Out of the Storm

A little bit of history: I started talking to a therapist through TalkSpace about a year after my mother died. This T helped me to understand some of the depth of the trauma I've experienced. About two years later, I almost attempted to end my life but instead overdosed on sleeping pills (intentionally). There are a lot of nuances that led to this, as it is with most depressive states. This prompted the reality that I needed therapy more than ever and began to see a therapist face-to-face at a clinic. I'll name her Jordan. As I started to see Jordan, I also got back into college. There I met Aiden, the college counselor; I began to see Jordan and Aiden as I wanted to be as active as possible in my recovery. It really helped.

Jordan eventually left the clinic and set me up with a new therapist named Jesse. Jesse wasn't like Jordan in that Jesse was much more focused on having an active dialogue with me. Jordan was more of a quiet-listener-type therapist, which is great but I need a more proactive therapist because of my personality. Aiden already plays the role of my "I'm going to be silent and contribute a little here and there" therapist, and she and I connected better than I did with Jordan.

Anyway, Jesse was the therapist that diagnosed me with PTSD, but she explained it as being complex since I've had multiple, prolonged traumas in my life. PTSD was something that continued to get dropped into my conversations with other therapists, including Aiden and the Talkspace therapist, as the disorder was very similar to my symptoms. (Jordan diagnosed me with MDD, and the psychiatrist at the clinic diagnosed me with GAD with depressive episodes.) I had already been aware of cPTSD through curiosity and a little bit of research, but through my new PTSD diagnosis and talking with Jesse, she and I agreed that cPTSD fit all the criteria I was struggling through.

Jesse started me on EMDR to find the roots of my traumas, and I continue to see Aiden for more general counseling and college stressors. Therapy has been a huge help for me and has encouraged me to take a more active role in my recovery. Before, I'd read about mental illness and didn't know how to relate, or felt too inadequate to really make any progress. Now I understand that getting better is a skill that has to be built upon; I have to keep trying, have to keep learning.

Some quick journaling as my school day comes to an end~

In my mid-20s, I stepped away from my religious belief system because I was becoming severely depressed and was finding no real help in my community. I decided to give myself a break, introspect, and reevaluate what would truly help me be happier and more content with my life. I eventually identified as an atheist and became a bit zealous about it; I offended some friends and had two burn bridges with me. (I look back at their friendship in spite of my behavior, though, and realize it was for the best either way. They weren't very good friends, to begin with.)

I've remained an atheist since, though I consider this aspect of my identity to be more agnostic than strong. I don't believe in a spiritual realm, nor do I really believe there is a god/gods/goddesses. I've had plenty of people concerned with what that could mean for my fate after death; I don't really try to counter this but simply realize that all I can do is live honestly and with integrity. I'd rather be judged knowing I tried my best than to worship out of fear and obligation.

It's been a few years and I've come to peace with my fellow humans who are religious. I used to be very adverse and combative with them, but now I've adopted a respect and compassion for why religion is so essential for many people's happiness. I get it and it's not within my nature to take that away from anyone. As long as no one is getting hurt, whatever makes someone else happy.

Saying all of that, I've also been more relaxed about considering the importance of certain spiritual practices in my own life. I began looking into this when I discovered Jung and fell in love with archetypal psychology. While I don't believe in the supernatural, I can't deny the immense importance mythology and archetypes have played in telling stories and lesson about the human experience. It's been fascinating understanding these nuances and how they help the psyche. It has opened me up to reading more about archetypes and exploring their role in other spiritual practices.

One of these practices is tarot, which I have implemented in my recovery process. I love tarot; I don't use it for supernatural/psychic purposes but rather as a tool to introspect and problem solve. For example, if I'm anxious or angry about someone or something, I'll draw a few tarot cards, interpret their meanings, and see how that relates to my situation as a way to challenge a healthier change in perspective. I find it a great tool for encouragement and just making sense of my life experiences.

My different readings are things I'd really love to post on here in regards to the variety of challenges I go through every day, but we'll see. But most definitely I will want to write more about my exploration of archetypal psychology in relation to my cPTSD.

thanks for posting, kdke.  i hope that your journal here is something useful for you and helps with your recovery.  mine has been life-changing for me.

i think spiritual (or lack thereof) beliefs are entirely personal, and as it seems with you, fluid.  i've gone from mainstream religion to exploring religions/spirituality of other cultures until i've found what suits me.  a conglomeration of sorts, but, like you, i basically want to live a caring life full of as much love as possible.  let those who would judge be my guest.

i've also done tarot, altho not on a regular basis like you.  i find it intriguing, and it, too, has helped me in the past make sense of something that i wasn't understanding.   

sending a hug filled with continuance on your journey.  so glad you're here.

***All names are aliases***

Lots of things happened this weekend and I don't say that with any real negative connotations. It was just very busy, with moving some last-minute stuff from my old apartment; and since I've been spending almost every weekend with my boyfriend, Mark, my time at his place is always busy since he shares his weekends with his children whom he shares custody with. I really adore his children, though, and have no issues with having them around. This was a situation I had to consider when Matt and I first met each other; I knew if I wanted to commit to him, I had to commit to his family, too. I have and those kids are pretty fantastic, even during rough days.

Anyway, I had a bit of a moment this weekend when I allowed my anxiety to get the better of me. I get sleep apnea when my allergies act up (my allergies make it harder to breathe at times), so sleeping with Mark has been difficult for him since I'll snore. At one point he requested I adjust my sleeping position, and then later yelled in his sleep at me when I started up again. I wasn't offended by this or by him in general, but it triggered the anxiety I tend to get when I start sharing a bed with a partner. I become hyper-aware of my sleeping and anxious I was disrupting his slumber.

It became so bad that I eventually moved into the living room. It then triggered depressive feelings of feeling like I was just a disruption; it also triggered some EFs of remembering my how my father would kick my mom out for her sleep apnea, and how cruel and judgmental he was towards her for that. Part of me was worried that her experience would become mine, and then just remembering how abandoned and bullied she felt. My poor mom...

I was able to sleep without guilt once I was in the living room, though, but started to wake when Mark's two older children came out to play on their tablets and watch TV. Mark eventually came out and was confused as to why I was already awake since I tend to spend time in bed with him in the mornings. I told him what happened and he just came over, gave me a big hug, and started to cry as he apologized to me. I reassured him that I wasn't upset with him but just felt very self-conscious and didn't want to take away from anyone's sleep. I guess it still really ate him up, though. We both knew he was asleep when he yelled, but the fact that he did at all just really killed him.

Mark gave me permission to tell him to shut up and sleep out in the living room himself if it happened again lol. I really love him.

We made up just fine, and I was able to spend time with his older kids before he even woke up. His daughter, Alyssa, wanted to make more cookies from a batch of cookie dough we started the night before, so we did that before breakfast. She and her brother, Terrance, were rewarded a cookie and some milk after they picked up their toys. Cookies in the morning always taste better.

very glad everything got resolved well and in a caring manner.  sleeping with someone can be a tricky road at times.  i'd have nightmares where i'd lash out pounding or kicking, waking my hub.  that stuff can be a trial.  just glad it all worked out.

love and hugs to you, sweetie.

Quote from: sanmagic7 on June 25, 2018, 08:14:51 PM
very glad everything got resolved well and in a caring manner.  sleeping with someone can be a tricky road at times.  i'd have nightmares where i'd lash out pounding or kicking, waking my hub.  that stuff can be a trial.  just glad it all worked out.

love and hugs to you, sweetie.

Thanks for checking in on my journal. I'm loving the company  :hug:

I wanted to get my thoughts out about the signature I chose for myself since ti really stood out to me.

"Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not."

I admire the sagely yet simple quote from Dr. Jung because I feel this describes our journey through mental illness and trauma. At the beginning, it may not seem so obvious why we behave the way we do, especially to those looking into our lives. We can sometimes judge our own actions and the actions of others as just a pure reflection of our character rather than a series of residual effects of our histories.

And I think the best way to come to this realization--this crucial difference--is stepping back and knowing that you don't know. I think back to the times when I've been called names, or my behavior has been rationalized as malicious; I didn't know any better myself so I would think I was just a terrible person. But as I deepened my understanding of how complex the mind is, I realized I had to put aside a lot of quick assumptions and start from the very beginning again.

There are reasons for these things. If I'm not actually a terrible person, and I truly don't intend to be malicious, then where does that leave me? It leaves my past, and why certain events bring up certain emotions and thoughts. I can go from there and create a tree of knowledge about my whole life thus far.

By telling myself that I know nothing and instead ask myself questions like, "Why, when, where, and how?" I can start to finally understand what the thing is rather than just dismiss and tear it down because it rubs me the wrong way. I can tell myself, "This thing triggered my irritability/anxiety/depression because it brings up a lot of complicated events that happened to me when I was a child."

From there, I make a bridge and can actually progress.

Quick entry as I have to get something off my chest.

Something happened in class this morning that was very distressing for most of my classmates; my instructor had been trying very hard to communicate with the publisher of this website that we do one of our courses in, and the publisher has been failing to fix issues that us students have been dealing with. However, what became little complaints here and there suddenly came at my instructor in waves, and came to a head when she was approached with one particular student who projected a huge chunk of their stress onto my instructor.

This student, whom I'll name Grace, has had challenges with stress since she entered the program with our cohort (a group of students that started the program at the same time). Grace has been battling anxiety and depressive episodes since the beginning and I guess still has a long way to go about how to handle her emotions.

This really conflicts me because while I believe the choice she made to throw her stress onto our instructor (who is helpless at this point at the hands of the publisher) was totally inappropriate and hurtful, I don't want to stigmatize her since I personally know she is struggling with her own mental illness. I know many of my other classmates really dislike her and want her gone. My feelings? I think she has a long way to go and I'm wondering if this is just not the degree she should be going for. We all have limits and I know this has hit many of hers very hard and often.

There's a part of me that is worried my classmates might try to get Grace into trouble. I don't think she's a troublemaker, just someone who's trying to figure things out and doesn't understand certain boundaries yet. And yet I'm also very upset she approached our instructor the way she did; all of us could hear the hurt in our instructor's voice when she told us, "I'm doing the best I can, everyone. I just can't take it anymore." I wanted to cry, my heart broke so much. I've never seen her defeated like that.

I've started to understand a bit better as to why the situation I talked about in my last entry bothers me so much. While I don't want Grace to get into trouble for her mistake (and by trouble, I mean removed from the program or shamed by my classmates), I realize that some of my distressed feelings are focused on something else:

What if I was in Grace's position? What if I was the one who had made the mistake she did and now was under the scrutinizing gaze of my classmates? I imagine it would feel isolating, frightening, and perhaps even angering. I know Grace enough that she is one who feels persecuted a lot of the time; and while I believe a lot of those feelings are wrongly perceived, they are real for her and make sense to her. She feels cornered and out of control, feels like she's getting the short end of the stick.

Because there is something that I think people too quickly throw away when faced with someone with Grace's mannerisms, is that they look at that person's worries and immediately dismiss them because those worries are not exactly based in reality. Granted, they may not be--but how are you going to help that person see their situation from a different perspective if you treat their feelings as though they're worthless? It continues the cycle of their negative behaviors, and even enforce them with a vengeance.

This was something I had to understand a long time ago, and even last year when my depression and anxiety were at their worst; putting down people (especially myself) doesn't help in the slightest. And depending on that person's character, they can retaliate because they feel attacked. Worse, some will take a person's put downs to heart and participate in risky behavior because why not--they're a bad person either way, right? That's what they keep being told.

So while a person is responsible for their own recovery and choices during that process, our choices in how we treat them make a huge difference in that process, too. I look to my classmates and see the dislike seething in their gazes and I have an idea as to why; but to act on those desires to alienate and punish Grace won't do her any favors because she is in a place where those consequences would ruin her. I just have a bad feeling about it.

And I look to this situation and see myself dealing with the bullying behavior of those I went to school with; Grace is an outsider in this situation who doesn't relate to many in our cohort, and now she's on the * list of many of my classmates who have their own clique and whom I consider kind of to popular kids. This can't bode well, but I really hope I'm wrong. I hope it's just my own past coming back to haunt me a little and projecting onto this situation. Maybe my classmates will leave Grace alone and this will blow over with time. I hope so.

It sounds like a challenging thing to be a witness to. I hope like you, that they will leave Grace alone and that it will blow over in time. Perhaps that depends a little on Grace's behaviour from this point and onwards too. If she feels threatened by alienation and her reaction-system is to lash out, it might be that she will continue to do that and that your classmates will have a reason to remember that they dislike her.

It is clear that this is affecting you too, could you talk to someone at your study about this? Your instructor or some student councillor or something similar? Perhaps they can take actions before it gets too much out of hand? And that way it might turn out better for Grace, your classmates and ultimatedly yourself too? Just thoughts, and please just ignore them if they are unfitting.

kdke, you truly have some major insight going on here.  to step into another person's shoes is a great gift to behold.  it's true that the reality of the cohort may not be grace's reality - who really knows the perceptions of another's mind?  and, what we perceive is, in fact, our reality.  so, it sounds like grace is reacting to something she believes is real and true.

unfortunately, as you say, we only see the behaviors, and can't guess what her mind is telling her.  it sounds like an awkward and unfortunate situation for everyone involved.  personally, i like sceal's thoughts of perhaps talking to someone about this, especially from a position of concern.  i'd hate to see it escalate, either.

i also love your self- exploration process.  i personally believe that the more we know and understand ourselves, asking the hard questions at times, (when we are able), the more readily we are able to interpret our behaviors, note their appropriateness in any given situation, and make the necessary adjustments so that we can feel more at peace with our own selves.

you show yourself to be a very compassionate, caring person.  so very glad you're here.   love and a hug filled with curiosity and exploration.

Quote from: Sceal on June 26, 2018, 07:06:58 PM
It sounds like a challenging thing to be a witness to. I hope like you, that they will leave Grace alone and that it will blow over in time. Perhaps that depends a little on Grace's behaviour from this point and onwards too. If she feels threatened by alienation and her reaction-system is to lash out, it might be that she will continue to do that and that your classmates will have a reason to remember that they dislike her.

It is clear that this is affecting you too, could you talk to someone at your study about this? Your instructor or some student councillor or something similar? Perhaps they can take actions before it gets too much out of hand? And that way it might turn out better for Grace, your classmates and ultimatedly yourself too? Just thoughts, and please just ignore them if they are unfitting.

Your perspective and suggestions are exactly what I was thinking of implementing. I'm fortunate to have a long-standing rapport with the counselor at my college, so I hope I'll be able to speak to her about this situation soon. She's on vacation right now but I know she would be receptive to my concerns. As strange as this might sound, I almost wish this has happened yesterday since I got to see the counselor one last time before she left for her vacation!

But yes, it is complicated because if Grace doesn't learn to compartmentalize her anxiety better, it will cause issues for her interpersonal relationships in the classroom, and my classmates will have more reason to seek out their own resolutions if that's what they desire. I certainly don't blame them for feeling that way in the first place, I just know small bits of what are obvious negative judgments about Grace and wishes that she was gone.

So... this week is just turning out to be one drama after another. I feel like I'm living in the same universe as Skins or something.

Grace is on academic suspension. This is affecting me a lot and I'm having to really introspect on what that means, as my brain won't let it go until I come to some kind of answer. I'm not looking for excuses for her, but just to understand why, you know?

It makes sense in that maybe she needed a bit of a wake-up call; her behavior wasn't ok and boundaries needed to be enforced. At the same time, there are kind of two groups of opinions forming about Grace and I'm not wanting to take either side. One side says she just needs to go and they want her gone; the other side believes Grace is completely innocent.

I can't take either side because there's obviously nuances to this situation. Maybe I feel that way because I've had the chance to spend a lot of time connecting to Grace as a friend. I do get frustrated with from time to time, but it's not as important to me as wanting to get along with her and enjoy the friendly company she can give. She has a lot of hurdles to overcome as far as her frustration and controlling her stress levels, for sure. I'm not sure if she will ever reach a place where those things will be resolved. I don't know.

It can be easy, I think, to not pay attention to all aspects of a person when you have no real connection to them. We can only work with what information we're given. Most of my cohort hasn't connected with Grace like I have, and so I know that their judgment on her is different than mine.

I like to think of people as puzzles; we're made up of all these little puzzle pieces, each representing a part of who we are and where we come from--but you can never truly know what the picture is unless you fit all the pieces together. You can have a puzzle that is half done, and so you might make conjectures about what you see. However, you would be missing the fact that this group of missing pieces shows a lovely part of someone, and this other missing group can show a darker, more complicated part. And isn't that the narrative all of us have?

I don't know all of Grace's puzzle pieces, but what I have found is that she is made up of all different kinds and shapes and colors. Just like me, and my classmates. Making conjectures can sometimes be our only option when trying to figure someone out, but it's always important to consider the complexity of someone. Grace isn't a caricature of a stressful student; she's someone who's walking her own path, made mistakes and victories, and is now facing the consequences of a poor choice.

I suppose I can be grateful that she hasn't been kicked out. I know my cohort doesn't agree with me but that's ok. I hope that Grace will respect the boundary our college has set in regards to how she is allowed and not allowed to communicate with her instructors. I also hope she can come back knowing that there are those who haven't given up on her.

****

This whole situation has made me think about some emotions and thoughts I've been processing for a long time; about myself and others who have come and gone from my life. It's helping me to see how hardship can be easily projected and taken on by others, and how to that understandably can sour an opinion. I'm also realizing how crucial it is to be very aware of that so I can always remember all the parts of who someone truly is, and that we shouldn't permit our resentment and frustrations get in the way of reality.

There have been people in my life that I've come to resent because of the poor choices they made towards me, and I feel like that is something I want to work on. Resentment, I believe, isn't really bad or good; it's just a response to being hurt. With any badly-perceived emotion (anger, resentment, hate, jealousy, and so on), I believe what you do with it is more important than experiencing it at all.

These same people I've been resenting also resent me for poor choices I've made. I don't blame them for feeling this way, and I can only hope that with what lessons I've learned and the better choices I can make now, they will come to a place where they are at peace. Conversations have been had in the past and there's really no where else to go except our own paths and making better decisions for ourselves.

****

I wanted to add a bit more general journaling to keep track of some other progress in my life.

One of the things that manifested from my mental struggles is an eating disorder. I'm an emotional overeater and will use food to regulate my anxiety and distract me from stessful situations. I guess in some ways, food is a form of dissociation for me. I can get lost in a food I like and if I eat a lot of it, well... that's time I don't have to spend on other dilemmas. Plus, the food I'm eating is delicious and makes me happy.

It's compulsive, it's emotional regulation, and it has ruined a huge chunk of my life. I remember it really starting when I was in junior high, as the best part of my day was getting home before my parents and stuffing my face with a high-fat and carb meal. It was like a reward system, but also to escape the stress I was under all the time. It was MY tme--the only time I felt belonged to me. So I indulged for the sake of feeling some comfort and control.

I still deal with this issue today, but I am lucky that I am still physically high functioning and can take care of myself. I am obese, but I have a high endurance for walking long distances (and I mean 3+ miles sometimes!) and I enjoy doing so.

Now that I'm living alone again, my diet has shifted and it's been making me think a lot about my eating disorder. I'm understanding that it actually flares up depending on what I'm dealing with, which would make a lot of sense for any kind of disorder. When I was living with my roommates, my eating disorder was on high pretty much every single day. I had gained back a lot of weight plus more when I lived with them, weight that I had lost making a lot of effort to be healthier. I just... got so lost in it. I felt like I couldn't stop and always had a strong need to eat crappy foods and as much as possible.

Escapism, for sure. But now that I'm in my own place, my disorder has calmed down. I still have compulsions to overeat, but they're not as strong and not as important to me. I can tell my brain and gut don't like and I've been experiencing some withdrawals (anxiety, feeling hungry all the time, obsessive thoughts).

Yet there is something that I've come to understand about myself that I haven't really been to explain, and I've told this others: when I'm by myself, I usually make some pretty good diet choices.

And is this true. I've started to settle into a routine that looks something like this:

-Celery juice, cucumber, and banana smoothie (makes two servings; I have one half in the morning and the other in the afternoon)

-Coffee w/creamer and caramel sauce (my only cup for the day and I make it myself)

-Hash browns (for supper and made from one large russet potato)

Other drinks include an iced black tea I make myself with a bit of peppermint tea and sugar for taste, and then water. Snacks could include rice chips or a cold cucumber salad (the latter I shred into a kind of pasta ((Vegetti for the win)) and mix with vinegar and a bit of suger); if I don't want hash browns, I use my Vegetti to make a zucchini pasta that I stir-fry with olive oil and seasonings.

And that's my main diet right now, and I'm really happy with it. It makes me feel better about myself and it just increases my energy and emotional stability. I do cheat a little with the coffee and hash browns, of course, (I love my creamer, caramel sauce, and ketchup), but I do my very best to not overeat. I make strict rules, buying only one large potato for each day of the week, and making it a habit to make my smoothies so I have breakfast (I hate cooking in the morning) lest I feel hungry and uncomfortable until lunch.

I will also cheat sometimes when I get my paycheck: I will reward myself with ONE special meal. This could be Vietnamese food, or a Subway sandwich. I'm trying to stay away from fast food right now, though. All of this has been very hard, and my eating disorder is a huge mountain for me to climb over. But if there is anything I've learned about mental illness is that you have to keep trying.

Something I've started to tell myself is that there is a point when the disorder turns into a habit. The disorder is still there, but habits start to form around it. My eating disorder still affects how I treat food and my body, but I can gain control over the disorder by tackling the habits that have appeased it this far into my life. Once those change and turn into more positive habits, the eating disorder is easier to contain. It will no longer take over my life and destroy me, even though it might never go away.

I'm sorry to hear Grace is on academic suspension. I can see you've been reflecting a lot on the entire situation.

I really enjoyed your description of thinking about people as puzzles. It allows for a much more nuanced understanding of humans and human behavior.

Thanks for sharing about your experience with an eating disorder. I never thought about disorders and habits in quite the way you outlined here but it makes a lot of sense and it's giving me some things to consider.

Back from a long weekend. A quick list of things that happened and I will expand further:

• Got the old apartment cleaned for inspection; isn't perfect in the slightest but we made the effort we could.
• Mark was having horrible stomach and intestinal pain; went to the ER and was diagnosed with an inflamed ileus. He has to have further testing for possible Crohn's.
• Played board games and The Last Guardian with Mark's older kids, Alyssa and Terrance. Terrance did get a little frustrated with me after I caught him cheating some at Sorry, but he got over it. Also, Alyssa cried a bit when Terrance and I tried to explain that Battleship was a 2-player game. Giving her a small hug and having her take a deep breath really helped her calm down.

Anyway, the final clean for the apartment was a bit stressful. I had some items I had to clean out last minute and then Mark and I waited for the cleaning lady to come by. She was an hour and a half late, so Mark and I were getting pretty stir crazy.

I was communicating all of this to one of my roommates, Emily, letting her know that this lady wasn't showing up and that she's kind of wasting everyone's time and Emily's money. I will admit--I worded it that way on purpose. It wasn't a lie, but I knew by appealing to Emily's time and labor, she'd be more likely to make a stronger stand in making sure this cleaning service pulled through. There was nothing I could really do on my end, after all.

It worked very well, as Emily became angry and was like, "This is unprofessional and ridiculous!" It was; I just know Emily enough that if I didn't make it personal enough, she would've just given up.

I told Mark, "With some people, you have to appeal to their ego to get them to do something." He said he never thought of it that way before, and I thought about it myself some. Appealing to another's ego is just a part of interpersonal relationships, isn't it? And as with these things that make up who we are, there is a spectrum of colors and limits to what is ok and not ok. It wouldn't have been ok for me to bully Emily or lie to her about what was happening, and I really just didn't want to in the first place. But by emphasizing certain factors involved in this service taking advantage of all of our time and her money, her ego wouldn't tolerate it. If it had just been about me me me, I'm sure Emily would've been less inclined. It had to be about her, and in some ways because she paid for the service, she had bigger stakes in this situaiton.

I know it's different and kind of strange to analyze an interaction like that, but I enjoy trying to understand the intricacies of why people socialize the way they do. What's the catch, you know? What's happening behind the scenes of something that seems so simple and easy?

****

I also want to talk about my last therapy session that happened on Friday. Jesse and I were talking about Grace and how much the whole situation bothered me. Jesse asked, "How does Grace remind you or yourself?" I talked about her anxiety and depression, about how I related to her feeling isolated from our cohort. It brought up past feelings of being bullied in school for me, so it was painful.

Then Jesse asked, "How are you different from Grace?"

I looked off to the wall and thought... and thought... and kept drawing a blank. My stomach dropped as I realized I just couldn't think of anything.

Jesse explained to me that this struggle to separate my own life from Grace's meant I had no real sense of self. Lucky for both of us, I was already very familiar with this description and knew it was something I struggled with a lot since my mother's death; however, I didn't ever know to what extent it went to.

I told her finding differences between me and Grace is something I would think more on, and Jesse was happy I would. It's really important I do. Losing the sense of self is something that is not uncommon amongst abuse survivors, especially with narc parents. I mean, a narc parent wants you to reflect them to some extent, so why would it matter that you're your own person? This is the mindset that was forced on me for years, and then my mother died and everything that I identified with was striped from me. I didn't know who I was, what I stood for, and why I was still alive. What was the point when I felt like my existence had no purpose without my mother's presence?

I know that I've overcome that hurdle, but my sense of self is still lacking greatly. I still have serious issues with making claims about who I am as a person, and having people tell me is just as uncomfortable for me. I can only really embrace the motives I have, my feelings and thoughts; but saying, "This is the kind of person I am: this, this, and this," is a terrible mountain I'm learning to climb.

That's what no sense of self does. It takes away the voice that can say those things with confidence. And if I am able to say something about who I am, I am in constant doubt. I wonder if I'm just fooling myself, or just being a liar.

Having no sense of self makes me feel like a drop of oil in a glass of water, unable to integrate with the rest of who I am.

Things that are different between me and Grace:

• Different ages, different generations.
• Grew up in different places.
• I know more about technology than she does.
• We have different learning styles.
• Grace has owned a business for 4 decades; I have never owned a business.
• Grace is a mother; I am not and have chosen to never become pregnant. I would, however, love to adopt one day when I am in a better place in my life to do so.
• Grace has been married and divorced; I've never been married but have had a few serious relationships, and am in one now.
• Grace is just learning to control her anxiety and depression; I've been working very closely with mine for about three years.
• Grace has only been to college since we met in our current program; I've been in and out of college since I was 18.
• Grace is a progressive Christian; I am an agnostic atheist.

I might expand on the list as I learn more about Grace, and about myself.

I'm celebrating 4th of July alone today. Not for any dramatic reason; I live in a different city than my boyfriend and family, since I don't have a car and they are swamped with the holidays... well, going over to hang out with anyone didn't work out.

I thought I was going to be fine, but I'm kind of not. Sometimes I get lost in my isolationist mindset that I don't need anybody to have fun, and there are times I don't. But now that I'm more social, I have this great relationship and my familial circle is growing, I just feel so alone today. Knowing that my best friend's family, and Mark and his kids are going to be having their little gatherings and I can't join in... it just hurts a bit.

And it's no fault of their own. I'm not blaming anyone because we all tried to make it work today and me traveling down was proving to be a bit complicated, especially when I have exams on Thursday. Still...  :'(

But I'm going to do my best to not get depressed about it. I already feel a bit that way, but I promised myself that I would get a nice dinner (Uber Eats woo), watch something good, and listen to the fireworks with my kitties. I want to make the most of what I have today.

Yesterday ended on a good note. After I did some facetime with Mark (we try to say goodnight on Facebook every night; his idea and I'm glad he encouraged it), I didn't feel as badly about being alone. As well, I tried my best to self-soothe and distract myself.

First, I decided to watch some videos to make me laugh. Laughter really is the best medicine sometimes. It helped me feel better and I eventually gravitated towards watching a series of longer videos about a convention scam that happened here in the states. Interesting stuff.

I've also been playing this new game on my phone called Crusaders Quest. It's 8-bit and has an interesting story to it. I always try to find a game I can focus on for a while, something to complete since it's always hard for me to finish things that I've started.

Now I've completed most of my assignments for the week and have an appointment tomorrow with someone to help me get grants for my schooling next quarter. Hopefully, that goes well...

Besides all of that, I took a small break and did some medical news reading. I started reading an article about a book I've been slowly making my way through called Lost Connections. It's a book written by a journalist in which he narrates his journey to find answers regarding his chronic depression and treating it with antidepressants. The book itself has brought up a lot of controversy in regards to the true efficacy of antidepressants (the author claims they are not effective at all; I'll say my thoughts about that), along with questioning the honesty of drug companies conducting trials.

The article about this book was very good, as it helped to create a less biased playing ground for both sides of this coin. And I do think it's a coin, as I think this author's experience is still valid even though he holds certain beliefs that don't necessarily reflect the reality of antidepressant drugs.

I think for him, antidepressants really failed him in his recovery, and this is an experience that many--including myself--can relate to on a visceral level. For me, antidepressants never helped; they dragged me down and caused more problems than they were worth. At times, they didn't have any effect at all.

Zoloft sent me to the hospital due to SSRI-induced akathisia. Not fun. Amitriptyline made me feel like a zombie and I would sleep for 14 hours a day. Ativan? Did nothing at all.

However, my story doesn't reflect the effects others have experienced with antidepressants. For some, SSRIs and tricyclic drugs saved their lives and helped them through the hardest stages of their mental illnesses. Those experiences matter and show that antidepressants still have a place in the recoveries of those who need them.

So I have an issue with this book in that it takes the author's personal experiences and makes them into objective fact. I just can't get behind it because it ignores the evidence that I've disclosed above. For many adults, antidepressants really help. For some of us, they don't. And that's ok.

"Does this way still work or does this way?" People... why can't it be both? Both ways can work! Why are we getting stuck in this cycle of black-and-white thinking with humanity? It's not helpful at all. As soon as I ran into that way of thinking in Lost Connections, I got pretty irritated with the author and his message. At the same time, he had some messages that I really agreed with, such as reminding ourselves that we have a lot more mental power than we give ourselves credit for. If we believe something enough, our body will reflect that truth, even if for just a short period of time (placebo effect).

If we learn to change a perspective about ourselves and how we view the world around us long enough, we can change how we feel in general. This all takes a lot of work, though; lots of time, patience, and trial and error. For example, I've had to teach myself how to recognize when I'm starting to have a depressed/anxious episode, and in response, I do a lot of self-talk and challenging my negative feedback loops. Even then, I had to also teach myself to listen to the reason within my self-talk and follow through.

This took months, lots of failures, frustration, feeling like I just couldn't do it... and yet I did it and am getting better all the time. Little by little, and that is something I also have to remind myself of. So yes, changing perspective about my depression and showing myself that I had the power to help myself, well... helped! A lot, really, and I know that this is a process that can help others.

However, I don't take antidepressants and that is a tool that some might need in order to walk their own path. I think when it comes to Lost Connections, it teaches a valuable tool that it might've not meant to: if you're taking antidepressants and they help you, educate yourself on the adverse effects. Protect yourself for the long-term, because there may come a day where you might not need them anymore, and getting off antidepressants can be a harrowing experience. (Especially if you've had to increase doses over time!)

For those of us who don't take antidepressants, know that it doesn't have to be a part of your journey to take them, but it's also ok if you need them to help you along the way. There is no shame in taking anitdepressants and if they help you, don't let anyone try to talk you out of it. If they don't like them, then they don't have to take them lol. But it's your life and you ultimately get to dictate what to do with it!

I've been thinking a lot about my most recent ex--we'll call her Lynn. Lynn and I got involved very quickly and in a passion; we had a lot in common and connected very well, it seemed. However, whether it was timing or just because we were in not the right places in our lives (maybe both?), it started to really fall apart after about... three months or so. At the six-month mark, it was pretty much done.

I have been trying to think on it very closely, figuring out all the puzzle pieces of the experience because there's been a lot of blame being thrown around. It's been very easy for Lynn and I to kind of point the finger at each other, and she is more susceptible to victimizing herself that I've been in this dilemma. That response has been very frustrating for me because it takes all responsibility she's had in her actions and puts it all on me.

One thing I have learned in my past relationships, romantic or not, is that I somehow attract people who have a very hard time accepting responsibility for their choices. They want to blame everyone else for making one poor choice after another. "I wouldn't have done A if you haven't done B" has been a common saying in my past dynamics, and it always rubbed me the wrong way.

Let's say you say something to upset someone. It doesn't matter what it is, but they are obviously offended by you. Now that person is presented with a choice within themselves: are they going to lash out at you for what you said, or choose another way to handle the situation? That is for them to figure out, alone. You can't make them do it, and you can't dictate to them how they will respond.

They decide to lash out at you and excuse their choice by saying, "I only did it because you offended me." This presents a false situation where they're implying they had no choice, even though they did. Perhaps it was a situation where after many years, they default to lashing out when offended. However, that is conditional and it's something they can change if they're willing to.

At the end of the day, it is their choice, and they are responsible for that. Not you. You are only responsible for how you choose to communicate to others, and that includes how to respond to someone you've offended, and so on.

Anyway... that's obviously just my thought process on it, and I digress in explaining it further. Almost everyone I've come across and has wanted to be some part of my life (excluding some exceptions) have had a very hard time understanding this. Lynn expected this understanding from me, but it wasn't something she wanted to reciprocate. If I became upset from something she said, explaining why it upset me was considered an attack and I was victimizing her. But if I made her upset, I would immediately try to understand what happened and then apologize.

I, of course, became very critical at times about certain things she said and it made her feel like she couldn't talk to me, which was very unfortunate. I tried very hard (and still do; my outer critic can be pretty mean) to fix that, but it's been a process that just took too long for our relationship. At the same time, Lynn was becoming very resistant and defensive against her therapy, and changing her own problematic behaviors was a mountain she didn't want to climb.

I say she didn't want to because she started to expect me to change for her; if I got better in my recovery, then she believed she would get better. If I could figure out how to communicate more effectively, that would make her life better and she would feel more secure. A few times she had admitted that it was my hope for her progress that she was depending on, but it was much deeper than that. She didn't want to change, but if I wanted to be in a relationship with her and be happy, I had to be willing to change for the both of us and expect close to no effort from her. I wasn't having it.

I left that relationship feeling very hurt, frustrated, and conflicted because I knew we had injured each other in different ways. I realized that communicating with Lynn about why I was frustrated was futile, as everything I could say to try to resolve those issues was taken as hostile. It was no longer an image I could change to help my words get across.

Jesse, my therapist, tells me that Lynn was the true perpetrator in this situation. To be honest, I don't really want to set myself up for a victim mindset about it. I don't feel like it's helpful in my case. I also think it erases any responsibility I had in some of the arguments Lynn and I struggled through. I'm definitely not innocent and it's something to note. I have a lot to learn still.

It was also becoming very frustrating on her side as I started to become less involved. It was a depressing and extremely stressful time in my life, when Lynn and I started dating. I still was having a difficult time with understanding why I would just... drift away from my romantic relationships. I started to do this with Lynn and it bothered her a lot.

Rightfully so. It wasn't that I didn't care about her, but rather I was handling my stress in a negative way and I allowed it to affect her. I handled it badly and it was a good chunk of what caused our issues. This is something that I'm working on in my current relationship; I'm fortunate that Mark doesn't have the same attachment style as Lynn (Lynn was much more of an anxious-attachment type; she would want my time constantly in the beginning of our relationship and had to learn that I couldn't be always available to her. There were other issues of her assuming that I was looking for someone else every once in a while. I never was as I'm someone who stays solely focused on the person I'm dating, but obviously me isolating myself from Lynn became an issue all on its own besides that), and he doesn't take my long silences throughout the day personally at all. That's been a great relief for me and has made our nighttime chats more desirable and less overwhelming since I won't be chatting with him all day long to begin with.

Anyway, I'm always throwing word vomit in this journal. I guess I'm just glad to have a place like this where I can work through my thoughts.

So... I might not be able to go back to school next quarter because I don't have any financial aid coming in. It really was my own fault; I procrastinated and let one screwup stack on top of the other to the point where all I could do was watch it tumble back down. Now I have to retreat and pick up the pieces. With what, though, I'm not sure.

I didn't want to write about this, to be honest. Not because I was ashamed but because I didn't want to feed my anxiety about it. I'm not sure if this is just a part of that procrastination like I'm trying to avoid the issue, but I've noticed a shift in me when it comes to dilemmas that pop up. I've become more inclined with wanting to focus on solutions; after I realized the pickle I was in, I started to feel anxious and very distressed. But even while feeling that way, I told myself, "Well, now we have to go to plan B and find a job. We have to survive this way until we get our * together again."

Job hunting brings its own form of anxiety for me, but I'm hoping that it won't be as tedious now that I've got almost a year's worth of administrative schooling behind me, even though it's not finished. I was wise enough to talk to my instructor about this issue and I think she would back me up with a reference if that's what it came down to. Until I can return and finish my degree...

But like I said, I really can't feel very badly about myself. Seriously, I did it to myself and this wouldn't have happened if I had made better choices several months ago. Anyway, I'm going to digress because I can feel myself getting ready to spiral down a "woulda coulda choulda" rabbithole that I don't want to go down, haha. It's done and over with--all I can do now is just make better choices.

I feel like my inner child is really urging me to put more energy into my creative side right now, as I've had ideas for working on a blog and also doing some freelance work. I like to make resume templates, edit and proofread resumes and cover letters, and also transcribe (when I'm not distracted). I'm good at these things and little Kdke is like, "Let's do some more woo!" She wants to go go go and make beautiful things. I just need to let it happen instead of pushing it down, and for what reason? It's actually come to a point in my life where stifling my creativity--my life force--is kind of destroying me.

I am... a creative person. I can be very creative, and I can make awesome things from nothing. And that's very difficult for me to say. It brings tears to my eyes, not because I'm happy, but because I'm fighting against this force that got molded into me that looks at my creativity and tells me it's worthless. It mostly sounds like my stepdad, but there is my mother there, too. But mostly my stepdad. I hate him for drilling his self-serving, ignorant, petty, hateful voice into my mind. I hate him for making little Kdke feel the way she did, sitting on her bed, staring off into nothing as she endured hours and hours of pretty much being reminded of how much of a disappointment she was... just for being who she was.

I can't let that happen again.

hey, kdke, i've been away for a bit, moving, but i caught up on your journal entries.  you have a fine mind.  i'm glad you've found this space to be helpful in working thru your thoughts.

i agree with you on the entire black and white thinking thing that so many people are into.  another part of that, to my mind, is the judgment that often goes along with it.  i've experienced that way too often in life, and altho i can sometimes understand why it happens (protecting a belief system, etc.), i believe, like you, that people are so very complex, have so many pieces about them that it's impossible to truly know why they hold the perspective they do.

finding out about your 'self', what it entails, what it might mean for the future, is an adventurous endeavor.  it looks like you've begun with being able to list your differences between you and grace.   well done.  i do think that at the bottom of everything, we have the ability to choose who we want to be, what kind of person we want to present to the world, and how we want to interact with others.

no small feat, to be sure, but a worthy one, to my mind.  i'm still working on it, make plenty of mistakes, but continue to practice.  i won't ever be perfect at it, but it gives me a continual goal to shoot for, and that's something to help me keep moving forward.

thanks for sharing.  by the by, i relate to the whole eating thing, too.  sending love and hugs to you.

Thanks for always coming by to visit, san.  :hug: I appreciate your insight.

This post talks some about chronic pain management, opiates, suicidal thoughts, and some angering towards my best friend's mother whom I love dearly regardless. Just a forewarning.

*************

I've had a best friend now for almost two decades. I'll call her Allie. Allie has been there for me since I was 13 and has been a sister to me. After my family died, her parents swept me up from that disaster and have been helping me find my place in the world.

All three of them are a huge reason why I'm alive and still going today.

But now Allie's going through a very rough time in her life, and I have a lot of conflicting feelings about it. Her mother, Kris, has post-polio syndrome. She grew up in Panama and was a victim of their polio epidemic back in the day. Kris is now 73 and is always in horrific pain, and the only thing that helps her get through every day is a regimen of fioricet and oxycontin. As her syndrome causes chronic pain that only gets worse over time, opiates have been essential for her to even be able to have everyday conversations with her family.

Now, that doctor who has helped her have these prescriptions is retiring in three months, and a new doctor Kris has tried to see is attempting to wean her off oxycontin--from 80mg to just 5mg.

I'm very aware of this new wave of trying to get opiate distribution under control; it's been a serious issue over the years as the drug is very addicting and can cause problems for the long-term. As well, many doctors are getting caught giving these narcotics to people who don't even really need them to begin with, sparking an epidemic that never had to happen if physicians had been more mindful of their patients' needs.

Kris isn't someone who can live without them. Post-polio syndrome is on a list of diseases and conditions (along with cancer) that may require heavier narcotics like oxycontin. So I'm both happy the epidemic is finally getting under control, but frustrated that Kris is having to suffer because of it.

This is especially relevant to me because I'm getting a degree in the medical field, mainly in administrative and coding work. I follow news and am very upset by the possibility of why Kris's doctor is doing this; I have a terrible feeling that this has less to do with her wellbeing and more to do with personal ethics and agendas of the physician. While a physician has a prerogative to having their own ethics, enforcing a personal agenda (in this case, being against opiates) on a patient with a chronic pain condition is, in my opinion, bordering on cruel and unusual treatment.

At Kris's age and knowing how much agony she's in every day, oxycontin should almost be considered an essential piece in her quality-of-life care. *... I almost feel like it should be palliative care at this point. She's tired, she's done; let her have her oxycontin and live her life in as little pain as possible so she can be with her family. Make her comfortable. Let her be. Let her die with some feeling of relief!

As far as how this affects the dynamic between her and Allie, however... that's where a lot of conflicting emotions come in. Just like how I was severely enmeshed with my mother, Allie is probably even moreso with Kris. Worse, it's not something they've ever wanted to consider fixing and have even looked at their enmeshment as something godly, like it's a spiritual gift and meant to be.

Honestly, I really don't care about the spiritual parts, but rather the fact that it's being rationalized as good when it's been slowly destroying Allie over the years. My best friend, the one person that I probably love the most in this whole world... might not be around for long after Kris dies. I don't know if Allie could handle being without her mother, similar to how I felt after my mother died--and yet worse, I suspect. Their enmeshment is more intense than mine ever was, and in the past, Allie has told me about how she and Kris have even made suicide pacts with each other. It's... really bad.

So I worry. I can't help it. Allie tells me she wouldn't kill herself if Kris died; I want to believe her, but I don't feel out of line to still be scared she will give up. And I'm frustrated at both of them, mostly Kris, for allowing this dynamic between them to get to this extreme level where they don't even know who they are without the other. It was a conversation I've had in the past with Kris, which I know now I wasn't the person that could be heard by her. I shared my worries that this enmeshment could kill Allie, and it really has been a concern for many years. Kris blew it off and told me she didn't see any issue. Allie does the same thing. I could never get through to them no matter how hard I might try. I'm not the person to do that, and I don't know who would be.

I could hope to have Allie see a therapist, but she is very resistant to therapy and has a lot of distrust. However, I am glad that Kris is with me in hoping Allie will change her mind. I do feel like Kris has some narcissisitc tendencies that have caused this enmeshment to manifest in the first place; I've had plenty of conversations where I've picked up on behaviors that were just off. Kris has been painted as a kind of matriarch of the family and she tries to live vicariously through her daughters, getting into their business and relationships. She can be very critical of her daughters, being "honest" when in reality she puts them down just because they might do or wear something she doesn't personally like. And that's hard--it's hard to be spoken to that way by someone whom should be lifting you up to be whatever you want to be.

A lot of this behavior, I think, was adopted from Kris's own mother, who was even worse from what Kris has told me. Seems to be a common pattern among baby boomers and their own parents, I've noticed. I hope that cycle will stop one day, and parents stop using their own children as objects to reflect themselves.

My irritability, anxiety, and depression got triggered a little bit today over a stupid, little debate I had with a classmate.

I'll name her Dre. We were all in a lecture and the topic was on neurological diseases, and this eventually branched into how food can affect our brains. Dre brought up that squeezable cheese that comes with certain packaged mac and cheese products, and said how most of it is silica and how toxic it is.

I kind of cringed inwardly at this because at least on my Facebook feed, I noticed this trend of memes where people are like, "Guys, this ingredient is bad for you because you can find it in this other product!" It completely puts aside the reality that a chemical can come in several different forms, and certain forms are harmless while others are toxic. Usually (but not always), the latter isn't put in foods, and the former is. Even then, the former isn't something you don't want to eat in large quantities because it can still cause issues, of course. It's really kind of a precarious balance, but I digress.

I know enough, as a layperson, that there is a difference, and I wanted to know more about what kind of silica was in the cheese Dre brought up. I talked to her about it and said, "I remember being very interested in silica after hearing this horrible story about some girls who tried to poison a classmate with silica packets, but found out that form of silica wasn't harmful. I wonder what form of silica is in the cheese you mentioned and whether it's really harmful or maybe in moderation, it might not do anything. And ya know, silica in a different composition is also an essential mineral for body structure. I'm just curious."

So I looked it up, and Dre started to immediately shoot me down and patronize my efforts. She started asking me, "What's that article, who wrote it? What are its sources? You know you can source anything, right? You can just cite me, you know." Like, holy crud, lady. I felt very disrespected and almost laughed at.

I tried to reiterate the position I was coming from, though. I was determined to have a civilized conversation. "What I'm saying is that I'm just wondering what kind of silica it is, because I know that not every kind is harmful and at least one kind of essential for everyday functioning." Dre turned around in her computer and said, "You know... I'm not trying to sound pretentious," and my irritability shot up 110% because a disclaimer like that is usually always broken with whatever is said next, "but I have an extensive background in forensic chemicals and toxicology, and I know that this form of silica is not good for you."

I was trying... SO HARD to keep my composure. I absolutely hate being dismissed, and especially when someone dismisses me using an appeal to authority. It was so, "I know all, and you're just a peasant" kind of attitude, and I almost hated her in that moment. I told her, "Fair enough, and I'll say it again, I am NOT implying that just because we have on form of silica in our bodies, that it means we can just ingest any form of it and be fine. I understand that's not how it works. I was just curious to know what this form was and how it used as a food additive. That's it."

I'm happy, though, that the debate ended peacefully, but I left it feeling like I was just someone that was shut down for no other reason than to preserve Dre's ego. Like... it started to feel like it had less to do about whether what I was saying was reasonable or not, but more to do with me simply being a layperson in that topic and therefore I should just be quiet.

However, I have to be careful to acknowledge the reality that I am still very upset that it happened, and perhaps my hurt emotions over it might be painting a picture that isn't based entirely in facts. This kind of confrontation, as well, is something that I'm working on in therapy as a side effect of my cPTSD. I get triggered very, VERY easily when I feel like my voice isn't being acknowledged, especially when I feel disrespected, and I will go from a 1 to a 10 in seconds.

My parents (especially my dad and stepdad) would dismiss, condescend to, and patronize me constantly for not understanding things. Worse, even if I did understand something, it didn't matter because I was a kid so anything I had to say didn't have any true worth unless it served their egos. I endured that kind of verbal and psychological abuse for years, and now I get incredibly upset when others treat me the way my dad and stepdad did.

I'm going to try to not let Dre's attitude ruin my day. I feel very down right now; hopeless, embarassed, angry, and resentful. I feel bullied, and I'm just trying not to let myself spiral. I think I'll be ok, but it sucks.

i don't wonder that you feel bullied - to my mind, that's exactly what dre was doing.  pretentious, indeed!  i'm with you that those kinds of statements are forerunners of just exactly how pretentious (know-it-all, smart-*, arrogant, etc - whatever they're attempting to deny beforehand) they really are being.  pooh on them!!!

as far as the chronic pain and painkillers go, i remember a doc once telling me that there's a difference between painkillers used to preserve quality of life and those used to get high (my d once had a chronic pain disorder).  these docs are so afraid of addiction, yet they know very little about it, except that the word sends danger signals to them and they try to avoid it at all costs.

i've been on clonazepam for over 20 yrs. for sleep.  am i addicted?  yep, definitely.  physically addicted for sure.  still, if i'm abruptly taken off it, my sleep suffers horribly and within a week i'm back to where i was 2 decades ago - depressed, miserable, sleep-deprived, and unable to get any profound sleep cuz of restless legs syndrome.  i've been warned by docs so many times about the 'addiction' concern with this med, that i'm sick to death of it.

your friend's mother deserves better care.  if the docs would only look into pain management and meds, learn something about it, educate their patients about it, and yeah, let them have what they need, especially when they're older - what is that going to harm?  ooooh, this stuff grinds my gears.

i'm not advocating anything rash or a free-for-all for everyone, but certain people should be able to depend on their docs to see their distress and do what's in their power to ease it.  i know the med. profession at large is like a cat on a hot tin roof about the opioid epidemic that's going around, but i do believe it's cuz they handled it badly in the first place. 

so, i'm very sorry you all are going thru this, sorry your friend's mother is in such pain, all of you are in pain about this on one level or another.  it's really too bad this can't be dealt with rationally in order to ease suffering as much as possible.

just throwing in some support to you for all this.  by the by, i totally understood the point you were making about the silica.  dre can just get off her high horse about her knowledge and all.  sending love and a big hug full of righteous indignation.

San, I appreciate to have someone who understands my frustrations about Kris's opioid situation. There really needs to be more consideration for those who seriously need stronger medications (like her) to have proper quality of life. She deserves it, has fought hard for it. I hope that shell be taken care of.

*****

Another weekend and it kind of started out frustrating. I made sure to get some software simulations done, and then an exam, but getting to Mark's was difficult. I usually grab a snack from the store so I can take out some cash; well, I got the snack but forgot to ask for cash! So I was walking in the direction of the bus stop, and halfway there I realized what I had done. I was very irritated with myself and couldn't catch a ride for almt another half hour.

When I finally got to Mark's, he sprung on me that we were going to the pool. I don't own a swimsuit and so I told him that I'd just get my legs wet. That made my Mark feel badly and so he started to suggest I try his swimshorts on, then do this and that, etc.

It really only served to make me feel even more frazzled and irritated. I know he was trying to be helpful, but it also felt like a situation where he was trying to make me do something to make himself feel better. I felt uncomfortable and pressured after a while.

It's definitely something that triggers my anxiety super quickly because it starts to feel like it's less to do with my feelings and more about the other person's. Also, from my perspective, it seems to make things more complicated than they need to be, and that just adds to my frustration.

I'm not sure exactly where it comes from, and I feel like it is a part of my cPTSD. It really puts me in a bad place, and I start to feel cornered and almost panicked. I'll go into fight mode, like I wanna say, "BACK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE ALREADY!"

I'm wondering if it has a lot to do with my childhood bullying, from other kids and my parents, and now anything that makes me feel pressured and like my autonomy is being overridden puts me in a super bad place. The anxiety is so bad that it's physically painful.

I took a shower after my talk with him and started to feel better (sort of). His big kids were hiding in different places in the living room and surprised me (Mark's ex dropped them off since I told her she could now that I was at the apartment). They ran out of their hiding spots and said, "Boo!" It made me smile and feel a lot better.

I talked to Mark and we went to the store to find me something to go swimming in, after all. We found me a swim top and got a pair of trunks. I haven't gone swimming in years, and being in a pool again was heaven. I absolutely loved it and we'll be going back tomorrow. I had forgotten how happy swimming makes me! I feel so at home in the water.

It's Sunday night and I wanted to end the weekend with another entry. I've been thinking on and off a lot about how my perspective of myself has fluctuated some, and not in a way that I think is helpful.

Right now, I've been kind of harsh about certain parts of me that are actually very essential. I was talking to my college counselor and she picked up on some fears I had about my harsher side. It started as I recollected why I have such a hard time accepting people's compliments about my personality; I told her that it feels like they're saying I'm on this golden pedestal when in reality it's like I'm looking up at it and can hardly reach it. I said it feels that way because of all these darker parts that exist within me, that feel like are going to creep to the surface and show the world that I'm not these positive things others say I am.

My counselor said, "So, a few months ago, we were talking a bit about your shadow self. Those parts of you that are shadowy but have helped you through life. You have this good, light side that people see, and then you have this darker, tougher side that defends and stands up for you. So the shadow is good when used in the right way, right?"

I started to cry when I thought of it. There's something very visceral that hits me when I talk about the shadow. My shadow, the darker and more complex parts of my personality, have been so repressed and shut down that sometimes I forget how valuable they are. It comes out as snippy and cruel, full of resentment and rage; but when allowed to breathe and integrate with my everyday self, my shadow is strong, tough, and helps me take charge. It helps me to protect myself and doesn't allow others who disrespect me to walk away unnoticed.

My shadow self tends to come out in my dreams, I've noticed. That's where she's most powerful and can do whatever she wants, whereas in the real world, she has to be stifled because of my fears. I sometimes wake up from my dreams a bit horrified by what my shadow is capable of, at least in a world only exists in my sleep. But in a way, it's a cry for help. Like a child who is so frustrated that she can only kick and scream, my shadow can rage and make awful choices in my dreams. At the same time, she can also make good choices, ones that show she has no room for the disrespect of others and has an unapologetic drive to do what she wants.

These are things that I struggle with a lot. But the fact that my shadow can do it tells me that I can do it, too.

The very first therapist I had, she saw these polarizing traits in me that were battling for control, so she asked me to name them and tell her what traits they represented. I named them Cadeyrn and Nedra. Cadeyrn was the voice that represented power, confidence, creativity, drive, but also aggression and anger. She was a masculine energy. Nedra was compassionate, empathetic, giving, loving, but also timid and scared. She was a feminine, maternal energy.

Cadeyrn and Nedra battle a lot when in reality, they are parts of me that should be working together. It's one of the reasons I know I've come across as a bit wishy-washy to some people in my life; I can go back and forth, between putting my foot down or letting people walk all over me. From being timid to being aggressive. It's very frustrating for me because I'm aware of this imbalance.

I bring up Cadeyrn and Nedra, too, because they both represent parts of my shadow. I think Cadeyrn more than Nedra, as I believe the former has been much more suppressed over the years and made to kind of fester and grow resentful. I also have found it fascinating how these two energies have an astrological significance for me. I don't so much believe in astrology as a supernatural force, but I do find it interesting as a way to explore one's personality. Cadeyrn represents Aries, my Sun sign. Nedra is Cancer, my Rising.

Nedra also has a special, archetypal presence for me. It was by total coincidence that her name is a deviation of a word that means "Underworld." As I got to know more about archetypes, I've grown a fondness for Persephone and her story. I started to understand that I could integrate Persephone's rise to authority and power to build up Nedra. I also know, through journaling and understanding these two polarized energies, that Cadeyrn (my shadow) isn't wanting to silence Nedra, but rather is just frustrated by Nedra's lack of courage to speak up. This is where I need to learn how to better allow my shadow to come forth and let it help me. It's something I need to be willing to explore now more than ever.

Hi Kdke.

I wanted to reply to your previous post, but I needed to get my mind more focused first. If you don't mind me jumping back to the day where you headed out to Mark.

Perhaps your reaction towards him and his suggestions that were meant to be helpful might be because you had a rough start on the day and the stress, irritation and frustration of that where still lingering and what you really needed was validation and just a moment to breathe after your arrival before you had to deal with unexpected new things.

My therapist said that when having survived trauma we often have lingering emotions that pops up without us quite knowing why or where they came from. But that the emotions most likely had a purpose once upon a time, protecting the Self, but without integration they appear in other overwhelming situations too. I am not sure if I quite explained that very well. But I hope you understand what I meant.

I am glad to hear though that your day turned nice afterwards, and that swimming for you were really enjoyable!

hey, kdke,

i believe we all have a darker, shadow side to us, and part of what we can do for ourselves is acknowledge and embrace it.  it is a part of us that has come to the fore when we've needed to be tougher, stronger, and fighting for our boundaries and our selves.   i think it's been repressed out of fear (because we've seen too much of it negatively in others) or because it didn't suit the agendas of others in our lives.  they didn't want to see us strong because we would be too hard to manipulate if we were.


i agree with sceal that your difficult start to your day may have exacerbated those feelings about mark.  another thought that came to my mind was how many times we've had people pressure us to do something cuz it would somehow make them feel better.   i don't like when people pressure me, either.  i'll find my own way, thank you very much, at least in situations like that.  and if i need help, i'll ask for it.

i find it fascinating that you were able to name your polar opposite sides.  i never thought of that, but it sounds like it works well for you.  well done.   sending love and a big hug to you, sweetie.

Sceal, what you've explained makes a lot of sense to me and now I'm wondering if being frustrated with trying to get to Mark's was already weighing me down by the time he told me about the pool. I've been trying to get into a habit of letting people know that if I seem agitated, it has nothing to do with them but because of a previous situation; I'm just trying to work through those feelings.

So far, I've found that when I put in the effort to acknowledge someone and say, "Hey, it really isn't you and you've done nothing wrong," and then make a good effort to not direct those emotions towards them, they really appreciate it.

Even if I slip up a little, the awareness has been established and the other person can step back like, "Let's talk about it later because I know you're already stressed out." I mean, I've been lucky enough to have people like that in my life, but I imagine that's not how it always works, lol. I've had people where I try so hard, but slipping up is always an offense regardless, even if I apologize and try again. Can't win them all.

But yes, in regards, too, to misplaced emotions that aren't being integrated well--this has definitely been a struggle for me! It's gotten a lot better as I've worked harder to understand my triggers, but that's not saying I still don't feel them and have to step away to know what for. Thank you for speaking up.

San, you saw the same thing Sceal did and I really appreciate you both giving me that extra insight. You're both so caring and receptive that I'm happy to really keep a closer eye on why I might feel the way I do so I can integrate those emotions more successfully in the future. As for the shadow side--yes! I really do agree that others also try to shut it down because if we allowed our shadows to fight for us, we would be harder to manipulate by those who wish to use and hurt us.

I almost see my shadow as the anti-hero side of myself; for the most part, I am seen as a very patient, friendly, and compassionate person. At the same time, the anti-hero part of me isn't afraid (or doesn't want to be) to put out my palm and say, "NO" to those who would try to disrespect me; the side that is willing to seem harsh, mean, or crabby for the sake of preserving my agency. It is a risk that needs to be taken with those who want to project their own negative emotions and control me. I'm still learning to have those battles but I'm getting better little by little all the time. The fact that I'm having them is a huge step, lol!

*****

I wanted expand more on my understanding of my shadow as it was something that really encouraged me to delve more deeply into my therapy. I don't think I had very much of an understanding of it right after my mother died, and even a year after that. I was trying to figure out what my first therapist was touching upon and now I realize she was helping me accept my subpersonalities.

Personally, I think of subpersonalities as the different parts of a puzzle. I like to imagine my puzzle representing a beach of my liking, and that beach is made up of different things:

Ocean water
Shadows within the water
Waves
Birds
Sky
Clouds
Sun
Pebbles
Seaweed
Bushes and flowers
Winding path down to the beach
A cave besides the path
Darkness within the cave
Shadows within the darkness

All of these things have their separate qualities, have a story to tell; but together, they make up my puzzle. They come together and make me who I am, and I have to understand how they integrate with one another, and even learn their different narratives that tell me why they are the way they are.

I remember when I first started to explore this concept with my therapist and felt a bit uncomfortable. I felt like I was being told I had multiple personalities and wondered how worried I should be, lol. Because to some extent, I knew that DID can be debilitating and I didn't fully understand where I was struggling the most just yet. She explained to me that this was simply an exercise in knowing who I was and to embrace that. It was also an attempt to help me feel more empowered rather than trying to stifle and fight myself all the time. (She also knew that I was a creative/imaginative person and this exercise would appeal to that side of me. She's too clever!)

As time has gone on, I also see this as a tool to filter out the criticisms that have been adopted by my abusers, which has been super helpful in understanding the motivations behind my inner and outer critics.

Anyway... in looking at myself in that way, I see parts of my puzzle that are obscured. I imagine for some people, might seem to hide away terrors that we are taught to fear from an early age.

I feel the same way, in a sense. I look at the sky, ocean, and cave, and see my shadow. It is the force that thrives in the darkest parts of me, that knows all paths, knows what to do to survive, even if it means having to choose what others couldn't stomach to. But my shadow does because it knows that sometimes you have to make hard decisions; sometimes you're placed in a dilemma (by yourself or others) where you have to make a choice that would cause someone else to dislike you. You might lose a friendship, lose trust with someone that sees your decision and finds offense. And perhaps that's something they're willing to talk about, but the shadow chooses the path that we have to go down to progress, no matter how much it hurts or scares us to.

I look to my shadow and see a young woman that has taken paths down dark places and dragged me along with her in my dreams. She is angry, but also hurting so much, facing my fears over and over again in different forms and intensities. It's like she's drowning, and I'm the only one who can row out into the sea and save her before it's too late.

Hi kdke,

I've been away from here for the last few weeks. Just wanted to say I really enjoyed your sharing about your shadow.

Also, your creativity is beautiful! I hope you continue to find more opportunities to allow for Little kdke's expression.

Sending a hug (if you like),
Seashell

Thanks, Seashell! It's so good to see you back. I was actually thinking about you today and wondering when I'd see you posting about your journal again.  ;D

*****

So today was kind of a blah day for me. I woke up at 10:54am, which sucks because Wednesdays between 10 and 11 is when I have an appointment with the college counselor. I really value these sessions because it just helps me to balance myself out, especially when getting an appointment with my actual therapist can be super tough. She has a lot of clients and trying to fit us all in when it works best can be a challenge, but she tries and I try. That's all we can do.

Saying that, I had to call her a leave a message; I have to cancel that appointment, too, because I have CPR/first aid training this Friday between 12 and 5. My session is at 3. Uuuugh lol. I hate missing therapy, but I explained in my message that it was a class paid for during registration and it's only offered by the college once a year. For that reason, if I don't take it this Friday, I have to either wait a WHOLE year (not going to happen because I need the training to graduate) or pay for it on my own time somewhere else.

Soooo yeah.

Beyond that... lol. Because there's more: I woke up feeling super hungover. I don't drink, so waking up feeling that way is never fun and sets me up for a bad day. Nothing could help me feel better; I thought maybe it was caffeine withdrawal--it wasn't. I tried to eat, but that didn't help. The headache just got worse and I started to feel nauseated. I went to my work but left a half hour early. There was no one there so I didn't feel particularly guilty.

When I got home, I downed 4 Tylenol (I made sure to read how much I could take in 24 hours--I am responsible so no worries!) with some water, then sipped on some soda hoping the carbonation would calm my stomach.

Thank the elder gods for rapid release, extra strength Tylenol, lol. I still felt on the verge of being sick for a while after the head pain went away, but I'm feeling better now. There is some dullness of what I felt earlier, but yeah. Not terrible. And my appetite is back to normal. I'll be making food later.

My mood isn't horrible, at least. I got to talk to Grace a bit today; the drama between her and our instructor is really coming to a head and getting more complicated. I was talking to my boyfriend last night, though, that I'm ready to tell Grace that I need a break from knowing what was going on. It's just a lot and knowing just her side of this dilemma is bringing me down. I feel very uncomfortable and the negative feelings she's experiencing are bit much for me to handle right now.

I'm happy to be her friend and I care about her a lot, but Grace has been developing some opinions about our instructor that don't settle well with me. I can understand that perhaps she is painting our instructor in such a way to emotionally distance herself and justify her own bad feelings regarding her, but it's not really a practice I want to enable or harbor if the makes sense.

Grace has been making fun of how my instructor looks, putting her down for reasons that really have nothing to do with a person's character. It's become petty to an extent and I'm kind of like, meh. I don't care to be a part of that conversation anymore.

Another part of the dialogue happening between me and Grace is her narrative; she believes that there is absolutely no reason our instructor has to dislike her, and Grace feels that she has done nothing wrong to be rude or disrespectful at any point.

This part of the conversation I've kind of kept quiet about because I really don't feel like I'm the right person for it. Grace has done things in the past to make others feel disrespected by her. During group projects, she has been very passive aggressive towards her classmates and the effort put into their work; she can also complain and seem very ungrateful sometimes. She has even done this right in front of me and her own group members, saying, "Well, I like your project. I think ours is bad, haha." It's... pretty disrespectful.

It has made some of our classmates not want to interact with her. I tried to kind of understand why she can sometimes be this way, as it's not something that happens often at all, to be honest. I think there was really only once or twice where she has shown a side of herself that was truly rude and passive-aggressive. Every other time, what others perceive as negative, I've come to understand as frustration and stress. She just doesn't really hide it and keep it to herself like the rest of us do. Which isn't always great since then she projects it onto some of us without realizing that's what she's doing.

Anyway... I guess I feel like some part of her feels so victimized by our instructor that she now has this narrative where she does no wrong and our instructor is this bully who targeted Grace for no reason other than why not. When the reality is... I have no idea why our instructor chose to suspend Grace. I really don't. I've come to accept the reality that no one can know the objective truth of what happened between Grace and our instructor in that office that day. We can only know their own, subjective perspectives, along with a small paper trail of emails, and secondhand words. That's it.

And it sucks. It really sucks, because that means no resolution that anyone can come to will be good enough for either party. It will never be fair, there will always be questions unanswered. I have a feeling that this whole squabble will end with both parties having some pretty toxic feelings. There will be hurt, resentment, anger, and even fear. I feel like it's unavoidable.

I've tried to explain to Grace that sometimes we can dislike someone because they reflect what we don't like about ourselves, so we try to correct it in what way we can. I said, "Maybe that's what our instructor is doing. I don't she's a bad person for doing it, since we ALL do that at some point in life. So if she is, it was a poor choice on her part, and it doesn't mean that what she sees in you is bad or good. It just is. Maybe she can come to terms with it one day, because it doesn't really mean she's trying to hurt you. She's on the defense so that tells me she's probably scared about something, and unfortunately, she doesn't know how to overcome that feeling than this way."

Grace thanked me for this mindset, and I think for a moment it really helped her to calm down and not feel so angry at our instructor. I don't think Grace is a liar, but as time has gone on, her perspective has morphed and changed in such a way where I think it's not as objective as it might have been in the beginning. If our instructor did choose to target Grace for no good reason, then I think our instructor needs to be disciplined and I hope she learns better ways of coping with her negative feelings. Punishing students because she feels uncomfortable isn't a good enough reason to make a decision like that.

But like any kind of situaiton like this, I know there is more to the story. These things are never so simple, and there are nuances involved. But ya know, I can only speculate and I've no real desire to go out of my way to find out more. I just needed to get it off my chest for now.

Hi.

I just wanted to say hello,  and that I have been following your recovery journal from the start. I have noticed that you are troubled by,  and discuss a lot of things that I too have issues with.  I relate so much to the situation with your friend Grace. You seem to have given it so much thought,  looking at everything from all points of view. I would be exactly the same, but would end up feeling so tired and overwhelmed with it all, that I would withdraw. It's such hard work sometimes!

All the best to you.

Libby.

Libby, thank you so much for your kindness. I really love that even though these journals provide us with the freedom to say what we need to along with anonymity, to have others looking at our journeys and supporting us is a real gift I'm glad to have.

*****

As I've allowed myself to dive back into my shadow self and learning to integrate that, it's also made me think more about my dreams since those worlds are where my shadow can explore without restriction.

My dreams tend to be very vivid, colorful, and each "dream world" is incredibly vast. Sometimes it feels like each dream is its own acid trip, as I'll dream about things that are so outrageous and impossible that I imagine such a thing would only happen if you were on drugs or in some deep psychosis.

I always remember one dream in particular (even though there are many I can account for) where I was sitting on a pier with an ex; we were watching the stars which had turned into a giant whirlpool of circling sparkles of white light in the sky. It was like the sky had expanded and come closer to us if that were possible. Even in my dream, I was awestruck by how massive this experience was.

Others include drowned cities, islands composed of cheap motels and abandoned malls; derelict skyscrapers and their massive underground mazes in which something is watching me but never reveals itself; theaters, more hotels, and strange elevators; houses where nothing exists but screaming ghosts; futuristic, dystopian cities in deserts; towns that are like mirror funhouses, shifting and changing at every turn; skies where the moon is too large for comfort and stars never seem to stay in one spot for long.

The list can go on and on and gets weirder and weirder. I know there are correlations to why I dream this way, some ranging from sleep deprivation, hypertension, mental illness, and even weight problems. Regardless, when I talk about my dreams to others, they respond to me as though I have been keeping some kind of drug addiction under wraps from them, and where could they get some lol. Other people describe their dreams as just having strange conversations with people they know, or being somewhere unrecognizable or familiar. They sound very simple, where my dreams never are.

I don't always remember my dreams, but while there are real explanations for why they exist the way they do, I know that my dreams have always been this vivid and wild. I remember having dreams of zebras turning into every color of the rainbow at epileptic speeds (too much of the zebra gum, I imagine); or worse, dreaming about going to a circus where I would float into the air while giant crows would kill people with shotguns. I remember having waking dreams where I thought giant spiders with bodies that appeared like chaotic galaxies and millions of legs curling towards me would try to grab me from the ceiling.

All of this at the beginning of grade school.

All I know is that my brain, at least when I'm sleeping, is a powerful place full of images, sounds, tastes, sensations, and symbols that I think I need to pay more attention to. Especially when I have a dream involving violence, as I'm usually directly involved with.

My dream self, sadly, will sometimes commit violence against someone she doesn't like. She will do things that I would never do in real life. I've had dreams of beating my mother or one of my grandmothers in the bathroom. I remember having one where I was killing children trying to kill me and my mother, and another where I manhandled someone by slamming them to the ground and putting a foot on their head for just asking me a question I didn't like.

That's why I tend to refer to my dream self as my shadow. She is sometimes so full of rage that she will act it out in my dreams in ways that make me feel uneasy once I wake. I understand, though, that it's repressed anger that has built over years, as I was taught my anger was never justifiable and so came to believe that I was never in the right to be angry. I started to believe my anger was bad and shameful, and it became a huge part of my shadow self and why it manifests in my dreams in horrible ways.

To this day, I'm still pretty afraid of my anger and never feel ok with expressing it. There's also this weird part of me that feels like... anger is beneath me? Like it's an emotion that is primitive or a reflection of someone's lack of intelligence or maturity.

To say the least, it's an irrational fear and the explanation behind it is ridiculous and pretentious. I've no doubt that it evolved as a way for me to rationalize why I try so hard to not be angry over the years. It's not served me well and has only caused me issues. Anger is neither good or bad. The good or bad comes in when you have to decide what to do with your anger. That's something I've been having to remind myself of as I feel anger about different things, because my inner critic will try to punish me for feeling it at all.

And then if I'm not careful and repress my anger, it'll come out in frightening ways in my dreams. It's a bad cycle.

Mm, another thing I wanted to record for the sake of my memory and just because I'm really confused as to what it is:

I've always dealt with these debilitating headaches every since I was a child. I remember having them randomly (or maybe not?) and they would get worse as the day went on. Sometimes they'd get so bad that I would be at home, sick in bed and feeling nauseated. Sometimes the headaches would make me feel so sick that I would vomit. Rest and sleep would be the only things (at the time) that would relieve the pain.

These headaches never went away, but as my blood pressure got higher, they were explained away as tension headaches. However, I've learned to tell the difference between a tension headache and these other ones. With a tension headache, nothing will make it go away except for bringing down my blood pressure, usually through staying very hydrated and rest. With these other headaches, rest and taking high doses of Tylenol/Excedrin will make them go away.

Like yesterday; I took four Tylenol and chilled out. I kept the lights off in my apartment, only allowing my kitchen light to be on so I wasn't in complete darkness. I even contemplated taking a long nap, as that's what I usually have to do to make the headaches subside. I felt nauseated, I couldn't handle any everyday stimulus...

Oh, by the way: don't these headaches sound a lot like migraines? (lol)

These headaches usually migrate to areas like behind my eyes, either side of my head, or just focused on one side of my head. The tension headaches always manifest from behind my neck and spread upwards.

The other headaches (migraines?) will throb if I move too much and will even cause these horrible, sharp throbs every once in a while. They will sometimes also last for days. So will the tension headaches, but like I've said, I can tell the difference.

The reason I never went to the doctor about them is because like I said earlier--I was told they're tension headaches when my hypertension popped up. But... they were always an issue. Saying that, I'm going to have to make an appointment with my physician to understand what they are. We'll see.

I'm in a writing mood today lol. I just wanted to document something else that was on my mind before I forget.

There's a dream I've remembered where my dream self (shadow? I'll just call her my shadow from now on) won some kind of lottery, so she decided to go to a store to spend some of her money with friends. Along the way, this guy approached my shadow to see if he could bum some money off her. Well, shadow kdke didn't take kindly to this and she grabbed the guy by the neck, forced him onto the concrete and stood a foot on his head. I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was along the lines of lecturing the guy on leaving her alone... in more colorful language. He didn't bother her from then on, and my shadow went on her way.

Once inside, she started to look around and decided to diverge from her group of friends. They took no real mind, even as other friends who were following her decided to go on their way, too. She was just there do her own thing, without any concern over anyone else's opinions. Eventually, she made her way to the electronics department (no surprise there) and sat herself down at a PC that was open for demo or something. There was a lady and her daughter hassling my shadow about using the PC, and again my shadow was giving attitude lol.

What can I say? My shadow is sassy and pretty rude.

But something I notice, in spite of the rudeness and bite--my shadow embraces her own will as the most important in her own life. She doesn't worry about what people will think, even her own friends. She doesn't take offense when her friends do the same. My shadow concerns herself with what makes herself and her friends happy.

Most importantly (besides the aggression), she doesn't allow anyone to take advantage of her, or take her for granted. She's quick to correct others so they understand that they're to treat her the way she wants to be treated, not vice versa. And if you disrespect and assume? Well... I wouldn't slam you against the concrete, but my shadow encourages me to not take anyone's disrespect lol.

It's this assertiveness that I thought I've always lacked, but apparently, I don't. It's there, somewhere... just floating in my mind, in my unconscious. Why I've pushed it into the darkness, though, is a dialogue I need to have with myself and my shadow.

your shadow reminds me of an old saying about women having pms, how they have 'attitude', how they stand their ground when otherwise they'd give way, or how they assert themselves in order to get something done.  the saying went something like 'it's during pms when we are our true selves, the ones we're meant to be.' 

talking about how your shadow is similar to this, how you believe you have these attributes but they've gotten pushed back or down, makes me think you may be absolutely right.  i do think you have that 'sassy' inside you, but you've had to block it somewhere along the way to protect yourself.  i believe that as you continue to heal, you'll find a way to integrate these characteristics into a healthy self.

keep going, kdke - i find it remarkable that you can remember these dreams so readily, and i think you're doing a great job of questioning, exploring, and being willing to look further into what it all might mean.  sending love and a hug filled with knowledge and realization.

San, thanks so much for being patient enough to read my entries lol. I know they're a lot since I always have a lot to say (I have a lot of internal dialogue!), but being able to write everything down helps to get it out of my head for a while and also makes me see value in my thoughts.

*****

I have a great uncle on my Facebook that I really love, but he's a part of a group within his generation that feel very entitled to make questionable choices for their children--choices that are now considered signs of narcissistic behaviors and just plain disrespectful/abusive to their children.

He shared a video (very staged, but all the same) of a father mowing over his son's video game discs, and it's meant to reflect "good parenting," meant to be funny and whatever. Meant to make resentful parents think, "Yeah, that'll show his ungrateful son!"

It just rubs me the wrong way. I understand what it feels like to be taken advantage of, to watch someone close to you just take you for granted and make a mess of your life. I get it.

But each party here made a choice, and I truly believe what this father did (in a real situation) is a poor, poor choice. This is toxic parenting. This is using your child to feed your ego. Punishing them by using the most traumatic way you can think of to destroy what makes them happy doesn't solve any problems--it creates more problems. It makes a child (of any age) think that their life doesn't belong to them, and is to be made into treasure or trash according to your personal likes and dislikes.

It's so disgusting to me that I could spit.

In a real-life scenario, the video shows a father having an ego trip and using his own child to make him feel powerful. To make him feel good about himself. Like, "What a good father am I. I'm so smart to take things from my son that he loves and obliterate them completely because they make me uncomfortable with myself. Look at how awesome I am, world."

This kind of behavior has nothing to do with the child's well-being. The child is a tool, nothing else. This father would've taught a better lesson about life and responsibility if he had sat his son down and had a serious, nonviolent conversation about respect, the expectations of both parties, and coming to a compromise. There are better ways to handle these things that are far more beneficial in the long run for both parties.

I'm so triggered lol!

i'm with you all the way on that video - totally disgusting, completely toxic parenting.  you're so right that nothing pos. comes out of such behavior.  i could see how that kid might be devastated and humiliated to have that posted on social media.  o my heart - how horrible!

as far as being patient re: reading your posts, i'm interested in how people move thru their healing, what paths they take, how it all comes together for them, their perspectives and perceptions.  it has nothing to do with patience, actually.  i used to want to be a brain researcher when i was a kid, cuz i've always found the mind fascinating in what it does and how it does it.

i'm just glad you've found it helpful to write everything out here.  writing has always helped me with clarity and realizations and emotions, so i can relate.

keep taking care of you, sweetie.  love and hugs.

San, I feel the same way about others, to be honest. I like to know what journey they're on, what they think of it, and how they plan to deal with everyday obstacles. As well, how they interact with others during all of that~

My college counselor, my therapist, and my close friends (including my best friend's mother) think I should be a counselor lol! I'm fine being a desk worker within the medical field for now. Maybe later? I'm definitely thinking about it. I want to be in a better place first.

i've been a therapist for over 25 yrs., have always absolutely loved my work.  it wasn't just a job, it was a pleasure and an honor, actually, to be able to work with people, help them see their own best selves and learn how to make that a reality for them.

if that's how you feel, it may be a good fit for you.  when you're ready, of course.  with all your background, knowledge, and experience, you already have the empathy and insight into so many levels that make up the reasons people need help.  i'd guess you'd also bring creativity to the profession, which is sorely lacking, to my mind, but what's needed to treat people as individuals.

i think being content with what you do is the first priority.  you'll know if/when you're ready to make a switch.  best to you, kdke.  love and hugs.

You have a lot of wisdom, San. Thank you for being on this forum~  :hug:


*****

This post contains descriptions of the dying process. Please be mindful when reading.
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This weekend was rough as I tried to step away from the drama happening at college between Grace and my instructor (I'm just going to name her Monica from now on; tired of spelling out "my instructor" all the time lol). However, I had one last thing to do before I could go to Mark's: CPR training.

I've done CPR training back in junior high, so much of it was very familiar to me; like learning to be on a bike again. However, it came with a different emotion after everything else I've been through. As we were watching the videos of what a crisis situation might look like (with actors and such), I started to feel like I was going to choke. I was present while my mother was dying and then had to ride in the ambulance while the paramedics gave her CPR. We didn't have a car and I wasn't going to be left behind.

So all during the videos, I just kept experiencing memories of watching her die, the horrible seizing, the vomit, watching her be unconscious but mutter nonsense as some part of her mind still tried to communicate with me. And then when the paramedics finally arrived, watching from a distance as they tried to help her, feeling so incredibly helpless and scared... but kind of knowing this was the end.

And of course, the guilt that came from not knowing it was about to happen, of feeling stupid and terrible for not forcing her to go to the hospital days before when she was feeling awful. I thought she was just having a bad week, as older people have. And the times when I and her boyfriend did try to get her to go? She kept refusing. I guess I could've called an ambulance; they would've taken her to the hospital if they had known she was having chest pains or some kind of pains...

Then when we finally arrived at the ER, and they wheeled her away, still pumping at her chest, trying so hard to help. All I could do was say, "Thank you," because there was nothing else I could say. Even if they couldn't save her, they did their best. And I was falling apart. The doctor came out of the room where my mother was and told me in the gentlest way he could that they couldn't save her. I was sobbing, but I nodded and thanked him, too. Later I wondered if he thought I was thanking him for failing. I wonder if that was a part of me that was somewhat grateful she was gone, for a few different reasons.

I had a chaplain sit there with me and try to be present while I cried and went through my own existential crisis. Part of me kind of wanted her to stop talking, telling me, "You're experiencing this part of the grieving process." Who cares? My mom just died--why do you have to be like that? I think she felt awkward because I told her that I was an atheist; she was used to dealing with religious people.

My best friend's family came, and I felt like I wasn't so alone. I felt needed again, or appreciated or something. I guess I just felt like someone cared. Allie's mother, Kris, encouraged me to go see my mother's body; she really advocated for me. I went to go see my mother on the gurney. She still had a tube down her throat but her eyes were closed. Kris said, "See? It's like she's asleep." She was right, but my mother was cold. I took a cutting of her hair and kissed her forehead.

I was drenched from sweat and felt awful. I didn't feel right for a whole year, and even now, it comes out to remind me at times. Like last Friday.

I didn't choke, though. Thank goodness. Once I looked at the mannequins and started to train, I felt detached. It wasn't real, but it was a start of a tiring day. I went to Mark's, feeling exhausted and just done. He could tell I was off, but since I couldn't tell him to his face without falling apart, I messaged it to him. He was grateful for that--he was just glad I told him.

This is the end of the TW warning.

*****

The rest of the weekend was tiring, too. His younger children ( I call them the munchkins; both girls, one is 1 and the other is 2) come over every Sunday and I really like seeing them. They're used to seeing me but trust is still being built. This has been difficult for me only because I can't comfort them when they're upset since they don't really know me just yet. I hate it when they cry because every part of me wants to scoop them up and help them feel better, but doing so would just cause them more distress.

So sometimes I'm just left trying to speak softly to them while they stand there and cry and scream, waiting for Mark to come to the rescue. And even then, sometimes me talking to them makes it worse. It's just really hard, but I don't force myself pass their boundaries. I'm very particular about that, since I have some disagreeable opinions about children.

I consider myself an antinatalist in that I feel it would be immoral for me to bring an infant into this world in that state it's in. As well, I would be bringing another human into this world without its permission, but rather to appeal to my own ego (and whoever I would decide to procreate with). I also consider it immoral since I don't have the best genes in the world and would therefore be creating a human who might have to suffer through negative disorders they didn't ask for.

I don't force this opinion on others; in fact, all I say is that I don't want to get pregnant because it would be bad for my own body (which is true, but there's obviously some lie by ommission there). The conversation usually ends there, unless I run into someone who still insists I should give birth--which has happened before and I shut them down lol. My life, NOT yours.

Anyway... I never told Mark about my antiatalist beliefs, especially after he and I discussed my desire to not have children. At one point he said, "But if you ever change your mind and really want a child, we can talk about that and make it happen." I was actually kind of stunned by his offer, considering he already had four kids with two different women. Just speaking financially, one more child would be unrealistic imo. He already struggles with four, even though he's very dedicated to his children and loves them dearly.

But it was this talk that really made me hesitate to explain why I felt the way I did, especially when he himself was still so willing to make more babies. I don't think he would ever be able to understand, and I don't want him to be offended.

Because there's another part of this opinion that I hold, that while it's positive, still holds some ideas that might rub some people the wrong way. I believe that because children didn't get to choose to be born, they deserve a certain level of respect that many parents don't give them. I think many parents give themselves way more entitlement than they deserve, when it's the children (imo) who deserve much more. I don't think they should be worshipped, but they should be entitled to more compassion, patience, and gratitude, rather than feeling they somehow owe their parents the amount they (most of the time) are pressured to give.

After all, they were brought into this world not for their own sake, that's for sure. It was the parents who wanted to have a baby, to be parents, to feel like they made something, to talk about how their baby looks so much like them, and so on. And most importantly, by having a child, THEY sign up to spending sometimes half their lives putting money and time and labor into raising that child. The child didn't ask for that--the adults did. And yet children are so often plagued with lectures about how they owe their parents this and that, how ungrateful they are, how their parents feel like slaves, how victimized they feel, etc. And sure, some children can be cruel and take things for granted that later in life will work against them--but again, a child (even as they grow into a preteen and teen) is still learning, and they learn FIRST from their guardians.

Anyway... I can go on and on. I have feelings about it, but I don't feel entitled about walking into people's lives and telling them how to live. I would, however, make a line in the sand if someone tried to tell me how to live, and I would feel inclined to speak my mind. I think what children do exist in the world deserve all the love and labor we can give them, and I would never fault them for this existence. And I see no real point in really lecturing a parent who had a child. It's done and over with--energy should be spent on making sure to give their baby the best life it can have.

Also, I can tell I'm super stressed right now. I hate the end of the month since I have to get ready to pay bills and rent, and then trying to get money in order to stay in school, and everything that's been happening for weeks now... it's really wearing me down.

And now I've been doing this thing where I have been berating myself for crying. I always feel so weak and tiring when I cry, even though I know it's perfectly understandable for me to cry. I'm stressed, I keep hitting my limits, and so I cry. It's the body's way to relieve stress. Crying being seen as a weakness is kind of ridiculous, and yet I realize in a way it kind of isn't. I mean... you can know a person's limitations if they start to cry at a certain point, and if those limitations are quick to come around, I suppose it could be some sign of a lack of strength.

The key is, though, that strength can be built upon in different ways. That's what people forget. Making fun of someone and shaming them for crying just instills this idea (for both parties) that the person crying can't be built up. But it's hard because in many ways, we can get stagnant in our progress by our own hands; not because we tell ourselves that we shouldn't try, but because we get stuck in a narrative where we've convinced ourselves that trying isn't going to change us.

This was a cycle my ex was stuck in. She had convinced herself that she had tried everything, and she had tried enough, and nothing could ever work. She had completely exhausted her resources, she told me; she was this freak case that just couldn't budge in her progress, so on and so forth. And I don't think she was being dishonest; I do believe, though, that she was just so exhausted from hitting her limits, didn't know how else to progress, and couldn't tolerate constructive criticism and people's boundaries that the narrative she told herself was the only one she could accept. Because when she did face the truth of why she was stalling, it just made her spiral; she couldn't take it, and I almost wonder if her telling herself that it was hopeless was some form of self-soothing for her. Like, convincing herself that she was right along about being a lost cause was calming--because then she was at least in control of that truth.

I don't believe she was a lost cause if she had been willing to push past her limits and narrative, though. I also don't believe her progress was hopeless because she had so much knowledge that she tried to help me with, which is always hard for us depressed/traumatized people to tell ourselves. With practice, however, it is possible. But it was a practice she wasn't putting into herself and just wanted to put into others. She also had negative perspective about trying to help herself; she always felt like she just had to lie to herself, and this idea that she was just lying to herself all the time brought her down, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to tell herself truths she wasn't used to accepting. Mindset makes a huge difference, and she wasn't willing to step outside of the one she had leaned against for so long.

Unfortunately, my ex was always so defensive about needing to feel like it was hopeless that I feel like it would take something bigger to light a fire under her to make a change. I do understand how hard it is to change a narrative, though; changing my own about my self worth is something I still work on to this day.

But by not giving up for years was I able to get better. So much labor, so much pain, fear, anger, and doubt. But I did it, and even though I still struggle to say that I have worth, I can say that to others, I have a lot of worth and they have good reasons to believe that.

Practice practice practice~

I've realized I really need to start turning my perspectives about life inward for once. I keep seeing this pattern with my writing where I focus in others and think about what they're going through and I feel about it. And that's all well and good... but what about myself? Where do I fall into these points of view? It's something I need to ask more.

Practicing a new narrative will get better with time: I truly believe this moral and have lived through it. I don't think I'm all better; I struggle and have lots of battles. However, something I remind myself of and that I learned from my college counselor--the further I go up in my recovery, I won't fall back down as far as I used to. And it's true. I still cry, I still feel anxious, and things still trigger me; but it hasn't been as bad as it was a year ago. Things have gotten better for me, as I see things more clearly and know myself more. Do I think my progress isn't real at times? Yeah. I do feel that way at times, when I feel depressed and start to question who I am and what I'm capable of. I question things--but I've learned to recognize the inner critic more successfully, so when I start to feel a little better, the inner critic gets to sit down in a chair and get interrogated by me for being such a jerk lol.

Antinatalism: Besides the general philosophy behind this one, I really do believe that it'd be immoral for someone like to me to have a child. Genetics, lifestyle, and just my overall well-being dictate that it would be a super poor idea, so I don't go there. I also look at the world, the things a baby would have to face, the toiling and things that are inevitable... and I just can't put an innocent life through that. At the same time, it's a goal for me to be in a very good place where I can make room for a child who needs a loving home. Whether I just foster or adopt, it's something I'd eventually like to commit part of my life to. And as for the battle parents have to go through when raising a child; I realized that through my writing, I had come across in such a way that I felt could be taken as dismissive of the frustration, fear, and hopelessness many parents feel when raising children. I don't mean to dismiss these experiences. They're real and I think whether a parent chose to be one or not, they should receive all the help they can get. After all, a child needs a good parent to get through, and a parent still needs to feel appreciated. I feel that there are some caveats that come with those words (i.e. a toxic parent doesn't necessarily deserve appreciation from their child) but yeah. I digress.

Toxic behavior and defensiveness: I've had to face my own toxic behaviors when I was 18. I remember that's when it was, because I realized I was in a place where I was hurting the people I loved most. I was projecting a lot of anger at this time (and had been for a while) and was finally seeing its affects in my relationships. I was pretentious, condescending, passive aggressive, and controlling--all the while not understanding nor taking seriously my responsibilities in the world I wanted to be a part of. My mother, in spite of her own toxic behaviors, could barely tolerate me. I had another toxic friend who turned on me. It was a terrible place I was in, and I realized I had to somehow change. Thirteen years later... lol. Regardless, I still struggle with these toxic powers; they dwell in my shadow and try to pop out at certain times--times which I've learned (through my cPTSD diagnosis) are a fight mode. Pete Walker describes a cPTSD fight mode as coming across narcissistic; and in detailing this term, I felt I was reading about myself. Toxic anger and control fed by fear of losing control of one's preferred reality, to sum it up. A nasty outer critic fed by a mean and scared inner critic.

I still have this issue from time to time and it sucks. Makes me feel like a terrible, monstrous person who will never be good. But I truly know, now, that this isn't true. I am good; I know my natural inclinations to care, love, and long for others to be happy. When the world feels like too much, I doubt myself and others, and the more complicated parts of my shadow try to rescue me in the only way they know how. They're not the best ways, and that's something I need to work on and integrate more positively into myself. Defensiveness when it comes to this battle I fight within myself can come on strong, as I don't always like to acknowledge where I could've screwed up.

Strangely enough, some of my hesitation to admit fault comes from being afraid of having my faults used as excuses for other people's toxic choices. This has happened to me before, where someone has said, "I wouldn't have done this toxic thing if you hadn't done that; you messed up first so what I did wasn't that bad." Since my childhood to adulthood, I've had this happen and I'm not sure yet how to defeat it. I suppose it's unavoidable in certain cases. So I will become defensive and while I'm not denying I did anything wrong, I will beat around the bush and not completely admit to anything out of fear of being scapegoated. I wonder if this sometimes comes across as passive aggression, OR EVEN may seem to the other party I am minimizing my own choices. What a precarious balance, ugh. Beyond that, I can become defensive about many things, usually because I react very emotionally to what I might perceive as being dismissed. I don't like it; I want to be heard, and so I defend like crazy, more than I should have to. I need to choose my battles more wisely.

these sound like some wonderful realizations for you, sweetie.  i relate to having to look at my own behaviors, how i've acted, and be brave/strong enough to dive in and find what's at the root of them so i can make a meaningful change.

as far as others using your behaviors as excuses for their own, unh uh, no.  that's not right, not fair, and not true.  their choices are their own, and you are allowed to avoid that trap.   it gets us nowhere, and only continues the neg. narrative of being responsible for what other people do.  we're not, we never were.  whatever anyone else does, it's on them.

i'm glad for you that you're beginning to turn your perspectives toward self.  i think that's of primary importance for recovery and/or healing.  in the end, we are all we have, so if we don't look to ourselves, take care of ourselves from every angle possible, no one else will.    good for you, kdke.

sending love and hugs to you.  i think you're on a really pos. path with this.

There was something that came up yesterday that really bothered me, and I realize that this was a good opportunity to do some "shadow work."

I decided I was ready to start talking to Hannah, one of my ex-roommates. Hannah and I have gotten along for the most part (sort of; we have had our issues), whereas I and her wife (Emily) refuse to interact. Too much bad history. But with Hannah, I've always felt fond of her and try to uphold some friendship between us, even if it has some very solid boundaries.

Well, Hannah is polyamorous, and I was in a relationship with her and Emily when we roomed together. It was a super bad idea to say the least lol. It was just a terribly poor choice as none of us were in a place to take on that kind of dynamic; heck, they can barely handle their relationship. It should've been obvious to us. Anyway, besides all that--Hannah and I were just asking each other how the other was doing, and she started to talk about spending time with her new partners. Two new partners besides her wife.

This really bothered me; I felt so annoyed about, but I kept it to myself and told her that I hope things get better with time and effort. Later, I was trying hard to figure out what bothered me so much about it and try to put names to the feelings swarming around in my head.

The first emotion was definitely annoyance because I have issues with why Hannah is polyamorous. She has openly admitted that because she fails to overcome her own issues and love herself, she tries to have as many people to love her as she can possibly get. I wish I was exaggerating. She's very keen on collecting as many partners as she can to surround her, and she likes the feeling of having many admirers. I guess it drowns out the negative feelings she has when she is forced to deal with just herself (and this was also confirmed by her at times). She'd rather focus on others and the rose-colored feelings that come with new romantic experiences. I've seen and experienced this all firsthand, being a new lover and then watching her gather more beyond me over time. Her wife, Emily, has watched it for even longer.

So there is why I feel annoyance, but there's definitely more to it. In all of that, I also see feelings of hurt. I felt very hurt by her, knowing that I wasn't enough as a second partner, that she just needed more and more to satiate a void she could never fill. In a way, my benefit wasn't her genuine concern--it was simply to have one more person to fawn over her and make her feel like she was the amazing person she couldn't convince herself of. That and she would twist my own life goals and desires in such a way that she would take credit for them. She wanted me to be happy and live out my dreams, but only because it was what she wanted for herself so she figured she could just live through me vicariously. Nothing was ever my own. And I can go around in circles about that doozy lol.

There was also a lot of hurt around the fact that I was with someone who could never fully commit to me, but I was expected to fully commit to her. I know this to be the case because when I found interest in someone new, she couldn't handle it. Suddenly, I was neglecting everyone, I should know better, I needed to fix it, and so on. She was always a victim, and if I felt victimized, well... it was just all in my head and I should get over it.

I guess in that way, I feel like I was judged unfairly. The relationship dynamics between Hannah and Emily were so wonky and had no real stability that I could never really understand where my place was. However, they made excuses and exceptions for each other all the time.

There is resentment attached, too, in that I thought I could trust her and Emily to know how to be in a poly relationship. They failed and I failed, too, but I was ultimately blamed for the chaos. It was my fault their relationships suffered, my expectations that made things difficult.

I think I also feel a lot of anger at how Hannah treated me as though I was her therapy client, and how she had this toxic POV of those she got together with; there always had to be a "mentor" and a "mentee" in her mind. Ugh, I couldn't stand the way she was like that, and still is! She finds self-importance by actively setting up what she has literally called "counseling sessions" with people who are in terrible places in their lives. Granted, we all need someone to lean on and I can admit that Hannah can be a good person to do that with. At the same time, her going through the effort to use those terms and even tell people that she is a counselor "just without the degree" really makes my skin crawl. I'm so disappointed that she would have that level of audacity, and I'm insulted for the people that she takes under her wing. But at the same time... I can't really speak for those people, because maybe Hannah gave them something they really needed. I have no idea. I just know what Hannah has told me firsthand, which is enough to make me angry.

At the base of all of this, I know there is a feeling of fear. Hannah is someone that makes choices and has perspectives that feel very presumptuous, narcissistic, and chaotic to me, and so this makes me feel out of control. A lot of these choices and perspectives were projected onto me many times over and so they have an even stronger, more visceral effect. Because my cPTSD manifests as a fight mode (but I have fawned and still do; it's bad), I was very critical of and tried to control her. What she was doing made me very uncomfortable and scared, so I had to fix it to feel stable again. But because I couldn't, my foundation with her became precarious.

That is ultimately my mistake, and I wish I had known the origins of why I did what I did to Hannah. Regardless of her choices that I still really dislike, she is her own person and it's not my place to control her. She has to learn to control herself, which also bothers me because I know she's incapable of that.

My shadow sees Hannah in a strange light: she feels a lasting tenderness for Hannah, but there's also frustration, discomfort, and resentment attached to it. As well, my desire to critique and fix Hannah isn't just for my own sake, but because I see someone who is floundering, going through the same vicious cycle over and over again. That also makes me uncomfortable because I want to help.

I think what also bothers me about this whole situation, too, is that my shadow is projecting something onto Hannah that I need to address. Hannah and I are not unlike in not understanding relationships very well. My first, truly commited relationship was with her and Emily, and it sucked lol. I had convinced myself, years before that, that I wasn't meant for relationships. I felt so broken and hopeless that I believed my longing to be loved was futile. It would never work out for me. I went into this toxic dynamic with Emily and Hannah thinking I was in a good enough place--and that they were in a good enough place--when none of us were. I couldn't handle it; I had so many unaddressed fears and ideas about relationships that it just blew up in my face.

Another thing that I think really bothers me is that Hannah and I tend to jump into relationships very, very quickly. We can go from a 1 to a 9000 with people, and it's not exactly the best thing in the world lol. It leaves little room to really get to know someone and all their flaws. We can't always tell the difference between infatuation and love, and we sometimes hope for that new relationship experience (NRE) to last. We think it's reality and it means we've found the one.

What a terrible mistake, right? I did this with my last ex, Lynn (she was with Hannah first, and then came to know me and we got together; it was a mess), and it was a disaster. With Mark, I decided I'd be more careful, but I always beat myself for how quickly we moved from dating to being in a relationship. It makes me uncomfortable with myself, as though I made a huge mistake (even it was what he wanted, too). I love Mark, and I really do think he's a catch--I just worry that I'm just repeating cycles that I want to break.

I have no idea how to have a "healthy" relationship. I'm still trying to build up boundaries and keep them, and also respect other people's boundaries, too. Like with Mark, I struggled so hard with not being a more cemented part of his familial dynamic for a long time. I've reconciled with those feelings for the most part, as I realized that it his boundary and it's a place that I need to earn. I'm not entitled to it right off the bat. I believe that these feelings are based in fears of unstable relationships and abandonment. Even though at this point, the abandonment fears are not as powerful as they used to be. It won't be the end of my world if Mark decided to that he didn't want to be with me anymore. It would obviously hurt a ton, but I can move on and not feel like I'm helpless without him.

I can also admit that my desire to be placed in such a cemented part of Mark's life has some roots in codependency. I was so codependent on my mother for all our years living together that it's a battle for me to look beyond that kind of relationship. However, it's also always been a goal of mine to be independent (sometimes to a fault lol), and I wish to stick to that. Mark has talked about me eventually moving in with him by next summer, but part of me kind of squirms about it lol. I want to be free for once! I've never truly lived on my own, without the help of anyone. I just want to experience that one day, at least for a year or something.

And you know... I'm realizing, too, that there is another layer to what made my conversation with Hannah so uncomfortable: she is very codependent (emotionally, financially, and physically) on her partners, especially Emily. This has always bothered me, and I know it's my shadow self showing me my own fears of becoming that same person. Again, there are feelings of wanting to fix Hannah to make myself feel better about it, but I understand better that it's something that I need to resolve in myself.

Hannah is her own person, and she is going to make her own choices, whether I like them or not. And I suppose if they bother me too much, I can just walk away from the friendship entirely. For now, I don't see much reason for that, other than keeping my conversations with her very basic and limited. But I feel better now that I've come to understand where my negative feelings are coming from.

I had a very tearful session with my college counselor today. I really admire Aiden for everything that she's done for me. I connect with her so well since we both have a deep appreciation for Jungian concepts of the self and shadow self, and I'm able to go very deep into memories and reasons behind my anxieties--layer upon layer--and she just gets it lol.

Today, I talked about my last journal entry a bit, and about why I felt so annoyed by what Hannah told me. I wish I can remember exactly what was said in my session; there was this super vital part where I was talking and then Aiden said, "This sounds very similar to internalized homophobia."

It kind of took me back a little, not because I was offended, but because I just hadn't made that connection, really. I think I was talking about like... feeling greatly misunderstood during grade school, always feeling like a failure, and then the harsh criticism I projected onto others because I was feeling so out of control with myself. I was trying so hard to fix myself. Yeah... I think that's what I was talking about. (Maybe my brain is just filling in the blanks, but it definitely was a topic brought up by me.)

Anyway, I said, "Yeah. No, totally. I had a lot of internalized homophobia," and explained to her (even though I know she's heard it before from me, but that's all a part of the recovery process is sometimes revisiting stuff lol) how after my three-year period of CSA through my mother, I became incredibly conservative and religious. I was walking around, covered head to toe (yep, I did head coverings; not as a Muslim, but a Christian), and went into this cycle of deep, endless self-loathing. I was a religious person that hated herself, knew she would never be good enough by her god's standards, but believed if she gave up trying in spite of it being hopeless, she would go to *.

So I kept beating that dead horse, trying to make myself more pious, holier, more righteous, and perfect... and I just kept failing. I felt there was no hope for me. I was doomed to fail, doomed to burn, doomed to be separated from any form of joy and contentment and love that my community told me I could have if I tried to live up to expectations that I was also told I could never truly achieve. My pain, suffering, and hopelessness never stopped; it made a pit inside of me that grew deeper and darker. After a while, I had convinced myself that because I was done for... what was the point in trying anymore? If I was fated to burn, why live? It was pointless.

My counselor described it as despair.

I eventually ended that cycle because I didn't truly want to die; I wanted to be happy, and I couldn't be happy if I was dead. I needed to survive, so I stepped away from my religious community and did my best to take care of myself.

That was a rough time. It hurts to go back there, but I have to be willing to go back there to understand who I am and what will always be a part of me.

The session kept going and kind of shifted into me talking about my encounter with my great uncle. That topic really got me crying as it was something that really hit close to home with how my parents treated me. It took me to a place in my life where I felt like my self was being slowly destroyed, that I was expected to be a reflection for my parents' egos. I felt like a slave, and I felt anything that I loved, that made me happy and feel complete--it was all game and could be destroyed at the whims of my parents.

At the end of it all, (and when I had calmed down enough from full-on sobbing lol) I said, "I realize now that this is true shadow work."

Aiden exclaimed, "Yes!" lol

I had romanticized shadow work a lot when I first started learning about it. Of course, now that I'm more in sync with my therapy and what I need to be willing to talk about, I understand now that shadow work is a process that is vast and dark. It feels like being faced with an opening that is so dark and spacious that it makes you feel like it'll swallow you whole if you take a step inside. If you're not prepared for what is waiting in the depths for you, that is. Inside, there are feelings, visions, and whispers that remind you of parts of yourself that you secretly hope will fade away. They won't.

Things that I loved are also in that place, things that feel hollow and riddled with rust and mold. Abandoned, left behind, and lost. I want to restore them and make them mine again, but they're not the same. I let them turn to trash because I was told they were trash. Now I have to hold these things that I want to love, that made me happy, that made me myself, and feel a betrayal that I and my parents created. A calcification of experiences that refuse to erode, but that corrode me with their stories.

As I get better--stronger--the deeper I go into this space and experience a suffering that I've honestly not experienced before at this level. It attempts to engulf me more than I thought it would, but not in a way that makes me feel helpless against it. Rather, it's like looking at a reflection of myself and watching it wail as hard as it can. That primal scream that shakes everything and sucks everything in while filling the world with its raw, sharp agony. I hurt for it, but I have to witness it until its end. I can't dare to look away anymore. It needs me.

Beyond all of this, I was able to sit through a video that talked about struggling with inauthenticity and its relation to enmeshment trauma. The woman who made the video described someone just like me, and I've been kind of churning the video over in my head since I watched it. A light bulb went on, and I realized that there was yet another layer to what makes me so uncomfortable about Hannah. Her level of codependency and desire to live vicariously through others is a behavior I dread inside of myself. Because to be that way is to live in a mode where my enmeshment trauma still controls my sense of self. I can never be myself--I would always allows others to destroy and absorb who I was. I would constantly fawn, and be exhausted trying to be this facade I thought others needed me to be, whom I thought I needed to be in order to fit in the world.

It's really exhausting, trying to overcome enmeshment trauma. Especially living within it.

I had a talk with Mark last night; I wanted him to know that my counseling session triggered what felt like a depressive episode, and I didn't know how I was going to feel during the weekend.

However, I was able to identify a whole bunch of things that have been piling up and causing me stress, so I know it wasn't just the session. I think in a way, it was just the final straw on the camel's back. I'm feeling better today, but last night, I felt like a mess.

My sensitivity levels were high and I would cry at the drop of a hat. I didn't feel like a bad person for anything I talked about yesterday; rather, I just felt incredibly drained and heartbroken. Shadow work will wreck ya lol.

The end of the month is always stressful for me because I have to think about bills and rent. I hate dealing with money, but I also hate that I don't even make enough to survive solely on my own. My job pays 15/hour, but I only work eight hours a week. The majority of my money comes from grants, loans, and with the help of my best friend's parents every month. They consider me a daughter, and so they help without question. I'm very fortunate to have them and know they love me that much.

Then with getting triggered by my short talk with Hannah, and then my counseling, AND THEN add in the fact that my hormones are shifting due to menses--I'm shot lol. I remember before I started therapy, everyone was convinced I had PMDD; the two weeks prior to menstruation, my emotions were intense and uncontrollable. My depression would become so severe, that I would have suicidal thoughts and even become catatonic. Thankfully, that hasn't happened in a long time, and it was due to both external factors and poor coping skills--both of which have improved a lot. I don't have PMDD. I have cPTSD and just good ol' PMS lol.

Anyway, I was telling Mark that I felt really low, and he was very understanding. He encouraged me to be all right with not coming over for the weekend if that's what I needed. I told him I'd think about it. I love being at Mark's place, but he is right in that it can be stressful at his place; with his kids and how young they are, there's always something to diffuse, there's always a child having an issue. It is what it is. I definitely need to consider if whether I can tolerate that this weekend or just give myself a breather.

At the same time, as I was explaining a little bit of how I felt, I noticed Mark getting mildly defensive. Sometimes he does this behavior where he'll try to dismiss and issue by saying something like, "Yeah, ok. Ok. I get it." Or if he makes a joke, he immediately becomes defensive as though I'm offended--even though I'm not. He'll say, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" It'll confuse me and even kind of irritate me, because I feel like he's just assuming my feelings. I don't even get a chance to tell him how I really feel, which is not offended at all. I honestly like his humor. I had a talk with him about it, saying that it really seemed like he must've had very defensive partners in the past. He said I was spot on and now he has a hard time not being defensive himself about certain things.

Either way, I think Mark is just a very defensive person to begin with and sometimes interprets people's opinions as attacks against his character. I've seen this happen a lot between him and his ex-fiance (the mother of the munchkins; she's a very nice woman and an awesome mom). She's more defensive than he is, and they'll feed each other lol. I'm preparing myself for the reality that I will more than likely have to talk to Mark about it. I don't want it to become a barrier and issue for us, especially when I know that a lot of my discomfort with his defensive behavior is because I don't like how I can be defensive, too.

I guess that's what helps me empathize with him and know he's just not being a jerk. I don't doubt he's had to defend himself against petty adults when he was younger and against others his age who had equally fragile egos. It happens, and I don't necessarily thinks it's a testament of who someone is. Rather, I believe it's just a testament of their lack of emotional maturity--which is a good thing because that can be built up with time and labor!

But yeah... I have a feeling that Mark might've also been bullied. Victims of bullies can have very strong defense mechanisms that create a narrative that everyone will eventually be out to get them. It doesn't come from nowhere; it's because at some point in that person's life, someone else really was out to get them all the time.

Hi,

I just wanted to drop in and say that it sounds as if you've been working really hard lately. Been very good at analyzing your own actions and emotions. I've found that once I start identifying the emotions that I'm having, and why I got them that the strength and intensity of the emotions lessen somewhat and becomes easier to deal with, or sit with.

It also sounds good to take a week-end "off", to relax and do some self-care, if that is what you need. Perhaps more impressions, sounds and having to deal with children might be counter-productive to your own healing after so much work, sometimes it is better to wait a few days and let things sit with you before you jump back into the pool. But it's also good that you have a place to go to that you love.

communication is so important in a relationship, well - any relationship with people really. And the willingness to have such a conversation with Mark is wonderful. I hope he'll be receptive once you talk it over - if you choose to do so.

Wish you a wonderful week-end!

I think I've finally figured out a behavior I have!

I've wondered why for so long. When I get into a relationship, it'll be good for the first few months, and then something switches for me. I start to feel very overwhelmed; I've used the word "stifled" to describe it. I'll want to be alone all the time, and will begin to feel very detached, almost like I don't love my partner anymore. It's like it becomes too much and I shut down, then my brain makes up reasons to rationalize why it's happening. And usually, my partner will feel frustrated by my isolationist behavior. I think back to Lynn and she felt when I kept "needing my space." That situation wasn't unique to our relationship. I've done it before plenty of times.

But I think I know now WHY. It's because I lack a sense of self, and because of my enmeshment trauma.

This idea was sparked after watching a video I mentioned before, regarding enmeshment trauma. And at first, it made sense to me in some ways, and I could relate it to my own situation--but not so direct like this for some reason.

Because of the enmeshment my mother put me through, the only way I know how to handle social interaction with anyone is by allowing myself to be absorbed by the other personality. It's involuntary; I'm suddenly a person I think they need me to be, every time I interact with them. How friggin' exhausting is that?

And it's true! The only reason I isolate myself--every time--is because it's the only time I feel like I can just be me. I don't have to please anyone, I don't have to entertain. Oh my god... like, seriously: I'm having such a revelation right now. I've always felt so stifled in relationships and have used that reason. "I feel like I'm having to entertain, that I have to always be interesting." Omg it all makes so much sense now...

I could never be myself, and doing that day in, day out--no wonder I wanted to run away! No wonder I eventually was like, "Screw this, I'm out," and just completely detached myself.

Sure, I can look at partners like Lynn and then my first boyfriend and see two people who were very demanding of my time regardless. They were codependent and didn't always understand boundaries. At the end of the day, I allowed others to overstep my boundaries, and I let myself be absorbed. I lost myself in every single relationship I've had, to the person I was with.

Wow... I've never been able to really understand it all so cohesively before. Now I do, and now I know what steps I actually need to take.

Sceal, thanks so much for visiting~

I appreciate your insight and you're right: I did have a conversation with Mark last night, and I told him I had to just stay home this weekend. I still felt so drained and down. He understood, but I could tell it broke his heart a little. However, he did nothing to guilt me for my choice. He only reassured me that it was a right choice! He's awesome lol.

Next weekend, he and I will be celebrating three months being together. We decided to focus on that and be excited about it. I let him know that he is genuinely one of the best things that has happened to me lately, and I love him very much. He appreciated that (and tried not to cry lol). It was a good talk.

Heya Kdke, which videos have you been watching? I recently saw a Spartan life coach video on counter-dependency which taught me a lot about myself.

Quote from: Kalmer on July 27, 2018, 07:13:05 PM
Heya Kdke, which videos have you been watching? I recently saw a Spartan life coach video on counter-dependency which taught me a lot about myself.

I like Teal Swan's videos. I don't watch them all because they can sometimes deal with topics I don't totally agree with, but some of them are treasure!

The video I watched was called something like, "Enjoy being by yourself? You're being inauthentic." I remember being intrigued and wondering if it was going to involve some controversial lecture lol. But wow, does she make some amazing insights to why so many of us crave isolation all the time! It was something I really needed to hear.

I've been quiet all weekend since it's been hot and miserable over here. I went to Grace's place, though, to do some studying and just get out of my apartment for a while.

I'm not doing well with my stress levels. I know I'm not because I've been dissociating; just letting myself wander into doing other things, and completely escaping from my responsibilities. I feel very overwhelmed, and again--I did it to myself.

A lot of these overwhelming feelings have to do with my hormones. I hate being more stressed out when I'm PMSing, because it gets super intense. The last few days have been riddled with old thoughts that I wish had disappeared a long time ago; thoughts of hurting myself, or just thinking, "Why not give up?" They're startling now because they feel like a place that I left behind for good. But I guess not.

I haven't hurt myself, even though the thoughts are there. I don't really have a desire to do anything because I know now that I can deal with things in better ways. I guess it's all just... residual or something. I'm able to fight it, but clumsily. I can't screw myself over again. I hate these cycles that keep popping up; my escapes are so self-sabotaging. I should've gotten stuff done today, but instead I allowed myself to space out and watch however many episodes of Grey's Anatomy that I could tolerate before I went to Youtube, and then back the Netflix, and now why not Facebook. Over and over...

ANYTHING ELSE but what I needed to do so tomorrow won't be so stressful. But that's my dissociation for you.

But now the day is done. It's past midnight and I need my sleep.

Beyond that, though... I've just been trying to figure out how to keep my cool and take care of myself so things won't get out of hand. If I feel anything about my life, it's just wishing most days that I lived on a different planet with different responsibilities. Ones that aren't so debilitating lol. Modern life sucks.

I'm feeling much better today. I think the heat, PMS (finally done with that, but now in my moon sickness blugh), and just being stressed and drained really did a number on my emotions. I mean, I still feel stressed but not as much today.

I was able to make myself focus super hard today, too! I got everything that needed to finish at a good time, enough time to allow me to rest and recuperate. I got more stuff to do tomorrow, but I feel a bit more confident about everything.

The only thing really frustrated me about my assignments today was one of my books. It doesn't really talk about certain steps you have to take; instead, you have to rely heavily on the pictures in the book, which can be a serious pain if you don't know what to look for. Either way, I did what I needed to do and I'm walking away until tomorrow lol.

My thoughts feel very obscured and simple right now. I don't think it's really a bad thing, but yeah.

glad you're feeling better, kdke, and getting done what you wanted to do.

in dealing with the heat, may i suggest electrolytes?  i lived in the desert 16 yrs., summers were brutal, and i found out about electrolytes, how we lose too many of them in the heat.  during those hot stretches, i was drinking them every day.  they help keep you feeling balanced, clear-minded, and focused.  just a thought.

love and hugs to you, sweetie.

Quote from: sanmagic7 on July 30, 2018, 10:44:12 PM
glad you're feeling better, kdke, and getting done what you wanted to do.

in dealing with the heat, may i suggest electrolytes?  i lived in the desert 16 yrs., summers were brutal, and i found out about electrolytes, how we lose too many of them in the heat.  during those hot stretches, i was drinking them every day.  they help keep you feeling balanced, clear-minded, and focused.  just a thought.

love and hugs to you, sweetie.

Thanks for the advice, San. I've been trying to make it a part of my daily intake to make a banana cucumber smoothie--a good fruit and veggie mix for electrolytes. It's cheap and easy to make. I cut up the bananas and freeze them so they're nice and cold when I blend everything up. It helps a lot.

I'm also just overall fatigued because of my lady issues lol. In pain and every move tires me out, oi. Thanks for checking on me.  :hug:

I had an interesting dream last night. I dreamed that a woman was being chased by someone dressed like a ghost. You know, when you take a sheet, cut out holes for the eyes, and then drape it over your whole body? Just like that.

She was being chased by a ghost person, but this person was trying to kill her. They had a knife (killers in my dreams really like knives) and she kept running. Eventually, though, she was able to trick the ghost person and tackled them to the ground. I remember this part the best: I could hear the ghost person breathing hard, as though they were more scared than the woman had ever been the whole time.

When the sheet was slowly pulled away, the woman found something strange: it was her own face hiding under the sheet, with the knife. Her doppelganger started to plea for her life, and the woman just tried to hush her, calm her down. I woke up.

I've been thinking about it all day, trying to understand what kind of weird, silly ghost/horror story my subconscious decided to show me. I know that many people don't take their dreams very seriously; theories about how dreams are just a dumpster full of leftovers from the day and even days before sleep. I do believe that, in a way. I've had dreams where I've woken up and thought, "I need to take a break from Game of Thrones."

At the same time, the subconscious can also only communicate with us through what we choose to feed it--so why not through Game of Thrones if you decided to watch six seasons in a week? That's the only language you gave it. I'm not sure exactly why my subconscious chose some childhood Halloween outfit mixed with murderous intents (I did watch It last week), but I think everything in context was an interesting message.

It kind of reminds me of this article I read on The Neverending Story. It talked about the Magic Mirror Gate. The article got it right in that, as a child, I didn't understand why a mirror was so frightening. What was so scary about looking at one's self? I'm me--unless there was just a monster on the other side. But even then, the monster wasn't me.

As an adult, the Magic Mirror Gate holds a greater, more terrifying purpose: it shows the Shadow.

I understand now, why most men, as Engywok told Atreyu, would run away "screaming!" Who wouldn't? Isn't that what we do as adults faced with our shadows? Isn't that what we try to do our whole lives?

More interestingly... doesn't that say something very special about children? Untainted by the world, they're still whole. Their shadow is integrated into their personalities. There's nothing to fear when you're exactly who you're meant to be. Atreyu had been traumatized enough that the Magic Mirror Gate affected him and was frightening, but not as much as it probably would've if he was older. He was more confused about seeing Sebastion on the other side, and vice versa.

In my dream, the woman pulled off the stupid ghost sheet and saw her shadow. The shadow, encompassing the woman's inner child and rage, only was doing what it was fed to do. So when the veil was taken, they faced each other and the shadow begs to not be killed. To not be forgotten. She begs to live and be forgiven by the only person who can grant her those things.

I wonder... if the people who faced the Magic Mirror Gate saw the same thing. I wonder if they were faced with an image of themselves, an image that reflected their hidden and dark desires and thoughts, that begged them for mercy. Pleaded for acceptance and love, for patience and time for their person to just get used to them--they'd make things better if they just had a chance. "You can't survive without me!" It might've said. (It would be correct.) I wonder if being faced with that desperation along with the horror of all things we wished would just fade away was too much. They just had to run away, it was so overwhelming.

Just a thought. Darkness needs love, too. I don't believe our shadow selves really want to die--why would they fight so hard to come out if they wanted to? Why would they pop up in our dreams and do things we sometimes could only dare ourselves to do?

Anyway... I almost wonder if my shadow self is becoming bolder about communicating her needs with me. I've never dreamed of that kind of energy in such a vulnerable, childlike way. Even with the knife--it was just too easy to overcome. It's definitely something to think about.

One of the things I was told as a child is to stop having pity parties. No one really wanted to hear about how much I hurt in whatever way I could hurt. It was annoying, there was no sympathy for me. Not unless my parents could directly relate to it--beyond that, SOL.

Now, I have as many pity parties as I friggin' want to lol.

I have to because for so long, I had to swallow down my own pain to make others more comfortable around me. I would let it out once in a while when I truly hit my limits, but for the most part, if it upset someone else then I could just pretend I was overreacting and all was well. I was a good liar in that way; I lied to try to make myself more tolerable, more likable. I thought I had to in order to survive. No one taught me I could just be myself. Far from it--I was constantly reminded that being myself was not preferred not just by my parents but by peers, too. So I lied.

And when I got caught in a lie? Well... why couldn't I just tell the truth? What was wrong with me? Everyone liked me less for lying. I could never really win. It wasn't until I met my best friend Allie and her family that I finally felt safe to just be me.

It wasn't until these days, the years after my mother's death, that I've finally been able to understand why I could never please anyone when I was younger. So now, I pity that little child and see that there was nothing she could really do to make anyone happy; and if she had done her hardest to please others, she would've lost herself, been absorbed into the existence of everyone dictating to her what she should be. Either way, she would've lost. Her sense of self would've been violated in either direction, never honored. And so I grieve for her, and I try to fix it.

I'm having to re-parent myself and fix the mistakes my parents made. I understand now why they didn't want to help me; because the reality of knowing all the mistakes they've made against me since the very beginning counted, and they all continued to affect me as the years went on. That level of responsibility must've been frightening to them, and so they just wanted to focus on the present and attempt to separate their mistakes from everything "wrong" about me. It wasn't a reflection of them as parents (let alone people) that I was a bad kid, they thought. And if it was, like I said, their ego couldn't handle that truth. They didn't want to accept that they had failed me to some level, that they were at fault first and foremost as parents. They wanted to be the victims and make me the prepetrator.

There were certain things that I could've done better as a kid, too. I didn't have very much discipline for anything, except for my escapes (art and internet). I procrastinated a lot and tried to avoid doing many things that I could've easily done. I think I was so preoccupied with wanting to escape my own life that I couldn't make room for anything else. It wasn't a very good coping mechanism, and it was obviously very misunderstood. It was just seen as laziness, disobedience, inconvenient, irritating, and punishable by nature. I had no one to look into my life and ask, "What happened?" It was always just, "What's wrong with you?"

Again... everyone wanted to focus on the present and pretend the past doesn't count. It always counts.

I think that's one of the reasons why I sometimes become frustrated with my current therapist. I'm grateful she is helping me with trauma therapy, but sometimes I feel a bit shut down by her. She told me last Friday, "You're always in the past or in the future." Which is very true; sometimes, though, I need to get it out of my system in order to move forward with my present self, and she doesn't really want to do that unless it directly involves EMDR. At the same time, I know that her wanting me to learn to be more present is important. My mind likes to wander and always be anywhere else but here and now.

I guess a part of me is afraid that her goal is to have me just live constantly in the present and to completely put my past behind me, as though none of it matters anymore--which now that I've written that down sounds kind of silly lol. I know that's not what she means at all. I'm wondering if my fear is based in being pushed out of a comfort zone, since I'm so used to just analyzing my past all the time. Now I'm being asked to move forward and let any thoughts focused on the past just wash away for a period of time. It's hard, and kind of anxiety-inducing. Makes me feel unstable like I'm going to implode and lose myself. Weird...

I asked her about my writing, about whether I could use that as a form of mindfulness. She didn't exactly agree that it was and encouraged me to start drawing again--you have to be present doing that (not exactly), right? But with writing, I'm just in my head. She said I need to learn how to turn my focus outward somehow. Like when I go for my walks; instead of getting lost in thought, I should focus on the sounds, sights, and smells surrounding me. Notice the details and just be curious about everything.

Maybe I can start learning how to sktech and draw things around me instead of what just manifests in my head. I'm not very good at just appreciating my environment since once I think I've figured something out, I get bored of it and move on to something else. LOL like a child. Oh dear.

Anyway, I wanted to focus briefly on something else. I've remembered two dreams I've had that took place on different days. The first one took place on a day I can no longer remember; in my dream, I was fighting with another girl--like, physically fighting. I pinned her to the ground (I always end up the more aggressive party in my dreams); then, very methodically, I grabbed a thick lock of her hair, wrapped it around my fingers, and ripped it off her scalp. I kept doing this over and over until she was bald. And the whole time I was thinking, "Oh my god... I'm doing something awful. I'm hurting her," but I wouldn't stop. I was disgusted and horrified with myself, but I didn't stop. I just kept going until I had enough--until I thought my point completely came across. I think that last part was the rub of it and has a lot of baggage attached. One of my biggest peeves is not being heard out and understood, and I hate not being acknowledged. Don't worry about accepting me--just acknowledge that you get my point even if you disagree. In my dreams, this peeve comes out full force and my shadow literally tears people apart for this egregious misunderstanding. The fact that I'm repressing that much rage about it and it's coming out so violently in dreams tells me that I have stuff to work on.

My other dream was very similar to dreams I've been having a lot since my mother's death. In my dream, I was in a tunnel deep underground. Everything was made of concrete, was worn down. There was dust and dirt on the ground and random things piled on top of each other, like boxes and papers and chests. The tunnel went on forever in either direction, and only the area I was exploring was lit, with either direction pitch black. There's always a sense of something hiding in the darkness, waiting for me to come find it; whatever it was, though, it never revealed itself. It never does. There was one dream where this sort of happened, involving a strange, black creature that I saw howling at the entrance of a hole in the center of a derelict, crumbling building. I went into the hole that led into the ruined underbelly of the building, but could never find the creature. It was there, somewhere. There was a part of me that felt sad for it.

My others dreams involving these strange tunnels and hallways included feelings of fear, but there was always a sense of curiosity that came with it. As well, I always sensed that something was with me, or at least waiting for me. I was never alone, even though I could wander these places forever and never find a single thing. I wouldn't call them nightmares; I think of these dreams as kind of dialogue between me and my subconscious that's trying so hard to show me something, but just can't for some reason. What am I trying to find that also disturbs me so much? Is it a monster? What does the monster represent? And if it's not a monster, then what is it? Myself? My child self? A lost memory? I don't know. All I know is that the dreams will probably continue to come back until I figure them out. Maybe these places are meant to be safe but just got lost along the way, and that's why whatever hides from me isn't actually trying to hurt me. Maybe... it's more scared of me than I am of it? Maybe I'm the monster in these dreams? Hm.

I've been doing finals for a week and still have two more to finish after today. My mind is overwhelmed with the five weeks of vacation, the reality that after the 25th of this month, I will have no income. My credit has been getting better since I'm keeping up with bills that I piled up from my move in June, at least.

But in September, I'll have nothing. I've kind of been scrambling, but I'm doing my best not to panic. School has been a good distraction, but not for long.

I've been dealing with a lot of stressful complaining from Grace about our instructor (Monica) still. Grace just won't stop talking about it and painting Monica into this vindictive bully of a caricature. I get that for most of us, it helps us to cope when we can dehumanize our perpetrators (whether they actually did wrong to us or not); it's just gotten to a point where I'm putting in so much emotional labor into just listening to these terrible complaints and resentful comments that I'm shot.

I've made excessive effort to try to humanize Monica, defend her choices even though they might've seemed poor. I've told Grace, "Sometimes when people are hurting, they don't know how to deal with it inside of themselves, so they try to control others to feel stable again. It's not justified but that's what happens. They're not trying to be mean; they're just hurting and they're scared." It doesn't matter. It's wasted effort because Grace just twisted it around to make it seem like I was saying Monica was this emotionally unstable and pitiful person. That's not what I meant. I only meant to instill some friggin' empathy and compassion. I was hoping it would help Grace just move on and let go.

But yesterday, I was talking to Grace about power dynamics in work places--just from my POV. Like how we sometimes have bosses whose subordinates are submissive enough to consistently reflect the bosses feelings about an employee they don't like. It can start a cycle of isolation and bullying the boss doesn't like, whether the boss wants there to be bullying or not. Loyalty can make submissive people do wicked things. I wish more assertive people could understand this more often.

I brought this up because unfortunately (and I almost fell into this hole myself), most of our classmates are isolating and bullying Grace. They ignored her, they refuse to help her; they get snippy and become passive-aggressive. No one likes her. She's been dehumanized. Like some superficial level of pseudospeciation. She is the other now. A lot of it has to do with the suspension and assumptions about what happened between Grace and Monica. It's not fair.

As I was talking to Grace about these things, trying yet again to kind of put things in perspective as to why our classmates are treating her the way they are, I didn't realize that Monica was in the classroom and could hear me. (She had left for a meeting and then I didn't know she had come back.) Grace had known, though; I had my back turned from Monica's office.

It wasn't something I ever wanted to discuss with Monica present. I didn't want her to think I thought she was a bully because I don't really think she is. I don't think that was ever her motive, and honestly, I really can't know what it ever was. Maybe I just give people the benefit of the doubt, but I simply believe Monica became very defensive against Grace and then acted out of fear. She went into fight mode and made a bad choice.

Grace left the classroom and Monica spoke to me about a resume that I had made for an interview at an oncology clinic (wish me luck). She then sat down at her desk and said, "I also want to say... try not to get involved in student drama." Of course, I was already mortified that she was present when I was talking to Grace, and it mortified me even more that now Monica knew that I was aware. I told her, "Yeah, ok," and left.

I have to admit that I was very resentful that Grace hadn't hushed me when she saw Monica come back. I'm still resentful. At the same time, I was the one talking about it and Grace didn't make me say anything I didn't want to say. It's not really her fault. I still wish she had warned me. I told her this when we arrived at the tutoring center in private. It really was the last straw for me, even though that should've been weeks ago. I have a lot of tolerance for these kinds of situations, and I hate it because it means they drag on and on.

I told Grace that I've hit my limit; I can't tolerate the negative talk anymore, I did my best to be a friend and be there for her. She was hurting, she felt targeted, and all of that mattered to me. At the same time, I told her, I still see Monica as a good instructor and have always had positive experiences as her student. That also matters. With Monica's comment by calling Grace's plight "student drama" and Grace's obsession with feeling cornered and persecuted, I realized that I had unintentionally put myself between two people who would never like each other. Ever. They were too proud, too resentful, too defensive, and felt too victimized to ever see beyond those feelings.

There was nothing more I could do simply as a supportive friend to Grace, and I hadn't even spoken to Monica about ANY of it. I refuse to, and I told Grace that I was done with it all and didn't want to talk about it anymore. I felt like I was being torn in different directions and I hated it. Fortunately, Grace really felt badly and apologized; she promised she wouldn't talk to me about it again and didn't want me to feel so conflicted. She wanted me to succeed as much as I did for her. I was glad for it.

I'm also walking away from this feeling somewhat resentful towards Monica, too. I don't like how she minimized and dismissed Grace's feelings with that one, simple comment. It's not student drama. And even though it is dramatic, Grace's feelings are real and are still relevant. I also realize that I'm taking it very personally because I would be infuriated if someone called my issues "drama." It really hit a cord with me. I've had my feelings dismissed all my life by abusers, and I am kind of disgusted to see it happen right in front of me.

kudos to you for putting your boundaries out with grace.  i'm very glad for you that you did.  it sounds like it was getting pretty toxic, and then it also led to the incident with monica.

is it possible monica might take grace aside on her own to speak to her about what she heard?  or that maybe she didn't want to talk about another student with you, respecting grace's privacy?  that's just off the top of my head, another perspective of the whole thing. 

i'm not trying to minimize your feelings at all.  i just wonder if there's another side to what monica said and why.  i wasn't there, so i can't see the picture of all of it for myself.  it sounds pretty messy, the whole thing.  trying to deal with all that negativity can't be good for you. 

keep taking care of yourself, kdke.  love and hugs to you.

That's a good point, San. It's definitely something I've thought about and am still considering. I think in that moment, I was so upset and annoyed by everything that was going on that I took Monica's statement as an indirect attack against Grace's feelings. It would make sense that she was more focused on just not wanting me to be a part of it, which is her prerogative to request.

Grace tried to have me tell her what exactly Monica said but I refused. I didn't want to give her any ammo after having a good understanding of what kind of mindset she was in. Monica was already this antagonistic caricature in her head and even if I had explained what I thought it meant, it would've added fuel to the fire. That and she's so frightened of Monica that when I asked to speak to Grace, all she could do was anticipate the worst and literally braced herself in her chair. She looked like she was on a rollercoaster she didn't want to be on.

I became very frustrated when she reacted this way because I just wanted to say, "You and she created this! Every single day, you come to me and wail about how the devil is after you, everyone is against you, Monica lied on you, you're innocent, you did nothing wrong. You always never do anything wrong. But then when you feel disrespected, you actively disrespect the person back and tell me that it was justified because they did it first. You hurt people, you're vengeful. You put people down, you turn their back on them, you wave your hand when they say something you don't like. You ignore them, you scowl, you sigh excessively during every lecture when you hear something you don't like. You can't be asked to reciprocate what you demand other people do for you. But you never do anything wrong. Right."

I did call her out once and she became very defensive. I don't really hold that against her; I get defensive when someone calls me out on my nonsense, but then I always try super hard to accept the truth. I've convinced myself I have to in order to progress positively. At the same time, Grace always rationalized her poor behavior by saying, "They did it first! They started it! I'm going to disrespect them if they disrespect me." And I'm just not for it lol. I let her know my opinion of it and she let me know hers. I said, "You can continue to expect disrespect from others if you're just going to hand it back." She said she didn't care, but considering how victimized she's felt by our classmates--some of whom have actually disrespected her--I doubt that's the truth.

As far as my thoughts on wondering if Monica meant something negative with her comment, I think I also thought of it that way because I realized that she and I have different ideas about what is respectful or disrespectful behavior. I'm very tolerant and for the most part and I let a lot kind of roll off my shoulders; I learned to be more that way after working in a nursing home with geriatric patients who for the most part had no filter for anything they said. I would be called names by a resident who would see me ten minutes later and act like my presence made his day. I'd be like, "Yeah yeah, you're being a grump," and then those ten minutes would pass and I'd say, "It's so good to see you, too!" lol I couldn't afford to take it seriously--I just rolled with it.

Now, if someone says something to me that could be taken wrong, it won't even register with me. (Unless I was already on the defensive, as I have been lately.) This was a conversation Monica and I had about what kind of person she thought I was. She said, "You're so patient and compassionate, but sometimes I'll hear what another student says to you and I think, 'I would never allow that!'" I was so confused when she said that since for the most part, anything most of my classmates had ever said to me never registered as offensive to me. There were a couple of times where I felt patronized by someone, or someone was atypical and seemed controlling (we have a couple of high-strung personalities in my class, but that's no real surprise)--but literally, just a couple of times did that happen lol. So it makes me wonder if Monica just has a shorter level of tolerance than I do. I tend to speak up these days when I feel disrespected. Might take me a while, but I'll always end up saying something. I feel like it's within Monica's nature to become defensive more easily, which makes me wonder if she takes things too personally to begin with. So when she made the "student drama" comment, I kind of went to that reasoning and figured she was coming from a personal place. However, I realize now that I can't really know. I only know what she has told me, after all.

Of course, there are times when I do take things very personally, like this whole situation with Grace. It hit some cords because I can relate to that experience of feeling isolated and bullied. It makes perfect sense that she would be resentful and want justice for herself. I guess I look at it from an angle where I would rather just move on with my life and try to be the version of me that I want to be. I would've moved on, even though I'd be hurting and feel uncomfortable. This isn't forever and all I can do is be true to myself and make sure I'll be in a good place once all of this is over. I see it from an angle of knowing that if I want to survive, I have to be willing to compromise and keep the peace. Any injury I have can be taken care of through positive support and my own effort. I feel like one of those maids in some baroque court where I have to consider my place among others and just go with the flow lol. The path of least resistance is the path I have to take right now.

Grace has been in fight mode for weeks and is only getting more aggressive. There is a toxic narrative that keeps morphing even though she and Monica don't talk to each other anymore. She wants the path of most resistance. It's like a door she's trying to push open that wants to stay closed, but she's so angry that she can't stop pushing. She tells me that she wants to be done with this place and never have to deal with Monica again, and yet she continues to complain and bring other authority figures into the issue, making official complaints, dragging the battle on for longer.

In other ways, I've been trying to focus in on why I allowed myself to get involved, even indirectly. There is a part of me that considers the possibility that I wanted to be a part of the drama, to have some kind of authoritative hand in it. After all, I tried really hard to help change Grace's mind about things so she would go in a direction I thought she needed to go. And even though I was only trying to be a friend in that way, I crossed a line and couldn't walk away. It's always very hard for me to walk away from a situation that is bothering me, that I feel like I could help. And it bothers me to see someone that I care about being so angry and wanting to drag others down into the pit they feel they're falling into. I try to stop it, I want to save them for themselves. And by realizing that, I know it means I have to save myself first before I get dragged down, too. Grace was ready to drag me all the way down with her. Luckily I said something and she was willing to see that it wasn't what she truly wanted, which makes me think she isn't fully aware of what she's actually doing.

And well... besides all of those things I've been thinking on, I'm resolved in thinking on them from a distance. I've also decided that if I'm approached about the issue again, I will let whoever know that I'm not interested in talking about it ever again. I was trying to be a good friend, a good student, but I got sucked in further than I had intended, and that's all there is to it. I don't see Grace or Monida as bad people; in fact, I think they're great individuals with strong personalities--they just have flaws like the rest of us. I don't have a desire to say anything more if someone asks me. And for me, this is kind of a good practice of holding onto my boundaries and not letting others pressure or bully me into saying something I don't want to share.

i think you're being very wise, kdke, in getting out of it now and staying out.  you did what you could, tried to be a friend to grace, but it seems like she really wants to stay stuck in the drama and wants you to continue to be her sounding board.  i've heard that if someone complains about the same thing more than 3 times, they really don't want to do anything but stay in a victim mode.  sounds like the case with grace.

i don't think either of them are bad people, either.  some people have a difficult time extracting themselves from being a victim (i've known quite a few), and that's up to them.  we don't have to be part of it, tho.  that is self-care to my mind.

sounds like progress to me.  every step counts.  love and hugs, sweetie.

That's definitely something I really want to be more aware of within myself, San: if I'm complaining more than 3 times, then I might be using it as a way to justify my victim mindset. This is good wisdom, at least a good guideline to follow for better mindfulness. Thank you so much!

I've absolutely fallen into a cycle of complaining about the same things over and over again. I do this a lot in regards to my past and how helpless I feel against it, the hand I was dealt (being a child to the parents I didn't choose), and even trying to reconcile the reality that I truly was a victim in all the traumas I've endured. It's rough, but these are things, whether I've been a victim of them or not, that I no longer want to hold me in a victim mindset now. That's part of my recovery and I'm learning what that means.

*****

I wanted to talk about a strange dream I had last night. It was particularly uncomfortable but I've been to place some of the themes with what I had experienced the day before I slept. In my dream, I was just a child; maybe 7 or so. I was in this old school building that reminded me of the aesthetics in a story like The Little Princess or Jane Eyre. Everything was spacious, wooden, and old. It felt very old.

I was with a group of children and I believe we were in some kind of class together. We were all led into an amphitheater that was built into the side of the building; we were going to watch a children's play that was usually shown to people of my age (in the dream). Apparently, though, I had already seen the play once before, which wouldn't have made sense being as I was already young but it made sense at the moment. I saw an older girl and recognized her as an actor in the play I had seen my first time around.

As we were walking into the amphitheater, I realized that this play was going to be distressing. I'm not sure why it was catered to children, but my subconscious thought it made perfect sense. The play was about a very disturbing story involving the abuse of children by the hands of nuns and priests; there was also a young boy who was mute and had pretty red hair. He was abused the most, kind of used as a doll by the adults around him. A whipping boy in some ways. He never complained, he never ran, he never cried. He would just stand there and stare. It was awful.

The play was also interactive, so the actors would interact with the audience. This might've seemed exciting but considering the themes of the play, it turned out to be very frightening for most of us. One actor, in particular, started to break glass very close to a young girl's face for every word she guessed wrong (I can't remember exactly what she was supposed to guess). I remember she almost got glass in her eye. No one fought for her, and the actor only taunted her for crying.

I remember right before the play started, we all stood and celebrated. The ceiling was covered in this strange, plastic material that crunched like rice cereal, and there were stray red pieces scattered across the ceiling amongst clear pieces. Then, this horrible buzzing drowned us out and we all sat down. It was like the sound of a million flies over rotting meat. We knew that things were about to get worse.

There was a girl, too, that was sitting next to me and who began to taunt me terribly for no reason. She just didn't like me, I guess. There was an empty space between her and me. Two knives laid there and she decided that she was going to try to take one to hurt me. I placed my hand on them and for some reason, this was enough to stall her. I eventually ran down to the main floor and she followed me with a knife in her hands. (Aggressive characters ALWAYS have knives in my dreams idk.) I couldn't tell if the audience thought this was real or part of the play; they didn't stop us and neither did the actors. This girl wanted to kill me. Eventually, someone in the audience started to make fun of her, and she became very conscious of what she was doing and how she looked. That was the end of the dream.

I hate it when my dreams do this lol. There are so many different things that are going on and there are some things that I know exactly where they came from. The whole nuns and priests in a school came from a story I heard on a video about a lady being in Catholic school. And the boy with red hair? The lady who told the story: Kathy Griffith lol!

Everything else, though... I have no idea. I've been thinking on all of it and I haven't really been able to piece much of it together. Lots of imagery that doesn't make sense--maybe it was just a junk dream. Those happen.

*****

Another thing I wanted to talk about today is something I haven't yet shared about in my journal. It's been on my mind today because I was watching this gentleman on Youtube browse through strange sites. He ran across this one site about a cult that exists to this day and is growing.

I was in that cult at different periods of my life for almost 4 years. I learned a lot about it as I was guided by a very important woman in the group I was in (they have multiple locations in the states) and she trusted me with understanding some of the darker teachings of the cult very short after my "initiation" into it. I didn't stay in the cult for long, and at one point they even excommunicated me.

It was a very... weird point in my life, not just because I was wanting to be in the cult and had directly experienced it. I had extremely poor coping skills for my emotional ups and downs during this time and so I was vulnerable and somewhat volatile. I look back and feel like I was kind of going crazy lol. I just had no limitations, no boundaries for how my emotions came out and how I dealt with reality. I was so lost, scared, melodramatic, and felt like an utter mess of a human. It's what made me a prime candidate for being a cult member, honestly.

I was groomable as I was very anxious to be a part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to contribute to life and others in the most positive way I could. I was very religious during this time, so the cult was especially appealing. I also just... wanted to find happiness. I hoped that it would be a place where I could be accepted for who I was, and even be loved romantically for the same reason. Have a husband, a child, and just be fulfilled. I was so naive and gullible, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I just was.

In a way, what ultimately saved me from being sucked into the cult was my enmeshment trauma with my mother. I just couldn't be away from her for too long before I started to feel like I was going to lose it. This was seen as cowardice by my leaders and weakness. I was too "ruled by the flesh," as they would say. And yes, I was very scared; I guess beyond my extreme dependency on my mother, I also had a gut feeling of being in a place where I knew I wasn't truly safe. I might've always been "taken care of," but I felt like I was slowly being absorbed into a collective that wouldn't allow me to be me. The woman that was like my mother in the cult said to me before I left, "You have to destroy your thoughts. Your thoughts are evil." It terrified me; I could see the sadness in her face when she said it. I couldn't allow that.

I think what also saved me was my naturally investigative nature. I paid attention to everything; the way someone looked when they said something, the way they looked at me when I said something. Where I was sent, whom I worked with, and how everyone interacted with everyone else. My brain is a sponge in that it's curious about every piece of information, and then once it's soaked it all up, it figures out what it all means.

From what I understand now of the sense of self and cult methods, I knew one of the #1 ways the cult I was in kept its members compliant was by keeping them exhausted. 14-16-hour work days was normal life. You had to adapt or else you'd be considered idle. Work too much and you were a busybody. I wonder if chronic exhaustion chips away at the sense of self as much as complex trauma does. It would make sense, and I imagine being consistently overworked would be its own prolonged trauma. I think one of the best examples of this chronic exhaustion that was disgustingly common in the cult was when I asked one of the women how she felt about being a member. She sighed and looked off in the distance; then, in a very monotonous voice, she said, "Yeah... I'm very thankful for this life." She look dead when she said it. I think back now and wonder if she was like... mildly dissociating.

I wonder if that's what happens to many cult members when they get that glazed over look in their eyes. Their brain is just dissociating a little as they talk about their lives, trying to push awya the reality of how they actually feel. Imagine the feelings they're repressing. I've seen it myself many times in cult gatherings. People tearing themselves down for things that are harmless or don't even deserve the level of punishment they're told it does. Children being broken down at young ages--before they can even really talk--and then built back up as another faithful cult member. I was even sensitive to the dialect of the younger members who were born and raised in the cult, or at least were young enough and didn't remember any life but the one they were in. Yeah--they literally had their own dialect! It was especially strong in the women, but some of the men spoke in the same way. It was a strange softness in their voice--anything they said would sound sweet and eloquent. But of course, it never really was.

This way of speaking stuck with me when I even listened to an interview of a young man who had left the cult after almost a decade. He still spoke like them. It made me feel uncomfortable. And I knew I had been made privvy to certain information about the cult very early as he spoke about things that he said weren't easily available. I had always been annoyingly inquisitive and investigative. It drove one leader in the cult kind of nutty. I would ask him about something and he would deny it--lie to my face about something I knew existed. It wasn't until after I left that I discovered he was lying, of course.

My experience with this cult is hard for me to talk about because for one, I wasn't in it for very long; it makes people think that I don't know much about any of it and my experience wasn't that bad. Second, while it was a short experience, it was very traumatic in that it tested an enmeshment trauma that had never been threatened before, and going from that into culture shock with a CULT was like being traumatized all over again. It was horrible. I was in a state of constant fear, of anxiety, of knowing I needed to leave and having conflicting feelings about my place in the world and yet I was so scared. I even developed a tic when I was in that group, I was so terribly stressed.

Anyway, I eventually got out and never went back. I've tried to kind of expose myself to bits and pieces of it for the sake of desensitizing; looking at articles, listening to podcasts and such. I can be avoidant about the experience, and I've noticed that it gets harder and harder for me to talk about. It's like I sometimes doubt that it's even a big deal, even though it was. I haven't spoken to Mark about it and don't know if I ever will. I just... have a bad feeling that he wouldn't be ok with knowing that part of my past. I'm not sure if he even needs to know at all.

It's been over a month since I've written in this journal. A lot of things were happening that were taking up most of my energy. In a way, I guess... I could've been writing but I just didn't want to, as well. I felt strange about it; ashamed, scared. I felt very embarrassed about who I was and wondered what was the point.

That's been a big issue for me lately: just wondering if I'm a joke of a human being. I try to be serious about things and be authentic, but then I wonder if others think I'm just ridiculous. In reality, I know it's just a projection of how I feel about myself, whether others feel the same way or not. I do think I'm ridiculous, laughable, embarrassing, uncomfortable to witness. I don't know how to fix this or if it's all lies. I've always felt off in some way, ever since I was a kid. I knew that other kids could tell something wasn't right with me. A lot of that had to do with me not knowing how to communicate my abuse, but still.

I was terrifyingly broke all of September, hanging on to money I didn't actually have to get through. On the basis of credit, I'm not in the best place ever but it honestly could be way worse. I'm grateful it isn't worse, but now it's going to be a struggle to move on from that. Fortunately, I'm back in school for fall quarter and working more hours as a tutor on campus. It's enough to pay my rent every month, which is more than I can ask right now. It's something. I'm also going to be doing work-based learning in the campus's dental office starting in November. It's not paid work, but it'll help me get my foot in the door.

I'm hoping that by doing my very best in the dental office, that'll be good evidence of me being a financially responsible employee. My personal credit doesn't reflect who I am as a worker. I'm not a thief; I actually have every intention to pay back my debts. It's one the biggest goals I have towards getting paid more. I refuse to go through life carrying debt forever. I've honestly never wanted to be in this position ever in my life. Before June, my credit score was 732 and I was friggin' proud of that. I worked hard for it and I know I'm capable of getting it even higher once I straighten things out. If someone will give me a chance to.

In other news, I was talking to one of my ex-roommates, Hannah, the other day to see how she was doing. The suffering she's been going through is really nightmarish: went to the ER for ketoacidosis (third time since I've known her; she doesn't watch her blood sugar levels), but her heart had stopped twice while she was there. Then, one of her partners broke up with her. THEN... her mother died of lymphoma. Like... I don't even have words. I only told her how devastated I felt and wished her all the rest she needed to get through all this heartache. Hannah also told me that her therapist dropped her and her wife. I guess the therapist said there was nothing else she could do to help them, and their issues were now out of her scope. I know they had been going to therapy a couple of years before they'd met me, but all three of us retraumatizing each other when we lived together became a huge topic in our own therapy sessions. I felt badly in that way, knowing I contributed to some of their problems. I think I'll always feel terribly about it.

I know none of us intended to hurt each other, but we did anyway. Hurt people hurt people--it's a very true statement, one that I've lived many times over.

sweetie, just want to let you know i've never thought you a joke or ridiculous.  we are all wounded, have been victimized, but you continue to push forward, and that says a lot about your character as a person.  sure, sometimes it's smaller steps than at other times, sometimes we take breaks in order to tend to something in our immediate presence (such as financial worries), but you came back.  that's what it means not to remain in victim mode.

yes, it's true that we can hurt others unintentionally, and the pain is real, but i hope you don't beat yourself up about it.  we act from our own perspective and perceptions at the time, and those have been created by the situations and experiences of our past.  it's when we are able to make adjustments and changes that our responses toward others will also change.  until then, however, we do the best we can with what we know.

i understand that can sound like a cliche, but it's really true.  you are making changes, you are questioning, you are working to be able to see things differently in your life.  that takes a lot of courage, determination, and persistence.  those qualities are showing up right here and now.  please, don't sell yourself short.

so glad you're back, even in the midst of confusion.  that's a sign of growth.  keep taking care of you.  love and hugs, kdke.

San, thanks for always checking in on me. I know you're right, it's only hard for the rest of me to acknowledge that truth, as well. So thank you for helping me keep better perspective.

I was watching a video earlier today of a youtuber that I don't necessarily watch all the time but I will watch her videos in regards to mental health. In the video, she talked about her thoughts in regards to others not liking the fact that she bluntly states that she is better than others. Not everyone, but others that don't make the same positive choices she's worked hard to make in order to be a better person. It all made sense, in a way; I know I look at others who make very toxic choices and encourage myself to strive to be better than that. I know I am better than I was before I really started to help myself. Objectively speaking, she was also talking about being better in certain fields of interest than others, which is also a good point. How is it that we can acknowledge that someone is an expert but when they start stating that truth themselves, we bristle?

I kept thinking about these things and realized it had a lot to do with projection. We can admit someone might be better than us in different ways, but to be reminded of that almost forces us to consider what we perceive to be inadequacies within ourselves. I do believe that humans can't help but compare themselves to others. We create reflections of who we are, unknowingly or not, in everything around us. That's why myths exists, any stories exist at all. Anthropomorphism is the result of inserting our humanity into nature, both fauna and flora. It's how we work out our problems, teach lessons, and find comfort in this harsh world. It's how we can relate.

The only problem is that this behavior can turn toxic super easily. It's what causes prejudices, assumptions, and hatred among different groups of people. It's one of the deepest roots of conflict. It's when one person yells and tries to overpower the other that disagrees with them. It's the parent that chips away at their child's sense of self to build them back up into an image that strokes the parent's fragile ego. So on and so forth.

Our insecurities can be very dangerous if we don't resolve them. If we let them gain control, they work like a virus trying to spread and overwhelm the masses, and we might never realize that's what's happening. Some people go their whole lives not knowing they are trying to make everyone placate to their perceived failures, self doubts, hatred, and phobias.

All of these things, combined together, really helped me to understand how important it was, then, to work even harder on my own sense of self. It's very difficult for me to make "I am" statements with any level of confidence. Who I truly am has always felt very fluid and reliant on the personalities around me. This was a mode of survival for me for decades. Being a reflection of what I believe people wanted to see when they looked at me helped me a lot growing up, so I never really got to just... be myself. I'm still figuring out exactly what that means, but I'm getting better grips on it as time goes on.

I allow others to absorb my sense of self whether that is their intent or not. I do it out of fear for lots of things. I care a lot about people, so it's never my desire to upset anyone. This fact feeds what is now essentially a toxic behavior, one that hurts me more than anyone else. Though it can hurt others to know that perhaps I just behaved in a way I thought they wanted me to, but I digress on that. Are they sure that's not what they wanted, or is it another case of just not being able to face the truth of what they truly desire? We ask for honesty, but I've noticed that honesty is relative to many who claim that's all they want lol.

None of that is me trying to justify this old survival mode of mine, though. I want a sense of self. A strong one that will never give to anyone or anything. A part of that, I know, is learning to make more "I am" statements and also acknowledging that yes... I AM better than whom I used to be. I really do make better choices for myself than lots of people do. I respond better to others and situations and conflict way better than others do. Not all the time, but it is a fact that I still do better either way. I've worked hard to be able to say those things knowing they're absolutely true.

I was talking to Grace yesterday, as well, about how I'm learning how to embrace a lot of the passions I have without shame. This became a bigger issue for me, I told her, after my boyfriend finally visited my new apartment and I showed him some of my personal belongings. Just to give him a more intimate look at who I am. I showed him a journal I had that was written entirely in a form of shorthand, and I started gushing about other forms and how it's one of those weird hobbies I'm secretly obsessed with. I also showed him a book I had on Victorian floriography, another secret hobby. Why are they secrets? I had to ask myself that and I told Grace that I believe it has to do with my lack of sense of self: one, I think they're weird hobbies that others wouldn't be able to relate to; and two, because I grew up having my passions kind of stepped on over and over by others, I just go to a place where I consider my genuine passions to be worthless and wastes of time.

I literally have adverse effects to doing anything I truly love on my own time. If I try to sketch, I start to feel uncomfortable and sad. When I start to do shorthand, I just beat myself and feel like it's hopeless. When I try to create bouquets according to the language of flowers, I think, "What's the point, no one really cares." I base it all on the world around me and never on myself. So what if others don't get it? I get it. It's my passion, I see beauty in it, and it makes me happy. It makes me proud of who I am. I have to keep remembering that.

As well, if I ever did decide to share my hobbies with others, I need to remember that any attempt on their part to put me down is only their projections of their own perceived shortcomings. It doesn't truly decide the value of the things I love. I decide that value. And really... what makes me happy should be priceless in nature.

Something I've been processing ever since Sunday night is a fight my boyfriend and his ex had. Without going into too much context (I'm honestly kind of tired of reliving that part lol. No offense to my own journal or anyone else reading this, of course), they had a conflict that led to an... aggressive misunderstanding on her part. There were some abusive messages sent Mark's way, things that really upset him and myself, but ones that he's used to. I found it completely unacceptable.

I spoke to him about it and let him in on my POV as his girlfriend. I don't think his ex realizes that even though she doesn't have much of a relationship with me, how she interacts with my boyfriend indirectly affects me. I'm not OK with watching my loved ones getting stomped on and threatened, treated like human punching bags and even being used for entertainment at their expense. It's vile behavior, and it's also conflicting since Mark's ex isn't really a vile person. She just makes some messed up choices in dealing with her anger.

I was angry for Mark but I also wasn't looking for a fight like she was. I don't feel like it's my prerogative to directly approach her about the situation and also, I don't think she's in a place in life where she could be receptive to that conversation. She's very defensive, very quick to attack. I'm not interested in that.

So instead, I decided to really challenge myself to understand her POV, since I was just really worked up and needed a way to express my emotions more creatively (and civilly). I pulled out my tarot cards--something I haven't done in a long time, shame on me--and did a reading. I asked myself, "How should I actively respond to their conflict?"

The answer I interpreted was really all-encompassing but helped me to further empathize with Mark's ex (I'll name her Molly).

7 of Swords: sometimes we feel like we get put in a place within the world that makes us feel misused. This can lead us into being resentful and stuck in a self-pitying mindset. It's even more unfortunate because we have all the tools we need to succeed, but we end up using them in negative ways to confirm our biases about our self-made situations. We keep turning our backs on possibilities, almost spitefully, but more often because we just don't know any other way.

9 of Cups: when we finally do start putting our full effort into the right choices, the results can lead to great fulfillment and happiness. As the cups represent psychic energy (meaning emotions and intuition, at least for me), this card is a good reminder that we have the potential to live with peace and emotional prosperity when we do our best.

King of Wands: I kind of take this as the driving force; the energy that jolts the 7 of Swords out of its pity party so it can see its future in the 9 of Cups. Wands are a forceful suit, so it's good to have the imagery of the King put things in perspective. We can't hope to make any lasting and genuine progress if we go in with too much intensity. We have to be wise, but this kind of journey requires passion and creativity.

Considering everyone involved in what happened Sunday night, it was a reading that I really think anyone could benefit from. We all get stuck in negative mindsets and set ourselves up for feeling like everything is against us. When this happens, it really is our own responsibility to acknowledge that's what's happening instead of blaming everyone else. I think the King of Rods signifies that refreshing and hot energy we can sometimes get when we feel motivated to truly change our perspectives about ourselves, but we have to be wise not to put too much on our plates at once. There needs to be a steady burn lest we get singed and feel like it's no use. But really, there is use in trying; in time and progress, we can reap amazing benefits and also know how to continue to recycle them.

hey, sweetie,

interesting to me was your observation about 'bristling' when we hear something like 'i am better than others'.  when i read what that you-tuber said, i also bristled.  i think it's because it felt like a judgment, that she's determining what's right/good and wrong/bad, and holding the rest of us up to her own specific standards.

for some reason that doesn't sit well with me.  i guess i feel more comfortable with words like 'healthier' rather than 'better'.  'i make healthier choices than others' sounds less judgmental to my ears.  plus, since we don't know the mindset of anyone else, how can we determine what's right or wrong, better or worse for them?  we don't know their situation nor their experience. 

i don't know, maybe i'm nitpicking where it doesn't need to happen.  however, i did 'bristle' when i read that, so your mentioning of bristling rang a bell with me.

i agree with you about staying out of that argument with your bf and his ex.  they have a history that we don't know everything about.  i'm like you, tho - i get kind of up in arms myself when i see someone i care about in a neg. situation, and want to 'fix' it.  i've found time and again, i'm better off out of it.

floriography - isn't that what princess grace of monaco did?  press and dry flowers to make beautiful pictures or messages using the language of flowers?  i think it's an absolutely lovely hobby, not something to be embarrassed about at all.   your passions and interests deserve a place in your life without the fear of what someone might say or think.  you're absolutely right when you said that if it makes you happy, that's what counts.

keep following your passions, i say.  they're true and honest to you and your 'self', and i believe that's always beautiful.   love and hugs, sweetie.

San, you make a very good point about the connotation of "I am better than them." Honestly, I can sometimes be a very literal person when listening to others and miss connotation so I didn't even notice that! But that is very sobering. I'm glad you pointed it out. It is a reality that this youtuber can sometimes be a bit forceful in spite of her explanations regarding why she makes a statement. It's understandably hard for most to swallow and I wouldn't blame anyone for feeling that way. It can make the person making that statement sound like a jerk lol.

I still do wonder, though, if many people still have a hard time accepting the accomplishments of others in general. When I was younger, that was a challenge for me. I was an extremely jealous child that would passive-aggressively protest against others who were succeeding. I know now that it was because I was insecure and felt like I failure. I couldn't handle seeing others do well when I felt completely worthless. As I've gotten older, the opposite has happened where others have tried to take me down for doing well! After some time I started to realize that my reaction wasn't unique to me.

And yeah, I told Mark that I've no desire to really be a mediator to them, even though I wanted to express to him alone how I felt about it. I felt conflicted because I didn't want my voice to be taken away from me. I know Mark wouldn't do that, but Molly seems to be already capable of that. I want so much to defend Mark but it isn't really my fight, and I'm also frustrated at Mark because I'm starting to see that he can sometimes be excessively passive to the point of avoidant. He's a fixer, too, in that he just immediately tries to pacify any conflict, which drives me nutty lol. I always think, "Don't let her talk to you that way! What she's doing is vile and abusive! FIGHT!" But as I said, I just think it. Nowadays, I've been getting stronger about setting my boundaries with others when they disrespect me.

I was reading another person's journal earlier today and it really made me think about how I deal with inner conflicts.

I've been told by others that the way I deal with processing things is excessive; I have this need to mull problems around until I can understand every single part of them. This is important for me because sometimes in the moment of the event, I don't always know how to feel about what's happened. And if I do, I will just sense anxiety, fear, confusion, or feeling upset. But as far as knowing what exactly is getting at me, that can take DAYS later for me to put into words.

And I have this horrible habit of just excusing these types situations as just "going over my head." "I just roll it off my shoulders," when in reality, I just couldn't think of what was actually happening to me in the moment. An example of this is if someone decides they don't like me and makes a passive aggressive comment towards my character. Part of me might realize that what they said wasn't right and I might feel anxiety, but it won't truly process until later. Or, if I'm having an argument with someone, I feel very limited because I get so disoriented about what it is I'm trying to express. Sometimes that's taken advantage of or misunderstood by the other party and seen as a weakness or lack of knowledge on my part. It feels incredibly unfair because it gives me no real time to actually process things according to the time period my brain requires.

It's frustrating and sometimes it can make me feel furious at others for not understanding, for presuming to know what's going on when they don't. What they perceive as me not letting go is me only trying to find total comprehension and clarity. I want to know every intricacy and be able to resolve a situation the best way I can. I want to consider all the possibilities from every angle.

I kind of see a conflict as a story: the rough draft is it playing out real-time. Then, I look over the rough draft and start refining everything: fixing inconsistencies, plot holes, and making sure every person in the story is being heard. Now I have my final draft. However, this process is something that most people don't want to play out with me. It's like the rough draft is enough and they don't want to fix anything that might need more work. And if they do want to, it's me who ends up being too slow in that process or going over things that the other person might not want to revisit.

It's created a lot of chaos, anger, anxiety, and loneliness in my life. Being misunderstood can be so isolating and sometimes it's very tempting to believe that I'm the one that needs fixing. Everyone else is normal, and how I think is abnormal. I mean, obviously it isn't because I see many people in this forum that process life the same exact way I do. Whether it's unique to complex trauma or not, I have no idea. I only know that every time it's played out in my life, most people can't tolerate it and then I start to question my sanity.

Yesterday was a very busy day for me, but it wasn't bad at all. I had to wake up at 5:30AM (which I'm not used to since I'm a fifth quarter student and work part-time; I have the privilege to not have to come into the classroom and my job doesn't start until noon, so I sleep in lol) and then immediately get ready for a trip to my therapy appointment. It's in another city and while the bus ride is over an hour, it's very relaxing. The bus takes us through back roads and we see all the valley, farms, flowers, and animals here and there. I love it. Lots of forests, too.

Well, I took a long shower, longer than I normally would, and realized that I would be late for the bus even if I hurried. I was so bummed but not angry. Just like, "Dangit uuugh. WELP... Uber, I guess." I really didn't want to put out $30 but I had no choice if I didn't want to miss my session. Because I had extra time in spite of being late for my bus, I went to the store and got myself a light breakfast: some tea and two hard-boiled eggs. It was pretty good, and then headed out of town.

My session was a lot about how I've been handling my own anxiety after the long break between summer and fall quarter, and then my feelings and thoughts regarding my relationship with Mark. My therapist brought up how I'm already practicing mental noting in a way but she elaborated for me how to do it more often. We do DBT and it's been very helpful for me. I like it a lot more than CBT.

I told her about how I handle the conflict between Mark and Molly; something I didn't share in my journal yesterday is how I made a post on my Facebook about anger. I explained to my therapist that I hated the fact that I felt like I didn't have a voice in this situation, but I knew I could have one on my own page. I took advantage of that and wrote a very general and positive post about how I've learned to deal with more intense emotions (like anger) with my diagnosis. I went into detail with that post about how if people learn to ask themselves the right questions about their anger, they open doors to actual, REAL conflict resolution within themselves and their interpersonal relationships. But when we don't take that step and try to force others to take ownership of our misplaced feelings, we create a cycle of violent communication and more suffering.

At the end of that post, I asked people to try to take a breath and really take care of themselves; practice active listening with themselves and they'll find a lot of healing with time and practice. For me, making that post was very healing because it showed me how much I've been learning and understanding about my emotions, how I know how to handle things more effectively, and it all allowed me to have my voice and not feel like I have to remain completely silent. My therapist was really happy and thought I handled it well without creating a situation where I might've made Molly feel directly confronted. It was just a general message and something I thought was very important to share within my own space.

We talked about it some more in detail and then also about the reality that I have a lot to think about with my and Mark's relationship. At the beginning of it, I thought I was going into a relationship that seemed to be more than I could handle; as in, I didn't feel healthy enough to fit into something that I perceived to be more together than I was used to. Of course, with time I realized that I was really idealizing things and now I can see that Mark's relationships with his exes are shaky and borderline toxic. He allows so much abuse to come his way and I've seen how his ex-wife and fiance talk to him. He just takes it. It's really distressing, and he feels so helpless.

The situation is more than that, of course. There are money and children involved, things like child support and co-parenting. Mark also has his own issues to work on as he is very passive, defensive, and even passive aggressive at times. He will even lie in order to not offend others over things that don't really matter at all. I've caught him doing this with me. He has a lot of fear.

I've been doing my best to let him know that he is allowed to express how he really feels with me, no matter how I might feel about it. That is his prerogative as a person. As long as he isn't being abusive about it, it's my issue if I get defensive. That's something I need to resolve within myself! My therapist noted how by me having that kind of conversation with him, I'm kind of teaching him to resolve things he struggles with. I didn't really think of it that way but I suppose it's true.

My therapist and I also talked about the fact that I don't exactly feel the same way about Mark as he does with me. As far as Mark's concerned, he wants to be with me forever. I love Mark a lot and I'm happy to be with him; there are also things that I'm having to consider before I feel comfortable settling down with him.

1. I really want to live out my independence. I've lived my whole life thus far allowing others to decide how I should live it. I'm building up my sense of self and now I want to really assert it. I want to be happy just being me without any attachments. JUST ME.

2. I don't want to settle down in the ways Mark does. Because of his children and his own personal goals, he wants to own a house. I don't want a house. I like being mobile, I like apartment living. I like having my own space and not having to share it.

3. I'm not sure if I want to share the burden of Mark's interactions with his exes. They don't treat him well and if I become even more enmeshed with him, that is something I will have to more directly approach.

4. I honestly don't know if I want to be a step-parent to four kids. I'm realizing that while I absolutely adore his children and love having them in my life, their progression through childhood and me helping to guide them is bringing up a lot of old triggers from my own childhood.

My therapist said, "One thing I'm hearing from you is that you really value honesty. I want to ask you: have you been honest with Mark about how you actually feel about him?" I confessed that I hadn't been and knew it was stupid lol. It was one of those situations where he was expressing how he wanted to be with me for the rest of his life and asked if I felt the same way; I gave  half answer, but there was definitely a yes in it. It was a very terrifying moment for me because I didn't want to hurt him. I told my therapist that I don't want Mark to feel like my feelings are not genuine or that I'm lying by being his girlfriend. I truly love being with him. I said to my therapist, "This is the first relationship I've been in where I've been with someone for more than half a year and we still TOLERATE each other. We still get along, we're happy. But it's all still new and strange for me."

I said that I feel like from the get-go, there's been a sense of obligation placed on me if I wanted to be with him. One of his exes told me that she wanted whoever was with Mark to be a mother to her children as she was for them. While I can appreciate and respect that desire, I felt like I was being pressured to take on a responsibility that I'm still not sure I want. It feels like Molly was trying to insert her own expectations of me into my and Mark's relationship and I don't know how to process that. It's like... I get that she is concerned what kind of person I am because I am interacting with her children. Makes perfect sense in that aspect. However, who is she to dictate who Mark is with? In my opinion, that is not her right. She can voice her concerns about it, but it's not her place to tell Mark whom he should be with or not.

It must be a precarious balance, then. I can only imagine how stressful that must be as a mother who is co-parenting with an ex, and vice versa. They want to respect each other but they also have to think of the children. I get it, and yet... it is not her relationship.

My therapist helped me to process these things and I came to my own conclusion: I understand now that I am not one to keep silent if I feel like someone is abusing me or someone I care about. I said to my therapist, "While I have no desire to be a mediator two Mark's and Molly's conflicts, there will be a day where I will say something if I see her continue this abuse on my boyfriend. It's not OK and I will say so."

Because I see the situation as two different interactions: I want to be a supportive partner to Mark and encourage him to stand up for himself. And then there's me as a person watching someone else getting abused. No way am I going to remain silent!

wow - your inner conversations are fascinating and so very down to earth.  i think that bringing them to consciousness like this is a big first step to taking the actions you want and need.  like, the whole idea of being truly honest with mark.  that's a biggie, isn't it.

i think that might also include not being silent if you see him being abused.  or anyone, for that matter.  we've had to stay silent for so long (i came from the school of thought that children should be seen and not heard.   very stifling), and it's both a relief and a freedom to finally find our voices and make them heard.

well done, sweetie, on so many levels.  love and hugs to you.

Thank you, San. I try very hard to be more practical and yet sensitive with my long-term goals. There are certain areas where I'm willing to compromise--but if it means compromising my happiness for the misplaced expectations of others, I realize that I have to say no.

*****

I finally talked to my boyfriend about the thoughts I had regarding Molly. Mark was very understanding (sometimes I wonder if he's a bit too passive, though; I fear that he might put aside his personal opinions at times as to not upset my own) of where I was coming from. He did have a reaction to my opinion about not staying silent if Molly were to continue her abuses; he seemed to interpret it as though I was suggesting I'd be fighting with her--Jerry Springer style  :doh: lol

Like, "My woman is going to stick up for me." I squashed that quickly. I told him that I will stand against something I don't believe is right, but he has to be willing to fight his own battles. I'm not doing it for him, and I'm certainly not interested in actually starting a fight with Molly. Will I call her out? Yes. Will I get into a squabble with her, especially if she wants to? I will walk away from it. I'm set in removing as many toxic interactions and relationships from my life as possible. I think that helped to sober Mark up a bit about it.

I'm sure it's something he and I will have to revisit considering the fact that he deals with conflict very differently than I do. Like this weekend, I learned that he either is very passive towards someone when they bully him, or he will respond violently (at least verbally from what I've seen). He's got a bark to him that I hadn't seen before and it really puts me on edge. I don't respond well to aggression in any sense. It's my opinion that there are few exceptions to violence:

1. To disable someone that is acting violently towards you in order to save yourself (throwing an attacker to the ground, kicking them in the groin, or punching the throat, and so on--only to disable and distract so you can escape)
2. Killing an attacker is sometimes very necessary if they are looking to kill you first, but this has to be decided with immense consideration. Disabling should always be the first option.

During the weekend a story came up about a child at a school who brought home what they thought were teeth, but the parent discovered they were actually crack crystals. Mark started making comments about taking a baseball bat to that school if that ever happened to his children, and wanting to kill the offender. He kept talking about how he was willing to kill others and bash their skulls in--right in front of his kids.

Even his brother participated and said, "I'd be happy to go to prison for those kids. I'm not kidding. I'd kill someone if they hurt them."

Now... I don't judge the passion and obvious love they have for their children and I really appreciate it. I don't think it has to be expressed through murder and brutality. In fact, it put me off so much and upset me so deeply that part of me wondered if I should even stay with Mark anymore. I just don't have any tolerance for unnecessary violence, period. I think it's vile and unjustified.

I kind of gave Mark a look when he started speaking in that way (it was a subtle little smile like, "Really, dude?" lol) and he started going off about how he had been bullied and how he doesn't stand for it.

Thing is--neither do I! Bullying is terrible! I don't think being against bullying justifies violence as a response to bullying AT ALL, though. In fact, it is part of the problem, in my opinion. It requires attention and correction. We cannot hope to have a more peaceful world if we just look to fight violence with violence, especially when the violence in response is more heinous in nature. It's hypocritical and I refuse it.

Mark's defensive reaction also upset me because it really erased my own experiences with bullying. My father and stepfather are bullies in their own right, but I have no desire to torture or have them killed in horrible ways. Do I think they need help? BIG time. Do I think some of their actions deserve jail time? Some of them, yes. There are consequences for abuse and I stand by that belief.

If Mark decided he wanted to murder my dad for what he did to me... Mark would be standing alone. Period. I don't support that. Same for his children. I just can't.

I know this averse reaction has a lot to do with removing the experiences I had from my past in regards to violence, and also the reality that my repressed anger has manifested and both intrusive/violent thoughts and dreams. I don't like it, and that is never how I want to treat others. It is something that I work very hard on and refuse to let manifest in my everyday interactions. I've gotten to a point where I'm better able to process my anger and understand that intrusive thoughts don't necessarily reflect who I am. More importantly, they also represent hurt and fear within me, and those feelings need attending, too.

I've been surrounded by anger and violent responses to it in all forms for too long and I reject any attempt to insert those things back into my life. I want a life of peace, joy, compassion, and patience. Of course, I accept the reality the world may always manifest violence and I can't completely outrun it--but I don't believe my goals are unrealistic enough that I can't work my hardest to achieve them every day.

That was stuff I didn't talk about in therapy only because I had forgotten to mention it. I mostly talked about my classmate, Grace, who is still riding the stressful rollercoaster that she's been on since last quarter. I feel for her; it's also become one of those situations where while she was truly victimized in the beginning, it's fed into what looks like an actual victim mentality. Nothing pleases her, our instructor's every choice is meant to sabotage her, and anyone who disagrees is rejected by her. Even me. I'm over it.

My therapist and I discussed my acknowledgment that I had allowed not just her but also myself to cross my boundaries over and over again. Because of my past, I try to be a savior to people. I want to fix them and help them find happiness. I take on their anguish as though it is my burden to alleviate. It hurts me and it can ultimately hurt them in different ways. I talked about how my stress has been going up with every interaction I have with grace and how it's been bringing me down just how toxic her resentment and narrative has become. And it made me realize something: Grace doesn't want her narrative to be fixed. She wants revenge. She wants to be the victim. It's been giving her purpose. By me trying to help her overcome that, I am taking away all of that from Grace, and she doesn't truly want that.

I also realize that by being a healthy friend to her, I cannot continue discussing that particular topic with her in any way. It hurts me and anything I say is also subject to be twisted by her--as my words already have been several times now. I'm tired of it, and it kind of makes me angry. I feel like I'm not just talking to a brick wall, but I'm also being greatly misunderstood and taken advantage of for toxic motives by Grace.

My therapist helped to guide me in how I can set a stronger boundary with Grace. I have to be willing to also face the reality that Grace might not respond well to it. As long as I approach her with respect and also asserting my limits, the rest has to be up to Grace to figure out. It is not my responsibility.

I'm still processing all of this within my therapy, though. My emotions are strong and I need to work on the judgments and labels I put on these different situations. My therapist and I use DBT for my cPTSD and I really love it so far. Right now, a lot of the tasks are about being mindful of what kind of thoughts and feelings I have, which categories they fall into (emotion, rational, or wise), and the judgments and labels attached to them. I'm building awareness more and more. I'm happy for that, but I never like feeling uncomfortable emotions like the ones I've been feeling off and on since this weekend. But like is written in my DBT assignments--feelings like anger and discomfort are just as important as the good feelings. They mean something and have a purpose. It's just a matter of knowing where they're coming from and how to handle them in the healthiest way possible.

Something I just thought about in regards to intentional violence, too, is that it's almost a projection of emotions--more often than not, hurt and pain. It is an attempt to make someone else suffer (or die) for feelings that the offender hasn't truly resolved in themselves. I realize that in many instances, when I think about killers that we've all learned about in the news and in documentaries, that this is pretty spot on.

So I suppose when it comes to Mark and his thoughts and words, they definitely are a reflection of his own unresolved fear and pain in regards to bullying and other toxic behaviors--especially when children are involved. Rather than processing why he would respond in that way (he fears that his children will be exposed to certain dangers, and he was extremely hurt by those same dangers in his own past), he forces someone else to suffer for his feelings that he doesn't work out for the well being of himself and his family. It's really the same problem that I see between Mark and Molly, just manifested as another form of abuse.

I also believe that verbalizing violent motives and thoughts in front of children is its own form of abuse. It's indirect and not at all directed to them, but it enforces violence and encourages it as an acceptable and justified response. Sometimes it is a snowball effect, sometimes it isn't. Either way, I don't believe Mark understands the lesson he is potentially teaching his children by speaking that way. It is especially worrying for me because one of his children (his eldest daughter) has been expressing her anger by hitting and pushing her brother. I imagine if Dad is ok with hurting someone when they anger him, she might feel like it's ok for her to do the same thing. She's very smart and I don't doubt the possibility that she could make this connection if she hasn't already. Mark has to be willing to be consistent about whether violence is ok or not, and by him expressing himself the way he has this past weekend, he is being very inconsistent and promoting toxic behaviors.

i think you've made some extremely valid observations about mark and his outbursts about violence, especially in front of children.  that kind of stuff would be quite upsetting to me as well.  personally, i think mark has issues that need to be addressed by a professional, altho i'd guess that he'd not be too amenable to doing so. 

i think you're in  a little bit of  a rough place, sweetie.  the idea that you already are voicing concerns about if this is someone you want to stay with shows that you're not quite comfy in this relationship for various reasons.  that swing of his from purely passive to purely aggressive speaks to me of childish behavior - black and white thinking about taking action when one's boundaries are crossed.

as adults, we learn how to live in the gray areas, assess the situation, make some analysis of options (like you pointed out about when/how to use violent comebacks), and decide what is the appropriate action to take.  children don't utilize that thought process cuz they often don't have the same set of skills, power, or logic to do so.  they just react.

best to you with this.  i hope you find a way through all this in a way that is safe and sane for you.  sending love and a warm, gentle hug.

This past weekend was all right. I got up the courage to talk to Mark about what concerned me the weekend before. We had a heart to heart about it and I was super impressed with the fact that he really did see where his reaction in front of his children might've been problematic. I only wish I hadn't been so wordy and afraid of offending him; I kept wanting him to know that I was in no way judging who he was as a person and just overexplaining myself. It's something I feel like I need to learn how to handle better. I feel like I talk too much lol.

But he really listened and he said his piece. He admitted that he's very protective and because of his past, he just goes on the defense and his reactions can be extreme. However, he confessed that he has no desire to expose his family to that and his frustrations are all bark. He knows, too, that expressing those things in front of younger minds is something he knows isn't healthy and wants to work on that. I told him that I truly believe he's a good father who loves his children, how I respect that aspect of him, and just wanted to share my perspective because I don't think he wants to create an environment where he is promoting violence. He is just reacting to old trauma--which is ok to do, peacefully, within the right circle. (Like between me, his brother, and himself. Not in front of the kids.)

I'm still processing my conversation with him, however, because I've been confronting the reality that I have a lot to work on as far as, well... fixing people. I can go into what I call "fixer mode" and really force my standards onto others at times. I do this when I see them suffering or struggling with themselves or life in general. I feel for them and want to help; I want them to feel empowered and happy again, like they can handle anything.  Unfortunately, this can turn into a battle of wills between me and someone else and I can end up really absorbing their issues. I'll burden myself with them and compromise my sense of self, my happiness, in the attempt to fix their life. I end up hurting myself and might accidentally hurt them, too.

I've been thinking over this and realize three things: some people want my perspective, others don't, and others can't tolerate hearing anyone's perspective at all. And I have to be willing to be ok with that. I need to figure out my own resolve within that situation when I come across it. I admit that I don't always know when I'm offering welcome advice or unsolicited; I try to ask if it's ok to offer my perspective, but I feel uncomfortable doing even that because it might make the other person feel pressured to take it. It's very confusing for me because like on this forum, I receive advice all the time when people come onto my journal and read my thoughts and I LOVE that. (Looking at you, San! Thank you so much.) However, I guess that isn't how it is outside of this safe space.

It's kind of a precarious balance, either way. I don't actually want to tell people what to do; I'm always coming in with the intention of, "Hey, here's a perspective that I hope helps you because I see you're really struggling. Have you ever thought about this?" And I don't know if I just need to word it in that manner or if I'm rambling too much, or worried too much about offending the person I'm offering my suggestions to... ugh. I also know I have to keep in mind that if I try my best to communicate my genuine intent, it is not up to me how the other person will respond to it. If they act defensively, I need to learn how to accept that with grace and know they're not in a place to truly hear me--or anyone.

So I think that is a focus I need to remember within my recovery: work on what it means to be a fixer and consider aspects of that which might be problematic for me and other people. I've been very demonizing of this part of me and I am now starting to see how that is toxic. If I want to overcome it, I have to be willing to accept it for what it is. I try to fix people. I try to put standards on them that I think will alleviate their suffering and make them happier. The intention is good; I just need to accept that everyone has their own agency and reciprocate the respect I expect others to give my agency. If someone doesn't want to accept my perspective (only offered when it's agreed that it's welcome), then I need to let it be. Whether that person knows what is truly best for them or not, they are on their own path and will find the answers they believe they need. Like all of us, they might be healthy or unhealthy answers. I don't know. It's their journey, not mine.

Just like I mess up and sometimes think I've found the right way to handle something only to find out I was incorrect, that's how it has to be for everyone. I need to remember that mistakes are just learning experiences: now I know what doesn't work and can try something different. Because at the end of the day, I only want people to be happy and fulfilled. It's what I want for myself, too.

As time goes on, though, I am very thankful regarding my awareness of these challenges. It's immense in comparison to how it was less than two years ago, and even more so beyond that. And even when I get lost in my mishaps, I recover quickly and think, "Oh, let's process this as much as I need to." I'm thankful for everyone who helps me to do this, too. I still get feelings of defense, upset, and confusion, of course--but I've been doing so much better at interrupting them for the sake of improvement. Right now, I'm understanding that in order for me to improve my "fixer mode," I gotta work on my interpersonal relationships and not be afraid to create more boundaries.

I have to be willing to do that even in the face of upsetting someone, too. I tend to attract people who want someone like me to fix their lives and it's very detrimental for me. I have a hard time turning them away, but I need to learn how to draw that proverbial line in the sand. At the end of the day, someone who wants everyone else to fix their problems isn't really ready to progress in life at all. That is a level of awareness I can't help them with, and I have to be ok with acknowledging that.

dang, kdke, there are quite a few paragraphs which you wrote that i could've written about myself!  having such strong opinions about others' lives and how to fix the, wanting to show them a better way (my way, lol), even including attracting people who want me to 'fix' them.  and i've struggled similarly as you with trying to figure out how to get my 2-cents worth in without rubbing them the wrong way.

i've been working on this for quite a while, still don't have it down pat, but it's better than it was.  one thing that's helped me is saying 'a thought about that just came to me - do you want to hear it?  it's ok if you don't.'  something to that effect.  i've had people say both yes and no to that.   what i've recently found out is that i also have to watch my tone of voice if they say 'no', cuz i've often said a rather clipped 'ok' or 'fine', which they pick up on.  i'm still practicing with that.

anyway, just wanted to let you know you're not alone in this.  and i, too, often feel like i talk too much trying to get my point across.  sometimes it's cuz i want to come at the problem from every angle possible.  or i just have so much info to share that i think is relevant.  or i want to make it easier or smoother for the other person.  still, very wordy on my part.

very glad tho that you had a good dialogue with mark.  that's wonderful.

so, thanks for sharing.  it made me smile in knowing i'm not alone with this.  love and hugs, sweetie.

This weekend was a real trip—metaphorically and literally. I went to Queer I Am 2018 conference and had a great experience, but I also realized I had a lot to process.

I participated in each workshop session, finding workshops that I felt would benefit me most. And they did... in a way that I hadn't thought about before. One of the things I knew, for sure, was that I am a part of the LGBTQ+ community. No doubt about it. However, my challenge ever since I was a kid was for one, coming to terms with that; and then two, understanding what that meant as part of my identity.

Because of how much my identity was reliant on the dictates of the adults that were suppose to take care of me, my sense of self is pretty fragmented. I really don't know who I am without the toxic hold of my childhood guardians. To them, it was most comfortable to have me be straight, and so I just thought I was straight. And when other feelings came up, I just told myself that they were lies and I was just confused. "I'm not bi/gay, I'm just being hormonal and curious." Excuse after excuse. I grew up into a young adult who eventually told herself that her sexuality was evil and that I'd be "serving my god" by either getting married to a man or just being celibate.

Technically speaking—I hated myself and it turned into a LOT of internalized homophobia. That also started to project outward, too. Anyone who wasn't straight was sinning and needed to be corrected. Just a whole bunch of BS. People laugh when I say that if Trump were into politics back in my early to mid twenties, I would've supported him. I'm not kidding. I had that much self-hatred.

I eventually realized how much I loathed myself and knew that I just needed to be OK with who I was, which was bi. Or something. I wasn't sure just yet, but I knew bi explained it best in that moment. But really, I wasn't OK with myself just yet and didn't know why.

This conference helped me to understand why. I've been so closeted for so long due to the trauma and expectations placed on me that I have a hard time accepting my sense of self for what it is. Authenticity, for me, has always meant just letting others decide, allowing others to let me know what is going to be the best outcome. I now know that what feels incredibly selfish is actually the most genuine form of self-love that I NEED right now. I HAVE TO accept the fact that I'm not just bi—I'm queer. I like whomever I'm going to like in the moment: man, woman, trans, and beyond. Right now, I love a cisgender man. Before him, I was with a cisgender woman, and also a transwoman. That all counts. That is how I love, and I'm trying to embrace that so I can be open about it.

I want to be bold about it. I am not just queer, either; I love being femme. The femme part of me was something I knew was intrinsic to my identity before the conference, but apparently the complications that I felt like were attached to that label are real. This kind of reared its head when I was talking in a group about the "right way" to come out. Someone looked at me and said, "You're queer, and you don't like you would be." It really hit a place inside of me that always had the same assumptions about my appearance. I don't "look" queer, but I am queer. But again, that is that part of me that has an issue with relying on others' perceptions of how I should appear and like. I love being feminine, but it goes against many people's (even within the LGBTQ+ community) prejudices of what a queer woman should present herself as.

For years since I've acknowledged that I'm not heterosexual... it's been rough, as rough as it has been to express every other part of myself. I feel like an impostor, some kind of fake, or maybe I just am confused and a joke. The latter, though, I know is not true. It's just the inner critic, the voices form my past that try to keep me repressed. Who am I, really? When I go in deep with that question, I realized how complex and overwhelming that becomes. But I'm happy to go into those places and start playing around. I know my inner child is just waiting to play and figure things out. Put on that dark lipstick; get that undercut; get the piercings and tattoos you've always wanted; put out the literature and movies and hobbies that are weird and obscure and even a little dark but that you love—let the world see it and don't back down.

I can't compromise anymore. I'm not going to go wild about it (mostly for myself; I don't want to shake myself up too much lol), but I am going to start really contemplating this practice towards self-acknowledgment, embracing, and expression. It's my own life now, and I really want to live it.

I had a rough day yesterday: I found out that my father hadn't been completely honest about a court case he was in and I'm having to heavily process that. Trigger warning: I'm going to be talking about CSA.
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I found out yesterday when I decided to search for him on Google a bit. I do this every once in a while to see where he's at, if he's popping up on social media or not. I ran across some public records and a transcript of a case he was in last February. He was a defendant, fighting against an event in which he touched and kissed a 6-year-old girl. I remember while I was reading it, I started to feel like something was breaking inside of me. I felt panic, confusion, and deep betrayal. I wasn't angry, but I felt so much hurt and loss that I had a meltdown. I was shaking and didn't know what to think. I felt blank and like reality had just kicked me in the stomach—like my father had kicked me in the stomach and threw me a big "eff you" in my direction.

I've been processing a lot of trauma bonding that has developed between me and my dad ever since I was a child. He had molested me several times when I was younger than the girl in the court case. My father... has a way with children. He knows how to traumatize a child without them even realize that's what's happening. He builds a bond, trust, love, and safety. He knows what a child wants and then uses that vulnerability to his advantage so he can act without causing fear and pain. At least that's how it's been with younger children. He molested (possibly raped; my half-sister said so and I believe her. My father basically raped me, too) my half-sister when she was 14 but it was frightening for her. So much of her rage is due to that experience.

It's vile, in any sense. In the case, he tried to blame the girl for it by saying that she had a crush on him and told the judge she wanted love from a man. He tried to argue its innocence but then admitted that he was attracted to her, that he is attracted to girls 12 years old and younger. AND THEN started deflecting about he has this business degree and look how accomplished he is. He also brought religion into it, saying his church supported him. It was one of the church members' daughter he molested and they called the police on him!

The more I mulled that information around in my head, the more nonsensical and ridiculous his defense sounded. It almost sounded like he had finally snapped mentally because his arguments were just... I have no idea how he thought this would work. ANd that business degree? Is that the reason why he's so successful? Oh wait... the guy can barely hold a job, was HOMELESS the last time I talked to him, and my one rich family member can't tolerate him because my dad wouldn't stop pandering. What a great businessman. If only the world knew his genius!

I could barely tolerate being around him when he was more a part of my life. He's defensive, condescending, sarcastic, and full of himself. He was the narc dog that gave me the fleas I've been desperately trying to get rid of. And it makes me wonder if perhaps any attempt he made to support me, to make me feel like what I loved was worth something... if all of that was just some way to keep me quiet. Was it genuine? Did he really care, or was it all just about him?

Trauma bonding doesn't haven't to hurt. That's something I've been learning. I read experiences of it where people talk about terrible instances of abusers hurting them and then turning around to stifle what happened. And yes, that is also trauma bonding, but it doesn't always have to be so blatant. It can be subtle, secret, and seem innocent. It makes my skin crawl. As far as I'm concerned, my father is gone from my life. Good riddance, I don't need that toxicity and darkness anymore. Still... I'm really hurting over this and don't know yet how I'm going to overcome.

sweetie, i don't have words for this.  i'm so very sorry for such a horrible experience on all levels at various times in your life.  i hope you can take your time processing it all.  do you have a t to help you with it?  above all, i hope you can continue taking care of yourself as best as possible.

trauma bonding - i've never heard those two words together before, but it sounds like the farthest thing from any positive relationship i can imagine.   sending love and earth mother spirit to gather you in, just hold you so you know you're not alone with this in a safe place.     :bighug:

How horrible! I'm actually nauseated after reading about your biological male parent. I hope the judge saw or sees thru his ridiculous defense. What ludicrous statements. Children are NEVER to blame! They are innocent and trusting. Abusers take advantage of that.

If you want it, I'm offering a gentle, safe  :hug: to you.

Oh my gosh I'm sick to my stomach over all this.  I'm so sorry for all the little yous and the adult you too.  No words of wisdom... just here if you need us  :grouphug:

San, Roses, and Blue: thanks for checking on me. I'm doing OK and I had my weekly therapy session today. We did talk about it and I broke down again. My therapist, Jesse, asked me a question that challenged me to discuss some details about my CSA that I'm very secretive about. There's a ton of deep and agonizing shame, betrayal, and just pure despair associated with what I haven't even said to the closest people in my life. I went to that place today and it was scary, but I got through it.

Jesse helped me to see how much resilience that takes and put in perspective how much work I'm actually doing to not let those things control who I am. I know she's right but yeah.... I'm still hurting.

She helped me do a containment meditation so I wouldn't be so distressed leaving the session. I tried to share what I went through in a cptsd support group I'm in on Facebook but the post got denied because I used the abbreviation CSA instead of typing out the whole meaning. Because of how stressed I still am, I took it personally and it really upset me. I didn't say anything about how it made me feel but I just accepted it. It's whatever.

Quote... the post got denied because I used the abbreviation CSA...

That seems kind of weird to me. I'm sorry your post was omitted. It's really hard to feel censored, even if you recognize the need for it. I would think they'd rather use the abbreviation...  :Idunno:

Quote from: Three Roses on November 07, 2018, 09:45:29 PM

Quote... the post got denied because I used the abbreviation CSA...

That seems kind of weird to me. I'm sorry your post was omitted. It's really hard to feel censored, even if you recognize the need for it. I would think they'd rather use the abbreviation...  :Idunno:

From what I understood, there are people in the support group who don't know English very well, so the admins want abbreviations to be spelled out for the of ESL members. While I can appreciate this effort, I feel like it could've been addressed not so harshly considering the fact that I was wanting to post about something very upsetting. I needed support and was reaching out, then got shut down because I forgot a simple rule. I became sensitive to how the admin addressed the issue; I felt embarrassed and like I was being a bit schooled. I had told her I would just journal it elsewhere since I knew that this forum preferred the abbreviation and that's where my mind was.

I also felt badly because it seemed like I was adding to some level of frustration. Like, "Ugh can't she read the rules?" I can... I just forgot. My mind was so much on what happened today that I didn't remember that one little rule. I apologized for it, regardless. I just checked and it looks like the admins approved it, anyway. I can't help but feel a bit irritated, but yeah. I'm just still so hypersensitive to everything today lol.

after that session, i'[m not surprised you're feeling oversensitive.  i had a similar something happen in an online support group for narc abuse, and i totally took it personally.  i was a newbie, and it felt like the mistake i made was dealt with harshly.  i didn't see any reason for that.  i'm glad your post was finally accepted, but it can leave a bit of a sting behind.

you did some very difficult work, sweetie.  glad you got a containment meditation - those containers can come in handy.  well done.  i hope you can be patient with yourself as your mind processes all of it.  sending love and hugs.

I'm feeling better today, but it really seems like this speed of progression from the weekend and my session is going to take longer than, well... I assumed it would take. I'm still feeling like I'm easy to upset; my job (I'm a tutor--I feel like a counselor sometimes lol) is bringing up feelings of irritability which sucks because it's really the one job I've had so far in my life that I love. It's brought me a lot of happiness and right now, I have very little patience for the emotional and intellectual labor I have to put in to help my students.

Either way, I know I am getting better. Little steps right now, I guess. I've also forgotten what I wanted to write down because my boyfriend called while I was trying to do this entry. I pushed down my annoyance about it; I hate being interrupted when I'm focused on something. It makes me feel like my time and focus isn't being honored and so I react very angrily as a result. It almost feels like a violation of something extremely personal for me.

I haven't told Mark about why I've been off this week. He asked me on Wednesday if I wanted to talk about what was discussed during my therapy session and I said I wasn't up for it. TBH I really don't want to tell him at all what I discovered during the weekend about my father. Like... ever. There's a part of me that wonders if because he's so low monitoring of how he reacts to certain things that he will verbalize his angry thoughts about my father's actions. I can't tolerate hearing that kind of reaction right now. I don't think it's helpful and it really does nothing to make the situation seem better. In fact, it just feeds into the darkness of it, and I don't want to enable that by telling Mark squat about it.

After all, my mind fed into it enough when I had a nightmare Monday night about my CSA. It was... awful, as it usually is. Always intense, exaggerated, horrible, uncomfortable, and ruined the rest of my day. I woke up not remembering it at first, but when I did, my brain kept revisiting it. It's so painful. How does my subconscious know how to tap into the shame and the horror of those memories, those emotions, in so many different ways? And so much of the mortification I have in those dreams is towards myself. It's like... this weird drugged state at the beginning of every dream about the CSA, like I'm not aware that what's happening is terrible. It's like I can't even think and I'm numb, like I'm in a trance. And then I'm suddenly super aware of everything and horrified, trying to get away and make everything stop. Every time, and every time, I'm just filled with self-shame. Like, "Why did you let this happen? What are we doing?" I don't know what to make of it just yet.

So I've mentioned Grace before in my journal in regards to a past conflict she was involved in with our instructor. Well, today I had a very negative interaction with her--it didn't have to do with that said conflict but it really shook me.

I'm a tutor and Grace comes into my workplace (along with the students I tutor) because I'm happy to help her with her schoolwork like anyone else I help. A lot of the work she's doing are courses that I'm familiar with because we were in the same degree program, and some of it is just prerequisite classes for degree completion (English, math, and so on). It's no big deal; in fact, I help her a lot more than my other students because I still do consider Grace a friend.

She came into the center today with a project she was making for her math class: a little poster board about a famous mathematician. She wanted my help putting it together, like offering my ideas and such. Grace felt really insecure about it and so I was mostly there for moral support--just a part of the job lol. Anyway, she wasn't wanting to write on it and asked if I would. I knew I didn't want to because I felt like that would be doing some of the work for her when it's her responsibility, not mine. I suggested that if she felt like she couldn't write on it, maybe she could type it and then glue the titles and such on the board.

Grace liked that idea and I felt OK doing the titles to show her what I meant. Unfortunately, I guess this gave her the impression that I would do all the typing for her; she gave me papers that had info about the mathematician and wanted me to type that down, too. I sometimes have a hard time speaking up in the moment when I feel uncomfortable and so I just kind of nodded at first and started a new document. As I was starting to type everything, I stopped myself and thought, "This isn't OK. You know you don't feel comfortable doing this and it's not fair to you. This isn't what you stand for as a tutor on the job."

I brought Grace back over and said, "I'm happy to help you and I saved the titles and such on your flash drive. The rest of this, though, I feel like you're capable of doing on your own."

It was like a switch flipped on in Grace and she was immediately angry with me. She started telling me how she would just do it all on her own and then accused me of never helping her like I help the other students, how I never tell any of them what I just told her. It was all completely untrue but I thought about it later and realized she was not in a rational headspace. It didn't matter what the truth was--she felt victimized by me and therefore anything I could do or have done was bad.

I tried to defend myself a little but then kind of stopped myself from going further with her. I knew there was no point having that kind of conversation with Grace when she had already decided I was wrong and was against her. She kept accusing me of things and painting this picture of me that never helped her--a blatant lie. I play favorites with her A LOT. It's honestly something I'm hyperaware of most days and I've just never known how to fix it. She really doesn't like sharing my time as a tutor with others. She might think I don't notice the scowl she makes when I'm having to go back and forth with her and someone else (I'm the only tutor on my campus), but I do. She's obvious.

Beyond the accusations, she started becoming very passive aggressive and acting a victim right in front of me. "That's fine--I'll rely on the LORD to help me! *grumble grumble* Thank you, GOD, for helping me. I don't need this..." Internally, I was really appalled and disappointed by her reaction. She was literally having a tantrum and treating me like trash. It's like our friendship meant nothing.

I said, "Ok, Grace," and turned away. She left the center for a moment and I went to one of the instructors I share the center with. She's a counselor and had her office door open when all of this happened, and she was really shocked by how Grace reacted to me. But she also felt like I wasn't out of place for telling Grace I wasn't going to do the typing for her and thought it appropriate. I was shaking because setting boundaries is really scary for me; I'm used to just... kind of letting people cross lines and bearing it.

I stayed in the center for another half hour and then finally left. I told Grace that I was heading home early and left it at that. I didn't feel comfortable sharing my space with her and I needed a breather. I'm really hurt by how she treated me and completely disrespected my boundaries. Her stress isn't an excuse to treat me, someone she's called FAMILY, like crap because I said no.

I'm so sorry you were treated that way! It was totally uncalled for. It sounds as if she was trying to manipulate you into doing it for her. Kudos to you for standing up for yourself! You are worthy of having your boundaries respected.  :hug:

Back from the quiet zone again. I get so sucked up in my thoughts and stressors that I can forget how helpful this forum is for me. I'm very thankful for it, even when I just mostly ramble and sometimes make no sense lol.

I've been having a strange few weeks. To begin, which isn't so strange, I started my work-based learning for my college degree. So far, it's actually pretty nice. I really felt myself ease into it with little anxiety. I was so grateful I didn't feel terrified tbh. There are a few things I'm ironing out (I know some stress is building when I forget details of a job), but I'm doing my best to not let it get to me. It did a little today, but I'm reminding myself that I have time--I just have to give myself that time and do my best.

Beyond that, I've made more space between me and Grace. After our conflict, I've limited my interactions with her and I'm hoping she understands that things are not the same anymore between us. Not in a bad way, just in a way that is wiser for us both, from my perspective. That conflict that happened a few weeks ago honestly affects me to this day, and I'm just trying to allow my mind to process it and then let go.

It's even shown up in my dreams. I've been making jokes at myself about my dreams--my subconscious has been so direct and blunt in my dreams lately! It almost feels like it's playing therapist for me, like, "Let's talk about how you really feel, shall we?" Almost every night since the weekend, it's not given me a break. It's helping me to face what I've been repressing very strongly lately.

I had one dream about confronting Grace, and in that same dream, I was behaving strangely around my boyfriend, Mark. My dream self was avoiding him, not wanting to be near him. I picked up on it very quickly once I was awake and knew that it's because I've been thinking a lot about my relationship with some doubt and second thoughts.

The next night, I dreamed I cheated on Mark with a woman. Dream self had no regrets, only some anxiety over getting caught.

The next night, I dreamed of watching two people cheating with each other. Later in my dream, I was holding Mark from behind and wondering if that was what I wanted. I thought that it was enough, that I would be ok, and felt calm about it. After I woke up, though, I realized that I was finding contentment in compromising. I was still questioning.

In a way, I wonder if it was my subconscious asking if I really was willing to compromise... that I was compromising and making myself be ok about that. It really scares me to wonder if that's what's happening right now. I've been trying to introspect on all this information my mind is mulling over and acknowledged that I really do long to be in a gay relationship again.

I've struggled with my sexual identity ever since I can remember. I do have memories of crushing on girls in elementary school. I did like other girls when I was a child. They felt safe and I could connect with them more easily. I've always felt I could simply be myself with a woman, whereas with men (even with Mark to this day), I always feel obligated to give up parts of myself. I had parts torn from me by men all my life, before I even understood what that meant. They always represented potential violence--emotionally, verbally, physically, and sexually. Even Mark hasn't been able to escape that fear in me.

I've always been attracted to women. Always. I hated myself for it, for years. I fought it, and now that I'm learning to embrace it, I'm so scared. Am I gay? Am I not? Am I bisexual? But every time I think I want to be with a man, I suddenly feel so tired, drained, and like I've lost who I truly am.

I'm going to be even more blatantly honest: One of the reasons I got with Mark was because I wanted the experience of being with a man in a healthy way. I just wanted to know what it felt like, to see if that's what I wanted. I couldn't remember what it was like and so I wanted to know again. Now that I know, well... now I wanna know what it's like to have a healthy relationship with a woman. Am I being terrible for wanting this? I honestly want to know. I'll have to explore that question in therapy.

I miss the genuine and safe love I can have with a woman. It's not like it is with a man. It's different, lovelier, purer--when done right. Mark truly loves me, but I feel like things have become more about his happiness than my own. Because his life has so many more dynamics than my own (his children, his exes, his siblings, his job, his hobbies), I feel like I'm slowly being drowned by all of it. I either let it consume me or if I resist, I'll rock the boat. Worse, I absolutely adore his children. I would never want to hurt them. I know that if I did ever decide to leave, at this point, it would break their hearts and cause stress for them. I honestly worry more about their precious emotions than I do Mark's.

But I guess that's the rub, right? Do I stay in a relationship, for the kids, that is causing my happiness to dwindle? What kind of lesson would that teach them if I stuck around as Mark's girlfriend and their potential step parent? "Your happiness is at the expense of others. It's worth living in guilt, emptiness, and regret if it means not hurting others' feelings." That's really how I'm starting to feel. I don't want to teach that lesson. They might come to resent me, and I know Mark would probably resent me even more.

I've been silent about all of this with Mark. I'm not ready to tell him anything about because I'm still understanding it myself. For all I know, I'm too hyped emotionally to know how I truly and reasonably feel about this entire thing. He and I have been spending less time together--that is another factor. We haven't been spending every week together because my weekends are busy with holidays and events. It's starting to die down now... but I'm wondering if I can even get off this ride now that I'm on it. It's in my mind so strongly, in ways that I can't ignore.

Another piece of truth: I acknowledge that I went into my relationship with Mark way too quickly. Like... a few days after I broke up with my last ex, I started dating Mark. I was over my past life and wanted something that felt normal. "Normal" = heterosexual relationship, I guess. How internally homophobic of me. I should've known better what I was doing to myself. I felt like Mark was more normal, more grounded than my exes. I was attracted to that balance, even though I can say I was heavily romanticizing Mark's life for months.

And honestly, he's got a lot of imbalances. He's bad with money, in constant debt with someone. He has anger issues, doesn't monitor how he expresses his anger around his children. The last time I spent the weekend with him, we passed an accident on the freeway. Everyone was fine but Mark saw that a child had been involved. He cussed super loudly and punched the roof of the car. He apologized to me but I honestly was more upset that he didn't even bother apologizing to his kids. I can take care of myself just fine.

I have enough imbalances to take care of within myself. I'm still becoming financially independent and wiser, myself. Would it be wise for me to settle with someone who also is struggling financially and builds his debts? Do I really want to be with someone who is so low monitoring that for the most part doesn't even want to acknowledge the effect he has on others unless they say something first? I don't want to feel like I'm fixing Mark, let alone monitor him for him. I'm not into that life. I'm done with that life lol.

Are seven months enough to have these kinds of definitive answers? I don't know. Am I actually just gay? I have no idea. I'm definitely not straight and I've known that since the beginning.

hey, kdke,

sounds like a lot of rumbling going on inside.  wow - thanks for the honesty.  that's courageous. 

questioning ourselves can be difficult, but i truly believe it's important if we want to get to the truth of who we are, what we want, which direction to go.  i give you a lot of credit for what you're doing.  i have no doubt you'll find real answers because of it.

and, just saying, i don't think you're terrible for wanting to know these things.  if it isn't working out with mark, it just isn't working out.  he sounds like he has plenty on his plate.

i do feel bad that you've lost so many pieces of you to men, and that's shadowed your adult relationships with them.  feeling like you have to give up parts of you to stay in a relationship with anybody is not good for you.

best to you with all this, sweetie.  sending love and hugs.  i have no doubt you'll find your way.

I was able to talk to my therapist about my dreams and concerns. She noticed that I was really stuck on it and decided to help me piece together my dream. I wonder if she felt like I was taking it too literally, and I can admit now that perhaps I was. I was a bit defensive--not to her face but when thinking about it--but I got over it lol.

But Jesse, my therapist, helped me figure out the subconscious undertones of my dreams and put it in perspective. There was a feeling of hiding something and feeling nauseated about it being found out, or perhaps what I was hiding was making me feel uncomfortable. I thought about it for a while and a light switch went on about the fact that I hadn't really addressed some things that I'm still not ok with between me and Mark.

The thing is, I'm having to sit down with Mark again and kind of get a better understanding of his moral stance on some things. It was hard for me to come to this conclusion because I wasn't sure if I was overreacting or if this was one of those things I just had to compromise with. I'm really worried that Mark is ok with potentially exposing his children to his sexual behaviors. It seems to me that he is just looking for his own gratification and will pursue sex, even if it means risking having his children see that.

This was something that almost happened between him and me and it was very distressing for me. It's a long scenario stretching over a few weeks, but the two times he had tried to get me to do something sexual with him, I told him I wasn't comfortable with it. It would've been a different story if his children didn't share a room with him... but they do. The times he's tried with me, his children's bed are literally less than a few yards away from his own. They can sit up in the middle of the night and see everything that might happen in Mark's bed. I wasn't ok with that.

The first time Mark tried with me, I stopped it and then later told him I didn't want it to happen again. It brought up a very traumatic part of my past and I didn't feel right potentially exposing his children to that very adult, sexual behavior. Some time later, Mark tried to mess around with me almost the exact same way. I almost completely shut down and went into a freeze/fawn mode. It was terrifying for me; I started crying and all I could think was wondering if I was about to be raped. Luckily, Mark caught on that something wasn't right and he backed off without any retaliation. He was apologetic but again, he was really concerned only about himself. "I'm not upset," he told me, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. What does he truly have to be upset about in that situation? Nothing.

I stayed silent for months, until a couple of weekends ago, I finally talked to him at the urging of my therapist when I told her about my dreams. Mark listened and didn't get defensive. He told me that he clearly misunderstood what I had meant about not wanting to be sexual with him around the kids, but that I was ok with just messing around. I did my best to not get upset and just reiterated that no, I'm not ok with ANY sexual acts in front of the kids. I told him that the risk of them seeing us doing something together would mortify me, and that knowing it almost happened already was already messing with my head.

Everything seemed to be in the clear, but then later I realized the talk didn't seem quite right. Did he really imply that he was still ok with taking that risk, and that he only backed off simply because it wasn't ok with me? Did he not actually hear me when I said I was horrified with the idea of his children seeing something like that? What does that mean? What could that mean about me and Mark as a couple? Am I really ok with this?

Last Friday, I brought this up to my therapist again. Jesse encouraged me to have another talk with Mark as it was my right to have absolute clarity. She said, "You've shown that it's a very important moral for you to not expose children to those kinds of acts, and exposing children to sex indirectly, especially from a parent, is still abuse."

I agree with her; it's just been hard to kind of fully embrace that because so many parents around the world do take that risk. They will have sex in front of children (that they hope are sleeping but let's be honest: sometimes kids see things, and they won't say that they have. It's a painful reality) because, well... they want sex. However, I am very against this kind of scenario. I have no doubt that part of it is due to my own sexual trauma as a child. It's so dangerous; I don't believe that children can process adult sexuality from a healthy perspective. Things get distorted; their young minds don't know what to do with it. It messes with them and can have serious repercussions. It can be very difficult to counteract.

I've learned to not get into those kinds of arguments with parents who feel otherwise, but I do know one thing: I am allowed to have that boundary—and to have it as a dealbreaker. I honestly do not want to have a partner who is ok with that risk and is happy to take it. I'm scared to stand up for that, but I don't want to be scared about it. I want to compromise but I know I will always feel disturbed and unwell by compromising that. Many times in the past have I been asked to compromise my morals for others, and now I'm over it. Why do I always have to be the one to sacrifice? I'm ok with compromise when it is reasonable, but I don't feel like I must compromise my morals, within my own private life, for someone else's comfort. I work very hard to not do that to others, and now I simply want that same courtesy.

So I have a very hard conversation ahead of me between me and Mark. I do need him to clarify his stance on it and then allow myself the space to make a decision.

best to you with this, sweetie.  i agree with your t, it's a form of sexual abuse.  i will go one step farther and say that if mark is not willing to see that - i'm assuming you'd tell him that your t labeled it as that - that there may be bigger issues involved. 

i stand by your perspective of not wanting to compromise on something like this.  i'm a firm believer that if something is important to one person in a relationship, it's important to the relationship, and therefore needs to be important to the other person.  i think you're showing a lot of strength and courage in having such a boundary, and you deserve to have it.

sending love and a hug filled with all the ooomph you need to have that talk together.  perhaps on the nites you both want sex, the kids could 'camp out' in the living room or something.  just a thought.  sometimes we have to get creative.

I also agree with your T.  :hug:

Weekend past and I'm halfway through this week. Things have been tough. I broke up with my boyfriend and I haven't spoken to him since last Friday.

I basically showed up to his place, sat down with him, and then about 20 minutes later, I left single. Mark seemed to be holding back and tried to remain cheery (he was trying to look on the bright side of things, I guess), but I was a terrible mess. It was one of hardest things I've had to do. We actually had a good conversation beforehand because I brought my concerns to the table. It was civilized, calm, and ultimately nothing negative happened other than me breaking up with him. We were on the same page about my biggest concern regarding his kids; he had nothing to object about and didn't get defensive. We just kept talking and I left feeling like we really benefited from just being honest. And I broke up with him, and I left feeling like I had made one of the biggest mistakes I've made all year.

I wanted to run back to him and tell him how stupid I was for doing that; I was scared and distraught about what I was losing. I resented myself, and I resented my therapist for encouraging me to do what seemed to had been unnecessary. I struggled all weekend and cried a lot.

But then I just sat in it and I realized something: it really was the better choice. I'm not going to take it back. Because whether he and I were on the same page and we communicated well, I didn't love Mark anymore. Not romantically. Not sexually. Do I love him platonically? He has to have become one of the most important people in my life. I don't want to lose him, but to stay with him as his girlfriend would've been very dishonest of me. I would've remained unhappy, and eventually resentful.

What I'm missing is his presence, the comfort of being at his place and knowing I'm safe, that it was an extension of my life and home. I could rely on that. And ultimately, while Mark has things to work on just like I do, I believe that I am safe with him. He's just an idiot sometimes who needs to get it together, who say stuff that he knows isn't OK but is too scared to confess it. I get it, and I hope he learns. I hope I learn, too.

He's an ex now and I want to keep it that way. It's time for me to move on from that chapter and hopefully, he and I can always remain friends. I hope he and I can have a very strong friendship, really. I told and reminded myself all weekend, "Just because two trails line up for a while doesn't mean they will forever." I think that's what happened between him and me. We lined up for a while, then I saw myself heading one way and he the other. I have to stay on my trail; I want to see where it goes, and I want to honor my journey.

I'm still processing these thoughts and emotions; I went to the store today and I felt sick with grief over it. I'm still so sad, but not crying much anymore. It's just a wound that's working on healing, still raw.

I had a good distraction, though, Monday night. I went to a local queer meetup and I didn't go alone. I made friends with the barista across the street from my campus (I'll call her Daisy) and she offered to support me since I was still very new to these kinds of events. So we went together, and I met some great people. A couple, and then a few others. I befriended another lady (Liz) there who seemed to have a lot in common with me. Liz was with her friend--whom I'm pretty sure was Liz's wingman for the night lol. Liz and I talked all through the night, just chatting and getting along. She invited me to a drag show Thursday night and I accepted. She drove me home and that was that. Super nice, nothing uncomfortable at all.

If she likes me, I will have to tell her no. I'm not ready for that, no matter what my feelings might be. I just thought about it, but who knows--I'm hoping that Liz simply wants to be friends and is just very excited to "integrate" me more into the queer community. That'd be awesome. We'll see. She's nice either way.

 :bighug:

I can't believe it's been since the end of December that I've written here. Too long, and too much to talk about.

I knew that I needed to take back my outlet for my thoughts and emotions after yesterday, though. It all felt like it had no where to go, which isn't a good thing. It needs to go somewhere and not just buried back down. Release is better.

So... I guess it all started with a durian flavored macaron. I wish I was kidding.

My girlfriend (Linda, and yes--I have a girlfriend now. She's fantastic) and I went to this local cafe and got some goodies before heading back to my place. She requested a coffee, muffin, and raspberry macaron. I decided to get myself a mango milk tea with boba, along with TWO chocolate chip muffins and TWO macarons, one for each of us. I decided to be curious and get myself a durian flavored macaron; I've heard so many strange opinions about it and have been wanting to try it somehow, so this was my closest chance. I bought one along with everything else and got going.

First thing I noticed was that her coffee wasn't the size I had hoped for; it was just a regular and not a large. Oh well. I didn't want to be a jerk so I left the cafe with a smile and apologized to Linda. She didn't mind one bit and once we got driving, I pulled out the durian macaron.

It smelled like putrid, sweet garbage--the stink that many Americans tend to complain about with durian. I told myself that perhaps the taste will be better and so I took a bite. It was disgusting, and I started moaning and groaning about yuck it was lol. I felt terribly, too, because I had bought it with Linda's money. What a waste... it ate at me a little.

I put it back in the bag and we parked next to my apartment building. I said, "I'll override the taste with a cupcake--WHICH are chocolate chip, by the way." I smiled and Linda scrunched her nose.

"No! You can't do that to a perfectly good muffin! Chocolate just overwhelms it. You gotta have it by itself or not at all."

My anxiety shot up along with my displeasure of the sugary, durian taste in my mouth. Crap, I screwed up three times in a row with this: the coffee, the macaron, and now the cupcakes? I felt so badly, even though Linda told me she was just giving me a hard time about the cupcakes. The durian taste wasn't leaving my body, but I tried to make jokes about it. "It's tainted my soul. I'm morally compromised!" I think a part of me was trying to also erase the pile of mistakes I had made in such a short amount of time.

I was upset and felt awful by the time we left the car and tried to head up. I went digging in my purse for a while, struggling to find my key card (can't get into the building OR my apartment without it), which added even more to my anxiety. I felt my inner critic loading up the gun, and my depression was coming to the surface. Linda noticed I wasn't ok; I knew I was slowly falling apart.

My inner critic was telling me that I couldn't even get the smallest of things right. There was something around every corner to remind me that I was still a mess, still a failure. Can't even get the right, stupid muffin or coffee size correct for my girlfriend.... blah blah blah.

Finally finding my key card, we headed up and I felt self-conscious; my apartment wasn't clean and I had stuff everywhere from moving things around to make more space for furniture. My apartment isn't really a home where I feel myself represented. More like... it's a holding place for my stuff. Just there, a clutter of possessions, attempting to be something. Anyway, it was especially cluttered, and that was another straw on the camel's back. If my depression and anxiety looked like a thing, it would be my apartment.

My older cat has been anxious with me rearranging stuff and overcoming a reaction to fleas (she has a flea allergy). She was so distressed yesterday that she went to the bathroom on the carpet, right in front of me and Linda. I about collapsed from mortification and stress, I couldn't believe that happened. It really broke me. I felt so badly for my cat's suffering and not knowing how I can make her feel better, then adding to the mess of my place in transition, to the clutter from my cPTSD, then everything else. I hid my face behind my hands, pressed up against the corner of a wall, and sobbed. I couldn't take it anymore!

Everything was just a finger pushing the same insecurity button for me and I folded. Linda was distressed for me and kept it together. She helped me to come back down, but I let her know how horrible I felt. Is this what she signed up for? It didn't feel fair when she was already stressed out with other things; I didn't want to override her feelings because I'm having a crap time over things that don't matter. I felt like a monster, a waste of time in that moment, completely ashamed of myself for having done that.

But she told me that she could tell it brought up some insecurities that were just sitting under the surface, but it wasn't anything to scare her off. "I wish you can see the wonderful woman that I see. It hurts me to see you suffering so much," she said to me, and other lovely things to try to calm me down.

I finally settled down a bit, just enough to stop crying. Linda started making funny, flirty comments, towards which I got frustrated by smiled at anyway because she's wonderful like that. I took a shower after a bit longer, came back out, and felt good enough to be present with her. We rolled around in bed together (good times!), then watched some Game of Thrones while my older cat kept trying to crawl all over Linda. Then she had to say goodnight, and then left for the night.

I still struggle a lot with worth and what that can look like. Does it always have to be proven in actions, or simply in being my best self? It's difficult because I hate disappointing people. I realize that a huge part of me still hopes for validation through the pleasure of others; when I do something that seems to disappoint, I feel worthless. I feel like a burden, no matter how insignificant my choice was. Does it really matter that I didn't get the right kind of muffin for Linda, with her money? That's money she can't get back, and she could've known better if she'd been present. She trusted me... but I guess it's nothing in comparison to other choices. It's just a muffin.

And that horrid durian macaron! I bought that with Linda's money, too. Such a waste of resources! I think that's what gets me. It's one thing if it's my own money; that's just my fault and next time, I'll know better. I must teach myself to prioritize these things so they don't break me down more than they should. And I need to trust Linda to understand that it's really not that big of deal, only that I will be wise enough to never buy a durian macaron or chocolate chip muffins for her again lol.

I worry if sometimes my efforts are just a carpet I've been sweeping my insecurities under; every time something triggers me like it did yesterday, I doubt my progress. Was it all a lie, or is this just a part of my journey? I can't tell, but I do try to remember one thing: the extent of my anxiety doesn't last as long as it used to. What happened yesterday, only really stuck around for a few hours and then I was fine again. I felt enough to have fun with Linda--genuine fun. In the past, I would've taken a whole day, or DAYS to recover. I didn't know how to cope back then, and now I do.

My therapist, Jesse, taught me how to have strong, internal dialogue with myself to stop anxieties from spiraling too far and too extremely. I guess it's been working; "logic" mind can be just as loud (sometimes louder) as "emotional" mind when reacting to stressors, and then finally come together to make the "wise" mind. I've established that skill, though I don't know if it's gotten stronger beyond a certain point. But it's there, and it helps.

So I got through. I'm still raw today and feel depressed, but I know I'll be all right. My brain tries to scramble a bit when I try to make a clear list of things I can do to make life a bit easier, but I have to find some way to do it. I just want to be happy, and I want to have a happy girlfriend. Yesterday was rough, but I am grateful that those days are stretching farther away from each other.

It is hard to trust your progress in the middle of the storm. That your anxiety didn't last as long and that those days of high anxiety are further apart sound like progress to me. (Personally, I don't think chocolate in anything is a mistake!  :boogie:)

notalone, you're right and that is definitely something I work hard nowadays to remind myself of. It feels so painful and scary and hopeless in the moment, but it used to be so worse. I am getting better with time and effort~

Adding another stressor of my own doing into the mix: I'm now on financial aid suspension due to my own negligence. I avoided and tried to pretend it wasn't happening; my anxiety can be that way, and it got me hard. I typed up an appeal, though, and so hopefully the financial aid department will remove the suspension and give me my grants and loans back. I need them; I have four classes left and two prerequisites. Plus, I'll be starting a certification which will take two quarters.

Part of me isn't too worried; most colleges just want to see genuine remorse and a good plan of action in an appeal. The other part of me does worry, reasonably. That is most of my income right now, but I'm also working hard to apply to job a few times a day, to jobs that I'm willing and reasonably capable of doing. I did get an interview on Friday. It was for a receptionist position at a senior living center. I really hope I get it; I love working with the geriatric community, even with all its more difficult qualities (Alzheimer's and dementia). I love senior patients. They're a special bunch in this world.

Beyond that, nothing much. I did get a phone interview earlier last week but it didn't work out. I don't have a car right now and they required personal transportation. That's fine and it wasn't upsetting. A bummer I couldn't qualify, but it is what it is. I had another interview for a call center, but they required hours during a class I'll be taking for spring quarter. Not going to happen lol.

The receptionist job is very hopeful because I applied on Thursday, then they contacted me Friday morning for an interview, and even removed their listing on Indeed the same day. Maybe they're hoping to hire me or have a few of us they're sure they want, I'm not sure. It only means, either way, they liked what they saw. Crossing my fingers.

The interview was good but at one point, was a bit hard for me; since they required background checks and that could've very well involved a credit check (not worried about criminal checks; 100% clean), I decided to be honest with them. Last living situation left me in credit ruins, and I'm struggling to pay off debt. It happens, but I don't bring that mess into the work place. It's not a reflection of me as a person. I'm not financial dishonest, just financially struggling and needing a job to catch up. "I take great pride in being a secure and reliable employee, and here's how," I said, and talked about my experiences over winter when I handled patient payments at my college's dental clinic. Never lost a dollar, always made sure everything got processed correctly and on time. I'm responsible, I'm honest--my personal life stays away from my professional one.

Luckily, they listened and understood, and told me they won't be doing a credit check. They just want to make sure I'm a safe person for all the residents. Thankfully, I pride myself in that, too.

Part of me is scared they might use my honesty as reason to not hire me. I didn't know they wouldn't have cared, but geriatric patients can be vulnerable with money. I take that very seriously. Either way, it's one of those things I resolved to talk about; because if they DID do credit checks and saw my credit score, knowing why it exists could possibly mean the difference between giving me a chance and not even bothering to. And if they don't care, then what would it matter either way? At least I tried to make my case. I did my best.

Being poor and debt-ridden is rough, but I've allowed myself to learn things along the way. I could just let myself fall apart and never change, but I'm not. I assert who I am in interviews: "Yes, this debt exists, but I have ALWAYS proven myself to be financially honest in the workplace. Yes, I am a student, but I can work during this and that time and I can be more available after this many weeks. I am reliable, I can do great things, I can adapt and show compassion and respect." I'm learning how to assert my strengths and my vulnerabilities all at once. It's a strange and fascinating experience for me.

I still got such a long way to go, though. What does it mean about me that I'm still having these struggles that make living so hard? I need money to pay my rent and bills, to pay for food, for furniture; a part of me is still impulsive and uses money as an escape from stressors. I gotta get myself together and really figure out what will help me stop doing what I'm doing. I'm grateful I have people willing to help me on this journey. I'm stable enough to at least put some income into savings. I got that, and I haven't touched it. I'm getting a little better.

Beyond that, my Linda and I reached our first 90 days of our romance. It was lovely, but also sobering. We realized we've gone wild and crazy these past three months, entertaining each other and having fun. It's time to simmer down and start nesting, sercuring ourselves for the long-term. I agreed, and part of me was scared that I might've disappointed her. I can't really tell, of course, because I'm not psychic; she and I, though, have a strange ability to read each other very very well. We don't even have to be in the same room, the same city lol.

Some nights ago, Linda was feeling down because her cat was getting too sick to keep going; she knew he would have to be put down. She also lost a distant friend back in January, and it really kicked her hard. She felt raw, tired, and wanted to turn inward and away from the world. I told her that if she needed me, she was more than welcome to come to my place and I would be there for her. Linda said she'd go home and go to bed early. We said we loved each other and we hung up.

I immediately thought, she's going to come see me.

She called me fifteen minutes later, waiting for me to let her in the building. It's not the first time we've done that lol.

I'm so in love with this woman. I've never wanted someone so much, every single moment. We've given each other a level of vulnerability I've never had before, and never have experienced in such a wonderful way. Sometimes it's scary because I fear judgment; she always proves herself trustworthy and never leaves me feeling like a burden or bad choice. Other times, it's just freeing and feels like it should feel between partners. I can't imagine this life without her now. I want to make a nest with lovely things and put her right in the middle lol. I love her so much.

I've been going through some rough stuff and trying desperately to give myself patience and compassion.

Being in a relationship is very difficult for me; I always feel like I'm going to destroy it somehow, or will find myself with someone who'll dominate me and I won't know it until it's too late, until I'm too enmeshed. These fears are even worse when I'm with someone I deeply love and want, which I'll be honest... has never really happened before. Until now.

Linda is that person, at last. I've never loved someone so much to think, "I want to nest with this person and have them with me for as long as they'll have me." Every time I'm with her, I feel peace and a sense of completion. Here is my partner, the one I love and who loves me. Our love rivals one another's.

She is 12 years older than I am, and this comes with a generational gap. She is an older Gen Xer, while I'm an older Millenial. It shows in our likes, our dislikes, how we talk and what we tolerate. It doesn't cause any major disconnect or issue; if anything, sometimes it's very funny to witness. This gap also exposes our levels of interpersonal wisdom. Linda obviously has more, and she also has a very large social circle. I still struggle in these areas.

It's through this struggle that we've had some serious discussion because she knows that I have CPTSD and that sometimes dictates how I interact with others. She will get frustrated for me. I will want to have deep and meaningful conversations with others but then I upset them because my viewpoint may differ.  When this happens, I admit that I don't always know when to walk away. Most people I've talked with, when this scenario happens, will take up a lot of my energy by trying to guilt me and rob me of courtesies that I'm giving to them. A lot of them are just plain trolls, and even men who can't tolerate being challenged by women. Big babies.

Linda can see it happening and says, "I don't understand why you waste your time with these people. They don't want to have the kind of conversation you want. You need to find your people and leave the rest behind." She tells me that my conversations are meaningful and deep but only coming from my end in every situation I vent about.

It's like... my logical mind knows she's looking out for me and wants me to have better filters, but my inner critic just latches onto it and shapes her words into claims of inadequacy, e.g., "You're immature, this is stupid, this is petty. Why don't you know any better? Stop wasting my time talking about this. I don't care. You shouldn't care, either. What you think is important is wrong."

It's been a rough headspace and I don't think I'm strong enough to discuss any of it with Linda, not right now. I am aware it's my inner critic twisting things around; I have past experiences and traumas that still get a grip on me when I feel vulnerable, and I've been so vulnerable with Linda. She smiles and tells me that I need people who are willing to go deep with me, who want to talk about the big questions and break them apart--just like I do. So yes, she is trying to protect me and steer me towards a community that will only be beneficial. I think sometimes she just expresses her frustration during times when I feel really helpless and it hits me the wrong way. Her words and wisdom mean a lot to me and so that is a huge factor, too.

All of it added together scares me because the last thing I want to happen is for her to think I'm wasting her time. Like, "Here's this young woman, in her 30s, who's struggling and still getting her life together--why am I here? What benefit am I really getting from this?"

It's funny, though, when I finally write it out... because aren't we all figuring out no matter how old we are? Don't we all struggle at some point in our lives? Linda just lost a cat to kidney failure; she had to put him down and she's been grieving. Her job is also running her into the ground. All of it has been driving her nuts. She struggles and has bad days; I've seen them, I've felt them, I've wiped away tears and tried so hard to be gentle. I haven't given up on her. Most of it is circumstantial, but she's also had a difficult past. She struggles with trauma and how that's shaped her relationships of all kinds. I still don't feel it's enough to make me walk away. She's been nothing but lovely towards me.

I guess I have to keep that in perspective: she is 12 years older, and has time to work out more things than I have. She has acknowledged that with me directly, saying, "I think this is our age difference coming up again." She'll chuckle a bit while saying it. Linda never holds it against me, only recognizes it for what it is. I have more energy and am still discovering life, especially after being separated from it because of my trauma. I'm still very naive and can't always recognize when people are treating me badly, which is both a weakness and a strength in the right situations.

The latter reminds me: I got a weekend job as a receptionist at a senior living center. I'm so excited about it and really want to do well. I love working in geriatric settings and have an affinity for elders. My affinity grows for elders with Alzheimer's and dementia; I don't know what it is, but I have a lot of empathy and compassion for them. Something about the discomfort and awkwardness of simply being one's self but feeling out of control of the self is familiar for me. I don't react and point out when an elder tells me the same thing three times over in a five-minute period (or less!). I take it for what it is and just let it be. They're just trying to be who they are, in whatever capacity their brain will allow. I respect that.

So in that way, my naivete can be a strength because it allows me to take people at face value and give them te benefit of the doubt. Super helpful in the job I'm now working, though I know some elders need to have eye kept on them! I can do that, too. But my naivete, in other situations, makes me a target. Sadly, people take advantage, sometimes without even realizing they're doing it. They just have poor ways of coping with confrontation and will try to manipulate someone like me into feeling badly for opposing them. My naivete makes it hard for me to understand when it's wisest to walk away and leave it alone. I want people to be heard and acknowledged, things that were stolen from me by bullies of all kinds for decades. No one cared, no matter what I had to say and how I wanted to say it. Not in any meaningful way. I guess I project that loss onto people...

All of it combined has left me feeling silly and embarrassed. Why don't I know any better? I've been in this cycle before and I'm in my 30s now; why can't I tell the difference? Why do I bother? I just want to talk about things that I find fascinating or frustrating with people who can meet me in the middle and say things that are interesting, whether they agree or not. That's all I want.

A month goes by and so much has changed.

Jesse, my last therapist, had to leave the clinic and I no longer see her. I guess something is going within her family. It's not my business, though I hope whatever is happening, it all works out in the end.

I have a new therapist now. I'll call her Sam. She's different but I still connect pretty well with her. It was funny because the last couple of sessions with her, she wasn't sure why I needed therapy lol. But yesterday, we were talking about my anxiety surrounding my sense of self-worth, my abilities and such... she understood, then. She knew there's some deeper stuff that still hasn't been worked out just yet.

She talked about doing some more intentional journaling and inner child work with me, which was a relief to hear. I've been wanting to do inner child work in therapy for a long time but didn't know exactly where to start with it. This will be new for me, to at least have some guidance in that process.

Linda and I are doing very well. Still deeply in love, super into each other. I think we're just establishing that as a normal, which makes me very happy. I've never had that before. Though right now, Linda's work has been awful with her; overworking her, taking advantage. She loves the work and that's why she's waiting for things to resolve, but it's taking a serious toll on her own mental health. It breaks my heart. Her blood pressure is high, she's been getting stress headaches, and now she feels like she has to get back on Zoloft. I wish I can take it all away for her, but all I can do is let her know I'm here and love her.  I told her that and she said, "I know you're my lady, and that's why I said something."

Beyond that, I've been trying to navigate my new relationships with friends and family. I've started taking ballroom classes, though not the kind where you do the tango and Viennese waltz lol. This is ballroom culture and vogue classes, specifically femme vogue, and it's been such a great experience! I've only gone twice so far but I want it to be a part of my life forever if I can help it. The first time I went, I was so nervous and was a complete, awkward, and confused mess during the whole session. Trying to catwalk, runway walk, and do vogue dance moves when you've never done any of that before can be mortifying lol. But I made it through, and the second time I got even better. The main person who holds the classes is one of the sweetest people I've ever met, and he's taken me under his wing because he knows I'm feeling super insecure and unworthy to participate. I'm a bigger girl and so many of the dance techniques are very difficult or almost impossible for me without hurting myself (at least for now!) and I told him after my first night, "I know I'm out of my league but I'm having a lot of fun."

He (I'll call him Ronnie) just flipped a switch and said, "Girl, you are not out of your league! You can do this and I'm going to show you some videos of some big bodies vogueing the next time I see you. You just gotta practice and you'll see!" And he was right! The second session was so much better; I was super insecure about practicing in front of everyone else and I decided that I was going to push myself past that and just keep trying. Ronnie noticed and decided to work with me individually for a while, helping me with steps that I could do. Catwalking, hand and arm movements, runway walking—I could do those things just fine. We were doing catwalking and he was improvising with me; I was able to follow him and started to loosen up, get into it. Ronnie got super excited for me and cheered me on and gave me a hug lol. He said he could tell my body was getting into the dance and music, that I was finally feeling it. I was laughing out of joy and felt so good about myself.

In hindsight, I can see that maybe it's not even really about the dancing. Yeah, the kind of dancing is something I love to watch and want to learn to do myself. It's fun, fantastic, exciting, sexy, weird, passionate, super queer—just like my community. But I can understand that in those moments when I finally just started to let go and allow my body to do what it really wanted to do, I was expressing a lot of repressed passion and desire to simply be the best version of myself. The best version is passionate, it wants to be free and amazing, weird and hyper, intense and even incredibly seductive. It doesn't know how to do it so smoothly just yet but I am getting there. I'm learning!

Needless to say, that night and in that dance studio, I was feeling like I could be this idea of myself that I thought was always just an idea. But it isn't—it's me and I can be that if I just embrace that energy for once. It came out and wanted to be seen, to be felt, to be appreciated by ME. I really loved it.

Today is the day after that session and I'm sore lol. I need to start wearing different socks if I want to practice, because the socks I wear grip the studio floor too much. I ended up with a monster blister on my big toe. It doesn't hurt much today but I felt it last night. I got through it, anyway.

****

Beyond all of that, and on a different note, I lost a family friend. Not to death, but because she decided she didn't want to be there for me in a healthy way, so I blocked her out of my life. She and I have been butting heads for the past month and it finally came to an end when I tried to extend an olive branch to her. She is a hyper-conservative person whom I've realized doesn't know how to (or just doesn't want to) think beyond the perspectives she already has. Very defensive, very caught up in this idea that she's persecuted and victimized by people that someone like her actually victimize. It's projection at its finest when it comes to her.

I sent her an image of the straight ally flag because I figured she'd appreciate it; she felt very left out for a long time because she is straight and has this idea that she's not allowed to be special like she believes the LGBTQ+ community is. It's jealousy and ignorance on her part. She doesn't understand why LGBTQ+ pride expresses itself the way it does among queer people. She thinks it's out of wanting to be superior and she has a very intense attitude of, "I want it to, why not me?!" about it. Again, it's projection; SHE feels superior, and she wants it all for herself, and so she resents my community for having what she can't.

Anyway, I sent the flag to her and was like, "See? You have a place as an ally and check out this cool-looking flag."

She came back at me and said she will never be an ally to me, and that she doesn't believe I deserve the same rights as straight people. She told me that my sexuality is a perversion of what is natural because I sexually abused. She then proceeded to tell me that no, I'm actually straight because she knows my history (even though she barely knows anything about my history and all its obscure details) and that I CHOSE to be gay because I just want to be special and superior.

That and I chose to not to be a white person anymore... even though I've always been half indigenous and Iberian. Like... I'm technically not a white person at all. I was born a Mestiza, a white-passing person of color. I've may have struggled with that identity for a long time and called myself white, but that didn't erase the fact that I've always BEEN a Mestiza.

It just came down to her not wanting to accept that there was a lot of crap happening below the surface. I was repressed and therefore claimed I was things that I'm actually not. I said I was white because my father is white and racist, and my mother was a self-hating indigenous Mexican woman. She didn't want me to embrace that because she couldn't embrace herself. I took that on and no longer knew how to relate to my heritage; I just thought I was white and didn't belong. I grew up with those privileges but when we talk about my heritage, it's obvious that calling myself white isn't accurate.

The same with me calling myself straight/bisexual for so many years. She doesn't want to accept the fact that a repressed gay person will vehemently call themselves straight for years—decades, even. Their whole lives. Many queer people have died calling themselves straight all their lives, but that doesn't mean they were straight. They were just too afraid to say otherwise.

That was my life for decades, as well. I was too afraid, too repressed to say I was gay. I didn't know up from down and took a long time to finally come this point to have the strength to say—yeah, I'm gay. I'm gay and I'm ready to own that and love my real self now.

Instead, this friend tried to dictate to me that no, she knows my past and I made a choice to change my sexuality because of outlandish concepts that I can only describe as projection on her part. It made me angry that she would use my life, my experiences, and details she was completely ignorant of, against my own identity and all the hard work I've done to embrace my sense of self up to this point. I told her she had no prerogative to do that and who did she think she was. She knew nothing and my history wasn't for her to use as ammo against someone like me. Ever.

She had the audacity to start gaslighting me and ask me why I'm so angry, she loved me and she was so sorry that her opinions offended me so much. I was so mad that I could spit lol.

I kept telling her to stop, that she was crossing so many lines with me. I had some very good reasons for being angry and I wasn't going to be treated like I had none. She wouldn't stop and kept trying to guilt me for being defensive, for feeling at all. Again, just more projection on her part. "I'm not mad, but you are and how dare you be mad!" kind of BS.

She told me that she wasn't going to participate in my anger anymore. She called me "ragefilled" and then said, "Goodnight, sweet cheeks." I think if I wasn't so against violence at any level, I would've slapped her if she were right in front of me for patronizing me like that. But again, she gaslighted me again for getting angry at that, so I finally blocked her.

I was incredulous for a while and talked about it with Linda, my partner. She felt super badly that I went through it since she had gone through that kind of nonsense (and worse) for decades. But she brought up the reality that I should've walked away from this person a long time ago. And she was right; this is an issue that I've dealt with for quite some time. I don't know when to walk away from others, and I'll keep going back to settle something that can just lie and die. For my own sanity.

I spoke to my college counselor about it. She's also gay and she asked me, "Do you think that maybe, subconsciously, you wanted to fight with this friend? That you wanted to keep that conflict because you wanted to prove that she wasn't there to support you as a lesbian?" It didn't take me that long to admit that yes, that could've very well been part of the issue. I knew this friend was much to ambivalent about where she stood; some things she's said have always bothered me, and she was always very reactive and made claims that never made much sense. It bothered me a lot, and so yeah... I think I chased that conflict in order to finally come to the truth about where she actually stood.

The is that she is ignorant, prejudiced, has horrific reasoning skills, and makes so many fallacious arguments against communities she discriminates against that it can make a reasonable person's head spin off their shoulders. She will never come to another conclusion unless the people she follows tell her otherwise, and those people are even more delusional than she is. She's lost, and she likes it that way. She knows nothing else and wants nothing else.

I also had to accept that someone like that will never accept another perspective unless they actively make the effort to. Like anyone else, really, but for her, it has to be especially intentional.

After a few days, that whole final conflict started to really hurt. I became depressed that someone, who was supposed to be like family to me, would reject me and my desire to be equals with them. That they look at me as inferior and less deserving than herself. I felt seriously beat up.

It took me the rest of the week to finally get back on my feet about it, but I'm better now. I do feel anger when I think back on it, but I can hold it at a healthy distance. She will have to figure out what her conflict with me really means to her, and on her own time decide what that means for every other person who isn't straight. For me, it hit a visceral level of my own struggles with sense of self; it brought up a part of my inner critic that I wanted to just die and be gone. It brought up the past, where I was so enmeshed with my mother than I didn't know who I was without her. I felt fake, like an empty person just trying to fit in a world that I never could. I learned that it didn't have to be that way for me; who I was, was just waiting to be let out. So when someone tried to tear apart all my effort and deny who I truly know myself to be today, it hurt deeply.

Another month and so much has happened.

I'm sure I've said this before but I'll say it again: I've never been so busy in my life. I have so much going on, all at once, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm accepting the fact that I sometimes learn things more slowly, and I'm slowly starting to understand how to balance everything out.

I've started my final quarter in college; just eight weeks from now, I'll have a degree and I don't know what will happen beyond that. That sounds ominous but it's true—I just don't know. Right now, I'm working about 34 hours hours, give and take, through two jobs. One job is 18 hours, the other is 16. It's going to help me with saving and paying off some debt, some of which has been paid off in full. Student loans haven't been touched yet, though. That's just something I'll have t figure out in the long run, I think.

Still doing the ballroom scene (not waltzing but vogue fem ballroom) and even got invited to be a house member. Very exciting, though it now means that if I want to stay a house member, vogue balls will now become a big part of my life. I enjoy this idea and will have to see how that looks after some more time. I'm finding myself creating a home in being a part of these social excursions, events I'm not used to but really like. It's like I'm building up this sense of social stamina I've never really had before. It's a good thing, though I can see where a part of me truly is more on the introverted side. I can only handle so much lol.

Studies are now part-time, but are online and I am taking four classes. Luckily, half of them are not assignment-heavy, though the other half are extensive.

I'm navigating some payments for my courses right now, as well. I'm having to wait extra long to resolve a transcript issue before I can get grant money. Until then, tuition is unpaid but hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, that will no longer be an issue. I'm just hoping financial aid will give me some grace to work it out.

I'll have to prepare myself to work an eight-day shift here soon to give one of my coworkers a four-day weekend. I was thinking of offering her this twice in the coming month; one 4-day weekend, every other week. Boom. Done. I have to do it that way since my schedule is so full now.

Linda and I are doing very well. I can't believe it's been half a year with her. I'm so thankful for her presence in my life; her love has been such a gift, and I'm always reminded of how lucky I am to have someone that is so thoughtful, wise, funny, and clever like she is. She makes me so happy, which has had its caveats. My cPTSD has been a bit triggered by this wonderful relationship; I've suffered a few anxiety dreams in which Linda either is very angry with me or completely abandons me. I've never really struggled with dreams like that before, with any past relationships. I know this is probably because I'm so deeply attached to her at this point. My brain has taken this and shows me these worst-case scenarios, causing me anxiety and heartbreak.

They're not real and Linda has never played on these fears, but cPTSD doesn't really care, I guess. It just says, "She will leave you. She'll find a way, she'll be angry. You don't deserve her. You're trash, she can do so much better. You're a waste of time. She'll soon start to see how parasitic you truly are." It's hard to not think these things now, even though every other part of me knows that's all BS. SHE chose me; Linda does think I'm worth her time and finds value in being with me. She tells me, all the time, how much she loves me and wants to be with me, how happy I make her. That should matter, and I need to remember that whenever my inner critic creeps in and tries to destroy reality.

I don't talk about these things with her very much. I have in the past, but have allowed that dust to settle since we both know that it doesn't reflect how our relationship is growing. The reality is that... Linda and I are going to be together for a long time, I think. She got me a promise ring—a Queen Victoria rupee that had been turned into a ring. Last weekend, I became so panicked and depressed because I thought I had lost it. Fortunately, it was in a makeup bag (that is a clear makeup bag that I had been using over and over before I found the ring in it lol) and now is safe and sound in a new jewelry box my supervisor's assistant handed down to me.

I'm not wearing it today but I'm glad to know where it is, along with my spoon ring decorated with violets, and my octopus ring. I also found a stainless steel ring with roses on it, a ring that belonged to me and then my mother started to wear it for a while. It's rusted over but I think I can recover it.

I'm in the process of my making my Linda a gift, something that has been in the making for many months now. Part of me is scared to execute it because... well, I'm not sure. I'm worried I won't be able to do it, or it won't be good enough. That it'll be silly and look stupid. I guess I can't know unless I try to see if I could ever be pleased by what I'm able to create. I want it to be a little grand, but obviously not so much that I'm spending a lot of money on it. I suppose that is one thing I'm so grateful to have now I'm with Linda—our creative natures understand one another. We know what we both can find precious and be able to appreciate.

I've been so shy about sharing a lot of my creativity with her, as I've ignored it on my own time, too. Just sketching here and there, rarely. Writing here and there. It's not really fair, as these two things make me happy and help me feel purposeful. That's how it's been for decades now. I can't remember many years (maybe the first ten years of my life) where I didn't spend so much valuable time either writing or sketching something lol. Time well spent, I think, considering all the trauma and stress I had to endure during my childhood. It was a healthy escape. It could've chosen worse, for sure. If only I had the right adults in my life, during that time, who understood that instead of trying to destroy my passions.

I guess I have to be the adult I never had, now. And now, I have people all around me that want me to be my most creative, happy self. My partner helped me to find ballroom, which is good for the side of me that is much too energetic and brazen for her lol. Nothing against her at all; she just can't match me when I'm in that mode and it tires her out! I have my best friend to thank when it comes to being another soul to sketch with. I grew up with her as we filled up sketchbooks with drawings. I am grateful for the countless online friends and strangers that made room for me to write with them for days and weeks, fostering my creativity and allowing my imagination to become vaster than I thought it could ever be.

I try to remember why these things are hard for me to hold on to. I know why: because of all the voices of past adults that tried so hard to scare it out of me, to make me feel guilty for wanting to spend my time on my writing and sketching. Well... in the ways that they didn't want me to. I can admit that I put my escapes above everything else, though I think every adult in my life didn't understand why that was happening. They didn't understand that my creativity was a tool for escape, and continuing to cause me shame and fear over it just made me want to escape even more. Add the fact that the adults in my life, at that point, were emotionally immature and abusive, it was a terrible cycle to be stuck in.

But I don't have to continue that cycle. I try hard to remind myself that I don't have to carry that horrible pattern, and hey, there are people who are super creative and that's their lives and look how well they're doing. I can do that, too. I just have to convince little kdke of that, as well. She still lives in a world where everything is scary, too much, ready to collapse, and full of hopelessness and shame and rejection. I know this, and now I have to really start communicating to that part of myself.

sounds like you have some great insight, kdke.  that's a great step in recovery.  parenting our little frightened selves who still live within is important.  it seems like you are on the right track.

do you think those dreams are voices from the past that have lodged in your subconscious now that you are doing well on so many levels?  the ones that always tried to curb your creativity, sabotage your passion?  just thinking out loud.

i think you're doing really well with everything, and so glad you've got someone by your side.  sending love and hugs to you.