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Hm...
What could I possibly put here...?
Deeper thoughts
These may contain triggering topics, warnings are under the titles!
Movies, Media, and Introjection
Because I struggle a lot with depersonalization and derealization, consuming media of any kind is a bit of a risk for me.
I didn't really realize what what happening until yesterday when I felt the same familiar feeling of being stuck in the movie I'd just finished, and googled it. One of the top results was the DP/DR subreddit, and everything clicked. I almost felt a bit dumb for not realizing that's obviously what it was, and it was funny to me how I never considered it could be something I struggle with so much otherwise.
Most often this is caused by movies, but all media has some effect on me, no matter how small. Even music!
When I'm watching a movie on my own, I get just as immersed as anybody else. I'm aware I'm watching a movie, and I often pause to check my phone or take a sip of water. Despite all of this, when I'm done watching, I feel like real life has been tainted by the movie. Life tends to float on in front of me, and I feel almost intoxicated. If I get some time to readjust, I'll be fine. Although usually I tend to get uncomfortable being back in reality, and just go to bed instead. This gets more intense if I'm watching something for more than two hours.
If I'm watching something I have a strong attachment to, or if I'm in a fragile state mentally, however, this can get dangerous.
I watch a movie, and thoughout the whole thing, all seems fine. When it ends, though, it's like I've been thrown in ice-cold water. I get desperate to get back to the comfort of the movie, and suddenly even breaking my eye contact with the screen starts physically hurting me. In these cases, I often try to keep watching more. I look for a sequel, or if it's a show, I keep watching more and more episodes. When there's nothing more to watch of the same thing, I feel like I'm actually dying. It's like if you were experiencing the happiest day of your life with the person you love, and suddenly they crumble to dust in front of you.
I often enter a state of shock when I realize it's all over, and I remain out of my mind for the rest of the day. The negative effects can last more than a week, sometimes gnawing at me for several years. It's traumatic, even if it's something as simple as having finished a show I was binging in a day or two.
Usually, if I'm aware enough, I tend to limit myself to watching only a few episodes of a show in a row, only watching movies with other people, or during daytime. If I'm depressed, or already in a blurry state from a triggering event, it's hard to approach what I do with a rational mind. The DP/DR I experience while fully immersed in something is, at times, a coping mechanism. I know the drop after will hurt me more, but the momentary bliss of losing myself in something seems worth it when I'm not rational. In a sense it's similar to an addiction to something you know will kill you if you mess up. I risk a psychotic episode every time I let myself do this, but when I'm not fully in control of myself, the temptation gets the better of me.
More than once, I've experienced psychosis triggered in part by this. I'm better now, but I lost a lot of myself to things that were only ever on a screen.
. . .
The other downside to consuming media for me, is introjection. My sense of self has always been very fragile, due in part to not properly forming one cohesive identity as a child. I don't form "new" selves often, but I struggle a lot with temporary influences on myself.
Introjection in a depersonalization sense, involves unintentionally being (heavily) influenced by a character you see in, for example, a movie (it often happens with people in your surroundings as well!). There's other kinds of introjection (like internalization), of course, but those aren't relevant here.
I will go out of my way to properly state that this is not about introjection when it comes to DID/OSDD systems. I have a lot of mixed opinions on that topic, but it is not something I experience, and I doubt I ever will. Though this seems similar at first glance, it's a completely different experience. Introjection in systems does not happen immediately, or out of nowhere. If someone tells you that, they're lying.
When I watch or read pretty much anything, some major introjection tends to take place. Usually it mostly involves mimicing the thought patterns and speech of the character I latched onto, but sometimes even things like how I want to express myself, or my mental image of myself changes. It happens with everything I get really into, but it's only to the point of being noticable when it's specific types of media and characters.
A fresh example is when I finished watching the first Spider-verse movie yesterday. Miles, the main character, is just the right amount of vaguely similar to me in very specific aspects, and likable in all the rest. It's usually a pretty small amount that I have in common with these characters, but it's just enough that I can relate to them just a little. Too much and it doesn't click, too little and I don't get attached enough. All of my favorite characters have the same ratio of relatability, so it's a clear pattern.
Anyway, I start watching the movie and find myself really enjoying Miles' character. He's naive and socially clumsy, but in a likable way, so when he has his more cool moments, I feel genuinely proud of him. In real life, we would probably never have been friends, but he's the type of person I'd cheer on from afar. This is how the introjection starts for me most times.
Once I have this small but not insignificant bond with a character, the more I watch, the more my brain adjusts to think like them. I'm guessing this is also partially related to the autistic urge (/j) to try and obsessively copy the behaviors of people you're around as an attempt to blend in.
My brain memorizes and takes frantic notes on the behavior and habits of the character, that makes the way we relate increase, even if it's artificial. Once the movie's over, and I've had my little emotional bond to the character on the screen, the effects still linger for a while. Usually the most noticable changes last only a day at most, and it never returns after it wears off.
The lingering of the effect is what causes issues. I need to isolate myself until it's over, because if someone approaches me at that fuzzy identity state, I can't predict how I'll act, and it usually ends with me making a fool of myself. This is an issue particularly if the character is very different from me, like Miles Morales, or even worse, a character from a fanfic spree I went on. Accents are the hardest for me to wean off of, along with vocabulary changes. If I'm watching/reading something with an irish character, you bet my internal monologue is stuck in irish for the next few days. If I've introjected from a character that speaks in a way that's something I, as a whiter-than-snow European, definitely shouldn't appropriate, it gets deep into the "making a fool of myself by accidentally being socially tone-deaf" territory. Luckily, there's a pretty easy way for me to get rid of the introjected accent, which is overwriting it with a new one. I still feel embarassed when I hear my thoughts come out in an accent that's definitely not meant for me, but it's something I just have to deal with for a while. If I were to deprive myself of content just because I'm scared of introjecting stuff I shouldn't, I would deprive myself of watching stuff outside of "safe" cultures to mooch off of. So I don't.
I went a bit off topic for a bit there, but to get back on track for the last paragraph, I want to talk about the positives.
Introjection often makes me feel bad, both like I'm losing myself, and like I'm just trying to copy characters I find cool. But it goes a lot deeper than that.
It's very rare that I end up introjecting traits I find unappealing. It's often things like the confidence, body language, or interesting vocabulary that my brain clings to. If I find a character attractive in his masculinity, I'll end up mirroring the harsher body language or stoicism. If I like the femininity and confidence of a different character, I keep my head high and move with grace. If I like the accent of a character, and the way words flow when they speak, my intonation shifts and my vocabulary broadens. I get to feel the positive traits I enjoyed in the character I absorbed, even if just for a moment. It fills me with joy and confidence, and I rarely see it as a bad thing when I'm not forced to try and remember who I really am.
Date of posting: January 18th, 2024.
People I've Loved in My Dreams
Vivid and elaborate dreams are relatively commonplace for me. I've enjoyed writing in dream journals for a while, but tend to favor the dreams that actually make some sort of impact... The others tend to be either forgotten, or have an entry that only gets a few sentences long at best.
The dreams I write down most are ones about people I meet, or people I become during the dream.
The most memorable of these people I meet, are ones supposed to be lovers, crushes, or something similar. I'm quite weak to romance, so of course those are the ones that stick with me the longest!
It's pretty rare for me to dream of a person I actually love. My brain seems to enjoy making someone up instead, and implanting the feelings I have for real people on these fictional ones instead. It's honestly pretty relieving, since having dreams about real people tends to freak me out a little, but I then have to deal with waking up and realizing the (literal) love of my dreams never existed. Some of these I still struggle to forget. I think about them more than I'd like to admit...
One of the people that stuck with me for the longest is a young man named Shun. I dreamt of him somewhere around 8 years ago now, and I'm still shocked at how well I remember him.
I wrote down the dream at some point, but I'm not all that sure where, so my memory of the dream itself is fading away little by little. I remember the dream being about dogs, and people who could turn into dogs, I think. Shun was one of them, I'm pretty sure. Either that, or he was a handler... Maybe someone who worked at a dog park? Something like that. He had black hair that was long at the front, it tended to get in his face, but he didn't seem to mind. He was taller than me, although my most vivid memory of him is when he's standing uphill, so I can't say for sure. He wore a loose-fitting jacket, and a mostly black outfit. He spoke quietly and mostly didn't say anything at all, but he was kind and gentle. I had a crush on him, and all I hope is that he's doing well somewhere in a new dream, taking care of his dogs.
I think the most recent one was from a few months ago now. I had a dream where I was supposed to take an airplane with a friend (fictional), and we decided to run away for some reason. I think I'd had enough of my life in the dream, and just wanted to run away from it all. We ran out of the small airport, and jumped the fence into the nearby woods. The story changed into some sort of fantasy setting upon entering the woods, now we were on horseback, riding through a field of flowers on a wooded hill. We were lovers now, I think we were nobles, or a prince and his knight. I suppose I'd been traveling on my own for a while, because we met again, wearing similar outfits. My lover had returned from a long period of training (likely several months), and wore an off-white uniform. I wore the same one in dark grey. He said "You're wearing my uniform", sounding pleased. I felt a sense of calm and love, then I woke up.
I still find myself thinking about him. He had light hair and a brilliant smile, and looked just like a prince. We were roughly the same height and stature, I think. I must've been a man in this dream.
The last dream I wanted to mention is one where I found myself working for a man with a lot of power. It must've been some sort of shady business, or he was just a really shady-seeming fed. He had this sort of charisma that sent shivers down my spine (both in fear and something else entirely). I was a strong, tall man, hired to work as this guy's bodyguard. Despite me by all means being fully able to beat my new boss in a fight, he still scared me... I guess he just had that sort of presence. The man (all I remember calling him was "my boss" and "sir") took me to bust an illegal gambling ring, full of people with the same threatening aura as him. The strategy was to infiltrate, point out cheating, and then leave them to destroy themselves. Somehow this meant I had to join in and pretend to be good at this card game I'd never played before.
We had to squeeze into this tiny room, on an even tinier U-shaped couch, while literally bumping elbows and knees with both my terrifying (and extremely hot) boss, and this allegedly dangerous criminal that looked at me as if I was lesser than dirt. The mission succeeded, but I honestly couldn't even have cared. All I was thinking about was my boss and the fact that our bodies were SO uncomfortably close. I woke up from that dream in a cold sweat. 90% of that one was definitely just the suspension bridge effect in all its glory, but LORD was my boss hot.
I think it's interesting how most people I'm in love with in dreams are men, despite me typically only going for feminine-aligned identities in real life. It's probably from the fact that I like the idea of men, more than the real thing itself. So my brain makes up for that by feeding me the most beautiful men imaginable in a controlled environment, instead of having me go googly-eyed over feminine-aligned people that are just as pretty in real life. I might also just be yaoi-pilled and my brain just feeds me beautiful men because they're the only men I ever choose to look at.
My gender in dreams is a whole other thing entirely. Usually I'm only my true self in nightmares, and in pleasant dreams I'm either a woman or a man, rarely actually looking like myself. In romances with men, I'm often equal to them, either being a woman with a relatively small man, or being a man myself. I suppose that's from my inherent distaste for being weaker than the person I'm with, something that comes from a place of fear. I don't mind either way, I think seeing things out of either perspective is nice. Being a big burly guy for a while is cool, although I think I prefer being myself the most.
Date of posting: January 9th, 2024.
Past Lives and Reincarnation
I think I've always been a pretty spiritual person, and one of the beliefs I've always held was past lives. While I'm extremely pro-science and all for keeping spirituality away from politics and such, I've always thought it's healthy to have some spiritual beliefs, no matter how minor. Most people believe in something little, like karma or luck. For me it's more than the average person, probably, but it's all in good fun.
The idea of reincarnation has always excited me. Ever since I was a very small child I knew I definitely was a cat in my past life, and I find myself agreeing with that belief even now. It's probably a side effect of having a literal cat be the most stable adult in my life as a kid, but I've always related a lot to cats.
When I was a child, I felt like I had a phantom tail and cat ears for the longest time, and that definitely led to me exploring furry identities and theriantropy later on, although now I just see myself as a normal person (mostly).
I've had other ideas of past lives too, but most of them go into "alternate universe" territory instead. In a way, it was probably a way for me to deal with both delusions and my alterhuman identity, but it's also a firm spiritual belief I hold.
I think one has to limit reincarnation beliefs to something somewhat realistic. I personally tend to limit it to beings that exist, or have existed in the past. I wouldn't say I was a vampire in a past life, I'd say I was a person in the late 1800's obsessed with the macabre and dark instead. Someone who could've playfully claimed to be a vampire when tipsy, or enjoyed the idea of coming off as mysterious and otherworldly.
Reincarnation is already such a pseudoscience-y topic, that you have to limit how fantastical it gets to remain even remotely believable, or the likelihood of it being genuine dwindles into nothingness.
In that same train of thought, I think being a famous person in a past life either has to be next to impossible, or you'll have to imagine the soul breaking up into a million little specks of dust upon death, so that everybody who claims it has a chance to be right. You'll also have to consider that if you could be Marilyn Monroe in a past life, you're probably even more likely to have been an ant, or a mass of fungus. Reincarnation and souls being limited to just humans seems a lot less likely than if every other living thing had a soul, too.
I myself wouldn't mind having been a fruit fly or a tree, I think that's just as valid in its own right.
Date of posting: January 9th, 2024.
Asexuality and Me
A Continuation of "Love"
Content warning for discussions of sex and intimacy.
Ever since I was a teenager, I knew something was a bit off with me and how I experience attraction towards others. I often brushed it off, thinking I was just too young to know better, and that surely I would bloom into a wonderfully normal adult who felt normal attraction in normal ways.
Now as an adult (albeit, still a very young one), I've had to look myself in the eye and accept that I will likely never be normal.
I've talked about this in my prior entry about love, but sometimes I just feel like I need to talk about the same damn things all over again, just from a different angle. Bear with me.
I figured out a few years ago that my issues with sexuality are likely stemming from traumatic experiences I've had in the past. I don't think something out-right criminal has ever happened to me, or if so, I've forgotten it anyway. Still, something lurks in the back of my mind that makes me afraid of intimacy.
At some point before I entered my teens, I was entirely put off from attraction beyond something very innocent. I had romantic crushes now and again, and ended up in a relationship, but something within me prevented me from going further, despite technically being able to want for it. I was convinced that I was simply asexual, and though I knew I didn't fit the only accepted version at the time (which meant being sex-repulsed), I thought the label probably described what I was experiencing best. And so, 5 years go by, and I was now entering college.
I think I entered college at 19, but to be honest, I'm not all that certain... I was either 18 or 19, at least. I had just gotten out of my long-term relationship, and though I felt like my issues surrounding sexuality had let up a bit with age, I still felt very uneasy about it. By this point, I had assumed I would either have grown out of it, or felt more connected to my identity as asexual, but neither had come true. I was even more uncertain about being asexual, due to my realization that I could probably see myself engaging in intimacy, but when push came to shove, I could feel my interest immediately vanish. I decided to put the label aside and at least not actively reject anything that came my way, unless I really didn't want to.
The big realization came when I found myself fooling around with strangers online. I was still too afraid to do anything beyond first or second base in real life, but a quick fling behind the safety of a screen seemed doable, and in a way, it kinda was?
I will go out of my way to say that these people weren't exactly all that interesting, or all that good at communicating with one hand clearly somewhere else. But despite me not really feeling into it at the moment, I realized that I didn't feel all that disgusted either. My fight or flight wasn't kicking in like it tended to do when it was someone I actually cared for. And that's when I realized what the issue was.
The reason why I don't like being put in sexual scenarios, is because I get scared when people act differently from what they used to. It's the uncanny valley for me, and I suddenly feel like I'm put in the razor-sharp jaws of a beast, instead of being held in the loving arms of a partner.
This is certainly one of the many reasons why I find myself unable to get anywhere close to intimate with a man, or someone who acts similarly. Men have a tendency to change a lot more drastically when they're trying to "set the mood". We all know the horrible way men lean in to kiss (it was a pretty big talking point online for a while), the deadpan face, half-lidded eyes, complete stop in conversation... It's often framed as near comical, but for me it just feels extremely uncanny. It immediately yucks me out. I think the only way for me to imagine myself doing just about anything with a person like that is if I could put a bag over their head, or if I never saw them while they were acting sanely in the first place.
With women it's easier for me to feel comfortable. Not to stereotype or anything, but generally they're better at keeping the flow of conversation smoother, and don't just completely go from normal conversation to unceremoneously groping at their partner.
I don't think it's something limited to gender for me either. Sure, I made some broad claims, but if I imagine a man acting the same way as the typical woman, I'd be fine with that as well. It's just extremely rare.
TMI-adjacent rant aside, the way I react to sexuality in general is what people notice the most. I usually don't really like talking about it, and PDA tends to creep me out. I make jokes about sex and weird fetishes all the time, but if you try to actually talk to me about it in a less abstract sense, I tend to avoid the topic, or let my disgust show. I think it's a relatively gross subject to talk about, and outside of the safety of my website it's pretty rare that you'll find me talking openly about it. Even my BL reviews are surprisingly devoid of talking about any of the actual sexual content, beyond brief mentions... I genuinely read porn for the plot, and that's funny on a completely different level.
I still think I am somewhere on the asexual spectrum, just not as much as I thought I was before. I've mostly overcome my trauma with it by figuring out the core of the trigger, and now that I'm aware that it's the tone change that freaks me out, it's easier for me to properly handle the feeling when the fear starts gnawing at me.
However, there's still a decent part of me that simply just... isn't all that interested? I've scoured wikis and posts for a label that might suit me better, but nothing really feels like "me".
The closest I've gotten is gray-asexual, since it's the most abstract one. It fits, but only because of its vagueness... Maybe I'll find something that defines me perfectly, but until then, I just say I'm a little weird about sex and that's all people really have to know.
It's a tricky thing to deal with, and a lot of people just mistakingly call me asexual anyway. I jokingly call myself a prude, and go on with my day. It feels like such a pressing issue when I wallow on it, but in the grand scheme of things, I barely even notice it.
Date of posting: December 29th, 2023.
Delusions and Pathological Lying
TW for delusion-triggering writing / "unreality".
Throughout my entire life, I know I've been prone to living in a world that was different from the one others experience. I knew things that nobody else did, and I told truths about myself that later turned out to be false. A majority of my life, I just thought I had an overactive imagination, and liked lying for attention. I felt very ashamed of myself, and even though I tried to stop, I'd only realize it afterwards, sometimes even years after the fact.
I knew there was a world beyond the lenses of cameras, and the glass of mirrors. If you just found a way through, you could find yourself in a photograph, or in the place inside your mirrors. The person in the mirror isn't yourself reflected, it's another "you" who mirrors your every move. They want to replace you.
I knew a person was living in my attic, so I kept the door barricaded and locked.
I knew I was a robot escaped from a lab, my memories artificial. I could feel my motors whirring inside me, and every biological function had their own mechanical explanations.
I knew I was secretly an angel, and any day my wings would unfurl from my back; I could feel them moving under my skin.
I know that my room is full of cameras, despite not being able to find them. I do everything in the dark, but I know that it's just a false comfort, since there's night vision on them anyway.
These are just some of the delusions I've struggled with in the past, and one I likely will never be rid of. I'm okay sharing them now, since it's been a very long time since a new one came up, and I'm pretty much completely immune to things that can trigger others. I don't think I'll ever be cured, but as life goes on, I've learned how to reality check properly, and I now face every new thought with a thick layer of skepticism.
I'm incredibly grateful that I never got too obsessed with my delusions, and that I only really brought them up as a joke now and again. I was the kind of child that just kept to itself, so I think that's why nobody ever really caught on.
When you're delusional, lying is a very risky thing to do. When I was younger, a lot of my delusions started out as simple pathological lies. I'd lie about being cooler than I was, or being more skilled at something, and when the lie got more elaborate, the distinction from reality weakened in my mind.
For a long time, I lied about being older than I really was, which led to me having to lie about my life to make it line up. I think that's one of the big reasons why I remember so little about that period of my life. All I remember were the stories I made up in my head, and I often find myself going "Oh I remember this... Wait, that wasn't real!". It makes it complicated for me trying to recount things to people when it's necessary. I'll try to remember what I studied in highschool, and the only thing I remember is studying for a program I never even went to, and having friends that never actually existed.
There's this one scene that I keep seeing in my mind when I think about my earlier meetings with my other "part". It's a memory where I'm wandering through a kitchen, while borderline going through psychosis, and this other part of me takes over and guides me back to bed. It's a memory I find myself cherishing, until I remember that I've never been in that kitchen. The entire memory was never even real.
I even have extremely traumatic memories, that I know I most likely just made up at some point to garner attention. They give me nightmares and flashbacks like any other traumatic memory, but there's no way it could've been real.
Dealing with these two things makes it really hard to accept that I do actually suffer from mental illness. I've gone from a delusional hypochondriac to spiraling into denial about anything and everything. Part of me knew I was plural for a very long time, ever since childhood, but the "me" who's paranoid and scared of being wrong again, just shoved these suspicions down until an eventual breaking point was reached.
Even now I need to be careful with what kind of content I consume, because if I start reading about symptoms I've never had, or longing a bit too much to fit in with a crowd I'm not similar to, it'll happen all over again. I can't afford to let that happen when I'm so close to functioning as a normal adult after all these years.
"i can't remember the last time i felt like myself. i think parts of me have rotted away."
disgustinggf on Tumblr.
Date of posting: December 20th, 2023.
Chronically Ill, But Not Ill Enough
TW for illness discussion and minor fear mongering.
So, I have a few chronic disorders, making me technically eligable to use the label "chronically ill" for myself. I didn't even figure this out until a few years ago, but apparently the stuff I have counts! Wow!
What I have are a plethora of autoimmune issues, and the amount makes sense since they're commonly comorbid. If your immune system is a bit fucked up in one place, it's honestly shocking if the rest of it is fine...
Anyway, one of these diseases I have is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Sounds terrifying, but it's one of the most easily treatable autoimmune disorders (other than maybe celiac disease, where you literally just stop eating gluten and you're fine, I also have this one...). All you need to treat Hashimoto's is simply taking thyroid hormone pills! Hormone pills that you're now dependent on for the rest of your life! Yay!!!! Problem solved!!! The medication doesn't even have any side effects!!!!!!!!
I want to go on two different trains of thought with this post, and I'm starting with the complete existential horror that is "being dependent on medication". Oh boy.
The dose I take for my medication isn't all that high, and I'm mostly alright going without it, even if I feel like shit. If I don't take it, I'm probably fine for a few years before complications start making themselves known.
Long-term complications from hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's disease can include a lot of things, most of them minor, but I'll list off my favorites for you.
- Peripheral neuropathy, AKA nerve damage!
- Infertility! (I wouldn't mind this one...)
- Myxedema coma! Yeah, THAT kind of coma!!!!
*Straightens tie* Ahem. So you can see why it's terrifying to me that I need to keep taking this medicine forever or risk... All of that!
I'm a very scared person in general, but the existential horror of being screwed if society ends is something that keeps me up at night. If I die from this disease, it won't be a quick, dramatic death. It'll be slow, taking decades to kill me if I'm otherwise healthy. But one day, if I run out of medicine, it will kill me. I'd suffer for years, feeling my body slowly deteriorate, and my mind grow sluggish, before I eventually succumb to the disease.
Of course I'm scared!
. . .
On another note, with my autoimmune diseases, I'm technically chronically ill, but I don't really have the symptoms to show for it. I've got weak joints from being hypermobile, so I use a cane, but that's not really a disease; I'm just too flexible for my own good. No, I don't have EDS.
Chronic illness has become a bit of a "thing" online these days. People love to claim they're chronically ill, and in most cases it's people who genuinely are hugely disabled by their conditions, but what does that leave for those like me? For those of us that have chronic issues that don't seem all that flashy, and don't require a ton of accomodations, where's our place in this?
I'm always afraid to call myself chronically ill, because people seem to assume I'm fishing for attention, and not literally just calling myself what I am. Chronic illness isn't always being wheelchair bound and needing a caretaker, most the time it's just having dietary restrictions, or needing to take medication. I'm sick of feeling like an intruder in spaces where my diseases are at the top of the damn list! Even asthma and (chronic) anxiety are chronic illnesses for god's sake!!!
Date of posting: December 18th, 2023.
Touch Starvation / Aversion, Continued
TW for... Me being a sad lonely freak? AKA this might be weird if you know me personally.
Fair warning, this one gets long.
I had a dream last night that startled me enough that it's still stuck in my thoughts, even now, four hours after waking up.
I was at a music festival that featured some of my favorite bands, and it was a relatively casual and chaotic event. At one point, the singer for one of these bands had entered the crowd, and though people were enthusiastic about the music, he could tell nobody was really there for him, but, he could tell I was.
The singer approached me, and I respectfully kept backing away (I tend to be oblivious in moments like these, even in my dreams LOL) until I reached the edge of the little area. Having cornered me enough to get close, he gently placed his hand on my back to guide me somewhere, barely even using any pressure. I was asked to sing along with the music, and some typical fanservice ensued. It was a very... 14 year old band-obsessed girl fanfiction style dream. Nothing perverse happened. It was relatively innocent, compared to other dreams my brain has fed me.
The thing that stuck with me wasn't who the dream was about, or really anything about the "plot" of it all, just the fact that somebody touched me in a dream, and my entire brain was alight with the brain chemical equivalent of fireworks.
I woke up from this dream with my heart still beating as if I'd just ran a marathon. Cold sweat, face flushed, and thoughts completely incoherent. All from someone touching me rather innocently in a dream.
"Holy shit," I thought. "I'm really off the deep end now, huh?".
I've had way more scandalous dreams before, and though they make me hate myself for a while after waking up, none of them really bother me to this degree. If it's just fully adult in nature, I can mostly ignore it and properly identify that I was probably hormonal or something. When it's shit like this, however, I'm just left completely speechless.
I know why I get these dreams, but it still catches me completely off guard.
. . .
Touch starvation combined with touch aversion is something I've mentioned in my first ever entry in this journal, but I was always a bit dissatisfied with how briefly I went over it, so I'm coming back for a second attempt, hopeful that I'll be able to just... never mention it again, honestly...
Touch starvation is a pretty common ocurrence in people who don't socialize much, or don't form a lot of physically close relationships (platonic or otherwise). I've never been much for skinship (physical affection between friends or family), and because of that it's pretty obvious that I'm naturally deprived of touch. It's honestly mostly by choice since it makes me uncomfortable, but the jist of it can be boiled down to a spiral. I don't like being touched by strangers, so my skin has gotten overly sensitive, because of that I don't want people touching me, rinse and repeat. This has kept going for a really long time, and now it physically hurts me whenever someone touches my bare skin. It's managable as long as I wear long sleeves and layers, but it obviously bothers me, seeing how I'm mentioning it.
Sometimes it's definitely worse than usual, and other times I'm barely bothered at all. I vaguely alluded to this in my "Loneliness" entry, I think, by mentioning how sometimes I'm simply not myself. That's a huge part of it, but usually it just boils down to it being easier for me to handle physical touch when I'm in a good mood (i.e. feeling like my typical self), like when meeting a friend after a long time, or when playing a game at a party, stuff like that.
Y'know, I've been thinking about it ever since I wrote that entry on loneliness, and I've remembered a few more things about the origins my aversion.
There was a period in my early teens where I was pretty much convinced that I was the most disgusting person alive. It definitely came from being bullied in the past, but that mindset has stuck with me pretty hard.
I found myself thinking that nobody in their right mind would want to spend time with me, let alone touch me. So, I developed a pretty obsessive thought pattern. I needed to make sure I kept distance (even from friends and family who obviously didn't care), and make sure that I never stepped over these made up boundaries I had convinced myself everybody had about me.
Even now I can find myself thinking "I'm creepy and gross so obviously nobody actually wants to be close to me", when it completely doesn't even make sense anymore. I've let this thought pattern completely ruin how I approach friendships and relationships in real life, to the point I even missed that a girl was pretty obviously flirting with me one time in college. I wonder how she's doing, by the way. Oh well.
I think the lack of contact has fried my brain a little, recently. I daydream about holding hands and the gentle touch of an imaginary person, someone dancing on the line between friend and lover. "I just need to be held for a while and it'll all get better", I tell myself, over and over like a prayer.
I find myself frequenting the "touch starved" and "touch averse" tags on AO3, finding characters that I can relate to in how they flinch when someone gets close, but fall apart when held. I see myself in them, despite the often sub-par writing and otherwise unrelatable characters. In a way I want what they have, but I also... don't?
The thought of someone real touching me in a way that isn't superficial still triggers my fight or flight, and I think it'll be a long while before that stops happening. I want so desperately to be held, yet the thought of a living, breathing, thinking person doing that makes me want to throw up. It's a hell of my own creation, and I'm not sure how to get out of it without something drastic being done.
Maybe I should find someone with affections for me just to exploit their feelings again. I don't know what to do anymore.
This is not a cry for help, I'm just trying to make peace with myself.
"i am so vicious in my loneliness. i tear myself to pieces. no one loves me and so i must dig teeth into my soft parts and rip through. what's so wrong with me. i already know. don't say it again. just come a little closer. touch me before you back away. i'm begging."
fuckingwhateverdude on Tumblr.
Date of posting: December 11th, 2023.
Depersonalization
Sometimes I feel as if my life wasn't meant for me. Not in a suicidal way, but more like an "Am I really who's supposed to be here right now?" way. I try not to let the thought weigh me down, but at night, when I'm staring at messages sent by a "me" I don't recognize, I catch myself falling into the same trail of thoughts again.
I think I haven't been the person I'm supposed to be in a very long time, and that should probably terrify me more than it does. My friends used to tell me they didn't recognize me, and that I'd become uncanny. So, I started practicing and pretending as hard as I could, I became the person they expected me to be, the person whose shell I now fill.
I know this person has always been me, but some nights I feel the mask slipping, my eccentric and optimistic persona distorting into something barely even human. I don't turn depressed or angry, I just become something so far beyond what I'm supposed to be that it sometimes scares me.
I make faces in the mirror with a face I know is supposed to be my own, the skin feeling like rubber and the muscles moving a bit too smoothly. I stare at every freckle, every wrinkle and tiny scar. I memorize what my face looks like, and what the correct expressions feel like, so that I can replicate them in the future. I've grown so aware of what I look like that I can recreate my face from memory, to try and convince myself that it's part of me. It's the only face I know, so it has to be mine.
I'm living another person's life, but I still get hungry. I still feel cold. I still feel lonely. So, I pretend I'm the person who lived this life before me, and life goes on.
Date of posting: December 9th, 2023.
Fear of My Own Language
TW for grooming.
I've been on the internet for a very long time. I can't really remember a time where I haven't been socializing online, talking to strangers on Skype as early as 8 or 9 years old. I was a strange child, I didn't have many friends, which led to me mainly playing minecraft with absolute strangers. I knew how dangerous it was, but chose to ignore it. Most the people I played with were similar in age to me, luckily, and I pretty much managed to completely avoid meeting any genuine creeps until way later.
As I got older, I started using more English, and realized that every single time someone reached out to me in my native language, they were extremely creepy. I thought it was just a really weird coincidence, but as the amount of creeps piled up, I began noticing a trend.
So, I started distancing myself from people speaking my native language online, and actively made sure the people I interacted with were not from my country.
In hindsight I think it began with a traumatic event, but that's long gone from my memory now. All I know is that I noticed people speaking my language were creeps, and I suddenly started avoiding them because of it.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, was when I was playing a game known as Gaia Online. There was a popular rich user on that game that pretty much everybody knew about and wanted to be friends with. He was almost always online, and had several custom items that cost unimaginable amounts of money. Surprisingly, it turned out he was from my country.
Somehow he found out I also spoke the same language, probably because he said something expecting nobody to understand it, and I made a cheeky remark to show that he wasn't so sneaky.
In any case, he noticed this, and started talking to me. A lot.
I innocently thought this man was just excited because he'd found someone to relate to, so I thought I might as well attempt to be friends. I was young and naive. My profile clearly said I was 16. He was 24. In my country, what he was doing wasn't even illegal.
. . .
These days I keep telling myself what happened back then wasn't that big of a deal, but every time I have to read my native language online I feel sick to my stomach. I make fun of people too chronically online to speak our actual language in conversation, yet I still use English while chatting with my friends just to keep down the adrenaline that's threatening to boil over.
Date of posting: December 9th, 2023.
Hyperfixation and Special Interests
So, I'm autistic. It's something most my friends just kinda assumed I was diagnosed with until I told them I wasn't actually diagnosed, LOL... It's something I've pretty recently come to terms with though. I'm autistic, that's that!
When you exist as an autistic person online, you see all these other autistic people claiming stuff is pretty much intrinsic to the experience, without it actually being that way. Usually it's stuff like stereotypical stimming methods (flappy hands), social issues (needing tone tags), or recently... even the way you dress and the music you like?
They're mostly harmless, and only really make being autistic seem a bit more cringeworthy, which sucks, but isn't a huge deal. The people who care way too much about it should probably go to therapy.
ANYWAY, one I can't really forgive, however, is how every single person I've seen talk about autism on social media (i.e. not talking about personal experiences on a small blog), at several points will mention stuff like hyperfixation and special interests, things I don't really experience, and if I do, it's definitely not in the same way as is advertised online.
I'm lucky to have friends both in real life and online that have the same experience as me, so I know I'm not alone, but it's still... A very exclusionary feeling?
It was one of the main reasons, besides being relatively good at socializing, that made me deny having autism for so long.
As a child, and in my very brief adult life, I've had normal interests and fixations that people normally have. As a toddler, I was obsessed with the human body. I had a phase as a kid where I was obsessed with collecting Hello Kitty merch (much to my parents' dismay). In my early teens I was really into space, and my interest in BL really took off. Now as an adult, I've had brief phases of stuff I like, but in general I don't actually keep an interest longer than a month or two, and even then I'm only really obsessed for a few days before the initial hyperfixation wears off, and I become just... normally interested in it.
I've never really had a special interest, and though I say BL is my special interest, it's honestly just the thing I consume the most on a regular basis, and the thing I've been interested in the longest. I don't know a ton about it, I just read a lot, and have good memory. Sure I can pretty easily find the source of a screenshot, but that's because I've read most BL manga avaliable on the internet, not because I'm some R-rated prodigy, LOL.
I've never had the urge to find out anything and everything about something I'm interested in, which means I usually don't fit in with other people who have the same interests as me. I tend to avoid them, honestly! It gets way too draining talking to people who, in a way, seem to take pride in how much they know about something they like. My interest in something is just as valid, even if I don't spend every waking hour researching mundane details, despite what the greater community tends to push.
Date of posting: December 3rd, 2023.
Gender, or the Lack of It
So, I was the last child out of 5. All my siblings were problem children in one degree or another, so me being a relatively calm and easy to raise child made me slip between the cracks pretty early. All my siblings required constant attention and supervision, so usually I was left alone with a book or some pencils and paper, and all was well.
Nowadays I'm aware that I was actually an unintentional victim of social neglect, which in hindsight is kinda obvious...
It's a bit of a scary topic, but I'm keeping it light-hearted for this entry in my journal!
Being raised without any real supervision or... any real social norms to conform to, I was allowed to experience childhood in a very pure way, to be honest. I had curiosity that was never quenched, leading to me knowing pretty advanced human biology at a really early age, since my picture books of choice were my mom's illustrated medical encyclopedia. A topic I never really explored, however, was gender and the norms that come with society's expectations of it. I was a child, being female or male in the eyes of society wasn't a thing yet. I frequently was assumed to just be a boy with long hair, because my favorite color was green, and I wore my brothers' hand-me-downs. My parents just treated me like a child, and let me wear whatever I wanted, which was pretty often a mix of pink tu-tus and cargo shorts. I had a girly name, and people used "she" and "her" to refer to me, but I never learned what that implied.
In kindergarten, boys and girls were always treated exactly the same. In elementary school, I noticed girls tended to play with dolls inside, while boys were playing various sports outside. I usually hung out with the girls, not because I really felt kinship with them; I just didn't like sports. After school I'd play videogames with the boys, and didn't really like playing with girls unless we were out in the woods playing pretend or something.
Thinking back, I've realized that the kids in my elementary class always treated me as some sort of third thing. I wasn't like the other girls, and often played a boy role when we were playing pretend since I had the deepest voice in the class, and when hanging out with boys after school, I was the only "girl" they even liked playing with. I think kids understand gender better than most adults do, honestly, because they don't understand it. If someone isn't quite like a boy or like a girl, they're a secret third thing and need to be treated somewhere in the middle. At least that's what I assume went through their heads...
When my body started showing signs of puberty, I had to actually come face-to-face with gender expectations for the first time in my life. My body was changing, and I didn't really understand why that meant people treated me differently. Personally I remember being relatively neutral to the change, but seeing people around me change as well felt... weird. Unnatural. I looked like the other girls, but I wasn't considered "girl" enough. The boys got too tall and started smelling awful (more so because of their overuse of AXE bodyspray than any natural odors...), and suddenly I felt like that wasn't supposed to be me either. I was at a crossroads, and both options didn't fit me at all. I thrived as a child, where nobody was different from eachother and I could be that secret third thing without people questioning it. Now I was lost and had to find words to express my identity when I barely even understood that there was something I was missing, or doing wrong.
Throughout my teens and young adult years, I've tried on different labels, but none of them really fit me all that well. I thought I was a trans man for a long time, before realizing I didn't actually want to be a man, I just didn't want to be whatever other people labeled me as. I've toyed around with the agender label now for a while, but recently realized that honestly doesn't fit either. I'm not without a gender, I never had one to begin with. I can't relate to other agender individuals because they all chose to throw their gender away, while I never even got socially assigned one. I've found a few terms that may somewhat describe my experience, but in general I still haven't found something that really describes me. The closest I can find is "accipiogender" for those who were raised gender-neutral, or "antegender" for a child currently being raised neutral with the expectation that they'll pick a gender themselves. Neither of these really define my experience, though.
I'm not sure if I'll find a gender label that really applies to me until gender-neutrally raised children become more common, but even then I don't think we'll have that much in common. My experience with gender is probably more similar to a feral child than it is with "theybies", to be honest.
For now, I like explaining my gender and how I want to be percieved in metaphors instead. I like to think of my gender being the same as a wild animal's. A female wolf doesn't understand that it's supposed to be percieved a certain way, it's a beast with an urge to raise young and take care of its pack. Trying to explain to it why it should use she/her pronouns is futile, and will probably result in you getting your face torn off in the process.
I am not more of a woman, man, or non-binary person than a wolf is. And I'd like to keep it that way.
Date of posting: November 25th, 2023.
Mother Nature
TW for spirituality and death.
Ever since I was a child, I've held some sort of spiritual beliefs relating to nature. I think they originated from me just... spending a lot of time outdoors to get away from my tumultuous home life. "Mother Nature" has always been real to me. She's the wind in the trees, and the warmth of the sun. She's the shimmering water in the stream I bathe in, and the tall trees whose branches I hang my clothes on to dry. At night, shes the pale moonlight guiding me to my rest, and the soft grass I sleep on. I know she treats me with unconditional love, just like everything else in her domain.
If I die from sickness, disaster, or at the hands (or teeth) of another of her creations, it's not done out of her malice, it's done out of her love.
When walking somewhere as a child, I could feel the wind on my back when it felt hard to move forward, and the rustling of the trees telling me it's going to be alright. I don't spend as much time outside as I used to, my body's grown too frail for that, but whenever I find myself outside, I still find comfort in the nature around me. I can feel how much Mother Nature loves me, and that makes everything feel a bit less daunting in life.
There's a goddess I found out about when I was getting into witchcraft. I'm not a huge fan of the practice anymore (a lot of it is rooted in stolen practices, after all), but the knowledge I gained from trying to find a matron to worship is still something I find myself using.
I never really liked a lot of the popular gods and deities I found, but one afternoon I found a goddess in Finnish folklore called Kalma. She's not very well known, barely even having a paragraph on her Wikipedia page, but something about her just... spoke to me.
Her actual existance is... uncertain, to put it lightly. The only real sources being extremely short articles, quoting the same post from a very shaky source, that has no references. I still like to believe in her though, and I believe that as long as someone genuinely believes in a deity or god, they exist.
Kalma is supposedly the goddess of death and decay, and is associated with graveyards. She supposedly has a demon companion called Surma, who guards the underworld, Tuonela. Surma is often described as dog-like, and I think the concept of Kalma having a weird demon dog guard her home is genuinely pretty cute. I even drew them at some point.
When I die, I'll return to the earth. I've made it my one goal in life (when I feel ready to embrace my death) to put on some good hiking shoes, and just walk out into the woods. I'll walk and walk until my legs give out, and then I'll sit where the wind has led me, lay down on a bed of moss and dried grass, and let nature take me back. I hope nobody will find me, and I get to lay in the place chosen for me until even my bones have been reclaimed. I think that's how I'll reach my own heaven, my own immortality. By disappearing into the soil, I will become part of the nature I love, and I will contribute my part to the cycle of life and death that my beloved Mother Nature upholds.
I think death is a beautiful thing, if it's treated with respect. I don't want to be cremated, and I definitely don't want to be enbalmed. I want to be returned as I came into the world, like nature intended.
I don't fear decay, I long for it.
Date of posting: November 25th, 2023.
16
When I was 13, I wanted to be 16. Something about being 16 just seemed right. It seemed so far away, yet all the kids I hung out with online were 16, so I pretended I was 16 too. Everybody believed me, and even then, a lot of people said I acted older than I really was.
I don't remember much of my teens anymore, only little snippets here and there. I think that's for the better.
I spent a majority of my teens wasting away in my room. My favorite song was "Teen Idle" by Marina and The Diamonds for a pretty good reason, all things considered. I had no friends in real life, and lived too far away from any big cities to go be rebellious. I even dropped out of highschool at one point, spending a full year isolated in the woods.
It wasn't a horrible experience, but I really do feel like there's so much I missed out on. While other kids in my class were out partying and getting a hang of the whole "living in a society" thing, I was just scrolling the few social medias I used mindlessly, talking to friends I'd never met, and playing Gaia Online. I think I played MMORPGs at some point, but I've forgotten which ones and when.
16 is the year of my life I remember the least of. I remember my graduation from junior high, applying to schools, and rejecting the offer to study at my dream school in a feeble attempt to salvage my mental health, but those all happened when I was still 15.
I went on to study at a nice little school by the ocean, up on a hill. My subject of choice was photography, because my dad had bought me a camera and I felt bad for not knowing how to use it. The day before school started, I came out as trans to my dad. I had been out to my mom for about a year, but was scared of my dad's reaction to the change. I knew he wasn't gonna be upset about me being trans, I was more scared of his reaction to something being out of his control.
With a face full of tears, and shaking in fear, I let my dad know I wanted to be called by a different name, and that I wasn't a girl. He took it better than I thought, and once we let the school know, that turning point of my life was done with.
The only other memories I have from that year of my life are short memories of photography class. I don't remember anything else. Nothing from my life at home, nothing from other classes, nothing.
I should be upset about the time lost, but I just feel... nothing.
I think part of it definitely comes from being aware a lot of the time I lost was just me being miserable.
I had really bad depression at the time, and although I don't remember it, it was strong enough that I had to repeat that year in school. I think that bothered me a lot. I feel a lot of shame whenever I don't have the energy to do things, even if it's something I can't control. That must've been part of the reason why I didn't get better.
I don't miss being 16; I don't even think I got the chance to be 16 in the first place.
Date of posting: November 21st, 2023.
High Metabolism
TW for weight loss and talking about weight.
A frequent comment I get at the dinner table is "Where does it all go?". It seems like an innocent and vaguely comedic comment, but after hearing it countless times throughout my entire life, at some point it gets tiring.
I have always struggled with my weight, but in a way a lot of people don't talk about. If I google "foods that help you gain weight" all I get are results for "Foods to avoid on a diet!" or "How to bulk as fast as possible!", nothing that actually helps figure out what I need to eat to actually gain fat. It's extremely frustrating, and it really makes me hate diet culture even more.
The last time I wasn't considered underweight was before puberty, I think. I had a growth spurt in early middle school, and ever since, I've been extremely thin. During that period I ate near constantly, and in huge amounts, but my weight still stagnated. There's a part in my growth chart that clearly shows my height going up, and my weight being a completely horizontal line, before slowly going up again, which baffled both my parents and the doctors. You'd think they'd actually attempt to treat it, but they just left it. If I'd been gaining abnormal amounts of weight I'm sure they would've actually done something about it, though.
This is still something I have to deal with to this day. Medical professionals note how "small" I am, and then proceed not to ask anything. In later middle school I was called to the counsellor to talk about eating disorders, which obviously offended me greatly, since I literally had the opposite issue. When I told them I was actually struggling a lot to keep my weight up, they laughed, shrugged, and said "Well, I better see you eating at lunch!", and that was it. My cry for help was completely brushed aside.
I genuinely believe this is the greatest downside to being skinny, at least socially. Sure, I get some negative comments sometimes, but it's mostly just people saying I'm "all skin and bones", and not actually saying I'm disgusting for being bony, something I'm incredibly grateful for (and definitely doesn't compare to being overweight). The big issue is nobody actually wants to help somebody trying to... not be skinny? I'm seen as the ideal, and, to society as a whole, "ruining that would be a shame". So, I get ignored by professionals unless I go out of my way to tell them that I can feel myself wasting away, to which I get a brief "have you tried eating more?". They don't believe that I don't have an eating disorder, and only give me advice like "try to eat regular meals", and "try to not avoid greasy food".
Fuck all of that. I don't enjoy being skinny. I'm lethargic, I need to constantly keep eating in winter or I'll actually faint on colder days. I'm so weak I can hardly take care of myself, and if I try to exercise I need to eat so much protein afterwards that I feel sick. I can't eat vegan food because it doesn't have enough fat and protein in it to properly gain back the calories spent during a regular day's work, and no matter how much I try to convince a doctor that I'm eating as much as a 200 pound man and still lose weight, they still insist I must be doing something wrong.
I can feel my body eating itself from the inside out, and at this point I've learned to accept it.
Date of posting: November 19th, 2023.
Fandoms and Why I Avoid Them
I've always had a complicated relationship with the media I enjoy. I'm not sure at what age that became a part of my personality, but at some point in my mid-late teens, I became fully unable to engage with any fandom of anything I enjoyed. The reason, however, is relatively clear to me (and pretty easy to understand).
With things like anime in particular, this started back when I was around 15 or 16. I basically just started losing interest in it, and could no longer relate to superfans of the shows I was watching, and it became more uncomfortable seeing fans either take the material way too seriously (sending death threats to people for liking a "problematic" show that would later become a popular classic), or they were way too lax about it ("no it's fine to make porn of a character despite that she looks like and has the maturity of a kindergartener, she's actually 1000+ years old!"). And seeing cosplayers and roleplayers exuding their fair share of cringiness makes me just naturally want to avoid them so I don't implode from cringing too hard, LOL
There is an exception for fanfiction and some fan-art/comics, though! Usually I'm not too attached to characters, and can withstand seeing them be misinterpreted just to enjoy some extra content, especially if the writing is otherwise pleasant to read. I like the way fans interpret characters and put them in new scenarios, be it alternate universes (AU's), or expanding on the original story; they all have the capacity to be extremely good! (Although most of them are... uh... absolute dogshit...)
Where it starts to piss me off is when the characters used have absolutely nothing in common with the canon characters, without being tagged with "Out of character (OOC)" or at least using SOMETHING to specify that the character isn't true to canon, like the old-school "headcanon!signifier", or the more modern "Firstname Lastname is [headcanon]" tag format... UGH. It irks me so muuuchhh!!!!! Like, when they don't do that I'll just assume they've never actually consumed the source material at all, or are straight up so deluded about the characters that they don't see the reality of it. If you don't at least watch an episode or two of the show you're writing about to get a refresher on the characters, don't write something at all!!
Date of posting: November 17th, 2023.
Bodily Autonomy and My Fear of Pregnancy
TW for (brief) mentions of sexual assault and suicide.
So, I'm terrified of a lot of things, which might become more and more obvious the more I write these little posts... One of my largest fears however, is loss of bodily autonomy.
I don't know when it started, but at some point I found that the concept of something like getting pregnant was terrifying enough that it kept me up at night. I'd lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how grotesque pregnancy is, and all the irreversible damage it does to your body; the body horror and gore involved before, during, and after birth.
I can't understand how some people can, while knowing the full scope of side effects and risks (information purposefully hidden from us by doctors, by the way), still decide they want to go through with pregnancy. It's not even that I have the vain fear of my body becoming distorted, it's the fact that doing something like that will change you forever, whether you want it to or not. And some people even sign up to be surrogates? They don't even keep the fruit of their labor!!!! (Pun intended...)
I think my fear of losing my autonomy in general is rooted in being... extremely autistic about having control. Like, I usually refuse to put myself in situations where I don't have full control of everything that happens, and prefer situations where I'm able to put myself in as little risk as possible. When you don't have control over your own body, through illness, injury, addiction, or (of course) pregnancy, you no longer get a chance to stop what you've started. You finish what you've gotten yourself into, or you die. Or go to jail... or risk gravely injuring yourself... Et cetera. You get my point.
What I was getting at, is that I can't enter any situation where I can't just say "nope, that's it, I'm going home!" and have it be over with. If that option isn't avaliable, my first solution is always "oh, guess I'll just have to kill myself!", which is an INSANE way for my brain to problem solve, but that's how my brain just... works, I guess? Fuck abortions, I'm going down with the ship! (I am vehemently pro-abortion. Personally I'd just kill myself instead.)
About a year ago, I had to explain to my own mother that Plan B only works before ovulation, and that during the rest of your cycle it's completely impossible to prevent that stupid little egg from potentially getting fertilized. Plan B works by preventing or delaying ovulation enough that the sperm dies before it can fertilize something, which means once that egg is out, you're on your own. This makes it easy enough to plan encounters to be before your ovulation, just to be safe in case something happens, but if that encounter is involuntary, you don't really get the option to go "Oh hey man! can you do this in 2-3 weeks instead? 'K thanks!". I'm not afraid of getting assaulted, I don't think I ever have been. What I'm afraid of is everything that can happen afterwards, and I don't think I'll ever get over it.
Now you understand why pregnancy/fertility-related plots aren't really my favorites in the mangas I read, LOL...
Date of posting: November 16th, 2023.
Motherhood
TW for bad mothers and emotional abuse.
Next year, I'll be the same age my mother was when she had her first children. When my mom had them, I'm sure she didn't realize how much motherhood would take a toll on her mental state, nobody does until they have their first kid, and by then it's too late to go back.
When she was 23, my mom managed to get pregnant with twins, one with autism, and the other with ADHD, and for the most part she was just a single mom trying to balance studying, working, and taking care of her incredibly difficult kids, all while in severe poverty. She doesn't want to admit it, but I really think that alone was a source of trauma for her.
Six years later, she met my dad. They apparently got along well in the beginning, quickly getting together, and equally quickly finding out my mom was pregnant with a new baby. It was apparently an ideal birth of an ideal baby, everything going exactly according to a textbook birth. All was well, until it wasn't.
By the time I was old enough to remember, I didn't have a mom anymore, just a mere husk of a woman who looked like me. All I remember of my mom is a broken woman, spending most of her time watching crime shows on our big CRT TV, or crying. I wasn't allowed to be home alone with my mom, and if I was sick and had to go home from school, my grandmother would pick me up instead. I don't even remember asking why I couldn't be with my mom, I think I just kinda understood that mom was sick, and that's that.
When I got older, my mom had started yelling and screaming at my dad and my older siblings, complaining about doing all the work and nobody helping out at home, despite being previously yelled at for trying to help out. After that started, my biggest siblings moved out.
When I was 13, my parents congratulated me on graduating middle school by announcing their divorce. A year or so prior, my mom had been sent to the psych ward for something I was never told, just that she was too sick to be alone at home. At that point I already knew that either my mom would die, or my parents would get a divorce. I was happy it turned out to be the latter.
Once my dad finally moved out of my childhood home, I moved in with my mom for the remainder of junior high (aged 13-15). During that time, I was no longer able to avoid my mom's episodes. The walls were paper thin, and the doors were practically just decoration. This, paired with the fact that my mother now had to support three teenagers financially while on pension, meant things obviously didn't get better. My mental health started getting really, really bad, and after this I don't remember much of what happened, except that my nightmares of my mom doing horrible things became less and less unrealistic, and more and more prophetic.
It was at this point I started regretting being born, not out of suicidal ideation, but out of guilt for what my existence did to my mom.
I've lived away from my mom now for 6 years. I come visit over christmas sometimes, but otherwise I don't even tend to contact her. Every time I talk to her, I realize how much of my mental turmoil was because of her. I'm slowly going no-contact with her, and even though it hurts to be apart, it hurts way more to be together. I still feel guilty for being born.
Keeping all of this in mind, it might make a lot of sense that I'm now afraid of becoming a parent myself. In general, I don't actually have anything against children, but I'm so painfully aware of what the tiniest words and actions can do, that they scare me. I don't want to raise a kid just to realize I've become just like my parents, and repeated the same mistakes they made.
As I've gotten older, and my body's started really kicking in the "we need to reproduce or our bloodline will end" chemicals, I've gone from thinking that I just don't like kids, to realizing I'm just not fit for parenthood. This, coupled with my phobia of getting pregnant, pretty much set in stone that I will never have children of my own. If I do, they'll be raised by someone who isn't me (or, if I have to keep them, by me and my friends as a group effort). This is something I've told my parents, and they don't really seem to understand my logic. It's really hard to explain it when the reason for my decision is them.
Date of posting: November 15th, 2023.
Love
TW for toxic relationships + suicide threats.
I've been aware for a pretty long time that I experience love in a way that's different from... pretty much everybody I know? I realized it when I entered my first serious relationship back in 2015, and right off the bat I realized that, oh, I don't actually feel jealous over this person... like... at all.
That relationship would later fizzle out (and then crash and burn) as my obsession with the person finally ended 4-5 years later. And thinking back, I'm not sure if what I felt for him could really count as romantic or sexual attraction, I was just kinda... obsessed with him? It was no doubt unhealthy, and seeing how that person turned out to be scum, I'm happy it ended.
After that, I've had to get used to feeling love without obsession, and that's put things into a really strange perspective. I have a new partner now, a wonderful girlfriend (he/him) (who I spend way too little time with to be honest, mental illness is horrible) who I love very much.
I think, at least?
He's definitely the person I feel the strongest for, but I'm unsure of how to really categorize these feelings. Part of it is definitely due to autism, and how that can screw up how someone percieves their feelings. The other part I'm not sure about? I had a very brief period where I questioned if I actually loved him, but then when he messaged me and I got butterflies and my entire brain felt fuzzy, so I thought it was definitely something strong enough that it didn't actually matter, and I stand by that even now.
What I feel can only really be described as the same as I feel for my friends, but safer (or riskier, depending on how you see it). I feel like I can trust him with things I'd never trust other friends with, but the flavor of my feelings still feels... the same? It's the same as I felt for my ex, so it's definitely how my brain processes romantic love, but it just feels so underwhelming. It can really get to me if I'm feeling depressed, longing for an emotion I only really got a taste of through obsession and worship, and then never again.
The obsession I had with my ex was closer to a drug addiction than genuine love. I still catch myself longing for this feeling that tore me apart from the inside, that caused so much heartbreak. It's made all the love I've felt before and after feel dull and unfulfilling, and I've spent many nights wallowing over the thought that I'll never experience that feeling again, unless I want to risk my life once more. It's a shameful feeling, and something I should honestly talk to a therapist about at some point.
I worshipped my ex like he was something otherworldly, a god. His praise felt like the sweetest nectar, and with every mistake I made, instead of threatening my life, he threatened his own. He had me on a leash so short it was basically just his hand around the collar. If I dared step out of line, I would be responsible for killing my own god.
So, blinded by "love", I stayed glued to his side. I refused to listen to friends who disliked him, I broke off friendships with those who criticized him, and I stayed up until my vision got blurry while trying to convince him not to take his own life.
When we broke up, he made me promise to still love him while he neglected me for his new toy. A month later, I told him to kill himself before erasing every single trace of him from my life.
"Weren't we made for eachother?"
Rosarium (part I)
Date of posting: November 12, 2023.
Internet Safety
I grew up in the peak "STRANGER DANGER" era of the internet, when schools had dedicated segments in computer class (and normal class) going over the ~dangers~ of the world wide web. Because of that, I've grown really concerned these days seeing so many young teenagers and straight up CHILDREN writing way too much about themselves on the internet.
The top offense I see recently is people legit writing a whole list of every single disorder they have, easy to find, right there for strangers to do whatever they like with. People put disorders known for making the person more suggestible, vulnerable, and emotional, right there on their little carrd or rentry profile, complete with a cute layout and graphics. It's terrifying seeing minors putting "hypersexual" on their public profiles, having "BPD" in their bio, and having a neat little aesthetically pleasing list of the exact recipe of things needed to trigger them into a panic attack, or worse. Thing is, even adults do it! They're so used to existing in safe space communities that they don't see the danger in putting all of this right there, pinned to their profiles, for anyone to see. If I wanted to, I could send them a message that's tailored perfectly, specifically for them, to ruin their entire week. All in less than 30 seconds of viewing their profile. I don't even have to know the person, I just have to check their "triggers" list they put up naively expecting people to pay attention and avoid these topics, putting their wellbeing in the claws of the public, and expecting them to not use it in bad faith. We need to stop normalizing this, and FAST.
In general, I think talking about mental health, and being positive about destigmatizing is great! I talk about my mental health from time to time online, and I'm even part of a discord server centered around a specific disorder I have, where we lift eachother up and talk about our experiences to educate eachother on a very stigmatized and misunderstood disorder. This is good, as long as it doesn't turn into an echo chamber, of course.
The problem comes when people disregard their safety and share information about disorders they can't tell people about in real life, and expect it to be safer to talk about on the internet, when in reality they're way more vulnerable here.
My general rule of thumb is: If you're fine with bullies and abusive people knowing about something, you can safely put it online. If not? Do not, under ANY circumstances, put that shit where other people can see it. There's no exceptions.
Date of posting: November 10th, 2023.
Depression + Dissociation
TW for everything depression-related.
I've struggled with depression my whole life, kicking in around the time I started puberty (~8 years old). It's absolutely hormonal, but no real attempts to deal with it have helped, other than a slight improvement when I started actually accomodating for my autism. It's rare that it really takes control of me nowadays, but I still have some days where it's hard for me to even get out of bed, days like today.
When I'm depressed, and it bubbles over a certain point, my brain kicks in the dissociation instead. I get a break from feeling depressed, but instead I don't feel real. Usually that makes another part of me take over, one more adept at dealing with depression than the original "me" is. But a lot of the time, that kinda half-fails and now there's just two different trains of thought, one more depressed than the other, trying their best to keep from breaking down crying. Other times it succeeds, but then I'm just... depressed in a different font. Either way it isn't all that effective in actually dealing with the issue, so I have to figure out what makes it better my own damn self!
The first thing I tend to do is put on some bittersweet music. It doesn't help, but it feels a bit better to listen to something I can relate to, and sometimes it helps me get my feelings out through writing, drawing, or good ol' crying. After that I get myself something sweet, usually a cookie or (if I've got the energy) I'll slice up some fruit.
And that's pretty much it! That's all I usually end up doing before giving up and going to bed instead.
Depression is one hell of an illness! Sure we all know about it, but not a lot of people actually know of the symptoms other than the obvious ones. Back when I had just entered my teens (and up until I was around 17), it was at its worst for me. I had something called "psychotic depression", and that's real scary to deal with. Basically, it's when your brain gets depressed enough that it gets a little funky with it and starts falling apart at the seams. You start hallucinating, experience delusions, and for me that included severe paranoia. Basically I was both having suicidal thoughts, AND being afraid everyone was out to kill me. A really interesting combination, to be fair!
Luckily I've always been afraid of pain, and notoriously bad at decision making, so I never ended up harming myself in any notable ways. That, and the insane amounts of tranquilizers and anti-psychotics I was on, LOL.
Back when my depression was real bad, I started dissociating often enough that I actually noticed it (I probably dissociated a lot as a kid too, based on what I've heard from my siblings, but that's something I can't remember myself). It wasn't long after that I discovered a part of me I couldn't control, though it would take a long time for me to realize he wasn't just a hallucination.
My dissociation issues got the worst when I was 15. I have a lot of dreamlike memories from that time, seeing the world turn 2D, and feeling like I was in a movie. Some of these I'd feel like someone else was steering my movements, picking me up off the floor, making me drink water, tucking me into bed... But a lot of them were just... staring blankly at my computer screen, as if in a trance. I'd fight it off sometimes, which are the moments I still remember, but others I don't remember what happened afterwards. It's something I noticed recently, and I thought it would bother me more, but maybe I'm just so used to my brain's bullshit that I don't even get surprised when stuff like this happens anymore, LOL...
Date of posting: November 5th, 2023.
Loneliness
Some days I'm struck with this terrible feeling of longing for something. I know it's from being lonely, but it surprises me every single time all the same. It strikes me when I'm vulnerable, at night after dinner, when it's dark out and I'm listening to calm music. It's something I've had to deal with since as far back as I can remember, and I think to some degree I've started enjoying the feeling, in a way?
I'm not sure how to describe it, but I think I feel secure in how it makes me feel alone, because I'm always safest when I'm all alone and nobody wants to hurt me or make a bad attempt at saving me.
It's times like these where I find myself drawn to writing, but I'm not really sure why. Probably just the wallowing in self-pity... Maybe I just like hearing my own voice read what I write in my head.
I've come to terms recently that I'm touch-starved. It's supposed to be something pitiful, but as an adult it just becomes a source of shame for me, I think. I've been touch-averse since I entered puberty, the reasons are too sad to delve into here, but I'm pretty sure a lot of AFAB peers can take a good guess why.
That touch aversion slowly but surely turned into me avoiding touch like the plague for a long time, and it's only recently, when I made friends in college, that I finally had to realize that physical contact is something people actually enjoy and want. So, I started hugging my friends, although few and far between. It's great emotionally, but the physical feeling still makes my skin crawl. The aversion slowly but surely led to starvation, and now I struggle with these feelings of both longing desperately to be touched and to feel the warmth of another human being, and once it's actually happening, feeling like I'd rather tear my skin off than endure it for even just a second longer.
Sometimes I'm not myself. This is something I've had to come to terms with in the past.. 3-5 years? It's not something I like talking about, but it's something I deal with every day. When I'm not myself, or when I feel strongly influenced by this other side of me, I can feel the loneliness really dig its claws into my chest. Part of it I think is just the nature of this other part of me and how he is, but I also think another part of it is from the fact that I've never really let him approach people as he is, and now that I'm more open to the idea, it's become too daunting.
When I'm him, every person I meet, whether I know them or not, becomes a threat. I no longer feel safe in my own skin. I feel this overwhelming need to hide who I am, pretend to be who I used to be, and hide my true feelings as deep down as I possibly can. Sometimes my true feelings and actions bubble up past the facade I put up, and it scares me. I want to be myself, I desperately clawed my way out of hiding so that I could finally feel free and like myself, but when I'm given the chance, I get terrified of rejection and it all becomes for naught, as I put the mask back up. It's something that'll take years to get over, and by that point I'm not sure if I'll even still exist as this part, or if I'll have been replaced.
The loneliness that comes from this, I think you can imagine, feels like I'm suffocating.
In the words of Emily Palermo:
I WANTED TO BE LOVED SO DESPERATELY
THAT MY FINGERS SHOOK WITH IT
Date of posting: November 2nd, 2023.
