Tumgik
lifeafterthewake · 3 years
Text
I haven't posted for quite a while
I'm a wreck lately. I feel like all the regrets, guilt and traumas of my life are crushing me and I'm just retreating deeper and deeper into fictional worlds, be it the ones I consume or the one my mind produces.
I read 'They both die at the end' today. I'm a little surprised I can still enjoy casually reading books as I mostly have been pushing through academic writing for the past few years which is anything but enjoyable. No spoilers but the book just ends in such a way that it's really heartbreaking. Especially when I related to one of the main characters a lot.
I've been dealing with flashbacks for more than two years at this point. And I finally got a therapist which I promised I would get right after what happened happened. Yay me.
I keep thinking what I could've done differently, how I could've changed my life and myself around so that I wouldn't feel so lonely and empty all the time. It's hard to actually think about those things when my mind is fried, I lose the sense of time and my memory is worse than Swiss cheese.
Today I thought about how in few months is my twentysomething birthday and I prayed that I would go before that happens. I hate my birthday. I never do anything fun, all my friends are scattered, it's the worst day of the year even with my partner supporting me the best they can. It's a bleak day for me. I just feel the weight of time on myself and I grow even more resentful towards the world. I've always had it comfortable - financially supportive family of origin even though most of them are either emotionally stunted or straight up narcissistic, a circle of my girl friends I could always talk to and spend time with, even if it was sometimes taxing, a person who took me under their care when I needed it the most and who have been looking out for me for the past eight years, even though I've been a dick to them on more than a few occasions. I feel like I have no right to feel as broken as I do. I desperately push down most of my stupid complaints in daily life. And still I make so many mistakes. Still I never learn. Still I feel so lonely, even though I don't live alone. Still bring out the worst in myself. Still do things I will regret my whole life.
I feel so haunted.
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 4 years
Text
hollow empty hopeless loveless unwanted unable to show compassion unworthy of compassion surrounded by other hollows nowhere to run nowhere to hide no way to rest no power to keep going ruin ruin ruin ruin all my fault no way back scared grief struck broken alone
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 4 years
Text
09.01.2020
Dear diary, dissociation of sleep deprivation upon me.
This has been the most unrewarding, humiliating and physically destructive semester of my academic life. This is the second year of my master's in education/upbringing/care studies (English doesn't really have an adequate noun) and so far it's been a nightmare. I'm overloaded with compulsory classes even though we should have time to write our theses. They forced us to come early and my sleeping cycle is in bits and pieces. Tonight I haven't slept and I do not know if it's because of anxiety that I'll miss a morning class or because I've simply fucked myself again.
The whole institute is based on punishment and hierarchy. The very thing at least humanist side of academia should oppose. Majority of my classes are to waste our time and make us miserable. Though my fellow students seem to be impervious to the fact that we learn nothing and the sources we're being made to read are worth less than a very cheap cup of coffee.
My dog died on the Day of Christmas Eve. Or rather I've called a doctor to come and kill her. She's been very sick for about a month prior. Not taking food or vomiting what she ate, her lungs slowly filling with mucus, her muscles slowly disappearing. I've stayed with her until her very last breath. Once she fell asleep on sedative the death was swift. I could feel it very clearly. The moment tension left her muscles and her skin came loose. Death.
I'm fed up with this city. With its arteries clogged with cars due to lack of regulation. With the lack of space design. Raging investor furies. Air pollution. Dry skin. Ever cold winds. Twisted so that they always blow but never clear the sky. Isolation. Isolation.
The bus ride was as nauseating as ever. Of course no one opened the window. Why would they. Better our brains boil and lungs fail.
"I'm feeling like a butterfly trapped inside a plane. Maybe there's something going on, I'm not insane. If we're already out of time then make it worse. Go on and hit me in the heart, hit me where it hurts"
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 4 years
Text
11.12.19
I feel like shit. I blow through money and eat excessively. I've gained weight. I can't stand attending the classes at uni, it makes me suicidal. Some mornings I can't move. The memories of the past few years are like a salad chopped finely and thrown into a very deep trashcan. Last year of my life is a blur. My partner is also low on money and I'm trying my best to somehow balance us both on top. Sometimes we can't pay the bills for a few weeks. The university still didn't pay me my scholarship cause fuck me that's why. And also why should they care about people having any kind of crisies. The classes are mostly shit, most of the teachers rely on shaming. I feel very ashamed as a top grade student with a scholarship and quite a few conference presentations under my belt already being forced into this situation, no fucking need to remind me constantly how I'm missing your oh so fucking important class. I don't really have anyone I feel really close to except for my partner and I do not want to burden them with how shitty I feel all the time. They tolerate enough of my unhealthy coping anyway. I feel so alienated and lonely. Sexually, spiritually, academically. I need a support group. I need time and money. I need to take on my diploma. I need teachers that don't constantly bring to sources 20+ years old. I need a better society for me as a nonbinary, borderline, ACODF person living in a conservative, de facto authoritarian, more and more capitalistic country. I need fairly paid job perspectives I don't have as a teacher. I can't stop hurting.
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 4 years
Text
9 12 19 vent
AaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaAaA
a punchhole in my stomach rising to my heart tearing up shellflaking shaking hands head painsplitting unhealed wounds unlicking
vomitting
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
Tumblr media
do not rb if not an abuse survivor
3K notes · View notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
how to avoid guilt-tripping people accidentally (will be updated as i think of examples)
don’t insult yourself. it seems like you’re looking to make them feel bad for you. it also makes it look like you’re playing victim. (ex: “i’m a shitty person.” “i should just die.” “i’m just stupid.”)
say, for example, “i feel like you dislike me” instead of “you dislike me.” you don’t actually know how they feel and being accusatory like that is a huge turn off.
when apologizing, make it genuine. don’t bring up how you feel and instead apologize for how you made the other person feel. how you feel can be brought up later.
remind people that you genuinely want to get better and tell them to call you out when you exhibit problematic behavior.
it’s perfectly okay to be angry that your trauma left you with these symptoms, but that doesn’t make it okay to continue problematic behavior and make no effort to fix it. you can do it with some effort. i believe in you. and feel free to add on.
18K notes · View notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
04.09.2019
September seeped into my room in many forms of chilly air. After this hot, alarming summer the cold came as a shocking surprise. It brought a sigh of relief as well, as it has proven that it's not the definite climatic end of the world yet.
I've always liked September. My birthday is up, leaves will soon get yellow and red and fall off the trees, with them the walnuts and chestnuts, and the raindrops, and the still warm golden rays of sunshine. I can recall as if it was yesterday as I walked through the withered fields of wild grass in my hometown, playing with my neighbour. Hiding, exploring, taking in the world as it surrounded me with the extremely tall nettles and reed by the stream, with the thistle fruit that we threw at each other, with the cold ground and sounds of the airplanes passing by over our heads.
I used to idealise my childhood a lot and I still think that I have many good memories from that time. I'm also aware that there are some inaccessible ones, and ones that are not very nice, mostly the constant feeling of... having to submit to expectations. Sickening.
Apart from that... I don't know. Things changed with time. At some point I gave up on throwing birthday parties, I think when I started secondary school. Then I started to celebrate them again in high school. And now... I don't remember what we did last year. Two years ago either. I know that that last September was a very difficult month for me that started off a series of traumatic events. I'd like to cling onto something. I should talk with my partner about that.
I don't feel particularly old. Just... I'd like my birthday to be really exciting. Something I look forward to. Not a day that I have to service all my family members in a pleasant matter and recieve few bank transfers from them. I asked some of my friends and acquittances to send me postcards. Officially to have more evidence for legally changing my name. But the longer I think about it the more it comes to me that I just wanted to be noticed and to feel at least somewhat special. I miss friends. A lot. It's also grief after the time that has already passed. But I can't mourn forever.
This blog is, after all, called life after the wake. I should live.
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
About 12/15, especially true for my mother.
Is your parent emotionally immature?
Emotional immaturity tends to be foundational to abusive behaviors in parents. More than one yes to these sentences means it’s likely your parent is/was emotionally immature.
I had to say yes to ALL of these for BOTH parents. How many are yes for you?
- My parent often overreacted to relatively minor things.
- My parent didn’t express much empathy or emotional awareness.
- When it came to emotional closeness and feelings, my parent seemed uncomfortable and didn’t go there.
- My parent was often irritated by individual differences or different points of view.
- When I was growing up, my parent used me as a confidant but wasn’t a confidant for me.
- My parent often said and did things without thinking about people’s feelings.
- I didn’t get much attention or sympathy from my parent, except maybe when I was really sick.
- My parent was inconsistent—sometimes wise, sometimes unreasonable.
- If I became upset, my parent either said something superficial and unhelpful or got angry and sarcastic.
- Conversations mostly centered on my parent’s interests.
- Even polite disagreement could make my parent very defensive.
- It was deflating to tell my parent about my successes because it didn’t seem to matter.
- Facts and logic were no match for my parent’s opinions.
- My parent wasn’t self-reflective and rarely looked at his or her role in a problem.
- My parent tended to be a black-and-white thinker, and unreceptive to new ideas.
Source: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
4K notes · View notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
Nagging you to open up about your feelings just to tell you that they aren’t valid because “I’ve always loved you the best I could” so therefore anything you’ve felt that contradicts this notion is wrong.
Dedicating your life to masturbating over how you’ve ‘forgiven’ your abusive parents while all you did is repressed your shit so that your kids and husband will deal with you.
Creating a dynamic where your child feels the most cared for in a situation where you had an argument and the child said some things that upset you so you also said something offensive to the child (because you have a mind of an abused three year old) so the child ran away from you to cry in their room and then you mercifully come in to calm them down and hug them. And apologize. Because you’re such an adult that you can tell when you’ve crossed the line. And you’re not doing all these just so that you can constantly apologize for being a bad parent, so that you don’t have to deal with your huge inferiority complex that your child will surely inherit along with mixing up abuse with caring for someone. Yeah, fuck you mom. 
Things it is NOT OK for a parent to do
List them…
Reblogging this will work. Liking this will work. Messaging me will not work. Email me at [email protected]
9K notes · View notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
03.08.2019
future.
I wanted to write about love because I had a bit of a stream of consciousness but I’ve checked one of the posts on a facebook support group for trans folks I’m in and it’s all I can think about right now.
A confused amab person is looking for help in figuring out their gender identity. Fine and dandy. I almost jumped to write a long ass comment on that but then I became discouraged. In general being active on this group has been bittersweet. I joined mainly because I was looking for university project respondents. Since I am myself gender non-conforming I became active. But I mostly respond in the comments, from time to time I ask a pragmatical question. Sometimes I comment giving away a little more of my personal experiences.
it’s becoming tiring. Practically every day someone appears to post about their problems or start a conversation on a trans-related topic. Some of these posts are unique, some of them are repetitive af. I feel frustrated with the fact that many of the posters aren’t as familiar with trans topics as I am. I’m not an expert but I have dabbled in academic writing on transness, sexuality and gender, I have strong opinions on many aspects of these topics. I don’t know if it’s frustrating because people think and learn at different speed and in different ways than me, or it’s because I’m envious of how simple it is for many people. How you can just treat gender as strictly biomedical matter and believe in neopositivistic sciences paradigm. How many people just... do stuff, transition, go to the doctor. While I’m sitting around undecided.
I feel weak and confused about my gender. I do not know what I am. I am not a man and I dread that the hairgrowth on my skin will accelerate indefinitely and I will become a rectangular piece of misery because of the fat and muscle shifts progressing throughout my life. I am getting older and part of this dread is simply linked to not staying young forever.
On the other hand I am not a woman. It feels better to be a she but I do not feel very socializable to that role either. If I am a woman I am more of an angry lesbian (well, in my case pansexual) feminist. And I like that idea but it feels like you can’t just be an angry pansexual feminist like that. I feel like this is an option reserved for people who were raised as women and emancipated themselves. I have a completely different set of cultural stereotypes and habits to emancipate from. And sometimes I just feel like such an awful human being who is destined to sooner or later become one of the awful disgusting males.
I’ve settled on queer after identinfying as bigender for some time. I believe in being queer and I see queer when I look in the mirror. But I do not quite feel there yet. Inside I just feel lost. I feel like a vast book with much data but little experience, with much knowledge but no wisdom. What was the word... phronesis. Right. Not much of that.
In general my life right now is like a protective bubble that is inevitably going to burst. One more year of studying. Then what? Today it’s a black hole. I want to teach philosophy and ethics, I want to use drama techniques, I’m getting my masters in education studies. But I’m also probably going to migrate west from Poland. Where will I go? What will my degree be worth there? Education is always very country-specific. Wages are universally low. What if I won’t be able to provide for myself? What if somewhere along the way we will drift apart with my significant other? What if I will just break down at some point because I’m tired of constantly keeping myself together?
I feel tired and I fear the future. 
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
3.7.19
Tw: self loathing, suicidal ideation
.
.
.
.
.
.
I've become a burden to myself. And to others. I don't know if it's true but it feels real. I've unlearnt how to share my tears. I went on a long ride and came back to the starting point. Older but still childish and helpless. More than ever filled with gut and shame. I feel like I'm fading every single day. University bores me. I float through social interactions like on autopilot. Even at home I'm disconnected. Does it show?
I'm getting worse. I cry alone and I don't know who to talk to. Sometimes I feel like I simply don't want to because I'm a coward who'd rather imagine being even slightly honest than actually do it. Sometimes I just don't know how to speak. Have I ever learnt to speak my mind when it comes to how I feel?
I lay in my bed and I cry and again all I can think of is how I should die. And how it would probably be even more of a burden if I actually did kill myself. I'm pathetic. Instead of doing anything to make things better I'm stuck and I just repeat the only things I know. Nothing has changed. I've never moved on. I'm no one. I've never tried to change anything for myself. All I ever do is conform to other people's ideas about what would be good for me. All I ever do is talk with people to disagree with them. I'm not okay, I'm never going to be okay, I'm going to have a mental breakdown in a year or two once the bubble bursts. I'm never going to be satisfied with what I do. There will always be mistakes invalidating anything I do or think. I'm just a menta leech incapable of thinking on its own. I'll forever stay a maggot confined to its loneliness and repulsiveness.
In the end all I feel is sorry that I've ever got anyone involved with me.
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
It’s complicated since my abusers are also my parents and I’m living at their expense.
I’ve moved out of their house 3,5 years ago to study in a different city about 330km (~200 miles) away.
I’ve wanted to move out of their house throughout the middle school and high school but I could never really put it together. I used to beat myself over my head wondering why I dislike my parents so much and why I had always been feeling like I was suffocating. I am a kid that grew spoiled - never had to work for anything, if I wanted something I got it. Also better than average student, no problems in school. It was especially hard to recognize the abusive behaviours, even more so because I don’t have many memories of my childhood. My mother is manipulative and she always shifts the blame onto others. I’ve always been like a trophy to her, a doll to talk about and show around on any appropriate occasion. There were good times and feelings but for the most part I’ve felt like I don’t own myself, like I have no right to my feelings, to be what I want to be. My father was usually just there. I’m mostly sad for him because he has basically given up on feeling anything and dedicated himself to work. When I ask him whether he’s happy now he acts like a broken record repeating that ‘he’s happy if his family is happy’. He was way more present when I was very little. I miss that person greatly. Most of my memories from my teenage years are about fighting between my parents and me, them between themselves, me and my nine years younger sister...
When I moved out I was homesick but every visit at their house was making me feel unberably sick. Gradually, over the course of the last few years, with help of my significant other who is also my best friend, I’ve restricted contact between me and them. If I go to visit them it’s only special occasions like christmas or someone’s birthday (I try to always see my sister when it’s time for hers). We don’t really talk. Sometimes I answer the phone, sometimes I don’t. I call when I need money but thankfully, because of scholarship, it doesn’t happen that often. They don’t really know what is going on in my life.
Also the question I get all the time is ‘how are you doing? what’s up?’ and I’m sick and tired of providing them with information about my life. I wouldn’t mind if they told me what is going on in their life from time but I don’t think that is going to happen despite articulating it quite clearly a dozen of times. After all this time I still mostly feel like a circus attraction to my mother. When I try to speak my mind either my words get twisted or I suddenly become the mediator of family therapy session. It makes me sick.
At the moment I still depend on them financially and I’m scared to be upfront. Even though they have financial capacity to support me I’ve been threatened to lose all support on their part if I were to stop studying (last september I didn’t know if I was going to get my diploma quickly enough to enroll for graduate studies). In a way you could say I haven’t really addressed the issues I should have face to face. But so far every time I try to talk about my side of the story I get shunned or I get ‘we were the best parents you could have had’ line.
I would like to just once hear ‘sorry, we fucked up, we take reponsibility’. To feel like I’m more important to them as a person than the picture of a happy family that they hold so nearly and dearly in their hearts. I don’t believe that it’s even possible anymore and it’s extremely painful.
So we drift apart, I keep things to myself, life goes on. I don’t want to fully break off contact, there is a biographical project I want to do with my grandma before she passes away. And I would like to keep in touch with my sister.
I keep my distance. Emotional, physical, temporal, spatial. For now it makes me feel safe. Hopefully at some point I will be strong enough to confront them and not crumble under the denial. 
Have you cut contact with your abusers?
Please, tell us about it.
The second most common question I get from followers is if it’s ok/helpful to cut contact. So please, if you are willing, share your experience because there are a lot of people out there who need to hear this particular story.
213 notes · View notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
09.03.2019
So I’m at a friend’s house for a party. She had birthday last week so me and my partner came up with an appropriate present, asked the guests whether they want to join in, we split the costs, I got the present and got there (moderately early).
I’ve recently changed some things on my facebook so that it reads more feminine but I haven’t really talked about it with my friends yet so I’m really not in a position to argue against introducing me with my boy name. I guess it would have been nice if someone asked me but it’s more or less fine.
The party... well just goes on. More people come in. I talk to some, I avoid some. I discuss feminism, some anthropology, drink some wine, talk about university yada yada. Eat a lot of gluten cause life is stressful and people don’t have any snacks other than those. Apart from herring that was brought by my friend’s parents later but yuck, fish.
At some point I start using feminine verb endings (we’re not anglophones, we conjugate). Cause why not. I feel somewhat okay with it, at least around people I’ve more or less recognized as safe. Had they asked me why I’d tell them, why not. So it’s going okay, we talk about the academia, then I start talking about my masters, about gender of the brain, we move to the couch.
One of the male guests decides to sit by at some point. He’s drunk, most likely hetero, smaller than me. A person I wouldn’t normally talk to - there is just a certain type of aura around some men that I avoid, it’s hard for me to name it. I’m sitting with two girls, one of them my friend, another a girl one year younger than me who came with her husband. So he sits by and shoots me up with “Are you taking hormones?”.
It was so sudden that I just angrily replied “No.” To which he says either “If I were you I would be.” or “I think you should be.”
So at first I freeze, fuss a ltitle. Then I get angry and ask why does he feel like he has any right to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my body. He is defensive about it. In general he was coming up with bs that popped in his head. The more I tried to talk about why does he feel that he should give me his expertise the more he was going the route of “oh so you feel special” “oh you must have had a hard life”, asking me have I wished my mother happy women’s day to which I reply “no because I don’t have good relationship with my family” (which is true) to which he goes “that’s what I thought”. It’s just fucking unberable. A random guy with whom I haven’t even talked that evening gets up my goddamn medical business, while misgendering me throughout, victimizing me. Fucking pity from a cis-dude who has “friends like that” whom “hormones have helped”. This is fucking XXIst century, people. This is the pinnacle of fucking social progress. A heterosexual cis dude telling a person that reads at least as gay if not as gender nonconforming to go get her hormones therapy.
For what fucking reason should I get my hormone therapy? Do I go right this moment? Shoot myself up with whatever the fuck? To alleviate my dysphoria or to make him more goddamn comfortable with himself? And when my beard stops showing am I good enough then or not wearing makeup is still a sin? Do I speak in a higher tune and become more receptive to the words of critique? Is that good enough?
Since when is he an expert in telling me what to do with MY BODY. Maybe he is fucking right about me being wounded and anxious. But he wasn’t the one having each symbolic and physical hand of his fucked up mother on his body. He wasn’t the one bombarded with contradictions about how he should be. He wasn’t the one denied the right to be his own person. I was. I am a property. I am raised a property. A doll, a shell, a trophy. A music box to say what is expected. A mind to expect and to fear what must come.
And maybe I would like some pity but not from someone who comes in and shoves it up my ears. Not from someone who came to be oh so helpful to a transgirl while calling her with her boy name and using male-gendered verbs. Not from someone who brags how he has friends whom HRT has helped. I don’t know how they still call him their friend, maybe they are normative as fuck and it’s all fine and dandy in that weird word.
That made me angry.
But what made me sad was my friend and the other girl sitting with me explaining how it doesn’t matter, how it’s an opinion from a total stranger whom I don’t even know. ‘If you knew him and came up for an advice then you would be right to feel angry if he had said something insulting’, ‘it doesn’t matter’. I even asked my friend, attempting to somehow explain how I felt, ‘[name] shouldn’t you have a baby soon?” (obviously acting out an unfortunately popular scheme and I made sure she was aware of it). She brushed it off. She said that people say that to her sometimes and she doesn’t feel the need to fight them. That some people say those things.
I do not want to live in a world where people, especially women, are blind to policing of their bodies. In a world in which they get BANGED OVER THEIR HEADS WITH CULTURE SO LONG that they become completely desensitised to it. To someone else telling them how they should be.
The other girl sitting with us said that when, after coming back from abroad, she put on her husband’s coat and hat to go for shopping (because they were unpacked) he asked her ‘Are you going out like that? This is men’s coat!’. And she brought it up simply to say that she doesn’t care. That some people say these things.
Men and women say these things and I don’t know which is more enraging. Women say these things because they were taught to believe in them, taught that is how they should be, how a woman should be, and, by proxy, how every other woman should be. And men say these things not even thinking twice.
We are the panopticon but it’s always a man gazing. A man, some men - looking, objectifying, policing, victimizing, justifying, having expertise. Having oh so much expertise.
I am sad, I am angry, I am sick. No amount of estrogen will calm this feeling. I may be coming from the outside into what we call femininity but I certainly don’t feel like this is something to brush off or just accept ‘as it is’. I want a world a little better and a lot less male-centered than the one we live in.
My women’s day wasn’t happy. I didn’t call my mother and I won’t.
To all women out there: get angry. And if you already are angry - stay angry.
0 notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
23.01.2019
Memory.
What is your first memory?
I do not know mine.
Since I was elven life has been a neverending cycle of being and forgetting for me. I would live, the time would pass, I would grow, change schools, fall in love, forget. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. In the space between there would always be a summer camp to keep my gears running, a two week or month long workout, a rest for the mind constantly living under pressure of school and family. It was almost like being someone else during these times in between.
I wasn’t paying that much attention to it or rather I was trying to avoid thinking about it. I am terrified of how many things I’ve forgotten. Good things, bad things, important and meaningless ones. They are all somewhere in my head, at least some of them I believe. But I constantly have access to only a chosen few. Only some highlights of my life, rarely do I remember something as a whole, in context...
My memories are usually in third person. Which only means they aren’t really memories but rather my own imagined pictures of these memories. I stand beside myself, I look at the room, the forest, the lake, my parent’s house. I change perspectives, I can see faces and sceneries. If I have photos I can almost drown myself inside of them. But am I remembering or am I just imagining how it went?
I have flashbacks. Sometimes. I do not know if I would call them flashbacks, really. They are feelings, voices that do not speak comprehensible words but rather tunes and emotions, movements, pain, tears, lightheadedness. Sometimes when I look at the old photos where I can see myself as I was when I was only 1 year old I feel like I can connect to that. If I close my eyes, if I let go of everything around me I can feel that moment inside of me. But I can’t think it. I can’t name it. I can’t talk about it. And I can’t remember because memories are strings of words and narrations that are somehow fiit into us - us as a whole.
I’m not whole at all.
There is fracturing inside of me. In my core. But on my surface as well. In my contradicting actions, facial and vocal expressions, words. I’m a paradox, I’m impossible. Sometimes, when I feel really bad, really really bad, the world feels fake. My body feels fake. My mind feels like I’ve manufcatured it. I can’t anchor myself to anything. There is here and now but who am I in that moment? Who are the people that matter to me? Who am I for them? Are we a family? Are we strangers pushed around by fate? By coincidences? Did we choose this or is it something else that pushed us into those constellations?
Questions remaining without answers.
I am oscillating between the past and the future and I cannot grab onto the present hard enough. It is a storm that has been swaying me, swaying my feelings, swaying my headspace. I am but a troubled and tired wanderer of my broken fantasies. A prisoner of my mind. A mourn at my own funeral.
One of the memories that for the longest time I believed to by my first was a memory of going down a small hill in a forest during the winter on a sleigh and falling flat on my face. I thought I remembered the tears, the pain, the redness of my face... How would I know my face was red? My nose? There wasn’t a mirror there. Did someone snap a photo? I haven’t seen it. Has my nose been red all the time until we returned to wherever we were sleeping? Or am I standing inside that memory and feeding myself a vision that never happened? At some point in that memory blood was running down my nose. But blood never run down my nose, it ran down my nose a few months ago after tonsillectomy. But before that? The blood is hot usually. Viscous. In the vision I had it all over my face. But that never happened.
So what happened? What the hell did happen?
I do know I fell from that sleigh during the winter. I’m not sure if my parents laughed at me or tried to console me. I was crying hard and I think they gave me their usual ‘come on, nothing happened’. Well, something happened for me...
So I thought this was my first memory. But a few years ago we were going through my old photos and I saw the pictures of my first birthday. And a video. They blew a lot of balloons for me. I really didn’t know what to do with them. We were staying at my great grandmother’s back then, my parent’s house was not even under construction yet. I was looking at it and I remembered distinctly a conversation my mother and grandmother were having. But I couldn’t understand a word. I would understand it now but since language is weird for children I guess I remember the sounds. I can’t recall it at the moment but I’m sure it was a memory when it hit me.
I learnt to speak fairly early into my life. At least that’s what my parents told me my whole life. I believe I could use sentences before I was two years old and I was pretty good with words. I wonder if I even knew what I was saying back then when I was saying things. I know I had some imagined words that had specific usage and my parents were trying to figure out what I was saying. One of them was ‘makapkat’ (sounding “mak-” as in the name “Mac”, “-kap-” as in “captain” and “kat” as in “cat”). I remember what it felt like to say that word but I don’t remember what I wanted to say. I’ve been told I used this word pointing at the wall near the sink. It is possible that I simply enjoyed what my mouth felt like when I was saying it.
I want to say that memory is becoming more and more important to me and the lack of memories is becoming more and more traumatizing. I do not know what is wrong with me. I do not know if it’s just the physiology in my brain that is not working right or trauma that is effectively blocking my memories. These factors do not rule out one another. It’s scary, especially when living in someone, being in an intimate relationship and just losing your memories with that person from 2, 3 years ago. Some of it is due to the fact that we went through a lot of stress and arguing in the past 5 years and it has for sure contributed to the fact that I forgot some things. But at the same time there were good memories we made. And they seem very distant right now.
I think the headache, or a migrene I guess, is here to stay. My self am shattered. Time goes by and the mornings are cruel as they were when in the past when everything was wrong. I’ve made mistakes but I also grew a little. Time itself never healed my wounds. They are stretched and etched all over my bodymind. I only wish to be whole.
3 notes · View notes
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
08.01.2019
Anger. Anger is a powerful feeling. It can destroy the bonds we have with other people but it can also motivate us to have courage to speak our minds about things that we don’t enjoy in life.
I’ve been afraid of my anger for as long as I can remember. I was actually terrified of it. I was a teenager who was constantly angry and in conflict with their parents but at the same time we were tiptoeing around the topics most important for me, focusing on the regular life and symbolic level of our relationships. My mother’s favourite topic I believe. How we don’t talk with each other. Great, then maybe she should’ve had something to say all those years.
I was raised catholic. I was taught that forgivness and compassion are important values in life. I was taught that when someone harms us we should turn the other cheek. And I believed that in the worst way possible. I was bullied in school and kindergarden. Not the hardcore kind of bullying that children hang themselves over, but I was fat and it was enough for kids to pick on me. And I was quiet, shy, played by myself, couldn’t get along with other boys or girls. I didn’t’ have many childhood friends, we lived in a suburban district where I had one friend one year younger who lived across the street. My parents had some friends with kids and we met together from time to time but usually I was the oldest of the bunch. It’s been lonely, really. I hated sports, I was raised to believe that I was some sort of a genius (which I wasn’t, I was better than average but not a genius at all), in an environment constantly bombarding me with contradicting communicates about body, sexuality, love.
My parents advocated love and self respect while treating themselves poorly. I’ve learnt a lot about diets moderately early since they were constantly on one, while being obese and living completely unhealthy. I was being scolded over a constant mess in my room while the whole house was usually a mess that was impossible to contain. May I add what my mother was doing my whole life was mostly trying to contain that mess and complaining how nobody helps her.
Probably the thing that messed me up the most was the constant need for finding the reason of an action/a feeling/a reaction. We were nose deep in invisible abuse bs. My parents act like big children since their parents never acted very maturely either. My role was acting like someone parent-like but not adult-like at all. I usually took the responsibility for how my parents felt. Almost always I’d say. If they got angry at me or with me I’d get some kind of guilt trip into the hateful wonderland. Combine that with catholic concept of guilt and bam you have me. Slightly egotistical neurotic capable of feeling but incapable of expressing those feelings in a healthy way. Sometimes in no way at all.
For the longest time I simply felt guilty about being so angry. I felt that if I didn’t keep repressing it I’d just hurt everyone around me. It was frustrating as hell and as I grow older more and more things make me angry. My and other people’s feelings, just stuff flying by. I can’t deal with the boiling anger and everything that’s been attatched to it .And I feel that I need that anger right now. I need it to keep surviving. Because I messed up, myself and not only myself and coming to terms with this anger is top priority for me at the moment. I’m struggling to accept it as a part of me and I’m putting energy into learning how to deal with it without hurting people that are near and dear to me. And it gets lonely sometimes but I feel like I’m achiveing something. Maybe in not such a long time I’ll be able to let go of more of my walls and chains that I still believe keep me together in one piece. Hopefully.
1 note · View note
lifeafterthewake · 5 years
Text
26.12.2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5S7i8SMArQ
the night was long and I want to go home
these words don’t come with ease
I have no home, I am stranded
I had a home for a while. they were the best thing ever and they were a cap on a bottle of boiling liquid. but I don’t blame them, I did it to myself
it’s been three years and a few months since I’ve left my parents house
it will soon be a decade of this feeling of homelessness
I go to therapy, I talk smart things and read smart people
the self hatred doesn’t go away
in fact it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s just there
I thought I could outdo it and I thought I could ignore it
neither have worked and now I’m in hell
I’ve avoided the darkest things in me for the longest time and I’m slipping through the cracks of my inner cradle
will the next morning change anything?
I’ve done bad things I regret. a human showed me a piece of them and I spat on it. I want to kill myself because of that. it also hurt a different human that I spat on that as if I haven’t learnt anything
I am stuck in a loop
I’ve been trying to help
but I guess I just don’t know how to help myself
I’m back to where I cried alone. I didn’t have to cry alone anymore. there is a human who can hold me when I cry. but I made everything dirty and I can’t forgive myself
I don’t want to think like this
I’ve been ashamed of myself. I’ve been ashamed of my body and my actions. I’ve been ashamed of sexuality and of love. I’ve been ashamed of breathing.
and still I can’t even say it straight to the people who made me this way. I need a justification. I need an explanation to make it digestable. but it’s not it’s  not it’s not I can’t digest it but when I spill it there will be no one there to hold me because different people hold me now and different people did horrible things to me
and it was also impossible to live through. and I’ve done everything in my power to make people who hold me resemble the ones who did horrible things to me. because they did horrible things and they held me. so I don’t know holding without the pain and the shame. I don’t know love without doubt. I don’t know trust without price
and if it’s priceless I’m making it mine by putting a price on it
and if it’s doubtless I’m making it doubtful
and if it’s painless I’ll make it hurt and I’ll engrave it into the souls
and I don’t want this at all. I want to be nice. I want to be clean. I want to be free. I know I can’t and I know that I can’t have one without the other. but I’ve repressed it, I believed a lie. and in the end it made things so much worse. all the actions taken to put the mess together and it keeps falling apart because it was a mess and I want it back but I don’t want it to be the same but I kind of do... no I don’t.
I’m lost and I’m tired. I haven’t slept for 35 hours now. I’ve said things I regret again. I just want to be loved for what I am. but how do I accept that which I am first?
0 notes