sept 27

 

I really don't have much energy to update today, but I don't want to slack off anymore, so let me at least try.

I don't remember yesterday. I really don't, and I'm sorry. However, I can explain that. I... don't know if I want to, though. Not explicitly.
Something happened in the evening that wasn't traumatic in and of itself, BUT the immediate aftereffects were.
I won't talk about that now though. Let's get the data out of the way first.


Something I realized today: in a previous post, I mentioned my old mindset of thinking "I'm not capable of making correct decisions on my own?" Well, I don't think I mentioned the other big part of what plays into that... which is, ironically, friendship.
I've spoken about this with my therapist already, but when I was in elementary school, after 1st grade, I was the outcast. I was the weird kid that no one wanted to be friends with, and when I tried, guess what mindset I got? "I'll only be your friend if you do everything I tell you to."
One of my only memories from school is in the church basement of my old school, in 3rd grade or so, with 2 girls who were my friends for a while. We were pretending we were Pokemon-- one girl was a Charizard, and the other was a Mewtwo. The problem? I wanted to be a Mewtwo. I adored that species, and being barred from being one felt like a slap in the face. But no-- the latter girl told me, quote pointedly, "you have to be Mew, and then you have to be my servant." I protested repeatedly, but couldn't win out. But it wasn't just giving up. I loved that girl, honestly I did, and so I decided I'd let her have her own way, even if I was going to gripe about it. She was the boss, I told myself. She would always be the boss.
And... that's just how my friendships seemed to go. I don't think I've ever had a real offline friendship, one that doesn't operate under that sort of power structure where I am understood to be the henchman, the scapegoat, the sidekick that does all the dirty work. The biggest problem, though, is that I let myself be shoved into that position, willingly or unwillingly... and I wouldn't fight because "hey, at least they're willing to call you a friend."
Another outcast girl tagged along with me for the rest of my elementary school days, but although I assume we spent time together, I don't remember any of it. All I do remember is that, whenever she was absent from school, I wouldn't miss her. Sick as it was, I would actually think "yess! Finally I have freedom! I hope she's out for a few days." It makes me ill to see that-- the only reason I know this is because I've found several old elementary school journals where I expressed that mindset-- but it's true. What's worse, though, is that when she was around, I wouldn't even hint at that exasperation. I'd talk to her and we'd spend time together and we were considered buddies by everyone else in school. But the second I was left alone, I was looking for a way out. I don't think she ever explicitly bossed me around, but I do remember one day in 7th grade where she literally threw my drawing tablets across the classroom-- the most meaningful things in the world to me-- laughing, as I stared in frozen horror, wanting to jump up and scream for her to stop but too scared of losing our "friendship." Is it really a friendship, though, if you don't respect each other? Is it really a friendship, if you never speak to each other outside of school, and only tolerate each others presence? But I never saw a problem back then. I didn't know any different.
It was the same once I left elementary school. On the bus, all the little kids flocked to me. And would you believe that I let THEM use me, too? One kid constantly stole my keychains and ripped pages out of my notebooks, demanding that I draw him things and getting angry when I didn't. I never told him to behave because I felt I had no right to. I never considered him a friend, but I still let him-- a 4-year-old kid-- push me around. But the most notable bus kid was someone I called Angelbee, after a magical-girl persona I created for her. She, too, bossed me around, pulled my hair, wrote in my notebooks, tore pages out of them, took things from me as I was using them and wouldn't give them back. I designed her character at her behest and then did the same for about 5 of her friends, even though I was exhausted. And, every time the bus drove past her stop instead of picking her up, I'd sigh in relief... and then punch myself for it. "How dare you wish your friend wasn't around," I'd say. "You don't deserve friends if you think of them that way." But was she ever my friend, if again, she never spoke to me after I stopped taking the bus? Was she ever my friend if I didn't know anything about her as a person, and only really loved the character she created, the pink-haired girl whose name I called her instead of her own? I don't think so.
But I did love her. I loved all of them, in a quiet sort of way, because they were people, wonderful individuals with their own stories and joys and pains, even if they were unknown to me, and they were deserving of love just because they existed.
Why couldn't we be real friends, then? I must be flawed, I guessed. It's me. I'm the problem.
Online it was a little different. Online... well, I can't speak directly, but looking back on old records, it looked like I was the one using people now. I was so used to being pushed and ordered around that now I just wanted someone to draw something for me. And that's the most selfish thing I can imagine, isn't that funny? "Hey, there are these characters that I absolutely love... can you draw them for me?" But whenever I said that, no matter what words I used-- and I was indirectly passive about it more often than not-- it felt like a demand, an outrageous demand. I was ashamed of it. But I constantly drew things for other people, hoping to "get them to like me," hoping to "earn" art in return. But damn it, that's not how you make friends either.
It's no use complaining about it now. I just want to make it clear, so I don't waste my hour of therapy on Tuesday reiterating something I already understand about my foggy past.
The point: every single one of my past friendships has been emotionally manipulative, either to me or because of me. Offline, I let myself be pushed around, never asserting or defending myself for fear of losing a "friend" I didn't even truly like, and who probably didn't even truly like me. Online, I would push other people around, skillfully handling my words and actions to get them to like "me," terrified that I was unworthy of friendship unless I played the exact role they wanted.
Hey... that's it, isn't it?
I never feel that I can be genuine in friendships. I always feel obligated to do what they want, even if I have to wrongly convince myself that I want it too.
That sounds far too close to my biggest problem again. I don't like it.
There's one last... friendship that I want to mention in this train of thought. It makes me feel like a horrible, horrible person for bringing it up, but I have to. This has been eating at me for a VERY long time, and I've only been able to put words to it now that I'm discussing it in therapy.
For years I thought this friendship broke the mold. "They like me," I thought. "They don't even order me around!"
But hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
It breaks my heart to say this. Maybe it's projection. Part of me hopes it is, so that they are pure and blameless and utterly righteous, but another quietly bitter part of me-- the part I squashed when I was still a child-- hopes that it's not, because it doesn't want to get trapped in that sort of situation again, if that's indeed what it was.
No use mincing words. Let me say this.
In that friendship, they never liked me, although they thought they did. The problem? I was too used to playing a role, and I played it damn well. Looking back, though, it hurts me to see just how much I deluded them. Once my mask slipped, they left, and I'm glad. No use perpetuating a game that they believed, just to have a "friend." The other problem is that I seriously doubt that was "ME" back then-- even my therapist thinks it was an alter. That kind of throws a monkey wrench into things. Point is, though, I learned how to manipulate people really well, to survive at home, to get people to like me. I learned how to say and do exactly what other people wanted. I just never learned how to separate an act from my true feelings and wants and needs. Maybe I still don't, not with all these voices in my head.
Still, my dishonesty there is what the friendship was founded on, and I'm well aware of it. They tried to fix it later on, but again, all my stupid acting and splintering around people made it near impossible. That's not what bothers me about this situation.
Looking back, I've realized, to my total shock and nausea, that it qualified-- yet again-- as being emotionally manipulative.
I would NEVER have accused them of that. I'd have rather blamed myself of that. And I was, I won't deny that. It was all I knew to do, to be liked. Again, that's not the point. The point is that, reviewing old conversations and notes, there is a disturbing amount of dialogue that flashes huge warning lights in my head now. Like, you don't say that to someone unless you're controlling their reactions.
It's scary to me because they didn't realize they were doing it. I don't think they did. Everyone I knew like them did that to me. It was like... like my life was a game, like my entire world was a game, and only they knew the rules. Only they knew the rules to my life, but instead of telling me, they would just make cryptic comments about it. They would leave hints-- which I am notoriously bad at even perceiving-- and they would insinuate, but nothing direct. The worst of it, though, was that they all acted like I was incapable of playing that "game," the game of my own life, without their help.
I even had them effectively tell me that a few times. That's what kind of tore the floor out from under my feet when I realized it.
I knew the early relationship-related manipulation was a problem once I started fighting for air and space, and ran. I knew that the clinginess and feelings of possession, although all obviously unintentional, were not something I could handle anymore. I didn't know that later, much MUCH later, that same thing returned, and I was blinding myself to it, because I believed them. I really did. Maybe I still do.
I BELIEVED, wholeheartedly, that they were in charge of me, and that they had the RIGHT to be. I fully believed that they understood more about life, about MY life and how I should live it, than I EVER would. I believed that I was incapable of making correct choices on my own, without their guidance. I couldn't see straight, after all. I Something in me must be flawed after all, I thought. But hey! They're here, they're so much better than I am, they're even my friends... and they know what to do, they must know. I'll do everything they tell me to.
I never questioned it. I never questioned it, not until I was torn out of their lives and they responded by throwing in the towel of our badly twisted friendship. That's when they suddenly started acting differently, rightfully questioning the validity of our bonds, and you know what? They were right about it. There was nothing, NOTHING, when you took the masks away.
One 'friendship' was based upon common interests that I never actually held. The other was effectively mutual therapy. That's all we had. That's all we ever had, and I knew it.
I was repeating the same pattern I had always followed: get a friend who chooses/ dictates/ influences everything I am "allowed" to do, actively or passively... then learn how to act to get them to 'like' you... whenever they're not around, try to run away... and yet, if THEY try to leave, freak out because that obviously means you messed up big time. Congratulations, you made someone hate you. Again.
So when they decided they'd had it with me too, I panicked.
I panicked. I was losing the only long-term friendships I had EVER had, and even if I had been a total asshole, I fought. I was stupid, and I fought to keep the relationship going, even if it was false, just because having to accept that I had fucked up again was too horrible to bear.
But the stupidest thing was I didn't even want the friendships back. I KNEW there wasn't anything substantial there, and hadn't been for years. I KNEW, looking back, that our friendship was unhealthy, and we were all at fault, with me wearing masks for fear of rejection, and them treating me, with genuine kindness, as someone incapable of living without them... something I believed with every fiber of my being.
That, on top of the thought of being rejected as a friend, stung too much for me to let go even if it would be mutually beneficial... especially because I still loved them too, like I loved everyone before them, and still did.
No matter how badly I had been abused by some of my "friends" in the past, I still loved them, and always would.
At least... I thought I did. Isn't that ridiculous?
That was the final nail in the coffin, when it hit me. I loved them all as strangers, maybe. As ideas, maybe. But that was all. I never really knew them as who they were, to themselves, to each other. None of them. I only loved the glimpses I saw of them, that I scraped together into dreams of them, doppelgangers that never existed. To this day, my mental images of them all don't match who they actually are, years later, growing up. No wonder we never actually got along. Did I ever see them for who THEY were? Was I that blinded by my hope?
I've done that to every person I've ever known.
I don't think I've ever known how to love people, because in order to see them that way, I have to see myself as a person too. I don't know how to do that.
I only ever feel safe when people don't see me. I only ever feel safe and right when I don't have a reflection in the mirror.
I guess I can't ever expect myself to have "meaningful" relationships if that's the case.

So there are our three problems, that I've found.
1. I attract, or cause, emotionally manipulative relationships, as I fear I am inherently unlikable on my own.
2. I doubt my ability to live my own life correctly, so I also attract people who insist they can/should/will do that for me.
3. I don't know how to see myself as a person, and struggle to see others as more than concepts as well.

So that's that. Terrible things, awful truths and personal failings, that J didn't even write. Of course not! He doesn't know them. He doesn't talk about "himself." The concept of a self, of a body, is claustrophobic and terrifying to him.

How much of that is even true? How much is us making stuff up? Or exaggerating? Or throwing blame at others? Do we have any right to complain? It's in the past, it's in the past, it's in the past, it's gone, not real, gone


Ssh.
Let's slip into a related topic. I believe he wanted to discuss what happened last night?

Do you know?

No. But I know enough.

this is getting really fragmented and it may be a wise decision to just close up

NO THAT'S WHAT SHE WANTS YOU TO DO!!!


I don't want to talk about last night.

Then don't. Let us talk about today, instead.

SHE ALMOST HACKED YOU TODAY, DID YOU KNOW??!?

no

SHE DID. I GOT HER OUT. SHE SCARED DAVID. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU LET HER AT YOU.

guys, don't, PLEASE, I can't do this at this hour. go talk in your own journal please, not here, not here.

...okay. okay. Okay. Sorry about that. I can't exactly tell them to shut up when that's happening. And it's extremely rude and selfish of me, not to mention utterly inappropriate, to delete what they've written after it's been said.

Last night. Last night hurts too much. I can't say that outright yet. Not yet.
There were two successful hacks this week. First ones in months. You know that, right? I wrote them on the calendar.
We haven't been getting hacked in about two years, not like this, because Julie "switched sides" in 2011. I still have to wonder if that was genuine or not. It seems maybe the Tar wanted her to. That opened doors for it to hurt us in horrendous ways, ways it couldn't even dream of using while Julie was its avatar. But once she wasn't, IMMEDIATELY it started attacking J. The horrible Celebi event chain happened. Physical flashbacks started. The nightmares stopped, but only because they moved to the waking. J insisted he was possessed half the time. He began to lose his sense of will, his awareness of his own emotions and thoughts, because the Tar was now able to slip right in and get him to instigate hacks himself. If you hurt a man long enough, brutally enough, and tell him repeatedly that it is his fault, that he deserves it, that he even WANTS it... because he should, you say, as you tear him to pieces... eventually, against every fiber of sense and health in him, he will believe you. He will believe everything you tell him. And he will forget how to do otherwise.
That is what happened to J, you realize? A boy that badly broken, incapable of seeing his own scars. Incapable of bleeding his own blood. So badly twisted and manipulated, so used to running and lying and faking smiles, that he has forgotten how to do otherwise. A boy so badly hurt that he forgets how to cry, that he forgets how to laugh, that he wastes every moment watching for danger, hypervigilant. A boy who cannot share a room with another human being without panicking that they are going to assault him, or worse. A boy who lives his days smothered by lipstick-pink desires and temptations that he hates and fears and loathes and doesn't understand, but which he gives in to nevertheless because he is terrified of the alternative. He is terrified that if he says no, he will make things worse. But he is wrong. There is nothing, nothing worse than losing your soul because you've been convinced it's worthless in your own hands.
There is nothing worse than watching a boy lose his heart because he's been told that it's inherently filthy.
There is nothing, nothing more painful than seeing a young, beautiful boy forget what love is, because he's too used to trauma masquerading under that name.
There is nothing worse than seeing this child view the world through empty eyes, praying for death, when all he truly wants is to live, to live a life free from pain and terror and abuse. His nights are sick. His days are sicker. What do we do?
I do not know.
Can we do anything?
I do not know. He could, if anyone could. But you see what has happened.
Yes. I do see. It's a shame, a heartbreaking shame. He's not trying to hurt him.
I know. But he does. The boy is broken. You know so yourself. The slightest touch will break him further now.
Does the healing require such terrible pain, though?
I don't know.
I see.


....
i have a feeling that whatveer that cloud of text is , its important.
not going to even ATTEMPT to wriet anymore tonight,good night.
weekends are tough. everyone is home and there's a lot of noise. i get suicidal on weekends from the sheer overload of sensation. its easier than dealing with an assault on my five senses for 72 hours afeter all
i was so tierd and sad today i laid in bed for 2 hours listening to todd rundregn
after standing otuside in the sun for an hour and wanted to cry because i couldnt just go into the woods and lie down beneath the pines and stay there forever
i couldnt fly this evening they told me i wasnt joyful enough and you cant fly without joy, i was weighting myself down
i got myself tos mile and for a second i felt my wings come back, mayeb i could have flown a bit but no too much sad
last night last ngiht hurt so much
whoops j is gone sorry he must not want to talk about that

but im not allowed to talk here too uh oh seee you