aug 5 2015

 

My voice is getting deeper, it's so nice.
I got a little scared last night, as I was listening to some old voice recorder files we had of Ruby and Nienna singing, and I was impressed by their talent but very upset by the fact that there would be so many dysphoric meltdowns during performances, often with self-abusive switching, during 99% of all such performances.
See, somewhere down the line the mother reacted to our transition by saying "why would you want to destroy your beautiful voice and face???" and we were absolutely terrified after she said that, despite having wanted to transition for years before she said that, and being aware that things would indeed change. It didn't stop us-- the dysphoria was unbearable and we would "risk it" if she claimed that's what we were doing-- but that's just the thing. Who the heck was she to tell us what would happen to us? It was frustrating because it just felt like she was blowing everything out of proportion just so we would stay "normal." I'm sorry but we can't. We tried and it nearly killed us inside.
But we still sing. And our voice is fine. Higher notes are still funny as our voice is still changing but we CAN still sing and it's losing the dysphoria more and more by the day. So that's why this is so nice.



I'm still battling depression. It's bad because I haven't been able to feel it, with a few very wrenching exceptions after hacks, and those breakdowns are all felt by specific people.


Today at work, Laurie and Jay found the actual Cel in our System (the one with original roots in Dream World, who HAS a personality and is benevolent but who is also very much tangled in this abusive stuff), and talked to her for a while.
She's heartbroken over Jacinth still, and the Androgyne (who may or may not be using the name Iris). Cel has a deep need for close friendships, for closeness in general, but she expressed notable confusion over it? Talking to her we realized she's actually aromantic, which was surprising. Nevertheless she has some sort of need for closeness that she cannot fully grasp or even comprehend yet.
"Lost" hackers like Jacinth don't exist outside of abusive situations, because they have no identity outside of that, and do not WANT one, as they are incapable of feeling self-love at ALL. Therefore they cannot exist as people because they cannot bear the awareness of BEING a person. This makes their sexually abusive behavior bizarre, because they perform it almost robotically, claiming it's "because they love someone," when they cannot define that term if you ask them, and they definitely cannot answer the question "well who are you, that is loving someone else?" They can't. They just go through the motions because they "have to" and because there's this bizarre mindset of self-annihilation attached to it, with the explicit dissociation and depersonalization and resulting suicidal shutdowns. It's a mess.
Cel doesn't want that stuff but she says she's just as confused in a way, she doesn't know what she wants other than that wish for Jacinth and the others to be people she can care for. She was really struggling with language, I'm sorry, we all need to discuss this more.
But she's sad. She's sad and she doesn't know what quite to do and we need to work with her. But she's not a threat. She's okay. She doesn't seem to be traumatized at all, only terribly terribly sad, and lost.

She says she doesn't want to be part of Central as it doesn't feel right, and that's making us wonder if there really are "two Spectrums," one for headvoices and one for "Outspacers." Who knows. We'll see. Heartspace and Headspace are linked but they might indeed have their own thing going on there.

Spice is working very well with people OUTSIDE the house. Like we said, when we're not at home we're not worried. All the abusive habits kick back in in the same environments that remind us of them, of past triggers, etc. We're getting more aware of it and it's a bit-by-bit process. I just wanted to reiterate, people are listening with more compassion to the E.D. managers and that compassion IS helping. Trying to talk to emotionless faceless programs will NOT help, it's impossible. We have to talk to PEOPLE inside who CARE and let them run the show instead.



Something we realized over the past two days:
viewing the body as a "person" or "self" makes it ABUSIVE, PROUD, AND SELFISH.
viewing the body as a "vessel" or "vehicle," AS A "SKELETON," gives it the vibe of patient calm gentle discernment that SPINE HOLDS SO STRONGLY.
THIS IS WHY SHE'S IMPORTANT. SHE IS THE CORRECT BODY MANAGER.




I'm so nauseous from stress.
I spent all evening researching suicide for both Mage Angels and my own morbid data storing and it just made me feel... what do you call this. Sad? Low? Not empty, more like... scraping at the bottom of a fishtank. There's a thin keening sort of despair to it but largely, it's a broad flat hard sort of rubble, something so existentially blank that the simple reality of it is what causes the despair. It's hard to put into words.

There's a very heartbreaking sort of despair-induced "apathy" running through Central lately, as we see the most. It's not quite apathy, it's more like... we're so shellshocked by the persistent shit we keep dealing with, what do we do? We can't cope well anymore, the emotions (both new and old) are so terrifyingly raw that we can't figure out how to feel them, there's so much trauma recovery that we're struggling with... we're trying. But we're deeply shaken. We're cold and tired and don't know how to face the monotonous repetitive pain and fear with this negative headspace shit, and our worries about the body.
There are still suicidal alters in this body and we're starting to not fight back.
It's still scary. The pain is scary. There's so much blood on this body and a lot of it is impossible to hide now. We forget it's there. People stare, shocked. We don't even know how to hide the truth anymore. There's no shame when someone sees the wounds, just that same awful feeling like a violin string pulled tight, too tight, in our heart. We're just so damn lost.
But we're trying. We're still alive. And we know we don't really want to die. Not literally, not completely, anyway.
But there's a lot of stuff in us, and especially in this body, that we want dead. Ideally. Then again things exist for a reason, even those things.


I don't like that icon. It feels too much like that rocky scrape feeling. It's Cannon-days stuff. I don't like it at all.

Our memories have become sufficiently alien and depersonalized for everything prior to 2013 to feel like memories of a movie we saw once. It's so distant. Someone tried to look at 2004 memories earlier today and it physically hurt to try and dig that far back. Memories are really only accessible via headvoices anymore, if they hold them. Sheer data-wise... Sherlock has the books but like I said, they hurt to read. Headaches and strain and confusion. A feeling of childlike frustration from the exhaustion. And what do we get from it, anyway? Just more data. None of it is tied to us anymore, not personally.
But it happened, once, at some point, to someone.

It's so hard to grapple with, the reality that "at some point Julie was "evil" and highly abusive," "our family was technically abusive in psychological, emotional, and spiritual ways, many people have said this," things like that. "We have a long and upsetting history of abusive friendships," too, that hit home today when the grandmother brought up the topic. And again, all we had to go on was data banks.

Sorry. This is getting very negative and I do not want to talk like this.


What I'm trying to say is... it's weird. This isn't quite "depression." We're awake and alive.
But... something feels wrong. We're not doing what we should be doing? We're not where we should be? Something. Something we're messing up. Stagnation on a level that should not be standing still.

Work is, ironically, a huge factor in this. We're just not good with this schedule thing, we never were. We lost almost FOUR YEARS due to our first job causing this same damn sort of dissociative loop and we do not want this repeating, but the past four weeks are already an abuse-racked blur and frankly we do not want this continuing.
But we have medical bills to pay and it is nice to have some spending money and we DO love this job, it's just... we get so tired, and I don't know why anymore. It's something else, I think it's coming "home" after it all. Working and then returning to a very not-comfortable in the big picture environment.
What to do. Just live, right now.

We are meditating more. The body is kind of forcing it. We just have to do it carefully because our natural tendency is to go way deep and then our vision is screwed up for an hour.
We're re-reading all the encouraging and reassuring words we've gotten and those are helping immensely, brightening our sense of hope and self-worth despite everything else.


You know, that IS still a big thing. Hope and Light. We don't ever lose them.
We're so much closer inside now that we ever were. Nathaniel was talking to Laurie and Lynne for a while at work too and that was so nice, he is such a sweet guy, his vibe is one of the most peaceful in the entire Spectrum. Having him around is very calming in and of itself.
Lynne is doing a bit better, she's taking it day by day but I really think we're going to have to sit down with her and TALK about things, like cleaning out a wound. She's obviously burying her hurt and although I understand that, burying it just causes trauma zombies later.
I want to talk to the kids. Jay was trying very hard to help Moxie and Ashen today but there's so much hurt in them. I want to help them.
This is getting really switchy. It's late and someone wants to cry and maybe we should type elsewhere.

Therapy is tomorrow! We're still at the verge of vomiting from stress (family and financial stress is bad lately and those two things link together; we're managing the best we can but it's still just heavy stuff) but that at least will help, we hope. Going to have to be super careful afterwards though because post-therapy evenings are typically deadly and we've been getting BAD flashbacks and mindset lapses lately so. Massive coping methods will be needed.
We haven't been exercising well lately due to fatigue and fear of ending up in the ER again, but again, we're trying. Little bits during the day if nothing else.

I'll tell you what though. I'm tired of self-pity. I'm tired of misery.
I'm tired of this weird family-based childhood compulsion that "suffering is good" and "you're not suffering enough" and why the hell do we keep effectively FORCING ourselves into more trauma, why?? We all realize it's not helping anyone, at all. But there's an old old program that is saying "you must. Someone hurt more than you, once. You must match that. You must understand." But why? I don't get it.
I don't want to sound selfish or proud in that. But is it really necessary for us to force ourselves through all this extra pain in order to be "good" and "compassionate" and "empathetic" and "human?"
I read a quote today on this self-pity thing:
"Self-pity is so addictive because it gives us the momentary pleasure of being supported, cared for and emotionally pampered. This is a dangerous, highly maladaptive way of developing emotional bonds and connections with other people."
That's the thing. Everyone in our System who CAN and does feel that, has issues with not knowing how to be close to other people without expecting immediate abuse. So, using self-pity is a desperate bargain to feel temporary care from others, at least ideally. In truth what we do get from self-pity is all negative, and it feeds the self-hating process. So it's not helping anyone.
But the truth is, some part of our psyche is STILL so upset that it believes that the only way it can recieve forgiveness and compassion is through expressing its potent self-hate and hoping, terribly, that someone trustworthy will speak up and convince them otherwise.
What we need to do is heal those kids.

I think more heavy-duty shadow work is due. We've been too far detached from "the great unknown" with all of this drama outside, with the family and the job and everything else. And THAT is exhausting, and maybe that is feeding into this inexplicable "drive" to hurt ourselves: maybe we're just blindly reflecting the atmosphere? Which is unwise, but "blindly" is the key term. Again, it's willpower and clarity that need to be exercised here.
We NEED to spend more time inside, JUST inside. Not during work, not during other things, that just causes dissociation again. We need to take legitimate time out to get OUT of the family life buzz, just get OUT and go inside ourself instead. We haven't done that in a while which might just explain why we've been sick for a while.

To be honest I miss the "quiet nothing" that's way deep down under all the noise. The clear place, inside and outside space. I still go there off and on during the day but I need to just stick around for a while. Problem is, as always, it's addictive. We get so absolutely entrenched in our inner world(s) that we forget to go back outside. It's a delicate dance we haven't mastered yet, the balance of being able to live physically while being aware that it's not all its cracked up to be, it's not all there is, it's not worth getting so messed-up over.
There's a LOT we have to redefine and relight inside, after all this unintended confusion from all the stuff we read and see and are exposed to. Again, going back inside and just trusting our self is really one of the best options here. Supplementary material is great but really it all feels like reminders. I'm not rejecting it, I'm just... admittedly, I'm kind of avoiding it lately out of a sort of worry that I'll be using it as a crutch. Yes it helps, yes it helps get me back on the right path when things get so tangled. BUT remember SLC, remember that whole time period. It's also not good to spend hours every day online just reading. Then nothing gets applied, nothing gets lived, nothing inside lights up. It's just words. And then we get exhausted and tired and sad and upset and "why, this is all good, this is what I should be doing," dude you keep saying that this is all reflecting "what you already know inside" so GO BACK IN THERE.
There's so much guilt around that though. Why? It's spiritual guilt. We'll work to heal that.

It's not bad to "do healing work" either. Facing your shadows with compassion is NOT "feeding your ego" just because you might have to exist as an individual in order to do so. See, this is where the trouble with redefining terms come in. The articles help but the vocabulary gets confusing. But we get the gist of it.

The most important thing we need to remember is that what works for others might not work for us in the exact same way.
That, and there is always a strong chance we might be totally misinterpreting what is being said. Hence, the "listen to others but follow your own heart" thing.
Yes we need to hold on to optimism and hope and peace and all that. But that does NOT mean stepping all over our damaged child parts, or ignoring the damaged teen parts, or pretending any negative voice inside doesn't exist or isn't worth acknowledging. That's really abusive.
Shadow work needs to be done, and that means giving love, REAL love, strong compassionate protective love, to all those broken sad parts.
I reiterate: IT IS OKAY TO HEAL.
It's this "identity" thing, we get so thrown off by what others say about those terms, we keep trying to annihilate our individuality and that's not good either. There's a difference between being "caught up in egotistic illusion" and "experiencing this life in a unique way." It is NOT EVIL to be an individual!! I'd say talk about this with the therapist too but really I think more outside opinions on this issue are just going to exacerbate things. We need to sit down and put our own experiences/ thoughts on this into words, to clarify that issue so we don't get thrown off by accident again.
I apologize. I'm starting to ramble.


That's all I can bear to type for tonight. I feel sick and I need to recover from the mood of this evening. Positivity, the right kind, is needed.
One thing that always works is having Jay come out and just spend time with Chaos 0. When those two are in tune with who they REALLY are the resulting joy/love/etc. just radiates through the whole System and really it helps us all out.
It's late anyway, we really do need to stop (again) forcing ourselves to "tough it out" on 5 hours or less of sleep a night, just because "the other people in my family don't sleep well." That doesn't mean you aren't allowed to sleep well. But that's a powerful old misguided mindset that needs to be healed, like I said, that fear that "if I do well and others are hurting, then I am being abusive in "flaunting my success" while they suffer!" That isn't true dude, remember the anology of airmasks on an airplane. Can't help someone else if you're suffocating. You deserve care too. Do that and then use that healthy state to help others reach the same state.

Good night everyone.