senseless

[prismaticbleed]

 

(two notes because I have no time to update today)

- awful waking up stuff. julie trying to hack us, got through for a while, and ultimately tried to attack infinitii. he refused and told her to leave him alone, but she refused-- and infi actually had the idea to shout "rape" in response. this was actually genius as it got sugar's attention and she immediately showed up to fight julie off. (i infamously almost never call for help when i'm in trouble; it's an old and bad survival response.) julie didn't think sugar had the guts to fight her if it came down to that, but sugar's hook-swords apparently changed her mind after a minute and she bailed before sugar could deal actual damage. infi thanked her, and they actually began to talk to each other a little about the situation, but I was starting to get incredibly woozy (I had just woken up after all, hence the hack) and couldn't hold any awareness of that. but infi noticed, and immediately called down (loudly!), "jay, get out of that bed right now." I willed myself to do that as quickly as possible, then got out of the room fast. infi thanked me for responding so quickly, as we were in real danger, I said I knew that and that's why I pushed the body to obey right away (sometimes it's near impossible to get it to respond despite risks). he and sugar said they'd be extra vigilant for the rest of the day just in case julie tried to finish the job or something.

-angelorei helping the car today again! I miss them. they're my favorite jewel monster species; I used to always see them surrounding the car on family road trips, guiding us so we wouldn't get in accidents. there was one right outside my window smiling at me (I was a passenger today), he said not to worry, I could even close my eyes if I wanted to, that was how much I could trust their protection. it was a really great feeling to know that, so I did.

 

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@ 06:23 pm

 

Major trigger warning for this whole thing, System members too. I need to get this filth out of my head.

I hate how trauma can make your worst fear the biggest part of your life. Isn’t that ridiculously ironic? I spent years avoiding something so completely I had to break my own mind to stay separate from it… and then one day it slipped through the cracks anyway, with a scream of victorious hatred, and thus every facet of my existence became tainted.

Today I was driving home from church through town in the twilight, and at a stoplight, I glimpsed some girl moving through an upper window in a home I didn't recognize. The blinds were mostly drawn, and she was wrapped up in coats, but I found my mind thinking, instinctively, desperately, strangely-- let her take those off. Let me get a glimpse of innocent skin. And with a jolt, I stared at those thoughts in total shock, realizing what that meant.
Once college hit, and I found myself finally convinced that it was "impossible to be asexual or queer," I began to obey my mother's loud suspicions and force myself to "become a lesbian," even though I was actively pushing against every actual inclination or lack thereof in my body. I shoved all fears of Julie under the rug, and tried to reassure myself by repeating, "it's harder for a woman to rape you." I felt I had no other option to consider, not as long as I refused to acknowledge my own identity. Still, even then it was impossible for me to even pretend to like cis men: the crushing fear of being in a 'straight' relationship, the total invalidation of my inner self, and worse, the forever-looming horror of my biological parts in that context were insurmountable obstacles. So I had to like women, I told myself, choking down my dread. I had to become a lesbian. And Julie sneered in anticipation.
I was ignoring something though. I had felt sincere love towards females in my youth, but it was all innocent. It was all childlike, admiring, the desire to be someone's "best friend forever," except even as a child, I added and then some. I wanted those girls to let me adore them. I wanted the sort of total, boundary-less intimacy I craved from life itself and never received… but whenever I tried to express that, it was met with grimaces, with disgust, with bewilderment, and sometimes even fear or anger. What I wanted was just not asked for. And if no one was willing to let me in like that, ever, then I was doomed to be alone.
Except I never stopped hoping. Even when Julie jumped on the sudden shock of teenage health classes and started hissing in my ear, "you know you want to f*ck them," "you're SUPPOSED to want sexual relationships," et cetera… even then, she couldn’t entirely corrupt that innocent need of mine. But it got devastatingly filthied in the process.
Despite that data being clear, I cannot remember a time when, to me, intimacy and affection and closeness were not completely infected by sexuality and lust, either forced on me by others, or faked for my own survival. The problem is, on top of that childhood rejection, I also never had the luxury of familial closeness. My parents were not affectionate. Any time I tried to show affection to my brothers, past a certain very young age, it was viewed as inappropriate. I quickly learned to be ashamed of my own burning desire for love, not the fake-plastic kind plastered on billboards and magazine centerfolds, but actual love, pure and simple: the feeling of warmth in winter, the sound of bells at sunrise.
To be honest, I was no stranger to distant, impersonal love. I knew my family cared about me because they paid for my schooling, they made sure there was food on the table, they bought me presents for my birthday. But hugs were rare, words of compassion were rare, closeness and openness in general were both rare. And THAT was what I wanted-- or at least, I assume I did, because that aching need still haunts me now, still honest, and still blackened beyond recognition most days.

This all feels so alien. I'm talking about secondhand memories as if they were mine, and it's making me extremely switchy and dissociated. I need to stop that; I'm confused enough without trying to pretend I experienced things that I don't even understand.
That's, sickly, part of this too. Let's get back to that point.

You all know I struggle with self-identity. When someone speaks to me, or otherwise includes me in the bubble of their personal existence, I feel that I must become them, that I must become an extension of their identity. Despite its obligatory nature, it is not forced, nor is it unwilling. I don't want to be different than someone else when I am with them. I don't want to be some sort of conflicting, harmful thing, even if I'm not, but I don't seem able to understand that. Around others, that old "merge drive" of mine kicks in, and I get the overwhelming need to just melt into everything else. I will shift and change and alter every facet of myself, even if it's painful, even if I don't really want to, because ultimately that self-sacrificing love-- which isn't really true love if it is willing to massacre my own health in the process-- values their self and life and identity far above my own. When I am around another individual, suddenly individuality becomes nonexistent for me. Does this make sense? I am incapable of being separate from other people, whenever they are no longer separate from me, even if it's only as close as a "hello."

So… putting all these pieces together in that instant at the stoplight, I realized what the sadly malformed thoughts were really about, concerning the girl in the window.
To my mind, if she did show her "innocent skin," it would have been intentional. It would have been practically an invitation. Not in the sense that Julie would think, but in the sense I always hoped and longed for-- "you're allowed to get this close to me." Simply, harmlessly. Without the mask of clothing, one is completely vulnerable, completely open, unable to hide their most basic shape… naked in the purest sense of the word. And I did want that. I wanted to be that close to her, to someone, to ANYONE, without the slightest risk of abuse in it. But in that openness, in that allowing me to be so near her, would have taken the identity-less drive of mine and kicked it up to 11. See, a merge drive felt while there is still significant space between me and another is one thing. A merge drive felt when the two of us are practically one shape is another thing entirely. And that's exactly what I realized I wanted in that closeness, to become so close that I ceased to be a person. I wanted to lose my entire identity and melt into them.
And the quickest way to do that is to dissociate. So you understand why I force myself into 'sexual' contexts? I can get the closeness I want, sure, but I'm so unbearably terrified that I shut off immediately, and don't come back until hours later maybe… I lose my entire identity, in the wrong way.
But ultimately, the only thing I want with those young girls, those sweet little things, is to destroy what identity I have left, to melt into them, if only to feel, however fleetingly, their innocence, their total purity, which I lost so long ago.
And I hate that I'm in this old body. I hate it so much. To them, now, I probably look like a rapist too. But inside I'm just as small and scared and fragile as them, just a little boy in a little girl's body. And nothing makes sense anymore.

I've never had sex. I know, I always try to make it sound like I have, but that's forcing misunderstanding on myself too, you know? That's forcing sexual overtones onto everything and anything, which is stupid and hellish. But no, I have never, not ever, been with someone in that way. I don't know what it's even like, nor do I EVER want to. The problem is, after so many godforsaken years of having sex and lust drilled into my brain until it bled, how was I supposed to know what anything else was like? I'd never had the opportunity to be honestly close to someone, ever. The only closeness I ever got was when some pigtailed slut was forcing herself upon me, insisting that THAT was what I really wanted. It's all devilish lies. I DON'T WANT IT, I never did, and God help me but I still don't feel I have the luxury of admitting that, or even viewing that as valid, not when the entire American media empire keeps telling me that people like me don't exist. What's that, they say, you're asexual? Oh you poor thing, that's not a real orientation! You're just confused, you're just a late bloomer, you just haven't met the right person, you just haven't had good sex yet… and then they wonder why Sugar wants to tear their throats out. They wonder why the children won't stop screaming no matter what they insist is right. And they tell me I need to "get over it" when I have emotional breakdowns at the slightest hint of physical contact. Like me, they don't have the luxury of a different frame of reference. To them, it's impossible for someone to not like sex… and as the years went on, I began to panic, because what if Julie was right?
And so it lingers. The cursed stuff lingers. Someone brushes against me? They're going to hurt me. Someone hugs me? They're going to rape me. And forget anything like kissing or touching-- I will flat-out shut down because God forbid, I do NOT want to be around for what comes next, I would rather not even exist.
Except sometimes a touch or a hug or a kiss is just that. Affection. Closeness. If a child kisses you, it's because they love you, as guilelessly as they might love their puppy dog or teddy bear. But I never got to experience that. So I don't have that frame of reference. I don't have the ability to tell when intimacy isn't sexual now, because when I finally got to experience it, it was, and it never failed to be so. I don't HAVE any other experience!
Do you have any idea how heartbreakingly horrific that is? I'm unable to have friendships, or admirations, or family ties, because that perpetual crushing need to be close to people will not die, but NEITHER will the hardwired lie that that need of mine is based on lust, something I can't even comprehend. And yet, in fear, I force it onto everything.
I really do love people, you know? I really do. There are some people I adore so fervently that I would die for them. But my brain refuses to believe that I can love them without wanting to have sex with them. And I hate myself for it, because I don't feel I can say no.

I'm going in circles. Again.
This stuff keeps getting dragged out onto paper. This is probably the thousandth time I've written those exact same paragraphs, in different words. I know I need to just let it go. I know. Holding onto it is just going to poison me further.
But what about healing? What about the reality of pain, that it shows me that something is wrong, and needs to be mended? Every time I try to let go, I end up simply turning a blind eye to the fact that I'm practically crucified at this point. I need to take these nails out of my hands and feet, for good, but if I refuse to face the inevitable blood, I won't get anywhere.
I'm tired. I'm tired and sad and yet at the same time I know the truth now, that's something I've never had before, and because of it I can't seem to quite lose my hope anymore.

I think I'm going to print this out. I'm going to print this out, and take it to the therapist on Thursday, because this is the central hell of my daily existence and I still haven't had the guts to bring it up to her yet. Maybe that's why this happened tonight? Maybe all I needed was to be reminded that yes, some ugly roots are still stuck in here, and you need to work through them. After all I haven't given this issue any thought lately, despite the fact that it never seems to go away.

Stupid as it may make me, though, this is making me ill, and I don't want to think about it anymore.
There's too much hope trying to shine through my eyes.

"...Are you still stuck attempting to define what you are experiencing in the Now based on what you were taught by your elders in the past? If only you could see yourselves as we see you, in your magnificent Wholeness. It already exists...Are your dreams a little more intense lately? Do you “see” things at the edge of your peripheral vision? Are you experiencing visions? Are you feeling moody and emotional? You’re going through a period of complex growth and development right now. Be kind to yourself. Do not fall back into self-judgment for your seeming lack of progress, dear ones, for you are forging ahead into a new world of your making, one that has never existed before, anywhere, in this entire Universe."

It's hilarious, hilarious and sad. Every time someone tries to reset or kill the System, it's because they want to deny the things that caused us to exist in the first place. They want to ignore and deny all this abuse, they want to pretend it never happened. But then they never would have learned what they did, they never would have grown.
You have to acknowledge and accept suffering before you can overcome it... and love is the only thing that can heal the wounds of hatred and fear.
If there is one thing this System has taught me, it's love. There is so much love up here it breaks my heart from sheer joy to realize that we were somehow able to get THIS out of THAT. If I didn't already believe in miracles, that fact alone would have been enough to convince me.

I'm admittedly not sure who wrote the vast majority of this entry. I copy-pasted it from the upload log on our computer. I'll have to re-read it later, as I do see that bit about wanting to print it.
In any case, today was kind of tricky, but darn it we've been through worse and there was more than enough happiness hidden in the cracks of today to carry us through without a scar. I'm thankful for that.

Sorry about the mess, again. At least we're able to stand back and recognize it as such now, right?