1228

[prismaticbleed]

technically it's 334 AM on the 29th and I'm uploading a few hospital entries but Tom Jones just came up on Spotify and reminded me that there's a topic I can't be running from and need to type about.

First things first, a quick note. Thanks to our being unable to properly manage family stress, the 23rd-25th were nightmarish. But... our heart didn't shut down. That's ASTOUNDING. Despite literally attempting suicide at midnight on Tuesday, the Core still CHOSE to have hope despite the hell. Massive emphasis on "chose" by the way; there was no visible reason to keep going or to keep trying. ...but inside, there was everything.

The Core decided, with a sort of victorious fire, that since family demands took them away from anniversary celebrations and Christmas joy, that we were going to celebrate the season and System love for the next 54 days, literally until Valentine's Day. "Take that" to the evil forces trying to crush love. They are doomed to fail, always.

I'm updating, though, because on the morning of the 23rd and this morning (the 28th), I've had... strange dreams. I have not been sleeping well at all; last night I couldn't breathe and woke up every hour on the hour until like 5am, after which I finally crashed until noon or so. It was a terrible night. I didn't fall asleep until practically 6am on Friday morning. The past two weeks, at least, have been similar. Sleep has been poor, broken, hard to come by and hard to keep. December in general has been a frighteningly difficult month thanks to the family-- and I am being brutally sorrowfully honest in saying that; it is not hyperbole; we've been keeping track of stressors and that is the #1 constant-- and because of that we've been somewhat out of touch with headspace, at least compared to the ideal. But we haven't shut down. We haven't gone numb. That's AMAZING. In past years, we... in past years such circumstances often ended with "reset attempts" or... the 27th was the 11th "anniversary" of the massacre. we didn't think about it. honestly i don't even remember the 27th. no one's been keeping daily journals so memory just disappears. we need to upload the emotion logs from that godsend "how we feel" app soon but other than that, there's no active memory.
still i don't think we're capable of thinking about the massacre right now. for some reason that trauma is... the wounds feel like they've been re-opened lately. especially for laurie. i'm sure something happened that caused this but i can't remember what. like i said, memory is shot. but i won't force anyone to look at that data before we're ready. and we are not. i sure am not, the few flashes i have access to (third person data) are harrowing enough. i literally shake every time i glimpse them. now is not the time to face that fully, not yet. but we can't deny or ignore it either. there has to be a balance here, as with all trauma processing, and that's delicate, difficult discernment work. forcing things will just make it all so much more terrifying. and you cannot read that data, or look at it, casually. it will destroy you whether you let yourself feel it or not. and i want to feel things now. so no haphazard reviews. if i face it, i will do so with reverent gravity, aware of how hard it is going to hit and bleed. i'm not ready for that yet. there's... i think there are other things to deal with first. as odd as that sounds. things led to the massacre, after all.

on that note. i return to the initial point. strange dreams.
you know, family stress aside, i'm the most shocked & stunned that these dreams aren't making me shut down and push everyone away and want to die or destroy everything in their wake. part of me feels "guilty" and scared about that fact. "am i so numb that i won't fight anymore?" "have i just gotten so used to it that i don't even care?" but no, that's... that's not what's happening. the "default response" shouldn't be suicidal destructive rage. that's missing what my subconscious is apparently actually trying to grapple with here.
gosh i just don't ever say this sort of thing outright, do i. i don't know how. i don't understand why this is happening. oh wait, yes i do. we've been watching media clips from a show we pointedly avoided for years because of how massively triggering it is, but someone didn't tag a few gifsets on tumblr so we saw them and we were moved & curious as to how THAT kind of show built up to THIS apparently happening in it, and so we unblocked the whole thing and started to look into it and it's surprisingly helping us process trauma better than therapy did. that's the short answer.
there's an entry in the works that will inevitably elaborate on this but it's not written yet. too little time, ironically, up until 4am typing and forgetting that we need to sleep. not tired at all. this is crazy why are we so exhausted but we can't get tired anymore, is that burnout too ironically?
now i'm wondering if that is playing into these dreams too. trauma all over the place. last night we relived it. but... we didn't want to die when we woke up?
listen i'm just going to be blunt
last night, i dreamed about the pink drowning event. that day that was the closest i ever got to dying (until 2013 of course).
i... i don't... i haven't thought about that night in a long time, because of the trauma it was soaked through with. but... apparently my dreams are reminding me that it only happened because of love and if it was saturated with anything it was that.
...2012 still haunts me too. i haven't talked to chaos 0 about that, not in a while. did we ever sit down and just talk through that? i know we've talked about and around it, briefly, like we even did today, but... we've never had a discussion. honestly we should have a xanga session about it, about this, about how my heart won't shut down even with THAT now and I don't know if Anxi literally rewired my circulatory system or what but this has never happened before. i wasn't capable of this before, this resolute devotion to love and hope that REFUSES to let trauma ruin the deeper truth of things anymore. i am COMMITTED to the fight. i really don't think i could do this before Anxi showed up. God only knows what she did, but something integral finally shifted into the right place. there's a reason why my main term for endearment for her is "mi vida." she has changed my life so much. i owe her so much. chaos 0 does too, by extension. if it affects me, it affects him. both directions. 

how do i even talk about this.
i don't think i can. i think i need to talk with him about this. and laurie, because she keeps me from losing my mind. i... i would say "and infi" but ze's... not around. i can't say the other word. i won't. i'm committed to that hope now, too, after having seen hir in flashes during church and when walking past the roses outside... just glimpses, but i know somehow that hir soul isn't dead. it's just... in the black somewhere. i can't hold hir. i can't... it breaks my heart. but one day. i swear. i'll do whatever it takes. i have to. God give me strength. i want hir back but I have to be the sort of person who CAN have hir back. infi is a daengel; if ze's going to return to me it has to be through my heart. and... right now my heart's a bit of a disaster. is it? i think it's the whole of us, all our poor battered koinofoni, everyone struggling, the fact that outside stressors are keeping us from the inside, and that's where infi will return, i'm holding on to that "will" like a drowning man, like a prayer. it really is a prayer.
but. there's too much prayer happening in those bleeding dreams, too, pun possibly intended, in a way i'd never admit outright on my own. but i have to. we haven't talked about this sort of thing in many years. i think this is where all the... oh good lord i just realized what song is playing on spotify. i thought it sounded familiar. god it just hit like a sword through my chest, it's leviathan, of all things to play when i'm talking about this...

listen, it's 430 am. it's been an hour. our brain still isn't tired but it feels like it's unraveling. we really do need to try and sleep. i'll return to this topic tomorrow. it's too important to put off any longer.
until then i'm going to go crash on that vanillamint couch with my beloved blue guy in my arms and probably weep from the quiet beauty of you're still here after 21 years, so am I, and here we are, as simple as that. "when i saw you, i fell in love." and it's... i don't think I can lose that anymore, even for a moment. i don't think i can doubt it at all. considering how past cores used to... which immediately makes me remember these two xangas (this one came up too, and i feel i need to reread it so here's a reminder)... that makes me genuinely very happy.
and yet, just happiness? there's still a numbness over everything. anxi's been affected by it the most strikingly. it upsets me a great deal. why this sedation, this suppression? it's like everything has been anaesthetized. has it? but... at least nothing is shutting down. maybe that's why. maybe we're at a weird halfway point.

talks need to happen. not now. it's almost 5am and i keep forgetting we have to be awake in a few hours.
if we want to go to church (we do) then that means only 5 hours of sleep... lord have mercy. i know we "already fulfilled our sunday obligation" with the vigil mass today but... i don't know, would it be wrong to sleep in until noon again? just so we can get around 7 hours and not collapse. i think the poor esthiofoni are so unstable this month because of the lack of sleep on top of all the stress.

but i want to continue this in earnest. i know i started this entry with the intention of saying a lot more than i have here. but... i like this outcome better. i think talking together about this is the better option. it'll require that i feel things.
so. tomorrow. i have to. no putting this off. if family makes that impossible then monday, after the medical appointment & after we return the car to the mother. hopefully that's not too late either. but i want to discuss this with him asap, even if we have to start at 11pm. it has to happen. laurie make sure
aha she's furious that i'm still awake ("i'm not furious, kid, i'm just angry from how worried i am about you") she has a good point. passive self-abuse like this (it counts, don't sugarcoat it) has been all too common this month.

time to sleep. i really do want to be with chaos 0 right now in any case. everything else can wait.
see you tomorrow. or later tonight, haha. time is weird at 448am. at least i feel alive right now.