103017

[prismaticbleed]

 

 

woke up around 9am with horrific stomach pain to the point of our head spinning. went on for a few hours, continuing from last night and yesterday.
at least we weren't a moody horror from it like yesterday, which we feel awful about. but we still had such a difficult time getting out of bed. just didn't feel right. sick and wrong and stuffed with dirty cotton. just not wanting to get up ever.

woke up again later, 1pm?
did we talk trauma? memory is so bad. i have a feeling something vague but important was discussed.
feeling so warm and safe in oliver's arms. the contrast nearly made us weep. to feel so ill and undeserving, so alien to ourself, and yet to STILL have this, to have him, to have them... god. that's the definition of unconditional love. please remember that always.
i remember we talked to kris. we mentioned that we missed him terribly, and he showed up. i remember laughing and crying in tired grateful happiness, just for the fact of his existence, the casual appearance of him, the reality of his existence anything but a casual thing. the reality of being two systems wrapped up in bodies in the sunlight sparkling through the blinds. shadows and light dancing in the cold. the warmth we were wrapped in. the voices that are not ours and are ours and are everyone's. words of protection and love and friendship and understanding. community. connection. it's worth the world.

got out of bed around 3pm.
still having troubles with our stomach. down to 98 pounds on the scale. not sure what to do. worried about dehydration on top of everything else. but we'll manage. we'll take care of ourself. we always do our best. we promise. you know this.

breakfast was a compulsion-caused mistake, as we made too much. instead of what we wanted-- just cilantro and cucumber, to ease our stomach-- we thought "but we HAVE to have protein!" so we put like 5 eggs in there because we planned on not eating again until like 9pm or so. that's no excuse. three eggs is ALL we can stomach and we KNOW that. but no. you "HAVE" to have more. you "HAVE" to cook them in more oil than necessary because you "HAVE" to eat tons of fat so you can "gain weight" and be a "good kid."
it's awful and it makes us miserable, miserable.
also we really don't like hot sauce, i don't think. it's okay, sure, but now, it feels like a chore to keep adding it. we don't quite enjoy it, and nor does our poor stomach. but we like something about it and until we PAY ATTENTION to what and figure that out, we'll keep blindly feeling "obligated" to douse our poor food in it "because we LIKE it, right??" therefore we "HAVE to use it."
this forced fearful panicked obligation-compulsion is our BIGGEST obstacle to healing, hands down.

anyway. we sat and watched the finale for stranger things. it was super good. left a lot of unanswered questions which is also super good. ended on a happy note but also without erasing the looming threat of what lies beyond and may resurface again, there or elsewhere. 100% happy with both seasons in any case.
dustin is still our fave, second is mike, third is hopper? every character is great. eleven is great, will is great, lucas is great, joyce is great, johnathan and nancy and max and even d'artagnan are great. even the ones that scare us-- max's brother, mike's mom-- are well written and have so much history to them, history tied to that little town and each other and everything. we love that. there's a lot to think about, and we love that too.

then we mentioned that hulu had season 2 of the good place up, so we watched episodes 3-6. now we're caught up!
the whole thing with 5 & 6, with the ethics dilemmas, michael learning to be human and not even realizing, and the constant brilliant humor written in (mostly from jason), was fantastic. we're so interested to see where this goes. especially with janet! she's awesome.
but yes, today was a tv day and that's lovely because we haven't been able to just sit and watch tv since what, elementary school? like 2003. and television means inspiration means league growth means outspacer possibilities means empathy with humanity means creativity out the chimney. media is a blessing. we adore it. it feels so nice to get back into it.

mason came home and we had a minor depressive crash immediately prior due to "fear that he's going to expect us to do something bad," which we realized was both family-toxicity projection AND self-doubt projection. we are so used to people EXPECTING us to be bad, defining us as sick and depressed and dishonorable, that we feel we HAVE to be. we feel our definition has been written as such, and if we DON'T play that role, we'll be even worse. we'll disappoint them even more. we'll make them look bad. we'll be liars.
that's all false. WE ARE GOOD. WE ARE HAPPY. WE HAVE HEALTHY HABITS. WE TAKE CARE OF OURSELF.
but that all needs to be correctly defined, too.
we need to learn to be PATIENT with our healing. truly patient. right now, we keep thinking, "we're so sick of being a broken mess. we're so sick of our illness causing you pain and worry. we're sick of being a burden. therefore we have to fix everything ALL AT ONCE, NOW."
it doesn't work. we keep doing it, desperate. but it doesn't work. it will always fail.
we need to learn that even if healing is slow, it does not mean that we're being lazy. it simply means that a broken bone heals slower than a paper cut. that's fine! but if you refuse to let the bone set, if you keep irritating it and jostling it, it's going to heal wrong. and then you'll have to break it all over again, and re-set it, and wait even longer, for it to heal properly.
that is EXACTLY what we are dealing with.

so mason made dinner. thank god.
dinner is a HUGE trigger for us, we've realized. food + darkness + isolation + yellow light = VERY BAD VIBES & FLASHBACKS. also blackouts, time loss, lockouts, etc. it is very very unhealthy. we need to STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN once the sun sets. no exceptions.
so mason made biscuits and gravy and eggs and sausage and it was amazing. we sat and ate it all and enjoyed it greatly, BUT then we made a huge mistake. we thought, "this isn't enough. UPMC and our family would tell us to eat more fat. so we have to."
so we ate more of the gravy, and then-- even more stupidly-- thought, "that's not enough carbs. you HAVE to push carbs to gain weight. you have to, or you'll die." so we made a small bowl of grits, and added even more oil to that, again desperate to "heal everything NOW" because our poor brain legitimately thinks "if you eat all this oil and carbs NOW, you'll never have to eat it again!! you'll be DONE." because we still struggle with understanding the progression of time. we still struggle to accept that we WILL wake up in the morning, and have to eat all over again, and that's so exhausting and overwhelming. so we try to "get it all done right now" so that tomorrow we "won't have to eat." that's not how it works. but it explains our compulsion to eat as much as we can in one go-- if we "finish it all," then we are free. it's over. we can live now.
except then we have to sleep, and wake up, and once we wake up we have to eat again, even if we don't want to, and now there are OTHER PEOPLE who are going to suffer if we keep up this garbage because it is THEIR FOOD that we are eating.
do you understand that? no, because our object permanence is abysmal. when ollie is at work we forget he exists. when mason is asleep we forget he exists. we're alone, like we always have been, and maybe if we finish all the food, we can die in peace. nothing left unfinished. no traces left of us. everything done and dusted. sterile and clean. and so we can sleep forever.
that's not how it works anymore.
we're learning. slowly. everyone in the Spectrum already knows the truth. but everyone stuck on the social level still thinks it's 2009 or 2012 or 2016 and there's nothing to live for and no reason to hope for it and nothing left to do but hurt and bleed and die. to them, life is still a dead end. that's why they come out when ollie and mason are absent. it feels like their life never changed. darkness and yellow lights and stifling tiny kitchens. that's their entire life. what else to do, but die there?

but we survived. unfortunately, we stupidly put some mayo AND oil in the grits, therefore causing our stomach to absolutely revolt, and we ended up helplessly vomiting again. that is the worst feeling. our poor system just hitches and empties itself out of heavy nausea and we CANNOT keep it down. we have tried. it does not work.
but that was it. it "got rid of the poison" and then we decided "well let's at least eat something to make up for it" and so we had three small zucchini and an avocado, with a smidge of hot sauce in it. we've found that we do not like avocado-- which isn't a surprise, as those are actually VERY tied to disorder trauma in the past-- but we made that poor choice and had to follow through. at least it's food, i guess. it's just terrifying, that first hour after eating, when you can still feel the weight of it. to this day, to this moment, that is STILL a HUGE and terrifying hack trauma trigger. 99% of all hacks in the past coincided with eating. that filthy, slutty, heavy, sick feeling. all of it tied to food. no wonder we panic and want to throw up whenever we eat more than a tiny bit. as soon as we feel it, our body spasms and prepares for war. where's the abuser? where's the terror? i know it's coming. it always does. except now it doesn't. but out body is so used to that way of life that it perpetuates it itself.
the only way to break the cycle is to stop the cycle from looping in the first place.
eat less. stop eating out of those trauma-tied plastic bowls, PLEASE. eat what you want, what is safe. FORGET what upmc or the genetic fam told you you "HAD" to eat. if it made you sick, STOP. please. be kind to this body. if something makes you nervous or regretful or bitter or upset or sad or angry, STOP. you are no longer obligated to sacrifice yourself on other people's altars. you no longer have to earn love through blood. stop. stop.
let other people make our food for a while if you must. sacrifice THAT. offer up that damaged fear-driven choosing. surrender it to trust and love. you have people here that love you and want to take care of you. they do. i know it sounds impossible. but they do care.
if you don't know how to properly care for this body yet, let them show you how. it's okay.

our biggest fear is that, if we let people help us take care of ourself,
1) we are forcing them to sacrifice THEIR lives for us,
2) we are proving that we cannot be trusted with free will,
3) we cannot live on our own.
i pray to God that those are all false. (they are, a voice says.)
we don't want to be a burden, please God, we just need help. do we? yes. it takes more courage and self-love and humility to ask for help than it does to isolate ourselves and hide and cry and stumble through imitations of toxic people under the guise of "self care." no. stop. ask for help. please.
we don't want to steal time and joy away from people. we're already so, so scared that oliver cannot live his life now because we're being a greedy little parasite. he keeps saying otherwise-- he likes watching tv with us, he doesn't mind taking us to the store, he enjoys going places outside with us-- but we are still struggling with the concept. doesn't he want to live his own life, away from us? are we forbidding him from that? they NEED time to themselves, to love each other, to grow together. god we don't want to hinder their growth and life anymore just because we were "too selfish and weak to stay with our birth family."

we almost broke down in gross sobs last night because we were going through old photos on our hard drive and found pictures of last winter. of diamew in the snow, of diamew in the fog. of the christmas tree blazing pink. of presents all over the living room. of our old college campus. of our grandmother, our grandmother, the day we walked to church, the day we went to the tree lighting, the day she had a stroke.
we were so crushed by loss that we couldn't even think. we stopped archiving. just browsed tumblr for like five hours to numb our aching heart.
god we miss her. we really do. we miss what it feels like to hug her, to kiss her face, the smell of her hair, her bony frame, her voice. we miss her. she was our mother, as far as care and company is concerned. we miss her.
...but she is the same woman who raised us to think of god as waiting with the guillotine above our neck, who gaslighted us to believe that we could not truly feel love, who made us deny and bury our queerness and pluralness out of crushing shameful guilt. she is the same woman who met us at the airport in july insisting that "we had changed" and that we didn't love her or god or anyone anymore. insisting we were evil now. insisting we were bad and hollow and cruel now. refusing to listen when we said otherwise. this is the same woman who, when we finally tearfully dialed her last month, trying to apologize and assure her of our love, answered the phone with a cold accusation of apathy and hung up curtly enough to curdle our blood. we cried. we ached. what did we do wrong?

we walked oliver out to the car and the air was cold and clean and beautiful and it smelled like home. like our heart's home. like us.
we stood under the night sky and the clouds and the falling leaves and turning trees and i remember we said how we had been missing our genetic family, while also realizing with jarring bitter aching that what we missed was not what we would meet if we returned. we admitted all this, and then we admitted an even deeper truth-- that no matter what we felt or feared or thought or missed or hurt with, at the end of it all, we would not give this up for the world. what we had now, with him and mason, with all of hiraeth close enough to touch, here in good old north carolina, was worth everything we'd left behind to be here. what we had now was worth living for. and we wanted this. we wanted this life, this present, this future. this togetherness. this life.
and we mean that. we mean that.

tonight was rough. but tonight was good. look at what we've learned! look at how we grow. i can feel our heart glowing hurting smiling crying all at once even now. but deeper joy, always. the gratitude of the laughing cosmos. the detached love of the universe. take it all in and let it all go. beauty and terror, beauty and terror. no feeling is final but every feeling is precious. life is fleeting and we all die but that makes every tiny second priceless. that makes every life a work of art, a piece of music. ephemeral and beautiful and finite and infinite. both at once.
that was discussed in "the good place," too. existential crisis. the "futility of life." but that's sacred too, to us. that's so sacred. the fragile temporality of life. the fact of our fleeting mortality. the fact of our undefinable abstract immortality. the glorious puzzle of consciousness, of faith, of mind and breath and soul and heart. the bizarre miracle of human existence. the horrific elegance of the human body. muscle and flesh and blood and bone and spit and sweat and sea water. speech and touch and taste and hearing and thinking and singing and seeing and smelling and creating, dreaming and wishing, fearing and doubting, growing and tripping, onwards and onwards and onwards. life.

we're having a beautiful conversation with oliver over messenger and Samhain just rolled in with the midnight hour and this is holy ground. the dirt is holy. the mud and dust are holy. death is holy. dark is holy. isn't that our life? isn't that something to honor? yes.

our system, struggling as it may, blind to parts of itself as it may be in that very struggle, is sacred. dark and bright and black and white. awful and adorable and scary and sacred and traumatic and the best thing that's ever happened to us. Us. What a word.

we made it through the day. we'll make it through the beloved night. we have 6 hours left until sleep and the world is ours and time is ours and this is what we live for, just pure undiluted life, under moonlight and sunlight both, quiet and untouched by worry, pure and true and gloriously defiant and indomitably hopeful. love undying. love eternal. love fierce and warm as fire. love soft and heavy as the sea. love like the hand of God, creating and destroying, making and unmaking, lifting up and tearing down, all of it a tapestry of growth, all of it a pattern of purpose, all of it a cosmic work of art. a celestial song. one line of an eternal symphony. every last heartbeat factored in. every single moment woven realtime into a greater thing. a holy thing, like all holy things, beyond the good and evil dichotomy, unfathomable and close as your pulse, as your breath. every angel is terrifying. but fear not. fear not.

time to continue archiving. time to continue reading and writing and being.

we are alive. living in the world is still a challenge. but we shall continue to unlock our achievements. we shall continue to earn our crowns of gold and laurel leaves. we shall wear our scars like caresses. we shall rejoice at the ceaseless march of our souls, ever upwards, ever onwards. bright as the sun and moon together. dark as the spaces between the stars. sacred as all of it united. sacred as all of us united.

have a blessed holiday.
see you in a few hours.❤