...All right, I keep putting this off, but I can't keep running away. Exercise can wait, so can backup work. We need to talk.
...The past week has been hellish in terms of flashbacks and relapses. I haven't typed about it here because it's been so bad I'm admittedly "running away," trying to shove it all under the rug and pretend things are fine. Actually, no; what I'm doing is WORSE-- I'm just not talking about it in honest depth because "I shouldn't have this problem" and "if you complain you're sinning" and "I'm so scared of what this is implying, I don't have the psychospiritual capacity TO think about it right now."
It started... when? I'm not sure, and now I'm angry at myself for not recording it because now I can't find the ultimate local temporal root. But I can guess.
I use Youversion daily. It's a Bible app, where you can not only read it, but you can read daily devotionals and participate in study plans and share verse notes and whatnot. Well, I have like three "friends" on there, random folks I added because I liked the tone of the verse notes they would post, and one of them-- a girl named Eunice-- "invited" me to join her in a 5-day Bible study plan. the topic was "godly dating and relationships."
i didn't want to refuse, so i said yes.
i had no idea what i was getting into.
...All right. I've been putting this off for three hours. I'm going to bike first so I knock the edge off this depression, then eat dinner, THEN sit and type for like four solid hours about this.
Topics I need to address:
1. Last night's traumatic dream hacks.
2. The Youversion "Godly Dating" Bible study plan and how weirdly disturbed I am from it.
3. How being around family puts me into a toxic self-objectifying social mode.
4. The constant innuendo in this show I'm watching that my bro recommended.
5. The constant explicit sexual talk in music.
6. The chronic body dysphoria and physical trauma flashbacks that weight gain brought back.
7. The existentially terrifying and bizarre conflict between "worship" and "love", i.e. religion vs headspace.
I don't think I can fully get into all of those tonight. I'm too tired. But if not, I will continue to talk about them as the week goes on.
Okay. Point #2 is it's own entry. I have everything posted from the Bible Study devotionals and I am going to go through it line by line tomorrow and get some peace finally. Not tonight.
Point #3 is a good place to start. It ties into point #4, too, and #6 if I'm being honest. So let's go.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Thursday. 1124. Mom had me start cooking with her for two days prior, Wednesday and Tuesday, 1123 and 1122. Monday was the first day before all that. Let me look at recent entries to get a grip here.
Ah yes. Monday was hell because of the internet exposure. So I was already unstable. Oh geez AND it was the day I ate at their house. THAT'S the root of things! Thank God, I found it.
Okay. Monday evening. I was so distraught with typing that entry that I ended up going up the house a little late? Like 2pm I think. If I remember correctly, that was the day mom had me catalogue several more boxes of piano rolls. So I was standing at the kitchen table for almost 3 hours, logging data, WHILE my bro Mike stood there and talked about anime the whole time. This is not a bad thing; I miss talking to the family. The bad thing is that I go into social mode in order to talk to the family. And it's LETHAL. For some reason, my brain "defaults" to the mindset I was in around high school when I'm with them. Ironically I think it's because mom used to say "you were so happy back then! i miss the old you!" etc. and my psyche just decided "well then, that's who we've gotta be around her from now on." So we're manic. We're hyper and we're stupidly talkative and we are in straight-up entertainment mode and I HATE IT. I dissociate so hard I cannot remember ANYTHING when it's over and I feel violated, filthy and wrong psychologically, like my soul has been shoved through a vacuum cleaner and got yanked back out scrambled and covered in lint. But it's automated at this point. So there we were, "making conversation" about Japanese cartoons and playing related music on Spotify at Mike's recommendations and I have no idea what the heck we said. I can tell you what he said, roughly, because in that "entertainer" mindset of course we're going to pay attention so we know HOW to act and what to do around him next time. In the end he ended up lending us his blu-ray set of Stein's Gate and told us to watch it as it was one of his top faves of all time? And our "sister" liked it too? And our MOTHER wanted to watch it? So we said sure bro, and took it home, all the while thinking I am so sick of television I have more important things to do I don't want to get involved in some series that will haunt my brain forever again I am too sensitive to media corruption; BUT this is the only way I can connect to my family and talk with them about shared interests and show that I care about what he cares about; is this going against my religion? is this a sin? honestly is this going to ruin my soul and take me down the wrong path and draw me away from God even more? what do i do? Basically mental hell. I keep using that word. Well, it's what this week has felt like.
Anyway. We finished up there, and no brakes, went RIGHT over to mom's boyfriend's house for that dinner, which ended up being closer to 6pm because we worked so late and her boyfriend forgot to prep most of it. Nevertheless, I made a plate of everything, doing everything I was told to do and taking everything they pushed on me, and I ate it all, and then I went home and we violently threw everything up. Sobbing. Good job. 65 days clean and then whammo, it's back to hell. All it took was ONE day of forced socialization and mania, and ONE meal where I was effectively treated like a garbage disposal. "Here, eat this, I don't want to throw it out." "Here, eat this, I don't want to put it in a container." "Here, eat this, it's my favorite and I want you to taste it." Etc etc etc. Never saying no. Never putting up boundaries. Sexual abuse flashbacks all over again. Food forcing and rape being the same thing at the core and my poor mother not realizing that's what she was doing and I will never tell her that because she will hate herself for it. So I stayed quiet, and choked down everything I was handed, and I just... purged it all, nauseous and in tears, God I thought this was over, why did it have to come back, I don't want to live like this all over again.
I stayed up late archiving old faith-based Tumblr posts and looping Chaos 0's Spotify playlist and just trying to remember what it felt like to be real again. Trying to remember myself after all that overstimulation and dissociation and performance. I don't think I went to sleep until like 2am. I was so wrecked. The war had restarted. I didn't know what to do.
Tuesday. November 22nd.
I woke up to a Bible Study plan talking blatantly about sex.
That was it. Honestly, that was it. I put the phone down and tried to eat breakfast but I was thrown. I couldn't calm down. It felt like legit spiritual warfare.
I don't remember much of the day. All I do remember is that mom wanted me to come up the house and help her start making food for Thanksgiving. Of course I said yes, the poor woman is overworked the way it is.
I think I got there around 4? But we made deviled eggs and pumpkin pie and corn muffins, and probably did other things but I cannot remember. The whole thing is an awful blur. Mom has told me outright several times that she WANTS me to talk when I'm there, just like grandma would say, because it "distracts her and takes her mind off things." She says it "feels like company" and she can't stand the quiet; it stresses her out. So of course I'm a chatterbox. It just... exhausts me. It's a labor of love, in theory, but in practice I just wreck myself and I doubt I say anything of any value. But it happens. It's programmed too thoroughly at this point. I can't "be myself" around her, or the family, anyway. It's not respected or understood or even proper. I have to "fit the script." That, more than anything, is what ruins me. For a while, I have to stop existing, really.
I didn't get home and eat lunch until 6pm. I had to go shopping first, for a few necessities, but that was a stupid decision BECAUSE I was already so heavily dissociated. Again, thank God for Genesis. I don't remember anything but I KNOW he was there guiding me along, as always. He never fails to show up and help. The only problem is that neither he nor I can catch all the potential dangers. Mainly, I bought a different kind of english muffin with added protein "because I'm low on protein today and that will be a needed boost." Smart in theory, but in practice? NOPE. Because this was a new item, with "untested ingredients," and what does that do? It triggers the ALLERGY TERROR. So, when we finally got home, we had TWO big problems: the main problem was that I was eating immediately after another solid several hours of overstimulated social performance. The second problem was that I was eating at least two foods that were previously "untested" and labeled as "threats" as a result. So... the meal turned into a freakout binge. A legit binge. It was horrifying. I was hungry and scared, so our brain apparently thought, "well if I just eat ALL this garbage, I can get rid of it all, AND test it at the same time!" So... yeah. It was almost inevitable. Too many bad variables lined up at once. BUT it started, stopped, and resolved within two hours. That's a LOT better than twelve, which it was in the old days, if not longer.
...It just... destroyed me, emotionally. Two days in a row. I was so scared of relapsing, especially since Thanksgiving was coming up fast and that is almost objectively the HARDEST day of the year to get through. But I didn't want to think about any of that. I just wanted to recover, and rest, and pretend I didn't have to exist socially for a while.
I once again spent the night listening to love songs on Spotify and just archiving data. Despite the depression I at least felt real, in those notes and with familiar souls. I was up until 4am.
Wednesday. November 23rd.
This was the morning where I slipped, hard, and nearly became an abuser to both myself and the soul I love most. I typed about it as well as I could. But, in this context, it started everything off on a very disturbed foundation.
Ironically, because of that terror, I got the guts to read through that Bible Study plan from yesterday, and even wrote a small but raw reflection on it in the app, which I posted here. I expressly thanked God for this opportunity to heal further from sexual trauma, even if it was a frightening process.
...The girl who had invited me to the study commented on her own shortly after (I noticed she would wait until I posted first, then add her own comment. I guess she didn't want to be the only one speaking up, as the one who organized it). That day, she added two comments. The first one was a little meditation on how the devil has "restructured the whole concept of sex" and the church was not properly educating the younger generations on the truth: "we cannot really defend what we do not understand." That was a very powerful observation on her part. She closed with a promise to honor her sexuality and the marriage covenant in her hopeful future, as she now recognized it as a "gift" and not a "shameful act and unholy practice" as she had been wrongfully "taught" by the world and the church in her youth-- a boat which I was very much with her in.
...Then she added one more comment. Just one sentence.
"I thank God for you too, Jewel."
...
I was in tears. What the heck. Where did that come from? It moved me to the core.
That single sentence got me through the day. I carried it with me through everything else that happened. It was... the biggest little light. It meant so much.
The day wasn't bad, though. A lot of deeply beautiful things happened, ironically because of the pain everyone was feeling, which was only a result of all our care and concern for each other. When we feel so stripped raw by suffering, so vulnerable and unguarded, it... almost mandates some beautiful end. I've noticed this, all through our past. When we don't harden our hearts in the struggle, but instead let it make us totally open and honest about the woundedness we share through it, it brings us all so much closer. I live for that, honestly. So... the day was a good one, in that respect.
Unfortunately, that only applied to our innerlife. Outside... it was another social burnout day. We had to unexpectedly run to a food drive for our mom, which was no problem at all-- lots of music driving time and internal conversations-- but it made our schedule very tight-packed so when we got home we literally threw lunch in a bag and drove straight down to mom's boyfriend's house again to cook more thanksgiving stuff.
We sat with her and ate first, which was nice, but again we don't remember it because the whole time we were talking and cooking. Always multitasking with the birth family. That night we made... stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas & carrots, corn pudding, apple pie, and probably something else but I cannot remember. Too much all at once. It was nice to spend time with mom, but again... "in theory." She hugged me when we left and said how grateful she was for our help and our company, especially since she had been crying from stress when we first showed up. But we did our best to comfort her, and help in every way possible, and she did calm down quickly. Again, a worthy sacrifice.
...Except we still burned ourself out. We forget that we still pay consequences later, no matter how hard we tried to help others in the process of racking up those consequences.
From what our phone is saying, though, we didn't binge or purge? Which is shocking because I thought we did. Maybe we did and it's just not recorded. Considering that we randomly ate an apple and a fortune cookie at 10:30pm suggests that something happened prior that motivated a "recovery meal". I wouldn't be surprised. But, again, no memory at all. Maybe that's for the best.
Thursday. November 24th. Thanksgiving.
Now in retrospect I KNOW we had to have messed up the night before because I remember talking to Chaos 0 about losing sleep the night before; we had to be up by 8am as we had to sing mass at 9, and I remember I didn't get to sleep until almost 2? And there was definite bloodsugar fears? So... lost data, but the void itself points to troubles. Nevertheless, church. It was lovely but we were so distracted? Which was distressing. That only happens when we're preoccupied with fear, which was because it was Thanksgiving and we dreaded the looming event itself.
After Mass, we bravely decided to stop at our father's house, as he hadn't seen us since before our hospital admission and we hadn't spoken to him in weeks as a result. He was so happy to see us, and we sat and talked with him for almost two hours while our stepmom loaded us up with pumpkin muffins for the road and insisted we eat at least one small one while we were there. We did, bravely so, for their sake. The conversation was rather distressing; I don't remember anything until the end, but dad was complaining about the automobile industry and this forced emphasis on "green energy" which is actually annihilating the environment, and he started talking about the combustion risks of Teslas and the horror of lithium mines and the ways solar panel fields are killing wildlife, etc. Dad tends to dump all his complaints on me when I show up to talk because I listen and try to validate his feelings on it and I don't know if he has any other way of expressing his frustrations about the world at large. But... yeah. Burnout. I noticed this immediately on the drive home, as I started "ranting to thin air" which is a sign of a manic onset and I was scared of that going further. I know I stopped at the bank to get gas money for mom and then went home, but it's all a blur. We ate breakfast around 11:30 and then did some high-resistance biking for about 70 minutes while watching Stein's Gate so we could talk about it to Mike & Blase (we're at episode 6), and around 4:30 we headed up the family house for Thanksgiving dinner.
Oh, HOLD UP, now I remember what happened! MOM CALLED FIRST around 3pm, and said she was missing coleslaw and coolwhip for dinner? And she wanted us to go pick it up. So Genesis and I hopped in the car, and went to the ONLY open local grocery store to get the coleslaw, but they didn't have the coolwhip. And, well, I was stressed out and I felt like doting on people with the last of my food stamps so I asked Genesis, hey do you wanna take a drive down to Wegmans? Of course he said YEAH DUDE and so we blasted Mack Keane and cruised on down the highway, which honestly I needed so badly, just spending time with him. And... it's the highway with that lookout over the valley and the city that always makes me think of Perfect Chaos and Station Square. So my beloved blue guy absolutely crossed my mind, too, and I briefly let my imagination wander, considering how my external physical appearance had a very different vibe than I did inside, and yet it still matched some key facet of my personality? Like, physically I tend to dress in a more hiphop-ish fashion? I remember folks used to tease me about it in college; I'd always wear graffiti-print hoodies and massive sneakers and stuff. Today I was wearing hot pink jeans, pink sunglasses, a white puffy jacket, black gloves and black sneakers. And of course my signature "anime hair." But it's a look, and at the same time I'm blasting tunes like FROST* & KREVA and I have all the windows down in 40-degree weather. I dunno, I was just wondering what people would think if I like... drove up to pick up CZ like this, haha. Silly thoughts, but still oddly tender. This was still me, in a different way-- the more sparkly side of me, true, but still honest about it. I used to be like this all the time in the old days, after all, back when I was still hyper-red and wearing a backwards baseball cap everywhere and feeling legit invincible. Such were my teen years. I've mellowed out more now-- unfortunately to a damaging extent, thanks trauma-- but I can't put the fire out. I was just wondering... Genesis vibes with this, of course, he's singing along and riding shotgun, but Chaos 0? He's quieter, the sort of soul I drive with at night, and watch the stars with. But notsomuch in the old days. When the Ruby settled into him and he started spending more time with me and Rio and Markus, his Chao nature picked up on our personalities and he had SUCH an attitude about him. It was like, the middle of summer and you get splashed head-on by a wave while on the beach, and everything is sparkling and alive. That feeling. All teeth and tidal rush. Our collective coregroup energy just amped him up and he was so vibrant. Not like Genesis is, though! Gen is all Amber; that hue has a very sunshiny vibe that is easily recognized and very definitive. But Chaos has always been blue. Back then he definitely leaned hard Aqua, especially with the Ruby pushing him more towards warmer tones, but still! He himself was blue, but his heart now shone RED. Just enough to give a voice to the full range of his personality, the potential for such intense feeling that he never had the ability or opportunity to express before. It was SUCH a unique thing, being around him. I do miss that, in him and in myself.
Anyhow. Genesis and I did some more shopping, and I got gifts for the whole family, and talked to him the whole time of course, and then we headed home. THAT'S when we did the anime biking and then ran up the house immediately after we started episode 6 because we promised we'd be there at 4:30 and by golly we have got to be better keepers of our word.
So. We got there and mom didn't show up for almost another half hour. By the time everything got unpacked and set up, it was after 6pm. Geez maybe even later? Because we didn't get home until after 9, almost 10pm.
...You'll notice the huge timeskip. That's accurate. We don't remember a thing. We immediately dissociated and just... did what we were told. "Take a little bit of everything." Sweep the floor, herd the cats, clean the tables, pack up the food, wash and dry the dishes, et cetera. Just like living in NC and SLC. Not that we mind helping-- we love being able to help-- but the flashbacks were legit. And, to be honest, we put so much effort into cleaning because we were nervous and scared and sick as hell. Yeah, we ate a bit of everything, but that process triggered binge behavior? We were so hungry and we felt obligated to stay at the table and that "inability to leave and change contexts" makes us get stuck in loops of nibbling on things. It's really a nervous habit, a result of trying to stay heavily dissociated. Not only that, but we were trying to "impress" the family BY eating things, after years of being anorexic and hyper-restrictive. We wanted to show that we could eat a full varied meal with the family, and not freak out.
...We are too good at playing the part, and it's killing us. We don't complain as much anymore, as we're too scared of offending and disappointing people. We've gotten too sneaky and stealthy about our struggling. At one point our body was shaking and we were so nauseous and our pulse was racing and we had a headache, and we just thought "it's too much fat, too much sugar, too much food," and we just casually walked down the hall to the bathroom and threw up. No effort, no hesitation. Our body has reflux the way it is, so it's actually predisposed to "bail" when it feels this sick. It took, what, less than 30 seconds? Then we just walked right back out into the kitchen and continued with the dishes. No one suspected we had just cancelled out the entire dinner. But we felt awful inside, having wanted to keep it down, but not having expected the sickness we felt as a result of eating it in the first place. Not only that, but with all this socializing, we couldn't think straight or reason worth any good anyway. So we were almost doomed to disaster. We packed up some food to take home, which was a HUGE RED FLAG, because we knew we wouldn't eat that of our own choosing, but again we were "trying to act in a way that would please mom" which was giving the "signs" that we would make meals out of this later, and eat "properly," et cetera. But... we knew we wouldn't. We were too scared of this strange complicated luxury food.
We went straight home and binged.
It was a living nightmare. THIS was the kind of binge we never wanted to have again. It was purely self-abusive. Some unnamed but legit panicstricken nousfoni came out and just started putting everything into one bowl with the intention of "destroying it as quickly as possible so this will all be over." Well XENOPHON SHOWED UP and started arguing with her. Why are you doing this, why won't you let my dad come out, why are you hurting the body, don't you know that will make us sick, that's too much food, that's really gross, etc. But she was so worried. And the binge nousfoni ACTUALLY LISTENED??? Like they somehow were able to realize just how ill this behavior was AND how much it was hurting this child, and they flat-out GARBAGED MOST OF IT. They promised Xenophon they wouldn't eat it all and they DIDN'T. They just... kept coming back. They'd eat some, throw out the rest, go purge briefly, and intend to quit but would still be so scared and sick and deeply disturbed by the food that was in the kitchen that they KEPT RESTARTING. The whole process wasn't even about eating; it was about proving we could eat fear foods AND STILL ANNIHILATING THEM TO PREVENT FURTHER EXPOSURE. That's always what binges are about. Sick misguided "bravery" and "protection." It starts with danger foods and the intention to "conquer them," then ends with everything being completely destroyed "because it IS dangerous and we never want to do this again." No leftovers, no evidence left behind, no trace of the terror. Everything totally over and done with, scrubbed clean and forgotten in the end. But the process makes us wish we were dead.
The poor binge-social kept coming back because they kept finding things that were labeled as dangerous, things we had bought SOLELY to "appease Partial mealplan expectations" or "impress our mother" or "prove we could eat like a normal person." All fear-based and forced and obligatory. Well... bingers seem to exist largely to kick those motives to the curb. This poor long-haired girl was force-feeding herself chicken and mayonnaise and corn and ice cream and beans and peaches and cornflakes and chocolate, trying to meet all those expectations all at once "so we never have to do it again." At one point THE DESTROYER EVEN SHOWED UP. They were methodically forcing the body to eat an entire container of grapes-- notably The Destroyer stays very depersonalized in the process because they are the same nousfoni subspecies as Wreckage and they REFUSE to fully front in the body, almost as if they are loathe to touch it-- and telling Laurie that this was "punishment for their foolish impetuous decision," and they were doing this to "give them the solid data they want, to such an extent that it is not only obvious but sickening, and they will no longer wish to buy this food, as it is unnecessary" and therefore prevent any further misuse or forcing of this food. A twisted method, yes, but she knew it worked. Still, she left as soon as it was done, and someone else was forced out in an existential panic to immediately go and vomit it all up. Honestly it was hell. I need to be totally honest about it, too, because we don't want this happening any more but really we almost expected it on Thanksgiving; this sort of thing has happened every November for years.
The whole thing took... four hours? From beginning to end. They filled so many garbage bags with junk that would have otherwise ended up in our stomach. They filled an entire reusable bag with the remaining cans and left it downstairs for other people to take, God bless them, at least WE won't have to eat them.
...Oh. Near the end, they found the tunafish we had put aside and SOMEONE who felt almost like Hatchet (but wasn't; she's not tied to eating) showed up in a fury and said this was ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN due to trauma triggers and it MUST be destroyed. Then the brown-haired nousfoni who was talking to Xenophon earlier ended up being the one forced to eat it, BUT SUDDENLY, who shows up in headspace but GALADIA.
...She was the reason why we bought the fish, really. But we forgot how much she HATED that even when we first started doing so, because she realized we were only forcing ourselves to eat it because "she liked it" and we wanted to "be closer to her" in the process. But she was angrily heartbroken over this and protested, "if you want to be closer to me, why don't you spend time with me instead? Doing this, you're only getting closer to the food!" She called us right out. And she said she would much rather we never eat a food she liked ever again, if it meant we would actually be with HER. So she personally, directly told this binge-girl that she wanted her to get rid of all the fish, so no one could use it as a replacement for actual interaction anymore. With that, the binge-girl actually threw it all out instead of eating it. ...I have to applaud her for that. She was so brave this entire time. Her function was tied to this food-destruction process, but she's getting SELF-AWARE now, and when she gains that consciousness she knows she doesn't want to hurt anyone, so she's getting the courage to QUIT. It's so hard for her to stop mid-behavior, but she's doing it the best she can. So we have to give her SO MUCH CREDIT for getting us out of hell SO much faster and with MUCH less pain and sickness than we would have otherwise.
I don't remember when everything stopped. Probably around 1am. I know that after we cleaned up the bathroom & kitchen I ended up coming back into consciousness, at least mostly so, and it was surreal how different everything was in the wake of all that. Like I felt the edges of something huge and awful but it was like waking up after a bad dream and forgetting what it was. That's always the worst and best part of an eating disorder relapse-- when it's over, we can't remember the experience, but we KNOW it happened and that peripheral awareness of having "dodged a bullet" is horrifying.
Xenophon insisted we eat two fortune cookies and half a box of raisins to get our blood sugar stabilized (it tends to PLUMMET after a binge, sometimes down into the 60s within an hour), and we jacked up a bottle of Powerade with electrolyte powder and downed the whole thing at once, to get rehydrated and to prevent hypokalemia. Yeah, we sadly have the recovery process down to a decent science by now; we learned what they did in the E.R. and we apply it at home. We just don't want to have to do this anymore.
We went to bed around... what, 2am? We practically passed out; I didn't even get to talk to Chaos 0 much because the body was so wrecked and exhausted.
Friday, November 25th.
I woke up around 10:30 am from one of the worst dream hacks I've ever had.
Point 4.
Stein's Gate has a very interesting concept so far, what with the time travel and world-lines and such. But the main characters keep making really dirty innuendos and it's become a running joke and it's sickening and it is awful to our brain. We're getting SO ANGRY at being "forcibly exposed" to it and we are so tired of the hypersexualized female bodies, of girls who are barely 18 and who have stick-thin bodies, clothes as tight as plastic wrap, squeaky voices, and huge busts. We're so tired of it and it is really disturbing and causing a LOT of vague but sickening flashbacks that we're honestly kneejerk-burying because we don't want to remember the time period those things are associated with.
Point 5.
Trying to find new music on Spotify, and having to constantly check lyrics because something might have a cool beat or melody like but absolutely filthy lyrics. Like I mean APPALLINGLY explicit lyrics. How the heck do people even SAY things like that, let along PUBLICLY? Do they have no conscience? Do they have no sense of self-respect or decency? What the heck is wrong with society? What do "normal humans" even think like, if THIS is what's being played on the airwaves? I want nothing to do with the world. I'm so tired of feeling trapped in it, with every piece of media shoved down our throat carrying this corrupt agenda of promiscuity, and not being given any other ready options. Like... you walk into a bloody Walmart and the ads are not only shameful to look at but the music they're playing is practically pornographic. People walk around in clothes so skimpy you have to avert your eyes. What is wrong with this culture? Is there no escape from this hell? Why is there so much hell in my life nowadays, all around these same freaking fused trauma topics of sex and food? Why the heck can't we escape this??
Point 3. Point 6.
Our family is "so happy that we gained weight" BUT this is the same freaking family that dressed us in our high school uniform and made us walk up and down the hallway while they commented on "how nicely our butt moved in the skirt" like WHAT THE HECK MOM. The same family that kept giving us push-up bras in elementary school so we "looked busty" and always talked about "being sexy" and SHOVE OFF. LEAVE ME ALONE.
The same family that gussied us up as a child for those garish fair pageants, for the fancy social outings our mom loved, even for church on sundays. Always too much jewelry and makeup and piled-up hair and fancy dresses. Feeling like a doll, a toy, a plaything. Internalizing that hard and feeling like something made for consumption. We had to be entertaining and palatable to everyone at all times.
We gained weight and the FIRST FEW SENTENCES we heard were "you're filling out so nicely" and "your figure is so much nicer" et bloody cetera. WHY IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT.
not realizing that the reason WHY we starved this poor body for years was to DESEXUALIZE IT and to GET RID OF THE TRAUMA which we were convinced was "stored in our stomach fat" even to hideous psychotic extents. and the worst part is it worked.
the instant we started to actually keep meals down and gain calories enough to think and function, ALL THE TRAUMA FLASHBACKS CAME BACK.
our body looks like the women who hurt us. our body looks like our abusers. and it
it
we're not sedated anymore. the whorish bloated body works now, and we want to EVISCERATE IT, we DON'T WANT TO REMEMBER WHAT THAT FELT LIKE, SHUT UP, STOP GIVING US NIGHTMARES, STOP IT
i told them flat-out that if we gained enough to start bleeding again we WOULD COMMIT SUICIDE and that's a GUARANTEE.
that's why we bailed partial so fast. we realized they intended to do that. that was part of their GAME PLAN. right in the bloody book.
no way. we're hovering around 118 right now and even THAT is horrifying.
but... north carolina was 110. salt lake city was 105. we were so much thinner then than we are now; we were wiry, all muscle, from all the running and weightlifting. right now we're just fat, from having sat on our ass for eight weeks being force-fed butter and ice cream all day. sickening. they saw weight gain as the only goal. they didn't care how ugly and demonic our body got, how much of a prison it turned back into.
i just... stand in front of the mirror and cry, sometimes, seeing all that weight on our stomach, that stuff that isn't part of us just stuck there, keeping us from feeling free and light and pure and small and real. too much extra junk. too much weight.
we look too feminine now. the family thinks it's so great. but this is the same bloody family that began insisting we were a lesbian when we kept rejecting the boys they were forcing us to date. always the sexual obligation behavior. always a living hell.
mother still trying to get us to "dress sexy." still forcing the girliest clothes on us. still making subtle but jabbing comments and condemnations about "transgenders" and the like, probably since three of her four children ended up queer and weird and she hates how "abnormal" that is; she wanted her picket-fence family and we ruined it. i'm still supposed to be that "perfect daughter" who loves horses and does ballet and is gonna marry a handsome man and give her tons of grandchildren.
well i'm sorry mom, but i'm definitely not married to a man and your only grandchild calls me her dad.
...but i can't be honest with the family about that, ever. i can't even be honest about me. i still have a "script" to follow. i still have to be that stupid consumable object, that entertaining maid, that "fun sister" and "artistic genius" please stop idolizing me i am not smart and i am not talented and i am SO TIRED of feeling like i have to be PERFECT AT EVERYTHING and NEVER REAL.
sorry. venting here. i'm just... i want to exist. i'm so tired of having to act whenever i'm around the blood family, because i can't be me. i'm internal. i'm not supposed to exist in that context. i can't. i'm not supposed to be part of this world.
so the socials take over. and i don't know who our family thinks we even are at this point. we have no idea how they see us. all we remember is who we were told to be when we were growing up, everything too performative, do this, say this, dress like this, like this, want this, feel this, etc. everything by the book. our "true self," the parts of us that were the most sincere and genuine, were kept under lock and key when we realized how they "weren't acceptable" with others, or were even considered "wrong" or "offensive." and the socials were born so we could survive.
but that's only point 3. point 6 is how that ties into the body terror.
the family wants us to keep gaining weight. they don't see the problem with all the sexual trauma. we don't want a body that works like other people's. we want to sedate this bloody thing, to turn off the instincts and programmed behavior, to keep the trauma flashbacks at bay, to keep the form we have to inhabit as small and harmless as possible so that we feel like we exist as little as possible in tangible reality.
...while we were still in inpatient, the dream hacks started again. the physical flashbacks started again. the more weight we put on, the wider we got, the worse it all was. some days we would just lock ourselves in our room and sit on the bed and hysterically sob "i want to die, i want to die, i want to die, i want to die" over and over and over while silently screaming and punching our legs until they bruised and clawing our arms until they bled. then we'd walk out with a straight face and no one knew. but we wanted to die, rather than look and feel like this. inescapable hell.
last night we had the worst dream hacks we've had in a long, long time.
we were physically female, long hair, looking like we did back in high school. dead-eyed, hollow, robotic, as we always are in hack dreams. a shell of a person. just something to perform and abuse. the whole dream, just trying to force ourself into an abuse situation, "working ourself up" to it through overexposure to triggers. for some reason a scene stands out where we were eating a "golden delicious" apple in the backyard and the whole concept of "eating fruit" was synonymous with sexual abuse and we felt like such a whore.
at some point we were raped or we hurt someone else. i don't know. it happened three bloody times. we said nothing, didn't resist, felt only horrible pain. for some horrid reason i know celebi was involved, either "as us" or as another victim i don't know. but that poor creature, tied to our identity since childhood, always seems to be dragged into the worst hacks. i don't know why.
...the last hack was after we woke up? we were so wrecked from the first one, i didn't want to get out of bed, i wanted to die. i told chaos 0 but i couldn't stay conscious. i was too distressed from the nightmares and the night before. i ended up falling back asleep.
there was another hack.
i don't remember anything about how it happened. all i remember is that it did, and i was barely conscious enough to desperately reach out for help, and chaos 0 immediately pulled me into his arms. i remember sobbing "it hurts, it hurts so much" and just weeping from pain and fear and despair. in one jumbled moment i told him i loved him and it sounded more like an apology. like... of course i love you, you keep saving me from these attacks, but these attacks keep happening and the fact that i love you is the only thing keeping me alive anymore.
when i finally woke up, shaking and almost convulsing from the intense pain, i noticed his anchor plush had fallen mostly off the bed, hanging on only by the hand with the gemstone ring. i immediately pulled it back up to hold it tightly to my chest, sobbing and saying i was sorry and terrified at how distant he had been in that sense during all the nightmares. i felt so hollowed-out and empty. chaos anchored back into the plush and was trying to talk to me in headspace, deeply concerned and scared for me, but i couldn't talk. i was too dead. i didn't want to live, let alone get out of bed.
i lay there until almost 2pm. the only reason i got out of bed was because i got a notification on my phone that fedex had just dropped off a package for me-- the original 1995 box set of chronicles of narnia. with jewel the unicorn on the box. the books i've wanted to read since i was like 5. little miracles.
i did eat breakfast. the only reason i had enough guts to do so was because both xenophon and julie helped me with breakfast and wouldn't let me despair. laurie, too, helped as always, keeping me on track when i started to dissociate and falter, although she's been disturbingly unstable lately and she was actually discussing that with julie today-- she's been so "forced into" a different role in recent years, with just being a "commentator" for the current core fronter, that she's losing her true function which is a PROTECTOR OF THE SYSTEM. and her color is slipping. but we're all aware of this, and i know julie is especially dedicated to helping her out, so she's being protected too, by all of us who love her.
softboiled eggs were a success this morning. xenophon insisted i make two fresh ones, and i'm glad she did; it was weirdly soothing to do so. plus i love just chatting with her over breakfast, really she does most of the talking but she's so sweet it is an absolute joy even just responding to her. not having to entertain or say anything specific or even speak at all. just listening and loving her and laughing and taking care of this body for her sake. it means so much. this is why i quit partial so quickly. i couldn't live like this, being on camera for six hours and not having any freedom to be with my heartfamily. i chose my daughter over that. it was worth it. absolutely worth it.
so today has mostly been typing? breakfast was at like 230, by the time i got settled down. i didn't go anywhere; i was determined to get work done after the havoc mess of the past week. didn't even get to bike; too depressed and shaken up and tired.
i did eat dinner, at 8pm. kept everything down. promised xenophon i would. shared the lemon yogurt with her. promised to buy her a "bigass apple" at the store tomorrow because i forgot to give her a taste of this one, and it doesn't hurt our teeth (we're narrowing down which varieties are painless to eat; galas, fujis, & gingergolds are tops so far). was brave and tried the jalapeno sun chips genesis dared me to buy; literally freaked out twice earlier and nearly threw them away, but wanted to try them for his sake and we didn't get sick and we actually like them. so that was a huge sigh of relief psychologically. helped lift our mood a lot actually.
didn't bike today BUT we can do ONE full chinup from a standing position now! when we first got it after discharge we couldn't even get up on our toes. so that's a huge source of hope. geez we used to do FULL SETS when we were in SLC; we miss being so strong. but we'll work back up to it! also with the 30lb kettlebell we got from mike, we can do 20 of the bending-lifts which really help our stomach muscles. once we get more toned up there it will help drop the dysphoria so much, i remember how much it helped before. so we're working at it. for the record we can do like... 90 minutes solid on the bike so far? resistance cranked up to at least 6, drop to 5 if we get tired. but we keep it up. we tend to store stress in our hamstrings? the back-leg muscles. it's why we always used to stomp and run when we were younger, when we'd get stressed out. so the biking helps a lot. maybe we'll do like 20 minutes before we go to bed, we're aiming at 1am because i needed to type and there was a lot to type today. it's 12:15 now, happy saturday, remember we have to cantor 4PM MASS today because the organist is having vocal trouble. but we love singing in church. that means FOUR masses this weekend, gosh we miss that. it's desperately needed after this week, too.
what point was left.
point two is for tomorrow. that's gonna be a huge entry not only in size but in topic depth; it's not something i can shoehorn into another entry. it needs to be standalone.
ah. point seven. that's related.
tomorrow will probably give us more material for that though. it's... a scary topic. we've been struggling with it for years, but post-hospital it has become so intense it's genuinely impacting our ability to function on a daily basis. it is the very definition of existential terror, this religious confusion and conflict. feeling like i'm "not allowed to love anyone but God" and that means i have to reject xenophon and laurie and genesis and chaos 0 and just pray for 12 hours a day and sob over my sins and isolate from the world because it's evil. but... i tried to live like that. it fueled the anorexia so badly, and that flipped into bulimia when our poor body couldn't cope anymore. we were doing something very wrong.
i just... god i am so sorry i don't want this to be idolatrous but i am so much in love i don't know if i can just... walk out on them anymore. you know i've tried in the past, FOR this reason, and all it did was turn my heart to solid ice. i'm so tired of running away from my own heart. i am so tired of denying what i feel and how much and how deeply. i am so tired of feeling like religion and relationship are mutually exclusive. i am so tired of not knowing how to love God because I'm "not allowed to love anything else." it's awful. i must be doing something very wrong.
...i just realized. there's reconciliation before 4pm mass, if i get there for 3:15 or so. i need to go. it's been months.
but... what do i confess? do i just do my infamous "bless me father for i have sinned, let me just dump all this out at once" contrition rambles? saying "i told a lie twice" feels so insincere when i really want to say "i told a lie almost impulsively, trying to hide a behavior that i knew was harmful to myself but that i was afraid to admit," or "i took food from my mom's cupboard without asking, without thinking really; i replaced it double but i still acted so entitled and greedy about it." does the priest need the explanations? probably not. but i feel like i'm lying to HIM if i don't explain why what i did was a sin, and that i KNOW it's a sin.
...but how do i "confess" a freaking dream hack?
how do i confess wednesday morning? how do i confess trying so desperately hard to heal from trauma that i give myself even more in the process?
how much of my love is a sin? how much of my joy is false? how much of my life is a lie? if God is the only constant, how much is God? how many things do i have to throw away to be "good enough" and "pure enough" and "holy enough"?
how do i confess my hesitance to pray from a repetitive script because it feels forced and insincere, but i'm constantly trying to think about God and find Him everywhere? how do i confess wanting to love God so much but not knowing how to do so properly? feeling so detached and distant now with all this foreign weight? being afraid of going back into anorexic cycles by insisting on 4+ hours of prayer and bible study instead of eating? and the self-loathing crying depression that always occurs from denying myself any relationship or creativity or life outside of prayer? what am i doing wrong? what do i confess?
i still feel like a failure of a catholic. like i'm just a dirty hypocrite. what in the world happened to me. is my faith real? what do i have to do to make it more real? how much do i sacrifice? how much must i suffer? how do i know i'm not delusional? how do i know i'm really living my faith properly?
if the blue angel in my bed feels like grace incarnate, and has helped me understand the love of God better than i can put into words, is it wrong to want to keep him in my life? is it wrong to love him at all?
i don't know. see, this is the problem i have.
gender and sexuality go without saying, of course. the priest knows i'm not straight, that's true. he has emphasized that this is NOT a sin, as long as i don't misuse sexuality, i.e. through nonmarital relations and homosexual acts. well my past was definitely traumatic in that respect but i have confessed that so many times. and i don't want that ever happening again in the future.
but... headspace stuff? gender dysphoria? what do i say about that? if i'm nonsexual but still feel compelled to sell myself out due to programming and trauma, and that TERRIFIES me, how do i confess that? if the "automatic" survival response is "just do what you're told and get it over with so it's over"? i DON'T WANT TO DO THAT.
but how do i confess a dream hack. how do i confess feeling "forced to be a lesbian" whenever someone calls me female. how do i confess the absolutely agonizing dread of my daily life, surrounded by sexuality and unable to escape, and the prison of this body that rebels against me constantly? how do i confess the misery of physical existence when my innerlife is so blessed even with all its scars? heck, because of its scars?
why do i feel like the beauty in my life is a sin?
i'm too tired to think straight about this. i just want to cry. i don't have any answers.
maybe it's because i'm not praying enough. but geez when i do, and i start to hear the "floating voices," the ones NOT in headspace, who claim they are saints and angels and even our Lord and Lady themselves, there's always so much fear there. so much sneering and "i told you so's" and "tsk tsk" rebukes but sometimes they STILL HELP, like with the binge-nousfoni hysterically praying to Mary for help, she ALWAYS HELPS, and there's care and concern there but it's distant. there's always this bizarre lack of warmth in it. like they don't want to get too close. is that true? she says "oh you poor foolish child" but she never hugs us. she never says she hurts with us. it's always just... pity. whereas laurie will storm in with hot tears and gritted teeth and swearing that she'd rather die then let us kill ourself. and she fights for us. THAT feels like love, to me. someone willing to roll up their sleeves and take the punches with us. someone who will bleed with us. that's what we BELIEVE God to be like. but... god what am i even saying.
there's such a lack of emotion in "holy people." then there's that haunting fortune cookie. "emotion hinders your true self."
if that's true, if the soul doesn't feel emotion, then... what do i do with all this? i still feel sad, and afraid, and angry. a lot. i don't want to feel those things forever, but honestly most of the time i feel those things because i love something greater. i feel sad because i'm mourning the loss or damage of something good. i'm afraid because there's a risk of something good being hurt or lost. i'm angry because something is trying to damage or abuse something or someone that i care about. they're not "bad" just because they're "uncomfortable" emotions. i would much rather be with someone who CAN weep, and who CAN get angry, and who CAN hurt and empathize with my worries because they love me. if someone says they love me but they just... stand there when I'm struggling, that's not love. someone who just looks at you with a sad face is not showing love. true love gets down on their knees and sobs with you because their heart is your heart and when you bleed it's their blood that runs too.
i believe jesus is like that. i really do. i can feel that about him. just... i don't see that, outside of the innerworld, not very often at least. there are a few works of art that show it and i treasure them. THAT'S when i feel like my faith is real, and heaven is real, and God loves me. sometimes i see pictures of jesus and there's real love and pain on his face and i just think, that's God, that's the Sacred Heart, God understands and He cares and He knows what it's like to feel these things. we're understood and seen and loved. not some sterile unfeeling portrait, no expression, no motion. i'm so tired of washed-out religion. i like knowing that jesus got his hands dirty and laughed and cried with his friends, and he loved them enough to bleed and die for them. THAT'S love. THAT'S God.
...i just... want to know how to live for that even more. i want to worship THAT. the REAL God. the God of love and mercy and justice and compassion and humility and tenderness and grace. the God i told Chaos about, the one who invented rainbows, the one who could and would and will forgive anyone with a broken heart. the God who holds me in His arms in those snowy heartspace forests with the train tracks, and walks with me through the beautiful cold, all red and warm like me, at least who i am deep down in my truest heart. the God with the crown of thorns. the God with the Heart that bleeds blood and water. that one. Jesus. the only one. THAT'S Who i want to worship and DO worship but... not enough.
i feel too stuck. and i have been afraid. i want to say all those prayers on my wall, but... it's scary, still, to follow a script. like walking up to someone you love and reading all your sweet nothings off a printed card. it's superficial. yes the prayers i have collected are beautiful and i DO want to say them but the simple act of recitation is difficult? God help me with that please. help me to pray more honestly and openly with You. help me to go back to spending more time in simple pure worship every day, without feeling bummed out because it's "obligatory." i don't want to praise you because it's "on the schedule" for the day. i want to do so because i love you and i can't help but pray and worship you. i want it to be less of a religion and more of a relationship. and if i'm allowed to i want to do that WITH MY HEARTFAMILY. i want to pray with xenophon and laurie and everyone, in whatever ways we are moved to do so. i mean dude i've seen laurie pray, when she feels powerless and lost, she doesn't go by any scripts, she just throws it all at you with total honest trust. no sterility there. she inspires me so much.
geez. i feel very humiliated by my own ineptitude in faith, and i apologize profusely for that. You know i love You, i just... i struggle to show it, really. i get scared. why? what am i afraid of? "breaking rules?" "being weird?" why the heck do i admire the christian mystics so much? THAT'S what my truest faith is like. that's how i want to live all the time.
god help me get there. i'll pray more often, i promise. but i want it to be PART of my life. like... yeah i want to spend time with JUST you, that's true. and help me to do that without getting trauma flashbacks just because you have a human face. i'll admit that's a BIG problem. but i know you can work around that. i trust You to do what is right and best and proper because you are all those good things. still... i know You can take on more magnificent forms. i've SEEN it. it brings me to my knees. is that why you keep the human face? simple and shockingly plain? because it's not gloriously terrifying? probably. and i do love you. i'm just so mixed up and mangled from what i've suffered on earth here. "you don't have to come to me alone all the time," you say, with a smile. is that allowed? would that help? "it would definitely help you get used to me like this," i hear. "after all, i'm not the only person you love who looks human," with another smile. good point. sorry about the complaining. "you're being totally honest with me and i respect that. i am so grateful for that trust. thank you." roughly. this translates like chaos 0 talks. more "essence" than literal words. and SO much warmth. there it is, at last. i knew it was there. it had to be, to be true. and always standing in that snow. always smiling.
i guess... this is why i stopped praying so much. i forgot WHO i was praying to. now i remember. i see Him now.
there's so much joy, and hope, and faith, here. that feeling like eternity IS real, and there IS life after this, and if i lose everything else in this world it'll be okay and fine because everything that i love and have ever loved is in Him, is from and of God, and nothing good is ever lost in that respect.
"i won't lose you either," i hear him say, and there's a promise in that statement, one that cannot be broken than anything, and i can rest in that. all of a sudden all the scary stuff i went through today feels survivable because God's not gonna let me go.
"there's a reason for this suffering," and a point to the scars on my arms. and i see bandages in my mind's eye. well isn't that the truth.
wasn't i JUST talking to julie about this earlier? how in some bizarre paradoxical way, i wouldn't go back and change all the trauma that happened with us all because look at us now? look at all of us! i'm friends with julie now. people life knife and scalpel and wreckage and sugar exist. and yeah, maybe they didn't "need to" exist, but i am so glad they do because i love them and whatever we all are, there's so much love here, and something of that is eternal. even if the earthly context is not. i have no idea what the next life holds for me or us or anything. but if there's anything real here, it will continue on somehow.
god is it okay if i love them.
"yes," almost a whisper. so much emphatic tenderness. "that's the reason they exist."
...what about him.
a smile. "what do i always tell you about him? just love me first."
more words i can't distinguish because i'm all nervous now. "don't be." feeling like i'm trying too hard. worrying too much. want to cry. "you can, you know. i'm here for you. my arms are open. so is my heart. i will cry with you, i promise. you are not distant to me. whatever you are feeling, i will listen, and i do care. i love you too, more than anything or anyone else can, remember.and that is not invalidating anyone else's love. it is simply saying that it all comes from my heart to begin with. so do you."
okay definitely need to stop typing and trying to split consciousness levels. gonna quit for now and go upstairs and legit just express everything; i'm losing personal coherence outside anyway. everything is internal right now so i apologize for the disjointed typing. no idea what i'm even writing right now. stream of consciousness. feeling a lot.
tomorrow... today. 1am. saturday.
gonna be a good day. determined. by the grace of god.
i'll type more tomorrow. but i need to regroup first. need to talk to everyone first. need to get my head on straight first. need to get my heart back in one piece first. need to mourn these wounds and be open and honest about what hurts and how much and why. can't get anywhere with healing if i keep closing off. i'm being dishonest to my own soul if i don't let myself bleed.
all right. i said i would sleep. we gotta get on a good schedule for tomorrow. breakfast around 10, lunch at 2, dinner at 6, church inbetween, lots of typing, and an hour on that bike. time together with the system. praying a lot, in the REAL way. feeling real and alive and hopeful again.
sorry if this entry is a mess. i'd like to close it up more coherently but to do so i'd have to externalize too much. i'm very much inside right now and i am VIBING all red and this is a very good thing. i feel genuine, somewhere deep down, and i want to BE that and i can't do that if i'm split to typing with half my brain.
111. good night kids, god bless you all, see you in a few hours.
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in the kitchen doorway! 
