Liz

this morning a respite from the front lines. i am going to go see a movie today, which one i don’t know. i want salty popcorn and butter. first film showing when i arrive at the theater.

i am entering the age regression to age progression pipeline

thank you that helps a lot. some of my friends have told me i have a “child’s spirit” but i didn’t really want to believe it because ive spent the past few years trying to cultivate strength and help people. but now the therapist is saying it too, im curious where it will go next appointment.

how did you unstick it?

my emdr therapist thinks part of my brain is “stuck” as a much younger age because of trauma and the goal is to unstick it so it can fully develop, and that’ll make the feelings more manageable. i am willing to try it at this point.

the emdr therapist thinks it’s a bad idea for me to be ruminating on the court records by myself and given my mental health over the past month i think she’s right so i am suspending the delve for now.

stayed up all night and did my consult and agreed to try emdr. i guess we’ll see how it goes.

are you also seattle based? i live in cap hill.

it’s nice to be able to call a friend for three hours at midnight bcuz you’re feeling down. it feels like you’re not so alone as you think

yes of course.

mm yes that is true, the thing is, it’s not really just a role i have for specific people but a role i’ve held ambiently that has caused young queers in need to seek me out. you know?

yeah you get it. especially when i have a bunch of kids who tell me they look up to me, and many of them i’ve helped directly, it’s just hard to know how open i can be. there’s a reason i post this stuff here instead of on my main account, i feel like i can be more earnest.

one of my biggest fears is that i became surrounded by people by being strong, and being there for others when they needed me. it feels scary to be open about what is going on in my heart, like i am not living up to my values by sharing it. i’m not sure what else to do, and neither path is easy.

hmm well i definitely am doing better than i was a few years ago, but ive made ~zero progress on one axis in particular and thats incredibly frustrating. also, i want to be operating from a place of wanting to help people, than needing to do so.

have a consultation for emdr & somatic therapy next week with a person specializing in people who had rough childhoods. not sure i’ll end up doing it after the consult. but, let’s see.

even though i thought i was farther along in recovery than i am until a friend pointed it out, i still am quite far along. the physical symptoms are gone to any degree that matters. i became strong. and i learned i could achieve a lot in life. it’s not dire. it’s just exhausting, and i want peace.

it took awhile to see that & figure it out. i want to continue helping people, but i’m not sure doing it from the place of trying to fill a hole in my heart vicariously by protecting other people is the healthiest way to keep doing it. i want to be useful, but from a place of recovery & not trauma.

i couldn’t protect myself. i was too little to do so, i wasn’t strong enough. i could help young queers so at least they had someone they could count on. and with queer nationalism, it’s the same thing. protecting my people bcuz no one else will. it’s all the same thing, the source is the same pain.

sometimes i wonder, if it’s ungrateful to have such complicated feelings about this. my life really did turn out better than anyone could have reasonably expected with the context of what happened. i’m proud i was able to turn the pain into helping other people. it still hurts. maybe that’s ok too.

i’m really proud of what i did to help people. i got a lot out of it too, it was the best thing i ever did by quite a margin. pretty much all the best people in my life came downstream of it. and also, it still hurts, and i haven’t yet found someone who is a good fit to have as a partner in my life.

maybe corrupted isn’t the right word. but it’s filled with longing for a sense of wholeness, and plagued with an inability to connect with others in certain ways. i think part of me hoped i’d find someone else like me who likes to help others, even partly as a cope, and we’d understand each other.

ive built a life that is surrounded in love, and i cherish all those people. and also, theres a sense that my heart was in some way corrupted. i do my best to help others, i think i made a difference to lots of people. but i know i started getting better really late, and im not sure it’ll be enough.

i don’t care about making money. any windfalls i make, i give away to queers online. i just live a simple life i can sustain a long time. what i really want & yearn for is something that was stolen from me young which is impossible to ever get back, and sometimes, it’s emotionally crushing.

i think what is sort of annoying is i specced into investing so hard so young & used it to escape 12 years of total social isolation and overcome not getting an education past 4th grade, and objectively i’m still quite good at it even barely trying, and i just don’t really care anymore.

this conversation wouldn’t have happened if the plane hadn’t been cancelled for maintenance and i didn’t stay another couple days as a result. i said at the time god seldom does things without a purpose. i want to believe that was the case this time too, that this will help my heart get better.

the robot recommended i look into “emdr” or “somatic therapy” given my background i’ve posted about here. i think i am going to try it, and see if i can fix the intimacy that way. even though i dont think poorly
on that night, it doesn’t feel like the healthiest impulse if intimacy isn’t fixed 1st.

since then, nothing has felt anything close to that. when partners are too respectful to me, it doesn’t feel quite real, it doesn’t feel like anything. he said i could something like that, that is consensual if i want. but i talked to the robot after this convo and it thinks it’s a trauma response.

the guy told me a lot of people would have been hurt by such an experience, that the lack of consent was no good, and i suppose i know that intuitively but i never really thought about it, because to me, it felt good. it was the peak romantic experience i’ve had, where i felt alive and truly loved.

tapping out wasn’t really a thing any more, though she told me she was trying to get me into a submissive headspace. and in the end she succeeded at that, to a point i didn’t fight back anymore when she roughed me up a bit more, but in some
sense more softly. and that was the whole
fight.