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guilt, 6/December/2022

i feel so guilty about what i did. i wouldnt even really know how to describe what happened. all i remember is how disgusted james was with me. thats what prompted the last post, i did something awful and then i realised why these things keep happening. but that doesnt really matter to me. i still hate myself.

james forgave me. i think its hard to stay mad at a partner. i dont deserve the forgiveness. i feel like i deserve some kind of punishment. i relapsed and hurt myself yesterday a couple of times. i punched myself in the head so james took me to the hospital to check if i had a concussion but i wasnt seen by the doctors. i think i deserve a concussion. i think i deserve death.

nothing i can do can take back the awful thing i did. i wont forgive myself. i honestly want to kill myself.

progress, 5/December/2022

i finally understand exactly whats happening between me and james. our boundaries are terrible but not because we sometimes do things which violate the other persons boundaries. the problem actually comes much earlier; we don't invest time into pretty much anything other than each other. its been 3 and a half months and the longest we've gone without seeing each other is 2 days when i went to see my parents at the very start of our relationship. everyday we spend all day together. everyday, the primary goal is to invest more time into each other. neither one of us has space to be our own person.

that inappropriate level of closeness, enmeshment, triggers both of us to do and say things we otherwise wouldn't. it leads to us violating each others boundaries, allowing our own boundaries to be violated, a feeling of being trapped and helpless. it leads to us quickly running out of patience for one another. it leads to both of us failing to use other means of dealing with our issues, when those means might be more effective.

neither one of us wants to take the risk of doing those other things when we have a safe relationship to fall back on. when you're under stress, you tend to pick the easiest option, the option you're most familiar with. when you've been in an enmeshed relationship with a parent, enmeshment becomes the easiest most familiar way to deal with a problem.

ive been discounting what hanging out with my friends, investing more time into them, might do for me. ive been neglecting my hobbies. ive been neglecting my health. my boyfriend is starting to wonder if we are good for each other and i know that we are. but i also know that this isnt all either of us can be. we are people outside of this relationship. if we dont invest our time into other ways of dealing with our problems, we start to need each other instead of wanting each other. i dont want that for us.

i messaged one of my other friends and asked her if she wants to hang out one on one more often. step one.

i was talking to james about how the reason a lot of friendships are formed is because people are forced into a space together. liking someone is an important part of a friendship but and equally important part is actually spending time together. otherwise you lose touch. if you want to have someone in your life, you have to find reasons to hang out. you have to actually pull them into your life. i complain about not being close without people i make no effort to get closer to. i want to change that.

i hope that james is receptive to what i have to say. i think i want to say that first point in an especially coherent way. i think ill say;

"we dont invest time into things other than our relationship. that is what a lack of boundaries is. the boundary violations are not the problem, they are inevitable symptoms of relying on each other for all our social needs everyday.

our overreliance on each other causes both of us to become triggered, because we have both been in unhealthy enmeshed relationships with our parents. the stress our lack of boundaries causes leads us to feeling burnt out, trapped, and helpless. because we are stressed, we turn to the coping strategies that are easiest, meaning the ones we are most familiar with.

our familiarity with enmeshment because of our parents leads to both of us playing the roles we did in those relationships. sharing our problems becomes something inevitable instead of one option in many.

neither one of us has the space -literally- to take responsibility for their issues. if we are literally constantly together, when we literally physically dont give each other space, the options we have for dealing with our problems will necessarily include the other person.

there are steps both of us can take to establish and maintain clearer boundaries with each other. neither one of us is a bad or crazy person. we are both under immense stress, we have both been starved of our basic social needs. we both love each other deeply. but there are things worth our time outside of each other and both of us need to be better at honouring that so we have the space to thrive and be there for each other."

FOUND HOUSE, 24/November/2022

LIFE GOOD ME AND BF FOUND HOUSE OF REASONABLE SIZE AND RENT. YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!

fragments,14/November/2022

yesterday, the alter that wrote the last post looked at all the old art i had made and all the old blog posts on my old tumblr blogs. he hated it, he was much less objective than he originally seemed. the longer he stayed around, the more obvious it became that he had specific preferences for particular alters. he only remember interacting with my alter Larry. so i started to realise, given his preferences for the alters he found least offensive and a couple other traits he had, he was probably a split off fragment of Larry.

it seems to me the way my alters work is that they are all fragments or split-offs of the three main alters. that might be oversimplifying but so far it seems like most of my fragments have very similar themes to each other, either that of Vincent, Larry, or Jack. i still havent read the blog posts on this blog yet. im putting it off because i found it very distressing reading the old tumblr posts and i might surprise myself with how distressing i find these ones.

im also rereading some of the literature around DID, like The Haunted Self because i feel like ill be able to find some useful stuff for myself and my boyfriend. thats all, have a nice day!

i love my boyfriend, 12/November/2022

i told him how i felt and it was okay :3 we talked about things and he apologised for feeling so responsible for my issues that he stopped listening to me and started getting burnt out. i keep being tempted to say he stopped wanting to be around me but thats not true, it just hurt to be around me, thats what he actually said. we spent all day together and i feel way better about everything in life in general after talking about it. it hurts to realise that ive been causing a lot of my own issues by actively refusing to deal with my own problems but now that ive started trying to not be self-destructive again, i find that im in a better, more mature place mentally.

i mean that literally because i think most of these entries are probably written by one of my alters who is sort of age regressed. the way that i write these is that i sit sown at the computer and i just write them stream of consciousness and then immediately post them and never reread them again. it would be interesting to reread them because ive just glanced down and read some of the things i wrote and all i can think is "woah why did i say that?". i dont even mean that in an entirely judgemental way, im just surprised. some of this stuff is really quite worrying. i thihnk id probably get a better understanding of the part that typically writes these posts if i reread them.

anyway, i still feel hurt from when james was avoiding me and i think its going to take me a while to get over the feeling that he might not love me. but actually i dont think its exactly that i actually feel like that and its more like theres some less mature part of me that seeks out closeness like that. "i dont feel like youre loving me enough", like goading someone into closeness. or actually its probably less manipulative than that and more selfcentered. i dont mean that in a disparaging way, more like that perspective that the alter has is limited, more like self-centred the way children are. im interested to see where that goes, i guess.

i should try and warn james preemptively about that alter because one of the things he found hurtful was that i thought he didnt want to be around me when it just hurt to be around me. those things are distinct but this alter doesnt see it that way. its basically that mindset i mentioned in the last post of things in a similar vein and level of maturity. "if you dont want to help me or if its so hard to help or so hard to be around me, just leave because i dont need you anyway". like, a very immature response to feelings of rejection and abandonment.

im somewhat embarrassed by how hectic these posts regularly are and how ill have such drastic changes in perspective and mood but i suppose i have a dissociative disorder, i just have to accept that thats the way i am and theres nothing wrong with that. its intense and a lot of the things i say are immature or bizarre or overly reactive but deep down i am a capable adult and i can manage these intense experiences and feelings and such.

everything hurts, 11/November/2022

i had a conversation with my boyfriend and if i dont start managing my self harm, he said he's either going to have to die with me or cut himself off from me. so im just going to manage it. it hurts so much. i felt like he was avoiding me because he didnt want to come see me when i was in a bad mood and he was always trying to get away from me. he also kept saying things about how he missed how the start of our relationship was and how difficult loving me is. i cant even wish that i was dead anymore because thats whats killing things. he cant love me.

im just being sad about it, i actually have managed my self harm better before. i just have to do it again. it was my fault the whole time that he didnt want me. he didnt want me. it hurts so much. everything i said about how its my responsibility to manage and that he didnt want to be around me and that i was starting to become a drain for him was right. i hate that it never matters how hard things are, you still have to try. life is so much effort and none of it is worth anything. absolutely none of it is worth it.

no, im just saying that because im in a bad mood. i should try and be kinder to myself. what i really hate is that i got rejected. i dont feel like i can trust that james actually wants to be around me anymore. he didnt say anything that entire time even though it was blatantly obvious to me that he didnt want to be around me, or couldnt stand to be around me anymore. it just hurts. i cant trust when he says he wants to be around me or has sex with me or comforts me that he actually wants to be there because he was avoiding me that entire time, i was completely right about everything. my judgement was completely sound so why would i doubt that judgement? hes going to leave me eventually. i hate how hard everything is. the easy thing would be to say that its okay because now things have been sorted and he wants to be around me again. or can be around me again. but thats not how it is.

this is probably how caleb felt when i left him. "fine, if you dont want to help me or if its so hard to help or so hard to be around me, just leave because i dont need you anyway". maybe not, im not sure how he felt. but i guess that how i feel, even though it misses the point. he wants to be with me, he just cant if i dont put in any effort into looking after myself. im not trying hard enough to handle my mental issues. things are already so hard so it hurts that i cant stop trying without destroying my relationships. tough shit i guess.

i think im mad at james. i never needed him to pretend to help me. i dont know why he couldnt have just been honest and said that i needed to do something about it or he would leave me. it has to be "its not your fault, dont be hard on yourself, ill help you." and its just a fucking lie. what do i need his fucking help for? how is it helpful to take on all the responsibility for a problem you have no ability to solve that stresses the shit out of you that has nothing to do with you? if its so fucking hard and stressful, why dont you leave me the fuck alone?

i already said this would happen. i said, people tend to take on too much of my issues as their own when im the only one that can solve them to begin with and them i start to depend on them because i want to trust their judgement and then when they inevitably get burnt out from being around me (for taking on problems i never asked them to take on and that they could never have helped me with to begin with) i just have to go back to handling it myself. i already knew this would fucking happen. why cant people just be honest with me?

somehow its help to lie to me about what my responsiblities are and then just start avoiding and resenting me when i dont do the things youre telling me not to do. somehow thats helpful. somehow its help to tell me you dont want to be around me and im a stupid asshole and im difficult to be in a relationship with for burdening you with a problem i never asked you to take on. regretable rant over.

things went well, 9/november/2022

things actually went really well. i told my therapist about how i felt like her comments from last time were unhelpful and then she said she would start taking a more directional approach with me and we worked on some self concept clarity increasing things. she asked me to tell her what traits i thought i had and i was surprised i could say as many as i did. i also switched midway thru the session which is the first time ive done that. the part that wrote the previous entry entered therapy with concerns and then the part currently writing this entry worked on the actual tasks shed prepared.

i always fail to take into account how sensitive i am. its clear to me now that the reason i felt so angry was specifically because of my therapist. i think what made that harder to identify was the fact that she did something which triggered me, which then reminded me of a bunch of other people who i had previously asked for help who i did not find very useful. i could probably avoid situations like this in the future by telling james about this session (when hes ready because i get the sense hes going to be having a difficult day today, i kept him up last night) because he might be able to help me identify when ive been triggered. of course, i should also try to remember this incident because then i might be able to recognise when im triggered in the future and prevent future meltdowns but given my dissociative amnesia, that will always be hit or miss.

i feel a little guilty for keeping him up last night when i could have waited until the next morning to discuss things with my therapist. but at the same time i recognise that he wanted to help me and i could not have dealt with the way that i felt at that time in a safe way alone. today i want to make things easy for him. i might ask him if he wants to go out and have a nice meal together. that might put him in a good mood. i love my boyfriend.

feeling betterish again, 9/November/2022

i talked to my boyfriend last nite about how my self harm is getting worse and he said its probably an alter thing and then i switched to the alter thats writing this post and i told him about all the reasons im pissed off. it helped, i think i feel better after talking to him. i think its because the thing that makes me angriest is the stupid shit that people say to me thats meant to help my situation but doesn't. its just patronising. i want them all to die. i do all of these stupid fuckin intervention managing things people tell me to and i never think they're gonna work and im almost always right. im so fucking tired of pretending like that shit is useful just because other people wont fucking leave me alone about it. james is actually not a patronising asshole, unlike all these other fucking people who say they're "helping".

maybe what i wanted was to be understood. im not really sure, i think im still going to be struggling and all that for a long time but at least i dont have to struggle and then hear twenty different parrot piece of shit idiots tell me to do yoga or breathe deeply, like that'll fucking do anything when i clearly know at least as much about my problems and how to solve them as they do. goddamn it. i love my boyfriend.

also, i had a horrible dream about something that im trying to forget about. i dreamt that my top surgery was scheduled to happen in a few days. when i woke up i swore to god it was real and i almost woke up james and told him about it when i realised it was just a dream. ughhhhhhghghghgh. BUMMER! anyone else ever get awful dreams like that? i hate that thats how dreams work. anyway, now im gonna walk to therapy and my therapist is gonna be like, "ur right lazarus i cant do shit for you. somehow this is helping."

dysphoria stuff, 8/November/2022

having trouble with dysphoria. usually the way i deal with it is by not thinking about it. im having all the weird sensation distortion things i used to get when it was really really bad but im managing it. managing it means acknowledging the thoughts are there or the sensations and then redirecting your thoughts to your surroundings. its the same as with body dysmorphia. its one of the few mental health issues i have ever managed effectively, to the point of thinking it was no longer a problem. i thought, "i feel okay about my ■■■■ but one day ill still get surgery since i dont want them, while theyre here i can handle it". but it is still there, i just have to manage it.

is managing it worth it? without a doubt its better than the alternative. i remember i used to be completely debilitated by dysphoria, or rather dysmorphia with a transgender theme. i say that not because i think those two concepts are the same, but because i remember it started with the things i was dysphoric about and bloated to literally everything about my body. my hands, my bones. i was obsessed with the idea that my bones had been permanently fused wrong. i would stand in the mirror and measure how my hips lined up with my shoulders wrong and take photos from weird angles to show that i was beyond hope. id spend everyday at school standing in the teachers disabled bathroom, staring into the mirror, measuring, lamenting. it was hell, it completely consumed me when there was already so many other awful things going on in my life.

i realised looking back that most of the reason i felt like that was because of the transphobic way other people treated me. family members would make weird comments about my body, i had no friends at school because i knew once they figured out i was transgender they would abandon me, it was a small town so id go places and get misgendered by strangers because they knew someone who knew me and was transphobic. i blamed it on the way i looked because i felt like if my body looked different i would be given more respect. but that wasnt true. they would have done that no matter how i looked.

when it comes to managing the dysphoria aside from the dysmorphic tendencies, i try my best to redirect my attention but it pisses me off because ive been trying to secure surgery for myself for years. i have the funds but i still cant find a surgeon. i got ghosted by my surgeon last year. the truth is even if i tried to manage it for the rest of my life i will still be unhappy until i get this surgery.

and thats true for so many of my problems. its hard to know which one i SHOULD focus on. it feels like im not allowed to think about any of them in any detail. it feels like theres so many things i just have to ignore, that cant be part of my life anymore because the stress of it is more than what i can bear. theres so many problems in my life that i have no control over, that i cant do anything about, that no one else can do anything about, and i have to manage them. i hate managing. i hate that all i can do is manage. is it worth managing it? no, its just better than the alternative. i hate asking for advice, i hate seeking help, because every time all i get back is that im already doing everything i can and theres nothing i can do.

it makes me so angry and suicidal that i end up doing things which are self destructive and making my life even worse. then i have even more shit to manage. im so exhausted. it makes me so angry talking about it with other people (aside from my bf usually) because they're just like "that sucks". or they give me advice on how to manage these things as if i dont have access to google.

i hate it but i think the best i can do now is nothing. i dont think i can manage these things. i think i have to just let myself have periods in the day where i want to kill myself and i use drugs and i hurt myself and then have other periods of the day where i dont do that. because i no longer have the energy to manage these problems, at least not all the time.

it feels like im constantly being strung along. people are always offering solutions and going back on them or saying things that make me think i might have some hope of changing my situation or making things easier for myself and then it never turns out to be true. its exhausting. i dont even think about when it will end anymore because it doesnt matter. all the comforting things people say to me just make me angry because its just opium. its just bullshit thats meant to placate me. sure, im not always completely 100% on the ball with my assessments of why im having the problems im having and when im in a bad mood i can be biased towards negative attitudes, but im right about the problems being there. i cant always articulate it in a way other people can understand but ive been dealing with my problems for my entire fucking life.

maybe the way i was coping before, which was unhealthy, was better than the shit people are suggesting me to do now. maybe the unhealthy mindset i have is better in the situation im in than a healthier mindset. maybe its not my fault and its not under my control or influence at all. god im fucking angry. i will probably hurt myself when im done writing this. will it matter at all? no.

starting to see a pattern, 7/November/2022

man just reread the last entry. i was really flipping my shit. im starting to see a pattern. every time i get into some kind of social situation, i end up doing something or someone else ends up doing something which ill start freaking out about. i think i have extremely bad social anxiety but i just keep forcing myself into social situations anyway and instead of that showing me that i have no reason to be scared, i just get overwhelmed and it confirms all the things i previously believed. i only get more nervous. thats the reason the only time i interact with people socially is while high. i remember i used to have a panic attack every time i spoke to anyone back when i went to college. its seriously bad. i mean of course it is, look at half the shit on this page. look at the last entry. so at least i have a clear goal to give my therapist lol.

why do i try?, 6/November/2022

went to sleep last night after having an extreme anxiety attack and woke up this morning and its started happening again. im was complaining about my friends or something like a piece of shit and james said i am probably just coming up with every reason why things would go wrong if i tried to open up to people because im scared of change and im trying to avoid it. im scared of everything. why am i fucking alive? honestly nothing i do is worth the effort of still being alive. i fucking hate that i cant just kill myself. everyday something like this will happen, where for whatever reason i will feel some kind of unbearable emotion i cant cope with that no one can help me with. i give up. i want to kill myself. this is no way to live. but it doesnt mean anything to say that because i know i cant or i already would have. why wont this shit end? why cant i just die? im so sick of being alive.

just an interesting quote, 5/November/2022

"While the theoretical framework is not always well spelled out, it is from this perspective, then, that current concerns emerge, for example, about role conflicts between and among combinations of spouse, parent and worker roles which may account for gender differences in stress and depression" citation

"In commenting on the fairly common findings that levels of stress among employed married women are higher than among employed married men, they suggest that work is compatible with the family-role expectations of men, but is less compatible with the family roles of most women (cf. also Gove & Tudor, 1973). Their own research begins to specify this relationship further by showing this to be especially true when there are young children (under age 6) in the household. Because of the different expectations held for mothers and fathers of young children, parental and work identities are much more likely to conflict for women than for men. It is not just the presence of children, but the meaning of that for the role identities of mothers and fathers. "

"For example, “Type A” personalities appear to have more tightly controlled identity systems with more rigid, and therefore easily interrupted, organizations (cf., House 1974; Jenkins 1971). Such tightly controlled identity systems are not only more easily interrupted, but interruptions cause more disruption than for more loosely controlled identity systems. Experiments have shown that Type A persons are impatient with delay (Burnam, Pennebaker, & Glass, 1975) and react with annoyance and impatience when completion of a task is delayed (Glass, Snyder, & Hollis, 1974). In the study of police dispatchers, Kirmeyer (1988) shows that Type A persons feel more distress than others, even when the number of objective interruptions of their job performance is controlled. Similarly, a number of studies have shown that Type A persons were more stressed by events and interruptions than Type B persons (e.g., Davilla, Mariotta, & Hicks, 1990; Jamal 1990). While the Type A personality has been studied primarily with respect to work roles, similar manifestations may show themselves in other situations and other roles. For example, Authoritarianism (Adorno Frenkel-Brunswik. Levinson, and Sanford 1950) and closed-mindedness (Rokeach 1960) may represent other manifestations of this sort of tightly controlled identity system. This would explain higher distress levels for people with these characteristics. "

"Similar patterns can also occur in other role identities as, for example, gender identity. A person with a strong gender identity might closely control his or her gender-relevant reflected appraisals. In this case, a person with a strong masculine identity is not necessarily extremely masculine (though is more likely to be given the correlation between strength and extremity of attitudes), but he cannot tolerate being in situations where he is perceived as very much different from the meaning of “masculine” as his identity has defined it; any perception that does not strongly agree with his identity standard must be quickly corrected. Because of the degree of attention that must be given over to control of the perceptions of self-meanings relevant to gender other identity processes may come into conflict with this time/attention and the different identity control processes interrupt each other (c.f., Eisler & Skidmore, 1987)."

"On the other hand, a person with a more androgynous gender identity is more flexible and does not need to control his reflected appraisals as much as the person with a sex-typed identity. In this case, androgyny is viewed not as having both masculine and feminine traits, but as having an open and flexible identity that allows an individual to behave in ways that are to their advantage, even though he or she may be sometimes perceived as more masculine and sometimes as more feminine. In this sense, the androgynous person does not need to work as hard to maintain his or her gender identity as the sex-typed person and is therefore less likely to have an interrupted identity process or have the identity process interrupt other activities. Roos and Cohen (1987) found exactly this result in their longitudinal study of sex roles and stress. They found that androgynous individuals had greater resilience and suffered less interruption and stress from life events than more strongly sex-typed individuals. This mechanism could also account for the findings that persons with androgynous gender identities tend to have higher feelings of self-esteem and self-efficacy (Spence and Helmreich 1978; Spence and Helmreich 1979)."

tentatively enjoying things, 5/November/2022

things are going okay. ive been thinking about doing another art project thing, something ive done before because i actually want to finish something. maybe a song, maybe a couple of songs. my music is terrible but its fun to make and i feel like making art in jameses parents house is stressful so its a good something to bridge the gap.

im wondering how smart it is to put all this personal stuff on a page people who know me know about. i dont usually tell people about all the fucked up things going on with me, it helps to know this page is public for some reason. its like venting to a friend because i dont reread any of the things i write. theres many things that are deeply wrong with me which would be impossible for me to put into words. i dont talk to other people about most of my problems because thats how they are. i try to talk about those kinds of things and i never end up saying what i mean to say. i think sometimes you need to talk to someone who has a better understanding of you than you have of yourself.

its very difficult to be understood. most of the time i wonder if i actually do want people to understand me, theres many things about me which are integral to who i am which i keep entirely to myself or only ever partially reveal. theyre too awful. i say that but then when i talk to james (or usually its james) he usually has something similar going on. of course he does, because weve lived similar lives. and then i think, man i was feeling all alienated and shit for no goddamn reason.

sometimes i think the reason my problems feel so lame and boring to me is because i feel so much shame that im even alive that i disown them. ive done things and have been doing things for a while to feel less like that all the time. maybe my therapist is right that she cant do anything for me, but i can probably do stuff for myself to increase my quality of life, even while im in trying circumstances. ugh. i hate that i have to say something like that instead of being able to say "glad im going to therapy, its really helping!".

okay completely changing subject. aimee got famous basically just by making posts like this about her life constantly. just complete stream of consciousness all the time. i think the reason im so drawn in by peoples personal blogs, such as this one, is because you can be close to someone and they know nothing about you. it probably reminds me of what its like being around my family, people just stream of consciousness ranting at you and you have to engage with that and they dont want to know shit all about you. lol.

thats also the reason i tend to play second fiddle to some other random person in all my relationships without even realising it. my therapist said i have "low self-concept" which was the last helpful thing she did for me. i dont have a good sense of who i am, i usually just end up "working" for another person, serving all their interests, taking over their goals as mine. im used to just being owned. im not used to equal relationships. if anything, they make me somewhat uncomfortable because its not what im used to. one day, when im a real full human being, itll be interesting to see how much of who i am now remains and how much of it turns out to be other people.

i dont feel like a full person. i feel like i cant look back on my life and say that the things i did reflected who i was because most of the time all they reflected were the pressures of my neglectful/abusive environment. even for the shows i liked. brotown, which i used to watch as a five year old, is just full of questionable shit like abuse justification. i related to the characters a lot so its dear to me but also i should never have been shown this content to begin with. lucky star was my absolute favourite show for a long time and its also full of pedophilia jokes?? or like endorsements?? its very questionable and that kind of content negatively affected me for sure. i dont have much to me outside of having been abused.

i guess when you have a dissociative disorder, that feels like being empty because you cant remember most of your life in a full and coherent way because its mostly abuse. but when you recover, you do have a full and coherent picture of things (which makes up your personality) and even though it is mostly abuse and you still probably hate your life, you know who you are.

now im looking into low self concept on google scholar.

"[S]tudy participants with high self-esteem tend to have positive, well-articulated views of the self, but participants with low self-esteem do not hold similar negative, well-articulated views of the self. Instead, people with low self-esteem tend to be evaluatively neutral with inconsistent, uncertain, and unstable selfviews" citation

im looking into this shit and its basically saying that having a low self concept makes you less able to deal with stress and to experience events as being more stressful. people with low self concepts tend to employ passive coping strategies:

"the coping strategies chosen by participants with low self-concept clarity are strategies that do not involve concrete action or planning. They are passive nonactions rather than active reactions to a stressful situation or event. It is noteworthy that one of the most robust findings is that low self-concept clarity is consistently and strongly associated with passive and potentially less adaptive coping behaviors such as denial. The tendency to engage in more passive coping behaviors may result from an inability to appraise adequately a situation or event (e.g., taking blame for a negative situation or failing to take credit for a positive event) or an inability to appraise one's capacity to deal with that situation rather than resulting simply from experiencing greater amounts of stress." citation

this stuff is consistent with the idea that DID is caused by disorganised attachment/neglect, the idea that trauma is any memory that you cant integrate and not necessarily to do with "how bad" the event that cause it was. it also talks about how even having more positive events that were intense causes stress if your self concept is low, because it conflicts with the negative evaluations of things and causes confusion about the self which is distressing. anyway, cant wait to look into this stuff more.

doing okay :3, 3/November/2022

ive been feeling a little better lately, even though yesterday i talked to my therapist and she basically said what i thought she'd say, "these things take time". something about that felt so condescending to me because obviously i know that. goddamn it. im not going to start complaining about my therrapist right now but if i talk to her again next week and she cant do anything to help me with literally anything im just going to stop going because this is complete bullshit. grrrrrr. anyway, things have been okay yesterday or at least are getting better and today my boyfriends parents are leaving for a couple days so we will have the place to ourselves :3 yay!

i think it sucks that im gonna be struggling with these mental health issues for a very very long time with no help except my boyfriend. i wish the people who say theyre gonna help me would put some goddamn effort in. im angrier than i was when i started typing up this entry. that therapist really is fucking useless. if i was a different client, wouldnt she reassure me or something? or is this just something she does with everyone? it feels like i do all of the work in our relationship and she just happens to be there. i dont get the sense that shes thinking about me after i leave the room. im gonna go type something up which im gonna give to her next time i see her so that we can talk about it and such. then im gonna have a lovely time for the next couple days hanging out with my boyfriend :3

fucking idiot, 1/November/2022

boy do i feel like a fucking idiot. i told my boyfriend about what happened because even when i think, "im serious guys, this time im never ever gonna talk about how i feel ever again," i go back on it the next day. speaking of things which are very typical of me, this whole solution was very much the kind of ridiculous shit i would suggest, and i know that because i have already suggested it several times. i remember asking my mum to stop asking me how i felt if she cant handle the answer and now she just doesnt do that and i no longer get abused. i remember there were several times where the way we and my ex boyfriend reached a solution to my problems was thru deciding we would stop talking about them. its not a good solution unless the other person is a fucking idiot, doesnt care about me, and/or doesnt live with me. even then, obviously it doesnt actually address the issues, it just means no one else knows about them.

in that last post, when i said i ran away from home, james was well aware of what was happening but since he agreed not to try to help me he didnt come after me, he just cried. how is that helping anyone? why am i so fucking stupid? its not like people cant tell that theres something wrong with me anyway. it just meant he couldnt say anything about it. i have no idea how to handle someone who actually cares about me.

we stopped doing that because i just told him everything i just told you, that this is exactly the kind of stupid shit id suggest because im insane. he said he doesnt mind supporting me. i just cant believe that. i could die from how guilty i feel. i dont want help. i need it desperately but it hurts so much to share that weight. its too much for anyone. i wish i could just wait until it crushes me to death.

i talked to him later about how i dont seem to be making any progress in terms of how insane i am. in fact, in the past week things have been much worse. or more like they are at a usual low point so its the norm in a way, im just at the bottom of a mental illness cycle. he said theres lots of external reasons why im not getting better. or actually he thinks i am getting better. but anyway, he says ive probably hit a wall because of external stressors. part of me feels like that doesnt matter because if i cant get better under stress, ill never get better. im always under stress. i dont want to stop trying and lose momentum. plus i told him that if im not doing everything in my power to be okay again, people blame me for not trying hard enough. they do that no matter what. he said the MOST he ever expects from me is to try my best. i could do nothing to change and he would accept me.

im lucky to have james. i dont deserve him at all, im terrible. but theres probably some okayish things about me or someone like him wouldnt be interested at all.

today ive woken up and i just feel anxious and stressed. i just keep thinking about all the things that have happened in the last couple days. ∑(ΦдΦlll) ugh jesus, i could scream. i could throw up. i keep having really intense dissociative episodes, i feel like shit basically constantly. grounding exercises of the regular variety dont really work when im like this. maybe i cant handle being grounded right now. maybe remembering who i am is too stressful. okay whatever, time to go wake up my bf.

struggling, 31/10/2022

ive made an agreement with my boyfriend that i wont talk about how i feel with him until he can handle it again. he takes on more than hes actually capable of. i keep getting the feeling that ive done this before. "dont ask me how i feel if you cant handle knowing". i dont know if i want him to know then, how serious things have gotten or actually how serious things have always been.

last nite i kept dissociating from stress. he asked me how i felt about receiving help and i was honest and he said some parts were so painful he felt like he was dying. i knew that would happen so i dont know why i even said anything. then i knew i would have to leave before i started having a breakdown in front of him and it just barely worked. i ended up getting out of the room and pacing in the lounge for a bit and then going downstairs and just curling into a ball on the floor and sobbing and punching myself in the face like a crazy piece of shit. he saw me but thank god he didnt see me doing that. then he went to play minecraft and i ran away. but then i realised i had nowhere to go so i came home. eventually i went to sleep or something. there was more but its not really important. but the good thing is i got to the end of the day without having to tell him how i felt.

at what point is it so serious i have to say something? if this is the point at which its that serious then it is alawys that serious and thats not sustainable. i need more friends to talk to about these things but i just dont want to, every time i talk about how i feel with other people i feel significantly worse. maybe what i actually want is to go be alone somewhere while im like this so i dont have to act like im okay when im at my lowest point just to avoid questions. i regret telling james i felt the way i felt, people find that kind of a thing very insulting. i give up. i dont want other people to try to understand me. i want to give up.

dont be alarmed, 29/October/2022

i was thinking about the entry just below this one and i think im sick of making care. receiving care takes so much effort. i remember all the times aimee made me call those hotlines and forced me to reach out. it was good. i got some extensions on some assignments. it wasnt help for the problem i had. it was help and it was help i made. i put in the work to get something out of what i was being offered. im sick of making help. im sick. i cant do anything anymore. im spiralling past the point of helping myself and i dont think that there is such a thing as someone else helping in the way i need help. no one can save me, i have to be the one to make the help. like with therapy, you only get what you put in. like with therapy, i must be treatment-resistant or something.

maybe ive got the good luck/DNA to be fixed by an antidepressent but i have no hope that will happen for me. i have no faith that this will be different but i feel calm in a way. i think ive accepted, at least this part of me has accepted, that this is it for me even if its not "it" in this moment or in a week or a month. i know my suicide is approaching everyday even if its in the relatively distant future. its okay. i never could have been helped and thats just how it is for some people. its not their fault, its not the people helping thems fault, sometimes these things just happen. im not a bad person for being doomed. even if no one else will see it until its too late, i know im past hope.

if someone saves me, maybe ill live. which is to say, goodbye.

not here, 29/October/2022

last night i told my boyfriend how much worse my suicidality has gotten. he called some of my friends and they came to my aid. everyone said theyd be fully willing to help me and that i could ask them for help any time. so thats good. im good i guess. thats a fine outcome. one of them told me about how the mental wards are here and theyre fine at least if youre in the nonviolent ward. ill probably end up there, i cant imagine a situation outside of killing myself where i dont eventually end up there.

that shit is my worst fear and it just doesnt matter. i spent so long avoiding these mental institutions and it doesnt matter at all. its like that junji ito story. this hole was made for me. but i have to be honest with myself. it could have been okay if i managed things myself but i am quickly losing the ability to do that. one of my friends told me about how before she dealt with it for real by seeking help, she didnt even realise how much she wasnt handling things. i wish i had a say over what i am and what the best option is for me. it feels like the only choice i ever make, the only thing i work towards is honesty. im either going to seek help or im going to kill myself. i cant lie and say that its not that serious any more. i dont want help, i want to die. but thats not fair to the people around me so i cant.

what hurt the most is how much worse seeing people made me feel. it didnt feel real, i was dissociating the whole time. why? no one is asking me to do that or to look okay or anything. no one was demanding anything of me and in fact they showed they cared by showing up on such short notice just because i wanted to kill myself. its bizarre. maybe concern is just something i cant handle. i just feel lonelier. alienated. and guilty that i feel like that. care should be enough. why isnt it enough that people care about me? why dont i even care? james said no one is expecting that after tonite you would instantly feel better. i know that. i know it was good regardless. i feel better a bit to have seen people. but i feel so much worse.

i feel when you tell your therapist you want to kill yourself and they dont freak out but they just say, "so long as youre not an immediate danger to yourself, we can talk about it", but of course if talking about it helped maybe youd be a little less suicidal to begin with. i feel empty. i feel like in this event meant to display care about me that i could have been replaced with anyone and it would have been the same. the only reason that fact that im suicidal matters is because it matters no matter who wants to kill themself. why am i here specifically? im not here specifically. im not here at all.

i keep thinking about this guy i used to keep tabs on on tumblr. come.tumblr.com. he was completely isolated, by his own hand. he actively isolated himself. he was constantly talking about how he was beyond help and just waiting to die. and about 2 months ago, he made a post that read, "bye." with a photo of a cross out in the desert. he lived somewhere near the border in the US. i think he killed himself. at what point was he too far gone? james said the moment he actually killed himself. i think it may have been sooner and you just couldnt tell until it actually happened because you held out hope. in retrospect, that hope wasnt going to do anything for him. i often think about how aimee harassed this guy because she was frustrated he didnt want to receive her "care" and "help". he said this;

creep is an appropriate term for aimee. its unsurprising with this entitlement she felt to this guys trust/time/effort/etc. just because she stalked his tumblr that shes a sex predator. ever heard of boundaries? i read this and i felt like this guy got how it was. this was something true. care is a complicated word, it doesnt necessarily mean much for the person on the receiving end. my parents care about me, they also abuse me. james cares about me and he actually does stuff to look after me. not exactly his point, just saying that to say that care is just a feeling of investment in most contexts. care can also be an action someone takes. "care", i dont know if care means you can do anything for a person even if it is something you are actively trying to do. i obviously cared about this guy on tumblr or i wouldnt be talking about him. but i couldnt do shit for this guy and now hes dead. he was right. "care". is care going to mean anything for me either, when this is how i respond? i cant help it, i feel worse for having received it.

part of me knows that this is just how i am. ill have this emotional reaction and im sure in less than a week ill have no idea why i was even complaining about it or why i thought it was a problem. its just uncomfortable even though i know that ultimately it doesnt matter.

and im sure most of the people in that room had felt the exact same way before, maybe even felt the way i feel right now. but instead of feeling less alone, i feel more so. i feel generic and i dont think thats their fault at all. i feel so vague. maybe im a bit jaded. so many people have told me they care as a gesture and nothing more. maybe now i cant receive care about of those experiences. maybe ive had these conversations before and it did nothing. theres some part of me ill have to lock away; it hurts too much to know that no matter how serious the problem is, the only options are the ones that have always been there. its like a breakup or something. its generic, i cant feel any investment with how vague it all is. its like, "that sucks, im totally here if you need anything". nothing anyone can give me will change that i want to kill myself. or alternatively, so many people have gone thru this before and i am just another one of those people. ill do the things psychology recommends and other disciplines and in a couple of years it will be as meaningless as when i have body dysmorphia and then because i followed all the instructions on how i fix that, i now dont. so people are going to do these things for me and ill complain the way im complaining now, and then itll start to work and ill be like fuckin fine i guess. its hard to put into words. im just jaded maybe.

letting go, 26/October/2022

i've been looking into ways orphans cope with their grief surrounding their parents, even though mine haven't died yet. i wish i cared less than i did. im scared to care about my relationship with my parents again. if i get too invested i might fool myself into thinking theres hope but the truth is i never had a relationship with my parents outside of the one they forced onto me. if we met under different circumstances we would want nothing to do with each other. but thats also a ridiculous thing to say because there are no other circumstances. im only like this because they raised me. it would be ridiculous to think this is something i can just not care about. its always going to be something that makes me vulnerable, maybe thats why im scared to be invested. its always going to hurt, even when people die they dont disappear from your life. theres no hope for me to have a relationship with my parents where i am not in danger.

both of my parents were abused by their parents. both of them are still in contact with their parents, in a very similar way to how im still in contact with them. still reliant on them in some way for support and maintaining the relationship by placating. realistically, in a decade i will still be placating them. im lucky that my parents are old. at least when they die ill be safe. but not even thats true. because the support of your parents is what insulates you from predators, doesnt matter what age you are, and i dont have that. my father was telling me about how parents will sometimes leave certain weak spots in their children as a way to clip their wings and control them but what they dont realise is that when the child leaves the nest other people see those same weak points. he was talking about himself of course, the irony was completely lost on him. is it bitter for me to point that out? yes. thats why i say theres no real escape because i will always be weaker, more bitter because it hurts and easier to control because of the lack of a real relationship with them. it would be dishonest to say anything else.

of course i care. of course i care. but what else can i wish for? ive accepted that my parents will never be what i need them to be, that all i can do is maintain a false relationship with them or estrange myself. i havent accepted how much it hurts still, even knowing that nothing could have turned out differently.

ive estranged myself from many people. people disappear from my life all the time. it has to hurt somewhere deep down. but its doesnt feel like that. it doesnt feel like anything. it feels like i should care, be angry or anything, but i dont because theres no one there to be angry at. theres just me, anchorless, and theres not a single person now who has known me longer than about 2 years (aside from my parents). i expect to lose touch with more people. its like im floating down a river and i cant grab hold of anything and i cant even make out a landmark because its going by so quickly. it doesnt feel like theres enough of me in me to make up for all the loss. all i can feel is the lack, all the things i was meant to have that i didnt have, all the years of letting go, letting go.