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[average-jor]

say goodbye

i haven’t posted anything in a while. i’ve been going through a lot. i have substituted writing about it for painting but today i need to write. today i said goodbye to someone i considered my best friend for 6 years. she didn’t die, but she’s dead to me. and not *quite* in the way that phrase is usually meant. i mean it that way partly, but also i’m pretty sad. i am still grieving the loss of a friend. i wanted to end our friendship. i had been struggling for the past month with how to bring up certain things to her. i’ll give you some backstory:

6 years ago, S moved into the apartment across the hall from me. i didn’t like that she played her music so fucking loud and she didn’t like my boyfriend screaming at me. thus, a friendship was born. it was desperation for an “out” in my relationship with dan, who i’ve talked about in a previous post. it was loneliness. it was someone giving me attention that wasn’t dan. it was an escape, or so i thought, from the abuse. S had a huge problem with using drinking to cope with childhood trauma. i drank with her a lot, but she always went the extra mile. it was like that for much of our friendship. there wasn’t much else there. it wasn’t that deep. but somehow we were so close. somehow she was my best friend. 

fast forward a couple years, i met and moved in with my now husband. first thing she said when she met him, was that it wasn’t going to last. i was gonna leave in a month. she just *knew* it. cool, but WHY the FUCK would you say that OUT LOUD??!! it was a moment where i needed her support and encouragement to explore this new relationship away from the abusive one i was accustomed to, and she seemed so dismissive of my attempting to find some happiness and healthiness in my life. 

fast forward another couple years, my husband and i move closer to S. i’m actually happy i’ll have a friend to hang out with. even though she’s notoriously flaky. even though she notoriously lies about medical issues when she blows off our plans. even though she guilt trips and emotionally manipulates me. i didn’t see this clearly yet, but i was starting to. 

fast forward to a month ago. as i’ve been sharing for over a month, i’ve really been going through a lot of things emotionally. i am in therapy because i have repressed childhood trauma and actively suffer from PTSD/anxiety/depression. i got on medication, i started doing things like writing and painting and actually taking care of my self, and my mental health. i told S that i needed some space to process my shit. she said she understood. and then she bugged me to hang out every single day until i finally caved. i offered a day and she was excited. day of, i message her and she didn’t message me back for 2 full hours before finally telling me she’d been - and this is a direct quote - “pukey mcpukerson’’. 

GIRL. you are 33 yrs old. i’ve been your friend for 6 years. i know when you’re lying to me. i didn’t say anything. i didn’t call her out. how do i call her out on a lie about being sick? even if she IS lying, she’s not going to admit that, and then i look like a dickhole because i accused her. so i say nothing. i always say nothing. 

here’s a synopsis of how i feel she’s treated me poorly during our 6 year friendship and any ONE of these things are a reason alone to end a friendship but today she told me things that i never could have seen coming and things that just reaffirmed how i felt about this friendship and where it was going - nowhere good:

- i feel that she is incredibly dismissive of my feelings

- i feel that she gaslights me

- i feel as though she is selfish + narcissistic and quite literally cannot care about anyone else besides herself

- i feel like she guilt trips and emotionally manipulates me

- i feel like she bullies me

- i feel like she is jealous and possessive of me 

- i feel like she is a bad friend. period. 

today she told me that it was not her responsibility to validate my feelings, and i’m not even joking when i tell you she said that i should not be so consumed in my own problems that i can’t still be there for my friends. she told me that i need to stop playing a victim. she told me everyone has to be soOOooOOoO careful about what they say around me, and that i need to “let go of” my past. she genuinely asked “HOW MUCH THERAPY DO YOU EVEN NEED?” what kind of friend is not supportive of them getting help they need? how is that sentence not haunting her as the exact reason why i had such issues with her??

i asked her repeatedly to please put aside her anger a little so she could listen to me. she kept gaslighting me, telling me i’m wrong in my feelings. telling me it’s ridiculous. calling me names. calling me to scream at me just to hang up the second i try to say anything. 

after all of this, i still apologized for not coming forward and being honest with her sooner. i explained that i was proven right in why i felt so hesitant. i said that i was sorry she was miserable, and incapable of personal growth, or letting someone else experience that. i told her that i was a good friend to her for 6 years and i expected the same back. i told her i’m in therapy because i’m TRYING to be a better, more well-rounded adult. i asked what she was doing to try to accomplish that, told her i hope she finds happiness. she blocked me. 

i’m not saying i’m unhappy that the friendship is over, i think it needed to happen. i especially feel confident in my decision because i’ve been going to therapy and can actually recognize toxic shitty behavior. and because of my husband, who has been supportive of my decisions about my friendship with S, and gently shared his opinion about how he thought the friendship was negatively affecting me. he applauded me for still putting myself in harm’s way emotionally to be there for her but reminded me that i need to take care of myself, too. which is exactly what i’m doing. i’m taking care of myself. 

i may have one friend, one therapist, and one husband, but i am full of so much support right now and so much love from the people who actually DO care about me. 

i realize now, S was never gonna let me live my life. she needed me to be in the same boat as her. now that i’ve become a healthier person, dealt with some of my shit. changed some behaviors, she can’t handle it. and i cannot sit here and let her tell me that its my fault. because it’s not. i should have been more honest sooner with her, i’ll own that. for 6 years, though, i was a very good friend. i feel hurt. i feel betrayed. i feel sad. i feel anxious. i feel better, though, too. i know i’ll get through this. it’s just hard. 

please don’t let yourself be blinded like i was to the fact that friendships can also be abusive. 

[average-jor]

survivor

so last week i was a mess. i couldn’t eat. i was so disconnected from my body. i was so despondent. i’d go from feeling full of fear and panic at the thought of confrontation, which had never been an issue for me in my life, to feeling so disconnected from everything. i reached out to my therapist and she sent me a link to an article: https://ct.counseling.org/2016/06/polyvagal-theory-practice/

the article was really helpful to me. it helped me to understand that there was actually something happening to me physiologically. my nerves and different parts of my body were actually working differently. i couldn’t eat and would experience these bouts of panic and fear for a reason. and it was all a response to trauma. 

i know that i’ve been through some really shitty shit. but i always thought i was somehow too strong of a person to have let it affect me too much. i thought oh yeah hey that was really crappy but i’m totally over it here’s my story it’s absolutely not that big of a deal. 

i’m starting to get into touch with my emotions in a way i never have before. over the last 4 years being with my husband, i’ve been in a safe place to emotionally unpack all the trauma i’ve been collecting. with that, i’ve been experiencing a lot of different shit at different times and it’s ultra confusing to me. i also have to remind myself that i am a grown woman now, and some of the feelings i’m having are going to feel weird and out of place for my age and/or situation. i’m actually kind of thankful that my husband is traveling so much with his new job because then i get to really deal with it all without fear of damaging someone else in the process. 

i had a therapy appointment today, and it was a little weird for me, because i didn’t even know what to talk about! i feel like after realizing what exactly is going on in my body due to my trauma, it has a place somewhere. it’s not just spilling everywhere inside me all willy-nilly. so now i have shifted the way i’m looking at things, and its really helping me to process things faster and better and differently. so i think it’s causing me to kind of sputter. i didn’t know exactly what to talk about today. so eventually i just started talking. and i learned that maybe i should stop worrying so much about having something to talk about and to just talk. i have a habit of trying to make sure that i’m always presenting what i think people need from me. so i feel like with my therapist, i have to give my whole life story and all the good things i’ve learned and gleaned from it. subconsciously, i want to make sure she knows i’m a good person but i don’t give myself enough credit or others enough credit that they’ll figure it out eventually. i’m used to having to market myself to everyone quickly. 

even just writing this out helps me understand myself so much better. i hope writing this out today will someday help someone else. life is rough, shit is crazy, and everyone needs a little help sometimes. 

[average-jor]

damaged.

i’m in such a dark place right now. i don’t know where it came from. i don’t know why. i am so scared, actually, of how intense of a feeling this is. i feel like a burden to those around me because of my anxiety and depression. i feel like i’m always bringing my husband down. i feel like just overwhelmed by a weight in myself and i don’t know what it is but i can’t fucking breathe. i can’t think. i can’t scream. i cry, i fully break down. multiple times a day. at home, when i’m driving, in a grocery store bathroom.. everywhere. i literally am at such a loss. i’ve been so strong my whole life. holding myself up, picking myself up, doing everything i can to make sure i’m okay. but i’m not okay. no matter what great things are happening around me, in my life, directly affecting me, i just can’t feel it. i can’t feeeel anything. except this dark heavy cloud of shit hovering over me ready to drop bombs of insecurity, lies, intrusive thoughts, and an overall sense of unease. 

i haven’t been eating. not on purpose. i want to eat. i’m so hungry all the time. plus i’m a diabetic. but i can’t. i physically can’t do it. i’ll order something or make something or buy something that sounds so fucking good. i’ll take 2 bites and even those i have to force myself to eat. there’s a disconnect somewhere between the food and my mouth or something idk. i just know i want to but i can’t. there’s a wall i never see coming, swooping in and shutting me off completely to the things that are going to help me feel good. be good. 

i keep trying to tell myself it’s just stress about money, but it’s not. we’re actually doing so much better in our finances. which i want to feel relieved about but i don’t feel it. i feel like i’m losing myself just when my life is really about to get better. i keep telling the fucked up abused hurt heartbroken little girl inside me to just hang on a little longer. she’s losing her grip though. i can feel it. i’m barely hanging on. 

i have a therapist. but right now, she’s on vacation. i genuinely feel like i can’t talk to anyone about this. my bff is going through some really personal shit with her marriage right now, so i don’t feel like i can burden her with this. my other really close friend is the girl i mentioned in a previous post who ended our friendship for a while, and i feel like she’s going to end up worrying about me and its going to affect her mental health, like last time, and then i’ll lose her as a friend again. i tell her sometimes some stuff that’s going on. but i’m not really all that honest about it because i don’t feel like i can be. my husband. my amazing husband is the only true lifeline i feel like i have sometimes but how is that fair to him?? he’s on a business trip, trying to focus on working hard so we can pay our bills and not be where we were a month ago. he doesn’t have time for this shit and i don’t want to burden him with my garbage and bring him down or cause him to be anxious from states away where he can’t help. my family is great, but i’ve never been able to fully let myself be a part of it. they were my foster parents at a time. i met them when i was 16. i’m 32 and they still consider me to be their daughter. their daughters consider me to be their sister. i consider all of them to be my family. but i’m terrified that if i say something or do something they disagree with a lot or something, that they’ll leave. i’ll never not think that someone is going to leave me. i’ll never not think that i’m not worth it to people to stick around. 

i feel like i have no one. i feel like i am no one. i feel unimportant, i feel like a ball and chain around the ankles of those i love. i feel so incredibly overwhelmingly and heartbreakingly LOST. i don’t want to kill myself. but i do want this pain to stop. and i’m trying so hard to make that happen. i just don’t know how. 

[average-jor]

1 & 4! this was SO HARD. 

Reblog with just TWO choices

[average-jor]

mo’ money, mo’ problems

like most people in 2020, finances are on the forefront of mine and my husband’s minds. when the state lockdown happened initially in about april, he was working from home. by the time june rolled around, he’d gone back to work, but the damage had been done and he was laid off soon after. all of a sudden, we were scrambling to figure out what the plan was going to be. what will this new normal look like.  the same day he got laid off, we’d hours earlier approved extensive car repairs on our one and only vehicle. GREAT! we could handle one big hit, but two?? how were we going to survive? my parents lent us a bit of money to help keep us afloat while we dealt with job searching, car repairs, unemployment, reorganizing our budget and our lives. 

it’s august now, and my husband just got a new job. it’s absolutely perfect, and we’ll be making a considerable amount more, which is going to help us achieve our goals so much faster. 

our minds have been officially blown, and racing through all the opportunities that we’ll be able to take advantage of. we’re already dreaming of all the vacations we want to take domestically + internationally (when we’re allowed to enter europe, of course - if that day ever comes again), and getting excited about buying our first home together. 

our lives have been changed, for sure, and we have only just begun on this part of our journey. i can’t even imagine where we’ll be a year from now, three years from now, and five years from now. sweet baby yoda, am i excited as HELL to find out. 

another fantastic thing happening, is that i am in therapy for the first time in about 15 years. i really like my therapist so far. i’m excited to not have so much outside stress to be worrying about so i can really focus on the hard work i’ll be needing to put into it. i have a lot of demons, a lot of unresolved feelings about a lot of fucked up shit i’ve been through. i’m super fucking happy to be in a place of relative peace to be able to dive into my trauma and get to the other side of it a healthier more rounded person with more confidence in who i am as a person and what i want not only out of life, but out of my relationships with the people in my life. 

a couple weeks ago my husband and i were in such a fucking dark ass place emotionally + mentally. we’d been hopeful for a long time but our optimism was dwindling as the stress was overloading us. we were worried about everything all the time. that can weigh heavy on a person. these last few days since my hubs accepted the position, it’s genuinely been so freeing a feeling. a true weight has been lifted off of us, and we feel incredibly lucky that we are going to survive. in every aspect of the word. 

in my next therapy session, my therapist wants to talk about my childhood, and i’m sure my next entry will be childhood centered as well. i hope its cathartic to both write and talk about it at the same time. i’m looking forward to potentially making some progress in letting go some of the jealousy i feel about who i could have been if my life had been different. 

i’m excited to document the journey through my emotional past and my physical future. 

[average-jor]

sorry, blame it on me

at one point in my life, i was in a really terribly abusive relationship. i don’t wanna use real names so i’m going to refer to him as dan. dan was older, a little reserved at first, but nice enough of a guy. a former friends boyfriend was dan’s roommate which is how i ever ended up in this guy’s life at all. they, being the amazing friends they were, decided to bring me there to have sex with him. even though they never told me this, so dan seemed even nicer to me once i learned this. what a low fucking standard, first of all. not that i knew better, having been raised by toxic narcissist abusive family members and then a slew of foster parents. 

but dan didn’t pressure me, he gave me aspirin for my headache - which was real and ended up being a point of contention later as i realized he wasn’t as nice as i thought and he had assumed i was lying about the headache the whole time just to get out of porking this asshat - and he even bought me a pack of cigarettes. which is nasty but i smoked at the time so it was a really nice gesture. 

i spent 7 years living with this guy. i’m sure in other posts, i’ll eventually get more into what that was like, but suffice to say those 7 years were a prison sentence. all my friends and family were aware of what a douche canoe this guy was. but how do you help someone in that situation? it’s not easy. in any event, my friends heard a lot about this guy. he was my whole life - good or bad - and therefore was ALL i had to talk to anyone about. my friends were tired of it. one of them even broke off our friendship because of the emotional turmoil i was putting them through. we were young, i understand that she wasn’t equipped to deal with it, and that it fed into her anxieties and caused her mental health to suffer. i had also straight up stopped caring about myself/what happened to me. so when i got sick, medically sick, i didn’t really do much to take care of myself, or to get treatment. we’ve since talked about it and are once again friends. 

with all that being said, i’ve run into this problem i’m having in my shiny new life. the one where i actually met and married a really nice guy. a really good guy. a decent dude. the kind of guy women are always saying they can’t find. i found him. he’s great. but like any human to ever exist, he’s got some flaws. some major issues that he’s working on. what makes him such a good guy is that he actually will recognize these things and works on them willingly. which, lemme tell ya, is a breath of fresh fucking air. 

but he’s still got issues. i get frustrated sometimes by how he deals with his anger. it always escalates any disagreement or even argument we’re having ten fold. it makes it harder for me to keep a level head and remain calm and reasonable during arguments. sometimes i fail, surprise surprise. 

at this point though, i feel like i cannot talk to anyone ever about the issues i have in my new relationship. i feel like because my husband is this really good guy, the people in my life who knew dan or knew of dan, cannot empathize with me on issues i experience with my husband. i’ve had literal conversations where i try to explain what i’m feeling as a result of something my husband did or said, and it gets swept under the rug!! “he’s such a good guy, though” “dan was so much worse”. NO SHIT PEOPLE. thanks so much for ur fucking profound comments and observations. 

look i am not trying to be a bitch about anything. but shaming me into feeling thankful for all the good stuff instead of allowing me to feel how i feel about the not so good stuff is NOT HEALTHY. just because my husband is a good guy, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be held accountable for the things he does that hurt me! just because he’s not hurting me like dan did, doesn’t mean he’s not hurting me period. 

sometimes i just wanna be like “i’m so annoyed with him today” to a friend of mine and not have it immediately be met with the attitude that says “u have some nerve being annoyed at this LITERAL ANGEL FROM HEAVEN when you spent 7 years with the DEVIL”. 

i’m not sure why this is on my mind today. i think because i got slightly annoyed at my husband and then realized i had zero people to talk to besides HIM about it. i wonder if anyone else who has found healthy love after a toxic relationship could relate. 

[average-jor]

absolutely true. but doesn’t everyone feel similar?

[average-jor]

shit is fireeeee. beautiful art. made me feel things. 

Henry Wong on Instagram

[average-jor]

Jumpin’ Jumpin’

some days are so hard. some days just don’t make sense. today my anxiety was really giving me a run for my money. driving was insane. people will pull out in front of you when there’s a clear road behind you. people will ride it out in a soon-to-be-closed lane like an asshat and then push their way into your lane when they run out of road. 

i feel like that is such a mirror to what society is like. people constantly are thinking of only themselves. they’re looking at the moment right in front of them rather than a bigger picture. they’re pushy, bullying, selfish, combative, and it’s really hard for me to even go in public anymore. 

living with such severe anxiety is a difficult thing. being 32 years old and experiencing legitimate and real fear of calling even my doctor’s office is almost fucking embarrassing. it’s even more embarrassing to even say these things to anyone else. it’s such a simple task, making a phone call, yet i experience anxiety for a couple days leading up to and following making a phone call. 

sometimes i listen to music, sometimes i smoke weed, sometimes i take anxiety meds, and sometimes i paint. i’m always doing something to help ease the intrusive lies my brain tells itself. 

i’m trying hard, you guys. i’m always trying so hard at this. i want to succeed. i’m hoping writing out my story will help me, and maybe if anyone else ends up reading this, it can help them too. 

this is just the beginning of my story, there’s so fucking much to unpack, y’all. better strap yourselves in. it’s going to be a wild ride.