loquacious-lavender

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The Call-Leader, Elwood, Indiana, August 14, 1915

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someone: why are u biting ur nails?

me, not wanting to explain my mental illnesses and how they affect my physical health and behaviour: lov the cronch

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art cred to Canis-Infernalis.

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God not having anything do to has really driven my insomnia into over drive

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The St. Louis Star and Time, Missouri, November 8, 1917

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my mind is an iron lung.

“I have eighty-seven cubic centimeters of air but you have the world,”

-Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky. One of my favorite novels that’s stayed the same since I read it when I was younger. I didn’t know why the quote always stuck with me at the time, now I understand.

How could other people live?

Why were they not confined to bed?

Didn’t they make up people who liked them?

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lyrics from Alewife by Clairo

In Massachusetts, only thirty minutes from Alewife I lay in my room Wonderin' why I've got this life I met you by surprise You were hangin' out all the time But you know you saved me from doin' Something to myself that night.

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a year ago, am i different now? i wonder.

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minnen hund.

I don’t want to have to romanticize the devil,

To pay back this “God”, to rub it in someone’s face,

I don’t want to seem as extreme as I do,

Knowing full well that I’m more numb than sexual.

I lost too much weight

I think I’ll bruise easily

It hurts to touch and it hurts to clutch

and I’m trying and close to lying and

It’s hard to keep up.

I’m trying my hardest.

At least now I’m eating,

But then I’m self-defeating,

Rinse, repeat.

Haven’t heard the term “lesbianism”

For a hot minute.

Maybe when I was suicidal,

Back when I was going through it.

Too many reminders.

She takes more than she gives,

Oh she doesn’t see it for what it is,

And she cut off that girl for speaking her mind,

I panicked when I realized that mine is in line,

That she could dispose of me that easily,

She’s done it once before,

Or worse, she could end up dead on the bathroom floor.

I’ll be honest when I’m less scared for her,

When I’m less stuck in this fear,

Recently a friend made an attempt,

Right after I’d told her something

Trying to keep her from hurt,

Is it really worth

Trying anymore?

I know it is.

I know it is.

Sometimes the only way to get out of a breakdown,

Is to read the tag of an old stuffed animal,

Wonder what the words written in Swedish mean,

Daydream about Ikea and casually translate,

Realizing it roughly means “Memory Dog”

and finally stop crying.

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Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck, when you don’t go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day, or an hour, or a half a second when so much happens it’s almost like you got born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.

E.R. Frank / Life is Funny (via bnmxfld)

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just a really satisfying album cover. don’t even like the single that much. credit to Blood Cultures.

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you’re a beautiful word i need a dictionary for.

When did you start replacing my thoughts?

Back in September or so,

I remember going on walks with my music so loud

Hoping I’d die or go deaf,

Then I’d remember how your relative couldn’t hear so good anymore,

And I didn’t want to do that to you,

So I turned it down a few notches.

I listened to this one song when I scratched myself just to feel anything,

It was the only thing I could do,

Try to feel anything, and try to take comfort thinking of you,

Forget the thoughts of needing to go,

Now I don’t have to hurt myself at all,

The lyrics and sound are enough,

And to know that you associate it with me,

Makes me think people know that I can feel something

You know I’m not cold,

And when I really am,

You’re the warmth.

“I wanna be with you.”

I think you’d reblogged,

Something about love being conscious.

May not choose who you fall in love with,

But love isn’t about falling,

It’s about being present and choosing

To stay.

It’s about reaching that bottom,

Still being there,

Not about being caught in mid-air.

I don’t “need” to be with you,

Yet I want to and I’ll choose it every morning,

Wonder how you’re sleeping each night.

My mom’s insecure of her parenting,

With my dad being all too confident.

They are not flawless beings,

Rather ones of whim and mistakes,

But thank you for grounding me,

You take

The edge off.

This isn’t one way

No way, no way.

I’m here May through however long you’ll have me,

You’re allowed to ask for what you want,

With anything, really,

And I know that hasn’t been the norm,

But let me quiet the storm,

Just this once.

Just this once, I’ll say.

Okay?

It won’t have to feel like being selfish,

Or betraying what you were taught,

You’re allowed to want.

It’s not that I give you all the credit,

To me getting better,

I’ve thrown in a few zingers myself,

“It’s going to be okay.”

“You can do that bad thing tomorrow.” and never do.

Though, you’re definitely in the cast

At first I felt like I’d paint the backdrops and work the lights,

But now playing the leads feels so right.

Sharing of sweaters,

Tangled up in each other’s arms or dreams.

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happy/sad

“There are days, or sometimes even just moments, where I’m not happy, but I’m not sad. I’m calm and still in this place of feeling everything while feeling nothing, like I’m floating on the surface of the water. It’s like I’ve been transported to this place of in-between where I don’t want to leave my safe place (which in this particular case is on my couch with no pants on and the softest t-shirt imaginable listening to my 75 pound dog chew on a tennis ball), but I also don’t particularly want to do anything else.

Surely you can’t sleep because you don’t want this feeling to leave you yet. But you also don’t want to force yourself to do something too quickly. So you sit. And search for that something that’s going to move you through the happy/sad.

So what do you do?”

https://medium.com/@smithmarieanna/for-when-you-feel-happy-sad-6607d646bfd1

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Hygge (noun): a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.

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it started as a sleep diary. ended in clarity.

A friend bluntly proposed the other day that dreams have no meaning. As someone who was raised religiously, I suppose I’ve always thought they had to. Left and right I was told about the dreams my mother would have of God, or the ones she’d have that were a bad sign, trying to tell her to change something in her life (The next town for us to live in has literally been picked before based on her dreams and what God is “telling” her). This way of thinking has made it so I never stop thinking. When I wake up I keep myself awake analyzing what I dreamt of.

This time a train, a dead wolf, and someone important to me- who was emotionally crushed because they couldn’t save it. I think I saw the same staircase in a nightmare of a basement where I wasn’t alone. Even recalling that disturbs me.

I’d normally assume that this is guilt symbolism, that I need to fix what I’m doing wrong in my life to stop feeling said guilt. But I was over the moon happy before I slept. I wasn’t feeling bad. A few times now I’ve had this experience… being happier than I thought I could ever feel, really, but waking up panicked or confused.

Are dreams nothing more than your head blending its memory bank and stirring the straw?

Some people dream fucked up things that they’d never want to happen. I’m not so certain that there IS some hidden desire, or the subconscious trying to make you aware of something.

Perhaps not always? Trauma will find you there, but other things are at random.

I’ve had a nightmare of my mother crumbling into dust in my hands, and it all being my fault because I messed with forces that weren’t Christian. Nightmares of being hunted down or watched. Nightmares of killing myself (and it being out of my control), which I still suffer from.

I recently heard from a speaker that her dreams of suicidal ideation eventually went away as she healed. It was like I took a breath after holding it for so long. I want them to dissolve, I want that too. I’m fairly stable in my waking hours… I don’t want that reminder anymore.

There’s a recurring nightmare I’ve had since I was little of a large wheel, a scene from Scooby Doo that wasn’t scary, etc. This is one I’d always enter a delusional, half-awake state due to.

I had night terrors as a child, far before I even knew of anything to be that scared of. Apparently locking myself in the washroom and screaming. I would sleep walk, would fall down stairs, would mutter strange things. Once or twice the muttered things were related to things I was worried about, crazed rambling about needing helmets when I was going to be rollerblading the next day.

I couldn’t help but think things were inexplicably linked.

Someone I talked with once had a sexual nightmare about a parent. When you hear things like this, knowing full well that’s not what they want at all, things are finally clearer.

Maybe sometimes food is eaten too close to bed or there’s hunger/dehydration and a physical disturbance turns into horrors in the dream-scape. I think most people have had a nightmare at least once about pissing yourself if you downed glass after glass of water beforehand. It could be less complex psychologically. Certainly less connected to spirituality.

I was told that if I prayed to God, He would keep me safe. He never stopped the nightmares. This isn’t to say I’m angry with God for not taking them away. There might not be God. Thinking there was… kept me paranoid about appeasing being the only way to avoid death. If I ever believed in Him again for some reason, it wouldn’t be to impress or be saved from damnation.

Kinda cool, realizing that my nightmares haven’t been too different between being a person of so-called faith and where I am now. My life is my own. It feels so good to recognize that.

I may still tend to capitalize His name out of ingrained teachings of fearful respect but he does not hold anything over me. Let it be said, he does not.

What realistically keeps me safe is rational security measures and the people I love.

With sexual touch, sometimes it’s harder to sleep. I think it has more to do with feeling physically uncomfortable if I’m focusing on it. Might just need a good shower, not a dose of sexual repression and regret.

Sexual guilt is an oddity in itself. I’ve gone through a few phases of incessantly repeating “I’m sorry” in a fit of tears after touching myself. I don’t know which reason wins out for this. Apologizing to my body for the sensory overload, or feeling grossed out about what I had to think of to feel anything, or feeling bad for thinking about someone that way when they’re not around. Then I also just miss childhood feverishly… masturbation in particular feels like a forceful throw into new territory.

Been trying to figure this out, I’m tired of doing things by habit. Tired of looking to “normal” to base my choices around. I don’t want to cry until my nose bleeds or I nearly puke anymore.

I’d thought the guilt was induced by girls, time after time being allowed to look but not touch-  being an emotional support dog but claiming I wasn’t such. Truth be told, I’ve only liked one girl particularly in a sexual sense, and I don’t think I struggled much to avoid touching the others. 

It USED to be parent induced guilt. I could call it by another name, religious guilt, but that wouldn’t be true. Would it? I’m up and down with this since it’s almost like I never believed personally. The one thing I had faith in was that most of my mother’s expectations or views were correct.

Hm, current sexual guilt could be disguised self hatred actually. “They wouldn’t want someone like ME thinking of them this way.” What’s so wrong with someone like me? With me? After going through a university class that talks about the Westernized therapy approach of figuring out what’s wrong with someone, as opposed to “what happened to you?” I think I’m learning things. Thanks, post-secondary.

When I wake up, I usually hallucinate. This has happened starting this year, and what’s been different? I’ve been sleeping with my bedroom light on, directly above me this time, in this house. If anything that’s messing with my head and my vision. You know when you stare into the sun for some blasted reason? Thinking- I don’t know- that this single time you won’t blind yourself and will be able to see what the sun looks like? Then there’s this sphere of pink or white or something hazey everywhere you look. My visual hallucinations tend to look like that, but with words or unrecognizable script. These aren’t prophetic- sometimes it’s a random username of jumbled letters. Hypnopompic hallucinations, perhaps.

Someday I won’t be so scared of the dark. I’ve been going downstairs with the lights off a few times. “I’m not going to let this obsessive fear get in the way of making a good cup of tea, or putting something away.” I’ve had some success.

I’ve had physical hallucinations a rare few times, someone touching my leg, and the feeling of pressure on my chest. The fingers tracing on my leg felt reminiscent of the time I got groped. I’m not sure what’s going on with the pressure, but it usually goes along with visions of myself drowning or someone trying to suffocate me. Unfortunate at times, but that’s life. Sleep paralysis is pretty common anyhow.

Sleep hygiene is a curious thing.

Learning to save the bed for sleep and little else, to do mind-occupying things outside of it. I find this difficult because my mother owns the main floor, as keeping the TV on all day is usually the only thing to keep her sane. I’ve tried sitting on my bedroom floor. A creature of habit, most days I slink back into bed. I think it’ll get easier with time. It does come with a sense of relief and comfort: easing under the covers after living a day.

And then... there’s him. Beautiful, wonderful him. Sleep comes easy. I don’t know how to write a smile as a word here. “Him” will have to do.

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Our Great Indoors, Erin Sullivan, 2020.

https://erinoutdoors.com/our-great-indoors