morbidsecretary

[morbidsecretary]

Augartst day 8: harbinger. This one made me a little sad :( she’s just the messenger

[morbidsecretary]

Me when I remember the road to hell is paved with good intentions

[morbidsecretary]

Augartst prompt day 7 via @artpromptcal

Dour (adjective):

relentlessly severe, stern, or gloomy in manner or appearance.

Been rereading C.S. Lewis’ incomparable The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape himself feels like an excellent candidate for this prompt.

[morbidsecretary]

August art prompts

[morbidsecretary]

I'm so fucking sick of this chem class lmao

I double checked the syllabus for the professor's office hours and they're just not listed

there are multiple lectures (online, that we have to watch on our own time cuz it's "hybrid") that are completely out of chapter order

the textbook is riddled with errors

last night I clicked on the reference link on one of the homework questions and it went nowhere! the page doesn't exist!

i'm fuming

[morbidsecretary]

>have to be pretty >don't deserve to feel pretty >??????

[morbidsecretary]

You know something? I didn't mind feeling invisible. And that's how I felt most of the time, when I was younger. I didn't really think about how I looked to other people. I didn't think other people cared to look at me.

They did, of course. People notice each other, as I was sometimes abruptly reminded, like when one of my softball teammates approached to ask if I was a lesbian. I had no conception that rumors could be circulating about me, nor any idea why. Now, I feel painfully visible. When I am not "on" or in hiding - sometimes even in the house - I fixate on what my appearance, my behavior say about me. On my poor computer-chair posture, my unkempt hair, the mismatched skirt and shirt I threw on this morning for lack of proper loungewear. Everything I find dissatisfying about my life, my appearance, my mess of a house, is filtered through the lens of public embarrassment.

So is anything I might do about it. Before I can be someone who skateboards, who dances or does karate, who has lost weight, I have to go and be seen as someone new to skateboarding, to dancing and karate. Someone who is dieting. Someone unhappy with their body. I am afraid to give up my front of competence. Maybe I've just been humiliated too many times. But what does that say about me? Do I think trying new things, exploring and struggling, is shameful? Was my feeling of invisibility the only thing that let me act?

[morbidsecretary]

When I was seventeen, and my stepfather hit me, I had this moment of clarity. All the questions and fear and struggling resolved into a solid image. I felt like I'd been trying to understand what was wrong with me, with my life, for years, and I suddenly had the answer. Everything I thought was right and good was wrong and cruel. That was why something was always wrong, why life never made sense. I threw it all away. I changed everything about my appearance, my behavior. I was sick of the world I grew up in and the toxic values my parents had trained into me.

It didn't occur to me that the person I was - the person I was uprooting - was not at root a product of that upbringing. I sacrificed everything that made me who I was. I completely lost touch with myself. It's been ten years. I still don't know who I am. I'm heartbroken. I feel like I destroyed that girl when she was already a victim. It wasn't her fault that she had lived that way. It wasn't what she wanted, or chose. She was not complicit. She questioned everything. She saved me, and then I erased her. I don't even know how to get her back.

[morbidsecretary]

Actually you can cry whenever you want. There are no laws about crying for "good" reasons.

[morbidsecretary]

I keep having to remind myself that love, care, and concern are not meritocratic rewards. People care about me because I'm a person. Sometimes literally because it's their job. I do not have to be efficient, productive, positive, or successful to earn people's care. And of course that idea is totally backwards. When I was taught to earn people's care by being productive, efficient, positive, and successful, I found myself desperately lonely. People did not see me needing care because of course, unbeknownst to me, I was doing everything in my power to suggest I was handling things on my own. Care is given in response to need, and I did everything I could to mask my needs because my abusive parents punished me for making my needs known. I was always told by them that at some point, when I was sufficiently productive, positive, efficient, and successful, I could "earn" their care. And what do you know, that day never came. Ironically, I suppose there was a kernel of truth to it. The more I distance myself from my parents, the more cloyingly they respond to my independence. But that doesn't mean they've learned to respect me or decided I've earned their respect. It means that their care is as it always was, purely for themselves. Now they don't have me, they "care" about the loss of the relationship and the benefits it afforded them. But they don't care about me. And other people will not demand perfection from me as a prerequisite for care. And I will receive care by being open about my needs, and I will protect myself and my success and my peace by doing just that. I will not let the ghosts of my parents' authoritarian cruelty convince me that I have to succeed on my own. I deserve support. I will go and get it. I will ask and be answered.

[morbidsecretary]

being sick is fun. yesterday i ate five meals and today i have had one. i am listening to christmas music and i can't turn any lights on. but i also might drink just to have something to do. who knows!

[morbidsecretary]

can i add i've wanted one of these things since i was 5 and would wake up at like 6 am and watch the infomercials like a lil sitcom until pbs came on

i love my magic bullet. i just made myself some 700-calorie protein abomination with a banana, pb, whole milk and hot cocoa mix. this is literally what i've been missing out on. this is what life is about.

[morbidsecretary]

i love my magic bullet. i just made myself some 700-calorie protein abomination with a banana, pb, whole milk and hot cocoa mix. this is literally what i've been missing out on. this is what life is about.

[morbidsecretary]

Things I like: ghost

Things I do not like: ghost having the haircut of an MP and the jawline of a chris

Things I like: ghost being. So bald. Like a cue ball. Blindingly, eye-searingly hairless. And like…a little jowly. Woof woof u mfs ever heard of an English bulldog?

[morbidsecretary]

new year new me new layout new found glory

[morbidsecretary]

hey

um so turns out a lot of my body image issues were bc i had short hair

[morbidsecretary]

Every single time I see a take that amounts to "if you write about X happening, or like fiction where X happens, you like X" I'm reminded of this one time I was at a casual friends house as a young kid. We were in her room, pretending to "be orphans" escaping from an evil orphanage and having to take care of each other and fend for ourselves. It was all very Little Orphan Annie/All Dogs Go to Heaven and based on the 80s pop media.

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.

My daughter does not want me dead. And I don't want bad things to happen in real life. But fiction and pretend help me face the horrors of the world and think about them without collapsing or messing myself up mentally.