#a passage i just read in jamie redknapp's book made me think of all this

[longeyelashedtragedy]

it’s been a really powerful year for like mental health acceptance and self confidence building which inevitably means, when you’re as fucked-up as i am, that periods of that always then make you realize how much else is still wrong

at this point i think that as someone with C-PTSD i can’t expect to live a “normal” life in terms of how i interact with other people.  i really...don’t think that will be possible.  this level of acceptance has been my thing this year and it’s really been helpful to defy toxic positivity/disability porn culture and be honest and open with myself about the reality.  it will never happen and that’s that.  so i have to figure out what kind of “normal” i think i can realistically achieve and of course adapt that over time as needed.  but there’s no way i can have what other people have--in offline or online spaces.  and it’s actually sometimes worse to think about the latter because of the common belief that “oh you’re WEIRD you can’t make irl friends but can make Internet Nerd Friends” but to be totally honest i have some of the same problems in both spaces.

i was just reading about how exposure therapy for people who find it impossible to be in successful relationships with others is...duh, nearly impossible when you are triggered by relationships with others 😭 i keep trying to find alternate explanations but i think my actual complex trauma diagnosis kind of covers everything. 

it’s very difficult to be in a social setting when you kind of can’t keep up in a “group” and “group” to you literally means more than one other person.  i like...stop existing.  i feel like this caged spectator.  as the conversation goes on i start losing the capability to try to put a sentence together to get a word in.  like those people who are “locked in” and can only move their eyes.  if this happens the only thing that can kind of end it is if one of the people leaves or someone mercifully brings up something i’m very good at talking about, but i feel hurt after, like i’ve been hit by a bus and am picking myself off the ground.  i used to have these very big, very scary dissociative episodes that were kind of cinematic, and i haven’t had one since 2014 but i’m realizing that i think i have smaller ones all the time. i complain a lot about my work team but we also were weirdly close to the point where i just told my coworker that i have Trauma so if i ever just seem like....weird or off that’s why--sometimes my mind just goes elsewhere and i don’t realize until it eventually returns to me and i realize i’ve been sitting in a room of people staring blankly at a wall for....a LONG time.

(the thing is...my brain doesn’t shut off so...It’s that i’m looking inside my head you know?  the outside world just ceases to exist for a while.)

and like, jesus, everyone in the know agrees i’ve been doing “so much better” socially. this is so much better? i can’t even hold a conversation in a groupchat (unless it’s the deathpond because the deathpond is just. magical.) i’m so deeply afraid of other people.  not afraid of their judgement or something, but like, the crux of it is that Other People in Groups are going to happily watch me die because of something inherently wrong with me that makes me deserve this from them, and i can’t tell people i need help because...i can’t trust Other People in Groups.  by the time i was in pre-K or Kindergarten i knew my parents couldn’t help me with my problems and i lived in a constant state of random fear that would appear out of nowhere, which is pretty developmentally fucked up for a child less than six years old.  i used to want to tell them to please help me--but i was also a disturbingly smart and intuitive kid, and i remember thinking, i can’t tell them because the only thing that will help me is to “take it out of my head.” and they can’t reach in and take it out, so it will just continue. and indeed--that is the only thing that would have helped me!  i wasn’t properly diagnosed with anything till i was 24, and i had been to many therapists before that.

i’m not sure why i’ve written all this out.  i used to write stuff like this on my tumblr but then stopped because of how public it is, but whatever.  i guess i just want people to know.  i want to have good relationships with others and laugh in groups and have fun. but it’s just too hard for me a lot of the time.  sometimes i can handle it but other times it’s not at all possible.  i just have to learn to accept that i won’t fit in. i might truly never be able to. it’s hard to accept.