therapizing-to-the-void

[therapizing-to-the-void]

a rant because I need to rant:

My maternal grandfather and grandmother were both nissei Japanese Americans, at least mostly nissei - one of the great grandparents was nissei I think maybe but my grandmother was adopted and then half raised by a third family so there's a lot going on there. So, my Japanese ancestors came to the US. Then WWII happened, and my ancestors here, including my child grandmother and teen grandfather, were placed in internment camps. My relatives in Japan were in Hiroshima. I never knew specifically where my Japanese ancestors were from, my mom never mentioned it. When I was 22 I casually asked my cousin and she said "Hiroshima. That's why they're all dead."

When I was six years old I told my first grade class what internment camps were because I was the only six year old who didn't realize it wasn't a misspelling of internet. My grandfather, an architect, refused to design a memorial for the president who gave the order. I was raised on stories about how white people bought Japanese heirlooms dirt cheap because people couldn't take their things (or at least most of their things) to the camps. Some white allies kept things for their Japanese friends. Some people shattered their things rather than allow them to be appropriated.

My grandmother saw an old man shot in front of her. He was deaf, and couldn't hear the soldier's warning to stop approaching the fence. I don't remember how old she was, but she was a child.

Both my grandparents were raised speaking Japanese. I'm not sure how many of the previous generation spoke english. By the time I was a child, my grandparents pretended they didn't speak Japanese at all.

Right now, I can't go into the pain of having your culture taken away from you, and having to recover it piece by piece, across multiple generations.

Right now, I can't talk about how abuse and mental illness and neurodivergence was both committed and covered up.

My mother is paranoid. More than is reasonable. But for some things, I have come to wonder if the reason she was so afraid of some things was because she knew that me and my brother would be held to a different standard because of racism. Everyone around us was white, and didn't have the same concerns. Maybe that was why my mom acted like we were in more danger than I thought. I don't know. She never said.

My mom and all four of her sisters married white men. I grew up in a white neighborhood.

I went to what I thought was a very white school. Talking to some other people as an adult, I realize that many schools are even whiter. I was never the only non-white student in any class; usually there were several in a class of thirty. But I think I only ever had one Japanese classmate before college.

I went from a mostly white high school to an even whiter college. Most of my friends were white. It wasn't until afterwards that I tried, have been trying, to be part of more diverse communities. I've never been in the position of having only white friends, but almost all of my friends have been white or asian. It's not a coincidence. I've thought about it more over the past few years, and while I always knew this was true, it's really disheartening to really think about the fact that segregation is the default, and whiteness is the default. When you don't choose to look for non-white creators, you will end up with an almost all white, or all white feed. When you don't specifically seek out communities of color, all of your spaces, and all of the people you know and all of your friends, will be all or mostly white. Especially if you're white yourself. I don't know how many spaces I've avoided, or been quietly excluded from, that other white people would have joined, specifically because of racism.

A few years ago I was reading more about racism, and I learned that one way racists find (and create) each other is by making racist jokes when the POC are out of the room. It's disquieting to think that I would likely never know about a lot of those interactions.

I'm in a few spaces that are very very white, and the amount of racism I see there is so much higher than others. It's tiring. Those are also the only spaces that don't talk about race.

I've had several people assume that I'm white online. It's annoying. I know it's not intentional, but it's still exhausting. What's worse is when they follow it up with "why does it matter." At least they listened when I explained.

I used to have all white roommates in this house. Then we got two more. One, who was white, moved into the basement because they needed a place to crash. They stayed for two years. It was a new experience of "wow, you just said a super racist thing and didn't think twice about it." One roommate pushed back. Another was a coward. The other, who was black, seemed to hate the basement roommate. I never questioned why. When more people moved out, I requested that the new roommate be not white. I didn't want to be the only non-white person in the room anymore. I was tired of the silent force of a room full of white people, people who weren't personally hurt and affected when someone was racist, people who could afford to tolerate it, people who racists would automatically think would be on board. One white roommate is the one who pushed back. The other is someone who seems in the middle for me. I do think it's important for racists to have, and be influenced by, anti-racist friends. Being friends with racists is much more doable when you're not directly affected by it.

I don't know how much to push back. Some people react very badly to being told they're bigoted. That's one way they stay comfortable being bigoted. And then other people keep being hurt.

Sometimes I think about deradicalization, and how I was raised conservative, but ended up here. But really, I never held with conservative beliefs. I only believed a few points, based entirely on lies I was told. All it took was reliably sourced information for me to switch my stance. My core beliefs always supported equality, freedom, independence, generosity, environmentalism, kindness. I was told liberals supported control, so I thought liberals were bad. It turns out it's the opposite.

This was a meandering rant.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I'm upset because I had to throw away the vegan lasagna that I got because it got moldy. I knew it wouldn't last long and I got it a few days ago so I was planning on eating it today and then I saw the expiration date was yesterday and I hoped it would be fine but it wasn't. I considered eating the non-moldy parts anyway but with such a composite meal it's hard to tell and I know it wouldn't really be safe, so I threw it away. It was a single, solid meal and it cost $6, so that's a good amount of easy, good food that was nonetheless expensive just, wasted. And I hate that, especially since I got that and some mac and cheese and ate the mac and cheese first while looking forward to the lasagna, and I didn't end up liking the mac and cheese and now really wish I had eaten the lasagna instead. So all around, I'm upset.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

me with fictional drama: omg the feels, this is so heartbreaking and good I love it, give me more

me with my own drama: *shoves feelings to the side and eats crackers as if nothing is wrong*

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I'm thinking about how when I was younger, I felt extremely strongly about things being Correct. It may have been an expression of autistic people's dislike of change, because usually things being Incorrect involves some kind of change, but I think it also had a lot to do with liking order and being anxious about decisions. Arbitrariness bothers me, and bothers a lot of autistic people. I like things having a reason, and when there's no justification for something being a certain way, then it might as well be different, and how do you choose? I want to know the right choice was made, otherwise I get anxious. When I know the best decision has been made, I feel secure. So it is, and was, helpful for me to have a defined metric for what the right decision is, and then stick to that.

(I'm reading the Rhythm of War and this is sounding very Skybreaker-esque.)

The simplest of those metrics, perhaps, is The Original. The Original is Right, and any deviation from that is Wrong. That's very helpful for things like putting things back where they belong, and tying knots the right way, and making a recipe when you don't really know how to cook. It's less helpful when you're making a movie adaptation, when the change in medium means some things can't be translated, but new possibilities are available to enhance the work, or when by changing something, you can actually improve it. Making improvements requires some degree of expertise; I recommend beginner cooks follow recipes as well as they can, but if you've done a lot of baking and you understand the effect of different changes, you can change a recipe to make something more suited to your own preferences. And that's better. It is better to make food that you enjoy more. Deviating from the original can be good.

Making changes gives me anxiety, not just because the change requires more mental processing, which takes up resources and causes stress, but because I need a justification to override the original decision. My instincts say things were the way they were for a reason, and so I shouldn't mess with it. But what I need to remember is that those reasons don't always apply to the current situation, or sometimes there was no reason either because it was arbitrary (augh) or someone was bad at their job (double augh).

A few examples:

I have no problem changing recipes when I cook. I do it constantly, because I know what I'm doing, I have limited equipment and willingness to do work for my food, and I have been very aware from an early age that my tastes differ from most people's. So every time I use a new recipe, I usually jettison all or almost all the spices and garnishes, because the reason they were included is that the person who added them likes them, and I don't. I'm not cooking for them, I'm cooking for me, so my reason to not include them applies and their reason to include them doesn't. So I'm authorized to make changes.

I really like to keep original packaging and parts, because that's the way it came. It's The Original. But unless I'm going to return it, that doesn't actually make sense. The original packaging wasn't designed to be a permanent case, it was designed to keep the object(s) together and in good condition until they got to me. Once they're mine, I should put them wherever makes sense in my home.

Adaptations also give me trouble. The original works were made that way for a reason (usually) and it feels disrespectful or just somehow ignorant to disregard that. But sometimes the intent of adaptations changes, like when you make a cover of a song in a different genre. It's different intentionally, to create something new; it's not that the original was wrong or the cover is wrong, it's that they're both good and different things. And then sometimes the reason something was the way it was isn't actually a good reason. As a creator I can confidently state that sometimes you make something a certain way because you couldn't think of anything better. Maybe someone else can. Of course, what's better is often arbitrary, according to personal taste, but sometimes it really isn't "well I like this so I am doing it" and the original creator is also excited about the change. And as a consumer of media I can also state that some things are just bad. Like racism. Adapting works to make them less racist is definitely a good thing. "The whole cast was white because the author was white and it didn't occur to them to put in people of other races" is not a good reason for the entire cast to stay white (and that's one of the milder reasons).

- s

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I figured some stuff out.

I think my affection repulsion is because I have been consistently expected, by abusive parents and a toxic culture, to be affectionate when I don't want to be.

Affection makes me panic if it's not something I want to reciprocate, because I feel like it's something I'm expected to reciprocate, and I don't want to. That's a boundary I'm entitled to, but I don't feel like I'm entitled to it - I know that I should be, but I don't feel like it's recognized by anyone else. Even if the person in question has no expectations, I still feel the expectations of society, and because I'm not a telepath, I don't know that they're not secretly disappointed or hurting, which makes me feel guilty.

P doesn't have this problem. If people are affectionate towards him he doesn't care, because no one has ever made him feel guilty or do anything. He doesn't have this trauma.

I do want people to like me. But I want them to like me in a way that doesn't set expectations on me that I can't fill. I like receiving affection, but only if I know there are no strings attached.

- s

I've been thinking about this scene a lot. One of my favorite moments from Picard was when Soji told him that Data loved him. It was something Picard couldn't tell for himself, but hearing it from Soji, who had Data as part of her, answered that question for him. Lately, I've been thinking about a different line, though one that very much relates.

"Data's capacity for expressing and processing emotion was limited. I suppose we had that in common."

This is why Picard couldn't tell if Data loved him, and why when Soji asked if he loved Data, his answer was, "Yes, in my way."

There are a lot of different kinds of love. Some are emotional, some are not. Data wasn't capable of feeling emotion in the human way, but he did love things. Picard wasn't great with emotions, but he did love his crew, and that was clear by how he treated them.

I've been struggling with my own emotions lately. There are many reasons why. I had a bit of a mental health crisis a few months ago, driven by the emotions of anxiety and trauma and grief and empathetic heartbreak. Farther back than that but continuing into the present, I've been making friends with several people, and my capacity for processing and expressing those emotions is limited. Just before the mental health crisis I created and played a semi-self-insert who very much embodied my RSD, and I also wrote a fic about them that rather highlighted the RSD. Sometime later I realized that all of those feelings could, in fact, be summed up by RSD and associated trauma. I knew about RSD and that I had it before, I just hadn't quite connected the concept to that trauma. That character is back, and I'm thinking about them again, and how they're going to deal with their prior relationship with another character, because like me, their capacity for expressing and processing emotion is limited. Then I was thinking about that scene from Picard for whatever reason (I love the last line, I think about it a lot). More friendship things happened but whether because I've been severely sleep deprived for months or because I just Can't, I haven't been able to process them. I started listening to a new song and some of the repeated notes make me feel sad but in a very good way, and I don't know why. The local bike shop said I can't bring my bike in anymore because it's too hard to work on (they broke it -.-), which triggered my RSD.

I listened to this in podcast form a few weeks? ago, and watched it in video form today. "[People] die, and I can't stop them." The character I created, played, wrote about, and will soon be playing again tried to protect people, and failed. Then they died themself, and that broke another character's heart. That in turn broke mine. It was rather a theme for that story, and it's also something I feel deeply myself. I want more than anything to save lives, but people die, and I can't stop them.

Later in the same quote is the line, "I am in love with the world." I know I love the world. I don't know if I'm in love with it. I am certainly in love with parts of it, though. My reincarnated character is established to be in love with the Woods. It's a direct parallel to how I feel about forests. For the character's last incarnation, I know they loved another character. I don't think they were in love with them. Maybe they would have been, eventually, if they hadn't died. But as it was, they simply loved them. They were very confused about how they felt about the other character, which was in large part because I the player was like "I see chemistry but am not projecting any particular feelings so *shrug*," but also because they as a semi-self-insert of me did not know where the lines were between friends and qpps and platonic attraction and alterous attraction and affection and caring and different kinds of love. This is confusion I also experience. In some cases, I don't think those lines exist. And in many ways, I don't think it matters. If you like someone you like someone, and if you love someone, that is enough.

That said, it is bothering me that I can't seem to access, process, or express a lot of my own emotions. And by "my own," I don't necessarily mean one person's. I've been speaking largely as one particular headmate, but sometimes as two, and the various emotions I am having trouble processing could belong to and be being blocked by anyone. I can't access my own emotions half the time, which leaves me feeling like I don't know what I truly feel, and so I don't know what I want. I don't know if I have the emotional range of a teaspoon or I feel everything far too intensely. Somehow it seems to be both.

Earlier in that video, someone says they seem to be writing their own life story, but because they're a novelist, it's all in code. In the same way, I only seem to be able to access, process, and express emotions about humanoids via fiction. A character's heart breaks and so does mine. A real person's heart breaks and not only do I feel nothing, I don't understand. I can't conceptualize it. All I know is that it's bad. I don't know how bad.

I love affection between characters. I practically live for it. Affection directed towards me makes me panic. I don't know why. I like having friends. I want people to like me and care about me and, in essence, hold affection for me. I'm constantly looking for validation that it's there. But when it's directly expressed, I panic. I don't know why.

I want to figure things out. But lately I've been too tired. I desperately need more sleep, and then I can think about all of this more.

- s/j

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I didn't read yesterday, I didn't even watch anything. I just listened to music and went to bed. And lo and behold, I had a nightmare about my parents.

It started off as a completely irrelevant dream and then things started getting bad and someone got abusive and then my mom came in and was physically abusive to the person being abused and then started screaming at me. I by that point was third person, and younger, maybe 12. I started half lucid dreaming, not really aware that I was dreaming, but just wanting to make some things happen so badly that I did. I still had to make everything work within the preestablished narrative, which was a mixture of dream canon and things from real life. Young me went to their aunt's office/apartment downstairs and swore they'd never return to their mom's place, not even to get their stuff. I tried to keep my mom out, bringing in Sirius as a protector, but I couldn't stop young me hearing the screaming. They curled up on the couch, wanting to have somewhere to sleep, afraid of being kicked out, not knowing what to do if they were, not knowing what to do in the meantime. They just wanted safety. I couldn't give it to them. That depended on my aunt's decision, and the dream ended before she showed up.

I wish I could have given that dream self comfort. I wish I could give my real past self comfort. I wish I had someone to give me comfort now.

All I have is the knowledge that it's over. That feels hollow when I'm still being haunted by it. Nothing feels resolved. The events are over, but the emotions aren't. So I guess it's not really over, is it.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

For a good chunk of the last 24 hours, I've been wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underwear. I really like it. My gender is currently femme rather than male, which is probably the determining factor in me not being dysphoric, but I haven't been dysphoric even not binding at all, and it's been nice. I feel cute and attractive, and I like it.

I also have been mostly physically isolated for awhile. I've had like 2-3 in person conversations in the past week, and have been spending most of my time in my room or at a different house with only animals for company. I think that has a lot to do with it. I can feel a lot more comfortable with my body and with the idea of being attractive when I'm not actually being perceived and evaluated by people. The only person gendering me is me, and I have a full, complete, accurate idea of my gender. I'm not going to misgender myself now, and I'm not going to misgender myself later. The only person perceiving me as attractive is me, so I'm not worried about harassment or assault. It's very freeing.

As a side note, it's finally actually warm, and I'm thriving. Being comfortable with my less clothes body is entirely contingent on it being warm enough that I don't need to be swaddled in several layers of cloth to survive.

- s

[therapizing-to-the-void]

Something that was bothering me awhile ago was the realization that I panic at the prospect of dating or hooking up with cis men. I didn't know why, and it was pretty disturbing. And sure, I'm bi, I can date other genders, but I'm primarily aroace, so the idea that I might be interested in someone and then not be able to go forward with it because of some mysterious emotional reaction that tasted of trauma was troubling. It reminded me a lot of when Jenny in the L word is dating a man, has sex with him, breaks down sobbing, and then never dates a man again. Or never dates a cis man again? I don't remember where Max fit into that timeline.

Last night I think I realized why. I have known a number of people to be interested in me, all of them cis men/boys. Not all of them, but most of them proceeded to express that interest by harassing or assaulting me. The assaults were nothing more than unwanted touches, which in the case of someone I was interested in would be wanted, but they were still assaults, and my brain interpreted them as such. It didn't matter how far people went, what mattered was that they trampled my boundaries. That has been my most common experience with crushes. Trampled boundaries. And boundaries are important. I am going to have boundaries in any relationship I ever have, no matter how intimate it is. And between my experiences with cis men and the knowledge that rape culture actively encourages men to cross boundaries as a form of courtship and play, I honestly don't think I could ever really trust a cis man to not take things too far. It's not that every cis man will; the one I dated (briefly, and semi-disastrously) actually did respect my boundaries, and I will always appreciate that. But anyone could, and with a cis man, I think I'll always be afraid that they will.

So yeah. I don't know if that's ever something I'll be able to resolve. Because I can't convince myself to feel safe. Feeling afraid is rational. Maybe I could feel safe with a particular person, but I feel like getting the assurance that I need would involve putting myself at risk in the first place. I don't like being limited by fear, and I don't want to stereotype an entire group of people, but I need a level of safety that I don't think I can reach with a cis man.

- s

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I've been thinking about this scene a lot. One of my favorite moments from Picard was when Soji told him that Data loved him. It was something Picard couldn't tell for himself, but hearing it from Soji, who had Data as part of her, answered that question for him. Lately, I've been thinking about a different line, though one that very much relates.

"Data's capacity for expressing and processing emotion was limited. I suppose we had that in common."

This is why Picard couldn't tell if Data loved him, and why when Soji asked if he loved Data, his answer was, "Yes, in my way."

There are a lot of different kinds of love. Some are emotional, some are not. Data wasn't capable of feeling emotion in the human way, but he did love things. Picard wasn't great with emotions, but he did love his crew, and that was clear by how he treated them.

I've been struggling with my own emotions lately. There are many reasons why. I had a bit of a mental health crisis a few months ago, driven by the emotions of anxiety and trauma and grief and empathetic heartbreak. Farther back than that but continuing into the present, I've been making friends with several people, and my capacity for processing and expressing those emotions is limited. Just before the mental health crisis I created and played a semi-self-insert who very much embodied my RSD, and I also wrote a fic about them that rather highlighted the RSD. Sometime later I realized that all of those feelings could, in fact, be summed up by RSD and associated trauma. I knew about RSD and that I had it before, I just hadn't quite connected the concept to that trauma. That character is back, and I'm thinking about them again, and how they're going to deal with their prior relationship with another character, because like me, their capacity for expressing and processing emotion is limited. Then I was thinking about that scene from Picard for whatever reason (I love the last line, I think about it a lot). More friendship things happened but whether because I've been severely sleep deprived for months or because I just Can't, I haven't been able to process them. I started listening to a new song and some of the repeated notes make me feel sad but in a very good way, and I don't know why. The local bike shop said I can't bring my bike in anymore because it's too hard to work on (they broke it -.-), which triggered my RSD.

I listened to this in podcast form a few weeks? ago, and watched it in video form today. "[People] die, and I can't stop them." The character I created, played, wrote about, and will soon be playing again tried to protect people, and failed. Then they died themself, and that broke another character's heart. That in turn broke mine. It was rather a theme for that story, and it's also something I feel deeply myself. I want more than anything to save lives, but people die, and I can't stop them.

Later in the same quote is the line, "I am in love with the world." I know I love the world. I don't know if I'm in love with it. I am certainly in love with parts of it, though. My reincarnated character is established to be in love with the Woods. It's a direct parallel to how I feel about forests. For the character's last incarnation, I know they loved another character. I don't think they were in love with them. Maybe they would have been, eventually, if they hadn't died. But as it was, they simply loved them. They were very confused about how they felt about the other character, which was in large part because I the player was like "I see chemistry but am not projecting any particular feelings so *shrug*," but also because they as a semi-self-insert of me did not know where the lines were between friends and qpps and platonic attraction and alterous attraction and affection and caring and different kinds of love. This is confusion I also experience. In some cases, I don't think those lines exist. And in many ways, I don't think it matters. If you like someone you like someone, and if you love someone, that is enough.

That said, it is bothering me that I can't seem to access, process, or express a lot of my own emotions. And by "my own," I don't necessarily mean one person's. I've been speaking largely as one particular headmate, but sometimes as two, and the various emotions I am having trouble processing could belong to and be being blocked by anyone. I can't access my own emotions half the time, which leaves me feeling like I don't know what I truly feel, and so I don't know what I want. I don't know if I have the emotional range of a teaspoon or I feel everything far too intensely. Somehow it seems to be both.

Earlier in that video, someone says they seem to be writing their own life story, but because they're a novelist, it's all in code. In the same way, I only seem to be able to access, process, and express emotions about humanoids via fiction. A character's heart breaks and so does mine. A real person's heart breaks and not only do I feel nothing, I don't understand. I can't conceptualize it. All I know is that it's bad. I don't know how bad.

I love affection between characters. I practically live for it. Affection directed towards me makes me panic. I don't know why. I like having friends. I want people to like me and care about me and, in essence, hold affection for me. I'm constantly looking for validation that it's there. But when it's directly expressed, I panic. I don't know why.

I want to figure things out. But lately I've been too tired. I desperately need more sleep, and then I can think about all of this more.

- s/j

[therapizing-to-the-void]

Caught somewhere between, “I shouldn’t care” and why does it hurt so much?

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I have a lot of feelings I don't understand. Why does a certain series of notes make me feel pleasantly sad? I'm very confused.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

so a little while ago I realized I was really not okay, and I decided to make mental health a priority for this month. Just now I realized I'm actually doing pretty okay now? And by that I just mean that I'm not in a constant state of being Not Okay. I still don't feel up to listening to the news much, and I've had some pretty horrible nightmares the last two times I slept, but right now, I feel okay, and I think that's been the case for the last few to several days? I don't know why. I've been having diarrhea for several days and have been mostly living on bread and crackers as a result, and I've been struggling to sleep, though most days I've managed to get 10 hours of sleep eventually.

I think it may be in part because I haven't been as social lately. I keep sleeping through the evening when everyone's online, and I've had my night time. I also acquired an active special interest again, which is always helpful. Even so, I have been social sometimes, and I think I maybe started being okay before the new special interest. I feel like something changed, but I don't know what.

Maybe it is the sleep. I've been struggling like I said, but my sleep has gotten much more consistent in terms of sheer hours.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

I’ve been pretty triggered lately (why? Who knows! There might be an actual reason I could identify but if so I’ve forgotten it), and I decided to see what emails my parents had sent me lately because I was thinking about them anyway and was about to read and why not.

My brother and his wife are about to have a baby. Well, in a month or so. I keep thinking about how to make sure the kid doesn’t grow up like we did.

My dad said in his email that he’s looking forward to reexperiencing the baby and toddler years as a grandparent, and included a story of how he’d play with me when I was a toddler. It made me angry. He fucked up in my baby and toddler years, or if not then, afterwards. My childhood was not a happy thing.

My mom talked about her work in therapy, and expressed regret at not having and using the emotional management skills she’s learning when she was raising me and my brother. It’s basically exactly what I want to hear, and would need to hear as a baseline for rebuilding a relationship, but I’m still just angry. She talked about how her relationship with God is helpful, and that’s great. That’s exactly what religion should be for. I think about this a lot. But in this case, I don’t really care. I’m just angry.

And I should be angry. What happened was unacceptable. I’m still dealing with the fallout. I should never have had to go through what I did. No child should ever face that. Stories of happy toddlers and apologies won’t make that okay.

When I say “should” I don’t mean I think it would be bad not to be angry, but that it’s justified. I don’t think the anger is helpful, except to keep me from feeling that what they did wasn’t bad. But anger is where I’m at. And for a good reason.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

so once again I have stayed up all night hyperfocusing on processing trauma, among other things. After having had a nightmare about parental abuse.

why does this still happen

[therapizing-to-the-void]

writing my about like “wow I was really this fucked up from two things? Well three I guess. And admittedly those first two were doozies” and then being like “OH WAIT actually there are these other things too” - s

it’s nice to be a well-rounded traumatized person - k

[therapizing-to-the-void]

As you get older you’re going to find that people won’t belive you about being abused. You’re going to have people tell you they did the best they could, they they did actually love you, and that it wasn’t as bad as you say. Your memories of it might fade, people will call you a liar, and you may start to question if it ever happened.

I just want you to know it did happen. You’re not making it up. No, they didn’t love you, and if they did it still doesn’t excuse what they did to you. And, you don’t have to forgive them.

[therapizing-to-the-void]

"keep it secret, keep it safe" - protector's motto