youfindmeunafraid - Tumblr blog

[youfindmeunafraid]

HOW MANY TIMES

This just in: I still have antisocial personality disorder. The diagnosis I was given still applies. Some other breaking news: antisocial personality disorder is a disorder of interpersonal functioning. Some insider knowledge: it cannot be cured.

I cannot practise radical kindness and universal empathy. I have a low tolerance for a lot of behaviours and therefore people that I cannot make space for in my life and when I am expected to go against that for  the sake of someone’s feelings, I am completely incapable. That is the personality disorder I have. I cannot make space in my life for people I don’t like, I do not have the empathy. I do not have the compassion.

I love the people I love. The myth that ASPD is a disorder of lovelessness is exactly that, a myth. I have friends I would walk to the ends of the earth for, I have been in love in ways that made me want to do all I could to be a better person, and I have children that I adore and am happily devoting my life to loving and protecting. But you know what I’m not good with? People I didn’t want in the first place. 

I do not have an obligation to make space for people I do not like, or find problematic. I see people I love as people. I see everyone else as functioning systems, for want of less quite obviously sociopathic language. I can see those flaws, I can see the weak spots (and please don’t think for a second  this means I am not critical of myself or I cannot use  that tool with which to examine myself, no sociopath likes themselves, we’re not out here thinking we’re better than everyone – we know we’re worse. We’re  trying to get through the day just like you are, and sometimes in order to get through the day we have to not accommodate for every single person we find problems with which is what we’ve been doing since childhood). I have no duty, emotionally or morally, to objectively love anyone in light of the things about them I do not like. I do not know how to love someone I do not like or do not know. The concept of practising universal love to me is like asking someone with severe depression to practise universal joy. It is not possible. It does not fit. 

I don’t have in me a tension between wanting to love people and wanting to question their motives and morals, because I’m not an empath. I don’t struggle with that quandary, for me that quandary does not exist. I don’t look at a person I do not like and think, “but what’s really going on? I wonder if they’re actually just sad? I wonder what their life is like? I wonder if I could overcome this with love?”. I have not got that capability. 

I do not have empathy for people I have not actively decided to have empathy for. My lack of empathy is full of contempt and it is hostile. I am angry, chronically so, and I do not pretend that I am not bitter. I see my flaws but I see yours too. I’m contemptuous that you do not see your own. I’m furious about that. The audacity of it. The outright hubris of demanding my empathy from down there in the gutter where you are, where we all are. 

My contempt isn’t based around me wanting your love and secretly being sad I didn’t get it. My sense of unlovability has nothing to do with you, it has to do with me and my trauma. The only people I expect love from are the people I give love to, and I understand, with my antisocial perspective, that love isn’t always infinite and has to come with boundaries. To expect my boundless love is disgusting. To expect it of anyone when you know you are incapable, just as we all are to varying extents, makes me feel sick for you.

None of us are morally pure. None of us live in an unproblematic way. We should try and strive to fight the injustices we see, we should do all we can to address our own privileges. But life is a game and everything is hierarchical. It would be great if it wasn’t, but it is. There’s a system, a structure, a way things currently are and have been for a long time, and that system/structure is detestable, loathsome, but real, and its realness is the foundation of all of my hate. I see that I am not better than anyone, but that’s the difference between you and me. I am not trying to pretend that I can exist in a beautiful way. I do not claim that I can live, laugh, and love. In the same way that I am not better than anyone, I feel strongly and truthfully that nobody is better than me. I see people adhering, falling into power dynamics, playing up to authority, accepting the self-appointed greatness of others, and I see a weakness that throws me into a spiral of anger and disgust that I cannot express to you in words because it is something that I’ve never been able to explain to people who are not Cluster B, or specifically antisocial. You don’t know what this feeling is like, but it’s not nice. The word antisocial does not mean asocial. It means, to be critical of societal norms and structures, to disregard and disrespect them. It’s why antisocials break the law. We don’t respect it. Not because we’re trying to be edgy and not because we want to be seen as tough. It’s because we do not understand it. There are no consequences when this isn’t real. 

I have a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder. Sometimes, SOMETIMES, this means I might be… I dunno, what’s the word… got it. ANTISOCIAL. You know why people really hate sociopaths? Because it’s someone in the world you know you can’t trick into loving you. You know that a percentage of the population exists that might never, ever tolerate you. And you’re frightened of that. And that’s pathetic.

You are all so fucking tolerant of mental illness when it’s something cute, aren’t you. Let me word this in a way you might be able to understand:  I DO NOT HAVE THE SPOONS REQUIRED TO LOVE AND PROTECT PEOPLE I DO NOT LIKE OR KNOW. STOP ASKING ME TO. I HAVE GOT ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER. GET THAT INTO YOUR FUCKING HEADS.

[youfindmeunafraid]

I'm doing "okay" as in nobody needs to worry about me, I can take care of myself, but it's a tense kind of "okay," a tired kind of "okay," the kind of "okay" that takes all my tools and energy to maintain. It's an "okay" that means "don't look below the surface, don't press me for details" because I'm held together with spite and stubbornness to carry on, and your kindness will only make me come undone.

[youfindmeunafraid]

[youfindmeunafraid]

Deep Water

When drowning  in deep water, you can only try to stay afloat. Grab tight hold of any raft, any flotation device. A big, soft, squishy orange life-buoy. A chunk of drift wood with rusted nails stuck through. Grab it and hold on.

And when the squishy life-buoy’s slick rubber slips out your grasp, you grab tighter to that chunk of wood, you let those nails sink into your hands and lock you in place. Pain is preferable to drowning. And blood may attract predators, but death is imminent, so let yourself bleed.

And when you hear someone shouting from close-by, when you see you’re not the only one drowning, you kick your abandoned life-buoy to them. You try to keep them afloat too. And when they slip off, you offer to share your wood with its nails, and you apologise for the blood.

And when they’d rather drown than bleed, you offer yourself. Let them hold onto to your shoulders until your shoulders ache. Put their arms around your chest, let them use your ribs for purchase. Let them hold onto your neck. Choke while they breathe.

And when they can’t hold anymore, you let them drag you down into that deep water with them. Don’t let them drown alone. Pull your hand off those nails, taste the blood in the water you swallow, be glad you tried, but don’t let them drown alone. Drown together, don’t survive alone.

Your hands hurt anyway, don’t they? You’re tired too, aren’t you? Your lungs will burn when you breathe in that deep water, but only for a moment.

[youfindmeunafraid]

Son of the Morning, Banished from Grace You are Forgiven. Profane thing, Ashes on the Earth You are Redeemed. Outcast. Fallen Angel. You are Loved. You are Forgiven. You are Redeemed. You are Loved.

Father Marcus Keane, The Exorcist

[youfindmeunafraid]

My chest hurts when I try to breathe. Like a band is locked around my lungs.

Like asthma.

If asthma was a hand Reaching inside to kill you with a memory.

The only relief is in violence. I shadow box until I burn

Punch a wall

A door

Start cutting.

Just one, to take the edge off.  Now I’m shaking I’m cold and there’s blood everywhere.

...

I’m tired now. I’ve bled my anger out, I feel foolish. My arm stings,

But thank God 

I’m tired.

[youfindmeunafraid]

I hide my tail for expectations, I fold my wings for prejudice. I file my teeth for others judgement, and cover my horns to seem at ease. It's not that I mind what people think, it's that I am searching for a home. I am a creature strange of skin, and have to alter to wear the clothes.

7 Dec 2019

[youfindmeunafraid]

Jeanann Verlee, "Said the Manic to the Muse".

[youfindmeunafraid]

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

Sylvia Plath (via nefariouscinephile)

[youfindmeunafraid]

When I slice open my arm,

Imagine

I am striking a flint.

I exist in a great 

dark

emptiness.

I strike a flint to make a spark,

To briefly light-up the dark.

[youfindmeunafraid]

this is kind of a weird personal thing i made in a fit of a pretty bad moment of depression, but this is not supposed to be read as pro-self harm. I’ve been mostly thinking and drawing this witch character as a way to clear out and handle my thoughts about various things and it has helped so far. (Also, it’s fun.) I have some more that I’ll put up later

[youfindmeunafraid]

They want me to severe a piece of myself off. They want to bisect me. Break me in half. Take my melancholy and my misery And Cauterise the wound.

But it's me. It's mine. My miserable aspect, My sad little mind. My broken brain And I want it.

I will keep it. I will love it,

All of it.

Even the bad bits, Because I don't live to be happy Anymore than to be pretty And All of me is mine

And

I am whole like this.

[youfindmeunafraid]

Curtains are moving

in the breeze. Floral scents are

Blown in on sweet air.

[youfindmeunafraid]

Cold, clear water,

A river, always running

Going nowhere slow.

[youfindmeunafraid]

Warmth leeched from the air

The sunlight is cold and thin

Spring dies with no fight.

[youfindmeunafraid]

Many shades of green 

The Spring leaves are bright and fresh

Fed by rain and sun. 

[youfindmeunafraid]

Sun followed by rain

Clouds chased the light away

Rain falls in the dark.