Post-cptsd

In 2011 I went into recovery for the abuse I experienced in my home as a child and as an adult. It's been 4 years! It's hard to believe that so much time has passed. This journey gave me more than ever could have expected but it was much harder on me than I thought it would be. I've lost my biological family but I realized I never had a family at all. I don't have many regrets anymore, even though I wish I could have been more aware of my circumstances earlier, so that I could have started taking action earlier.

I still have some thoughts I want to jot down and share every now and then. Every year things change a bit and there's a new challenge to work through.

I want to keep this journal until I learn to FINALLY let go of my mother. Even now I know that I'm secretly hoping for a reconciliation with my mother. Logically I know can't because she forces me to believe I'm her only source of happiness, her only source of pride, and the only person who will put up with her constant, never ending verbal and emotional abuse. I gave her 24 years to try to do at least something about it, she has made zero effort with me. I know she's miserable and probably remorseful but she can't face it on a conscious level.

Even the minute I start writing about it I start to feel overwhelmed by her lack of understanding that she can't be parasitic on me. That's putting it mildly, it's such an understatement.

I have to stop caring what happens to her. I seriously have to or I'll be sad forever, she is SUCH a lonely, desperate, empty shell of a human being. Anyone would feel bad for her, and I was unlucky enough to be born her daughter. I seriously hope that she can find peace in death or something because if she doesn't do anything to change she'll be the loneliest person on planet earth off a very long time.

In my head, I imagine her as the reject monkey in the tribe that claws your eyes out when you try to pick it up and comb its dirty fur.

It actually does help me a lot to think her suffering might end when she dies. That makes me feel a lot less guilty for moving on. Maybe that's the key to finally letting go.

Even though I'm not religious I actually sit around worrying about her going to hell because she's not strong enough to survive that! I imagine her being bullied by Satan and all his minions and her just spiraling down further and further into a pit of self-hatred and shame. Ugh she literally has the lowest self esteem ever, either that or she's incredibly manipulative and has lead me to believe that she's actually this helpless and uniquely flawed. Like she wants to win the Loser Olympics. But that's also part of her perverted hierarchical way of viewing things.

She's not helpless, she's capable of being a totally normal human being.

I do hope she finds self acceptance and stops being self destructive so that she can at least enjoy the rest of her time on earth. So many bad people of the world really do have a horrible time of it. They can't enjoy life, that's just terrible. They never truly live.

I got a taste of that with her lifestyle and I seriously almost died. Ruminating...I'm ruminating aren't I? I'm just trying to talk myself up into letting go of her. Just want to vomit out any compassion I have left, it feels like poison paralyzing me.

It's really misleading when some therapists say you can't be aware of when you're dissociating because that's just not true. Once I realized what it really was it took me a few weeks to stop doing it so much. Therapy has been such a mixed bag, it helped me immensely when I didn't have the strength to heal myself. I kind of regret that I chose a therapist based on the cost instead of the standard of care, and I definitely got what I paid for. I don't think my therapist valued my time because it wasn't financially worth it to her. I was in a truly bad place so I'm kind of glad I got through the worst in front of someone that I didn't really feel close to. I gave her way too many chances despite completely forgetting our appointments, constantly rescheduling, actually falling asleep during our meetings, confusing me with other patients, telling me the same anecdotes over and over, she even thought I was a Buddhist and if she had been listening to me at all she would know that's nothing like my personality. She also kept insisting I become a park ranger and insinuating I enjoy isolating myself from people. She was passive aggressive and flat out refused to give me any information I could use for dealing with triggers for example. Seriously that was some scary stuff, going from one abuser to another. The weird thing is that I don't she acts out like that in front of all her patients, obviously, then she would be out of a job. She also only kept focusing on how my mother doesn't like me because I'm so pretty, ugh, that was just a weird time in my life I guess. I'm just so tired of dishonest people. But for the first time in my life I had my wits together enough to realize she was behaving like a predator and to get away after I kept getting more and more confirmation that something was off. It took me too long to act on my suspicions because I was like I wonder if this is some kind of weird therapeutic technique or something, and of course I assumed she knew what she was doing and trusted her. Who knows, maybe she was trying to teach me to stand up for myself, I honestly am still confused by her actions. So I just stopped going after my last paid session and never rescheduled.

She gave me one key piece of the puzzling I had been missing all along though, it was the dissociation that I wasn't really aware of at the time. I used to force myself to go into that state when I visited my mother in the summers when I was a child. I was terrified of her. So eventually every time I was stressed, I would dissociate. So that's what I meant when I said it was like taking the red pill in the Matrix when I finally realized my parents were truly abusers. It was all connected to my dissociation, which I thought was a totally reasonable way of dealing with all my pain. I honestly didn't know that pain was okay to feel, that I could survive it.

I think I finally stepped off the roller coaster for good. This year I want things to be completely different, I know I always say that but instead of always trying so hard to change, I think I'm just going to LIVE.

For a minute I thought I wasn't going to make it when I found out

Nmom just got diagnosed with a lifelong sexually transmitted disease last week. Well actually the results aren't officially in yet. Probably resulting from her naïveté in her choice of husbands as usual.

I felt ill thinking about how the only person I thought had a normal intimate relationship with her probably turned out to be a scumbag, like she was going to be more dependent on me than ever. I was so upset because this year was supposed to be the year I let so and now I'm getting unbearably anxious picturing her dying alone with no friends and an uncurable condition, but I really fought that feeling of pity. Then I started to emotionally distance myself and I realized that she's becoming more and more vulnerable, that I don't need to be afraid of her anymore. That like I'm the adult now, and I'm going to live on. So out of compassion I told her about someone I know personally who has the same condition so that she wouldn't feel alone. I think that was the best thing I could do for her.

Then the next few days I honestly just completely detached. I'm finally starting to see her a different light. She's not the good person I thought she had the potential to be.

I've been trying so hard to find the silver linings in not having a family, I'm free to be whoever I want and I save money not having to spend time with them but it really just feels so unnatural and bizarre, like this can't be real life. In the beginning I wanted to be certain that there were absolutely no drawbacks to cutting off my family because as usual, I couldn't face the ugly reality of what was happening all at once, the changes. had to be absorbed slowly. It's so incredibly frustrating, like why did it have to be such a painful, disturbing process? Is that entirely my fault? I was pretty foolish to think that positive thinking would be enough to convince myself that I'm not going to feel the pain of such a huge loss. I didn't let myself really feel it because I was so scared and upset that it was even happening to me. I did cry like every night for a year but there was a deeper layer of loss that I just didn't let myself face. I was in beast mode: like I wanted to believe I was invincible because it was too painful.

I'm detached, in that in these past few days I've been able to stop feeling her pain as my own or at the very least stop imagining that I feel her suffering like I'm used to. This is a sign that I'm not dissociating, but not dissociating means I feel so much pain, I know it's not a real injury but it's hands down the worst thing I've ever felt, being completely alone, so unloved, missing experiences and connections that can't be bought or replaced or found anywhere but in your own home. There are still so many questions. I don't feel her shame, I don't feel her supposed self-hatred. Maybe I was wrong all along, maybe N's really don't have empathy and I was just projecting my normal human emotions on her. She has no warmth at all, I'm beginning to feel it now. I'm beginning to mature as a woman who could be a mother myself and realize how messed up this is, how strange it is to be in this situation. I thought by now she would be "cured," and that she would be a completely different person. I thought I would have a mother. I thought that if she learned to love herself more she would lose a lot of her sadistic impulses, but I think I was completely wrong. I thought I would be allowed to love her, period. How is it possible that she doesn't even need me? I literally need her to stay alive and she just doesn't need me at all. She never has, she doesn't need peace of mind, love, happy memories, how is this possible? Who doesn't need those things? Who doesn't want to be happy? Who in the world is as miserable as her? Is it really my bad karma that unleashed this person into my life? What the f....

It's not even a question of whether it's worth it, but whether I'm even capable. Just trying to put my fears into words so that I can overcome them instead of getting trapped in them. Time to ditch a few more overwhelming thoughts. I was getting kind of worked up in a way, because I now feel like I'm such shell of a person that there is nothing left to abuse, at the same a fragmented part of me is observing the situation in disbelief of how any person could conceive of being so evil let alone actually do this to another human being. I kind of brightened up a bit when I realized, that it's true, you can't really inflict more damage on someone who is already dead inside. That's really how I feel, that realization gave me strength because even though rock bottom might be real death, once you get to a certain point the abuse can't get any worse. There's nothing left to fear.

I don't know if that means I'm healing. I used to think healing was a completely state of mind, but I think I'm capable now of integrating myself into one person, letting the memories be emotionally neutral in a way instead of being smothered by them.

Forgiveness sounds so noble. The kind of forgiveness I'm embracing is the kind that is just leftover after your inner hatred and anger destroy you to the point that you're desperate for relief of any kind, even if it means letting go of unforgiveable things.

Forgiveness is also not what I thought it would be. It's not even a peaceful feeling, again, it's like neutrality. I thought it would be more exciting and powerful and inspiring. I used to want to be an inspiration to people. I felt a responsibility to be as kind as I could be but I don't really know how to be strong and kind at the same time.

Yeah there it is, it's all so complicated to feel, period, I have all these feelings to micro manage and keep them under wraps. These feelings are necessarily real, because it's part of the PTSD.

Abusers are just confusing people because they are sometimes so lazy they'll just torture because you are around. It's like they could destroy your life but for them it's the same thing as choosing what restaurant to eat at. It doesn't even matter if they get to abuse you or not. So maybe she'll be happier without me, or it'll have no real net effect on her, I read the other day that the abuser appears to be in a constant state of rage. That's how it is with her, the rage is always there just about to break through the surface. I've never seen anything like it on anyone else because it is so extreme. Yet maybe it's all an act. Maybe I'm an idiot for suffering at all.

It's hard to explain but I go through life feeling a lot of unnecessary feelings because of the PTSD. Even just reading the word PTSD used to be so powerful for me, I had the expectation that I was going through something something so serious and terrifying that I think it really made recovery much more complicated. I feel a little taken advantage of, it didn't have to be such a big deal. Everything always seems so much worse when I go through it, maybe it is my fault for being so damn serious about it. Or was the abuse and situation really that bad?

If you're just going to get better eventually then I just want to get on with it. There is no point in suffering in between. The ruminations have helped me get wise to the abuse though, as tortuous as they are. I can't say I regret it, but I feel deceived or clumsy in some way. I'm not sure what's broken and not broken in me.

I think I'm finally taking things one step at a time. I remember how I came into this with this huge goal in mind, colossal expectations. I had lost a lot of things in my life so it was my ultimate dream to be genuinely happy, now looking back my first priority should have been just to get over the abuse enough that I could say it no longer affected the decisions I made in my life. It's understandable that I conflated the two goals, but my ignorance has cost me a lot. I've spent a lot of my life not getting the obvious, and hope I don't continue to be the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. I don't want to take it for granted that I'm lost. I don't want to be lost or confused. To be honest I think I was hoping to avoid all negative feelings for the rest of my life by cutting off my family. I really never wanted to feel disappointed, scared or sad ever again. I was actually terrified of anything going wrong, not necessarily being a perfectionist, just neurotic and afraid. Just realizing you don't hear that word much, neurotic. I feel like people used to use more for some reason.

I guess I'm strong enough to say now that the kind of borderline narcissistic stuff I was exposed to really did have an effect on my way of thinking. It has been hard to let it all go, there have been no souvenirs of the experience because it triggers the pain of not having a family, it's just one non stop pity party!

It's been 18 days since I stated my intention to finally let go of my mother, or more accurately let go of the idea of a mother I always believed I needed. One of my trademark dysfunctions I guess you could call it, is that for most of my life I've been really uptight about needing everything to be smooth, bland, safe, and non threatening. The fantasy of the mother I always wanted was the same way. Up until this very minute I thought that was completely reasonable. I can't believe that I have managed to think myself into such a mess. Hopefully the way out will become clear to me soon. It's like I fell into a deep pool of my most secret desires and almost drowned. I think I almost wanted life to like one of those cheesy 90s calendars with the babies in fruit and vegetable costumes. I guess it's not a big deal either way, I wouldn't necessarily judge someone else for being that way but I want to expand my perspective a lot more this year, to challenge myself to be stronger and let myself explore the complexities of life post-abuse. Why couldn't I even be abused in a normal way? It literally makes no sense. I'll never understand why, even in cults, trailer parks, the hood, nothing is as weird as the people who were supposed to be my parents. It's like being abused by a piece of dirty cardboard, it's just makes no sense. But the longer I keep asking why, the weirder the situation is just going to be.

Ha, it's so true, the longer I keep asking why, the weirder the situation is going to remain. I just have to dust myself off and make my life normal even if my parents are complete freaks.

I took for granted for so long that I can't stand jagged edges, what I used to think of as unattractive people, in my mind there was a way to do everything smoothly, more simply. To the point that it just made me blank myself, a totally boring person who was more interested in the surfaces of things than the reality. It's terrifying, it's so weird. When it came to friends they had to be cutesy on the outside, it didn't matter to me what their personalities were like, if we were actually good together, cute dogs, I would get into these weird rituals of needing to fold clothes and towels a certain way so that I could believe I had self worth. I want to ask the dreaded question again but I won't. I can't understand how this could happen when the world seems so fine, how could I be suffering in my own private hell?

There are some rare diseases that have barely any documented cases, so I guess there is a precedent for being in my own private hell. That's a relief, to be honest. I just had to find a way not to be afraid that there was no way out of this and that I'm literally in some weird cage alone. I guess there are other people who have been abused in bizarre and humiliating ways too. There might not be many of us, but we exist. I'm not the only one even if I might be the only one in my unique circumstances.

This year though, I don't want to be in a club of one, or even 10 or 100,000. I just want to be like instagram perfect all the time. I just want to be one of those lucky people who are sucking up all the positivity into their lungs that they can, and enjoying that edge.

Purging emotions works pretty well for me, but this year I'm going to try to suppress unnecessary angst. Actually it's more that that I can just as easily direct my thoughts to a more positive place with better results. I guess it's not necessary to dismiss the pain as unnecessary, it's just that it's been mined dry pretty much. I have enough self awareness that I'm not going to get back into self destructive, submissive, fearful patterns, black and white thinking and catastrophizing.

Maybe someday I can even stop being numb! I can't remember what it feels like to be happy in a way, I want to feel something. I'm not so afraid of change, that I'm always going to keep changing and that everything is temporary.

I can just tell 2015 is going to be so much better than the last 4 years. I don't even have to try to make it better, it just is. I put in the work, and now the real fun can begin. I consider myself about 4 years old to be honest, 4 years since the healing began, and I'm finally beginning to be able to not only stand on my own but start building the life I should have had. It's like I was being tortured by some invisible monster the last 4 years and it just evaporated for no apparent reason. The air around me is lighter, I don't feel like I'm an evil person who deserves to be punished and messed around with for the rest of my life. In a way it makes it seem like the fight wasn't even real or that it was all stupid. So I have to keep telling myself I'm not stupid, the fight was real, and I really am safe now. I can't be abused if I understand how it works and I don't get deceived. I can't be depressed if I like myself. I can't feel alone if I love the life I'm living. Almost anything is possible.

I don't expect to wake up happy, I don't expect to fully enjoy the difficult things like exercising and work, I don't know, I feel really focused on myself:

Me and not her. Finally. So this is what it feels like to be a human being, not a parasite. This is what it feels like to have a mind that is mine. I can't even explain how mind blowingly different it is, how clean I feel. Knowing that it is impossible to go back.

I don't think I could be in a toxic relationship if I tried anymore. I've conditioned myself to reject that so deeply that no one could get to me like that again. I think it might be literally impossible for me to go back and let my mothers abuse affect me to the point that I break. This is a new feeling, that's for sure. I hope it's the right one.

It's a complete certainty, not even an emotion. Toxic people are like cigarettes, I know them so well it's like they come with a huge warning label and I know the risks so I'm willing to accept the consequences for dealing with them. But the issue with that analogy is that I do indulge in the occasional cigarette, so maybe they are more like meth, it's probably not as scary as people make it out to be but I'm just not even going to go there because of a mix of social taboos and my own desire to preserve my innocence of certain experiences.

Keeping tabs on my emotions again in here. In January I finally stopped lurking and joined a subreddit that relates to my specific experience of abuse. Not only do people share their stories, but other insights into their abuser's minds and their current emotions in the healing process. There's always someone posting something that resonates with someone else and the people have been really thoughtful but I've notice a change in the atmosphere as the sub gains more and more subscribers. Within weeks I made some unexpected progress. There were some obvious blindspots that I have that I'm finally facing up to. This is the hardest part in the next phase of my healing.

Maybe this is just me but PTSD made me often work really hard for no reward. I'd always be trying so hard but not making any progress. It's like I just didn't know how to try, and I was hoping that if I just tried hard enough all my shortcomings could transform, even if I wasn't even really trying that hard, somehow it felt like I was giving it all I had. I sold myself short and I was just using my time really inefficiently, all things in life felt intense and mystifying and I always felt like I didn't understand the world. I have no idea WHY I was like that. It literally makes no sense because things are falling into place now and I don't get why I was so clueless!!! It's like I was mentally handicapped or something but in the most random way possible.

I remember being a young child and watching American beauty and being struck by how similar Wes Bentley's parents were to mine. They lived in a time warp, and everything about then was stiff and unnatural, like mediocre theatrics. I can relate to my entire personality being a feat of mediocre theatrics. I could sense my own awkwardness but I didn't have the confidence to break free from acting the way I had always been forced to behave.

The world was this weirdly artificial, simplistic place for me, like I was living in the Lego movie or something. If things or people got to be too complicated, not in a bad way, like if there were too many details and things to learn and remember I would go blank. Reality was just something I couldn't even comprehend. The world was also weirdly colored, like faded, melancholy. With introspective music playing all the time, interrupted by manic cheeriness once in a while. Every story, poem and thought that had ever been written or expressed on earth had to be beautiful and slightly sad at the same time. What was once so natural to me is SO incomprehensible to me now. It's literally tunnel vision, and being a prisoner in your own mind, my mother wanted to discard anyone who didn't fit her idea of a perfect person so all other people didn't seem real to me in a way. I had that same tunnel vision when I was free all along! It's like I would watch a movie and not really get it but not really realize I didn't get it.

How I lived in that hell for so long is beyond me. It's crazy that a simple mindset can literally be tortuous.

Just a note to myself: trying to use more is it the imperative? Even if I'm just writing in here for myself I have to force myself to change that. I noticed i tend to start sentences with pronouns in a super boring way so that's a project I'm working on. It's fine for long posts like these but I need to just man up and write better.

Things get tricky when concerned third parties try to get involved in your abuse, but aren't necessarily aware of what's going on. Training myself not to become resentful of those people has been a long road. I wasn't aware of how negatively it was affecting

Another first, the first time in 4 years I haven't been paranoid about my mother spreading rumors and hate. I won't be undone by anything she says.

I'm a slow healer, way too slow to recognize my pain and slow to realize how to deal with it. Dissociation is becoming a less pervasive condition in my life, yet somehow it's been 5 years. Is that even remotely normal?

There's this silence in my head. Realizing I'm going to have to really get used to not being abused. No one is telling me everyone hates me and that they are simultaneously soooooo worried for me because god knows I can't take care of myself and that I'm so unproductive for even caring about that and that I'm selfish and lazy and not smart enough to achieve my goals. Thats a mouthful and not even close the amount of emotional abuse I've experienced.

A good way of describing my thoughts today is I'm that learning more about the way I can change my self-harming response to extreme stress.

Rage-I haven't wanted to discuss this on here just in case someone read it and got the wrong idea, that I turn on people or something. That would hurt me so much because abuse survivors get stereotyped a lot and I want anyone who might be reading this to know that for the majority this rage is completely internal, even if it is directed at certain people in our lives it's usually kept under the surface and is a very painful thing, quite literally to live with.

I don't know who I can trust, or how to deal with it without imagining the worst when my trust gets broken.

So that's why I think in most of my life I've been so non confrontational, because I know if I let myself get angry even a little bit things will just get uglier and uglier and I will completely lose my trust and respect in people.

My mother was a rageaholic, and she was also very good at making the world seem like a very dangerous and dark place. So the last thing I want to do is turn into the Hulk and rage on people. I think abuse survivors know the rage well though.

For me, it was one of my biggest fears, if something went wrong or I did something wrong or hurt someone, just like my parents they would never forgive me and either abandon me or punish me for the rest of my life.

I hate the term flying monkeys because it's kind of immature. When my mother's flying monkeys for lack of a better word get involved, I tend to shut down, become extremely cold and unforgiving.

So then I feel guilty for being so unforgiving, and then it eats away at me.

I didn't like how I was forced into playing this defensive position, and I just wanted the whole situation to disappear.

The point though is that it's been a long, long time or maybe the first time in my life I haven't had to hate someone by default just because they are one of her flying monkeys.

So then I had to examine myself and realize I have to outgrow my grudges.

I have to outgrow my tendency to be unforgiving when something really bad has happened. Relating this back to abuse, I was in this mix of denial, shock, and rage that anyone in the entire world could even misunderstand or minimize the evils of child abuse that I didn't even care how much it hurt me to be upset by that.

It's selfish and self absorbed but I don't want to hurt myself more just because of that.

In my loneliest hours being locked in my mother's house, I would actually wish for a ghost to come haunt me or something because I couldn't see any difference between the living and the dead anymore, and having anyone to talk to would have been a relief. I realized that if you can communicate with someone, it makes no difference if they are alive or dead.

Lately I've channeled my rage into healthier places, like by hating ISIS or murderers in the news. Maybe someday Ill be able to help someone who really needs it. I'm not afraid of death or anything anymore. Lol not that I'm going to join the army or that I think I'm invincible, but seriously if some jerk tried to rape me or something and if he didn't have a knife or gun I wouldn't be afraid to fight back at all. I'm not afraid of crazy people at all anymore.

I hate hate hate and hate and hate, sometimes, just to have something to hate.

That's what I got used to, I got used to being screwed over and betrayed, every opportunity for a low blow taken.

I'm really not afraid to hit below the belt when I get screwed over, like when I got cheated on with 5-7 people and boy did my ex see a side of me that few besides my mother have ever seen.

Who has seen that side of me? My ex-mother, maybe not even my ex-father really, 2 of my exes.

I have had my limits, I guess I'm surprised that even in my darkest hours I've only literally lost my mind with them.

For the amount of rage I have felt, you would think I'd actually be worse off.

I'm just like, waiting to feel guilt or shame, like any day now? Why am I not feeling horrible all the time?

Emotional abuse is probably one of the worst things you can do to anyone.

The mind control, the brain washing, the stealing of your childhood and prime years, the opportunities lost.

I have to accept that my mother's "soul" can't be really saved unless she saves herself, I forgive her kind of now.

I just can't cast any human being off like that, no matter what she has done to me.

Staring into the abyss again, a fear of my mine is my need to forgive and make all the ugly jagged edges appear smooth.

I compulsively feel the need to forgive and repent, to love someone who literally will destroy me no matter what. Ugh it sucks I'm literally like I just can't, I can't hate her as much as I should and I can't let her go.

I thought I was past this

I just doubt myself so much

As an experiment I'm going to try to forgive

I forgive her

Because I am loving and kind person who can't really hate.

Her soul, or her happiness is beyond my control

But I will never manipulate or harm her or treat her in any way that isn't in tune with who I am as a person

I'll be kind to her, even while not allowing her to abuse me.

Just because I forgive her doesn't mean it's okay.

Might as well try since not forgiving and imagining her as a lost soul kills me inside.

She's fine, she can find happiness.

My life has been wasted by her but that's okay too.

I'm just going to be okay with that

It's all fine, all the confusion, lost years, it's all fine and I can move on.

I might be losing the ability to introspect. Necessity is the mother of all invention and as I sink to the mundane every day routine of not being abused, not being a battered woman, I just don't have certain deep thoughts. I thought my past thoughts were pretty much useless to me or anyone until I read this journal and was like, damnnn. I miss being in school and learning new ways to perceive things.

I still try my hardest to name my insecurities to give myself an opportunity to overcome them.

I'm still so bewildered by how everything and everyone is so different. Like that colorblind guy who saw purple for the first time.

I have a tendency to want to make everything flat: make everyone happy, make everything look the same, streamline everything, live in the future, but I have started to wonder if that's a good thing and I'm wondering where this is all going to lead. The future seems to be moving toward that in a way, we're losing diversity every day. And I never even got to appreciate it because I was a zombie most of my life:

Case in point, the 90's wiggers. They've gone extinct and I was alive when they were around but I didn't even know how ephemeral the whole thing was going to be. I wish I could have experienced the early 2000's because it seems like such a unique moment. I wish I knew what it was really like to be alive then. Maybe then the way things are now would make more sense to me, back then I wanted the culture of today, nothing ever seems to fit for me. And getting what I wanted 15 years later, I realize, it wasn't as perfect as I imagined it to be. But at the same time the thing that keeps my nostalgia in check is the inequality and oppression back then and that still continues now.

On the surface of culture and pop culture there is so much beauty but then you find out Bill Cosby is a prolific rapist and you're like, um which is the REAL reality? That ugly underbelly or the endless celebration of life. I have never seen any of his work because you know, most things before like 2005 or so just never resonated with me or creeped me out. Ugh see I'm just trying to let it all out so these weird paranoid thoughts are left behind me and it's nice to say what echoes in my head because writing in here is a fool proof message for purging. At the same time I feel like I lose my identity because I read my journal 6 months later and don't recognize myself and my thoughts!

There was a time when accepting that I wish I had never born helped me move forward because I hit rock bottom but maybe I wasn't thinking about it the right way instead I honestly, like I said so many times before just fundamentally wish I could transport my soul and memories to a much brighter future. I don't know if that makes me a bad person because I can't deal with what I was given. I obviously don't want to believe that it does...

But I feel like I'm soooo far off the grid from what's considered right.

I'm not desperate anymore but I still wonder constantly if I'm only okay because I sold my soul to the devil, and I'm going to pay for it later, and the longer I'm in this soup the more mushy my brain becomes, and the less of a chance I have to redeem myself. Like maybe I'm forever lost in this forest where there is peace of mind but total isolation.

Even this seems like a dream, a story I repeat to myself so I don't forget how I ended up here:

4 years ago I broke the dam on my emotions and I had no idea what was going to happen. At the time, there were so many ways it could have gone and in some ways I failed to accomplish what I intended to accomplish. I'm sitting in my bright white bedroom really feeling like its 2015 and I'm in some science experiment.

PS I don't love my mother anymore!! This is progress, at least not with the intensity I used to. It just feels like left over residue in a way.

The downside is that I feel unable to love anyone or even really be happy, in the sense that I used to think of happiness. This is what is making me think I got more than I bargained for....