EMBRACING SADNESS IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA

so today i talked to a woman who i’m pretty sure is schizophrenic, not because i trust my armchair diagnosis but because she started our conversation by saying that she used to think she was schizophrenic, but she knows better now. she told me about the spirits that take people over and make bad things happen with EMP’s only she said it like ‘imp’ but I know she knew what it was, she knew the abbreviation, the two things, the two concepts had just blurred for her. she was sure of these things, and of course I mean of course she needed help and i hope she finds a way or someone or something or the next person she encounters who can help her, does. 

but she was so sweet, like you could just tell she was as a person. and underneath things that were obviously the disease were these concepts that i got the sense were values she holds regardless of her mental state and things that had happened in her life, she talked about not always trusting people just because they seemed like you. and i mean of course she said it was because the EMP’s could have them and you wouldn’t know, but at the same time that’s also true and a thing people sometimes feel. and she told me to stay safe, and stay above the bad things, and that you have to keep above the bad things to be the goddess you are supposed to be. she told me that she wrote poetry and did readings sometimes and i wondered if she meant now, or before she stopped thinking she was schizophrenic. i hope she meant now because it means she has something in her life that she is connected to, and i feel like if anyone who is a good person knows her and sees her regularly they know she is a sweet person and that means there is someone who cares about her and wants her to be okay.

she told me she could tell i had a kind soul, or a caring soul, it was something sweet like that and i told her i thought the same of her. she wanted to give me a nickel for planned parenthood (i told her i wanted her to have it) because she thought it was a good thing, even though she thought the EMP’s were controlling all of it anyway she told me what i was doing was good, but i should know that they were doing that, so i could be prepared. so i could watch out.

i hope things turn out okay for her. i don’t know how things went for her in the first place, i don’t know how she found out she was schizophrenic i don’t know what medications she was or wasn’t on or what they did or what it was or wasn’t worth it to her to go off of them. i’m assuming a lot, anyway. but you can’t be stable and okay mostly, when your mind doesn’t see what’s there and especially when it sees things that aren’t. so i hope she gets some help or learns to work within what she does see or, something. she was such a sweet person.

clean out your car

boxes

sell/give away/keep

my mother is unwilling to break a cycle of codependency, or maybe my methods just suck

but i realized i have literally never done anything for my own actual good, by myself

ever

for comfort? sure. gotten other people to do things that were good? constantly. done things that were good for me, but only under instruction? sometimes.

but i’ve never done a thing that was just mine and was for my actual real good without roping someone else in, or to earn approval

i’ve never taken responsibility for myself, ever

i look back at my memories and i don’t know who half the feelings belong to

everyone else

and i want what they want and if they want for me i want it too i want to want what they want do what they want we want? i want, wait

when you feel what everyone else feels as if it originated in you, you lose track of what did originate in you

it’s like fighting but i never fought but i have to now

i think i’ll die otherwise, which isn’t a threat but it isn’t a joke

you just can’t go on like that and not sink deeper and deeper and deeper until you are numb and nothing and no one

so it’s almost okay because this is the only choice

i honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, and i’m only going to do what i can for me. and keep it mine. not let anyone else pick it up. i have to hold it, just me. alone. i won’t be alone or feel alone i’ll just be holding myself up for once

i am excited and terrified terrified

my mom is really awesome. i think she’s maybe not as depressed anymore, & actually thinking about it now i think i’m incredibly proud of her. she has taken time off from work lately, not a lot but a day here and there, and she cleaned her room up one day and the house in a spread-out kind of way, and i didn’t fully realize it until today but her mood has changed. and like, that’s so.. impressive. there’s no other way to put it really.

i’m not going to mention it to her, or at least not for a while because thinking about her feelings isn’t good for her, acting and taking steps to make sure her day-to-day life is satisfying is. but at some point when i think of how to do it, i will tell her. 

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glompkitty replied to your post: it suddenly hit me that ill be 24 in 3 months and…

Why? Why is being 24 such a bad thing?

it’s so very much not a child. that’s it in essence. 23, 23 was pretty scary. it was because it’s not 22 anymore and 22 year-olds are within the expected college age range, that’s in school. that’s a kid. or it can be if you need it to be. but like, 23 is really close to that. it’s the first year after that, so there’s still a lot of leeway. you can still be a kid. 23. 23, is 2 years away from the midway point of your 20’s. 2 years is a nice amount of time. a safe distance. 24, that’s just one year until the midway point of your 20’s and then once you get there, you’re in your late 20’s really and none of this is inherently bad or it’s not supposed to be but who am i? i am danielle but who is she? she is no one. and see, she’s not no one or she wouldn’t be no one if she were a child, she is a child. she’s a full person if she’s a child but i don’t, there are some very basic things that i don’t have, a job or a purpose or a space that is my own or anything that i actually really truly own or a college degree or literally any responsibilities at all, who the fuck is that? what kind of person has literally no responsibilities at all? that’s not being a person, that’s not living that’s existing. that’s existing and i’m going to be 24. that’s so old, not in the grander sense but for that.. for having literally no responsibilities for not being an adult. 24 is ancient for a child.

and then there’s the irrational part, the part where i’m just so afraid and i don’t want to be any older i don’t want to get older, i don’t want to be old. i don’t want the solidity that comes with age, the seriousness. i’m terrified of being taken more seriously because that means being judged more harshly and i’m already found so wanting by even the most basic standards and see i’ve learned to deal with that, and i’m trying but to have it just get even worse right out from under me like that, i can’t. 

i can’t be living here when i turn 24, i cannot. i cannot. but i am so afraid, i am terrified of change. 

honestly i just want to be a little girl and i get further and further away from that every minute and i’m never close enough for long enough to stop wanting it and then i keep getting further away, i can never catch up, i’ll never stop wanting it back. i don’t know why i want it back so badly.

i’m sorry jaime this is so long and i would’ve sent it to you somehow but it’s so long and also i feel like it belongs on my blog because i haven’t explained this much at all. sorry to everyone else reading it that it’s so long and in no clear order. i hadn’t meant to do that. i know i could make my thoughts about this much smoother and i don’t know, prettier maybe but that’s not how it came out right now.

i really really really really can’t wait for it to be spring. or like, i don’t care if it’s actually spring or whatever i just can’t wait for it to be warmer. like, i miss my legs. and not wearing shoes sometimes and i keep trying on rompers with a sort of excited wistfulness and then going and checking the weather for the 100th time to see how many warm days there are compared to last week and i wonder how warm it will be in two weeks, can you imagine? and i get really excited when there are days that are near or over 50 AND sunny, i don’t even go outside those days half the time it’s more about what they mean.

i know once it starts to get warm enough so that excess clothing becomes a burden i’ll be totally sick of it because all my warm-weather outfits will stop seeming new and i’ll wonder why i have no fucking clothes anymore and, yeah, but for now i am whatever the godless version of praying is, for spring.

i’ve been watching toddlers and tiaras on netflix, and feeling kind of guilty/bad/etc. about it because like.. well actually only for a few small real reasons, but mostly for vague conceptual reasons, that it’s ‘bad’ in some grander way. and there are some parents that are terrible, and some of the situations are genuinely concerning. and there’s the whole concept of pageants and how the girls are done up and what that says and what it means, and there’s plenty of not-good there.

but i realized that the reason i watch it and really enjoy it isn’t for the pageant ‘glamour’ or the trainwreck drama of fucked-up parenting, it’s because in addition to those things, toddlers and tiaras is a show that focuses entirely on little girls with strong personalities being theatrically, emphatically, and sometimes even unapologetically themselves.

when the cameras just focus on them in their houses or in an ‘interview’ setting or whatever and they make all kinds of outlandishly awesome declarations and unselfconscious-yet-performative faces and are all enthusiastic and like, i’m like this! yeah! or how they approach all these different situations, with this… (usually) undiluted awesomeness. it’s so much fun to watch. 

the sad parts happen less often than the awesome ones, and they are when the parents are overbearing or emotionally damaging or are successful in diluting the awesomeness of these little girls. that does happen. but often it also doesn’t, you know?

i’m not defending pageants (because the way they’re set up & the culture of it is fucked.. but i do kind of want to defend having an outlet for dressing up in a completely over-the-top hyper-feminine way and performing, ‘cause i would’ve fucking ADORED that as a little girl or tbh even now) or even really the show i’m just saying there’s something in there that for me is worth watching.

don’t tell me how thin i am

or that my body is so enviable, perfect, tiny, you’re jealous, whatever. the part of my brain i’m about to explain to you is screaming “NO, DO!!!!” but really, don’t.

there are so many layers to this. 

i am thin. people have said i am ‘very thin’ in a way and context i am inclined to believe but i don’t see it, or feel it. i just don’t. i can’t explain it, because i honestly don’t think my self-perception is that off but it must be, to a certain extent. 

i wasn’t always thin. i used to weigh about 100 pounds more than i do now, at the end of high school and for the first year of college. before that, i wasn’t at all ‘thin’ either. i don’t know, i was probably a size 10? 12? something that i now know to be average but i never felt that, then. i also hit puberty really early, and i always looked older than i was. always. like in kindergarten i could’ve passed for a third-grader, and on from there. i needed a training bra when i was 8 or 9, i had my period at 10. grown-ups would treat me like i was one of them, both in the creepy men-hitting-on-you way and in a more casual but nearly as disturbing kind of, just acting like you’re older way. like, i was on a college campus once (walking from a car to a building) and a car pulled up next to me and asked me if i went there (they needed directions). i was eleven.

so up until a few years ago (which in the context of my entire life is not much time at all) i was simply, large. i was never someone who was small. never. there are so many things that you probably wouldn’t think about.. like seesaws. or sitting in your friend’s lap. or always playing the boy in games, when you are SUCH a girl personality-wise and want nothing more than to feel feminine and delicate and small. getting weighed in elementary school as part of a yearly physical and weighing what seems like a disproportionate amount more than everyone else, and having no one tell you that you’re actually normal, you’re actually fine. that you aren’t fat and you won’t grow into some kind of giant and that you aren’t only pretty to older boys who stare at you strangely and have no idea that in your head you are a frightened child.

and see, that’s where it all comes from. right there. i wanted to be a small girl. small as in tiny, girl as in child. i wanted to be a small girl, i didn’t know why other people got to be but i didn’t. because i wasn’t small, and i got the distinct message that i wasn’t a girl, either. either because i was large and therefore unfeminine and therefore less of a girl, or because i was being sexualized and was therefore being seen more as a woman. i wanted it so desperately. so painfully. i felt wrong, all the time. like it didn’t matter what i did, i would never be right with my body, i would never feel right.

lead to, binge eating disorder (undiagnosed, but because i never ever would have told anyone because to me then it was a GIANT SHAMEFUL SECRET) in high school, solidly fucking up my brain in regards to food which made it that much simpler to switch over to, not eating at all, in college.

and so it all comes together. feeling how i felt in my childhood taught me to be passive and quiet and shy and anything, anything at all that was the opposite of big, imposing, loud, visible, heavy, too much. i spent my childhood working to make up for my perception of my size by being small in any other way i could think of, and that is ingrained into my personality. so my personality is tiny and so am i and now you see, i am a small girl. finally. 

but you know, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. i don’t feel small, just because i am. i wonder if i never will. i wonder if i will ever feel feminine enough, small enough, delicate enough, pretty enough, quiet enough, the list goes on and on and it doesn’t stop.

and now, i am a feminist. i know now that those things aren’t real, aren’t important, are bullshit. i know now that i might have been beautiful my entire life but i never had a fucking clue. i know, but i feel just the same. i know, and i can hear it coming out of my own mouth and i am horrified at this thin pretty girl talking about how her arms are too big like we’re in a goddamned lifetime afterschool special fucked up backwards culture nightmare. i am disgusted with myself, i really am. but i am not her, not really. i am not the small girl, i am the too-large too-much too-grown-up thing who is NEVER soft and small and quiet and delicate enough and whose ARMS ARE TOO BIG GOD DAMNIT stop telling me they aren’t you don’t know.

but now i need to be responsible. because i know, or, i believe. yes, i believe that this is not an excuse. i want to mature and be accountable and an activist and grow a backbone and, i want to do better. i mean, after calling up all these emotions and memories and feelings just now i mostly want to sob and ask everyone to tell me how frighteningly tiny i am and maybe pick me up for a second and show that they aren’t straining themselves, but those feelings will pass and the grown-up dani, who knows different, that i’ve been working so hard on lately will be waiting underneath them and she wants to be better. she really does. we really do.

sometimes it’s really hard not to close my eyes when i’m driving. not quite in a suicidal way, just more in an oblivion way. like this urge to just close your eyes and floor it. or just coast, even. something. if you let go of the wheel it stays in a straight line i guess, mostly, i like to test that too. let go of the wheel, just to see.

i really shouldn’t be driving, not just because of that, but. at least i know how. i can’t wait until one day when i can fix it so i don’t have to.

cockaine replied to your post: i have to stop using this blog like a diary i…

er, pretty sure you can make those posts private

well, sure, but what’s the difference between doing that and just writing something for myself in a notepad file? the communication part is the point. i like that. people being able to read and reply if they have something to say. it’s just, unfortunate that that means that people i don’t know will be able to reblog personal things i write in full in a way that, while not inherently offensive (i do recognize that) happens to fuck with my head.. like, i’m writing in a vague way about very specific feelings, and unless someone at least knows something more about me on a personal level (and i’m inherently aware of who does) then they can’t know that they’re feeling exactly that, too. so it just feels shitty and kind of invasive, which if i want to maintain the aforementioned positives, i can’t actually control. which sucks. and now i’m basically repeating myself.

i have to stop using this blog like a diary i guess

but i like sharing my thoughts it makes me make sense of them sometimes, when i just write for me and me alone there’s never any real structure, i have to be trying to communicate or nothing comes out making sense

but it’s all so personal and then when it gets reblogged i feel unbearably trivialized and gross because even though sometimes i’m vague in my wording, everything i say is specific to me. and i want to tell people to get their own words, you know? except this is a tumblr and so what can i do. it’s just a shitty thing for me i guess.

i think i need to cry. i’m not sure why, and i’m fairly certain i won’t be able to, but it’s there. i’m incredibly disconnected from myself. it makes me angry because isolation makes me miserable but brings clarity. but i get so far from myself so quickly it’s like my mind is gone. parts of my brain barely know our name. maybe this is just a bump in the road, a hill i have to get over and maybe time will pass and i’ll be a person again. i’m not one, right now, i’m a made-up thing. vague and the kind of thing that’s only real when you can see it.

i wish i had more self.

i am particularly in love with the phrase ‘aerosol mist of blood’ 

my overly visceral/emotional murder fantasies always involve excessive spraying of blood, maybe it’s a thing although i can’t even begin to analyze it. but ‘aerosol mist’ is perfect