The simplest definition of trauma is an event or events that you can't process all the way. I guess this pisses your brain off cuz it usually comes with some pretty distressing side effects. Generally this makes sense because traumatic events are often distressing in themselves and that's what causes them to be harder to process, although this isn't necessarily always the case. Obviously I don't know all the science but I know myself as a clinically diagnosed severely traumatized person, and it feels horrible to not be able to process something. It feels like drowning in the shallow end when you know you know how to swim. It feels like not being able to remember something so important to you, and other people don't even know, or understand why it's important. Painful self betrayal, indescribable panic.
For a while the acceptable word to use for developmentally disabled people was "slow." I'm sure in some circles that haven't caught on this is still the case. Not ideal. At least somewhat derogatory. But, being autistic, this really is how it feels sometimes. Everything goes so fast and I don't know what to do with it all, especially with my upbringing, having been given so little to work with. I feel like I spend every year recovering from the whiplash of the previous one. That's what the passing of time feels like. Whiplash.
For a while when I was younger, when I was out of the house having fun (usually at my best friend's house), I'd always have this moment at the peak of my elation, where I stop and think. In a few minutes this will all be over. I'll be waking up and it'll be time to go home. In my mind, sleepovers end when we go to sleep. The morning after is for coming back down, and even if in reality I spent the better part of the next day still at my friends' house, it was never a continuation of the fun from the night before. Of course I preferred that to going home right away because I never wanted to go home, but it was still unpleasant, savouring the bittersweetness of the fact it was over. I hadn't slept well, and the rest of the time was just dreading the going home. I can't have fun when it's the same day of the going home.
As luck would have it, a common disorder associated with autism is sensory integration disorder- sensory issues are incredibly common in autistic people but ones severe enough can warrant their own separate diagnosis. I took an evaluation for sensory integration disorder in the hospital, and when my psychiatrist came back with the results, one of the first things she said was "How do you even function??" I said something to the effect of, well, clearly I don't cuz I'm in the hospital for kids who wanna kill themselves. She explained it to me as the inability to fully get used to sensory information in one's surroundings. The average person, on driving past the same tree every day to and from work, will, most likely rather quickly, get used to the tree. Often, they never really paid it that much attention in the first place because the brain is conditioned to filter out the majority of the sensory input it receives- because the majority of it isn't that important. The sensory integration disorder brain can't reliably identify what sensory input is or is not important, so to be on the safe side, it pays good attention to the tree every time like it's the first time. Anyone who's at least somewhat tangentially aware of autism knows that autistic people are not usually very fond of change or new things, because it's stressful for roughly such reasons. Involuntarily trying to process all sensory information as if it's new and could be really important is stressful and tiring, and for me at least processing the same old stuff is still pretty tiring just on its own, not to mention stuff that actually is new.
Amidst the over processing, I have to make an effort to prioritize what I can consciously identify as actually important. What happens then is that so much goes half processed, and I feel like so much of the time I'm grasping at straws and the straws are what happens day to day. I feel so left behind. It's all a blur. Days weeks months years. Can I ever really fully process anything?
The first six years of my life. I think I have a good hold on those. The rest is up in the air though. I was abused every day from birth until shortly after my seventeenth birthday. And since then I've just been reeling. 2022 After my mom kicked me out I went to the hospital again 2023 then I tried to get a job and have a partner and also I totaled my car and it was all too much and I violently crashed out. 2024 I was just trying to get a grip on it all while trying and failing to find a new therapist after a handful of terrible experiences. 2025 I moved twice, got a new therapist twice, started dating someone again, and tried to do two full terms of college before realizing I can't handle that. Now here I am. Drowning again.
I've done a lot of healing, really I have. But I have an immeasurably large amount of shit to heal from, and that's part of what makes it all so hard. The sheer weight of it all.
I was doing amazingly well last summer, the future felt bright. For a few months I felt genuinely okay. I felt better than I ever have probably in my life thusfar. And then I overdid it. I don't know how much is to blame on what. The college was a considerable part, but really the bulk is just the amount and rate of change. I'm halfway through 2026 now and I'm still trying to get back on my feet but it's excruciating.
Not only did so much change, but so much of it is so completely brand new. It's one thing to go from living with my grandparents to living with my mom again- it's something entirely else to live on my own.
I feel like I've been saying for awhile now, in part mostly to myself, that I'm losing familiar things in my life. Familiar things are what anchor me, and the longer I live on the further I move away from anything that feels familiar enough for me to almost not over process it quite so much.
In the last six months the only people I have had any kind of prolonged meaningful interaction with, especially on a weekly basis, is my therapist and my partner. Both of these people I've only known for a year. For all intents and purposes, they are not filed in my brain under "people who know me". They are safe people, but only insofar as I trust them to be who they say they are and that they are well intentioned. These things I know are true but they only get me so far. I live in a city I've never lived in before. I'm living alone for the first time. I shop for all of my groceries. I'm responsible for doing my dishes and sweeping my floor and cleaning my toilet. Before I moved into my apartment the most responsibility I had had for the past 5 years was doing my own laundry, and keeping up my bedroom. Everything else was taken care of. I bought my own groceries and made most of my own food, but even then I regularly was provided for in terms of food as well. It's all so new. It's all so much. I don't know what to do with it all. And on top of this, I have basically nothing to anchor me, to hold onto why I try to catch my balance in it all. I'm on a log raft in a stormy sea. Nothing to grab onto but the edges of the logs, my scraps of memories and my base level of sanity.
You'd best believe I feel it's incredibly annoying and stupid that literally all of these changes are positive. I wanted them. They're good. But they're still changes, and I'm still struggling to process them.
titsay
ellievsbear
vaporwave
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
