live through this and you won’t look back

This summer has been a welcome whirlwind of joy and fun and whimsy as well as nourishment and self care and strong boundaries after years of pain and exhaustion.

One of the wildest things about CPTSD, which I’m only now a few years into unraveling that onion, is that when you live life with trauma on top of trauma, you’ve done a lot of lying in the name of survival.

Lying to yourself, mostly. But also lying to others to get by, while not intentional, you absolutely learn that if you’re not covering every threat at the expense of your own wellness, there’s going to be consequences. So the trick is you have to lie to yourself, a lot. You tell the lies the manipulator and abuser told you, about how special you are, how you’re uniquely able to handle this hell you’ve been given. And you take it on. You’ve got this. You can handle anything! Including everyone else’s shit. It’s all on your shoulders baby and you’re a natural! And after years of lying that everyone else comes first, that you gotta make sure everyone else is okay until you’re ok, that that’s how it all works, that you can’t relax unless you know everyone else is okay and not upset… and you’ve truly convinced yourself this is fine. You’ve also convinced yourself you’re strong and smart and self aware as fuck! The crazy thing is you’re aware of everyone else while you’re hiding a lot of your own needs from yourself.

At least that’s where I am, what I’m realizing. I thought I knew myself, thought I was really taking care of myself, when all I’ve always been doing is continuing cycles of abuse again and again.

So, been working a lot on saying no or saying hey I wanna do this if you don’t want to come along that’s fine or if you want to leave early ok bye. I’m not extra extending myself, been deliberately not texting first for the last two years or so. And I know, relationships are a two way street but there were a hell of a lot of people in my life where if I didn’t reach out first or initiate or check in or ask questions, the relationship went flat. And I don’t have the spoons to be the mother of the relationships, ever. I never should have been extending myself so much to try to keep people. I am sick now. I need my people to be doing the showing up for me, and I need them to be asking me how they come correct for me.

I know I do need friends, and am working on finding those relationships that fit for where I am now. Deepening my art practices and joining more art events in Chicago as I submit my pieces to shows. I’m also putting energy into sapphic spaces and it’s so amazing how many queers are organizing beyond boystown, it makes my baby bi heart sob.

Another huge and wonderful shift for me lately is that my pain levels have consistently been so much lower. I am at a 3-4 pain scale, when a few months ago I was at a 7. That kind of drop will make you feel like god is real and life is magic again. Just a few years ago I was at a 12/10 pain every day. Trust and believe suicide ideation is a monster I fight regularly.

An uber driver said “gratitude with an attitude” the other day and I really loved the phrasing and it feels like where I am. I’ve finished something like 8 books so far this year? Huge for me when I used to have PAIN while trying to read and my vision would go blurry. What a blessing to finish books easily.

My therapist is a big part of the care formula of how I got here, but I did the work. Standing up to my mother and being honest about her bullshit changed a lot for me. And the veils have been falling in the reality of my life and what it’s always been. And it’s ok, the more I see it for what it always was, the more grace I have for myself and my disabilities. Things were really fucked up for me for a very long time. Most of my life in survival mode. Now, I get to enjoy and not feel guilty. But so many years of crap programming take gentleness and patience to undo.

FFB and I have been together now for 4 years. Every day I sink more into comfort and love with him. I still am shocked constantly that a man lives in my house and his sneezes make me jump every day. There’s just some shit your nervous system never seems to get used to (I also can be triggered into panic attacks if he comes up behind me and I don’t hear him coming and he surprise scares me, PTSD is a hell of the thing). And yet he makes sure I eat every day. He’s Buckley’s dad and we talk about getting another dog sometimes. We had an amazing trip in. Vegas and I loved that he loved the degenerateness of the city as much as I did. We’re going back in two weeks to celebrate his birthday. I love he’s spontaneous. I love he’s creative and has ideas out the wazoo and left his corporate gig to make movies with his friends. We make a great partnership and it’s so funny because we are open, we’ve always said our relationship will be poly…we are so into one another and so busy (or sick in my case) that we have stayed monogamous the last 3 years.

It's my 16 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

Wowwwwww

It’s ok to be. It’s ok to live.

“Value” and “worth” are for objects.

People and beings and aliveness doesn’t have a price or an output amount to get to live life.

We are here and that gets to be it.

No price to pay, no trade off.

Despite what they all make us think, there’s no tolls to pay for living.

None of us asked to be here.

It’s ok to be. It’s ok to stop proving yourself. To stop spinning. To stop being whatever you thought they needed you to be.

Because now it’s my body that must come first and everything else second.

And that’s how it is. Despite what I learned as a child. The rules are different now, because the rules never were what I was taught.

So I get gentleness and sweetness and coaxing to my own self.

Now.

It’s funny how life happens and how you begin to see yourself

This may be the longest stretch of consecutive time I’ve gone without writing or blogging or micro blogging documenting my life via words. I have instagram but it’s not much of anything lately.

The idea of that makes me smirk so I must be doing something right by myself. I was never really private, that’s for sure. And this isn’t so much privacy as a lack of words, which is even more strange. And it’s not even a lack of words as my brain is constantly talking to me, it’s a lack of energy. I don’t have the spoons to communicate like I used to, and so. I’m quiet, even in my more “private” places, I’m not even writing in a journal. I am making art and that’s better anyway.

Spoons, I’ve given into the lingo because it’s what’s available and understood. I don’t have the spoons to create and explain something new.

Some life updates: I’ve been “discharged” from PT for my head/neck “upper crossed syndrome” issue. I got to ring the bell! I never got to ring a bell before! My range of motion in my neck/shoulders is much improved, and getting back the hour 2 days a week is needed. It was a lot for me. But I have to keep up with it. I’m just so tired all the time.

FFB has built a gym in the garage and that helps motivate me to keep up with the exercises. He’s wonderful. We have had a lot of 1on1 time and dates lately. I’m soaking it up. I’m leaning into fun and pushing myself a little especially since gaining some functioning in PT and being in some less daily pain.

I completed another year of art classes and spent the last 6 months in an independent studies class where I worked on my own ideas along side other artists working on their own ideas, and I’ll tell you what, it’s been so cup filling. And my mentor showed me how to take proper photos of my art and I have every piece in sleeves with glassine and in an artists portfolio, all pieces together I’m really proud of how I’ve grown and the collection I created. And I now feel more confident in my “voice” as an artist and what I want to work on next.

FFB and I are going to a BBW “lifestyle” event in Vegas in July 🤣 and tbh I’m so excited. One night is “y2k” night. He’s wearing pucca shell necklace and popping polo collars, I’m going to do layered tanktops punk sk8r grll w a tie and wrists full of rubber bracelets

The morning I started this piece, a teenager had jumped in front of the redline.

I had told my art class instructor, in case anyone was late. Trains delayed. Ride share surges. I saw it on Alderman Maria Hadden’s ig, or I wouldn’t have known.

I remember she said a teenager. Prayers to their family. Prayers to them, too, I thought, several times, wherever their soul is.

I remember learning about the phenomenon of jumping in front of the train to commit suicide. I hadn’t been in Chicago long, definitely was 18. It became my fantasy “out” for a long time. My just in case plan. My uncle had been killed in a freight train wreck, what an homage, I thought. Oh to be remembered, to mess up so many people’s day, I would think, at least I’d get their attention for a moment, their prayers for a minute. These were my thoughts years ago. When life was simpler-darker. Not complex-dark.

The composition on this piece got all wrong, it was supposed to be more of “looking through” the tree, and that’s not what’s happening. It’s ok, it’s my first attempt at something so structured and industrial with oil pastels. I typically stay very nature-y. I did almost all of this free hand and cleaned it up with a straight edge, but the front proportions aren’t exactly right. I tried using some color trickery to give it the curve, but I’ll be making more with cta cars soon, I like what’s happening here. In the original photo I took, I could see the orange stocking cap of the train driver, and there’s a bit of a nod in there.

My body has finally adjusted to FFB being back home. Sleeping together again is still rough but everything else is adjusted back to comfortable or enjoyable or neutral. He’s gone again this weekend, and tbh that helps. He has a bunch of travel this year and it works out. I get I space and rest. We get fam time (w Buck) when he’s home.

Me and my best boi in my place of zen.

So now I’m back in PT 2x a week working to correct all of this bs. I know it’ll help, I’m in so much neck and shoulder pain. I’m just so very very tired all the time. Getting the help, doing the things, because eventually it’ll lead to an easier and less painful life over all. It’s PT Monday and Thurs. Art Tues. Therapy Wed. Rest the other 3 days. Disabled life pacing, still doesn’t feel like enough rest.

And my body? Well my body is in rough shape and she’s stuck in a survival cycle and she’s just afraid all the time so it’s a lot of talking myself down out of panic spirals because I’m triggered so often.

I am so tired.

Therapy was great today, I saw her in person to help myself ground. I cried most of the time, and I talked about how sick I am of the crying. It’s always been there, the crying, bubbling under the surface. She asked if it’s new with this round of being upset or grief I said nope, same as it ever was, the feelings are so much and just a few heavy feels away from bubbling over and then I told her about the Reddit post.

One of my neighbors posted in AskChicago Reddit about my crying on my patio and how loud it was and how long I went on and asked if they should say something to me.

My therapist busted out laughing. We spent the next 10 minutes bawling laughing about the whole absurdity of the whole thing cuz I realized I hadn’t even told her about it all yet, I hadn’t told anyone about it.