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Earlier this year, partially due to extended illness, I became deeply entrenched in the game Alice: Madness Returns, which is the sequel to American McGee’s Alice. It’s the first game I’ve really sunk my teeth into in a decade, and once I did that, I thrashed it around in my mouth like a rabid bulldog for weeks.
I found myself relating to the visuals, storyline and music in the sequal even more than I had the original, and in ways I can’t summarize quickly. There were even pieces of my original songs that stuck out in this soundtrack. The feel and movement of the audio in the game has, but especially had then, a sinisterly heavenly feel to it. It overtook me, gave me nightmares, personified my own flavor of festering pain I’d refluxed up at the time, and extended its hand to me.
In a word, it was fucking beautiful.
I don’t recall how I stumbled across wickedslicks1003‘s game extensions on youtube, but I did, and I’m glad for it. I still try to fall asleep to this stuff sometimes, but because I still have really fucked up dreams when I do that, I mostly listen to it as background and sing with it. I imagine at some point soon I will make good on my priority to learn how to play some of it, and I won’t be surprised if some of this music makes its way into Obsidian next year.
Here are my favorite of these musical pieces, extended into ~10 minute long tracks.
Listening to 90′s alternative Pandora with all the windows and doors open, packing up Juno #1 for Fedex pickup tomorrow. Soon it will be on its way to the Synth Spa in Grafton, WI for a new lease on life.
It’s in the 70′s and sunny, and I’m reminded of the elation and release of the summers of the mid 1990′s in Sacramento, after I’d spent long periods of my life encased in my filthy room, with aluminum foil on the windows to keep the light out of my life, and a suicidal depression to keep the light from my soul.
Those were the summers I rode on my boyfriends handlebars after being inside for weeks and almost cried when I felt the breeze on my face. The summers I discovered iced vanilla lattes and off-roading in the mud. When I got drunk in public for the first time seeing Cake at the Cattle club for $8 and saw Hole and Beck at Lollapalooza. Those were the summers I bought myself my first car, went to Vegas for Defcon for the first time, went on my first road trips into the wilderness, and felt my first real tastes of freedom.
Every time the weather turns toward summer again, I remember those times, and I’m so glad I didn’t die, or let my heart stone over. The harshness was what dominated me then, but now that it’s over, it’s those moments of light from my past that shine through more than brightly and profoundly than anything else.
Instead, I forget. I forget I know you, I forget there has been work done by others, I forget there are others like me, that what I deal with is understood, and that I’m not some kind of inhuman freakshow because I struggle with the realities of this.
I forget I was ever diagnosed in the first 3 years of intense, wrenching, horrifyingly naked psychotherapy that transformed my life. I forget the answers I put everything I had into finding.
Largely, I choose, rather, my idealism, and resistance to psychological diagnosis which is often abused in the interest of drug companies and politics. I choose the sense that, surely, I am more complex than a wikipedia article on human behavior, which took me years to think to look at again. That, surely, I deserve to feel awful about myself an increasingly disturbing amount of my life. Again. That, surely something MUST be incredibly, strickenly -wrong- with me.
Where is my courage? Why don’t I recognize when this is happening, or more accurately, that it is THIS IS WHAT IS happening? Why can’t I recognize when I’m watching myself dismantle my life, like there’s another soul inside me that shuts me off and moves and speaks for me. Why don’t I SEE IT FASTER?
I’m think-smart. I’m smarter than my own fucking good. Why can’t I be honest with myself about this? Why am I so horrified, so embarrassed, so fucking ASHAMED?
How many more nights will I spend paralyzed by incessant, merciless thoughts of how terrible I am? How many more times will I break down sobbing like a shivering, petrified animal? Why does something so common and ordinary feel so fucking WRONG? Why does the label feel like such a copout?
Why am I not over this? Why am I not fixed? I think about it sometimes, but I don’t want to die. I want this to go away.
Among the everyday occurrences of this and growing up with a military Dad, at one point I spent a year and a half with a sociopathic partner who incorporated this kind of emotional manipulation to cover up his lies.
Though I’ve virtually eliminated this kind of treatment of myself in current times, the PTSD from that horrifying relationship experience, and other significant experiences of emotional nullification, can still significantly overwhelm my interactions.
Man or woman, read about what’s covertly happening to us, and don’t fucking tolerate this being done to you anymore. Use your voice to stand up for yourself, to educate and empower others around you, and take back your emotional body for the intuitive, amazing gift that it is.
A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not “Crazy”
Posted: 09/12/11 04:34 PM ET
You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!
Sound familiar?
If you’re a woman, it probably does.
Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?
When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling — that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation, pure and simple.
And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.
I think it’s time to separate inconsiderate behavior from emotional manipulation, and we need to use a word not found in our normal vocabulary.
I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a term often used by mental health professionals (I am not one) to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.
The term comes from the 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s husband in the film, played by Charles Boyer, wants to get his hands on her jewelry. He realizes he can accomplish this by having her certified as insane and hauled off to a mental institution. To pull of this task, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker off and on, and every time Bergman’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things. In this setting, a gaslighter is someone who presents false information to alter the victim’s perception of him or herself.
Today, when the term is referenced, it’s usually because the perpetrator says things like, “You’re so stupid,” or “No one will ever want you,” to the victim. This is an intentional, pre-meditated form of gaslighting, much like the actions of Charles Boyer’s character in Gaslight, where he strategically plots to confuse Ingrid Bergman’s character into believing herself unhinged.
The form of gaslighting I’m addressing is not always pre-mediated or intentional, which makes it worse, because it means all of us, especially women, have dealt with it at one time or another.
Those who engage in gaslighting create a reaction — whether it’s anger, frustration, sadness — in the person they are dealing with. Then, when that person reacts, the gaslighter makes them feel uncomfortable and insecure by behaving as if their feelings aren’t rational or normal.
My friend Anna (all names changed to protect privacy) is married to a man who feels it necessary to make random and unprompted comments about her weight. Whenever she gets upset or frustrated with his insensitive comments, he responds in the same, defeating way, “You’re so sensitive. I’m just joking.”
My friend Abbie works for a man who finds a way, almost daily, to unnecessarily shoot down her performance and her work product. Comments like, “Can’t you do something right?” or “Why did I hire you?” are regular occurrences for her. Her boss has no problem firing people (he does it regularly), so you wouldn’t know from these comments that Abbie has worked for him for six years. But every time she stands up for herself and says, “It doesn’t help me when you say these things,” she gets the same reaction: “Relax; you’re overreacting.”
Abbie thinks her boss is just being a jerk in these moments, but the truth is, he is making those comments to manipulate her into thinking her reactions are out of whack. And it’s exactly that kind manipulation that has left her feeling guilty about being sensitive, and as a result, she has not left her job.
But gaslighting can be as simple as someone smiling and saying something like, “You’re so sensitive,” to somebody else. Such a comment may seem innocuous enough, but in that moment, the speaker is making a judgment about how someone else should feel.
While dealing with gaslighting isn’t a universal truth for women, we all certainly know plenty of women who encounter it at work, home, or in personal relationships.
And the act of gaslighting does not simply affect women who are not quite sure of themselves. Even vocal, confident, assertive women are vulnerable to gaslighting.
Why?
Because women bare the brunt of our neurosis. It is much easier for us to place our emotional burdens on the shoulders of our wives, our female friends, our girlfriends, our female employees, our female colleagues, than for us to impose them on the shoulders of men.
It’s a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they don’t refuse our burdens as easily. It’s the ultimate cowardice.
Whether gaslighting is conscious or not, it produces the same result: It renders some women emotionally mute.
These women aren’t able to clearly express to their spouses that what is said or done to them is hurtful. They can’t tell their boss that his behavior is disrespectful and prevents them from doing their best work. They can’t tell their parents that, when they are being critical, they are doing more harm than good.
When these women receive any sort of push back to their reactions, they often brush it off by saying, “Forget it, it’s okay.”
That “forget it” isn’t just about dismissing a thought, it is about self-dismissal. It’s heartbreaking.
No wonder some women are unconsciously passive aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or frustration. For years, they have been subjected to so much gaslighting that they can no longer express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them.
They say, “I’m sorry,” before giving their opinion. In an email or text message, they place a smiley face next to a serious question or concern, thereby reducing the impact of having to express their true feelings.
You know how it looks: “You’re late :)”
These are the same women who stay in relationships they don’t belong in, who don’t follow their dreams, who withdraw from the kind of life they want to live.
Since I have embarked on this feminist self-exploration in my life and in the lives of the women I know, this concept of women as “crazy” has really emerged as a major issue in society at large and an equally major frustration for the women in my life, in general.
From the way women are portrayed on reality shows, to how we condition boys and girls to see women, we have come to accept the idea that women are unbalanced, irrational individuals, especially in times of anger and frustration.
Just the other day, on a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a flight attendant who had come to recognize me from my many trips asked me what I did for a living. When I told her that I write mainly about women, she immediately laughed and asked, “Oh, about how crazy we are?”
Her gut reaction to my work made me really depressed. While she made her response in jest, her question nonetheless makes visible a pattern of sexist commentary that travels through all facets of society on how men view women, which also greatly impacts how women may view themselves.
As far as I am concerned, the epidemic of gaslighting is part of the struggle against the obstacles of inequality that women constantly face. Acts of gaslighting steal their most powerful tool: their voice. This is something we do to women every day, in many different ways.
I don’t think this idea that women are “crazy,” is based in some sort of massive conspiracy. Rather, I believe it’s connected to the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as “crazy.”
I recognize that I’ve been guilty of gaslighting my women friends in the past (but never my male friends–surprise, surprise). It’s shameful, but I’m glad I realized that I did it on occasion and put a stop to it.
While I take total responsibility for my actions, I do believe that I, along with many men, am a byproduct of our conditioning. It’s about the general insight our conditioning gives us into admitting fault and exposing any emotion.
When we are discouraged in our youth and early adulthood from expressing emotion, it causes many of us to remain steadfast in our refusal to express regret when we see someone in pain from our actions.
When I was writing this piece, I was reminded of one of my favorite Gloria Steinem quotes, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
So for many of us, it’s first about unlearning how to flicker those gaslights and learning how to acknowledge and understand the feelings, opinions, and positions of the women in our lives.
But isn’t the issue of gaslighting ultimately about whether we are conditioned to believe that women’s opinions don’t hold as much weight as ours? That what women have to say, what they feel, isn’t quite as legitimate?
Yashar will be soon releasing his first short e-book, entitled, A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy — How We Teach Men That Women Are Crazy and How We Convince Women To Ignore Their Instincts. If you are interested and want to be notified when the book is released, please click here to sign-up.
Unable to breathe through congestion. Either raging hot and sweating or freezing fucking cold. Eaten twice since Friday morning. Only been awake about 3 hours at a time. Cramping but haven’t fucking bled yet. Feeling depressed and isolated, and don’t have any energy for the people around me. Went through this a month ago and a couple months before that and a couple months before that and so on. Tired and fucking frustrated and sick of being a failure at life and canceling on people and stressing over income loss and other stupid shit. Sick of doctors who can’t fucking tell me what the fuck is wrong with me. Sick of blood tests coming up normal. Sick.
There’s this time in every significant relationship where things are simply dripping in awesome. Life is flowing through everything you do with one another, you stand stronger on your own, the layers you skillfully peel away together reveal excitement, reverence and possibility. The processes are as enjoyable as the outcomes and it’s impossible to not at least occasionally catch yourself wishing and hoping that you may have found a fountain of perpetual fairy tale bliss that may just never have to end.
And then someone fucks up. And shit gets real.
In the most recent case, that someone was me. I found this detail highly inconvenient. It’s usually not me, at least not the first significant trial, but regardless of when it happens, the first time I royally screw up signifies a very particular point in the everlasting, yet constantly progressing cycle that is my relationship with relationships. It signifies a very important and basic test, a subconscious impulse that demands verification: Is this thing real.
One side of a coin is not a real coin. Until you suffer challenge together, you don’t know the strength you may have in a bond. But until you’ve suffered the inevitable fallibility in the other person, until you know what that looks like, and how they handle themselves, and you, when it happens, you don’t know if that bond even truly exists. At least, I don’t. Or at least, some small hologram that periodically takes the wheel inside me doesn’t.
So, that happened. I fucked up and it broke us both open and we were awesome and authentic about it and continue to progress as individuals and as a couple because of it. I’m not proud of it but I’ve worked through the vast majority of my guilt regarding my actions and I continue to learn a little bit more every few days.
I demand integrity and truthfulness and breadth in my significant interpersonal experiences. But real, as much as I covet and search for and insist upon it, is god damn fucking scary. She wants you to fail that test. She wants to stay right, to have (job) security, to stay alive, to keep doing what she knows and does so well it’s almost sickening: Protecting the rest of me. And she’s incessant, she’s crafty and wise and skeptical, she’s righteous and wants to be right because her being right inevitably means less hurt.
And that’s who bursting the bubble makes real, inside, for me. That’s when the shadows step in. That’s when insecurity starts nipping away at my confidence, when I start periodically shutting down emotionally and not knowing why, when I become ambivalent and oscillate between intense attachment and wanting the fuck out. Cause once it’s real, I have something to lose. Something else to invest in, give myself to, protect and foster and fight for, and fucking lose. And that just fucks up everything. She’s on. She’s fucking AWAKE. And it permeates everything in my life. I periodically want to leave my job, stop teaching aerial, give up music, get rid of all my shit, and disappear. Travel light. Travel light, and survive.
I used to think it was all guilt. Once I stepped out of my integrity with someone, and treated them poorly in some way, the guilt ate my resolve away. I thought I felt muted and inconsistent because I deserved to for whatever it was I did, whatever thing I inflicted in my fucked up gauntlet I make the people close to me run. And I could imagine all kinds of things, even things that I hadn’t even done yet and may never do, that made me a bad person and a bad partner who was better off, and made others better off, alone.
As well as I’m able to see this stuff in a relatively short timeframe, I’m still blindsided the test. It wouldn’t be a subconscious thing if I wasn’t, but god damn it if I don’t feel like I should see it coming. I’ve figured out that I feel muted and inconsistent afterwards because I’m threatened somehow, but knowing that doesn’t make it feel any less natural when it happens. I’m just being me, and everything feels fine. Monosaturated, but fine.
I finally saw her today. She’s about 12, with long, stringy, dirty blond hair. She’s wet, and cold, and dirty, standing inside a stone cave, Indiana Jones style. She’s holding something, like a torch or a specter, stationed outside a huge, heavy door. She’s collected, logical, matter of fact and appears unphasable, but there’s a look in her face that tells you she’ll tear your jaw off with her teeth if you step sideways at her too quickly. She radiates old soul, intimidation, and is undeniably smarter than you.
She’s the part of me that mama bears. She’s the one who stands up for the people around her because no one stood up for her. She’s the child that was so impressively mature. She’s constantly tense, constantly on guard. She’s intense and serious. She doesn’t sleep. She’s defined by her duty and by what lies behind that door. She’s the one who understands that there’s always a motive for someone to attack and try to steal what she’s charged to protect. She’s wrung out and full of endurance at the same time. She’s emotionally muted because she has to concentrate, obsessed with finding a breaking point and getting rid of you. And she has no fucking idea what it is she’s guarding.
All the time I’ve known about this test, from the first “I’ll try to run eventually” warning I gave to this last “Aww, man, not again — What the fuck did I do that for?!”, I thought it was about the staying. It’s always been about the staying.
Can they? Will they? Now? What about now? Oop, apparently it was time to test again, agh, I’m such a jerk. What, you’re still here? Really? Why? Sheesh, you’re fucking stupid. Again! Again again! .. This is boring. You know what, just.. nevermind.
The test is never satisfied because it’s not about the staying. I want it to be that easy, and for a long time I’ve stayed in some version of this corrosive loop where the all-telling test us supposed to solve everything and prove I’m capable of becoming comfortable being close with someone, if I just run it one. More. Time.
But it’s not. It’s about all the other shit that comes after the staying. All that scary shit I actually want.
And it’s all behind that door.
Another ingenious, beautiful, incredibly effective, creative, awe inspiring, bulldog stubborn, self inflicted fucking masterpiece of a booby trap.
Though it’s often looked like it to me, feeling insecure doesn’t lead to the matter of somehow behaving unlike myself. It leads to the matter of utter confusion as to which part of me I want to wear.
Throughout my life, I periodically run into people who are infuriatingly incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. Even when acknowledging that there shouldn’t be one, there’s always a reason, an excuse, some kind of explanation as to why what happens in their life and the effects their decisions have on others ultimately aren’t their actual fault, really.
When a persons inability to own themselves and their mistakes effects me personally, this behavior arouses my deep, penetrating anger. I find it insulting and calculatingly offensive. I see it as inexcusably dishonest to claim ownership of yourself and still behave like a fucking wimp. Sometimes, I find myself yelling obscenities and colorful insults like ‘flaming sack of curdled assbarf’, and ‘dicksnot’, and wishing death via car fire upon these types of people. In jest, of course – but seriously, fuck these fucking impotent shit spewing fuckers.
I like my anger. It’s funny, it’s effective, and it helps me get motivated when action is necessary — but it’s not always the most useful aspect of coping. The sooner I can let the slew of cuss words out somewhere, the faster I slow down and remember when I was incapable of comprehending how I manipulated and controlled my surroundings through what was, ultimately, emotional retardation. I recognize, while I sometimes see it as malicious and lazy in other people, how rarely it was about that when I was constantly failing myself no matter how hard I tried to be a good person.
I remember how incessantly difficult it was, and how much raw will power, determination and resiliency it took to pull my head out of my ass. How I spent 10 years before that moment running around digging trenches in my psyche looking for evidence of my villainy, having convinced myself that what I was doing was good inner work.
I remember when it made sense to stay stupid, to remain confused, to sabotage my life and my progress in order to avoid responsibility for the neglected brilliance I was pissing away. I remember, as I wanted to grow out of my skin so much I’d slice it open myself, how being that person allowed me to wallow in safety, and to hide.
I was like a beaten dog pressed into a corner, shivering, snapping and displaying for anyone who dared the mange and sunken eyes. I wanted it. Occasionally, people got bit, and I felt for them. But being wretched let me shirk my tasks as a human being, and for a long time, being stunted and dim was worth it.
I remember how crushed I was when I realized that I lacked the ability to be cause in the matter of my own life because of how little I believed in myself. How guilty I felt when I realized that deep down, I’d been blaming the people I loved for that deprivation inside me. For not understanding me when, frankly, I didn’t understand me, or the true motivations for holding myself down.
I remember how sobering and scary it was when I finally conjured the courage to face, and act upon the answers, to the questions I had been asking myself. How big the world became when I saw the potential influence I could have from a place of inner strength, when I’d mostly just reacted and seen myself as a shallow robotic shell trapped in a vicious loop.
I remember the weight in realizing that embodied living meant the real work I’d finally stepped into was never going to be over. I remember wondering how long it would take to feel better, and being terrified of what little might be left of me once I escaped the strangle hold of my sadness.
I still feel echos of that struggle, scanning for that terrible evil person that would make some kind of sick sense of why life can be so god damn hard. I remember overcoming being enslaved by that debilitating mindset and paying my fucking dues revisiting that place, thinking I could save others from it. And now, in my 30′s, when I see my peers still pulling the same shit I did when I was 20, I get annoyed. Sometimes I get hurt. And then I get angry. And then, I get compassionate.
I’ve discovered, with the help of my Dad, that I’d fused two memories that were about a year apart regarding when my mom finally left the picture for good. I thought she said I was dead to her after we’d had an argument. Turns out it was said out of spite over the courts decision to refuse her demands to keep dad from seeing me (a consistent struggle that I clearly remember between the two of them) and granting him custody.
I am starting to see a clearer picture as to how my mothers absense shaped my identity, and finally beginning to let go of the deep, tangling belief that her leaving me was my fault.
Not being allowed to feel, allowed to be a child, is what saved my life. As I delve into this, finally, I’m coming to understand just how clever, intelligent, insightful and resilient I was. What a brave and strong little girl I became for myself and for my dad. I decided it was better to be bad and in control and helpful, than debilitated and afraid and a burden. I’d decided that before she actually left, but once I was the lady of my house, it was sealed, and I’ve subconsciously identified with that ever since. I became a natural at spotting deception and intention, creative at manipulation, persuasive, and did what I needed to do to survive. And I truly am an amazing human being with some pretty badass skills and depth for what I have faced and overcome in my life.
It came at a price. This price. Years of re-enacting insurmountable incessant pain, being cracked open like an egg in my 30′s. Though I’ve teased away so much of the anger and defensive mechanism that began to corrode my life once I was out of crisis, that pain that wants to be heard is still here. It’s been here, for 20 years, while I’ve been crying alone at night and not been able to understand what’s wrong and why I am capable of feeling so bad when I am so much better and have so much to be thankful for. It’s been there when I’ve been paralyzed in bed contemplating how I could die with compassion and responsibility, fantasizing that the loved ones I pushed away would come save me. It’s there when I wonder why I am so intensely afraid of the love and caring I want, and it cries out to you in my voice when I sing.
I’ve found myself on the brink of tears and crying periodically for days, weeks, for various reasons. It’s true, I’m mourning a romantic relationship right now, and I’ve finally passed through the posturing anger into missing a lot of what we had together that we won’t have again, and sometimes, though I’ve been enabled more than inhibited, I’m just so sad he chose to leave me as my lover while I was doing this. But most times, that just isn’t it. I’ll be sitting on the bus, sad and crying, and after a while I still can’t quite pin down what it is I’m sad about. Every time I’ve been overtaken by my grief/depression/sadness, become unable to function or process it in my life, it’s been because I couldn’t figure out what was causing it.
I have a mantra now, in which I say something like “This is why. This is why I’ve been so sad.”. In that moment, that invisible ball of metaphysical energy is connected to something in the real world, a reminder, a link, a recognition, and my sadness makes SENSE. Where before I felt lost and hopeless, I would start thinking I was somehow fundamentally flawed, or crazy, or deserved to feel like this, and that maybe the only answer that could free me of it was to die. Now I have a tool against that. I have a context for that tiny aching terrified runaway that’s had to be the strong one for so, so long.
Now that this is getting some of the attention it’s been seeking, attention that I’ve often supplemented in the form of the ‘falling in love’ and ‘passion’ stages of my romantic relationships, I’m beginning to reconnect with my worth with a profoundness I can feel when I breathe, taste when I eat, and hear when I speak. I’m embodying my transformative nature and embracing the often profound, life altering effect my authenticity has on people – even in passing. I’m reconnecting with that authenticity and taking chances on being vulnerable, and asking for what I need. I know better what I need, both when I see it and when I ask for it. My boundaries are returning, and the apologies surrounding them fading away. And I am giving amazing, connected, intuitive massages to my clients, who are coming back and tipping me more.
Though appearing in the world as a velvet glove encased in iron, often in my life, my lovers and close friends have told me how amazed they are that I never let what I went through make me hard.
I will never let what I went through make me hard.
It is times like these, when I am emerging from oppressive darkness and reconnecting with my creativity, that I greatly miss what was once the Little Red Studio. I did some truly amazing work there.
I just spent the last couple hours combing through some old entries to my former therapy journal, femanutzi, when I went to therapy the first round 6 years ago.
Most of the core stuff is the same. But man, am I not. Even in my worst, darkest, thickest places, I am not that person anymore. I’m so much softer now, so much more open to growth and resolution. I’m so much kinder, if you can believe it. Seeing how I was vs. how I am now is a real gift to myself, and a real fucking testament to my abilities as a human being. It worked last time – fucking look at me now! – and it will work again this time, and the next time I do it and the one after that.
As an added bonus, reading through helped me put together a few things that I won’t need to pay a therapist to remind me, now.
This will work – no, this IS working. This is my stuff. It’s ok that it’s my stuff, and that I’m still holding it.
I can feel myself relaxing, trusting how this works, letting go of having to focus on deconstruction and running my mind putting pieces together. I’ve been balls to the wall for days, and today, I was able to actually lay down and rest for a while, my mind, my body, everything, and snuggle into my cat and heating pad, because it felt good and nourishing. It felt amazing to be in my bed for a reason other than being paralyzed with dread at doing anything else. Which is a good thing, cause fuck I’m tired.
I’ve known you long enough to recognize that this is a cycle that you are struggling with and have been dealing with for some time. Successfully it would seem, since you are still here and still a remarkably productive and contributing member of society in spite of it all. I know that doesn’t make it any easier every time you have to fight that battle all over again though, like you’re doing now.
It’s ok. Your feelings are ok. Wanting to die is ok. You are whole, complete, human, and you are sane. This makes sense, it will pass, and there is always a reason for your feelings. Listen, as best you can. Trust that there is always a reason, even when you think you can’t find one. Remember that there is a truth and a knowing you have, and it’s still there, even when you can’t see it. Of course you feel depressed right now. Of course you want the pain to go away. Of course you’re scared.
Of course you are. There is NOTHING wrong with you. Nothing.
I want something new to get lost in. Like the matrix, or a place, or heroin, or a person, or an idea, or a sense, or a song, or silence. Something. Nothing. Anything. Anything but this.
Only I could have the amazing night I had, and still end up sitting in the dark alone thinking about how dark and alone I spend most of my time. Seriously. Only me. *sigh*
I found myself relating to the visuals, storyline and music in the sequal even more than I had the original, and in ways I can’t summarize quickly. There were even pieces of my original songs that stuck out in this soundtrack. The feel and movement of the audio in the game has, but especially had then, a sinisterly heavenly feel to it. It overtook me, gave me nightmares, personified my own flavor of festering pain I’d refluxed up at the time, and extended its hand to me. 
