Warning for discussion of abortion and related issues. So, yeah. I went from basically okay to anxiety-spiraling, hyperventilating, sobbing today, because a friend told me a story about a thing in a video game and it was Bad. I do not know what kind of emotional closure I could possibly need. I did not kill a person-in-potentia. It was an ectopic pregnany and before six weeks. I wasn't brave enough to talk about it at the time, but I told everyone afterwards. I told like half my fucking high school. I apologized to my boyfriend for not telling him, and it still wasn't any of his business what I chose to do. I have grieved. I have written about the experience. I have talked about it, and how it made me feel, and I think I've come to terms with it, but I still keep freaking out and I don't know what else to do. How can I stop feeling sick when I encounter anything about traumatic pregnancies, reproductive rights experiences, miscarriages, etc? I live near a planned parenthood. I can't really afford to start shaking whenever there are protesters outside it. I am tired of this being the way my brain works.
Welp. After posting here yesterday, I had another creepy sex nightmare. Never occurred to me that the creepy sex nightmares were my brain attempting to process trauma. Okay, thanks brain, but please please stop. Spoiler: Dream content, tw dubcon, body horror, nsfw In dream, I convinced a much older man who I was not attracted to to fuck me, and it was fun for a while but I knew it was wrong and that he was also not into me. His roommate was nearby and we were sort of half-heartedly trying to be subtle, which, yeah, reminds me of a lot of the sex I had around when I had the abortion. Sex ended, he came really a lot, I cleaned up my thighs and told him the rest of the clean up was his responsibility. He corrected me, pointing out the splotches of my blood on the floor. I hadn't felt any pain during the sex, but I was suddenly very afraid of the condition of my genitals. I didn't want to check, because I knew it would hurt. Rest of the dream consisted of me cleaning up blood. Every time I thought I'd finished, I either found more, or moved around and bled more. So, yeah, that was awful. I hate dreaming so much.
Numbing out is the thing you're doing whenever you want to read something just because it's fun and distracting, or watch a tv show where people fight the bad guys. Whenever you don't want to feel what you're feeling, so you try to do something nice to take your mind off it, that's numbing out [[according to my mother when I was growing up]] and it means you're failing to be the person you're supposed to be. Every time you play a computer game for a couple hours (because you're home alone, or your parents are busy, or you don't have any friends you feel like seeing) that's numbing out. Every time you choose to spend a weekend day on doing fun things by yourself, instead of throwing all your energy into being productive or sociable, that's numbing out. Never mind that being you hurts all the time, and the only time you feel happy is when you're in a different world. Never mind that if you spend all day doing yard work and going to the movies now, you'll feel like crying Monday morning when you have to get up for school. Taking time for yourself is avoiding your feelings and entertainment that isn't sophisticated and deep enough is the opiate of the masses. Be Meaningful and Mindful and Engaged every single moment.
it's my birthday. that's a thing. guys, could you please not fight on my birthday? it's triggering as fuck, ever since the time my parents had a screaming match over the salad dressing at the dinner table on my birthday (and didn't stop when I picked up my food and disappeared into my bedroom) I was having a good day and feeling good feelings and things. I saw the Birthday Heron. I brought brownies to school and my classmates pretended to like me for a day (which was seriously weird, but eh, the brownies were good) and. fuck it, I wonder if I can find somewhere that'll deliver me steak.
I think the great irony of my existence is that my fear of being disliked by others is the primary thing that prevents me from forming and maintaining friendships fuck me. i hate me.
in Things I Hate News: straight ppl like, no, not all straight people and hating them doesn't help and I know that and I'm just really mad. because. today my friend was researching domestic violence rates in Jamaica (for a class thing, it makes sense in context) and somehow discovered that corrective rape existed. like, she had not previously known that this is a thing queer women deal with. and. she started talking about as a thing They do Over There and *cries* no that's a thing that happens to people like me in this country that we live in that you never had to know about because your FUCKING straight life never made you see the dangers that exist for us and you never bothered to look did you know that being queer is actually, physically, dangerous? maybe that lesson hadn't sunk in for you, but that's the reality people live in every fucking day and I'm just so furious that people can not know
i focused a lot about queer women there because thats my experience, and i'm having that feeling more and more lately like i'm just disappearing, like my identity never mattered in the first place I fucking hate having a straight boyfriend, how that makes me invisible. I kind of want to just start presenting really butch again. Yeah, it's not me, but at least then people get that I'm signalling "queer"
I don't know why I exist. I am completely useless as a person. nothign I do has value and my net impact on the world is just an increase in suffering. I know that I am catastrophizing based on something totally ridiculous, but, I just don't want to try any more because it never matters what I do. I can't believe I let S think she's the dumb friend. like, has she seen me? I'm a fucking disaster waste of humanity.
man, I just fucking love losing points on every single practical exam for being dyspraxic. And never ever wanting to get a diagnosis or ask for accommodations in case they tell me I just can't be a PT if I don't have super-precise motor coordination. I fucking love being tested on how precisely and slowly I can turn a dial, or how smoothly I can move a thing in circles. It's GREAT
instructor: I really think you could have applied this pressure at a slightly more consistent level me: okay but I trip over my own feet when I'm tired, and this practical is stressful as hell, so I can't concentrate on that shit, so.
and today's rant is about Christians, so, if you're a Christian, read at your own risk, be prepared to learn something, and don't come into my vent thread to fight me over your religion okay, warning complete, I'm just really fucking sick of the way Christians assume that their beliefs are the default, describe other religions in terms of Christianity, assume that whoever they're talking to about religion shares at least the fundamentals of their beliefs, and will become personally offended if you bring up that those beliefs are not actually universal. I just want to be able to work with patients and say, "I don't share your faith but I'm glad you have it, and I think it's a really good part of your life" when patients start saying shit about how "God doesn't send us anything we can't handle," or, "Everything happens for a reason" or any other of those dozens of OVERTLY CHRISTIAN phrases that people use to talk about illness and treat as if they're completely neutral. I fucking hate nodding along to those. It hurts me. It makes me understand what people mean by "micro-aggression." But apparently saying anything about that, or even attempting to steer the conversation away, is not professional behavior.
oh hey, I wonder if my complete lack of internal motivation and my desperate need for external validation are related. just a thought. man, I wonder if that could have anything to do how my parents were only ever absent, dismissive, or untrustworthy
I got triggered today Did not even recognize what was happening at the time, but in retrospect, there's a word for "otherwise innocuous thing happens that is a reminder of a bad time/thing in your life and suddenly you are flooded with emotions/memories/etc and cannot calm down" I sort of know that abortion-related things are potential triggers for me, so I can handle those a little better. This was very out of the blue and not something I would have expected. A guy on the train hit me in the shoulder with his heavy bag as he walked past. I had been reading and didn't know he was behind me. There was plenty of room for him to pass without hitting me. The bag was heavy and solid enough that it actually hurt. He did not acknowledge that it had even happened until I glared a hole in his back, and then he said a sort of half-assed sorry. And then I was in a blinding rage with lots of thoughts of violence and feeling vaguely like crying, and then I was slightly dissociative all day. Woooo, I guess things that are reminiscent of elementary school bullying go on the list of potential triggers. Thanks brain.
Things that are great: -Staying up until midnight and then waking up at six because of anxiety -Putting off a project that you've been trying to work on all summer until 3 days before it's due -Going to work exhausted and nauseated because of the two above points -Nearly letting a patient fall because you're too tired to focus on work -Train home containing not only guy who keeps hitting on you, but also dozens of drunk sports fans
I have got to figure out a better way of being an appropriate professional person that isn't basically just a very long-lived performance. I burnt myself out really hard by trying to blend in all summer. I feel like an idiot for not noticing until now that this was the issue. Reminder to self: when back to school, talk about with therapist.
you ever get that feeling like, "what am I doing, where did I go wrong, I was supposed to have lived fast and be on my way to dying young by now?" I am far too much of a real person with a real life
I am doing the anxiety-and-depression dance a lot harder than I really want lately. I'm like, "Oh, I'm nearly two years into my program, I only have six more months of coursework, time to fail out!" So that's fun. Not doing well in classes. Dissociated in a practical exam with predictable consequences. (And my prof hasn't emailed me to schedule my retake and I'm freaking out about that.) Being avoidant about things like making phone calls and sending emails. Think I permanently ended one of my nicer friendships from school, and can't bring myself to repair it, or even to want to repair it. I think not repairing that friendship is my birthday present to myself. The whole mood/motivation slump thing is definitely what is happening. Is probably time for lots of organization and structure and externalizing my motivation. So: here's my list for the rest of the weekend. It is achievable. I will triage as needed but I will make progress. And I did make progress today. -Email PT dept admin about recruiting participants for my research, email advisor about advising meeting ((be really apologetic)), email therapist to make sure we're meeting next week -Do research for tutorial/study group/thing -Read materials for Burn Out Prevention course ((Do this when I have a lot of time to be angry during and after)) -Do laundry -Cook chicken -Cook pasta -More dishes -Call health center to reschedule appointment and ask about immunization records (RIVA IT IS OKAY THAT YOU CAN'T FIND THE PIECE OF PAPER, THE HEALTH CENTER HAS THE INFO, THEY WILL NOT JUDGE YOU FOR ASKING FOR A COPY, PLEASE STOP PANICKING) (Things I did today: bought bread, lab write up, 20 minutes of dishes, full grocery shopping run)
Update, so I can see that I did things. It is now Monday night and I have: -Met with my adviser, confirmed with my therapist -Done my tutorial research -Done laundry -Cooked chicken -Scheduled health center appointment Emailing about research participants, burn out prevention stuff scheduled for Wednesday PM Dishes and pasta are in limbo You know, I actually did pretty damn good.
Things done today: -Grocery shopping -Wrote ~500 words justifying clinical preferences list -Tutorial research -Took online exam -- had 1 hour, took 45 minutes, got a 92. Happy with that given I 1) have missed that course several times now, 2) have not been doing the readings for it and 3) did all my review in the half hour before I took the exam. Things still to do: -Dishes (can technically be postponed, but I'll be sad) -Write another couple hundred words about clinicals (can't be postponed) Overall status: fuck fuck fuck I want to curl into a ball and drop out of school and never do anything again, but I am still doing things and I have not failed out of PT school yet. Despite my best efforts at self-sabotage, I seem to be keeping up, more or less. Today was super productive because I was frantically catching up on things I should have been doing over the last 4 days, but I mean. I was able to do the frantic catching up. That's worth something a significant achievement and I should be proud of myself and stop devaluing what I have accomplished.
