Waxing Nostalgic

Orihime from BBleach

There are some things that I have always wondered why I have some deeply embedded beliefs. Some of them I haven’t the slightest idea of where they come from… like the thought that my life will be much shorter than most will be. And, more importantly, my brain has been putting together the pieces of why I have the belief that I will always be alone.

For the longest time, I had absolutely no idea where the thought came from. It was something that my brain latched on to and wouldn’t let go. At the time, I thought that maybe it was because I was a teenager. I was raped. And I was in a school that I didn’t want to go to and wasn’t happy with. It felt like I was you standard disaffected teenager in the nineties.

Unfortunately, the belief never went away after I changed schools, or even after I was no longer a teenager. It has been persistent throughout my life… and until recently, I didn’t understand where it came from.

The more that I have learned about my childhood, and the more that I’ve remembered, the more that I’ve been able to untangle some pretty bad behavior that I’ve developed as a coping mechanisms. Trying to unlearn things that have kept you alive for so many years is hard… not impossible, but incredibly hard. Especially as so much of it has become such a fundamental part of one’s self. It’s something that I’ve been striving to do… to make myself a better version of myself.

So, how did the belief that I will always be lonely come to pass?

Well, this was such an incredibly easy thing to untangle… and I think to a certain degree, I’ve always known. The belief that I will always be alone stems from the fact that I largely have been. My mom checked out when I was pretty young. My dad was never really around because of his work schedule. The love that I was supposed to see when I was younger, never was really there. So, I’m guessing that had a huge effect on my belief of if I deserve to be loved and have people/family in my life.

I don’t remember my mom being around all that much. And, I think, to a certain degree, I think somewhere in my subconscious, I was aware of what my mom was trying to do. My mom didn’t even think that it was worth it to stop me from being beaten for something that I never did or being unduly punished for being a child. My dad was as equally there. I didn’t have the emotional nourishment that I needed as a child. I was alone in the world as a kid, so why would that change as an adult?

Well, one thing that I’ve been learning as I get older and having different, more wonderful people come into my life, is that maybe the belief that I deserve to be alone might actually be wrong. I don’t know if I’ve started getting comfortable with this. This is largely because my brain keeps going back to the old familiar feeling… because it’s familiar.

How does one undo something that’s such a fundamental part of oneself?

I honestly don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It’s possible that positive reinforcement and psychological conditioning can help with this. And, maybe that’s just what I need. We’ll see. There’s only one way to find out.

A Childhood Want

Suntop, Skywise, Cutter, Leetah, and Ember all sleeping

If I was to think back to when I had my first experience with poly in any form, I would have to say that it went back to when I was in middle school. My friends were just getting into Elfquest. It was something so very new. My mom wouldn’t let me read comics when I was a kid because they were evil or something. In all fairness, I have no idea why they were considered so bad. The storylines at that point were still fairly simplistic.

There were three characters that shared a loving V relationship. They are Cutter, Skywise, and Leetah. The connection point between Leetah and Skywise is Cutter as he’s the one with the intimate relationship with the other two.

I didn’t realize how profoundly the image of the three of them sleeping was for me. After all, I never had that closeness when I was younger, despite how much I wanted to feel like people wanted to be close to people.

There was something comforting about the relationship between the three of them, that just made me feel… I don’t know… comforted. I think that would be the most accurate, especially because at that point in my life, I didn’t even have a good place when I was home with my birth family.

It’s funny, because I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like to have a warm and loving family. I didn’t really have that experience when I was a child. A majority of my childhood was chaos and anger and fear. It was everything that you would never want to have as a child. Looking at a picture of Leetah, Cutter, and Skywise sleeping peacefully with Leetah and Cutter’s children…

It’s something that I desired when I was a child. It’s never something I really experienced nor do I have a conscious moment of when I was younger. There was a lot of anger, pain, and fighting… but never a sense of peace of serenity. Never a sense of what I hear is supposed to be what it means to be in a family. The strife that I dealt with when I was younger has made me a bit more standoffish than I think anyone should be.

Life does seem to have a way of righting itself some of the time. While chaos will always be a part of life (as much as I dislike it), It is possible for things to right themselves. The peace that I saw in that picture, the love that I saw in that relationship… that seems to be within reach. I keep hoping and waiting patiently to have that an image like that of my own… and it’s possible that maybe I can have that family. It’s certainly something that I want more than anything. I want to have in my adulthood all the things that my childhood never presented me. I want constancy. I want a warm and loving environment. I want people who will actually love me, make me feel like I’m loved regardless.

All it took was a simple picture of three people sharing a loving moment…

A Cut, a Personal Story of Dealing with Depression

Yesterday I posted about processing hurt in ways that are more healthy. That is coming from a place where I was processing hurt in a way that is nowhere near healthy. I never was an alcoholic. I never turned to drugs. While those are largely what people do, I just haven’t felt the need to do so.

Instead I did something that’s much more dangerous. I know it’s hard to believe that there’s something that could be more dangerous than drugs and alcohol. But really, there’s one thing that can possibly kill you a lot quicker if you’re not being careful.

While I was still constantly being berated and beaten down verbally and emotionally, while I was still in a place where I was always alone, there was only one thing that I could trust. If I could hurt as much on the outside as I was on the inside, maybe I could deal with it.

After 25 years of almost constant abuse, I was driven to many really dark places. Places so dark and deep that I thought I would never get out of. At one point I almost didn’t. In a lot of ways, I’m grateful for my ability to still think at times where it really did help.

So, what is it that I was alluding to?

I used to cut myself.

Yeah… let that sink in.

I’ve never had a lot of good friends. I didn’t have a lot of people I could personally confide in. Up until 2002, I had no one.

What can one do when you’re alone and need someone to talk to?

So, I wrote… a lot. I wrote a lot of angst-ridden and depressed poetry and escapist prose. You know, they typical lone wolf, artsy teenage stuff. It helped. Writing helped.

But it never helped with the loneliness and the hurt. While I entertained the thoughts of doing something, anything to numb how awful I was feeling inside, I decided instead to cause myself pain on the outside.

Was it a wise idea? Of course not. It was a decision made of desperation. There were times where I just didn’t want to live anymore. How could I continue to live if I’m some shitty person? Why does someone who is worthless and pointless deserve to live?

And while that may not be the case, it’s an endless loop I hear even until this day.

So, what’s changed so I’m not cutting myself?

I know that I’ve taken myself out of the place I was at. I stepped out of being in any romantic relationship and got rid of the toxic friendships I had in my life. I no longer hear a constant stream of negative, hateful things about myself.

While I’m still stuck with the after effects that I constantly struggle with, I’m trying to move past it. Move out of it to a time where I no longer hear that negative feedback loop. A time where I can finally just feel strong. It’s going to take a long time, but I’m getting there. That’s the hardest part.

There’s a great website that is all about this, it’s called To Write Love on Her Arms.  It’s a good resource that didn’t exist when I was cutting myself. If you may need it or someone else, here’s the URL: http://www.twloha.com/index.php