mindswe-had

[mindswe-had]

I SAW TAYLOR SWIFT LIVE. TWICE. LIFE COMPLETE. SHE RAISED ME

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twenty two. you made it to another taylor song. happy birthday lou<3

welcome to 19, by the way. can't believe i've made it there.

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who you want to be is who you are

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Remember touch.

Picture one is just a vague childhood memory. Someone’s fingers, you know who, your bare skin.

W porządku Lou, dorastasz. (It's good Lou, you're growing.) Ponownie? Again.

Picture two starts a bit further on. Pavement. Family spread around. It’s a walk down the road that’s next to your grandparents’ house, one you’ve been on several times. It’s the kind of walk your family makes you take after quite a big Sunday lunch. Then weeping willows, more pavement, a bridge even. Lianas hanging off a tree to your right, you running around I think. No sounds, just the giggles of a child echoing. Then a warm yet firm grip, one you’ve felt before. He grabs you by the ankles and balances you above the bridge’s edge. He’s talking but you’re not listening, just hearing it. They all laugh and it seems like it’s going on for ages, then you’re back on earth. It may have been a few seconds.

W porządku Lou, dorastasz. (It's good Lou, you're growing.) Ponownie? Again.

Picture three is a barbecue party. Your mum’s cousin is hosting. She’s at the table, he’s taking care of the grill. It’s a hot summer day and you’ve been glaring at this plastic swimming pool for a bit too long. You wander next to it when suddenly, blackout and a splash. You can’t hear anything but a deafening ringing in your ears, and everything around spins. A hand, his hand threw you in. They’re all laughing, almost making you believe you jumped in yourself as he’s back at the grill. But you know what happened. You’re just too little and they won’t listen, no matter how hard you scream. As you change from your wet clothes in a guest room, he comes in. You immediately sense something’s off as he starts asking questions about why you’re here, even though he knows exactly. What comes next?

W porządku Lou, dorastasz. (It's good Lou, you're growing.) Ponownie? Again.

The fourth one is back at your grandparents’ old house again. A car just broke down a road not too far from there so you go help them out with your grandparents. As your grandpa is replacing a wheel, some of the adults there decide to head back home walking. So you all do. Your grandpa kept the keys though, so you have to wait in the garden. You’re thinking about how grateful you are that the weather is clear that day, when a rope ties itself around you and a laundry pole leaving you stuck. He laughs and you recognise him right away. You laugh it out too. It doesn’t mean you aren’t scared.

W porządku Lou, dorastasz. (It's good Lou, you're growing.) Ponownie? Again.

The fifth picture is a doctor’s appointment. You have to get ultrasounds to check for eventual kidney stones. You do not have any, however he will grab you around the hips as you’ll wonder if that’s a normal thing for a doctor to do. You’ll brush it off telling yourself it is standard procedure, but your mind will become a blur as soon as he places his hand a little further down, pulling your underwear out the way.

W porządku Lou, dorastasz. (It's good Lou, you're growing.) Was I ever really?

It took me some time to be able to tell the touch apart from abuse. There was a time I couldn't. There was a time I would use someone to convince myself that I wasn't so broken for flinching away, that this was touch (and it was, but it wasn't comfort). I could tell myself that the crawling under my skin was something good when it was this girl I knew in the dark, keep telling myself that the twisting in my stomach was what people described in these situations. It was fine. It was fine if I initiated it. That way I was in charge. It was fine. Rough hands and rougher treatment were a reprieve like shadow puppets behind my eyelids and they were fine, she was fine until a knife between my shoulder blades alarmingly screamed otherwise.

Old habits die hard. W porządku Lou, dorastasz. Maybe not anymore.

Every touch, every fleeting connection etches itself into my consciousness. I remember every soul I've ever laid a finger on, even hesitantly. I remember every soul that's ever laid a finger on me. Sometimes it's pleasant, others obviously not. Sometimes it's pleasant. Sometimes it's pleasant? Taking from what I've learned it really shouldn't be. Maybe I wasn't growing all this time. Sometimes it's pleasant. Sometimes it's safe. Sometimes it isn't dry or meant to harm, but I can't feel it until it's already on me lingering. Sometimes it's a friend hugging me on a train platform after a shared bad week, it's surprising because we have both been best friends for years, yet somehow this is the closest we have ever been and it's nothing but warmth. Sometimes it's me wrapping my arms around a friend in need last week. Sometimes it's a brush of noses on a hot summer day a few years ago, where we're still both too shy to close gaps between lips. But it's safe. So safe that I crave it. So sometimes it becomes a burning question on my tongue of asking someone if they need a hug, even if the question never quite comes out. Sometimes it turns into me stopping on a street every time Siri lets go of my hand, refusing to walk until their fingers are laced with mine again. And sometimes I even crave them closer, but not in the rough ways that shaped me, solely in the ways that make my stomach flutter so much I could puke butterflies out. A younger me would find it sickening. Or an utopia, I'm not certain.

Unfolding is rare but it's beautiful. It's freeing not to always be on my guard, even though I'm not quite sure when it became a thing. Maybe this is the growing. W porządku Lou, dorastasz. But this time I really might be.

Uściski są dla dzieci, a ty jesteś dorosły, Lou.

Family whispers still linger in the recesses of my mind. Hugs are for children and you're a grown up, Lou. Don't you want to be a grown up?

Sometimes I'm not certain. I still don't know if it's normal or weak that sometimes I want to be cradled. If I should feel hesitant about it. I flinch under my family's or a man's touch but let my walls crumble for a safe hand that dares lay itself on my shoulder. I can't hold eye contact with most of my friends but the yearning for connection always lingers. I crave the warmth, yet my steps falter in a dance I've never been taught until now. It's not so much that I'm not a touchy person, only I still haven't learned how to unwrap myself. It's always a gentle ache that refuses to be silenced. I sometimes wonder about if I were naturally more open, but again it's not the way I've been raised. It doesn't mean I don't find comfort in it, even if my touch is still hesitant. Or too assured, maybe a little harsh, from force feeding myself the fake confidence to reach.

Sometimes I wonder if anything could thaw the frostiness completely. It’s so ingrained into me to be small and inconspicuous in public, I don't mean to curl in on myself or to hide in corners, to silently observe, it's only what I know. Instinct screams I'd be putting a target on my back by making my presence in a room any more known, even if I trust the people I'm with. Unfolding feels rare, frustratingly elusive.

Keeping myself small always turns out to make me the expendable one in a group it seems, and it's only logical. And again, if I were more open. But I'm not. Groups of friends or people exist and I remain tolerated in a corner, or so it feels. Taking up space is hard. The thought of someone noticing I'm actually there and not just some ghostly apparition gnaws at me. Yet sometimes, I don't know why, that sounds exactly and more and more like what I'm aiming for. It scares me, it's unnoticeable.

I sit on a wall watching the tide roll in until the waves splash up against it. Not quite jumping in but pointing my toes so that maybe the spray will reach up and dampen my shoes just a little. Maybe one day I'll end up soaked before I notice, I'm there.

[mindswe-had]

it's cold and dark again, i'm not sure i like it. my body yearns for the fear that comes with night walks. i miss her (the girl i was in the summer<3)

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it is a weird feeling to think i have ever felt all those words

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Je fête mes 5 ans sur Tumblr 🥳

🥲

#5 year tumblrversary #tumblr milestone

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baby welcome to TWENTY ONE??? so proud of you<3

welcome to 19, by the way. can't believe i've made it there.

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i wish this would never end, staring at the stars forever in this moment. soft clicking noises from the birthday confetti hanging. it all seems peaceful for a second. and i wish they were here too

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i can't cry anymore again. all i do is looks at pictures of this summer and want to cry at how happy i was but i can't cry. i hope i'm just adjusting

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i just came back from spending 15 days with siri, i'm so grateful<3 feeling both very heavy and empty now that it's over, but i know we'll make it through. i'm so proud of us. and i hope we can see each other soon again.

[mindswe-had]

i haven't been there in a while. not sure why. i just didn't feel the need to, i guess. i'm here now!! i think i missed this place, in a way. let's go over a quick update of recents events so that future me can keep track, you're welcome:')

i saw siria again recently, they came visit me for about 10 days. and it was so nice, and i'm seeing them again soon and i'm so grateful. we celebrated their 20th birthday together and went to disneyland, i'm so so happy my parents could help with all of it. so. grateful.

another thing is, i got my driver's license!! and didn't blast driver's license by olivia rodrigo yet. unbelievable. i'm staying at my grandma's at the moment as i'm taking care of a dog, his name is luigi and he's adorable. my grandma not so much, it depends:')) i love her, don't get me wrong, but i feel she got more stubborn with time and that never does well with me. i'm trying, i'm trying so hard but it feels she only sees me as a child who can't do anything for herself and thinks she's always right. except i'm not 4 anymore and i feel stuck now. i don't like how she pretends she knows me more than i know myself. but she is still nice, and i feel bad for admitting i don't always feel right with her anymore. maybe i am the problem and should just try harder after all. i know that's not the case, but i cannot help and i'm sorry. to myself i am.

i've been struggling a lot with my own self image lately. i gained weight back again and i feel bad in my own body, they all say losing weight doesn't make you love yourself more but then why was i so happy about it when i noticed it drop? i was in a bad place that is, but the body looked nice i think. it's okay, i'll get back to it again when school starts over:') i hope i'll make it through. maybe this is all just a bad unhealthy thought after all.

i miss jaudie and max, and even my parents here i must admit:') it's lonely here sometimes

em isn't doing great and ended up in hospital for her mental health. i've been worried about her... i hope she'll be okay. i used to feel she didn't really enjoy my company before she said anything. i still wish we would communicate more though, is that too selfish of me? i'd like to think not but the thought is still there always

[mindswe-had]

amyspractice me

I have been labeled “prone to addiction” for as far as I can recall. On several occasions growing up I remember my mum sitting down beside me and reminding me of the way my dad got when he’d get a few glasses too much at gatherings, of how I had to stay away from his mother after 8pm ever since her husband died. My nan would pray I didn’t end up like my grandpa and how much he smoked before it gave him cancer later on. I didn’t know what being addicted was at the time. I think you truly get to know once it’s too late, and that if you are doomed to fall into it you will. I know all the prevention and warning signs did not stop me. Suddenly I wasn’t ten anymore and my mum wasn’t at the kitchen table with me, and I wasn’t wondering why on earth she would repeat the same stories of my dad and grandma so much. It was middle school, I was thirteen and so, deeply losing myself for the first time in my life.

The first form of addiction I ever ran into was self-harming. Partial amnesia from those times will keep me from remembering exactly how it came, but I still can vividly see myself dismantling my mum’s old razors and hiding away the broken plastic, keeping the metal safe in a grey box in my room. I remember facing myself alone there at night holding them, with the smallest camping flashlight you’ve probably ever seen stuck between my teeth. I remember when it got bad, the sounds and feelings of skin fighting that still make my stomach tingle to this day, the pair of old suspenders I’d use as a tourniquet, me telling my friends at school I had slipped using a knife during a family gathering over the weekend. And I remember how they believed me. I still can’t tell if we were too naïve for it, or too young. Maybe both. For me it was the beginning of a downfall, and I was deep into it when things accelerated to reach a point of no return.

Fourteen came and I was raging. I discovered how close I once had been to my dream of being a sister. My family was tearing apart on my mum’s side. My grandpa’s health was deteriorating each day. There’s an old bookshelf at my house where all of my parents’ books are set. When I was younger, I would sit on the floor and go through random books from it, anything from comics to dictionaries. On this bookshelf was a certain book, the largest of them all, with the smallest writings. It was Vidal’s dictionary, an edition from 2008 that my dad got as a pharmacist. A book which contains all the information on every single authorized medication you can find. Medicine already fascinated me by the time, it had since I was in primary school. I had fallen in love with medicine as soon as I had been introduced to it through shows my mum watched, House MD at first and Grey’s Anatomy later on. I was eager to learn, so one day I decided to read it. I didn’t care how big it was, I wanted to read it all and take notes and I wanted to understand how medicine could change us. I started off with pills that my grandparents would take to try and understand their health, and then moved on to the substances which were classified as the strongest. If they had the most power, maybe I’d find out what made them so special there. The research was going well until my grandpa passed, quite brutally. If they have to bury someone, people don’t pay much attention to you when you are a fourteen years old only child and naturally known for your discretion and autonomy. They don’t see you when you steal the remaining of their dead father’s pills and some of his wife’s heart regulators from the kitchen as they all argue about properties next-door. They’ll never know you’ll get back home to your pill book to once more see what each of the ones you picked does, and that once you’ve found out you’ll start taking some of them “just to try”. There were a lot, strong kinds of different pills in the pack and to this day I can still find in the book pages I folded up to find them more easily. I started taking them on one of those nights I was facing myself and the grey box again. I knew what I was putting in my body, and I still don’t know why I did. But I did and then I didn’t stop. I have this memory of being at school with a friend that saw me swallow a pill and asked about it and how I lied about having a condition because for some reason I felt guilty for telling the truth. She believed me, everyone did. I was the nice quiet kid that would never do anything bad. Each day I’d take something, and each day I’d look for the strongest thing I could find in my stock for me to have. The big Vidal book is great for that. What it doesn’t cover as much though is why you shouldn’t exceed dosage of each of the substances it presents. I quickly found that out by myself, as through the days the concept of “just to try” faded into “because I need to”. And there you have it, a new form of addiction. Which went on for a nice little period of time until I ran out eventually. I think I blacked out the withdrawal that ensued, but I suppose it must’ve been bad. I remember looking for every single open door that would’ve picked me out of it. I would’ve stolen my dad’s prescription pads if I had been able to pick morphine from a pharmacy by myself as a minor. I was stopped in probably one of the worst, harshest way you could ever wish an addict to be stopped. But I stopped. I was lucid and sober just going on fifteen, and I think even the self-harming was getting sorted from all the chaos.

I’d have a drink or use my dad’s cigarette when withdrawal came in a bad wave, and that usually somewhat helped, I think. But never as much as not feeling alone through everything did. I was never a person who had a whole pack of besties to hang out with. I was pretty shy growing up, “too mature for my age” I heard a lot. I had my share of friends through the years but not many I considered myself close to. And from my earliest years, my environment and the people surrounding me taught me I’d be better off keeping most things to myself, that whatever my issues were, they would bother anyone exposed to them. So, when in middle school I started spiraling, with probably the most important group of friends I had ever had in my life with me, my instincts immediately were to hide that part of me from them. I’d keep on being who I was with them and struggle when they weren’t around. Sometimes hiding from everyone is the easiest thing to do and I chose to, and I had no issue with them or school at all even by the time. Moments with them brought some light to my life on most days, and I needed it. When I wasn’t around them to forget was another story though. I had never been more alone my whole entire life at the time. It was dark and scary, and nowhere near what or where a fourteen-year-old should be. For the longest time I thought I’d never be able to pick myself up from there, but against all odds, I found one of my lifelong best friends there one day. I found someone I could relate and connect to on the deepest level and someone that made me believe that I’d get through everything. Maybe Amelia Shepherd was just some fictional character from a spinoff show of Grey’s, but she was everything to me. She was real because I was, and my situation was real because hers was. I found her character one day while watching Private Practice just by the time I started to ingest my pills. And from then in my own chaos I had someone I could relate to, someone that would show me how valid I was when I didn’t feel legitimate in my own dependency. We went through every little thing together more or less as I carried on watching the show. We lived through addiction and withdrawal together, relapses and newer victories. At the end of the day, I wanted to get better because she was, and it saved me. Though she was never real, she saved me from myself by being there. It still comes in waves to this day, and she still does sometimes. And that’s something I think I’ll never forget. Only freaking superheroes as she once said.

[mindswe-had]

we met for the third time, i just got back. god i love them. please keep them safe and happy

[mindswe-had]

phone notes dump because i don't want to see these anymore but also don't feel like getting rid of them :')

oct 8th 2021

if you first approached me not knowing me would you think i look scary or mean or unfriendly, and now that you know me am i? or am i too unnoticeable? or am i boring to be around? or too high maintenance? and if i am too high maintenance is it because i do too much or is it not enough and you're left having to do all the work? basically is there something wrong with me:')

???

lmao my friends were like let's go to the bakery and i was excited because i'm kind of hungry but they got up and left without me so i just went back inside and they didn't notice i wasn't following them

dec 14th 2021

i don't think i've ever been so low in my whole entire life and i'm terrified for myself i have no idea where i'm going or what im doing i hate myself i hate being aware of myself i hate that this is only a moment out of my whole life and that it never seems to get better for me i hate that i lose everyone around me and that it's by my own fault i hate that the people i see every day notice something is off but won't even ask i hate that i could keep myself busy for so long with school that now that it's starting to be over i have weeks of feelings pushed back all rushing in i try so hard to hold on but i'm genuinely just fucking drowning and tired and giving in because what is time and what is the world maybe i'm none of this is even real maybe i'm venting but maybe not i can't tell maybe yesterday and every other day never actually happened and maybe now isn't happening too but then why would i have to feel so much i hate that all the rage i used to feel towards the world i now redirect towards me and that my first idea whenever my moods switch is to get hurt and i hate that i'm to weak to stay strong and i am never really genuinely scared for myself but this instant i am i fucking am terrified i want it to stop i want it to stop i want everything to stop

jan 1st 2022

i'm scared i'll lose myself again over stupid school projects // why does everyone constantly feel the need to remind me how unimportant i am

feb 13 2022

I feel bad for breaking things that aren't myself

[mindswe-had]

i relapsed and i want to die

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why do i bother