existentialcrisesand

[existentialcrisesand]

maybe, eventually, i will be less scared of family

its such a shock to me when people have a positive association with their family and/or the concept of family. to me, when i think of family, i think of people who i’m joined to by blood, who i should be able to turn to whenever i need, and who i should feel comfy hanging out with sometimes, and who we should share a mutual care and affection for each other; but they inevitably end up hurting me in some way. to me, family = ‘run for your life.’ to me, family = eternal pain and suffering; betrayal upon betrayal; being used and demeaned and convinced of my lack of worth.

so with that said, im talking to my cousins again. and will be contacting my dad’s brother - who ive never met nor spoken to before - by the end of the week. maybe, eventually, when i hear ‘family’ it will no longer be necessarily conflated with ‘run for your life.’ maybe, eventually, when i hear family, i will think of people who im joined to by blood, who i trust and have care and affection for, and who i trust that they have care and affection for me, and i wont worry that theyre actually out to get me. maybe. eventually.

hopefully.

[existentialcrisesand]

its winter and im trying really hard

one day, i know that i will get better. i will learn how to handle call-outs and call-ins well, i will learn to say no before i feel adrenalin pumping through my body, i will learn to not shame myself for needing or wanting things. one day, i will have confidence in my body and my experiences and my feelings. one day, i will understand all the screwed up things that have happened to me, and i will be able to view them calmly, they happened and i can do nothing to change them now. one day, i will have confidence of the way i interact with the world, in my relationships with others, and in my relationship with myself. one day, it will be less hard.

for now, it is hard. it has been harder and it will be harder again; it has been easier and it will be easier again. i won’t give up on trying to learn, even though it’s one of the most difficult things ever. ive made progress already and i know im not in stagnancy, even though it might look like that to someone else. 

#learning #healing #trying my best #ptsd #the world we live in #the world sucks #and so does capitalism #i will be okay #this is hard #i can do it though #i can get through this #trauma #healing from trauma #i wish i had more community #i need more support

[existentialcrisesand]

i dont see myself

So, I’m two-spirit (nehiyaw/cree from manitoba); in my language the word for me is ayahkwew, and that’s what I’ll be using to describe my identity in this post. If you don’t know what that means - twospirit is an Indigenous-only identity. It means that I hold energies of femininity, masculinity, agenderism, and pangenderism inside myself, inside my spirit. What two-spirit means differs from nation (tribe) to nation (tribe) and from community to community. Two-spirit people are sacred, we hold sacred responsibilities that non-two-spirits can’t hold. We look after land, after spirits, after energies; we greet new people and energies into our communities; and we are also never cis and/or het. There’s quite a bit more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it.

But yeah, so I’m ayahkwew. I’m also mixed, disabled, Autistic, I have brain damage, and severe C-PTSD. And I’m into women and femmes. I considered myself a lesbian at one point, but I’m starting HRT soon and I’m really not a woman so I’m not actually a lesbian, just into women. And there’s no word for that - a two-spirit person who’s 99.999% into women and femmes - yet. Not gay, or bi, or pan, or lesbian... Anyway. I look through songs and posts and lists of albums, musicians, books, shows, films, even youtubers, to see if there’s someone who makes content that might make me feel seen. And I haven’t found any. All I’ve found that remotely even begins to make me feel seen are lesbian tiktoks and I’m trying not to consume tiktok much anymore because of how toxic I’ve seen it to be for people (ie unrealistic beauty standards, most of the people on tiktok are younger than me and it feels sketchy and weird to consume their content). So now I’m back to feeling even more alone than I did already. 

#two-spirit #twospirit #two spirit #gay #trans #indigenous #into femmes #lonely #no representation #fuck the media #not feeling seen #sad #rant #rants and rambles #rants n rambles #cree #nehiyaw #nehithaw #native american #first nations #lgbtq #poc #poc representation #lgbt representation #transgender #non cis #non het

[existentialcrisesand]

everything is fucked and we are all lonely and i love you ~

Where I live, we have been impacted by the pandemic (ie quarantine, stay-at-home orders, etc) since March 2020 - that’s 11 months. 11 months of significantly less social interaction, except online (including social media, like youtube, instagram, tiktok, facebook, etc). Households are not allowed to mix with other households, which means that, although I know a lot of people are ignoring this, people who live alone (and are trying to not further spread COVID) have gone eleven months with no touch. This also extends to people who live with people who they don’t touch, or aren’t touched by! I know people whose roommates are very busy, or they don’t get along with, or their family can’t give them physical affection. I don’t know if you know this, but babies and children die if they aren’t held and touched enough. People living alone (hopefully..) aren’t babies or children who could die from lack of affection, but the fact that small humans die from this should tell us that when we lack affection, and community in general, it Will have detrimental affects on our mental health, at the very least. 

I have lived .. my entire life deprived of all types of affection and community, which had its own affects on my development, and then was being abused and dealing with subsequent untreated brain damage. I don’t actually know what it is like to live with your needs of physical affection and community being fulfilled in any way. So that’s my bias here. 

I’ve seen a lot of people, including myself, go through various stages of emotions during this pandemic, from panic, to horny, to confused and depressed, to i-will-take-any-and-all-affection-please-just-touch-me, to Depression and/or despair. I see people turning to social media to fill these needs. But I don’t think we’re going to get our needs filled there either. Social media is designed to make money, not to serve as a respite or to Build Community, especially not the communities I think people are needing most right now. I see people trying to be people they aren’t because they’re in such dire need of affection and some sort of community. They go to considerable lengths to adjust themselves in the hope of making themselves seem more palatable to the people they follow or whose attention they want. They try to mold themselves to fit what they think others will want to see or be involved with. And then they get burnt out and have no idea who they are; they’re lacking sufficient community already, so they turn to social media, where they don’t find what they need at first, so they adapt and find strategies to get what they need, even if that means being someone they aren’t and don’t want to be, when that still doesn’t work, or what comes of it still doesn’t fill their needs, they are empty and alone. They have put this weight of community into becoming someone they think others will like and in this desperation for community, they lose who they are, who they want to be. 

I’m in my 20s, so my perspective of this is going to be different to younger people - I’ve known so many teens and even people younger than 13 using social media. Obsessively. What is this going to do to their development? Their senses of self? How will this impact who they become, who they are in five years, ten years?

I also don’t see many people talking about how this pandemic will affect suicide rates. People aren’t talking about it. (When do they ever?) There are disabled people who rely on paid services and in-home care to stay alive, to have any quality of life. As far as I know, these services, where they aren’t cancelled entirely, are severely limited. People are going to die - but not because they catch COVID, because they are alone, because people suck and we don’t care enough about each other yet. And! Bringing it back to my first paragraph - we are social creatures. That’s just a fact, that’s just what humans are. We can’t survive without community. Our nervous systems and brains suffer pretty greatly without community and touch. But most people seem to forget about this idea. And then they remember it but they’re reckless and decide to meet up with a bunch of people or take their masks off, which isn’t actually the best idea either. COVID sucks but it’s real and if we don’t take it as seriously as possible, the Roaring 20s won’t happen for another hundred years probably, and I’m looking forward to being alive for the second Roaring 20s in history. 

And then there’s the question I’m sure you either have asked or will ask - ok, it’s bad, what do you propose we do about it? Yes, you’re right! Firstly, we wait. We try to manage as best we can until this is over and the Roaring 20s really begin and we all party for five - ten years. We wait for the shitty governments to be less shitty, or for the wonderful doctors and scientists etc to find vaccines and distribute them. Secondly, we build community how we can right now in as healthy of ways as we can. In my opinion, healthy communities and relationships can’t rely on social media. At least not right now. Maybe media in general will change (hopefully it will, I hope to be part of this change) and it will become a beautiful, safe place where people can go to to feel held and loved. But right now, it’s not that. Except maybe the warm places on reddit, and discord if you’re lucky. We need to put effort into our own individual healing and into the healing of our loved ones and of our kin, of the people we have yet to meet. We need to make room to have tough conversations about feelings and loneliness and we need to make plans and strategies to help each other and build spaces where this loneliness is lessened, even if it’s only for a little while. We need to find ways to hold each other and love each other even though everything fucking sucks.

This will be over eventually, and the Roaring 20s will be here once again. I for one plan to go to every gig I can afford to attend, to kiss everyone who wants to kiss me, cuddle everyone who wants to cuddle with me, and hold the hands of all the people who will let me. But we need to figure out ways to get through this shit show, cause it’s not over yet. We need to love each other and make plans. 

I hope this wasn’t too terribly pretentious. I’m really upset about not having much community, about feeling unworthy, about finding a person or two but then being screwed over by them. I’m putting this here cause maybe this will help someone, and because I need to say it. Thanks for reading. Please stay safe.

Disclaimer: these are my opinions, experiences, and views. I may be wrong, I may have gotten details, timelines, statistics, etc wrong. This is not meant to be taken as medical advice, therapy, or anything like that. Take from it what you will, but I’m not a doctor or a therapist, I’m just saying what I have to say because I can. Thank you.

#rant #loneliness #quarantine #community #lack of community #affection #lack of affection #social media #i love you #build community #decolonizing #decolonizing love #development #relationship #relationships #touch