GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE THE SKY SAYS HELLO. :)
A knife embeds itself in the wall by your head. ❤️🔪
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Kind of a wild ride just now, someone liked a post of mine from 2020 so I clicked on it just to have a look around at what I was doing back then.. and as I was scrolling thru, I was slapped with the realization that I wasn't out as nb/trans masc yet and was still calling myself a woman
And then I remembered the winter of 20/21 where I would take my dog on these long walks and just be Screaming in my head like 'just come out with it!!!! U know yr not a fucking woman omfg' and it was this weird boiling point where I was so done with it. And I think around spring was when I cautiously started throwing they/them pronouns around my online spaces, then VERY slowly throughout that year using them irl
Two years later I'm still not out to my family but I got just about everyone else calling me a Them and idk, it was just a weird thing to wake up this morning and go on a random journey of self-reflection
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had a bit of an epiphany this morning. i've spent so much of my life striking a line through my own wants for various reasons. when i was young, because it wasn't safe to have wants—and through gaslighting i believed that the things *i* wanted were things that would hurt me. when i was in my early 20s, as i began to heal, i was able to slowly process that i had external safety, and on that surface level shed my fears and express wants. but i could still never truly accept the deep wants i had, or even allow myself to identify them, because deep wants like that were clearly a danger to me. (like, being 5 and wanting to be comforted. that was dangerous. and through fear and shame i began to believe that i would only even want those things if i wanted to hurt myself)
so this led to, as i became healed enough for it to surface, beginning to see my true wants and flinching back from them out of fear. and covering them up with the things i'm supposed to want. only, this got so warped as i began to heal. the way my brain processed a lot of the healing was to take the words of it, and map it onto damaged pathways. the loudest one, that i realized something about this morning, was "i am not supposed to want to be alone. to be healthy, i have to want close interpersonal connection."
this was not me acknowledging a deep inner want for a neurotypical-esque level of intimacy with another person(s). this was me seeing my want for solitude and saying That's Bad, You Only Want That So You Can Hurt Yourself, and pulling over a rug to try to override my true desire. because that true desire isn't safe. that true desire is going to get me hurt. and by wanting solitude i clearly can't possibly be trusted yet (or ever) to know what is actually good for me.
and it occurred to me, when thinking about other disabilities and health issues i have, that cannot be cured, only managed... maybe there isn't a prognosis for my psyche to be able to have those well-adjusted-since-birth social wants and needs. i've always struggled with the idea that the starting point my trauma left me with was not as catastrophically damaging as it felt. that maybe i wasn't in the highest percentile bracket of "fucked up by trauma", so not only was i overreacting, but that the expectations for how much healing i could do were higher than the progress i had shown. no therapist has ever given me a straight answer on that which... intellectually i understand.
but after ten hard years of therapy—and finally starting to be able to sit with the idea that what i want NOW does not have to be invalidated by what i may want later—i'm realizing that maybe. and not in a bad way. i can't be cured. partly because there is not enough time to do the work, but largely... because i don't want to do it. not because i want to hurt myself or deliberately stunt my growth but. because—even though it was my trauma that trained me to like solitude—i want and like to be alone.
which gives way to the framework of How Do I Make Myself Happy Here? Now? i've read a thing that suggests rather than a personality metric like meyers-briggs, we acknowledge that everyone has a minimum and maximum limit for social interaction before they get weird. (the op of the post talks about sticking googly eyes on everything when they're lonely... which i have certainly done. Mr TV, my beloved friend) so i think the way i need to be framing it all instead is - knowing a need for solitude is my baseline, are my social needs being met? in this moment?
it's not pushing myself to interact with people more and more, to build up more energy, to have more corrective experiences, with the endgame of being able to withstand a high amount of social interaction so i can someday want to have this allegedly healthy want for attachment. a want i don't even have! right now! because if i wanted all that interaction now, i would be looking for ways to get it. i would want it now, not anticipate that i may want it because i think a certain amount of depositing Good Interactions will spit out the Want For More Interactions.
i've always wanted to be alone. my reasons for it have changed, yes, but not the core drive. which i think is the point. if i wanted to have all those attachments like i'm "supposed to", that would have been the underlying core this whole time, and the reasons why i couldn't have it would be the things that were changing. it would be "i'm not healthy enough to have safe relationships with people yet even though i want to" NOT "i don't want relationships with people, which means i must not be healthy enough to have them yet". which entirely invalidates the stated want of not wanting relationships!!
i SEE that i want a very minimal level of human interaction and intimacy. i SEE that that want has not changed throughout the course of my memory. how much interaction i can handle has changed, but that it is a baseline much lower than most people has not. and i can't move forward in my actual healing, with the brain that i have, if i think it will someday magically change into something else.
my trauma shaped me. built me the brain that i have. i can mend a lot of it and make it a pleasant place to be, but i don't have the means or the desire to entirely bulldoze and rebuild the infrastructure. and that doesn't mean i should abandon the central highways and try to build new ones right next door, either. it means i'll take care of those highways, put up greenspaces around them so the noise doesn't travel, add new exits and side streets and houses. i'll make it a nice place to live with the plot of land i have, and i'll take down the signs saying "New Superhighway Coming Soon!"
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