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docboots · 6 years

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(PotDA 10) Survival through Muses

I still need to write an update involving what has happened since my teeth were removed, the even still infuriate me enough that my memory on the concept is in a jumble. However, I feel this would be a good update.

This is mostly two comments I made to a friend on facebook. However, I quite enjoy what I wrote. It is something I often try to put in to words. Something that I feel saved me, kept me sane in these trying times. I often talk about writing, but don't really have much to show for it. That is because it is my hobby, it is something I did to understand myself.

I wrote this in response to a post he made involving that mental state where you lock yourself away. Where you avoid human contact due to your personal walls feeling more safe in a world that has caused a matter of harm to you. I related quite strongly to this, and wanted to share what I did to try and fight these darker feelings.

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I would like to introduce you to someone.

I didn't actually take this picture, I was standing around with this avatar and someone took this amazing one of me. I use it as my wallpaper quite often.

This is Lickypede. He was initially created (using Second Life and avatar pieces I bought then edited) this thing to be where I shove all the inspiration being a Lovecraft fan caused. However, as I wrote him a different energy went into it.

This is the embodiment of those feelings you described, to me. I gave it a face, a voice, and a ugly and horrifying appearance based on how I viewed it. This is my depression, my rage, my bitterness, and most of all, my low self-esteem. This is the rot that is created, the bi-product of trauma.

The many mouths on it represents those inner voices. The ones that don't speak for you, but are given voice by memories. By those who hurt and insulted me, belittled me, and did so to the point that, for a time, those memories took on my tone. Repeated so many times it just merges.

I laughs at me, it insults me, and it does all it can to ruin me. Trying to lure its soul to it by making you make the ultimate bad decision.

Now, you might think I have given it power giving it a face, a name, a body, and centering it as the dark, rotten, ultimate antagonist of my stories.

Fun thing is, it had the opposite effect. Now, when those feelings come up... What once I could only blame on myself now has an entity I can be angry at. It now has a villain who I can write with the hate and vitriol that'll hopefully translate into being on the page. All of this makes me more confident, even as it barks and giggles. Squirms and wiggles in my mind like a rotten millipede. How vividly I see it in my imagination at these moments makes me feel better, as I have imagination. I can talk it down, as it now has a voice that isn't my own. I can argue.

Most of all, I have something to metaphorically put the characters I made to represent myself, to work through my traumas with a fictional source, fight. To mold them into their own characters as the trauma did to me. To make them feel real, so even when I have locked myself away and initiated 'Hermit Mode' due to the mental sickness... I created a way to not feel alone when I was younger. Now it is my way of keeping myself occupied. The hobby of playing these characters like piece.

Why I wanted to write this though, is it is one of the weird things that saved my life. It is difficult to be suicidal when you put a face on the feeling causing it. When you make it the inky, rotten scum of your mind that it is. Since I can have spite towards it. That is one of my stronger emotions lately, and damn if it doesn't work.

I will not succumb to my own creation. I am its god, not the other way around. I gave it a higher definition and I can take that away. I made it more terrifying, so that when it attempts to scare or belittle me.. It feels weak, it feels empty. As I have to feel good about my writing to write horror proper, and that is when it is most terrifying to me. (In that kind of way that is addictingly fun, as I love horror stories.)

Lickypede will not win, and no matter how much agony I am in or how difficult it becomes... I will not let its voice be the thing that takes me. Especially not until I can transfer all of this into a series of stories that, hopefully, can help someone else half-crazy half-fictional like me.

Funny thing is, now I find him kind of cute. His attempts now are like a new pet trying to force dominance. In that kind of way that just makes you find it adorable.

Which is good. You have to accept your traumas and assimilate it. Since otherwise you are cutting off related memories that do not add to your trauma, and instead, suck away a part of your personality and souls. Locking it away until you can work through the trauma locking it up.

It is annoying how many of mine were like that, but that is how the brain is. Instead of a file on a desktop, it is an annoying weave of webs. Yank one point and the rest shifts with it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ In response to their comment to this comment. ~~~~~~

It can have a few downsides. Namely in the fact my characters inspirations come and go, making it difficult to do more than plot pieces of them. so I have taken to calling them muses, it seems fitting. Each one being a character. Since they aren't voices or anything (minus Lickypede, and that was still intrusive thoughts and not auditory hallucinations. It is very easy to distinguish them from reality just like my inner monologue and minds eye) just trains of thought that spread like wild fire. Stories that feel less like I am crafting them and more like I am looking into another world. It is quite calming. I call modifying them (at least avatars like the above one) trimming the bonsai tree since I feel it give me that same sense of inner peace that Bonsai Tree maintenance it is shown to have.

It is rather good for understanding your own subconscious as well. As instead of trying to deal with a soup of thoughts and inspirations, you create a form of what I have heard (namely in the Hannibal books) be called a mind palace. Things in a room, house, neighborhood, or world that act similar to mnemonic devices. Once you are used to it, you can make them as quickly as a phrase. However explaining the train of thought connected to each one would be similar to being a museum tour guide, only with your personal history.

Things you enjoy being used when you think of that for a scene. Like paintings, I often remember paintings I like when I am thinking of a setting for these muses that requires them. Especially as, in order to make each character different, I needed to give them hobbies, backgrounds, and drives different (even slightly) from each other. Especially since I was often writing as them in play-by-post roleplay. It got boring if they all were the same. It made me study things that I got bored with in school. Like, thanks to a particular character, I needed him to play a shrink well enough so had to learn some of that. Needed to have his backstory as a Frenchman right, so I learned the history of New Orleans. Somewhat, enough to fit him in there (hurricanes really love that place.)

Someday I want to write up the whole idea, since I think it would be a great way to help people of all ages with the trauma issues I had. Specifically children, as I started doing this (unknowingly, it is all thanks to anime forums introducing roleplay to me) when I was 12. I had a LOT of issues talking to people due to bullying and some other shit, but the online format helped. It translated into real life once I let it. It built up skills that help me feel worthwhile instead of the pit I was in before I did, and when I am back in that pit and even deeper.. The muses or the skills developing them inspired helped me pull myself out every time. Often more driven to fuck, what I now call Lickypede, up. Purely by going the 8-mile route and leaving there nothing for them to insult. Be it through acceptance or change.

Just need to make it more neutral. As my characters are piece of me, so they wouldn't help outside sources in quite the same way. I want to give people the tools to develop their own character. Not necessarily with the hope of writing stories with them (I only got that interest once I started really enjoying the stories I built with and around them) but of understanding yourself inside and out. The hidden pieces of drive, and giving me different versions of my own voice so I can quickly argue my decisions in a constructive way so I can try and knock out the ones that would in the very least cause issue or lack common sense.

As well it helping my memory, when I have a mind built to sabotage itself in that regard (ADHD and PTSD). I have little bundles of my interests, piece of unrelated history, and things I'd like to remember all hidden or bundled up in these characters. So long as I remember the character, I'll have a path to remember everything else in something complex enough it has stability. Somewhat. It is more like drawing pictures in the dirt with gasoline. You figure the fire will make the picture light up ala The Crow(and punish..And batman) every time. However, who knows what'll happen with Gasoline. Maybe a squirrel runs across the path, maybe you didn't put enough, maybe someone realizing you're being an idiot with fire switched your gasoline with a strong smelling alcohol at a low enough proof it wouldn't ignite. So many peculiar things can happen, but at least there is some stability in the picture being drawn the same way.

That and if we ever get to the point all the comics with mutants come about, anyone that tries to get into my mind is going to have some annoyed tenants that already hang around up there. If anything, they'll confuse and force cognitive overload to those not used to the path of their train of thought. Possibly. Fun to think about for fictional purposes though. Especially anyone who has to deal with Lickypede. At this point I think I've weaponize my trauma, depression, and anxiety into a inky millipede monster. One I hope to reignite my favorite genre combination: weird fiction and horror.

Since the other downside is that after using horror to help create Lickypede... Now it all feels the same. Least when you go the route of animated or motion medium. Since plenty of comics and manga are allowing me to keep shoveling new ideas into the forest fire. At this point it seems to be as important to keeping myself energized as food and water is.

I might have accidentally turned myself into a muse. I need inspiration and creative medium to survive and keep my mind reeling. Pls send writers. To Hollywood. (they need them.)

#disability selfhelp writing mentalhealth

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