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May. 30th, 2021 09:04 amSo, this is gonna be a bit of a heavy post. Talk about mental illness under the cut.
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update I guess, warning for dysphoria
Mar. 6th, 2020 05:51 amI don't really know why I decided to write a post. I opened my browser to work, and then suddenly was filled with an urge to. I guess then this is an update?
What was my last one. Right, yeah, the retrospective. Well, let's see. I, uh...well, I've been back at my parents almost two months. I'm having some...gender problems? about that? I keep having waves of overwhelming but undirected dysphoria, and last week I kept trying to she myself just to try and...undo it all, because it hurt. Plus I was having a hard time with feeling like I was existing too loudly, but that's slowly burnt off a bit. I'm still processing some of it, and I have waves, but they're softer.
I haven't made as much progress with editing the Novel as I wanted, but I'm about half-way through, so that's still not bad.
I've written another chapter of my phd dissertation, and this one was a lot better than my last. Dr Supervisor only had quite small comments to make so I'm pretty happy overall I guess. I do have to do some professional development shit before my next evaluation, so gotta be quicksharp on that. Maybe I also ought to see if I can fix up something to put up for publication? idk. Anyway it'd probably be something like an online digital humanities course, which i think I can manage.
My Paying Job is going okay; sent in my first invoice a few days ago.
So...resolutions. Mostly my reaction is hollow laughter. I've lost a lot of that...not even drive. Executive function? Idk. The chasing enthusiasms thing has been pretty impossible. The medical + brain stuff isn't moving, although I did get some blood-proof boxers to try and survive without collapsing. Job's been okay like I said, but I haven't been able to do quite as much as I wanted. It's still good, and anything is better than nothing. I also have carried on carving! I started before I left for America, and then recently I finally got my act together and carried on. I was carving before I logged on but my hands got sore and I have a perpetual returning blister so, it's typing time.
What was my last one. Right, yeah, the retrospective. Well, let's see. I, uh...well, I've been back at my parents almost two months. I'm having some...gender problems? about that? I keep having waves of overwhelming but undirected dysphoria, and last week I kept trying to she myself just to try and...undo it all, because it hurt. Plus I was having a hard time with feeling like I was existing too loudly, but that's slowly burnt off a bit. I'm still processing some of it, and I have waves, but they're softer.
I haven't made as much progress with editing the Novel as I wanted, but I'm about half-way through, so that's still not bad.
I've written another chapter of my phd dissertation, and this one was a lot better than my last. Dr Supervisor only had quite small comments to make so I'm pretty happy overall I guess. I do have to do some professional development shit before my next evaluation, so gotta be quicksharp on that. Maybe I also ought to see if I can fix up something to put up for publication? idk. Anyway it'd probably be something like an online digital humanities course, which i think I can manage.
My Paying Job is going okay; sent in my first invoice a few days ago.
So...resolutions. Mostly my reaction is hollow laughter. I've lost a lot of that...not even drive. Executive function? Idk. The chasing enthusiasms thing has been pretty impossible. The medical + brain stuff isn't moving, although I did get some blood-proof boxers to try and survive without collapsing. Job's been okay like I said, but I haven't been able to do quite as much as I wanted. It's still good, and anything is better than nothing. I also have carried on carving! I started before I left for America, and then recently I finally got my act together and carried on. I was carving before I logged on but my hands got sore and I have a perpetual returning blister so, it's typing time.
(no subject)
Jan. 4th, 2019 10:18 amStory time. (warning for self esteem issues, rsd, and parents being dismissive)
I used to think i was an Incredibly jealous person, because i would get upset over people's friendships with others and it could really hurt me to think about people's other relationships. I had two friends in Guides who were best friends with each other, and interacting with one of them was an absolute minefield of horrible, desperately sad, ugly little feelings (in hindsight I had a crush on the other of the pair, so really I was cursed either way). And then, slowly, I realised it wasn't jealousy as such, or at least not in the way I had conceptualised jealousy.
It was, in fact, a feeling of rejection. It was "they must prefer this other person's company to mine and therefore they're just putting up with me"; it was a feeling that i was being quietly and non-confrontationally rejected in favour of someone else who was better than me. The "therefore I must be" or "therefore they must think I am" feelings were key to how bad I felt, which didn't seem to mesh with how I had always thought jealousy went. I always thought the feeling itself, if not the root cause or reason why you get jealous, was supposed to be external to the self, about someone else's behaviour rather than what that behaviour meant for you.
I'd mentioned, vaguely, to my mother about being open to polyamory, and she laughed and said it would be a really bad idea for me because I get so very easily jealous. and I felt utterly wrongfooted because Book and I had been quietly flirting with this girl for a little while and I very very rarely felt any kind of feeling that seemed to count to me as jealousy.
It didn't make sense, how I could get so "jealous" of people's relationships to others and yet picture Book with [other, at that point, because I thought I was cis] girls without blinking. Actively encourage Book having other partners, even. But the second I thought that maybe, maybe it was actually about feeling rejected, I made sense to myself, because it wasn't about the fact of a relationship existing, it wasn't me wanting someone all to myself, it was about me feeling like I wasn't good enough, like I was awkward or boring or not a good person to talk to.
Yes, I have a lot of trouble with feeling people are better than me. But those feelings are always wound very tightly with the idea that I am being rejected, that I mean less than they do, that I'm not good enough. As if only one of us can be seen as good and all others must be lacking and therefore if someone is better than me that means I mean nothing at all. And that realisation really whacked me in the face, because suddenly i made sense to myself. Once I had the reassurance that I was good enough, the "jealousy" went away. And conceptualusing it as being about rejection meant it fitted with all my other issues my parents knew under the name "for gods sake stop being so bloody sensitive all the time! how are you going to hold down a job?!"
I used to get hung up on my jealousy as this enormous, horrible personality flaw that was going to wreck all my relationships with people, and that would lead me into a cycle of anger and pain and self-hatred. But now I know what it actually is, and I can actively learn to manage it, and it's all one thing! The same thing that made me cry as a child trying to choose between two angel statues is the same thing that makes me anxious about exams and the same thing that makes it hard for me to interact in dreamwidth communities and the same thing that makes me occassionally feel conflicted and small when my partner is having long conversations with friends.
I am not a horrible abusive person. I am not bad.
I used to think i was an Incredibly jealous person, because i would get upset over people's friendships with others and it could really hurt me to think about people's other relationships. I had two friends in Guides who were best friends with each other, and interacting with one of them was an absolute minefield of horrible, desperately sad, ugly little feelings (in hindsight I had a crush on the other of the pair, so really I was cursed either way). And then, slowly, I realised it wasn't jealousy as such, or at least not in the way I had conceptualised jealousy.
It was, in fact, a feeling of rejection. It was "they must prefer this other person's company to mine and therefore they're just putting up with me"; it was a feeling that i was being quietly and non-confrontationally rejected in favour of someone else who was better than me. The "therefore I must be" or "therefore they must think I am" feelings were key to how bad I felt, which didn't seem to mesh with how I had always thought jealousy went. I always thought the feeling itself, if not the root cause or reason why you get jealous, was supposed to be external to the self, about someone else's behaviour rather than what that behaviour meant for you.
I'd mentioned, vaguely, to my mother about being open to polyamory, and she laughed and said it would be a really bad idea for me because I get so very easily jealous. and I felt utterly wrongfooted because Book and I had been quietly flirting with this girl for a little while and I very very rarely felt any kind of feeling that seemed to count to me as jealousy.
It didn't make sense, how I could get so "jealous" of people's relationships to others and yet picture Book with [other, at that point, because I thought I was cis] girls without blinking. Actively encourage Book having other partners, even. But the second I thought that maybe, maybe it was actually about feeling rejected, I made sense to myself, because it wasn't about the fact of a relationship existing, it wasn't me wanting someone all to myself, it was about me feeling like I wasn't good enough, like I was awkward or boring or not a good person to talk to.
Yes, I have a lot of trouble with feeling people are better than me. But those feelings are always wound very tightly with the idea that I am being rejected, that I mean less than they do, that I'm not good enough. As if only one of us can be seen as good and all others must be lacking and therefore if someone is better than me that means I mean nothing at all. And that realisation really whacked me in the face, because suddenly i made sense to myself. Once I had the reassurance that I was good enough, the "jealousy" went away. And conceptualusing it as being about rejection meant it fitted with all my other issues my parents knew under the name "for gods sake stop being so bloody sensitive all the time! how are you going to hold down a job?!"
I used to get hung up on my jealousy as this enormous, horrible personality flaw that was going to wreck all my relationships with people, and that would lead me into a cycle of anger and pain and self-hatred. But now I know what it actually is, and I can actively learn to manage it, and it's all one thing! The same thing that made me cry as a child trying to choose between two angel statues is the same thing that makes me anxious about exams and the same thing that makes it hard for me to interact in dreamwidth communities and the same thing that makes me occassionally feel conflicted and small when my partner is having long conversations with friends.
I am not a horrible abusive person. I am not bad.
