"give up your shovel and dig with a spoon"

 Talking to someone this weekend who credited some of their skills to circumstances in their childhood, of classjumping downwards (is it not jumping if it's downwards?) and needing to learn how to adjust their language and way of being out of a desire for safety.

 

What do we only learn through trauma?   Are there things that stem from hypervigilance that I can't communicate to other people in a healthy way? 

 

It took me forever to adjust to Light's way of being, because I didn't understand the lack of fear.  How do I remember all the things I do?  by having a scared little hindbrain convinced the world will end and everyone will leave me if i'm not good enough and good enough means, among other things, keeping track of all the things.  Also, how can you even pretend to be safe if you don't know where all the moving pieces are?

 

I've talked about this before, that thylias moss poem "otherwise, anything that moves is a wolf".  I think it's probably what keeps me from being a better person than I might otherwise be.   It just happens to also be a crippling social anxiety disorder.   

 

I remember being very confused by one of the first antidepressant medication tv commercials I saw, where it was trying to explain what the drug could fix/help with.  I'm not sure I could imagine then, I can't imagine now, the idea of being easy in a crowd.  I fled the hotel because I didn't know what to do and the only thing my brain wanted me to do was run to the hotel room and cry, sobbing out broken words about not wanting to be there anymore and that fucked up thing I do, where I start trying to promise to someone I'll be good if it'll just stop, even though I don't know a) who I'm trying to bargain with b) what good behavior is and c) what I want to stop. 

 

It's kind of a fucked up hobby, to spend all this money to listen to and talk about people crossing each other's boundaries or being generally either awful or injured, to go to a meeting that I'm starting to think I just can't handle the structure of, to eat and sleep badly.  I could probably find a way to do good and wear glitter that didn't feel so fucking gutting.  And of course, I know what I need, is the recognition or praise of a handful of people who aren't in a relationship with me, and that'll sustain me and remind me I'm doing a good thing, that this is a way to make a tiny bit of the world better.

 

I'm trying to reconsider whether or not I want to have this surgery now.  There's never going to be a good time, but maybe there are worse times, and maybe during medication changes is one of the worse times.  

 

But I can't do this anymore either, I don't feel like there's enough to my existence anymore and that feels shitty, but I don't think I can figure out what happens next until I either have this surgery or deliberately decide to put it off for years and years.  I have the luxury to stay unemployed, or the luxury to work in ways that are more house or SJ-oriented (though that dovetails badly with my work ethic, because there's always more to be done, so I'm perpetually falling short because the dishes don't stay done, that's not how dishes work, I never have a finished product to point to, I only can point to the ways I should be doing something else every time I zone out to youtube videos, or spend extra time in the shower, because I should be trying to find a way to make less self-indulgent use of that time.

 

I don't want to lose the bits of Spark I get to have now, but driving her to and from daycare seven times a week isn't enough to keep me from doing that thing where I start some internal autophagia, and progress from chewing my metaphorical fingernails to just straight up trying to bite my fingers off.  So I should probably try to find something that fits around that,  But, on that note, the timer I set myself for text-wallowing has gone off and it's time to do the other random tasks I've set myself today.   Step one, find a better soundtrack than listening to these four songs that make me feel bad over and over again.