I have been suffering from a sinus infection since about last Monday night. The odd thing was that I had run out of the SinuSoothe natural nasal spray that I have been using for months now (so I wasn’t able to use it for about a week). At first I definitely did feel the congestion coming back. For the last few days before it finally came in the mail I was surprised at how I actually felt like I was OK without it. In the early evening on Monday night though, I noticed that my nose was starting to run. I used my SinuSoothe nasal spray when I got home from work that night, close to midnight. Immediately I had a huge sneeze attack, tons of congestion, but also tons of drainage coming out of my sinuses. I found this odd because I didn’t even have that strong of a reaction the first few days that I ever used it. When I first used it I mostly had weird pain that radiated all the way up both of my sinuses and then went all the way back down my skull on both sides, where the pain settled at the base of my skull on both sides. I figured out that this was me actually feeling this natural nasal spray as it traveled through my lymphatic system and lymph nodes. As much as it hurt I was so happy to have finally found something that seemed to truly be attacking the actual source of the problem. I’m not really sure why my sinus infection came on full blown this time after using it after not having it for about a week, but I can speculate for sure. I think what really caused me to have this full blown infection starting on Monday night was because of the crazy happenings of the day before. My mother had pitched a serious fit and stressed me out to an insane degree.

My mother had been trying to reach me for a few weeks. She has this issue where she claims to literally worry whether or not I’m OK if she doesn’t hear from me. It is beyond clear to me that she has undiagnosed and untreated generalized anxiety disorder, and that she has had this for decades. All the while she has been completely denying that she even has an anxiety issue, when everyone in my family has told her this and she has been made more than aware about it. She is a very ego driven and ego centered person, so god forbid she ever admits that she isn’t perfect or that she has an issue that she needs to work on. My mother had been incessantly calling me, leaving me voicemails, and texting me for what felt like weeks. She was using every type of guilt and manipulation tactic that she could think of to try to force me to talk to her. This is her usual method and typically after a little bit of this I think “jesus christ ok I’ll see or talk to you just so you leave me the fuck alone”. I end up getting back to her and then going out to eat with her, out of what feels like pure obligation to me. I have read a lot about boundaries and about what are healthy and unhealthy boundaries. I have read that if you do something for a person because you feel obligated to, that is an example of an unhealthy boundary coming into play. I totally agree. So this time I did not allow her method to force me into doing what she wanted, and I stood my ground. She took it up another level in response. I had to work all day that Sunday. I got a text from my boyfriend telling me I should contact my mom because she called him, his brother, his workplace, and the main office at the apartment complex we live at. Apparently she was acting as if I had been kidnapped (mind you I’m fucking 25 years old), and she was trying to get people to actually go check to see if my car was parked somewhere. She caused a major scene and my boyfriend said that he felt like she was making him look bad because the way she was acting made it seem like he was being neglectful of me, or something ridiculous like that.

I was beyond embarrassed, but more than anything fucking livid. I texted her saying to keep the problems between her and I, between her and I. I said do not contact the people I live with and that she is causing a major scene. I told her how inappropriate and wrong this was. I told her she needs to see a therapist, because she is out of control. She literally expects me to fulfill her social and emotional needs. She has literally forced this into happening for years on end. Because I never wanted to deal with her ridiculous child-like behavior, I would eventually just give in and do what she wanted. I realize this is totally wrong and unfair to me. This is enabling her to continue to be a control freak, and enabling her to keep me under her thumb. I ended up texting her for about two hours while I was at work. I was very articulately describing to her what her problems are, what she needs to do to work on this herself, how her behavior was negatively affecting me and how it was poor treatment of me, and how exactly she could improve things for herself and for our relationship. As usual, and as she always done over the years, she entirely refused to validate anything that I had said, and continued to blame me for essentially being a bad daughter. She didn’t use those words but she said a few times “I don’t need a therapist, I need a daughter who cares and who will let me know once a week if she’s ok or not”. Round and around we went until I had nothing left.

I know what her problem is. I know that she is having an identity crisis because she lives alone now and because all of her kids have moved out. The only identity she ever had, was the identity of being a mother. She is freaking out because she does not have even a remotely close relationship to either of her two kids who live only a few towns away. The other kid lives in Denmark. She is freaking out and trying to control me because I would be the easiest choice. I am her youngest child, and I’m the only girl. I also live the closest to her. She will never admit this but she is just as much of a control freak as my father is. The fact is though right now I do not feel any resentment towards my father but I feel a whole shit load towards her. I’m only mentioning my father because he called me last Wednesday and I talked to him for about an hour. I hadn’t talked to him in something like a year because of issues we have had. This conversation actually went really well and he sounded like he was doing much better psychologically than he has been in years. He was very caring and he actually asked me a lot of questions for once. He told me that he loved and I told him that I loved him too. For this conversation I actually felt like I had a good, healthy father who treated me well.

My mother on the other hand, could not be treating me any worse at this point in time. She made the huge mistake of bringing up their failed marriage when she decided to text me *again* last night, to add in so more ridiculous behavior. She is now trying to take me off of her phone plan. She didn’t even say this shit directly but I figured it out based on how she’s been acting. She said “please call or text me when you have the time regarding your cell phone”. I KNOW she is trying to threaten to cut off my phone because I’m not meeting her requirements of checking in with her EVEN THOUGH I’M A FUCKING ADULT NOW. I know this is her last resort type method. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t working on me either. Before she could even start up her plan, I replied “I will get my own phone if that’s what you’re getting at, which I’m pretty sure you are”. I then told her she should know just how manipulative and controlling she is being because I won’t meet her requirements. I told her that she is proving the very points that I made before. I also told her how I have been sick essentially since she pulled that drama earlier last week. I have had to call out of work a few different times. I have spent the past few days (my days off mind you), sick because of how much she stressed me out. I think I may have been on the possible verge of a sinus infection again, but I don’t think it was going to fully happen until she created the catalyst for it surface. Basically, she is literally making me sick now. I am feeling the brunt of her tactics because I standing up to them. Emotionally and psychologically, my mother is a child. She’s a little over 60 years old, and she has had a successful job and has been successful with money mostly, but underneath that strong exterior is a weak, dependent child. I used to pity her and so I would allow her to treat me in this way. Now that i’m older I realize that this fact is no excuse for her to treat me like shit. I do not owe her extra psychological help and support merely because she refuses to work on herself at all. It is not my job to do this shit and it never should have been.

Basically what i’m getting at is that I honestly believe that her and my father, and the upbringing that they created for me and my brothers, is what has created my chronic sinus infection issue. I have had this issue for about a decade. It’s no coincidence that this fully started off right around the time that things in my family first started going to shit. My brother had a nervous breakdown when I was 12. My parents had an awful marriage, in which they fought on a regular basis, multiple times a day, for seriously as long as I can remember. I never saw it actually go physical but it *always* felt like it was right on the verge of turning physical. They’d fight a lot really late at night. Being the lucky one that I was, having my bedroom on the same floor as their bedroom, I was woken up on so many different nights, to screaming. I would immediately jump and run down to their room because I seriously thought they were about to kill each other. It’s again no coincidence that I developed severe insomnia later on in my life because of the years and years I had been subjected to this every single night trauma.

My house was also full of mold and dust, as well as dog danger and dirt. I was breathing in this stuff on a regular basis. I believe that I have fungus up in my sinuses from this, which is the physical cause for why I have had chronic sinus infections for over a decade. I have tried so many things to treat this, and only prescribed nasal spray made a *slight* dent in the issue. The SinuSoothe spray I have been using has overall worked a lot more than any other treatment I’ve tried. The trauma and stress that I dealt with for so many years, mostly at the hands of both of my parents, is what has caused this chronic condition. I also believe I have undiagnosed fibromyalgia. This is also caused by the traumatic upbringing that I had. My mother is addicted to drama and thus is still trying to keep the cycle going by acting like this towards me. She is insufferable. I have been reading about spiritual explanations for particular physical illnesses and one article said that the spiritual explanation for chronic sinus infections is “irritation to someone, usually someone close to you”. Hit the nail right on the fucking head!! How many years of my life have I spent stuck living with not just one, but often two to three different people who *all* irritate me because they are toxic people! This had to have had an effect over time. Ok I have a lot more that I wanted to write but once again it’s just too much to put in one post.

I’ve been meaning to write for awhile. I’m going to write about the things I wanted to a week ago or so, and then just go with whatever else comes up.

I’ve been working full time at a very hard job since August now. This is the longest I have worked *anywhere* I have been working there for 5 months now. 5 months really isn’t a long time to work at one place for the average person, but for me it is. Another thing is that this job is extremely physically and emotionally taxing. Other jobs I’ve had have been one or the other, but never both, and never to this extent. However, no job has been as physically or emotionally taxing as my life was growing up. My Dad was never in the military but with the way he raised us, you’d think he was. My Mom faded into the background, even though she was the breadwinner. As far as every other kind of influence/control went, my Dad took over all of it. He forced us to run starting at age 7, and forced us to continue running for as long as he was around us. He was our cross-country coach too, and all three of us were on that team (of course). So, he continued to control us through that as well as at home. Anyways, what I’m getting at is that no job and nothing else in my life was as tough as my upbringing. I can handle a lot because of it though, so I suppose it’s overall a good thing. Even though it caused me a lot of physical and emotional pain, even though I didn’t develop on time in some important ways, even though it caused me to develop mood disorders and to have long-term physical pain, I became tough from it. Oops didn’t mean to pull the past into my current life but my past definitely had a huge influence on the present.

Somewhat recently at this job I’ve been working at, I noticed that three out of the four residents and one of my coworkers started opening up to me *a lot* over the course of like one day. It felt like I was a therapist and I provided three or four talk therapy sessions for these people. It was draining yet interesting. I was shocked at how much they were telling me, especially in relation to the happenings of their traumatic pasts. I couldn’t believe how much they were telling me. I was shocked at some of it, especially what one of the residents told me, because I had no idea she went through such a fucked up childhood. She had never really talked about it before nor did she ever tell me that many details of super personal/damaging events.

Initially I felt a bit overwhelmed by this, but then later on I started to feel good about it. It made me think about why these people all opened up to me so much. It made me think that it’s likely because they trust me, because I have made it clear that I am an open, accepting, and empathetic person. It was nice to see some clear evidence of my influence on them. I frequently tend to think I don’t make an impact on people. I tend to think that I don’t influence them in any way. I guess I still think this way because when I was growing up I felt like my family never listened to me. I felt like my voice made no difference whatsoever, and I felt inferior to them because they made it clear that they thought they were superior. This taught me to believe I was inferior, and to kind of start actually acting like I really was inferior.

I don’t think a lot of people would agree with me in saying this but, I think people are more likely to really open up to someone who does not react super emotionally to personal things that they say. When people can tell that you don’t judge them, that you aren’t going to leave even if they tell you some really crazy shit or really show you the contents of their psyche, they are likely to feel comfortable totally unloading on you. A lot of times when people tell me really intense/traumatic things, I don’t get all dramatic in response. I tend to not even let them see how I am reacting to it. I keep a straight face, and I respond in a supportive yet practical way.

Personally, that is how I want someone to respond if I tell them something really intense or traumatic that happened to me. I cannot stand when people act even more emotional than you’re being when you’re opening up to them, or if you’re crying or something. I cannot stand the fact that a lot of the time if you cry in front of someone, especially the general public, they will respond to you like you’re a wounded child. They kind of freak out, make some super emotional facial expressions, and ask you if you’re ok or say “what’s wrong?”. I hate this. It draws attention to the whole thing when you do not want everyone around you to know that you’re crying, it makes you feel like crying is unnatural, and it generally makes you feel like you’re a baby or like totally insane for crying. Personally, I do not want someone to ask me if I’m ok or to get all emotional if I’m crying, and I definitely don’t want them being anything but discreet about the fact that I’m crying. I want someone to recognize my pain, but only someone that I’m very close to. I want that person to stay with me and maybe ask if I want to talk about it, and I want them to be the supportive/level-headed person that I need at that time. 

When the residents cry in front of me, I typically just listen to what is upsetting them, and I remain calm. I talk them through whatever it is, and I only say supportive things. In addition to that, I will sometimes say something to bring up the positive part of that situation. If they are crying and talking to me about their traumatic histories, at the end I will say something like “Well it’s a good thing that’s not around anymore right? Or I’ll say “It’s a good thing that that is no longer going on” or “It’s a good thing that you’re not in that situation anymore”. I say this to try to remind them that although those traumas really messed them up, that it is in the past and essentially, cannot fully hurt them anymore. It’s a somewhat cold thing to say, but not really if you say it at the end of the interaction. To me, it’s a protective thing to say. I’m trying to let them know that they are safe now, that things are better now than they were when those things happened. It’s also a way to remind them that they are not just the product of their traumas. There is much more to them and parts of them that those traumas cannot erase or take over. 

Alone.

No matter what I always end up feeling alone. Doesn’t matter how many fucking people are around. I feel separated. I feel I can really absorb other people’s emotions but yet I still feel like I’m alone, set apart from everybody else. I think I’ve felt like this for most of my life. Both before and after all of the trauma. I never quite fit in anywhere. As soon as I think somebody else truly understands me and my intentions, something happens that breaks that down. Something happens that reinforces my belief that no one will ever understand me and that I will always be misinterpreted. I will be noticed for my flaws, for my most outward behavior, not for what I really am or for my strengths. The core of me isn’t fully shown because I hide a lot. I repress a lot of my intense feelings and thoughts, in order to keep them from upsetting others. I’d rather hurt myself than anybody else. Yet even though I do all that I can to keep people happy, I still manage to push them away in one way or the other. It’s like the more that I reveal myself the more others move away. And I’m so goddamn complicated and broken up into so many different parts with different traits that I’m sure I confuse the fuck out of people.

I just had a like hour and half long argument with my boyfriend. He suggested we go on a walk together earlier today, and I was happy about that because normally I go on my own and he doesn’t typically want to go or I don’t ask him because I want to walk fast. But because he actually asked me to go I felt wanted. It was nice.

But then the walk of course turned into a ridiculous argument the whole time. The whole time that I was just trying to help him. To talk to him about how many people in his life that he keeps around that don’t deserve him. I asked him why he continues to be friends with people that stress him out more than they make him feel good, when the relationship is more toxic than it is healthy. He got incredibly defensive and acted like I was straight up attacking him. Started yelling at me and actually was the one to turn the whole thing into an argument. I don’t know why whenever I’m really honest with someone about something that might be a bit touchy, they become livid. I feel like I try to talk to them about it in a way that is passionate and persistent but also calm. I don’t feel like I’m trying to start a fight at all, yet that is what is suggested by the person on the other end.

I brought this topic up because he won’t let go of people that for the most part just hurt him in one way or the other. He treats them pretty damn well but they are not good friends or are not fair and he continuously gives them chance after chance but all the while frequently complains about how much these people suck. Says really harsh/critical things on a very regular basis about these people, but will not let the ones go that he could let go of. What I got from what he was saying is that he won’t stop being friends with people because of those things, and made it sound like he had no choice.

I know this kind of thing is near impossible to do with family members but with friends you certainly can cut them out. Why keep around friends that are toxic and extremely difficult, why keep around friends that are unwilling to be flexible about anything or to try to be better in any way? Why keep them around if they negatively affect your quality of life??

I think he keeps these people around because they are people he’s known for a long time and so they are super familiar. He won’t let go of these people and the fact that I suggested this to him made him think I was being cold or ridiculous. Said I was being idealistic about it. Kept saying that I just don’t understand because I haven’t been in the situations he’s in.

I know that he doesn’t like to try new things and damn near avoids doing so. He prefers the known, the tried and true, the established things. He has a lot of attachments is what it comes down to. Like he won’t let of people/things/concepts even if they no longer serve him at this point in his life. It’s interesting to me because he’s such a solitary person who is definitely an individual in a lot of ways, yet he is so goddamn attached to the things he already knows front and back. I don’t know what he thinks will go so horribly wrong if he tries to make new friends, if he lets go of these toxic friends, if he tries something entirely new without knowing how it will turn out.

Now I’m not saying that I am not a fearful person in a similar way, but I find that on the whole I am the opposite of him in these ways. I ALWAYS want to go new places, to do new things, to meet new people, to watch new things, to find new music and movies, to try a lot of new things. I love to learn new things, and I love to try them as well. I have had more than enough of the same old bullshit in my life that I never even wanted to begin with. I have had more than enough of the familiar. For the most part it caused me more pain/depression/stress than it did me any good. It made me static, stubborn, stuck, incredibly resentful, and eventually, numb.

I want the new. I want new, positive, exciting things/people in my life. I want new experiences. I want to feel incredibly alive again like I used to, like I always do when I am brought to a point in my life when a lot of things are new. I view change as mostly positive actually, because for the most part the familiar things in my life were very bad. Kept me from growing. Kept me from having hope. Kept me from feeling enthusiastic about anything, kept me from feeling a strong desire for anything other than to get the fuck away from those bad situations and people.

The familiar is not something to cling to because I think it prevents personal growth.

—-everything after this point is post huge meltdown sesh——

Anyways maybe the main reason this argument happened and whatnot is because him & I are total opposites in some ways. And I think that’s actually what makes us compatible in an ironic way..because we complement each other instead of clashing. I think that we help each other grow or to atleast hear/mull over different perspectives. It’s just really hard sometimes because him and I can really agree on a number of things and have a harmonious relationship…and we’re really good friends in addition to being in love, but when we do disagree…it’s a vehement mess. We’re both very intense/stubborn people and neither one of us backs down easily or just lets something go easily or whatever. We both have a lot of baggage too. I think I have more baggage than him but again we just have different types of baggage and we deal with in different ways. He deals with it in a relatively healthy way, while I deal with it in a predominantly unhealthy way. I almost never admit this kind of thing to anyone but I actually did some mild self harm when I was having this meltdown today. The urge to do it was so strong and I felt like just balling my eyes out was not releasing my pain enough, so I scratched the fuck out of my upper thigh. I used to engage in it a lot more when I was like 14, and I’d just scratch really hard then too. I’ve never been diagnosed with Borderline but seriously the more time goes on the more that I feel like the criteria applies to me.

   I feel like whenever I actually make a confident statement about something, not long after something happens that makes me think “I spoke too soon, I should’ve known it’d go wrong again”

My ability/tendency to feel rejected is triggered so easily. And when it is triggered the pain hits fast, and deep, and sticks around until I cry all of the pain out and have nothing left. I feel the worst pangs of rejection (whether real or imagined), within my romantic relationships. I constantly need to be reassured that I am loved and wanted around, even though the guy I am with now has stuck by my side for nearly 2 years now. It took a really long time for me to trust him and to believe that he’d really stay with me despite seeing all of me (the largely broken self). I feel like I believe it now but that doesn’t make me not feel utterly rejected over simple matters still. It can be the most trivial thing or situation, and if it is ignored or pushed away in any way, I crumble. I of course don’t let the person who triggered it know that I’m about to cry my eyes out. I wait until I can do it in secret, unless of course the trigger is so bad that I can’t help but cry like right away. I find it hard to discuss my thoughts/feelings when I have been triggered, because I can’t do so without crying, or without saying something inflammatory that will start a fight. So most of the time, I just shut down. I go silent, I put my numb face on, and I turn off.

I just feel so fucking strongly in general, never mind when someone I really love does or says something that makes me feel as inadequate or bad as I felt when I was a child.

I feel I cannot explain this series of emotional events to anyone and have them truly empathize with what I’m saying. I just feel hollow and disconnected, yet so incredibly full of sadness. It’s a feeling I learned to develop long ago, likely since I was about 9, and the feeling and reaction seems to only deepen as I grow older. These wounds from my past will never go away, atleast not to the point where I can have one romantic relationship in which I never feel this deep rejection. I think that almost all of the time, in reality I’m not being rejected at all (in current situations), but I can’t separate feeling rejected/unwanted from someone simply expressing that they have to be enveloped in something else for a little while. I personalize it all, I can’t go like one day of even slightly less affection or interaction without being convinced that they want to get away from me.

Because my emotional responses are so unreasonable to most everyone else and because they are likely just seen as a confusing burden, I suppress my expression of this very deep feelings. I don’t feel comfortable just openly expressing to my boyfriend that I feel he is rejecting me a lot and that it hurts me a lot, or that I really just want to be close to him physically and mentally for atleast a short period of time each day. I feel I need to suppress myself, and I know this aspect of myself is my inner child. My inner, damaged child. My inner, exhausted yet ceaselessly curious/needy self, that seems to have a hunger that can never be fully satisfied. When I get in that deeply hurt/rejected/ want-to-disappear-now-for-their-sake state of mind, I feel as helpless and needy as a child. What I need in those moments is to be noticed, for my strong emotions to be acknowledged and validated, and for the person that I feel hurt by to do everything they can to let me know just how much I mean to them. But since almost all of this deeply emotional reaction is dealt with by Acting In, it’s probably nearly impossible for anyone else to fully see and feel.

So it’s swept under the rug, or if I do open up about it I STILL repress expressing just how down I feel in these situations, and I still don’t know how to be consoled without feeling like a burden and without still feeling like mostly I’m being pitied and I fucking hate that. The last thing I need at a time like that is to be pitied, to be seen as an overemotional/needy person who is blowing something totally out of proportion, or to be seen as delicate. But I am delicate. I am delicate internally. Writing that previous sentence out made me realize why it is I can’t properly be consoled–because I feel like the way people respond is in a way that shows they see me as a baby. And that is almost entirely the reason why I don’t let people see me cry–growing up & going through A LOT of trauma/depression, I was told over and over again to “stop being a baby”, to “get over it”, to “stop feeling sorry for yourself”. So now no matter what I tell myself, I still feel like I am perceived as being a baby when I do cry.

I’m broken in so many places that when a deeply negative emotion is triggered, I have to cry for usually an hour or more in order to feel better. The pain runs so deep and is so complicated that once a bruise is hit, I re-experience months worth of built up sadness, in one session. Once the dam is opened the water pours out until not a drop is left. It’s like I’m constantly holding an entire ocean of intense feelings within some barriers, and every time something hurts me the ocean fills up a little more, until it eventually has no choice but to overflow and spill all over the place. The thing is, it’s as if I’m already starting at 3/4 full no matter what, and then anything that actually happens after that is just bringing me closer to overflowing again.

Ok so I hope I didn’t just totally fail at using all those metaphors and similes and sound like a complete idiot. I just wrote them out as they came to me in the moment, because I just spent about a hour experiencing a meltdown on my own, even though my boyfriend is right across the room from me, half asleep. He doesn’t even know I’ve been balling my eyes out and that it hurt so badly when he just said he was going to bed abruptly without saying I love you. He doesn’t know that I was curled up in the fetus position for a long time, with tears pouring down my face, feeling utterly unwanted and abandoned, literally holding myself because I felt so low. He doesn’t have any real idea how many times I have felt rejected by him today, even though I know he wasn’t truly rejecting me, he was just busy doing other stuff. Most of all, he doesn’t know and can’t feel just how much I hurt over these small incidents.

I feel so conflicted. I wish that him and I could trade souls for a day, in which we would each experience all of the pain and traumatic experiences that we’ve both had in our lives. I want him to be able to see it all, to feel it all, so that he can understand why I’m so sensitive and so he can understand why I react the ways that I do. I want him to be able to feel how I feel, so that he can know when to sense I am feeling hurt and so that he will know what I need from him when this happens. It hurts so much to feel like your pain isn’t even noticed or validated as intense as it really is, when you feel it so strongly. It hurts to feel like the people you love so much, no matter how well they know you, can never experience the depths of your emotional experience. So you’re essentially alone, and I think almost everyone needs people to recognize their struggles and to empathize with them.

So I just looked through a couple of years worth of photos I took (of myself during those times, pretty narcissistic I know), and it made me think of a lot. Thoughts that summarize what happened during those years–my 4.5 years at college. Thoughts about what changed and what didn’t. And what lead to me being the person I am now from the way I was at the beginning of my time at college, what influences and circumstances altered and molded me.

I used to be healthier, physically healthier that is. I smoked a lot of weed during those 4.5 years but I also took an entire year off and a few half-year or so breaks from it entirely as well. I experimented with acid and ecstasy. Those things altered me and also helped me to find myself a little bit more. But I won’t say that it was a smooth ride, because it sure as fuck was not.

My small experimentation with acid changed me probably the most in terms of learning the most about myself and what was at the core of me. At first I had a major panic attack/ego death at the beginning of my first trip. I ran to the bathroom when I started to feel severe panic, I puked a bunch, I stared at myself in the mirror, and I didn’t recognize the person in the reflection. I felt separate from my appearance. And I think this was also ego death. Yes it was severe dissociation but it was also the completely shocking and scary as fuck realization that my true self is not my ego. All of the defenses I had been putting up, all of what I thought was my identity, was too centered in my ego.

In a way I think dissociation is not just a response to trauma, but I think it is also a small glimpse into the truth that is: We are spirits, composed of light/love, we are simply held inside our physical bodies, our shells. The first realization of this is so scary, because our egos don’t want us to figure that out, and they fight like hell to convince you out of it, which may be the main source of severe anxiety that occurs during dissociation. Here you are, realizing the separation of your soul and your body, while you have just spent your entire life believing that you are just a physical being.

Acid didn’t make me just freak out, it made me face all that I was repressing, and all that I had repressed for many, many years, came to the surface, and reared its ugly head in the course of a few minutes. It was beyond words actually, and as much as I describe my experience, I cannot explain how exactly it uncovered all of that that quickly. Basically acid forces you to face yourself, completely, and your ego loses the intense control it usually has. The ego’s primary purpose is to keep control, to make sure you reason your way out of anything that isn’t based on reason, so that you can be safe. But this is limiting because in doing so it keeps you from truly changing, from truly viewing things in a holistic way, from letting go and realizing that you are not the center of the universe and there are forces at work that you will never be able to fully explain through reason. It’s human nature to want to explain everything and to relentlessly attempt to learn all that there is to know, thus knowing everything about everything. What people don’t want to accept is that there are so many things that we will never be able to fully figure out or have the answers to. And this scares the shit out of people so they usually avoid it all costs.

One major benefit of using psychedelics is that you can no longer hide behind your ego, you can no longer keep trying to think everything is based in science and reason and facts. It forces you to lose control and to realize that letting go and opening your arms to new experiences and even scary experiences is the key to growth.

Psychedelics are also the reason why I know for sure that at my core I am an artist, a visionary, and a highly emotional/healing type person. When I tripped, after I got past the shitty part, it started to go entirely the other direction and everything started getting mind blowingly awesome. I started to see lines of color coming in from the corners of the room that met at the middle, and these lines of color were both matter and energy, and they were made of the primary colors. They were not only in the room but stemming out of all of the people that were around, and the colors were different in terms of which ones dominated for certain people. One guy that was in the room had sooo much red in his energy field, and I remember telling him that and I think he just laughed ha.

The reason I say that I found out I’m a visionary/healing type person is that not everyone sees these kinds of things when they trip. My trip was incredibly spiritual and artistic, very visual but also very visceral. And this totally makes sense because those are the very elements of my core self. Not only did I begin to draw later on in my trip, but I also continued to draw everyday, just for myself, from then forward for a long time. My work was the most creative it has ever been, the most colorful, the most abstract and full of energy out of anything else I had previously made. I basically couldn’t stop drawing. It was like I realized that art and creating art was such a strong and important part of me, and though this wasn’t conscious, I know I did it a lot because I felt inspired *and* like I absolutely had to express these creations/visuals. I had to capture them, because in doing that I was becoming more in line with my true self. I also got very spiritual after I tripped, and I began to research chakras and meditation a lot. I bought a book on all of the chakras and it had meditations in it for every one of them. I began to meditate every day as well, and I could totally feel my spirit when I did so. I’d feel this tingling and warmth rushing to my feet, and I *felt* like I was energy. I felt like I was so much more than just my body and even my mind.

The interest in Psychology has always been there for me but even though it has to do with emotions, it is still pretty based in reason. There are so many categories and definitions in psychology, and then there are so many logic-based responses to dealing with disorders once they are diagnosed. You are to go to therapy and talk it through, you are to take medication that will chemically alter your brain. Even though Psychology is the study of the mind, it is less connected to spirit than my strong connection to art and meditation. But, psychology has the great intention of *healing* souls. The word souls isn’t used very often in psychology, but it certainly is about healing damaged emotions, and emotions are very much a part of our souls.

So during this whole time I’ve been talking about I was majoring in both Psychology and Art, and I was really getting into drawing and meditating. I didn’t choose the best period of my life to decide to take on the intense experience of tripping, as my family life was incredibly fucked at that time. So initially I had a lot of good revelations and I came more into myself, but then a few months later I began to spiral downward. I’m sure this was for a combination of reasons, but mostly I was just so exhausted, and so not prepared to take on college at that time. I could barely handle my family life. I also felt very isolated at college and at home. So basically I was left to face all of these huge changes on my own. And so I fell apart. Uncovering my artistic nature also lead to uncovering the dark side of my unconscious. There’s no way to avoid uncovering your unconscious feelings when you’re working creatively.

So I began to come down from my amazingly great feelings time to return to what my unconscious contained. There was a lot that was not dealt with well, because I had no outside emotional support and I internalized nearly everything that happened in my dysfunctional family. There was no one to tell me otherwise, and I had no real escape or way to live my own life, other than by going inward more into my imagination. So you see what I’m saying? As I learned so much about my core self and what I was here on earth to do, I also learned just how deeply I had been damaged by my family, and by my long-term feelings of being inadequate, a lone wolf, the one who doesn’t fit in with anyone or anything. So I got very very depressed and was for a long time, I stopped being able to be creative because I was so depressed that I turned numb and hollow. I couldn’t sleep like at all, I felt like I had no identity at all and I lost every single bit of that spark I had previously. I lost that confidence and enthusiasm. I never would have come out of that dark pit if it weren’t for starting Wellbutrin, which I’m still on.

So, identity. That’s what I thought a lot about looking through those pictures too. My identity is so fluid. I could be anyone or anything. I am so many different things, I have so many different interests, I have a couple different selves. Throughout that time I went from Hippie, to Indie, to Formal, to Hippie, to Nothing, to Punk/Hippie. It was pretty much in that order, though I would also change my style and interests dramatically between these various scenes. I would often take on the identity of the people around me. I think I still do that to an extent now, but not as severely as before. I know who I am a lot more now, but I don’t *feel* it as much as I did for that period after I tripped, I don’t meditate or make art everyday anymore, and I haven’t been able to put my psychological skills into use yet either.

I guess I never got to the stagnation element that I intended to write about. Basically I am a very fluid person but I am also rather stagnate. There are some things in my life and within me that have been the same for a very, very long time, and I still don’t know to change those things and struggle with doing so to this day. Then there are the other things about me that continue to change all of the time, and I am pretty fluid in thought and beliefs. I get sucked into people’s stories when I read them, I get sucked into movies when I watch them, I begin to feel like I am those people or I am also a part of those stories even though I’m not. That is part of the fluidity, but it’s also that I am very empathetic and highly sensitive.

Ok this post is way too long, but I hope some people read it. I think I will be writing in here more often.

Now I know she has been through some shit in her life but none of it started until she was about 20. She lost her mother right around that age. But before that she had a picture perfect life, she was a fucking cheerleader who dated a jock and lived in a happy go fucking lucky family with happily married parents and two older sisters. She was able to grow up in a healthy way and without constant chaos to make her split into several different fucked up selves. She hasn’t a clue as to the degree to which I have been damaged by this family and how it has never stopped since I was about 9 or 10 years old. NOT AT ALL. I mean that the trauma and fucked up shit never stopped. Now I don’t think it takes a genius to think about how much that can fuck someone up to see your brother go through a major breakdown when you are 12, to constantly witness the huge fights between your Bipolar brother and your totally fucking insane Bipolar father. To see him grabbing my brother by the throat, to see my brother paint himself up like a member of Mudvayne because he lost it, to see him taken away in an ambulance and to see him in the psych ward. That wasn’t even all of it.

I can’t even begin to explain the depth to which I have experienced trauma from that point on, because it would take like 10 really long posts. I was there hearing and seeing it all from the point my brother started breaking down till the point he fully broke down, including my father trying to scream him out of it and tried to control him so much and make him into what he wanted him to be like. It got physical at times, I saw him throw my brother down the stairs around that same time, but above all me and my two brothers were verbally abused non-stop for a very long time, starting since we were very young. My Dad was like a crazier version of a drill sergeant and we were forced to start running around age 8. And we forced to run and do exercise shit and tasks for him that whole fucking time. And we were not allowed to get jobs. Literally not allowed. Because if we got jobs we’d couldn’t get straight A’s in high school, we couldn’t be elitist athletes, we couldn’t be excellent at everything, in his mind. He expected this. Not only expected but forced it down our throats all the time. And because we could not get jobs to make money to eventually buy a car, we could not get out of the house, and oftentimes he would physically blockade us from leaving if we didn’t do what he wanted. He has literally acted as a door many times.

Again lots of details and not getting to the full core. My mom will not try to be understanding or validating about my upbringing and is the same way towards my oldest brother too, the one who had the breakdown(s). He is really depressed right now because he lost his job of almost 2 years and lost his girlfriend of almost 2 years right around the same time. He has been coming over a lot out of what seems like desperation to talk to us, to get support and companionship. I totally understand it because he spends too much time alone, as do I. As we always did growing up too because our father essentially wouldn’t allow us to have our own lives so when we weren’t doing family shit we were totally alone in our rooms, isolated in fucking Granby where nothing ever happens.

Anyways so one of the last times he came over he was really really upset and started crying and talking about how he didn’t even want to be around anymore and how he just wanted to have a normal life and whatnot. I felt so badly as I overheard some of this because it takes a lot for him to cry too. I immediately had my typical panic reaction of needing to go take care of him. Needing to be there for him and help him especially because my mother is possibly the worst person to talk to when you are that depressed. She essentially gets this super annoying high pitched and anxious half-yelling type talk going and she just keeps saying unhelpful shit that makes people feel guilty for feeling depressed and makes them feel like they have to get over it right now and that it’s so simple if you just do this and this and this. I had to interfere. She’s damaging.

I went downstairs and sat down next to him at the table where him and my mom were. I just asked him some questions about a panic attack he mentioned to me the night before, asked him if anything had triggered it or if something happened to lead to it, and I listened to him. I consoled him, I told him that depression makes you feel like you are a shitty person and makes everything look grim and that the thoughts and feelings he’s having are not entirely true to reality. Meaning they are made much more critical and dark because of the depression. Meaning don’t be hard on yourself, you have the right to feel the way you do, and it is not your fault. I told him about my experience with panic attacks, about how I figured out after a long time that generally they are the result of a lot of very strong emotions that have been repressed. I told him that it helps to let yourself feel whatever way you do, if you need to cry, do it, if you need to yell, do it. We talked about a lot of similar topics and I feel I helped him. My mom kept trying to say random unhelpful shit and I essentially cut her off and kept with what I was saying. He noticeably improved.

I don’t understand why some people have no idea how to help someone that is depressed or emotionally struggling. I don’t understand how some people don’t seem to have Empathy, or have buried it away. What people need is to be heard, to be validated, to be supported, to be accepted and unconditionally loved, to not be judged, to be genuinely cared for and to hear things that make them realize they are not alone in how they feel and that it is OK, more than OK to feel the ways that they do.