lavendertowerarchives

[lavendertowerarchives]

This. This is the stuff I was talking about.

Early last October, I made a post describing a foray into my own exploration of "whether or not I am plural." My own haphazard tests came back negative. I read back the post in full and thankfully still agreed with what Past Lavender said (even including the extraneous shit that 100% shoulda been in a separate post).

What I had perceived as "differing personalities" were more accurately codified as "intersections of specific traits," separated roughly by the desirability of these traits. If I was content, creating, well-fed, and happy, I was likely also with another person or had recently talked to another person. Similarly, if I was $uic1d@l, depressed, hungry, bored, and tired, I'd probably not talked to someone in hours, days, weeks...

These intersections were recognized simply because they were almost always a package. I was never just hungry or just bored, there was always the link between them of "feeling alone." As such, they were the closest I got to another personality that could "overtake" me (the reason they felt like separate entities is the sheer force with which they overtook me, I was always in one or the other, one always heavily dominant and the other close to nonexistent). That's the reason it took so much effort to document how they affected me: I couldn't understand one of them while inside the other. It was almost always a complete takeover, no amount of reasoning or proof could convince my pessimistic self that my friends actually did like me. No feeling of physical or mental pain could convince the other side to rest, sleep, pause, or stop sacrificing tomorrow for today's benefit.

To directly contrast from your experience, Phantalgia, I (un?)fortunately know where all my stimuli come from. I do not wonder where these "blobs" of emotion originate from; they are always the same types of impetus, just in differing polarities: hunger/fullness, pleasure/displeasure, people/loneliness, distraction/obsession, inspiration/boredom... While I can name them all (given enough time), I still struggle to figure out which ones affect me at any given time. As I am now, I'm debating between going to class tomorrow and not having a tomorrow at all. Why am I not eager to work on one of my twenty-ish projects? Well, I am alone, but I don't feel very hungry, but I'm a little bored, but I do have some inspiration for writing this exact post... I know what issues to check, but not all of them are in the forefront of my brain, and not all of them are insightful.

The second inverse problem I have is an inability to zoom out my map. I find myself unable to take any number of steps back and view things from a less biased vantage point. I'm stuck in my own 2.5D world, staring at the horizon at the things I think are influencing me, looking down at where I think the intersections are, guessing at where my mind may be right now. The only way I can tell how I feel at any moment is by analyzing the symptoms I see. I only realize I'm depressed when I spend my fourth (consecutive) hour wondering which video game I should play to make me less bored.

This relative blindness is, again, what makes the prospect of multiplicity so... probable. While in one such mire of bias and perception, personality A, it takes so much effort to understand how personality B thinks that I'm usually living as personality B by the time I do "get it." Then I, drowning in personality B, have to understand how the fuck personality A got such a different conclusion from the exact same data. There is zero middle ground.

I myself concluded that this was probably not multiplicity. I do not have the understanding necessary to diagnose myself. I'm not exactly saying I don't have it, I'm more forcefully saying I have no way of knowing. I feel it's less plausible that I have another fucker in my head and more plausible that I sincerely do not know what's going on. Again, I'm mostly blind when it comes time to peek up in my own brain.

There's quite a bit of labor required to switch modes of thought, whether monolithic like the two fuckers I described above or more modular like "talking to a human" vs "writing c++" vs "writing prose" vs "making an MTG deck." This transition is never on purpose. It is never voluntary (at least for me). I'd argue that neurotypicals transition between these much more fluidly, yes, but they paradoxically have less knowledge about the differing modes they find themselves in. Being consumed by anger/pleasure/hatred/love/whatever is exclusive to nobody, but it usually takes some prior mental fuckery to realize "oh. This is abnormal. This is overwhelming. Should I do something about it?" This is a process which I have seen startlingly few neurotypicals go through before doing something irreversible or rash or inadvisable or just plain stupid. Hell, the reason I distrust myself so heavily is because I used to just... do shit because "it seemed right, given the data" when in reality I just accidentally ignored certain key conclusions. I learned I am not to be trusted.

I do take issue with one of your conclusions, though. I don't think "living a lie" is the best moniker to give one of your options. While it'd be more accurate to call it "not living the truth," the "truth" is not necessary for just... living. As someone who refuses to trust himself, a trick I use to get my brain to drop certain uncertainties is "I don't know if it's correct, but I also don't know if I'm correct. Therefore, no matter my conclusion, if I were to check if for fallacies/consistency/correctness, I would come to a similarly uncertain conclusion." Hopefully it works for you. Idk how helpful it is to essentially be told "you'll never know lol git gud XD" but it definitely works for me.

Either way, with your other option being "use the tools at my disposal," I'd say use those tools. The world as a whole may not understand the differences between people, but you can pick individual people out from that world. There will be people who think they know what they're blabbering about (look no further, my dude), but you're the one who knows how accurate their shots are.

Exploring Multiplicity

I don’t keep track of my blogs. But if I remember correctly. The last blog I did was on this feeling of "alterhuman" that stemmed from a connection to my fursona. I can't remember what I said in it. But it's really been "itchy" in my mind lately.

As with anything in my core beliefs, we are fundamentally defined by our environment and learn from it and take from it. Our identies are thus shaped by others, and the world around us. From adolesence to well into adulthood. I don’t think there's a specific core to be found. Enter multiplicity.

I've been wondering about multiplicity/ plurality. It's controversial, even amid the community at large. Which is what concerns me when discussing my own journey in getting my feet wet into some of the ideas or inspirations from multiplicity.

For safety, I want to seperate the real trauma that exists for many that come out in DID, OSDD, if those labels are helpful to you. I want to mean no disrespect and completely seperate myself from that valid experience going further. That is not what is being discussed here. If anything, endogenic systems will for the most part be discussed. Sort of...

I know someone with a form of multiplicity. It's rather abstract and the details continue to keep flowing as it changes and molds. Much of what they tell me gets me so lost that I cant even understand what they're saying. But clearly they are at least understanding for now to the best of their ability what they experience and it's still ongoing. However, their system seems traumagenic but didn't make itself known until much later in life (I could be butchering it, as they don’t talk too much about the origins of it, just hints at childhood experience).

Thinking In Retrospect and Neurodivergency

So, there's this real possibility that my doctor seems to agree that I’m neurodivergent, ADHD, on the spectrum, whatever. Well, this at least helps with validation. At least in the confines of a culture that prides itself in putting people into boxes that people in white coats do. Of course, we can get into how limiting and dangerous that is at a collective level as many people do not respect phenomonology nor the idea that maybe scientific and medical inquiry is dynamic and influenced by cultural, material, and ideological forces.

The point I’m getting at is because I didn't have the language to pinpoint a person I was. I can only look back at myself and see just a robot. A set of scripts. I think the world was challenging. So I protected myself through avoidance and acting out online.

As you get older, the brain develops, events happen, your language broadens and things start to become clearer. Which has lead me to confront the things I've been avoiding and try to understand why. For the past few days, some things have been illuminated.

I think the tools to unlock this come from alternative identites, queerness, alterhuman, and so on. And just expanding oneself and not hiding oneself. Perhaps I shrunk back down again in order to protect myself from the new experiences of disconnection that has come from a wide open spiritul connection to all things that it becomes paralyzing.

A 'System' To Make Things Work

I needed a new way to understand myself and the world. Part of what I've been avoiding is my natural capacity for systemizing. This is in conflict with ADHD symptoms. But it does occur.

I recognized that at a deep level, my mind does change into certain "modes". I don’t believe this is anything new among people. But it's become more jarring. One personality for one context, another for a whole seperate one. There might be some similarities between them, but they have distinct thought patterns, emotions, feelings, and even how strongly I can have impulse control.

So I need something new to understand this. Neurodivergency comes with the challenge of being able to switch to certain modes of being as change can be a struggle to adapt to. So going from an art mode to a music mode to an academic mode becomes daunting. Coupling that with the systemizing. I think this is why shocks of external stimuli can become so paralyzing, it fucks with the predictable nature of the environment.

Agar.io Blobs

Think of agario or microorganisms floating around. Combing and decoupling. This is how I imagine myself now. This is the idea.

So, you have this bubble I call the "me at one time". As the name suggests it resembles who I am now at this moment. Surrounding it is all the other bubbles and shapes of varrying size and brightness symbolizing strength and relavence. What are these bubbles and shapes? Everything. Every internal, mental, external thing. Moods, hobbies, objects, thoughts, tastes, sounds, emotions, everything. These things can combine together to form new clusters that can help explain an experience. Say, certain music, emotions, physical state, memories combine together to form an idea, concept, feeling, or even that connection to my fursona. Or a disconnection to the world.

Another example is I like to think of the blob of me at one time is this. When confronted with perhaps vulnerable feelings from another person. I shut down. How this looks can be a contraction of my blob down to a specific set of overwhelming and contridicting feelings and uncertainty where the useless stuff gets expelled as I contract and my bubble forms a hardened shield preventing those emotions from returning.

This is a 2D map of these things, but I have thought of it also being multidimensional. To represent spiritual or essoteric aspects, like being in connection with my fursona. Wondering if this is where new blobs can come from. Or maybe each blob has the capacity for multidimensional travel in some capacity to explain the unexplained.

However, where do these blobs come from? Well I recognized that there is only one possible source. Thats the real world, outside the mind. But the "me" (not the "me at one time") is the huge bubble that every blob floats in. We don’t know how big the "me" is. Or if it also expands and contracts. This me is represnted of as the me that takes in it all. All the unconcious. The 2D map itself is just the observer part of me.

So the outside world exists. But there must be an inbetween. This must be where things get processed, turned into thoughts, where dreams come from. So the layers starting outside are: the external world, the processing area, and the internal, then the "me" at one time.

So where do personality shifts come in? I think once certain external and mental stimuli hits the processing zone, the new blobs are formed. But then they mingle with each other as they come closer to the "me at one time" bubble. These blobs shoot at me as fast as it takes the brain to process visual info, 13 miliseconds.

But that doesnt mean they'll become part of me. Again a lot of them are stuck floating around finding moments necessary to start combining with me. Or themselves. Once they combine with themselves, they gain the size of the "me at one time" bubble and overtake me. Perhaps everything consolidates and hardens until some release happens as things get expelled, decoupled, or replaced by new blobs.

This Way Of Looking At Myself

It's been helpful in creating an actual vizualization in explaining how things feel. It's broad enough to encompass everything. It's helpful enough to understand strengths of these shifts and to communicate when I feel something different. Or maybe I’m unaware of it and need to open my map and see "Ah yes this blob has overtaken me!"

This method, for its limitations, is the best at explaining my feels of rigidness, my esoteric feelings, my ability to avoid, why I struggle to socialize as there are many blobs at once to try and understand and become overstimulating.

The next question I’m wondering is this multiplicity per se?

There's no "alters" necessarily. There is a sense of unity among this. But there's a recognition in the fluid and dynamic changes in identity and feeling of oneself. It can help me relax to some extent and forgive myself for having such jarring experiences.

What changes is the "me" state. The bubbles can combine together to form something bigger than me and swallow me but they tend to shrink to my level. Unless it is I that becomes part of their blob, then there's a possibility that I become an unconcious alter. This happens when my DMN becomes hyperactive due to ADHD or OCD like symptoms. I will recognize this as a blob that had taken up significant space among the "me at one time". This still doesnt explain personality shifts too much as many prompts in the environment cause me to switch to something else. Perhaps my map can allow me more dynamism or at least communicate rigidness.

It's helpful in understanding why my interests can be hard to engage with or change to. Because of the effort to align the blobs in such a way that helps fit the mode best fit for it. And then the systemizing that takes place.

The Other Dimensions

I think about the other dimensions. As I believe these are the places where spiritual connections happen. The oneness with the universe, the connection to my fursona. If they are exceptions of the rule of coming out of the processing zone.

Maybe they are like black holes that grow in size, sucking in different aspects of the self forming this new deeper connection. It's hard to know for sure.

Thinking Of Multiplicity as Something Natural

From Socrates, to Carl Jung. There are constant hints of multiplicity throughout human history. Tulpamancy, shamanism, and so on. It makes me wonder if multiplicity isnt all black and white. I struggle to find any compelling reason to believe that this is soley a trauma based phenomonon.

I think it helps to really emphasize the seperateness of these phenomonon. Trauma based needs to be respected, adversity based needs their space, and spiritual based needs their space. Yes they can overlap. But they need their space.

Multiplicity probably does exist as a form of social construct (because a single uniform identity sure is!). It's an aspect of identity formation. I've seen the theory that queerness as identity formation can come from trauma. So trauma, adversity must come from it also. It's all about deep introspection.

I think for the neurodivergent, it helps to explain the unexplained. It recognizes the constellation of identity to such a degree that it can't be ignored. It becomes necessary to function. It's not the only way to function as neurodivergent. But is one way.

Neurotypicals probably have a smoother time at navigating certain personality shifts as they are more able to recognize the cohesion associated with their "oneness" perhaps unconiously. To people more sensitive to these changes. Multiplicity offers a way to navigate the world.

Conclusion

It's hard to navigate the world for me. It always has been. Its hard to ignore certain things as I’m hypersensitive. I struggle with shifting modes of being because they come with energy draining shifts in thought patterns, emotions, memories, feelings, and behaviors. Some of these have things in common, it's just they manifest differently.

What choice do I have then? Live a lie or use the tools at my disposal to navigate the world in a world that doesn't appreciate the differences amongst people.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I understand where my mentality of "if they wanted me, they'd come to me" arose from.

I did online school for eight years. The longer I live, the more fucked-up that seems to me. It genuinely made my life so much worse than it had to be, and its effects still haven't stopped. Poor decisions aside, once I attended high school for real, there were people all around me. Constantly. The hallways always had someone in them, the common area always had slackers (especially me), and the classes themselves were chill, with twenty to thirty students in each room. There was always someone within ten feet of me. I became known. People said "hello." That was perfect.

I had my "usual spots." People who knew me would come see me (FB even played the binding of isaac with me. I'm so sad she stopped hitting on me, I'd have loved to have her as a girlfriend at fourteen, despite her being seventeen. I hate myself for not catching on until too late). They'd hang out. They could have sat anywhere else.

Now, as I attend SU, there are so many places to be and so few reasons to be at school outside of class. There is nowhere to just "hang" and occupy. Don't misunderstand me, there are plenty of rooms dedicated to studying alone or in groups, but no one congregates for the sake of congregation. Everyone's social skills are high enough to invite people out (leaving me in the dust).

I've let my friend groups fall apart. I'm alone. It's my fault. Blah blah blah. It's all the stereotypical "lonely loner" bullshit. I'm specifically referring to the phenomenon of "high concentration of people" no longer applying. The reason I fear for my future interactions is the lack of such a structured format of introduction. In high school, I'd be forced to interact with everyone due to proximity (I say "forced," but I loved it). Now, in college, no one talks to anyone else. We're adults. We have other places to find friends. I do not have other places to find friends.

Once I get a job (if I don't kick my own bucket first), it'll be even worse. It's already bad. I wasted this entire fucking quarter by hanging out with practically nobody. I want more. I need more. I can't even talk to people online (recent attempts discouraged me) and it's fucking me up. I'm sorry, Poltergeist, I need to hit you up but it's the same story for everyone else, too: I do not know what to start with. I cannot fathom what to talk about. The same thing happens when I starve: I cannot think of food. I do not know what to eat and I do not know what to say.

Hopefully something happens. I have no energy. I need people to come to me because I'm literally a charity case. I didn't see it for most of my life because people gave me just enough charity to keep me alive. Now that I don't want to keep myself alive, the charity has dried up. I overstayed my welcome. There is a reason why people don't reach out to me. I am not worth their effort. This isn't some self-effacing excuse for why I'm sad and don't fix myself. It's the only reason for their silence that I keep coming back to. I do not believe they are in my position: scared to fail.

Once I get to know someone enough, I try (and probably fail) to explain how much I need social interaction. I usually don't get to that point.

[lavendertowerarchives]

Occasionally, I gain the ability to wipe my mind clean. It's never on purpose. If I could, I'd be using it so much more often.

I forget things a lot. I've complained countless times about this. The facet of this ailment I'm referring to now is my ability to forget things while I'm thinking of them.

It will happen out of nowhere. It's not like I get distracted, rather my head goes completely empty for about two seconds and it's like I dropped something and can't find where it fell. I search and search but all I can remember is my thoughts from several minutes ago, so I have to piece together how they went and how they morphed into the thought I lost. It's always panic-inducing. I don't know how important the lost thought was, so I assume it had a high priority because I literally have no recollection of what it was even about. Sometimes, after trying to remember what I was thinking prior, my backtracking will yield a memory so familiar that I accept it as the one I lost. Usually there's a handful of context clues for me to pick up on so that I know "yes this is what you lost."

The reason this feels different than normal isn't just that it happens in the middle of thinking, with zero warning. It's that it quiets my entire mind. Not even the music is playing. The incessant tunes which fill my head miraculously stop. It takes a lot of distraction for the music to stop. This is the ultimate mind-clearer. I need more of it, and I need it on command.

The reason I'm writing this now of all times is because I was trying to workshop another post when I just lost it. It vanished. I'd been thinking about it for five whole minutes when every trace of it ceased to exist. I looked for what it should have been but decided I'd find it later and started on this instead. I think I know what it was, but I gotta restart my progress.

This "ability" would be immensely useful if I could do it on command. I've had absymal luck sleeping lately because my train of thought keeps going down the usual rabbit holes and renders me too $u1c1d@l to sleep. I'm exhausted and done with the day, yes, but I'm also exhausted and done with my life. I can't get either to end so I'm stuck with the agony of hating my waking hours either way. It's normal shit. It's not interesting. Hell, I don't even want to talk about it here because it'd be easier to link my ninetyth post whining about JH not responding to me or some shit.

Unfortunately, my mind stays active despite my best efforts. Hopefully either my mind gets accidentally wiped more often or I have less things to clear out of there in the first place.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I played Buckshot Roulette with AH and E tonight for like two or three hours. It was completely spontaneous. AH was bored and asked me what to do, I told her Buckshot was two bucks on Steam (its three, oops) and she bought it. We roped E into it later.

Even if it was the shittiest game imaginable, I'd be having a good time with my friends. They make my life bearable for the few hours a month we talk. The game itself, however, is hilarious. It's russian roulette with a shotgun and various items to peek at the next shell, eject it, regain health, skip turns, etc.

It scratches the same mental\social itch that playing MTG (specifically the Commander format) does. Each player came to win, but we also came to have a good time. Everyone wants to keep it fun, but the optimal play is to straight-up murder every player. I got bullied out of the game often (the shells ended up in my skull more often than not) and since I suck at the game already I can't be mad since I would have lost either way. If the other two intended to win, killing me first was the right play more often than not. I understand how the game works, of course, and can verify that the sequence of moves the did was the right path to victory.

(also I found out tha E keeps up with MTG news even though she doesn't play and dislikes the game, so Imma ask her about it when I find where I put my confidence)

I need to find a way to remember this. I've unfortunately already enshrined it as "a lovely exception to my friends' silence," so I need to extract the positive nature from the saddening context it resides in. I don't want to remember the context. I want to remember the laughter I heard from all three mouths after I fucked with the settings and gave everyone eight full packs of cigarettes. Remembering this as "proof my friends don't dislike me" entertains the idea that they may not enjoy my presence, despite refuting the claim. I need to find a way to convince myself that it can and will happen again.

I'll see. I suck at the game because my memory is absolute shit. I can't remember "four blanks, three live rounds" for too long because I spend too much time repeating it and not enough time paying attention to whether or not the round E fired actually planted itself in AH's forehead. This same memory issue strikes when I "remember" that my friends haven't talked to me in ages.

[lavendertowerarchives]

Sometimes it takes some bullshit

To make some bullshit

[lavendertowerarchives]

Energency. Abort. Warning. Lavender has gotten confident for the first time in ages. Not only does this happen rarely, I need it to happen even less.

Person said "damn. Life sucks." I say "naw youre lookin at it wrong!" They say "thanks dude, you made my day better." Of course, I sent in a fucken essay of advice I try to follow, I wasnt just pointlessly optimistic. That shit came later.

Of course, I fold mentally. I got praise. That's a resource worth holding on to. I think, "hey, I did it once, I'll do it again." No I fucking can't.

I hit them up. I try to give more advice. In my haste to get approval, I both jump to conclusions and assume information that is 100% incorrect. I fucked up, man. I spent like an hour writing the first bit of "help," just tryna make someone's day better, completely anonymous. I spent five fucking minutes on the second shot. Of course I was genuinely trying to help. Unfortunately, I rushed it because I was also doing it for my sake. I'm pissed that I gain a "savior" mentality when I get confident. That's like the worst set of self-deceptions I can ask for.

Not only did my "words of encouragement" not land, they directly worsened the situation. Now I have nothing else to say except "sorry for overstepping my bounds." Not only do I have no real help to give for the specific situation, but the reason they're not doin so hot is *the exact same reason I'm $uic1d@l.* I do not have a fix, by definition. I can't even fucking try because the moment I keep thinking about it I just slingshot back to "oh, Lavender, your life is shit. You should abandon it." I refuse to subject someone else to that. (Ignore the fact that this is public. No one is being sent my weird posts.)

Speaking of which, I understand I can't exactly whine about this shit without risking this person reading it. Homeslice, this is for me to complain. Not for you to read, but if I had the balls, I'd find a way to distill this shit for you to explain me being a dumbass.

The issue in question is that of trying to connect to people (yes. Ironic. Move along). I feel alone. I cannot express this easily because I paradoxically have a partner who I love. I am hesitant to explain this because the crux of the issue is that the only reason they still love me is because they are 100% dependent on me. I will not let them die. I stilllll have to check their arms for new scars every time I see them, not because I explicitly don't trust them, but because I refuse to risk anything else. Hell, I gotta keep the fact that I want to Leave this earth from them every fucking day.

Thankfully, I did not come out of this thinking "see? Never reach out." Instead, my conclusion is "let them come to you, if they wanted to, they'd ask for help." As well as "confidence is never to be trusted." Now excuse me while I try to find a bandaid big enough to slap on the MASSIVE OPEN WOUND I made TEN MINUTES into a conversation. It doesn't help that I gotta go on hiatus anyways to properly prevent anyone else from finding this damned account.

Fkn hell, man.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I find eggs disgusting. I gag at the taste. Hell, I gag at the scent.

Why is it that a small amount of mustard and mayo (if not half my spice rack) make it so delicious I have to prepare entire dozens at a time for fear of running out in just a day?

[Would]

Made eggs 🥚

[lavendertowerarchives]

I dislike eating in general, as I've described before. I have my reasons, but I don't know how they specifically translate to a distaste for it.

For some background: I had a Wilm's tumor when I was eight. In other words, I had kidney cancer. It got removed and now I have a wicked long scar alllll across my stomach.

I have quite a lot of trouble distinguishing between "hungry," and "starving," as well as "full" and "not hungry." This prevents me from eating what I understand to be a healthily sized meal.

When I was eighteen, this fucked me over. I ate too much lasagna. I couldn't tell how full I was getting. I ate an actual fuckton. Probably double what I normally ate, which ended up being over triple of what other people tended to ingest that night. I could not sleep due to the pain. I'll spare you the details, but the magnitude of this stabbing pain in my stomach was so large that sleep could not take me.

I ended up in the hospital. Turns out, the scar tissue on my abdomen was scant compared to the amount of scarred organs inside me. I later learned that the surgery they performed to remove my kidney was exploratory. They really fucked me up by looking for every last trace of cancer.

The scar tissue inside me had roped itself around my gastrointestinal system. The food literally couldn't physically pass through. The sheer volume of it made it a full stop instead of the normal delay.

After they literally emptied my stomach through a tube in my nose, I ate extraordinarily slowly over the course of the next year. I ate less overall. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson.

Fourteen months later, it happened again. That sandwich was fucking delicious, man. I let my guard down. I ate as much as I wanted. I was punished.

It's been over two years since I had another round of surgery to remove the scar tissue (which could generate more scar tissue but who knows). I still can't tell how hungry I am. I still eat slower than ever. I still eat less and less. These trends aren't things I'm actively controlling. Unless I actively think about the meals I eat as I make and eat them, I will default to "not much, not fast, not until your stomach is screaming."

Maybe I just innately dislike eating for other random reasons. Maybe this disdain is my base response to being punished for eating in the past. I'm getting kind of tired of it, to be honest. This dislike can never be dealt with. It will never not be a chore to eat.

Everyone else, eat lots. I mean it. It's the quality of food that makes you fat, not the quantity. Your body knows how to spend the energy you give it, and if your body decides to store it, it knows where to put it (and it's usually not gonna be your stomach, your thighs, your ass, etc.).

[lavendertowerarchives]

A person's absence is much worse for my mind than it should be. I can't stop that, but I can at least explain it away.

It would be correct but misleading to say that someone's death hits me the same way as them just not being around me. It would be much more accurate to state the opposite: someone's temporary absence hits me just as hard as their death.

I dunno why it took me this long to put the pieces together. I should have kept looking when I realized I felt no different after the death of my dog. I know it's a little far-fetched to extrapolate this interpersonal failing from a pet I didn't even see very often, but the scant evidence I have lines up.

I will cling to my friends' presence until they actively have to go. Their departure wrings from me the euphoria I had when talking to them. I will ride the high of interaction, but it will always be tainted by me having to let them go. This much is apparent, and has been most of my life. Now I just have an explanation for why my desperation is so constant.

I also, conveniently, have an explanation for why I go dark for so long every time there's the smallest lapse in attention thrown at me. The sensation of people not talking to me, looking at me, listening to me, etc. is the same as them not existing (I understand these are far from equivalent, but it's the unshakable and unreasonable sensation which I despise for its perception-warping properties). I do not seek them out because my brain shortcuts my attempts to contact them. The route I should take is "take the shot. Send the message. If they want to talk, they'll talk." The route I almost always coast into without touching the steering wheel is "if they wanted your company they would have sought you out." There will always be a reason they won't text me. I don't know what that reason is. Logically, I don't have to.

I've got several people I've actively been meaning to hit up this past month. I need to. Guess what, though, I'm not doing it tonight. Too many things on my mind. I'm sick of accidentally prioritizing non-social needs simply because I seem to be incapable of categorizing them as "needs."

[lavendertowerarchives]

I fucking hate being colorblind.

I don't even know how bad it is anymore. I literally cannot tell. There is zero feedback I can use that doesn't come from another person.

My name's lavender, right? I tag, right? My little stickers that I put up around town have my name on them and some color, right?

I've been using the wrong fucking color. I've been using something much closer to purple/pink than to blue. I literally couldn't tell when I made them and printed them and slapped them all around my neighborhood. I only noticed this when I worked on my fourth iteration.

I printed out my stickers. They're bright pink. This is a difference I can comprehend. Pink is decidedly not blue. My issue was with how the color got so warped on its way to my printer (which had so many prior issues besides color that I was already pissed). I troubleshooted (troubleshot?) it.

The CMYK capabilities of the printer's color space did not have perfect analogs to the RGBA color space that my computer did. It shortcut the hex codes conversion for the colors and (i guess) truncated the amount of blue it could not "add" to the paper.

This discovery was fueled by me googling "lavender" and being met with a nice shade of, well, lavender. I apparently didn't notice how my brain equated the correct shade of blueish purple to the more magenta-ish color I'd been using. When faced with a side-by-side comparison, I was rather disappointed.

Regardless, here's the final product:

It already looks better than the third iteration, but I'm still not fully happy with it. I just needed something to print so I could have something to do while outside, as well as get a reason to go outside in the first place. I can trick myself into thinking I'm accomplishing some task while going on a normally "useless" walk. As self-aware as I am, that gives me no benefit when trying to control my mindset at any given time.

It makes sense that the color space my eyes are capable of detecting (and the color space my brain can comprehend as a result) is incomplete relative to the whole spectrum of colors, just like the subtractive color space the printer's inkjets are capable of producing has to improvise some colors. Strangely, they both miss out on different ends of the red portion of the spectrum. Oh well. Maybe now I'll be able to recognize lavender when picking out colors with no reference.

[lavendertowerarchives]

JH simply abandoned her invitation to spend halloween at her house. I should have expected as much. I don't understand how I can continue to have hope for her. She literally did not contact me whatsoever, despite her in-person enthusiasm for having me over. I haven't heard from her nor seen her since.

Her presence in my mind has slowly deteriorated. Her face is fading. I'm sad about it, sure, but the magnitude of the sorrow is negligible compared to how glad I am to no longer obsess over her. It's been two fucking years since I've met this girl. I have had no interruption in my avarice for her. Maybe now I'll have a break. This is our last year at our college anyways.

I still want her. Badly. I'm unfortunately still attracted to her, but even more devastating, she's friendly enough to make me think we're friends. She's certainly still *my* friend, but she's made it clear she has no need for me, my friendship, or anything I have to offer. I am not her friend.

It just keeps getting worse, the more I think about it: there is no world in which I do not forgive her. Contrary to my frustration, I know myself (well, I recognize patterns at least), and I know that I will drop to my fucking knees to get her to talk to me again. I've just exhausted all options over and over again.

Maybe this is permanent. Either way, I'll be happy. Either way, I'll be fucking devastated.

[lavendertowerarchives]

As much as I hate routines, I can't seem to shake the patterns so large I can't see their next repitition.

There's absolutely nothing new to report. Nothing different. There are no new struggles I haven't accidentally overcome before, no new people to meet, no new projects, and even the new games are just a reskin of old ones.

I got addicted to Skyrim. Makes sense, it's just Fallout 4 with slightly different mechanics and a different map. Everything else was shoved aside in favor of just going through the normal RPG motions of grind->fight->get quest->grind->fight ad nauseam. It's not like it's an extremely fun game, everything else in my life was just so unenjoyable that even a sliver of entertainment was worth grabbing on to. Of course, that means straight up not turning in my assignments. It means not reaching out to literally anyone, even my partner. It means barely eating, not like that's happening in the first place.

I tried streaming on twitch. Yeah, yeah, it's cliche as fuck. I was desperate for a way to meet people where I didn't have to go out and find them myself. I've already gotten ignored when I tried to reach out to new people on tumblr, though they may have just ignored me because they saw my posts and thought "hmm. not touchin that." The actual outcome of the two times I streamed were my partner popping in to support me and troubleshoot twitch and OBS. AH came the second time and told me personal stories and shit just cuz she had someone to talk to. I was glad to listen, but I had many inputs that I could not mentally straighten out: Skyrim on screen, twitch chat on my other screen, AH's voice in my ears, Skyrim in my ears, reading skyrim's dialogue... I couldn't pay attention. I'll have to work that out, but most of those have easy fixes. I might advertise my channel somewhere. Who knows how much effort I'll want to put into this shit.

I just feel like shit. All the time. I find myself incapable of "doing what I'm supposed to." Part of it's due to me routinely goofing off just to search for some semblance of happiness. Part of it is due to me fixating on the mountain of things I'm not doing, no matter what I'm currently working on. I can't work on more than one thing at a time, so there will always be something looming over my progress.

This is a recognizable cycle. First, I lose a source of happiness, then I search for something to fill it, find something to unhealthily fixate on, neglect the rest of my life, snap, reject that something for a while, and actually have energy for projects. I've tried to work on stuff to very little success, but not enough to feel proud. The cycle described has only one way in and out: people. There's been a noticeable but very small uptick in my social interactions lately. I'm working to increase it. Hopefully streaming will allow me to hang out with people and not feel guilty about taking their time from them.

The cycle will continue. I just need to prolong my current state.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I've realized why I failed my Software Architecture class last quarter, and am in danger of failing my AI and Software Ethics classes this quarter. I don't have anyone to impress.

Yeah, who could've seen it coming? I'm surprised I didn't find the answer sooner, seeing as I'm always whining about my friends being my reason to live but they don't really talk to me, so on and so forth. I certainly knew I was crashing and burning quite hard because I was more isolated now than ever before, but it never occurred to me that the problem was a specific lack of people I know in class.

I don't have anyone to learn from. I don't have anyone to teach. I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off. The social aspect of learning has been entirely erased. I don't see much of a reason to go to either of my classes, despite AI being only twice a week and Ethics being only once. Even my homework is being shoved aside, favoring literally anything else.

It's like I can't even convince my stupid fucking brain that it is worth it. I barely get any satisfaction from completing that shit any more. I know I need to do it, I know it needs to be done soon, I know it needs to be done well. I can't make my mind comply. My instincts tell me I don't need to complete it to stay alive, and that itself has never been a goal to begin with.

I'm constantly searching for dopamine. I am at a severe deficit. I am unhappy and am constantly facing problems that give no sense of accomplishment when completed. Every day starts and ends with damage control. My sheets are still on the floor, my fridge hasn't been opened in days, my trash overflows, and there are remnants of my various projects scattered around the room. The board game that's practically prototyped by now? I haven't cleaned the pieces off the floor. My MTG Cube experiment? Barely contained in its box. My partner's cosplay materials which I intend to work on for/with them? Hasn't left the bag in days. I keep telling myself "I just need a break. Just one week of break to fix this." Unfortunately, a week of fixing things is definitely not a "break." What I need is someone to help me. I can't ask for help. I barely know anyone anymore. No one besides my partner has sought me out. My partner's reason to seek me out is love, I don't doubt that, but their main reason in this past month has been because their body is failing them. They can barely stand without passing out. It's taking all of my willpower to not say "I told you so. You kept pushing yourself. You could have lessened this or even stopped it if you took breaks. Any break at all, from any of your tasks."

Meanwhile, all I do is take breaks. All I do is nothing. I can't seem to finish anything I start.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I forget a lot of things, and I forget them frequently. Even when I manage to remember, there is no guarantee the idea will be around when it's relevant.

I do not forget how I feel about people. People I like, people I love, and people I hate are constants in my life. The severity of my memory which allows them to stay fresh constantly also allows them to torment me. I can hear a name or see a face of someone I've known and my feelings will be reset to the last time I'd done so.

I am able to pick up wherever the fuck I left off with someone. The amount of time that has passed is irrelevant. Having not heard from G in six years, I would be ecstatic if she finally picked up our chat again. I haven't heard from AK or AH in a bit, but I know they're my friends and will gladly talk (or so I keep trying to remind myself). E hasn't hit me up in a long while but I know she's friendly and I know the sort of conversations she has with me.

I do not understand how someone's opinion of a person can change during an absence (outside of trivial cases such as uncovered evidence). I know it does happen, and I know there are reasons for it, I just never have been exposed to these reasons. The moment a friend leaves my presence, a snapshot of them is automatically preserved in my mind for the next time their presence is refreshed and their attention is once more.

This is not to say that my opinion is not analyzed in their absence. I routinely, unfortunately, and uncontrollably revisit my past interactions with them and imagine future ones (it's a major pain, if I'm gonna write fiction, I don't fucking want to "write" about real people but I can't get my mind to ignore it). Whatever the verdict of my musings becomes, I automatically feel the same about the person. Even in drastic cases such as concluding that they do not like me(which happens over and over again), I am steadfast in my admiration of their presence and craving of their attention.

I miss everyone. That's not gonna change.

[lavendertowerarchives]

This is a concept I've explored before, both with myself and friends. I don't know if I've talked about it here or not. It pains me to look at my old posts.

I need to not trust myself, ever. This much is obvious, and is proven to me every day. To the point of this post, I need to not trust myself when I believe that I will be boring when I hang out with a friend. I panic when thinking of what to say to people, believing that I just don't know what to say. This has not happened in over seven years, maybe eight.

The problem is that my end goal is that of "being with someone." I never really plan for anything beyond "talking." I think to myself, "do I take them somewhere? Are they expecting me to eat with them? What video games do they like? Do they like video games? What do we talk about?" Fuck all of that. I care about them, and will likely be genuinely interested in whatever the fuck they say in response to "how's it goin." I haven't had to feign interest for anyone. I am interested. That's just how I am. I like my friends, and will gladly listen to their stories, even if they've told them before.

Of course, I remember none of this when panicking and hyperfixating on what they want from me. I will give them whatever they want just to keep them near me. I will jump through any hoop they throw at me just to keep them talking to me. I will do whatever the fuck they ask or demand of me. The "problem" is, they ask for nothing, tell me nothing, and need nothing. I'm just their friend, and they're my entire reason to live for as long as my ears hear their words or my eyes read their texts. There's a reason I never reveal exactly how much someone means to me: I don't want to scare them with how much of a responsibility they might have. It will be no one's fault when I Leave. I don't want anyone thinking that the seconds they spend not responding to me are seconds I spend sharpening my razors and tying my nooses. I'm doing that all the time, regardless, and they're a brief respite. They're not my babysitter. I know that that's how I feel towards my partner, who has confided in me that they also want to Leave, and I know how I react. I can never let them know how fucking close I am, every day.

This becomes harder to clarify when I know people through these accounts (who may read this). I am no one's charity case. I am no one's helpless child. I can totally spin my narrative any way I want, whether it's "Please help me, please respond, I'm so close" or "Your response, and your time, are yours. Do not give them unwillingly or rashly. I will have the same problems regardless."

[lavendertowerarchives]

Please, allow me to complain. I want to complain about the same shit I always complain about, concerning the same person I always complain about, in the same state I always find myself in.

I saw JH like a week ago, right? Had fun for like an hour talking to her about the game I'm making (95% done, prototype is built), and she seemed interested. She invited me and my partner to her place for halloween. I don't have confirmation on whether the plan has come through or not.

I need this shit, man. I need someone to talk to at length. I need someone to keep me from being with myself, and I need validation from JH specifically because I'm a fucking parasite with a borderline parasocial relationship with her. Yes, I'm fucking sick of it. If I had any control over it, this obsession would be one of the first things I yeet out of my overrun brain.

It's wednesday now, man. It's thursday tomorrow. I need her to respond. I'm hanging by a thread. This is not an exaggeration. I have no one to exaggerate to. This is just a marker in time for the fact that I tried for an hour today to physically research ways to stop my own damned heart. I need out.

[lavendertowerarchives]

"Today" has been a shitshow, starting with the reason I put "today" in quotes.

On monday, I got home after celebrating my 5 year anniversary with my partner (wahoo) (I love them), sprinted to class, and proceeded to not pay attention for enough time. It's not entirely relevant but I still hate AI class. It's boring AF. After the class, I played skyrim for about eight hours straight. I got it to play alongside my partner a couple days ago (we take turns on separate save files, we're both bad in different ways) and have become rather enthralled, despite my dislike of it.

I got out of class at six. I played for eight hours. I did not sleep that night, nor did I ever intend to. I was going to put more effort into the programming assignment that was expected of me. I have not touched the damn thing, and it's due in fifteen minutes. I gave up trying to start it. I just couldn't get myself to start. It's the same paralysis I try to explain every time I get depressed. It was ruining my day, night, and day again, knowing that I just... didn't know how to go about it. I genuinely want out of both of my classes. Going back for my Master's was a fucken mistake, and I only chose to in order to avoid getting a job.

Back to the night. I don't really remember what I did after I stopped playing skyrim at like three in the morning, but I do know I finally reclaimed a friendship (yippee). Life ain't hopeless, I just ran out of places to look. Thankfully, someone else came bearing gifts from out of my FOV. I tried reaching out twice to others in the past month, but I can't blame them for not responding. Maybe they don't like randos, maybe they don't like my vibe, maybe they see that I wear my self-destructive tendencies on my sleeve and deem a friendship with me unsustainable. Idfk, they never told me why they never responded. Oh well.

As I progressed my extended day, doing random shit and letting my increasingly dangerous memory loss run my life, I could not stop stressing about whatever shit I had to do. That prevented me from actually completing any other tasks, including feeding myself for most of the day, though I got around to that eventually. I just want out of my responsibilities. They don't stop. I'm pissed at my inability to handle them. I have so many miniscule tasks to complete and my pleasure-oriented brain consistently convinces me that they just aren't worth doing. I can barely think straight as I am now. I can't help but ramble in this post because I can't string more than two thoughts together at the same time.

The sun rose. I started seein shit a little more often than normal (just small stuff out of the corner of my eye. Nothing serious, nothing out of the ordinary). I became noticeably tired in a short time frame. As I napped at ten, I began to hyperventilate without noticing it, with it coming to my attention after I felt two breaths in one second and thinking "wait hold on, that shit ain't right." Turns out, my panic was more pronounced than I admitted. I overcorrected in my effort to calm my breath: I found myself unable to breathe for extended periods. Not to the point of asphyxiation, but it increased my heart rate nonetheless. The control I exerted was completely miscalculated. Unfortunately, I ended up sleeping, erasing the issue.

After I woke, nothing happened. I just couldn't start anything, finish anything, or want anything besides taking my Leave. This was the most concentrated my urge has been since the end of spring quarter. Shit was bad, man. I'll leave out details, but I had experimented for about an hour and had come up unsuccessful. My attempts were halfhearted, crippled only by the fear of getting caught due to failure. I needed to commit, but my options are still severely limited.

I'm cold, but I have a heater and sheets. I'm lonely, but I have friends and their numbers (even if most of them don't respond quickly or ever). I'm hungry, but I have a fridge of food.

I just don't have the energy to get more energy. I just want out. I want to be fucking gone. Until then, I guess I'll just keep accidentally and uncaringly fucking my future.