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thelonelyrainbowguy · 5 years

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2010-2019 Recap

2010-2019 has been, uh. A Wild Ride. I've had my highest highs, and my lowest lows, and I've come out on the other side WAY different from the person I was before.

(CW/TW: talk of shootings, suicide, self-harm)

A few bullet points:

-I moved out of my abusive parents' home, and despite job loss and mountains of debt, I have never had to go crawling back and ask to live with them again.

-I (very slowly) came to the realization that I'm a gay-ass bitch, and then a few years later, that I'm agender, and both realizations have helped me take leaps and bounds forward with self-love and mental health.

-I kissed my first (and only, so far) girl in 2017. She ended up dumping me, but kissing her solidified my realization that I'm a gay-ass bitch, because kissing her was wonderful, whereas with the one guy I've kissed, it felt gross, and even though I thought I was straight at the time, I hated it (guess that should've been a clue, LMAO).

-I got my autism diagnosis, which has helped me SO MUCH with not hating myself for being abnormal, and with taking care of myself properly to minimize the bad parts that come along with being autistic. I'm still learning, and lately executive dysfunction has been kicking my ass, but if I compare current me to the me from a couple years ago, I'm so much better and healthier than I could have imagined. (And if you tell me you never would have guessed, no shit, Sherlock, a lot of autistic people kill themselves trying to appear "normal.")

-My writing has improved so much. No, really, even looking at it with an objective and unbiased point of view, the novels I've written over the past couple of years are easily better than a lot of published ones on the market.

-I finally got past (some of) my anxiety about querying literary agents and have started sending query letters. I've got nothing but rejections thus far, but I'm trying to gather up my self-esteem to query more.

-I've had several jobs, a couple good, most bad, and I got my current job, which is the best paying (which isn't saying much) and most fulfilling one I've ever had. Despite circumstances that would have made any sane person quit, multiplied by being autistic and having extreme anxiety, I pressed on through training and have been a fully certified 911 dispatcher for over a year now. While I don't think it's a career I want to keep forever, I'm extremely proud of myself for getting this far, and now I can go basically anywhere and find a dispatch job.

-I went to DC Pride this year, for the third time, and there was a shooter scare, which traumatized me badly, especially since it was already my biggest fear. I ran behind my friends to shield them, just waiting for bullets to tear me apart; it wasn't even something I had to think about. It sucks I had to find out that way, but I'm proud of that selfless aspect I discovered in myself. Before that day, I genuinely wasn't sure whether I'd die for a friend; the answer, it turns out, is yes, absolutely. I'm slowly healing from the trauma, but I still have flashbacks pretty often.

-I got over a years-long self-harm addiction, and haven't cut since 2016. I'll always have the scars, but now when I look at them, it's empowering rather than triggering or shameful; I can let them show without being embarrassed, because they say that I'm a fucking fighter, that I've been through hell and dragged myself out.

-In early 2016, I went through the most suicidal period I've ever had in my life; it was so bad that I couldn't even look at my window or sit on the couch in my living room because the 15-story window/balcony was right there, and I felt like I'd lose control and jump. But I got through it, and I'm here today.

-I deconstructed my harmful religious beliefs and decided I am agnostic, and I'm so much happier for it. I've come to accept and embrace the entire LGBT+ community (it'd be kind of stupid if I didn't, considering more than one of the letters apply to me). I've learned a lot about disabilities and ableism. I'm also constantly working to get rid of my ingrained racism, and further understand the privilege I was born with as a white person, and aim to use it to help people of color.

-I had my first surgery. Well, actually, my first four surgeries. All in July of this year. I'm still recovering and still in pain, but my carpal and cubital tunnel symptoms are all but gone, and now I can crochet, draw, write, whatever I want, without waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks because the pain is so bad. The recovery is taking a while, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

-I've lost a lot of friendships, but I've also met so many wonderful people who have helped to shape me as a person, and I can't imagine life without them.

Here's to a decade full of self-care and self-improvement, full of letting go of toxic people, thinking, and beliefs, and full of wins both big and small. May we never be the same.

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discloseddesire · 7 years

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You, were the definition of a winters morning, a summers day, a spring afternoon and an autumn evening all rolled into one. You were rain beating against a bedroom window and unsteady heartbeats wrapped in hoodies. You were the heat we felt when we argued and the fire from the bush that ended with me on top of you for more than one occasion. You were allergies in the best way from hay fever that plagued me for a week straight, runny nose and all. You were evenings before I had to be picked up by my dad and the warm hugs and the offers to stay for dinner ever so occasionally.

It's like all the seasons hit me at once the moment we stopped.

I felt the cold. The bitterness of the air in my bedroom because I left the window open while I slept with the covers still placed perfectly on my bed. I felt the rain on my cheeks and the wind was almost wishing me to whirl away, like thistle does when you make a wish and blow. like a birthday candle.

I felt the burn of the shame on my face as I told my mother and father what had happened. I felt the heat rise up in my palms and the searing hot pain in my throat that still has yet to leave, like third degree burns on my already singed heart. I felt the fire that was once in my belly reduced to nothing but coal.

I felt the allergies. They were red noses and red eyes and stepping on pretty flowers on purpose as I walked around the neighbourhood, crying behind my sunglasses and my reese's peanut butter cup that was way too sweet for my liking. I felt the spring sun on my skin and I badly wanted to turn into a flower and wilt away on the side of the path. like a pathetic dandelion that could only live for so long.

I felt the autumn today. It's technically Spring but today was a mix of Winter and Autumn rolled into one. Car rides are a peculiar thing when the wind blows the tiny car down the street like it's running away from all its problems, we were heading north after all. I wished for the leaves to crunch under my sneakers, but instead I got one stuck to my foot that wouldn't let go, and a leaf blew in from the partly open window on to my shoulder like a pity clap on the back.

Nobody knows what to say to me anymore. I wake up from a sleep that I didn't even endure to my mother opening my door (I sleep with it closed now.) and asking me how I'm doing, and whether I want a cup of tea or not. I kind of just look at her from the right side of my bed, my entire body pressed against the wall while the wind shook my window, rain hitting the roller shutter. She pots to get me a cup of tea and I leave it sitting there for several minutes, I don't even check my phone. Nobody's messaged me. Nobody would.

My brother had his first day of high school without me today and he told my mother that it made him feel like an only child. I wish I had've left a legacy with the school. It feels wrong to send him through the gates without joining him, humming the last song on the radio and him telling me to shut up and that I'm embarrassing enough.

My dad tells me the cold hard truth in between car trips that last ten minutes while I sob in the passenger seat holding a cup tray full of sprite, coke and fanta. My dad doesn't tell me that it's going to be okay anymore, he doesn't even give me a pat on the back. He tells me that I'm too good for everybody and that nobody is good enough for me except myself. I don't entirely believe him, he's stoned after all.

We took my nan to a podiatrist today and my mother took me in to look at the orthotic flip flops. I immediately picked the teal ones, and when I looked up the lady looked me into my eyes and just did a sympathy smile. Like I don't need any more sympathy when I'm walking around like an old woman at the age of 17 with greasy hair and a tshirt that I keep repeatedly wearing because I never wore it to your house. Maybe it's because my beanie says 'SLACKER' in old writing and that the beanie is bright red but I'm willing to take it into consideration that she did pity me. I pity myself.

My nan is a woman of few words. Mainly because she's short of hearing, can barely see and is rather forgetful but she is the strongest woman I know on the planet. Fuck Beyoncé and Malala Yousafai as role models, my nan is what is keeping me strong. She's been alive since the early 40's and she finally this year has learnt how to use touch screen on an Ipad. I sat in the back of her car today on a crocheted fremantle dockers blanket she had made as cushioning for her car. She likes football. I sat in the backseat and barely said a word as I read my book about angels and demons and what I described to be a love square. My nan pipes up and asked me if I'd kicked anybody in the face yet. My mother nearly lost control of the car. I told her no, and she seemed disappointed. Like I was a main character in Kill Bill and that it was my task to destroy everybody who had ever done me wrong in my entire life but that, would be a pathetically long list. When we returned to drop her home she asked me if I would ever sit on her piano stool again and try to play her a song on her completely out of tune piano. She knows that she has boxes upon boxes stacked around the piano and that a South African family with a young toddler live next door and would probably prefer not to hear a faulty old piano. I said that if she ever moves the piano out of her house, that I will play the best song that I can think of for her. She wants me to play Elvis.

My mother has finally agreed with me that I do in fact need urgent medical attention to my ankle. Posterior tibial tendinitis with all of the severe symptoms being ticked off the list means surgery. I've never had surgery before. I'm actually quite horrified of the entire idea of it. What if I wake up from the anaesthesia? What if i can feel them removing parts of my body and scraping away unwanted tissue? It terrifies me. So a trip to the doctors is necessary before I cannot walk anymore. It's already caused the muscle and definition in my calf to disintegrate. It doesn't look right in the mirror, it's too straight. Like my entire leg is collapsing into my ankle, and my ankle is quicksand or something.

I haven't got what I'm wearing for the valedictory ceremony downpacked just yet. I'm finally off school but yet I still feel ridiculously busy even though I'm doing absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing consists of minimal showering and bed sheets that are starting to look a little gross from the amount of times I have accidentally spilt food on them. It's me complaining about the internet quality and how all I want to do is watch something or listen to something but I can't so I sit and play Subway Surfer and CandyCrush until the internet speed recovers and I no longer feel reduced to my bedsheets. I think there's a mould of me in my bed, shaped in the curve of my spine by now. I wish there was a mould the shape of you in my bed instead of my heart. Maybe i'd feel less empty.

Empty doesn't necessarily mean sad. I feel dulled. I feel like somebody's dimmed the lights on my personality and then jammed it on the lowest power setting until further notice. Maybe I should place a sticker on my shirt or forehead that says "I'm having a rough time and I'm not who I used to be, sorry". I'm only reading my pathetic romantic fantasy novels out of boredom, not out of curiosity for the actual storyline. Writing this is hard, writing used to feel like nothing. Remember when I used to write to you? Late at night? You'd open them in the morning and I'd feel like a parent who'd just given their child a piece of candy before breakfast. A little worried but still happy. There's just so much that I could be doing with my life but I'm not flinching at jumpscares that I would normally flinch at, not laughing at jokes that need to be laughed at, and not having any consideration for anything anymore, not even myself or others.

That's one of my faults, after all. No consideration for others, absolutely none I say to myself as I scroll through all the times that I did have significant consideration and care for other people. I'm too sad, I think. Now. I'm like a fuckin' tap most of the time. I think I'm desensitised right now or something because I'm still not crying even though I wished to. I wish that crying would plant flowers in the gaps of where you left, but salt causes droughts for flowers, and waiting for a quick fix is like waiting in the middle of Africa for it to snow. It would be the equivalent of me asking you to come back again, pointless and just plain fucking sad. Good on you Maddy. You're crying.

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