#existential trauma tw

[hamoodmood]

In another universe I was happy

[acemdzsfan]

It's kind of hard to want to live when every day past your twelfth birthday you "feel" you soul getting darker, stained by the snap in your mind from child to teen. Ink bleeding into you from sins you committed willingly and knowingly.

(Said sin being reading fantasy books and writing fanfiction.)

Because now you're too old to go to heaven automatically.

[anonymoushotsexyperson]

Thinking a lot about how the inevitability of death is not talked about.

I know you got attention span issues pookie bear so I split this post into sections and you can read whatever your most into if you can't do the whole thing ^_^

SECTION 1 my first encounters with the idea of dying.

I wish I could literally hug John Green for writing the fault in our stars. People can say it's sappy or whatever but it is one of the only mainstream forms of media that successfully acknowledges the inevitability of death and the lack of control we have over it. Though it took a lot more than TFIOS to wake me up to the conversation of dying.

The first time I realized death was a thing I can remember so vividly. I was at least 4 years old, I forgot how the whole conversation went but I remember my dad saying

"well honey everyone has to die one day."

"even you and mom?"

"even me and mom."

He said it so casually while folding laundry in the kitchen not knowing my world view had just completely shattered 😀. I went into our shared bedroom ( I didn't have my own yet because POOR) and cried on my parents bed. I don't know what happened after that. I think I just shoved death into my back pocket and kept it pushing because it was too hard to really grasp at that age. It still is now, but it especially was then.

Section 2 Being someone aware of your mortality and not being able to cope with it.

I think about death a lot now, it's been a reoccurring visitor in my brain since covid. It surprises me that the average Joe doesn't think about death all the time considering the current climate of our world. Im not gonna lie i've developed a bit of thanatophobia (death anxiety). This is because I have always dug myself out of my depressive episodes using knowledge and through that knowledge, understanding my relationship to the world helped me fall involve with living in it. The idea that one day this experience will end and regardless of what you believe whether it's in heaven or reincarnation or whatever we really don't know what's coming next or if there is a next. I don't think i'd necessarily be too keen with an afterlife as well as the idea that an afterlife doesn't exist. Both seem pretty ass, because if there's an after life cool but like what happens after that? You telling me i'm just here for ALL ETERNITY NIGGA? But also the concept of just dying and thats just... it? Kinda stupid and DUMB if you ask me. I think what im really looking for here is control.

Section 3 Does no one talk about death because of capitalism?

Apart of me believes that this thing where people around me tend to avoid the conversation of death or respond like an npc when I do get them to speak about it is due to western cultures obsession with capitalism and power. Because if you contemplate your existence and how both big and small it is, all this capitalism shit becomes kind of extremely fictitious and ridiculous. Like yeah maybe people just don't talk about it because its SCARY but also what if it's so scary because we done talk about it and because we are wasting our lives as wage slaves and in some areas of the world, literal slaves. Also this makes me think a lot about how religions are used as a weapon of conservatism instead of respected as a philosophical and metaphysical analysis of the human experience. There is honestly so many examples of religion-especially religions associated with colonialism-being used to control people. This can be seen and interpreted many ways and most if not all of the most obvious interpretations probably ring true. But what i'm really attempting to segue into here is that religion is uses as a weapon by the powerful in all sorts of ways but the idea that it is used to keep us from pondering death instead of exploring what it's like is something ive been thinking about a lot. You can argue some religious folks specifically follow religion to relieve death anxiety and its always been that way but I think that it now exists on a dissociative level.

Also, the ignorant American I am, I couldn't tell you the part about western civilization playing a big role is from an informed experience it's more so a studious guess. I don't really know what the vibes in other countries are like when it comes to dying I have not gained enough international knowledge and experience yet. So thats where you come in reader. YES you. What do you think?

QOTD: why do you think the conversation around death and the inevitability of it is so hush hush? Where do you believe we 'go' after and how does that make you feel? If you are apart of a non western civilization do you see a cultural difference in our experiences?

[infizero-draws]

GET THIS GUY OUT OF HEREEEE

[neuroticboyfriend]

this can't be all there is. there has to be something after this. there has to be some kind of meaning to why we're here. there has to be some reason to keep going that doesn't just fade to time and decay. there has to be some kind of permanence. i don't know how to keep living this shit hand at life, going through all this suffering, fighting so hard every day... if there is all there fucking is. fuck. shit. motherfucker.

[absolutelybatty]

It's fun being unable to tell if I have religious trauma or if I worry about hell the normal amount

[nadia-cannot-think-straight]

Tbh i have no idea if i am happy or am i just okay, because i've felt so miserable over the years that i forgot what good even feels like. It's cool that i finally feel like a person though, and not some fucked up alien who possed the body of who i used to be. I mean, i am functional, i can do more stuff now. That's nice, but is it how happiness feels like? I don't know, it doesn't feel empty like before but it also isn't that strong of a feeling. Was it always like that.

[unofficialchronicle]

Al Anon Daily Affirmations book “The Courage to Change,” p. 299

[thelindenpapers]

Memoriam for Knight Errant

Her honest trembling was the very last straw.

So she shoved him quickly out, bolting it all closed.

He banged at the door in accompaniment as she lit match after match.

His eyes asking, ‘Why--?!’

Through the window, the look of smoke the nerve-ending sizzle of flesh as she sat calmly, casually, busy being consumed.

Glasses melting red; skin curling like autumn paper her frame tensing silently as her nostrils inhaled the flames--

‘--why do you not scream?’

‘Because, I don’t deserve it’, her one bloodshot, dim-seeing eye steadily stared, ‘the screaming.’

Her bones are there, even now.

Her own ruined palace of torment: sculpture of ashes, slagged windows charred wood the bones yearn the bones

beg and beg and beg

to scream.

Caged in dry calcium dust hanging in the air all around that open sky grave the pressure of air built up in lungs no longer there.

But she has had her way. And nothing in all the human world will allow those bones their desperately wanted release.

A knight beyond her very end. Suffer, and rightly so. This, her legacy to no one.

[struggling-to-find-home]

An incredibly fucked up part of my life, now that I think about it, is that I simultaneously had two childhoods and also didn't have a childhood at all.

Like, obviously I was a child, at some point, considering that is how time works. I was a child, who had a personality, and thoughts, and feelings, and memories.

Then, I was a teenager - and, as a teenager, I killed my personality, got my thoughts indoctrinated by my abusers, denied all of my feelings, and had a constant stream of poisonous memories fuck up all my decisions in the backround. I knew what it was like to live through a childhood, an actual one, lasting multiple years.

Then, everything broke, my psyche broke, and, after swimming in dissociative hell for a good six months, I woke up after what I jokingly call my "factory reset" - and I had to memories. Like. At all. Literally, a black wall lasting seventeen years of my life, and then, all of a sudden - I was there.

My first ever conscious thought, the one I remember, at least, was - "Holy shit, I can actually think". Not very exciting for a first thought, I guess, but it was very exciting for me at the time, considering that my dissociation was so bad I couldn't count to five most days without getting lost.

Do you understand just how fucking terrifying it is, to suddenly gain awareness and realise that you don't know how you are, what has your life been life, and how to interact with the world, with the only information actually being in your brain being memories of abuse which were too horrible to forget? Because I fucking do, I lived it. You read isekai for the plot, I read it because it's the one genre that can describe my experience. I literally was the "born sexy yesterday" trope - a mind with no knowledge of how life works, who was, let's be real, at the emotional regulation level of a toddler, stuck in an body of an adult.

I had to teach myself everything - how to talk to people, how to focus for more than three seconds at a time, how to extract my memories, one by one, and slowly piece together who inhabited this body, my body, for all of my life. I was literally learning how to person from scratch, and in the beginning, you can bet your ass I didn't feel any close to, well, an actual adult, like I was supposed to be. I had to stumble over every mistake, and learn every lesson you learn as you grow older.

Fucking hell, for one and a half years, I lived in a world where I physically couldn't comprehend that someone wouldn't like me. When I say I had to learn everything, I mean it.

Sometimes, it gets to me - the fact that I am technically inhabiting the body of a corpse. She - the child, the teenager, the one who actually lived through hell - is dead. I am somebody else. I will never be her. All I can do is live - like this, in this bizzare existence - and try not to wince every time someone mentions their childhood.

I don't remember what it's like to be a kid - to be able to grow, make mistakes, and not be judged for being in the process of figuring things out. In all honesty, I'm not sure whether I was allowed to be a kid - I got some memories back, but none of them give me that kind of info. I don't remember what it's like to be a teenager.

I remember what it's like to try to live a normal life when your first memory was yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. I remember what it's like - to have that innocence, that naivety, that additude of not having any shame or self-consciousness that you usually only see in children, going through the world without looking at any obstacles because your enthusiasm hasn't ever been crushed yet.

For a child, every obstacle they encounter can be the biggest one in their life yet - even if it's something as simple as learning to tie your shoes. Fortunately for me, the first obstacle I encountered as myself was a horrible, terrifying monster - my mother - raging at me and disowning me in a week-long fight over me not wanting to take a math test. Everything else seemed like a small problem after that. Well, until my brother pulled a gun on me, but that's besides the point.

So now, when people say "Childhood" - I think about my first days as myself, the amnesiac teenager. Being young, moldable, soaking every piece of information up with no filter because I didn't know better. But then I think to myself.

Oh. Right.

I was a child, but it wasn't a childhood.

I was a child, but that childhood is lost forever.

And then, internally, I weep.

[wilde-words]

i am afraid to find that none of this is real—

that if the plane gets any higher i will see i have been living in a shoebox diorama in the hands of a vengeful God

who moves me around on a popsicle stick.

[hamoodmood]

[myheartisonthetrain]

it feels like no matter what i say, nobody will know the extent of my attraction. i don't even know it; it is limitless.

my love for him is born from a fear of commitment and the world around me and when i look at him i see a shining light that sees past the person i'm confined to. i thought he was an archangel.

the kind of love born from fear is often unfortunately the strongest, he is the antithesis to my fear and the core of my beliefs. i am clinging to something that no longer exists, and will continue to cease to exist long after he's gone, so what am i believing in? what am i becoming? i'm not scared of losing him, i'm scared it will live on after i've lost. will i ever move past the trauma that keeps me starved for a salvation as great as his?

and when i thank him, will he know what i'm grateful for?

[nostomannia]

Sol is an adult. That should be very much apparent. She takes up a childlike humor and spirit, but that doesn't stop the fact she's an adult, body and mind.

With Deity, she just feels... dwarfed? When they're around, she isn't a full-grown woman with her own sense of self. She's a child clinging to Deity's coattails.

Heck, as soon as Deity is mentioned, it's like a switch is flipped. Solita seems to change from this big, loud personality of a woman to a meek and small little girl. She just feels like a kid trying to play dress up and be something she's not, living in another person's skin.

[venting-town]

I can’t trust my own “ family “ to really tell them anything

Not unless I want to:

- Be gaslit

- Be blamed

- Not be believed

- Not get acknowledged

- Be mocked

- Etc

Both sides are fucked. I hate both, mainly maternal side because they’re the ones I’ve spent most my life with compared to my parental side, but they aren’t exempt either

I shouldn’t have to constantly try to justify my reasoning for things ( such as not wanting to be around anybody/do anything social for instance ).

Yet when I try, sometimes they get incredibly upset at me for it.

Fuck off. If you all were ACTUALLY a good support system, ones that didn’t abuse me or neglect me or make fun of me or ignore me or get irrationally angry at me and blame me for it or hit me or genuinely love me or actually REALLY tried to understand why I was so depressed/anxious/angry/clingy/etc, MAYBE I WOULD want to be around you all

Not to mention that I just love/crave being alone in general. I didn’t have that growing up, not really.

What with me constantly being ripped from home and being sold out as a sex slave over and over and over and over for 9+ years, not being safe in my own bedroom as that fat fucktard came in to use me however he pleased, etc

But nobody wants to hear about that.

Grandmother didn’t. She didn’t care when I told her I was sex trafficked/abused/neglected as a child. Kept talking about other things WHILST I was confiding in her about what happened to me

And I’m sure they/etc will try to justify it:

“ Well if you’d just spend more time with them.. “

“ Well if you weren’t so aggressive and bitchy and ‘ victim-complexy ‘ as a kid.. “

“ Well if x,y,z, 1,2,3, etc (( aka I’m still getting blamed for them )) “

Fuck off. They were the ADULTS

I was a CHILD

No, they DIDN’T deserve “ more respect “ because they were older.

If you don’t give a child respect, whether you’re their parent/guardian, teacher, or WHOEVER as an adult figure, you SURE as hell don’t “ deserve “ respect from them.

Fucking entitled overgrown bastards.

They didn’t deserve it then. They don’t deserve my respect now

I can “ like “ them. I can even “ love “ them.

But they aren’t my family. They haven’t been for basically my entire life, save for the first 3-4 years of it.

They aren’t even strangers.

They just aren’t my family. Dead or alive or etc

[pandorasboxoftreasures]

It has to be said as much as it hurts...Sorry in advance. MAJOR TW!

Earlier I was going to make a meme with innuendo of Ritch when I got a response to an earlier post I made about the nastiest of Neteyam simps while also writing my fanfic with oc Recoms and a horrible realisation shot to the forefront of my skull like a 9mm hollow point that made me immediately stop making the meme. Not sure if it’ll ever see the light of day or if I’ll even keep it on my PC anymore after this. Technically, it’s not explicit. But with what I’ve been thinking about and will explain here, it creeps me out at the moment to even look at it.

I despise those sexualising the kids, a lot. But there's still a stomach-churning thing I've realised upon further reflection especially after so many times watching The Way Of Water (think it’s been about 9 now I’ll need to do a recount)...

The Recoms are babies.

Just because they were grown for 20 years longer than usual, doesn’t make them any less babies. They woke up in adult bodies but having an adult body doesn’t make you an adult. Neither do adult memories make them adults because the implanted memories don’t make the person.

If they didn’t have those implants or they malfunctioned, what would they be? Unable to speak or walk or sit up or control waste functions even though they would have the muscle strength to because they're still newborn babies in adult bodies.

Would they still be hot then because they’ll still have those bodies?

Despite having an aesthetic, emotional, sensual and romantic attraction to Recom Quaritch myself, this is probably the main reason why I've been knocked physically ill sometimes by the extreme levels of thirst directed his way for the past few months as well as to all of the Recoms.

It's a 13 going on 30, Jack or Big situation. And people just can not shut up about their filthy, filthy fantasies everywhere I look.

And subconsciously in my brain I've been getting alarm bells going off because my stupid yet frustratingly insightful skull-blancmange can't help but notice and check philosophical, logical and moral inconsistencies like this.

But now it's not subconscious. It's conscious. It's melting my head. I can't keep quiet about it.

Are we honestly that much better than the ageing-up self-shippers? 

Yes, but still not clean of the same dirt, either. We're looking at technical toddlers here even if they don’t look or sound it. 

There's little hints peppered throughout the movie even that they're scared little kids sent out to fight and die when they're nowhere near ready to mentally under all that blue muscle and marine bravado, no matter how many adult experienced memories they upload into them. It definitely didn’t save most of their lives, for sure.

But nobody's thinking about all that. They just wanna see some blue meat and ponder angles and stripe patterns and I’m hunched over a bucket.

“Looks like an adult so is OK” is an excuse I regularly see online for those posting explicit content of canonically underaged characters that may or may not have been aged up. Including the Na’vi kids.

If we’re gonna point out the hypocrisy of that mentality, we have to accept in some way we are also victim to it. Albeit in another form.

God damn am I glad to be watching a modern sci-fi property that actually has mind-bending philosophical stuff going on again, though. Even if it’s hidden under many, many layers of subtext so as not to alienate a general audience, but I sure as hell ain’t glad that this is the property that broke my streak of never being romantically interested in fictional characters because now look what’s happened.