#high half the time and dissociating the other half before i started doing drugs... literally anything to not be present in my life lol

[ourladyoftheflytrap]

When I was a teenager everything happened so fast and now I feel like it takes 1 billion years to get anything done

[edo-vivendum]

My Past Two Years 11/2019

I wanna tell yall the briefish version of my past two years. Two years ago, I was doing okay. I proudly identified as 99% recovered from the eating disorder which I'd done IOP treatment for twice. Yet at the same time, I was in a rigid daily routine and maintaining a "healthy" yet artificially low weight (though I didn't realize this). But I was doing way better than I had in high school or in my first two semesters of college. However, I was finding myself fairly frequently overwhelmed with emotional flashbacks, and I decided I was stable enough and ready to finally dig deeper in therapy and delve into my childhood traumas.

I was very wrong. I was far from stable enough to do outpatient trauma work. I managed to fight my eating disorder thoughts and urges through the spring semester, but the signs were there: I was slipping. I was crying most days at lunch. I was lying, arguing over food, skipping meals. Things I'd promised myself I'd never do again. Finals week I told myself I had to follow an old meal plan: I needed energy to perform well in my tests, tests which would replace lower grades from days and weeks during the semester when I just couldn't gather the energy to study. And I did it, I finished the semester with all A's, a feat that was quickly overshadowed by my rapidly disintegrating mental and physical health.

During this period of time, my thoughts were obsessively suicidal, but only when I was eating (adequately). And so I stopped. It seemed safer, a temporary delve into my eating disorder in order to stay alive. Seems fair? I was terrified I'd accidently kill myself. I was so overcome with shame and guilt. I thought I'd be able to just turn my eating disorder off again the moment I was ready. But it didn't work like that.

My mental health was overpowering my sheer will power, and I quickly found myself deeper in my eating disorder than I had been in years. And unlike in high school, my body couldn't take it for months and months on end. I found myself in the ER and was told that I couldn't do IOP anymore, that the lowest level of care that was ethically appropriate when I was a medical risk was PHP, and so I did PHP (a day program). I couldn't think straight, ever. My thoughts were hazy. I couldn't concentrate. It was like being dissociated constantly, except it was there even when I wasn't. And as an all A student, a girl who (at that time) found my confidence only in my intellect, I was terrified. But I was also terrified I'd accidently kill myself if I stopped restricting. But, regardless, I ate my meals in program, arguing and debating over every bite. Then curling up and crying. I stayed alive for the swim team I coach during the summer. I coached in the morning then headed to PHP for the rest of the day. And those kids brought me so much joy. They kept me alive. Them and my guilt. The thought of damaging the lives of everyone around me by ending my own made me so guilty.

Eventually, somehow, I graduated, stepped down to IOP again, and only had groups for a three hours 3 days a week (rather than 6 hrs 6x/week). But then one day they challenged my rigidity. They told me I couldn't bring plain rice with 1 tsp of butter + chik'N (vegan) nuggets + steamed broccoli + a cheese stick. It met my meal plan. Precisely. And they said it was disordered. (it was). They asked me to add ketchup to my nuggets. Something overcame me, and I couldn't do it. I cried so much that night that they pulled me out of the room and had me sit individually with someone. "This is not an IOP response." It wasn't. And suddenly I realized that I had never been recovered, that my rigidity was part of my eating disorder, that I had MILES of work to do, and it was too much. I couldn't do it (at that point in time). I felt so defeated. And I didn't know what to do. And in my defeat, my urges became harder to fight, and my intake once again decreased dangerously.

PHP was suggested again, but I was skeptical. If it didn't work before, why would it work now? My outpatient therapist mentioned to me that residential treatment was only a slightly higher level of care than php. I started looking into options. I felt like a fraud. I wasn't underweight. I wasn't physically at risk to myself (my team and my current self disagree with that). But I didn't think I needed it. But part of me found hope in the idea. What if I could go somewhere and receive ED treatment and trauma treatment at the same time? Somewhere where I'd be safe from myself? In my head, the options seemed to be : (1) die (2) starve myself until I die (3) go to residential treatment, give it my all, and try to recover.

And so I picked option 3. I felt like a fraud, but my insurance covered it. I did my research, and I picked Monte Nido River Towns in New York City suburbs. Within two weeks, I was flying up there. I was terrified, but I was ready to work.

It was harder than I ever imagined. I was so scared. Never before had I lost so much control over my food. I got no say in what was in front of me other than my choice of three food items i could exclude. I picked Brussel sprouts and red meat (and later added raw onions as a third bc the chef overdid it on the onions every time). Monte Nido was stricter than my local program in so many ways, but they were also more supportive. For the first time, I was able to begin to explore my past. I was able to start healing. While there, I realized I was sicker than I could have previously admitted. Most of the clients there were at healthy weights (many of whom has anorexia or atypical Anorexia diagnoses). My bloodwork was a mess. I was having heart palpitations nearly daily. My sodium was low, and my water intake was restricted in order to level my sodium. I realized I'd been overhydrating previously, and it felt like I was withdrawing from a drug. I was always thirsty, overheating, dry throat. It was terrible, but after a few days, I adjusted to drinking only 64 ounces of water a day (I know that's such a normal amount lolll I have no clue how much it was before!!).

My insurance only covered 30 days, and I wasn't ready. I discharged to a PHP in Boston also owned by Monte Nido. I stayed in their supportive housing and did a month and a half of php. It helped. I slowly improved some. I became more stable with meal plan compliance. I started to realize how bad my family was for me. It was only in their absence that I began to flourish. I was preparing my own food outside of program. I did another month and half of IOP in Boston, and then in November, about one year ago, I came home to continue IOP at my local program.

And things became stagnant. I would have a good week and then two bad weeks. Things were stable enough to not need PHP again, but not stable enough to discharge. But I couldn't stay in IOP forever, and after 5 months, they discharged me.

I knew I wasn't ready, but I was determined to try to make it work. I knew I couldn't stay in IOP forever. But I wanted so badly to recover, and I was so scared I'd fall backwards.

So I did pretty well for about a month, then slowly things started slipping. I'm not sure what happened per say. I think I was probably brute forcing it, and I couldn't keep it up. I decided to go back to IOP, not in the full program, just twice a week, sort of a tune up. That was the plan anyways.

I did an assessment on a Monday, started that evening. I was to come back on Thursday. Tuesday, I went to my parents, and for whatever reason, my brother told me that it was my fault that I was bullied.

I spiraled. It triggered shame and guilt. It triggered my own belief that it was my fault. As though all my work had come undone, I was suicidal again.

I tried to hold it together. My therapist talked to me on the phone countless times over that week, but on Saturday afternoon, I asked my boyfriend to take me to the hospital. I didn't feel safe with myself. I was scared to be in the bathroom alone.

The hospital was a horrible experience. It was my second time in a psych hospital, and this time was by far the worst. There were 38 women in a small unit. We spent all our time in a day room that definitely was not designed for 38 people. Most of the people there were detoxing and were sporatic and loud and... Terrifying to me with PTSD from being bullied and verbally abused by peers and teachers. Staff were verbally abusive. Finally, after what felt like a year but was only six days, I left the hospital. My suicidality had been quite literally scared out of me, but my anxiety was 10/10 constantly. I felt unsafe. I was shaking consistently for an entire week. Even now, I start shaking thinking about it.

My therapist suggested residential trauma treatment at a place in Florida called the Refuge. They had an eating disorder program as well, so they would be able to take me (as most places just straight up won't take you if you have an ED but most ED places don't do real trauma work either). Anyways, this place was amazing. I was there for two months, and I grew so much. I was surrounded by support. The ED part of the program was pretty relaxed, which in some ways was good but in other ways let me act out through my eating while doing trauma work. But they kept me contained enough that I was very safe physically. I was so emotionally supported; I don't even have the words for it. My program therapist gave me new understanding of myself. She tested and diagnosed me with Asbergers and taught me that some aspects of my rigidity were likely because of asbergers and not because of my ED —that it was OK if my recovery looked a little different than other people's recovery. I was able to share in groups about my childhood, and I received a ton of validation and support for traumas that I perceived as not worthy of being traumatized by. I was supported and respected and made a ton of progress in respecting and supporting myself.

I discharged back into the shitty ass local iop program. I needed to refocus on the food aspect just a little and get back on track with food. I had a little weight I needed to gain in order to be at my own set point. Blah blah. Etc.

This program has been such a mess. My case manager told me everyone walked on eggshells around me. When I advocated for myself, I was told I was being needy. Then they told me I had to discharge because I was refusing to learn to cope with emotions despite the fact that my outpatient team and I both agree that I'd made huge progress. Before going to the refuge, the experience would have been triggering, but instead it became an opportunity for me to prove to myself just how resilient I have become. I finally discharged IOP last week, and this time, I actually feel ready.

I've been meal plan compliant for months. I've been actively using coping skills and managing situations more effectively than I ever have before. I have made so so so much progress; and I can say, today, I am happy to be alive. I haven't had a suicidal thought since being home from the Refuge. I haven't self-harmed since September. I still have work to do, but I can also accept where I'm at while I'm doing that work. Life is good. I am confident I can keep this up for months, even years.

[sirsparklepants]

Today is my mom’s birthday. If she hadn’t died a year and a half ago, she’d be 53. I love her, and despite my childhood with her, I miss her. But I wanted to take today to deliver a perhaps... more nuanced tribute to her than I could somewhere like Facebook. I wanted to talk about a pretty difficult topic: when you still love your abusive parents.

Below the cut: child abuse, parental death

My parents separated when I was eight, after two years of increasingly toxic behavior toward each other. They both continued their separate downward spirals until about when I entered high school five years later, when they leveled out into a plateau of “mentally ill and still abusive but functional”. Coincidentally, when I hit high school (a year early at 13, I was bumped up a year before they split), I made some of the most genuine close friends of my life, a few of whom I’m still close with to this day. And that’s when I started to realize that even aside from being divorced, life with my parents... wasn’t quite normal.

I figured everyone got pissed with their parents and had screaming matches. Everyone had chores and had to look after their younger siblings. Everyone had to sit down and listen to their parents lecture them about the most tedious shit. But... something didn’t quite fit. I’d tell a story that I thought was hilarious and get met by a room full of horrified stares. My friends’ chore load wasn’t as heavy as mine. No one else got crowded into walls and told “you’re lucky I know better than to slap you” or “be careful next to those stairs, huh?” And no one else’s parents thought it was funny to give their eleven-year-old a drink or have them bartend at their parties. 

See, before high school, I didn’t have close friends I could trust. I didn’t understand how to socialize, really, until then. This was my first time seeing into the home lives of other people, and it was eye-opening. Even my parents on their best behavior clearly weirded some of my friends out a bit. Even the ones with abusive parents themselves. Probably because my parents were both alcoholics with severe bipolar disorder with psychotic features. My mom had dissociative identity disorder as well. My dad was a coke addict for several years who blew through quite literally multiple millions of dollars on either drugs or manic or drug-fuelled bad decisions in... oh, less than ten years, I think. So almost everything they did had to be extreme.

But the thing was, though, they weren’t all bad. That’s the thing that people sometimes miss in their depictions of abusive parents. You don’t just love them because they’re your parents. They’re also not abusive all the fucking time. My dad took us on fantastic island vacations and to Disney and out to eat for every birthday and to the bookstore every couple of weeks. My mom made us art and let us watch cool movies and listen to cool music and loved to let us choose clothes we liked. In retrospect, most of those choices were either financially or like, parentally irresponsible (I watched Natural Born Killers for the first time when I was thirteen), but when you’re a teen, you don’t think about shit like that. 

You think, ‘oh, my parents are the fun parents. They’re the ones who will let me stay out at night as late as I want as long as they know where I am. They’re the ones who won’t make us do homework if we have friends over after school. They’re the ones who will let us watch Rocky Horror and not tell any of the other parents, especially the religious ones. They’ll let me sleep in the same bed as my boyfriend. That’s so much better than what my friends deal with.’ And you take the rest of it - the responsibility for younger siblings, the yelling, the heavy chore list that really should belong to an adult that’s basically all the housework and cooking, the listening to your parents destroy shit and sob when they get upset, the hitting, the listening to your siblings get hit - as the price for them being the fun one. Or you think, ‘they let me do so much fun stuff, I have so much freedom, and I still fuck up. It probably really is my fault and this is a justified punishment.’

I was probably sixteen, in my junior year of high school, when I really realized that things weren’t right. I’d been living in a bubble of unreality. And that’s when the bad stuff started ramping up from my mother. I would start fights with her just to keep her attention on me, so she’d stop screaming at my younger sister over her grades. I’d get after my sister for her homework, but much more gently. I’d do all the laundry, clean the house, and cook dinner most nights. And most weekends, she’d get drunk and cry on me about her boyfriend problems, about my dad and how awful he’d been to her, about her relationship with her parents. I became the parent in that household, and it was suffocating. And it was most suffocating because I genuinely loved her. I still love her. I wanted her to do better. And I thought if I left, I’d be abandoning her and abandoning my sister.

I did leave, eventually, and it caused her to attempt suicide to get me back. When my sister left, three years later, she did the same thing. I had a very hot and cold relationship with my mother most of my adult life. With my father as well, but that was mostly papered over by pleasantries. My mom came to me and apologized for what a fuck-up she’d been during my childhood - a rambling, self-centered, guilt-trippy apology, but it was there. But even without that, I loved her and would have tried to make it work with her, because I genuinely wanted her mental health to improve and cutting her support system down wouldn’t do that. If she stepped over my clearly delineated boundaries, we didn’t talk for a set period of time. When she didn’t, we went out to lunch and talked about work and she gave me small little gifts that improved my day - bath oil in my favorite brand and scent, a tiny light with a screen over it to look like a planetarium, oil perfumes, things like that. Because she knew me. Sometimes she used that knowledge to hurt me, and sometimes she used it to care for me.

When she died, we were in a good place, relatively. I didn’t hear from her for Christmas, but I was going to see her for New Years, probably, because we never set much stock in dates. But two days after Christmas, I got a call from my sister. She’d died. She’d died two weeks ago.

I don’t think I can explain the conflicting mass of emotions that rose up in me, those first few months. I’d seen her a week before she died. She’d hugged me. But I hadn’t really talked with her, because it got up to 80 outside (yes, in December, I live in Satan’s taint) and I was making gravy on the stove without the AC and I got sick from the heat, so I laid down for most of the visit. But I said hello to her, and I did talk with her, and I hugged her goodbye. It was good. She behaved herself, didn’t drink, didn’t get too loud and self-centered. It was a good note to end our relationship on. But I can’t count how many times I expressed, to my best friend and my then-boyfriend, that I wish we had been on the outs so I’d feel less grief. That I’d feel less guilty that no one checked on her, even though she isolated herself and often went weeks without speaking to anyone. That if I was angry with her, doing the things that I needed to do would be easier. That if I was angry with her, I wouldn’t feel so badly about still having so much lingering anger about my childhood. That no one would expect me to come up with a beautiful eulogy at her funeral. That her friends wouldn’t be so angry with me for not checking on her.

It’ll be two years in December, and I’m still not done processing everything. I’m still conflicted. But two facts do stand out to me. She was abusive. I did still love her.

Happy birthday, Mom. I love you, and I see you, the whole person. You were doing better, but that didn’t make up for your fuckups. But neither did your fuckups take away from the good you did. You believed that things continue, so here it is, my tribute: I believe you are keeping on, somewhere. I believe that you’re beyond the concerns and hurts that dragged you down. I believe that’s what’s left of you is love. Love and dragonflies and the light of the moon and the sun.

Love, your kid.

[surviving-guilt]

Checks and Balances

Many are keen on accepting the notion that the abused carry the abusers. This is what we call a revolving door.

They would also argue that the indifference of man is just as evil as evil men are by their actions.

If your friend texts you they’re going to kill someone and 10 minutes later does it, are you evil for not stopping them? Most people would say no.

If you and your friend are in a room with someone else, and they tell you they’re about to shoot the other person and 10 seconds later they do, are you evil for not stopping them? A little more wishy washy, but most people would tell you there was nothing you could do.

What if you were in the car with them, they parked in front of an ex’s house, and told you they were going to run them over the moment they walk out of the house? The ex opens the door, your friend whips around the block to gain speed and momentum, it takes about a minute and a half to make it around the block, you see the ex walk into the street, you see the impact coming and it happens. Are you evil for not grabbing the wheel at any point? For not texting someone or calling the authorities when it was still being premeditated? For not getting out of the car when you had the chance? The courts would decide if you were an accomplice or not, but would you be evil for your inaction? Whether you tried to talk them out of it or not?  -- If you say yes, why aren’t you equally as evil for the first example with the text? Why not for the second. People act as though “evil” and “immoral” are synonymous, they like to pretend all things are circumstantial, but that is truly a conclusion that people make up within their own minds. I will start my point here by saying on the conversation of “good” vs. “evil” there is no gray, it truly is black and white; it is light vs. darkness, or light vs. the lack there of. 

I say this because “morals” are man-made and vary culturally, therefore, in the grand scheme of mammal existence, morals do not exist. I know this because my dog does not know I’m an asshole for calling women bitches, but it does know if someone or something malicious or evil is present. Quick word of advice -- if your dog is usually nice to most humans and literally hates someone that walks in one day and you don’t know why, take the hint. Your dog will know to run away because of an earth quake or tsunami before you will, and it will know evil and toxic people before you realize it. Trust your dog. Anyhow, no one would argue that walking passed someone drowning a child in a pool or lake and not doing or saying anything makes you a fucked up person, but everyone has this confused fucked up conversation about what if that child was Hitler? Would a strict Catholic, against homosexuality and abortion, still believe in the purity of that fetus if it was born gay? Where are these invisible lines we draw in our heads and when is something gray and not black and white? I ask all these conflicting questions as someone who believes very little in circumstantial exclusions and gray areas. For example, many people recognize “high functioning” people on the Autism spectrum and that have asperger’s as having extraordinary talents despite their “disorder” but would look at someone who is schizophrenic as having a simply negative disorder. I do not. I feel all mental disorder, both naturally occuring and developed through physical or mental trauma, is both an affliction and a potentially powerful adaptation and expansion of mental ability and/or capacity. This is not to say that this is true at face value. I am sociopathic, have bipolar disorder including BPD, seasonal depression on top of Bipolar, PTSD, severe ADHD, and go through bouts of anxiety at different points in my life depending on where I am, it’s a living hell, i know. But surviving it and battling it head-on when it’s easier to run away long enough to learn ways to manage it and cultivate the “positive” symptoms along with the bad ones has left me more capable than I was before these disorders overtook my entire life. I am in no way saying that ALL people with mental disorders are better for having them, not at all actually. At their worst, these disorders are so debilitating that they kill who they afflict, or rob them of the ability to lead a successful functional life, or even form basic human relationships, and these examples are what most of society uses as their basis for their impression of mental illness in general. When you hear the term “sociopath” the images that come to mind may be serial killers, child abusers, animal abusers, or generally evil people, but I’m sure your first thought isn’t “Owner of a Fortune 500 company.” As i’m sure when you hear “Autistic child” you don’t immediately imagine tech geniuses that are the best in data analysts, developing algorithms to make for better technology, or catching hackers and predators by sorting metadata for big companies and the government.  I’m also sure you hear schizophrenia and think that someone should be in a jacket or heavily medicated and a danger to society, but have never thought that you may have met a very high fuctioning schizophrenic who goes untreated and you just think of them as nice and quirky. Someone you may know with dissociation may come off as selfish and forgetful and insensitive or overly sensitive, but I’m sure you wouldn’t think that in the time of complete crisis, they may be the sanest, most calm and rational person in the room capable of leading everyone to safety rather than being in complete panic, now would you? Someone with OCD may come off as an anal, controlling, selfish, narcissistic, and sometimes condescending prick, but they’ll know where the exits in the room are, when someone may trip in front of you due to an untied shoe, exactly how much time until the next bus, etc. Someone suffering from severe anxiety that has learned to manage it may actually know better than you when something is worth freaking out about, because they focus so hard on reasoning and not letting irrational fears and feelings overtake, that when they finally do let themselves freak out, just like my dog hating someone, it IS time to listen and freak out. People often mistake ADHD as the inability to concentrate, but often time the issue is that they are focused on TOO MANY things at once and don’t have the energy to fix any one thing because they’re experiencing more of the world at once than you can fathom without drugs. Most people don’t believe that in any given moment, I can be listening to you speak, have music on, have a completely different song playing in my head, while thinking about the past and wondering about the future on two different trains of thought going in different directions, and texting someone all at the same time while still actively listening and responding to whomever I’m speaking to with no issue. My ADHD is an issue when I have to sit in a quiet room and accomplish one task, too little stimulus is my downfall, not too much. My last example is those with emotional disconnection issues, be it from PTSD, sociopathy, autism, anxiety, or a variety of other potential factors. They may find it hard to care, like, and especially love, and may come off as “cold” and incapable of sympathy, empathy, or tenderness beyond simple introductory kindness, but believe me when I tell you that when they DO care, when they DO love, when they do form a bond, no one you ever meet will care more, love harder, and try with everything inside them than they will. Saying “I love you” less DOES make it more valuable when it is said. 

So with all this said, when is the last time you had an argument with yourself? Who won? Did that seem like a stupid question? You see, people think that symptoms of disorders are exclusive to those WITH disorders, but you see people every day who exhibit the same behaviors as people like me. How many times have you caught yourself purposely not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk? Do you think your have OCD for that? Do you get sad and not want to go outside or leave your bed when there’s bad weather? Do you think you suffer from major depression for that? Does a similar sound, smell, or image that reminds you of an old bad memory make you cringe or feel bad? Do you think you have PTSD for that? More than often, the case is no with all these questions, but you exhibit symptoms without having the rest. So if someone with bipolar disorder learns how to manage their bad symptoms, but allows themselves to exhibit the more practical or useful symptoms, such as high energy and drive during a manic phase, are they not using their disorder as a beneficial tool or way to get ahead without suffering fully from the full negative symptoms of the disorder? Is this wrong? Or an unnatural leg up? Is it wrong to exploit a disorder for a benefit? You may think it’s circumstantial, but I simply do not. One can take advantage of manic symptoms to simply gain, such as being able to go to school, go to work, hang out, party, have the confidence to get with someone and do school work all in one day with little sleep, yes. But what if someone was just coming out of their major depressive episode, finals are coming up, work is at it’s busiest, their friends need them for help through a tough time, and they’re having personal issues at home? Is tapping into the manic energy, drive, and full-on go mode to not collapse under the pressure they’re undergoing considered taking advantage? I would think not. Now let’s revisit our more extreme examples from the beginning. Someone has a dissociative personality disorder, or “split personalities”, they are both you and your friend in the example about killing someone. Part of them fears the other part doing something they consider evil such as murder, does the part that doesn’t reach out or do something about it get the same judgement the part that carries out the act does? Is not stopping a death  you can evil? Yes. But what if your reason is because there is so much stigma against the mentally ill that the absolute fear of being attacked, detained, misunderstood, or not listened to is what causes your silence? If you tell someone you get institutionalized and labeled a danger, if you don’t you commit the act and are looked at as evil over ill, and you can’t just walk faster past it because both people are inside you. This is the torment that leads us to kill ourselves out of fear for not stopping ourselves from the pain we can cause because we’re afraid to reach out for help. But now, what if one personality is a sociopath and the other is human as can be, and just anxious? What if that sociopath is smart and instinctual enough to catch on to the fact that someone is evil, maybe about to go runover their girlfriend and kill her? It wants to do the right thing because the other personality cares about morals and it sees evil. The sociopath recognizes evil, and realizes he can’t reach out for help because he’s labeled as mentally ill, therefore not credible and “damaged” so he decided to drown the person who is going to kill his ex. You, a neurotypical person, walk past him drowning the would be murderer, and choose to keep walking. Putting all morals to the side, who was evil?  The stigmas we have towards the mentally ill not only cause them to suffer directly, but it blinds us to the great potential those who have mental illness have and how they can do such greater things in society BECAUSE of their disorder, and we shut them out instead of letting them in out of fear for what they may do, instead of letting them in out of excitement for what they may do. That same person struggling with an inner sociopathic personality may be a huge asset to law enforcement, but won’t be allowed to be because they would fail a psych eval.  The point of this post is that if we were more supportive of those with mental disorders CULTIVATING and managing their symptoms to their benefit, rather than suppressing ALL symptoms with stigmas, shame, and medication, we could be a lot further along on our progress as a society instead of muting the great minds that could better us all. We create the serial killers and “psychopaths” of the world by forcing them to have to run away from themselves based on the potential of the damage they can do rather than the potential of the great they can do with self discipline, self awareness, and joined management with professionals that can give them the tools to use their disorders for good rather than suppress what makes them who they are. For some, we are not defined by our disorders, but in some cases we ARE our disorders, and suppressing that makes us less human than you think we are with them. Abusing us makes us the abusers when we give up on trying to get help, and for many the ones we abuse are ourselves to dangerous and even fatal extents.

The biggest thing I want to stress is not looking at someone with connection issues or sociopathic tendencies as a serial killer or societal reject, because when we learn to put our resentment for not feeling things the same as others aside, we rely on our instinct and we’re much closer to recognizing evil the way your dog does than you are, and our trouble grasping “moral” vs “immoral” doesn’t mean we can’t teach ourselves right and wrong if you let us try to learn more about ourselves other than “YOU’RE BAD.” All of this is food for thought, and me realizing what I wish I did years ago, I’m not as bad as I think I am, and I’m not as bad as I can be, and most importantly, not letting myself be as bad as I can be makes me good. It is okay that the only opinion of me I care about it my own, because it is me that has to learn how to live as me, manage me, and control myself for better or worse. Not accepting help is okay, taking a step back and saying “i need this time to figure me out” is okay, and warning people that you’re afraid of not responding well in certain situations or doing something others would find wrong is okay if you recognize something and say or do something about it.

It is okay to be ill and not suppress yourself if you learn to cultivate the good. I am not handicapped, in fact, I’m one of the most capable people I know. Self improvement is not selfish. I may never love myself, but I can appreciate the good parts in all the bad, and that’s huge. FUCK YOUR STIGMA, BE YOUR OWN BIGGEST FAN AND CRITIC, AND BE WHAT YOU GOTTA BE EVEN IF ITS IMMORAL AS LONG AS ITS GOOD.

Congrats if you read this.  

Thoughts?