#the thing about trauma is that it's indiscriminate. if you are deeply affected by something - haunted by it - it's trauma.

[snowrainandbooks]

That is so true... Can we just start comparing their boobs instead ? And their love for the Enterprise ? That's very much more delightful to see :D

i love seeing people compare tos and aos kirks, but when comparing them, can we not use phrases like “more traumatized” and “less traumatized” or try to quantify which character has more or less trauma? like every trauma is different and it’s gonna impact people differently

and by trying to quantify the trauma of these characters you’re gonna hurt real life people who may feel like their trauma is being belittled if their trauma fits the description of the “less trauma” category

[authoraesthetic]

Please, I can’t breathe. 

Those words fill my eyes with hot, burning, shameful tears. I’m not an emotional person but George Floyd’s story, and all the stories that are so maddeningly similar, make my head pound with grief and anger and shame.

Passivity here is not an option. Turning your head away so you don’t see knees on necks, guns in faces, blind racism, is the same as allowing it to happen. Being on the side of this happening.

It’s time we KNOW their names. George Floyd, Michael Brown, Sean Reed, Steven Demarco Taylor, Ariane McCree, Terrance Franklin, Miles Hall, Yassin Mohamed, Finan H. Berhe, Trayvon Martin, and more. Unfortunately, you can find dozens of examples and names in many places, including here.

These men are human beings. Sons. Brothers. Husbands. Fathers. Family members. Friends. Loves. SOULS. And we need to hear them, see them, know them, fight for them, and create a world where just BEING isn’t a crime that may come with a death sentence.

May we hunger for justice.

Christians, remember Jesus would not take the sidelines here. These are his sons and daughters who are being judged, discriminated against, hurt, and murdered. This is HIS family. Whose side are you on?

I don’t want to hope on a pedestal because this isn’t my time to be seen and it’s not my voice that should be heard. But I can’t stay silent either. I am white but I HAVE to be an ally.

I have a mouth so I can speak out against injustice.

I have eyes so I can see my own privilege and the oppression of my fellow humans.

I have ears so I can listen to their words, their experiences, and their knowledge.

I have feet so I can do something and take action.

I have a heart so I have empathy and feel the heartache and grief that this causes them and the Lord.

And I have hands so I can point to the voices of those who know more than me.

Follow authors such as Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi, and Clint Smith who use their life experiences, families, friends, and knowledge to spread awareness and share stories that are so important. Follow Zellie Imani, an activist who started the Black Liberation Collective, a group of black students organizing initiatives to shed light on problems that are often kept in darkness, setting demands from the college level to the highest level of government.

  And if you’re white and ignore this, think all lives matter, then you need to use what God gave you and OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES to the violence and oppression that is filling this country.

Bernice King said, “All Lives Matter is ideal. Black Lives Matter is an organization & activism committed to ensuring that Black lives become a part of the ALL. #GeorgeFloyd’s last breath screams to us today that Black lives are not indiscriminately among the ALL. Do #BlackLivesMatter to you?”

Rachel Elizabeth Cargle wrote this in 2018 and it’s frustrating that it still applies so deeply and personally.

Dear white people,

I’m tired of hearing you say: “I’m shocked” “I can’t believe this” “I had no idea” “This can’t be real”

That is in all actuality wildly offensive that our pain is so far off of your radar that the mention of it shocks you. It’s actually hurtful to know that the news that’s been keeping me up at night hasn’t even been a topic of conversation in your world.

Instead, when I keep you informed on the blatant abuse, racism, and trauma happening to women of color and their families I need to hear:

“I’ve found an organization that helps in these types of instances and I’ve donated money,” “I’ve brought this topic up to my coworkers and family so we can talk through what’s happening,” “I’ve researched more on this and I have learned more about the history of this particular race issue we have in our country.”

Your shock isn’t enough. Your wow isn’t solidarity. Your actions are the only thing I can accept at this point. And if that is too much for me to ask of you, dear friend, feel free to let yourself out of this community because complacency is not welcome here.

With all seriousness, Rachel Elizabeth Cargle

TOOLS/ORGANIZATIONS/ACTIVISTS/BOOKS/AUTHORS/WEBSITES TO READ MORE/GIVE BACK/DONATE/VOLUNTEER/RESEARCH

Black Lives Matter – donate here

A global organization whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

BAJI

An organization that “educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social, and economic justice.”

UndocuBlack Network

“A multigenerational network of currently and formerly undocumented Black people that fosters community, facilitates access resources, and contributes to transforming the realities of our people, so we are thriving and living our fullest lives.”

Black Women’s Blueprint

An anti-police brutality organization that “envisions a world where women and girls of African descent are fully EMPOWERED and where gender, race, and other disparities are ERASED.”

NAACP

An organization whose mission “is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo – A simple book for anyone trying to understand identity, representation, and racism in modern-day America.

Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi – A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism–and antiracism–in America

Black Is the Body by Emily Bernard – A collection of essays about the black experience and a testament to the necessity of Black storytellers.

Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism by Bell Hooks – For the reader who wants to learn more about black feminism, this is one of the most important and comprehensive works on how sexism and misogyny specifically affects women of color.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum – Through research and case studies psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum confronts the subtle ways in which racism dictates the ways both white and non-white people navigate the world.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – A YA novel about 16-year old Starr Carter who witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Dear Martin by Nic Stone – a YA novel about race relations in America. “Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs.”

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds – “An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother”

Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X by Ilyasah Shabazz – A picture book about Malcolm X

More picture books with POC protagonists. 

This is STILL happening. Please, I can't breathe.  Those words fill my eyes with hot, burning, shameful tears. I'm not an emotional person but George Floyd's story, and all the stories that are so maddeningly similar, make my head pound with grief and anger and shame.

[anjagnorisis-blog]

Artist: Conor Oberst                                                                                      Author: Conor Oberst                                                                                    Album: Ruminations                                                                                         Year: 2016                                                                                                    Genre: alternative/folk/anti-folk 

 TITLE

 A “next of kin” (NOK) is a person’s closest living blood relative or relatives. It is a legal definition in the United States (where Conor lives). According to legal systems, in cases of medical emergency, the next of kin may participate in medical decisions when their relative is incapable of such. This term is not used anywhere in the song itself, except for the title. Its nature, related to legal issues (jargon), may indicate that the author wants to separate himself from the issues presented in the song (death, loss, hopelessness) by using a term which doesn’t necessarily have any emotional connotations in order not to feel sadness himself. He may also use it ironically to point out that people, when in difficult, life-challenging situations (such as death of a beloved person), are limited to the system and its bureaucratic procedures, having no room left for sentiment, nostalgia and pain. 

 VERSE 1 

The speaker admits to seeing a (supposedly) car crash on the interstate highway which moved him deeply to the point he couldn’t get rid of the feeling. The crash must’ve been fatal, with certain person(s) dead as a result, since he ironically points out that the dead person’s relative (next of kin?) must be notified, as restricted in a database. The speaker now reveals that he is, in fact, to notify the relative. He again admits that he feels uneasy as he doesn’t want to call that person nor inform them. Did he know the deceased? Does he know the relative? Or is he just as empathetic? He tells the relative that he has bad news and asks them to sit down to not fall unconscious (possibly). It’s worth to notice that the mentioned “interstate” sounds similar when pronounced to “intestate” which refers to the condition of the estate of a person who dies without having made a will or other declaration. 

 VERSE 2 

We now switch to a different scenery. We’re presented with an image of a bathrobe hanging on somebody’s bedroom door. It belonged to a woman who’s clearly a year gone by the time. Her closest one, possibly a relative, a man (a husband? partner? father? brother? A partner more than anyone else, given the image of a shared bedroom) buried her body by a sycamore, a tree which in Catholicism symbolizes clarity (Zacchaeus climbing it to see Jesus clearly among a crowd of people). The tree is a symbol of place in the lives of Catholics where they’re able to have a clear vision of Jesus, their savior. In Egyptian Texts, two sycamore trees stood at the eastern gate of Heaven. Between the trees the Sun God, Ra, showed himself each morning. It is believed that a sycamore tree and its valuable wood (often used to carve sarcophagi, or coffins) was a symbol of protection for the Egyptians during the journey from life to death. I think it’s safe to say that the author could’ve had both symbolic connotations in mind. He tells us that the man, grieving his wife’s death, buried her under the sycamore. By “the” & the following line we know it’s not a random one, but possibly a tree growing in their garden or somewhere near home, since the man wants to “keep his wife/partner close”, aka wants to have “the best view” to visit her grave often and to have it protected, near. We’re later told that “it”, the man’s partner’s death was devastating to him both emotionally and physically. It “made him old” which may refer to him changing physically (people’s hair, for example, can turn gray within seconds of a traumatic experience) or/and mentally (loss of a loved one is a life-changing experience which provides people with both trauma and knowledge). The man tries to “rebuild” something. His heart? His body? His life? His faith? but he can’t do it, because it deteriorates instead. He’s told by people that that’s the routine of life, that’s what happens - death is real and will affect you, everyone experiences loss, you can’t do anything about it, but he doesn’t want to deal with it that way, he’s unable to come to terms with it. 

 VERSE 3 

Now the speaker addresses the listener/reader. He tells us - “you” - that you can’t perform onstage when you drink too much. When a “star” is born something needs to die - he paraphrases the issue presented e.g. in Andersen’s tale “The Little Match Girl” where the protagonist is told by her grandmother that when somebody dies - a star falls from the sky. The speaker, possibly the author himself, knows the difficulty of being a known artist - drinking problems, the possible loss of one’s true identity which needs to “die” in order for their new image - “a star” to emerge, to please the audience. It doesn’t only need to refer to a musician/artist’s fate though, because one doesn’t need to be a singer to “perform” aka present, carry out, fulfill or accomplish anything. This verb may refer to any actions one can take, including the most basic ones. “Get too drunk” = make yourself unstable so you can’t do anything right. One thing also has to end in order for something else (sometimes better) to start. For us, for the speaker, for the author. For everyone. Later, the speaker clearly shows us his own perspective on the issues as he admits to having “spread his anger like Agent Orange”. Now, Agent Orange is a defoliant, most notably used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War which caused major health problems for anybody who was exposed to it. By “spreading his anger” like a chemical the speaker confesses that he was open with his negative emotion in a toxic, contaminating and damaging way, to himself and other people, probably. He then admits that he did randomly, against the better judgment, as being “indiscriminate”, just like Agent Orange affecting the lives of Vietnamese people. He talks about how he met Lou Reed and Patti Smith (both valid counter-culture icons of the 70s, musicians and poets, self-taught and independent, charismatic) which didn’t have any crucial impact on him anyway. He thinks that yet another loss - of innocence, made him indifferent already. Also, you should never meet your heroes.

 VERSE 4 

Who’s a “she” mentioned at the beginning of the first line? That’s possibly the trickiest line of them all. A partner? A girlfriend? A mother? The aforementioned Innocence? She’s definitely known to the speaker and has the edge over him by “winning the fight”, possibly an argument or a game (like poker) by “calling his bluff” i.e. challenging the speaker to reveal his real intentions (like a card) to unmask him and show his weakness. “She” is smart and skilled. The speaker, as a result, runs away and notices the night has already begun. It is hot, too which can be unusual to some of the listeners since there’s no more sun at night thus the heat decreases. He points out that he has a lighter which doesn’t seem to work and admits that he shouldn’t smoke anyway. The lighter may symbolize the urge or possibility to do nasty things which never seem to work thus it’s better for the speaker to not continue on this path. He says he’s already on his way, “free to leave” as though he can go away already, not restrained nor limited anymore. He walks down the Bowery, fast. The Bowery is a street and neighborhood in New York City. The area was infamous for the number of low-brow concert halls, brothels, pawn shops and flophouses, welcoming all those considered outcasts or degenerates. This line can make the “she”-problem clearer then by adding more possible interpretations . A “she” can be a prostitute, an opponent in illegal poker game, maybe. The speaker cries and through his tears, yet another obstacle, he can’t see the road/path/way before him but he admits and assures us that he managed to get back home; to what’s familiar, close, near, comfortable and considered safe, known. 

 SUMMARY: 

Conor Oberst’s “Next of Kin” tells a story of loss and acknowledgement of it. A story of feeling lost and inadequate, nervous and anxious. A story of failing at living with pain. A story of losing innocence, purity and dignity. A story of understanding loss, facing up to it and finding a way to what is always there, sometimes abandoned and neglected - home. Our own sensible selves.

[tiredbiplantlady]

Love Letter To Myself

I have always loved you - from before you ever existed in this form, I have loved you. I am the drive inside of you that longs for love - I long for you to love me as I have loved you. I am not angry with you for not seeing me - I am merely waiting for you understand. I have to sit back and watch pain teach you over and over because there’s nothing I can say. My language does not make sense to you yet, but you’re getting there. It kills me to watch you hurt so badly. The longing for love inside of you was never meant to hurt you. As you pour yourself into every person who even remotely shows you some kind of action or word that resonates inside of us, I watch knowing it isn’t right, but it’s closer. I know it’s going to end in heartbreak again, but I let you go. 

Some of the best things are you are the devotion you have. You give so much - you want so badly to love fully with every single cell in your body. You feel so deeply and that is a fucking treasure not many people can understand or appreciate, blessing and a curse. You go all in - you give with your whole heart, some part of you still with this wonderfully childish way of looking at someone like they’re the world. There are ways to do that without seeing them as some kind of overlord, and at times you’ve been able to do that as your perception of god and the world changed. You try love and give the way you want to be loved and given to. You try so hard, so fast to create the love you always dreamed of and never had. You have a vision and you see it right in front of you, if only...

If only this person was who you needed them to be. If only they understood you. If only it was the right time and place in your lives to be for each other what you both need. It leads into “if only”s that let you lie to yourself. You want it so, so badly and you see all the potential. Your vision is a beautiful thing. The idea in your mind of perfection isn’t unrealistic. What’s unrealistic is the people you attach the idea to, seeing pieces of those qualities and forgetting the rest, blinding yourself in the hope. You don’t ask yourself “can this person give me what I need? Can this person be who I need? Can this person give me what I deserve? Can a future exist with this person in the desires we have?” 

You long for a person who looks at you like you’re something precious and important, who openly expresses their feelings for you and everything, who speaks the same language you do with your body. You hope over and over with this idea of the future you will share where he brings out all the best parts of you and loves you still in your worst. You want someone who is looking to build a life with you - to bring together the lives you have alone and cross them over without letting go of their respective places. You want to be with someone who goes to music festivals and museums and conventions and cares more about experiences than things. You want to travel the world and fall in love with every place you go. You want to do spontaneous stuff and take pictures of the wild, amazing life you have together - you want to be with someone who wants to document their life with you because they’re so in love with you they want people to know, they want to remember forever. You want to be with someone who makes you feel like the most attractive person in the room because they’re in love with you and that makes sex all the better. You want to be with someone who talks and makes noises and tells you they’re pleased with you during sex and who wants to please you too, who loves the noises you make and tells you how much you turn them on. You want to be with someone who tells you the truth all the time and who talks about how they’ve been hurt, why they’re angry, when they’re feeling something. You want someone who can talk to you without yelling and fighting, who can solve problems and find solutions with you to make it better. You want someone who makes you feel safe and protected - from the beginning never making you feel as though you have to hide any part of yourself, feel stupid or unappreciated. You want someone who tells you how good it feels to hold you and how you feel like home, who smiles when you rest your head on their should and who can fall asleep holding you. You want someone who kisses your forehead and rubs the back of your neck knowing it makes you melt instantly. You want someone who makes decisions with you, not for you or take orders from you. You want someone who is psychologically healthy and who has built a life they’re proud of. You want someone who cares about animals and has compassion for other human beings, who could never even dream of hurting someone on purpose. You want someone unselfish and giving, but reasonable and realistic, mature and with life wisdom and an understanding that what is unknown is vast, but wants always to understand. You want someone with a balance of spontaneity and responsibility, seriousness and playfulness. You want someone intelligent and driven with a width of knowledge and places of special depth - you want to be taught and to teach, too. You want confidence and commitment and a sense of morality with a character that is honorable. You want to be with someone who slows down, who slows you down, who takes the time to untangle miscommunication and doesn’t back away at the first sign of it feeling “too complicated”. Someone who isn’t afraid of complication, but understands that it’s part of any relationship - and he considers that relationship to be worth taking the time to repair, invests in it and wants to make it stronger. You want to be with someone who listens and respects you and when you feel like something is wrong, he doesn’t overreact, but puts himself in your shoes, still able to communicate his side too. You want to be with someone who has similar values and life plans and makes you feel like you can accomplish anything. That whatever you do, he’ll be there to cheer you on and support you if you fall. You want that comfort and certain stability. You want to be with someone who makes you a better version of the self you and and who you bring out the best in too. 

You deserve the relationship you want, and you deserve to wait for it instead of seeing how men fill one or two of those roles and lying to yourself that they will reveal themselves as the whole package. You deserve more than settling for feeling bad because someone only wants you for sex or to give you all of the affection you crave that says “I love you” and not meaning any of it. 

The best, most beautiful things about you are also the downfall that leads to your heartbreak because it’s indiscriminate and lead by desperate need and fear. You see hints of the goal and believe you’ve found it, so you cling praying to god you can hold on forever. You love with your whole fucking heart, but you give it all too soon. You devote yourself, but you do it for someone who doesn’t invest near as much as you do. You believe that if you prove yourself, they’ll follow suit. You act as though they’re higher up than you and you need them to pull you up and give you the things in life you only believe they have. You act as though you can achieve the foundation of your life through the foundation another person has built and included you in. But it doesn’t work that way - you can’t conjoin a house built on a foundation with a frame being built in the grass. You can form a midle ground and connect your walls with someone when you don’t have the base that they do - those people are looking for what you’re looking for, and you aren’t that person yet. You find these people who you think have the strength foundation you want, but really, they’re just getting started as much as you are. They’re immature, inexperienced, confused and trying in their own ways to find happiness that clearly aren’t working. Why do you keep dating people who drown themselves in alcohol and sex? or who move away? or who otherwise can’t be there for you? Because you can’t be there for you - you aren’t ready for someone to be there for you the way you want most. You aren’t ready for the relationship you believe will fix you, satisfy your life. It’s a cruel misunderstanding you have that in order to find happiness, you need the relationship you long for most, not understanding that kind of relationship can’t be found or built without first having happiness of your own. The missing link between what you want and what you don’t have has been this painful, gaping awareness. You’re on an island staring off to the other side of the ocean, but you have always felt stranded here and helpless to get there. People show up and you believe they can take you there, but all along they’ve been figments of your imagination, fantasies you created that waste your own time when you could be giving yourself a fighting shot to build a boat to take you where you want, need, long to be more than anything. You have to let go, risk it all, and show yourself and everyone else that you fought to get off the island and made it, stronger than ever. 

The greatest battle of your life has not been coping with/overcoming the abuse, the trauma, or any of the disappointment, failure, and heartbreak - those were monsters in the dark that felt huge and turned out to be not as scary as they once were. The real fight isn’t with outside, it’s inside - it’s your resistance to the love you want that first has to come from in here, with me. You won’t let me love you so that I can show you how to love others. You won’t let me love you so that you can show other people how to love you too. You ignore me because you believe this isn’t good enough or important - and I’m not angry at you for it. Why would you believe love can come from inside of you and be good enough for you when you were taught in this life that you weren’t good enough to deserve unconditional love? How could my love ever be good enough if it wasn’t good enough before when you tried to use it with mom and dad? How could you let me love you when no one taught you that I could? How can I be angry with you for something you don’t understand and are trying to the best you know how? 

I’m proud of you when you take care of us, when I see you turning all of our love you burn through quickly on other people and put it into me instead, as part of you. I feel loved when you listen to me. I feel loved when you write for me what I’m saying to you so that I know you can see and understand it. I feel safe when you listen to me when I tell you something feels wrong. I feel disappointed, but understanding, when you get drunk and keep sleeping with people who don’t love you, who can’t love you, especially when I’m telling you this while you do it, and I feel how heavy your heart is and the indescribable feeling of self-deprecation, almost a satisfying feeling, as you let yourself think about how much he doesn’t love you as he’s fucking you. Sad and painful in your heart and you enjoy it because you believe you aren’t worth more. You look me in the eyes while it happens, challenging me, and wait for me to scream at you, but it only hurts. Why do you want to hurt me so much for trying to love you, even though you don’t understand me yet? I’m not sure what to do - I parent you the way my mother did. I don’t react and let you destroy yourself because I don’t know how to save you. You have to say no to him. You have to say no to the part of yourself that doesn’t believe you deserve love, because that’s the part that keeps saying yes. Saying no to yourself is not always a punishment. Denying yourself food is punishment, binge eating is punishment. Saying yes to everyone is punishment and saying no to everyone is punishment too. You have to learn to discriminate - you have to learn to think beyond what’s in front of you with a fantasy in mind that skips all the steps in between. You have to see the plan and think about all the working parts. 

You have to fall in love with me first before you can ever fall in love with someone else. It’s the only way you will ever have the kind of love you want. There’s a disconnect here where there’s unconditional love deep down, but it’s smothered by criticism, fear, anguish, desperation...there isn’t something I can name off the top of my head that makes me say I fell in love with you. I want to and I want you too, and this is the only relationship where I can say for certain that it’s possible we can fall in love with each other. I can’t control whether the men in my life fall in love with me, no matter how much I want them to. I can control this - I know me better than anyone else. I know what I like and what makes me feel alive and important and how to take care of myself the way I dream another could. I know that I want to be with someone who supports, encourages and is so proud of me they cant help but brag just a little. I don’t give myself opportunities to prove to myself that I love me. Singing makes me feel conjoined with the other part of me. It makes me feel whole, and yet I can’t sing in front of others with pride or confidence in the slightest. The thing that instantly comes to mind as something I could do to appeal to myself is let myself sing without shame. I want to grow myself that way, let people see that part of me and open it up to the world. I love singing and how I feel when I sing and the accomplishment and praise I get from it. Why can’t I brag about myself like that? Why can’t I say “holy hell, look at this girl - fucking amazing, I’m so proud of her and she’s mine! She’s me!” I’m not in love with myself and I give nothing to anyone to be excited about except my body. I know how to use my body to express things I can’t say. I’ve let myself believe that love will come from sex. It never does and I end up alone and empty later, unfulfilled emotionally with no promises or plans for the future - just the return to an empty and unfulfilling life where I feel alone, bored, and detached with all the anxiety in the world about the state of things, obsessed with wondering when the next time will be I can fill the addiction of temporary “love” from sex. 

I feel more in love with myself when I show myself, when I show what I know, when I say exactly what I think and how I feel. I keep abandoning myself. Of course I attract people who don’t feel I’m important. I don’t feel I’m important and I don’t see a lot in me that I want to fall in love with. I need to show myself that I matter and that I’m good enough for myself - I’m not totally sure how to do that, but I’m trying by writing this now. I want to give myself reasons to fall in love with me by being as much the partner I want to myself as I hope someone else can be someday. Like I said, I know exactly what it takes to make me fall in love with someone - can I be that person? Instead of trying to transform other people into that person, the only person I can transform is myself. I have to be what I want so that what I want will find me. And I’m so scared because it sounds so lonely. There’s no real end, there is no real certainty about when it’ll happen, but it has to and I can’t stay stranded on this island anymore - it’s starting to kill me. My heart has broken too many times to do it one more. I need people in my corner - no one can go it alone. Having friends to support me who truly understand and selflessly want to see me grow, nurture me, tell me the truth is what will help carry me. Those things are part of a foundation, not just a waste of my own time and energy. Those friendships stick around, they last and they help you see that you are unconditionally loved. I have not valued that and instead placed the ideal romantic relationship above everything, even my own successes. 

I need to decide now whether I can make a commitment to myself the way I want someone to commit to me. I don’t trust myself - I’ve known myself for my entire life and the same way I flake in my relationships with others I also flake on myself. Commitment means very little to me in the long run - I can’t appreciate it and I don’t know what it means. I’m much more familiar with right now and what’s true right now that probably won’t be later. I need to decide if I want to keep running myself into the ground falling in love with people who can’t love me, or if I want to truly commit to me. The thing is, I can’t run from me, but I don’t know what’ll happen if I self-abandon this badly one more time. I may not come back - I may become the alcoholic it seemed destined for me to be, quit everything and completely fall apart. This is not rock bottom, but it’s the first level of hell - a hell I don’t actually want to know how bad it gets. I’ve tasted enough of hell to know I don’t actually want more, the death-drive only willing to go so far. It scares me, finally. It scares other people, what I do to myself. 

I have so much want and it’s misdirected into mostly useless places. Dead ends that until now have mostly confused me. You know I’m thorough and need to suffer over and over just to make sure I can’t squeeze anymore learning out of it. It needs to go into me. I want you so bad! I want to be wanted so bad! What’s the problem here?? Why am I not good enough to want?? I have everything you need. So show me! I’ll show you too! Just....do something! What’s so scary about spending time alone with me? What’s so intolerable? What do you think you’re missing out on that you can’t get later after you’ve shown me that I’m worth your time now? 

These are the things I need to focus on:

I don’t feel satisfied with my own accomplishments because I have never been a high achiever for its own sake, I used those things as a way to buy love. I don’t get a rush or an internal feeling of pleasure for doing well academically, I only get that feeling when someone provides me the love I believe I want from them, sometimes in the form of praise for my accomplishments. However, a long time ago, those accomplishments stopped having as much value to the people I wanted reactions from. Getting all A’s for example became the norm and I’d set the bar high enough that when I got a B, I was criticized and conditionally loved. I stopped knowing what else to do, so I stopped receiving scraps of “love” and became more depressed and unmotivated. I became an ultra procrastinator who writes papers the night before they’re due. The value is not in the work I do, it becomes motivated by the fear of losing what I already have and appearing as a failure. I do enough to stay afloat and nothing more because I am motivated not to fail, but not motivated by feeling as though I worked hard. I often forget information as soon as I utilize it to jump through the hoops. I don’t maintain it because I’m more concerned about filling the hole where love should go with things that don’t satisfy it than I am with taking care of myself and directing that desire inward and filling it for real. 

I numb myself with binge eating, sex, and binge drinking. I do this when I feel the “Skin crawling” feeling that, if un-numbed, starts causing me to hyperventilate and go into panic mode. My thoughts are fast and catastrophic, I cry, I feel like I’m dying. It’s the closest to withdrawal I ever want to get. Because that’s how it feels, like I’m low and needing a fix, and as soon as I get it the edge goes away, or if I’m “lucky” enough, I’m “high” out of my mind on a bender. I get that feeling and desperately need the object of my affection to talk to me. I am desperate enough to venture to get it and hope he doesn’t ignore me or act in a way that ruins it. He talks to me and I feel some relief. He invites me over, I feel the feeling fade. He fucks me, I’m not just okay, I’m back at the top again only to come crashing down the next morning when I go home after he doesn’t hug me and kiss me when we wake up anymore. He doesn’t flood me with affection or send me off with one last dose of my drug, a second fuck before he gets up to shower and carry on with his day. He doesn’t want to wake up next to me anymore and he isn’t excited by me. I wanted too much and he pulls away and suddenly none of it is doing the trick anymore. I need more to feel the way I felt before. I thought he wanted me. He only wants my convenience when there isn’t something better. 

I don’t want to treat myself that way and time and time again I’m shocked when other people do because I let them. I want so much so badly, and if I can’t stop wanting, then I need to figure out how to use that want for the better instead of letting it destroy me. That want is one of the most painful things, if not the most painful thing, in my life. Because it goes unmet and I have no idea how to go about meeting it. It is uncharted territory and I’m very scared. Because it means letting go of what I’ve been doing and say no. I can’t grab the next rung holding on to the last one. It’s like that intentionally because I have to jump. I have to actively reject the unhelpful coping mechanisms and reject the people who I believed were good enough substitutes for something they can’t give me. I have to walk away and make it clear what I want instead of always leave the door open for it. I have to tell people that I wanted more from them and so I can’t settle for giving them my body when they don’t appreciate or desire my mind the way I hoped they could. I have to start literally saying no, and I have never done that. 

I deserve more than being second best. I deserve more than being thought of as fun. I deserve more than someone who doesn’t even think about me or my feelings. I deserve more than 2 am text messages. I deserve more than being held to sleep and told I was liked and smart and pretty, only to be told you never really cared. I deserve the love I want. I have suffered long enough and I choose now to stop walking in circles and move forward, no matter how scary it is. I will make it. I am worth taking the risk for.