#this is not a negative post btw! it's not venting or anything jiji think we're exchanging stories about ourselves over

[ii-zi]

In theory I like the idea of therapy bc, as it's so easy to see the second you “step” into this blog, I always have so much to say and can keep going for ages lol (edit: as shown under the cut).

But when I actually need active help or get the opportunity to get help, I can never get a single word out. I used to be The Kid who knocked on doors for others, spoke with the adults for the flock of 30-40 children of my class that would follow behind me whenever it happened, etc. But ever since what I personally call “gaining sentience” happened back in the transitional period from the end of middle school to the beginning of high school, I get so much stage fright I completely “blank out” and my brain and body go into autopilot.

And it used to be such a foreign concept to me: in theory I understood it, but I could not not the life of me put myself in their shoes.

I'd give presentations for fun, jump immediately at the chance of being the first one just so I could have as much time as I could to speak, etc. Yet once I started high school I gradually became more and more terrified of stepping up to participate, etc. I had my first solo presentation (with an already teacher-revised script, formal clothing, etc) on my second year, and the second I stepped up I was already stepping down. I gave the entire presentation and remember not a single thing. My classmates said nothing and clapped normally, but I could tell they noticed something was off, yet the only comment I got out of them was that i looked “sort of absent”, so I don't even have an idea of what happens “outside” when it happens.

I'm not completely clueless, however, and it just occurred to me that, just as the stutter I developed around the time, it's connected to me slowly becoming more and more self conscious about not only my self image but also my speech, since if i have clear memories is of how often everyone around me remarked how “unbelievably fast” I spoke, to the point teachers would ask this one classmate (who I'm guessing could keep up pretty easily bc he was a musician?) to "translate" whenever I went too fast, so they could understand me without making me repeat myself (which obviously bothered me bc I had so much to say lol).

This bad habit never really disappeared, but it's instead hampered by how bad my stutter gets when I speed up at all lol, so it's not usually a problem, unless I'm with someone I'm immensely comfortable with and I just speed thru the stutter, knowing they'll understand me.

And I honestly think both how I spoke so fast and how I stutter nowadays contribute to the sort of like? “pet/creature” sort of view/idea of me people have? I've obviously never had a person come and say it to my face, but I'm not clueless, and I've spend so long actively studying people's reactions and public behaviors (only way I can have an idea of how it's "right" to behave lol), and I can see how they look at me as if I was a toddler babbling who thinks they know everything there is to know but it's just babbling nonsense, or like a sort of funny looking dog that regardless of what it does it makes you laugh just because.

And frankly? It wouldn't even bother me, if the fact that people clearly see me like that didn't contribute to neither my pain nor any of my problems ever being taken seriously.

They all feel the right to react accordingly to my wrongdoings when any of them are of any inconvenience for them, yet not of my problems are big enough because to them it's akin to when the funny dog gets his tail stuck on the fence, and you wanted to help him, really! But by the time you could stop laughing the dog already got itself out, so no biggie, right? Just keep going

And this is all the sort of stuff I'd love to say to the therapist! But there's so much I can never get myself to find a single place to start from, an argumentative line to keep up with, or even identify the "problem" I'm supposed to be complaining about.

And I find it kind of funny, but also kind of silly, how easy it flows for me when it comes to writing here as if I was chatting! Like I know people may read it or not, maybe leave a like, may think a while about it, and then keep going with their lives; and there's just something so familiar, so comforting on it?

Like, my problems are heard. No, there's no "solution" offered, but I already knew there wasn't gonna be one! Because it's not as if I never tried to find one! But here there's noone who'll come, to my tumblr out of all places, to pretend and fix it all by giving me little tasks or motivational speeches.

Sometimes I do get your regular one or two people who approach me really concerned for this persone they know solely as a concept. And these people always offer such sincere words of encouragement, such a natural feeling worry, that I genuinely cannot help but feel better thanks to it.

And I can't explain! I could, if I were to stop and actually analyze it, but there's not even a need for it. It's strange, and I wouldn't have it any other way, how legitimately nice it is to just drop any worry or stray thought into the void knowing that, regardless of what happens after, there's not actual consequence to expect, no way any of it would have a palpable negative impact, not even on myself.