ventingoutmyass

[ventingoutmyass]

2.9.25

update: i am totally utterly royally FUCKED

[ventingoutmyass]

2.7.25

more than anything, more than a stressful moment, more than low feelings, more than days of episodes.

I have hope.

and I'm not sure I've experienced that before. not truly. not in a way that holds anything below some simple words or fleeting feelings in a moment.

it's underlying in every moment, every thought and every feeling, for weeks now, lies something that makes everything just a little bit sweeter. It holds a familiar spot, just months ago filled with something else. every thought, every feeling, every moment held down by a chain, haunting everything. what was once hollow and despair, is a hope.

this hope is not ignorant. this mind and this body know the alternative. the alternative is familiar, its comfortable. in the way the smell of cigarette smoke is comfortable and familiar, so is giving up.

the work is possible. the work can be done. it doesn't need to be all at once. find the priorities, and take them head on first.

I have to love people first, learning to let them touch me can come second.

the work is tiring, it's hard, and the other areas are stressful and expensive. but it comes with feelings I've never been able to feel and appreciate before. I've known happiness before, and soon I will know it again.

[ventingoutmyass]

2.7.25

"accepting the hands extended to me... to one day train to extend my own."

this morning was the last shift a coworker had before moving full time to her new job, upon saying my goodbye I decided to extend my hand, and insisted we make plans to hang out, and she was visibly excited, and I genuinely could've cried. this evening I will hang out with my best friend somewhere i haven't been in years and with his friends I haven't seen in years. I hope connecting will be easier now that I want it, no longer only because I need it.

I've said a lot about human connection over the years, and what it means, and what I think and need and think I need.

there's no way to ignore the innate human need for connection to others. to ignore it is to kill yourself, one way or another. to reach for it is to live. to connect is to love. to love is to live.

this is the work it takes.

this is the work i can do.

[ventingoutmyass]

2.1.25

trying to face the things I'm used to running away from, these last couple years. human connection being the most notable, though showing specks of vulnerability, sharing bits of myself, allowing the rejection dysphoria to pop up, showing up for people.

telling my best friend, the one who's poor connection perfectly overlapped with the time I would've shoved him away anyway, that I love him after years of fear in crossing a line. going to a different farmers market that was recommended by a coworker to cried to me yesterday about her abusive ex. I don't have a third example because it's only 7am.

but, coming across light reluctance a couple times a day, and just pushing through it, dealing with the situation, accepting the hands extended to me by people who care or wish to care. to one day train to extend my own. this is the work it takes. this is the work I can do.

[ventingoutmyass]

2.1.25

the dissociative episode has ended, though the sour mood has stuck around.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.27.25

sorry, the Last First Day On Record was yesterday, but I'm not even sure if it's started or not. so nothing really to share tbh. sorry lmao

[ventingoutmyass]

1.27.25

yesterday I had a moment, at 10am walking the trashcans to the backroom at work, and moment of "maybe this is it, the dissociative episode is the start".

I was grumpy, had been for a few days, the cause probably being frustration about the days-deep episode. it got better after the morning, and it hasn't flared since. I'll have to let you know when I believe it's over. constant check ins, that's a personal promise I made.

though in fear of being insensitive, I will share that there was a suicide less than 24 hours ago, a close friend of my stepfather. They had left soon after getting the phonecall, but I'd been there for the first minutes of the fallout.

I was reminded, the same reminder I'd had almost a decade ago, of what the incredible impact can look like. a reminder, some nine years and several cycles and too many 180's to count, that I don't want to mimick that incredible impact.

there are people who would be devastated, many people, in fact. even if I put years of separation between us, how many past friends would cry in a way that would mirror the current ones?

enough.

the devastation it would put on my brother, alone, is enough. and I can't run from that. that's why I'm doing this in the first place. He will always be what convinced me to change my mind.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.25.25

I've just taken a sativa gummy for the first time. I now understand why artists smoke for the creativity.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.25.25

sure, my time blindness is terrible even on good days, but having no idea what time it is until I can see the sun or knowing what day it is until I have multiple environmental factors enforcing the fact that is it most definitely saturday, will never not be an incredibly disorienting experience.

on the bright side, walking this funny line of making efforts to be healthy and make worthwhile investments to undo the two and a half years of sacrifice in the middle of winter would always have set the best chance of success. that's not sarcastic. I have the opposite of the usual seasonal depression. ya know. Phoenix heat. autistic poor temp regulation. I have many jackets but the same fucking layer of skin will always curse this mortal body.

but I'm running my little errands by myself at 10am this cold, overcast Saturday morning. and I'm having a wonderful time doing it. even if I still struggle holding a budget.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.23.25

last,, three?? days, I've been in and out of one of the dissociative bouts. that's been rough. sometimes these guys will only pop up or a few days over a few weeks, sometimes it'll be everyday for a few weeks, and once or twice or thrice I've been stuck in it 24/7 for a few weeks. if it lasts more than one episode over a couple hours, it's usually only a few weeks. I'd call it lucky if it didn't usually happen every few months.

did get scared this morning at 6am fifteen feet in the air at work, the thought first passing through that these could be the first days.

if they are, thats alright. hoping to escape it was always a silly and unlikely thought. the goal is getting through it, not totally escaping it.

there's a reason I'm still sick in every fantasy I've had.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.17.25

reading bkdk fanfiction like a little fucking rodent whispering to myself "we're so fucking back" over and over again.

to anybody whos never had any kind of similar experience to what my last few years have been, this is what coping looks like.

I am nothing, if it weren't for the gaping hole in my chest exclusively reserved for [fictional] romantic couples and my severe attachment of human connection to them.

just a constant over my life, the feeling that "nothing feels real, except for them"

and also the whole idea ig of choosing somebody for the sake of choosing them and loving them wholly for the sake of loving them. chosen unconditional love, perhaps.

remember i said not too long ago that I don't care about feeling loved? yeah. maybe healthy brain has changed its mind after 26 years.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.12.25

"just know, my day of the end, this was all your fault"

a bad day is decided by me. she does not get to decide it.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.11.25

hope is seen in the way i look forward to talking about this to my loved ones in the future. patience, to wait to tell my friends now. to tell them "I was planning for this to go so so badly. but it's not. and I'm here with you instead."

there is time. there is. the latest First Day on record is fifteen days away. I won't feel relief until February. I won't loosen my grip until May. I won't speak of it until I hit twenty seven.

but i will speak of it. i will live a good life, a happier life, knowing what I now know.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.10.25

just a casual reminder to myself that in about a week when my period hits, there will be a rough day or two, but it will not be First Bad Day. thank you for listening.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.9.25

how did I get through the bulk of 2k22's pitfall? the same way I'm starving off this years. Bkdk to the grave bb!! <33

[ventingoutmyass]

1.7.25

I want to wake up to a bunch of 'happy birthday' texts this year. that's what I want for my summer.

[ventingoutmyass]

1.2.25

"maybe I shouldn't have implemented the no new friends rule. this is such a sad life to leave behind. there couldve been more people to mourn me the way I'm now mourning the birthdays I'll never experience again. " 6.27.24

I come across this one occasionally, and it makes me want to cry every time I read it. the words seem pretty surface level, it's nothing I dove deep into on this day to explain how I was feeling. but I remember how I was feeling.

this was the first time I realized, this wasn't what I wanted anymore. I didn't want the people I've cared about to forget me. I didn't want to leave the world having touched it as little as possible.

this was the first day I realized that the decisions I had made, all the work put into driving people away, wasn't worth it. The agony I forced myself through for this stupid rule was not worth any thing. This was the first day i realized I made a mistake. This wasn't the life I wanted to leave behind. At some point, this was the life I maybe didn't want to leave.

though, to say the agony was not worth anything, would be a lie. to know hardship is to believe hard things can be easier. I've known a life with few good things, few good people. I can know a life with more, and face the trouble and work it takes to have that. three years ago, I wouldn't have been willing to work through the bigger issues underlying that I felt okay to ignore because "I'll be gone anyway". I can work through the rsd, I can seek gender affirming care, I will go see doctors about problems I've had for years. I will talk to my friends. I will leave the people I need to leave.

I will have another birthday. And I will celebrate it the way I want, with the people I want.