weirdmaggedon-reporter

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

Grieving for all the safe and comforting touch I’ve missed out on

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

Quotes from my paracosm:

Para 1: Affirmations don't erase your trauma

Para 2: They're not affirmations. I'm just gaslighting myself. I have never suffered a single traumatic event in my life

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

Talking with an old friend after a long time is like you died and now you’re reborn only to see your old life being made a museum. And you’re just going around the museum remembering things you’ve forgotten, touching pieces of your your old life, smiling in reminiscence. This feeling of happiness yet sadness because oh God, you’re REMEMBERING sth you’ve wanted to forget for so long. “Oh God I forgot you had a quirky reply to everything” and “remember we were supposed to meet up but it never happened and I still haven’t gone into that restaurant because I still want to go there with you” and “damn I forgot what a cynic ass you are now that’s inducing nostalgia” And “I thought you were a hopeless romantic what happened to you.” And “I want to tell you SO MANY THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO ME RECENTLY.” And “I don’t want to let go. Please I need to stop but I can’t I can’t I cant.” And lastly,“I miss you I missed you I’m missing you as we speak I just didn’t realise how badly I missed you. Maybe by next week I’ll stop missing you again.”

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

It's evolving 🛏

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

burning.mp4

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

Joy strains through grief,

sifts down with grains of sand to chip at the teeth.

Your molars ground in your sleep—

was it me, stuck between your gums?

Joy turns to glass,

falls from a flung-open cabinet to shatter on tile.

Your feet, always sore—

was it me, hiding in the grout?

Joy, resting in a Glad bag.

Joy, sold for five cents at the bottle return.

I am bottled and your arms are wires.

I am uncorked and your fingertips are flames.

Joy strains through grief,

stares up at wineglasses of guilt,

watches me drink them down.

The carbonation is gone. A dull sting.

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

I don’t know how to act around you..

[weirdmaggedon-reporter]

TW: SA

Something that’s kept secret about the aftermath of sexual assault, especially subtle assaults that people say “aren’t a big deal,” is that it can make you completely paranoid that the way you’re touching someone could be unintentionally traumatizing them. Because I’ve done so much rationalizing that my assaulter didn’t mean it, that it was too slight to matter, and that I overreacted, I now place extreme weight on exactly how I touch and am touched. It’s especially difficult to trust people when they unexpectedly touch me on the shoulder, because I remember the time it got scary and start to feel guilty all over again. Guilty for knowing that I was touched in a sexual place without my consent, but wondering if it was an accident and well-intentioned. Guilty for leaning on them before it happened, because it makes me think I’m just as bad. Guilty for speaking up, because I’ve been told by so many people I trust (including my assaulter) that it wasn’t assault. Guilty for continuing to do physical things with that person, because I think I manipulated them into touching me when I didn’t want to be touched.

OCD makes this even more complicated. I’ve had periods where I’ve had to compulsively re-enact the way I was touched on myself, to determine any possible way that it could have been accidental. I go over every time I felt too guilty and afraid to make myself say “no” or “stop,” and convince myself that I subconsciously manipulated that person into touching me and that I’m the abuser. BPD makes it even worse, because of how terrifying it is to speak up and risk losing someone that your trauma posits as the only person worth knowing. And because my reactions to being invalidated and left by my favorite person (aka my assaulter) were obsessive and “crazy” (which they were; I harassed them online begging for attention and accountability and to talk to me, which was really wrong). I kept feeling uncomfortable, kept blaming myself, and stayed convinced that I was the one causing harm because I ended up starting to crave unwanted intimacy and discomfort and it was eventually all I could think about.

People tell me my assault wasn’t assault, but I still get somatic memories where my arms feel like fire because that’s where I was touched first before that hand snaked up to my chest and I finally felt nothing. I still get flashbacks to touching people and being so terrified by initiating that it made me dizzy and sick. I still have distorted memories and fear surrounding physical intimacy. I started abusing substances despite promising myself I’d never do that, to make touch bearable and so that I wouldn’t feel to blame for it. I’m still terrified of talking about it, because I think it’s my fault and I’ve been convinced that I’m manipulative and so I no longer trust my own memories and perceptions. And I’m still obsessed with my abuser. And the way I confronted them, hysterical, while they calmly reminded me of every detail I’d misremembered and every reason it wasn’t wrong, every reason I was the one who’d made them uncomfortable, has terrified me into eventual silence. But at this point I just don’t care what they have to say about my reactions and what they think of me. I know what the truth is, though it’s been warped, and I hope someday that will be enough for me to allow myself peace.

I’ve read that people who’ve been assaulted often feel like they caused their assault, but I haven’t seen much about the fear of causing someone else to feel the way you felt, and the constant analyzing of every form of contact to determine whether it was consensual and whether there were somehow sexual intentions behind it. The fear of being predatory has emerged for me with people who’ve made me uncomfortable through touch, because I typically end up wanting more of that discomfort and powerlessness from them, and I then panic that I’m the abuser for continuing contact.

I hope this is something that people can relate to and maybe get some relief from by seeing that they’re not alone. Becoming addicted to your abuser and trying so hard not to accept that they’re your abuser, that it’s you instead, that you secretly wanted it and you made it happen and that therefore you’re the predator, it fucks with you in incomprehensible ways. I remember telling my assaulter that I had abused THEM, because I was so convinced of it. This terrifies me further, because they have that false admission of guilt forever. But I’m going to try to stop blaming myself. I hope other victims are taking steps on this journey too. The fear that it’s my fault and that I’m the one who should feel ashamed, it’s been killing me. I don’t want to let it kill me anymore, while my assaulter gets to blame me and feel no remorse.

My black-and-white thinking constantly gets the best of me. It convinces me that my “hysterical” episodes somehow cancel out the fact that I was assaulted. It feels like I’m being manipulative, for begging to just be held, for begging to just be loved by the same person who destroyed my ability to trust touch in the first place. I’m terrified that I became just like them, because my understanding of consent has been destroyed by the subtle wearing-down of my physical and emotional boundaries over time. It feels like I’m a dirty liar. It feels like I deserve to suffer. But I deserve peace. I was assaulted. And I have to choose to be the one person who believes me every day. I hope it gets easier.