🏴‍☠️ Bones

See? Weird as hell.

I balk at discussing my system openly because it feels so… some kinda way.

But we’ve had several alters attend therapy every week for years, doing the heavy lifting and rebuilding our sense of stability and safety internally, without shame. Grateful for them, too, for learning how to do the work.

Childhood trauma makes our lives so damn small, so limited in experience and vision. When other people feel like a threat, reading becomes in invaluable tool to open up our world.

"Read wide & deep. Read like your recovery depends on it." Amen. Read to build out our recovery world.
#cptsd

I also don’t recognize myself when I’m hopeful. I was an asshole; a persecutory alter, cynical, violent, aggressive, isolated, in denial, and angry. So angry. Who am I without my anger? I don’t know yet.

But there are birds chirping and the breeze is warm, and I am so alive. My own mind no longer feels like a minefield. I hope to never take this for granted.

Part of this is simply trying to come to terms with reality. It no longer feels like the trafficking happened to someone else (who is also me). It feels like it happened to me, just me, standing here like🧍what do I do with this now?

but didn’t grasp how it impacted every moment, every day, every idea.

I am trying to adjust to feeling real but it feels like the floor will drop out from under me if I’m not careful, and the static and fog will return. I don’t want it to but also don’t know what to do with myself.

It’s real! It’s all real. It’s so disorienting to wake up one day and learn that my memory never lied, that I was right to be so afraid that I hid from my own mind, and to suddenly have that fear and doubt dematerialize. I intellectually understand derealization as a protective function,

Holding this one close tonight.

No matter the trigger, it's never the wrong response to push pause, step back, breathe, & check in w/ ourselves. Whatever the trigger is, we're going to need space, self-awareness, & oxygen to process it & respond intelligently.

When in doubt, hit up those basics.

Last night I was eating vanilla ice cream with rumchata poured over it and realized I was grateful to be alive so I could experience it.

So I guess that’s the first real entry: vanilla ice cream, rumchata, chocolate sauce, and a cookie for a spoon.

I am interested in a lot of things: neuroscience, psychology, critical theory, youth liberation, poetry, experimental and/or dystopian fiction, and writing all help keep me here.

Thanks for reading.

This account represents an effort to reconnect to the world around me and not be lost to the static in my mind, to document my own gratitude so I can access it, and maybe connect with my own history in a way that makes sense to me. I am learning to navigate being real.

This space is my attempt to document whatever small, banal things make me feel like existing in the world, even as a small piece of a larger self, feel worth it. I don’t know what that will look like yet but I wanted to pin a blanket TW for anything about my life that might surface.

About: I’m an adult survivor of CSA, incest, trafficking, & I live with a dissociative disorder as a result. I have spent many years in treatment and learning how to live. Over the last year, I have glimmers of clarity and inner connection that make the pain and work of recovery feel worth it.