Something To Say

A little on the nose with that title, eh?

Sometimes I just get the urge to write, and that's not always poetry. It is most of the time, but not always.

I work for the next eight days, which will be absolutely exhausting. They are all twelve-hour shifts too, so wish me luck!

I have been feeling so much pent-up energy lately. There's a lot of grief in there. There's a lot of anger. There's a lot of loss.

One of the problems with PTSD is chronic rumination. It often runs hand-in-hand with denial. Lately, life has just felt like a revolving door of fixations. When I'm not upset about one specific thing, then it's another. And another. And another. Until it wheels back around to the original thing. Part of me wishes that I could invent my own closure or justice. Part of me wishes to receive an apology. All of me, however, fixates. I swing from denial to anger to bargaining most of the time. I know that I can't rush to acceptance, but fuck I wish I could.

For the longest time, I just thought that I was spiteful. I thought that I was just holding grudges and being a bitter person.

So I pushed my feelings down and isolated myself and downplayed my traumas.

I'm learning how to undo that. A lot of that includes sitting with traumatic experiences and letting myself feel all of it. It's exhausting. I wish that I had done this sooner, but at least I'm doing it at all. Some people never even get that far.

I'm proud of myself for confronting these things. As a part of my healing process, I've reached out to some people who have hurt me.

I never get a response, which I tell myself that I'm okay with. It still stings though. Part of me wonders if these people are just running from their own shame and that's why they can never admit to themselves that what they've done to me is wrong.

I mean, I've been in that position too.

I've made several rounds of apologies after my episode. Again, some people never even get this far.

Well, remember my last post? The one before this one?

My ex best friend publicly posted on her Tumblr page about me. She talked about grieving someone while they're still alive. There was also a lot of deflection of responsibility and desperate denial in that post.

It read like it was so close to accountability, but also so far away from it. It read like guilt.

So, it's interesting that it's been several years since the "events" and she still has her tumblr profile linked in her bio.

That post is the last thing that she posted.

She started the post describing how her tumblr profile was always a safe space to vent. That's interesting because I couldn't find a single other post where she had done such a thing.

It feels like a fucking press statement. Like self-absolving oneself of guilt and responsibility.

Honestly, it took me so aback.

How fucking dare she do that.

How dare she "grieve" me when she was the one who did irreparable damage to our friendship. During my episode and before.

When my mom died, she didn't show up for me. I didn't get a funeral for my mom, so my family put together a celebration of life for her. It was the only thing that we could do. We didn't have her ashes or any of her pictures or possessions because of her abusive husband. We had to make our own memorial for her with what we had.

I asked my best friend to be there.

After the event had started, she texts me. She casually says that she's uncomfortable and won't be making it.

I was livid. I was sad. I lost my mom in this horrible, sudden, traumatic way and she couldn't even be bothered to be there for me? She was my only friend who actually met my mom. It was so important to me.

I was pissed and stopped talking to her.

Well, she runs to her ex best friend (who hates me) and tells her everything. She tells her all of my private business in an attempt to get validation that what she did wasn't shitty. Even this other girl told her that that was messed up, but somehow she couldn't figure that out on her own.

I should've cut it off then, but I didn't. I was so desperate for kinship in my grief that I accepted a half-assed apology.

I shouldn't be surprised that she hurt me again. In an even worse way, too.

That's one of the things that I'm fixating on lately, but it is also new information to me. What she did is one thing, but to post about it is another. She has no right to post that and keep it up for years.

It's ridiculous.

I have never been so vulnerable in my entire life as when I was recovering from psychosis. A lot of people really kicked me when I was down and I have a lot of problems letting that go.

I'm working on it in therapy. I'm writing about it here.

I'm getting through it as best I can.

I'm trying to remind myself that these people cannot hurt me anymore. They are barred from my life. I am safe from them.

Somehow, they still haunt me. I am trying to be compassionate with myself in this process, but it feels so painful and so slow. It's hard not to revert to my old coping mechanism of shutting it down and locking it away.

Fuck, doing the work is hard.

I am doing it though. I'm really proud of myself for that. I have pulled myself up from the darkest time of my life and alchemized it into something better. I have never been stronger. I have never been happier, even with all of these big emotions.

My aunt recently asked me to vote for her for an art contest, so I did. I was inspired to look at all of her paintings on her Instagram feed.

God, she is so talented and loving.

She always comments on all of my Instagram posts and she always tells me how much she loves me. How proud she is of me.

I remembered that she painted me. I was a teenager and walking home from school when she was inspired to paint me. She did that entirely of her own volition and gave the painting to my dad.

What an extraordinary kindness that is. How many people can say that they've been painted? How many can say that it was genuinely because they inspired someone?

It made me feel beautiful. It still does.

I have a lot to be grateful for.

I'll talk to you later, kay? <3