Going Radio Silent for a Few Weeks.

 I am stepping away from social media and blogging for a few weeks to do some intensive therapy work. This business of voices in my head (which is different from hallucinations because I can make them shut up with some effort) is getting to the point that it is interfering with stuff like my ability to get things done around the house and causing me distress.

So, I'm taking a few weeks to work on this and try to find some kind of equilibrium that I can live with. My anxiety would be off the charts if it wasn't for the medication dosage being increased a while back. I'm having more flashbacks (typically of the emotional sort) back to when I was a child and things were awful. It's just all around not a good time and I am struggling.

I'll probably post on this blog once in a while to keep all six of you who are reading updated. I'm going to warn you right now, things are probably get weird for a little bit.

Looking over old posts.

 Looking over some old posts and noticing the ones with the highest reads are typically angry posts about bullshit that people in some group I've been involved with have pulled. I think I manage to stumble onto key words in my ranting and that's how I wind up with something like one hundred and eleven views on a single post. I also noticed that I was getting more traffic across all my blogs when I was posting more a few years ago when I wasn't having as severe problems with seasonal affective disorder and with my other brain issues.

This leads me to conclude that I should be posting more across all platforms. I just don't know what to write. I feel like my life is boring, depressing, and that no one is really going to be interested in the fact that I had the spoons to put a whole basket of laundry away today. I know what's going on here is that I internalized the bullshit that my mother spewed at me when the concept of blogging first came up: Nobody is going to want to read what you have to say.

That rattles around in my head a lot when I'm depressed. When I was younger and struggling with bouts of depression, I was regularly told to shut up when I asked for reassurance or even some understanding that I was struggling. I was regularly mocked in my home and at school for the outward symptoms of depression (i.e. evidence of poor self care, downcast expression, slow speech, etc.). When I attempted to do things that made me feel better (i.e. isolate from my toxic family members, spend time making art, writing poetry), I got the third degree. I was accused of taking drugs. My room got ransacked on a regular basis. They went through my journals when I started keeping them regularly (I didn't note which notebook was for what and carried the one that was my daily journal on my person almost all the time, so they didn't get into everything, but they tried). My randomized notebooks for poetry, fiction, and other writings made a half way decent method to secure the journal that was handling my life and inner thoughts. I also hid them in random places because of the fact that I had no privacy.

I digress, but who knows, maybe that'll pick me up a bunch of readers. I don't know what I'm doing. I just know that I need to write more. I've been writing more off line and that's getting a bit hairy. Exploring this plurality expression of trauma is creepy shit. I'm having trauma memories come up as I'm writing what feels like somebody else's memories being dictated to me by somebody in my head. Somebody that I don't know but knows me.

I just don't know what to write. Some of the therapy journaling stuff is horrific. Like being beaten for taking a single slice of cheese and accused of trying to starve my younger brothers. I don't think that stuff is quite appropriate to post on here just because it is distressing. If I do take the therapy writing online, which I tried a while back and then deleted after I got extremely anxious and uncomfortable, I will probably be doing it on a different blog.

I may post recipes on a weekly basis. I don't know. I'm not really cooking anything with variety now. There isn't the time and the kids won't eat it. Our menu has been fixed at:

Sunday: Pizza
Monday: Burgers
Tuesday: Tacos
Wednesday: Meatloaf and mashed potatoes
Thursday: Sandwiches
Friday: Fishsticks
Saturday: take out

We've been doing this for a few months now. I'm bored out of my skull. Lunches have been nothing but salads for me and sandwiches for the kids. Deviation from this norm gets the kids up in arms and kicks my anxiety about my carb load into gear. I can't have my favorite foods from the take out places. I've developed a shellfish allergy, so I can't even have my favorite soup once in a while (clam chowder). The stuff that I loved from the take out places are all too many carbs. This has Beloved and I resorting to scanning the nutritional facts about everything on a given restaurant's menu to try to find things. 

It's stuff like basic burgers. It's depressing. It's also very stressful when we go to the in-laws. My half-addled father in law either keeps forgetting I have diabetes or is trying to insult me by talking about food that I should try. It's equally bad with my sister-in-law. It's been three years now since my diagnosis. You'd figure that they'd recall. I don't know. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. I'm not ascribing malice to what could just be falliblity and/or stupidity. I'm just sick of it.

Anyways, old posts. They seem to get the most readership when I'm ranting and accidentally hit buzz words. I make a point to keep this blog separate from the other blogs that I have. I do my best not to cross-reference material. This is a more personal thing than the others. But sometimes it seems to bleed into them or vice versa.

Screw this weather.

 Seriously, the weather today sucks. We probably have over a foot of snow on the ground right now. Winter storm Izzy blew through. I was concerned about it being too cold for the kids to play outside but Beloved convinced me that they'd be warm enough in their snow gear and that they've got enough sense to come inside when they get cold. He was right on all accounts. I just worry too much.

But, there's another arctic front coming later this week. It's going to be awful. I don't know how much snow we'll get before it hits but it's the cold that I am troubled by. It makes my arthritis act up. It makes my rib ache where I fractured it a few years back. (I don't know if I posted here about how I fell down the shitty front steps and our snow shovel caught me. I can't remember.) It makes my depression worse. I just can't handle it.

Cold, grey days screw up my mood to begin with. I'm still trying to nail down exactly why. Signs point to it's because of the bipolar II. Because why not have your mood at the fickle whim of the weather? I have about six months where I am depressed and miserable. It makes it hard for me to function. I have more flashbacks. I have more nightmares. And there's the trauma memories attached to being physically cold. It just sucks.

Stupid weather.

/rant

Fuck depression with a chainsaw.

This is the face of someone who is depressed and struggling to sort out their brain. It's also someone who is desperately trying to be warm despite the cold weather. Our heater is trying its best but barely managing to be at 70 degrees when we have it set higher. Why? Because we're on the windward side of the building and the temperatures are fuck you degrees, with the windchill of go and die.

Being cold makes me depressed as much as the low levels of sunlight this time of year. It brings up flashbacks to living in my parents' house where it was cold all the time because it was super drafty despite their best efforts. Some of those flashbacks are meh, most of them suck. Because they consist of my asking them to turn the heat up and them telling me to suck it up (or something similar), fully aware of the fact that I lack the bodyfat layer that keeps you warm due to the fact I was a preemie. 

It's left a mark. I hoard blankets and quilts. I have a pile of sweaters. I tend to wear layers when it it just beginning to get cold and everyone else is out there trying to get just another day of wearing shorts out of the weather. I worry about the weather and its effect on my family. Today's temperatures, I was hoping that school would delay pick up because the wind chill was -12 deg F. I had the kids wait in the entryway of the building before going out to meet the bus. My youngest was freaking out over the idea that if he was outside, he was going to get frostbite. (He was fully bundled up and did not get anything like frostbite on his walk to the bus.)

I stay inside during the winter because the cold hurts. It feels like my hands and feet are burning, even with gloves on. It doesn't do my arthritis any favors. The weather systems that blow through still give me migraines. It's generally awful and I hate it. The problem is, I remember life before migraines and when I was young and dumb. I loved winter because it was beautiful. I remember getting bundled up into layers and a snowsuit to play outside. I hated shoveling the driveway, but aside from that, winter was fun outside and we didn't have to worry about my parents. My parents, however, strictly monitored how much time we were outside and didn't allow us to be out for very long. One of the few things that they were responsible about, I suppose.

Being trapped inside, however, there was a lot of verbal abuse and harassment. I got depressed and immediately was branded as lazy, selfish, and worthless. To say the least, that didn't help my mental state at all. I tried to keep up with things but it was exhausting. I hid in my room most of the time with my writing stuff and under a pile of blankets to actually be warm. I got accused of sleeping all the time and being lazy because of it. This was all on top of the usual verbal abuse and harassment because of the fact that I wasn't born a son.

The sad thing is when I do get depressed, I have emotional flashbacks to that verbal and emotional abuse and feel that I am lazy, selfish, and worthless. It sucks.
 

Update on the Screaming in My Head.

 It's been a challenging few days. I started doing the work of therapy journaling this purality stuff. It's been hard and creepy. When I talked to my psychiatrist about this, he was completely unsurprised by what I had said and gave me some suggestions on what I can do to start finding equilibrium with all this. I haven't begun looking into books yet. I'm still working out this journal stuff. I picked up a set of twenty four colored pens to use. I've got more than six colors in play right now. It's making me a little nervous.

Not everyone is 'talking' to me right now. This is my second attempt at this type of journaling. During my first attempt, it was more like having a conversation with strangers on paper. There was introductions and such. This time, I'm just basically writing whatever comes up. There's at least two insiders (I guess that's what some folks call 'em, I don't know what the right language is for this.) who are angry with me and each other.

One is young. The age fluctuates but never hits over thirteen. I suspect that this one is actually a pair answering to the same name for safety purposes. Generally, pleasant child but very anxious. She's also quite angry that I haven't let her make artwork or do stuff like coloring books. I am doing my best to make time for that now but it's hard. Tuesday mornings are her time for art stuff now. That seemed to mollify her upset with me. But then there's the anger that is directed at the other insider. I don't know how to manage that.

The other insider is an adult. A very angry and bitter woman of forty. She's furious with me for apparently using her abilities and not giving her proper credit, among other things. She hasn't stepped out as a spokesperson for the rest. But boy is she angry on their behalf. I literally spent two hours going back and forth with this insider. She wants me to commit to the journal work and to acknowledge the others. She wants writing time under her own name. (No, her name is not Brythwen,) She wants me to give her a place to do public writing, like a blog. 

We're still in the negotiation phase on that one. Partly because I can't manage more blogs. Partly because this business has be sufficiently incapacitated at times that I can't write because my head is so full of noise. She wants to make herself known here but I'm not ready for that exposure. I don't know what she has going on and I want to make sure that it's something that's not going to be a problem. Like I said, negotiation is happening.

There are two others who have been making their presence known but weren't as emotionally charged today. They are adult women as well. I can't determine what their ages are but that's never come up in our conversations over the last few days. One is a warrior with a whole world of her own. The other is a priestess with another world of her own. It's weird to have this going on but it's been like this my whole life. I've just been keeping it under my hat and desperately trying to be 'normal'. And they have come out at different times in my life and masqueraded as me to handle whatever situation was going on.

That's why people remember actions or conversations had that I don't. Because I was not in charge when it happened. When these insiders of mine come up to the surface, things get remembered and I have an easier time with different things. It's been strange to me but as Beloved has said, there's never been any indication of these insiders having malicious intent nor have they demonstrated a major change in my behavior. It's all been real subtle.

I have a feeling as I work on this, that's going to change. A few nights ago, the child came forward looking for reassurance and I got bumped to the 'backseat' so that I was aware of this exchange with Beloved. I think that the child/children came out before in the past. I just hope that it's not going to be a thing where it interferes with my ability to take care of my responsibilities and be an adequate parent. 

Welp, screw my brain.

 I feel awful right now. And a large part of it is because of the transphobic and related bullshit on Tumblr in the Filianic community. I warned them literally years ago that these people are a menace. Their response was 'we don't want to strangle our fledgling religion in the cradle'. Now we've got a nice little collection of TERFs and SWERFs who are getting an echo chamber out of people who I had once thought might have been decent. Seeing that garbage is awful. 

It brings back memories of things like being assaulted at school because I wasn't femme enough, never mind I was wearing a dress and had breasts. In gym class, I had one time someone tried to rip my undergarments off to 'prove' I wasn't a 'real' girl. End result of that encounter, I punched her in the groin and backhanded her friend who was going to come in and settle the matter once and for all. When the two girls realized that I wasn't going to passively let them strip me in public, they backed off. I was declared a 'freak' and continually harassed about the fact that my vocal pitch dropped when I hit puberty. 

I was constantly the target of girls who decided I wasn't femme enough because I didn't wear make up, shave my body hair, or wear the latest fashions. I got called a tranny. I got called shemale. I got called it. All because I didn't fit the mold for their version of femme people. I got physically assaulted on a semi regular basis through junior high and the excuse was 'you look like a freak'. I fought the people who assaulted me, which didn't make me any more femme apparently. One kid who thought it'd be funny to try to pants me as I was going up the stairs, I kicked him in the chest and knocked him down half the flight of stairs before I turned around and said, "If you're going to come at me, be a man about it and do it to my face." That never got reported to the school officials. What's the kid going to do, admit he was attempting to assault someone and they kicked him for it.

The girls were merciless about the 'you're not a real girl' bullshit. The boys seized on the 'you have a period and it's gross' bullshit. I had them throw ketchup on me, or at least try to but I dodged out of the way so it just hit the floor. And then the person who threw the ketchup said loudly, "OH LOOK, SHE'S ON THE RAG!" because the ketchup was in the vicinity of my feet. Same moron who did this regularly tried to shove me into walls and lockers with his buddies laughing. I dodged as best I could, but when you've got three people at your back, somebody's going to land a blow. So, I turned around with my purse and brained one of the idiots with it. I got in trouble for my 'excessively violent' response. My parents, surprisingly, approved of what I did and told me next time to put a brick in my purse.

It was the moron with the switchblade who just pissed me off. He kept stealing the lock off my locker and once I had a keyed lock that he couldn't easily pick, he decided he was going to steal my purse and my locker key. He whipped out his switchblade and demanded I give it to him. I looked at the knife and scoffed. Then I walked away, because a kid with a switchblade isn't half as scary as your parent with a butcher's knife, and reported the little shit to the school superintendent. Fifteen minutes later, parents were there the kid was getting chewed out by his mom and my parents were starting the paperwork to pull my brothers and I out of that school in the middle of the school year.

Cue getting transferred back to the school we left because the bullying was so bad that some motherfucker decided they were going to try to strangle my little brother on the bus. Yeah, that hadn't improved. They hadn't forgotten us. We were harassed. My brothers got into fights and then people backed off of them. But I got the 'freak' treatment from a bunch of my peers. It only got worse when one of the ringleaders of my harassment from the other school transferred in to the school I was at. This time, my odds were heavily stacked against me. It was me versus my entire class, with the exception of about five people. Transphobic shit from the girls and sexual harassment from the guys. Explict sexual harassment.

It got to the point that we were getting ready to take legal action when mediation was attempted. One person out of the group of twenty showed up. He left the school district shortly after that incident. The rest, well, they were back at the sexual harassment shit and spreading rumors that I was a whore. I got to experience the ugly side of patriarchy in multiple ways. When I tried to get someone official to intervene I got 'boys will be boys, just ignore them.' When someone randomly groped me in the hall, I couldn't turn and deck them because I couldn't tell who it was. When another person tried to shove me into a locker, I did get a chance to do something about it. I stepped back and let his momentum carry him half into my locker and slammed my locker door on his head about a half dozen times. He never laid hands on me again after that.

So, TL:DR I got the transphobic bullshit and the misogynistic bullshit both in school. When I see these young women spouting TERF crap and SWERF crap, it's painful. It brings up memories of fighting to keep my dignity. It brings up memories of people trying to hurt me because they felt that I wasn't enough of a girl to deserve any sort of respect. It's obvious to me that these 20 somethings have never experienced that level of harassment. I block some of them. Others I tried to educate. And they said that it was impossible that the transphobic crap happened to me because I'm obviously female.

The women I feel safe with are transwomen. There's a real short list of other women that I feel safe with and they usually turn out to be some form of queer.

But, this is the shit going round and round in my brain making me think maybe it's best to just stop blogging so that I don't have to go through the gauntlet of having to prove I'm femme enough again.