Burn and Rise #Journaling #ActuallyAutistic #CPTSD #Love #Feminine #Drive

Love was the death of me

I can look back and see the places I let myself believe in the lie just to feel alright

I can’t quite find a single place he decided to lie…I can look back and see many places I could have seen the truth, and I can see myself becoming.

Perhaps it is the wounded feminine–this thing we are calling autism, Asperger, neurodivergence, CPTSD, anxiety…some weak stupid blind thing that is the key to everything. Not weak and stupid by nature but weak and stupid from being held down, used, scorned, shunned, humiliated, put down, cast aside, tied up, beaten, bound…

I don’t know how to go on. I want to live. I have incredible drive still, and nowhere and nothing to put it into. The whole world feels blind and fake. Humanity is a liar. How to cope. How to transcend, not just cope. Coping is how we got here. It is not a good long-term strategy.

We are racing towards extinction and no one seems to care enough to step up and take responsibility, take the wheel, take the reigns, say they are sorry, and rise again.

I want to apologize but I don’t know how without causing more damage.

I am sorry to the people I worked with–especially Aaron, and also Dawnstar, and Most Especially Soibhan, to my son and to my godchildren and all humans and my own inner child, for letting them see me in that state of utter denial and think it was okay for him–think it made him better than me because I believed his lies and everyone knew he was a liar except me.

Love has been the death of me.

I loved and believed a liar that everyone knew was a liar except me.

I chose to believe a lie I knew was a lie and it damaged me.

For allowing my joy, my vibrance, my hope, my enthusiasm, my trust, my strength, my flexibility, my creativity, my sexuality, and my love to be so squandered, I am sorry. I continue learning how unconscious humanity is, and I do my best to breathe through the agony.

I do my best to breathe through the agony. I do what I can to find peace. My body, mind, spirit, and heart are broken. I believe I can rise again if I can just collect these fragmented bits of self, collect my flesh, and get my heart to beat coherently again.

I want to live! I want to live! I want to live! Humanity seems intent on dying.

I think about the monarch butterfly I found whose wing never properly unfolded and so she could never fly. I think about the mouse I snapped dead a few days ago, and Sapphire who suffered so awfully, so terribly, who lived so incredible a life and died so tragically at my own hands. I think about my failures to thrive. My successes too, only they feel like stupid bait for more lies. I don’t know how to move forward without trust, without any clarity, without understanding how he could do this to me, to so many…

I know it is because he was tortured as a child, and his own fracturing happened so deeply he gave up on healing it…I really believed he was trying to grow, trying to heal, trying to become a better person with me. I really believed we were a team working on living life and becoming good humans, good lovers, good parents, good leaders together.

I tried to love my mother a lot of my life. She has tried to love me. Autism or whatever we want to call it, our mutual inability to navigate feelings without being activated, overwhelmed by them, our mutual blindness to one other and ourselves–I actually think I have an incredible gift to see through others, but perhaps it is only those who are also divergent…that does include my mother and alex. Leave it uncapital-ized. I gave him so much honor and respect and trust, so much of me, and he squandered it all, scorned it, humiliated me…still does with his silence, though I worry for him. I worry for the women he comes into contact with. I worry for his daughters. I worry for the feminine and for the masculine.

I need to make progress, and I need to make money. It would be great if they would sync up–I am making another push on Youtube–which is how I ran into so much unprocessed work from 2018-2019–the daze I was in…still drinking a lot, smoking much less, sometimes not at all…so fucking caught up in lies, dreams of things working out, of love being real, of building community.

I posted this publically and considered copying to Golden Music, briefly. I know my wrecking ball tendencies are strongest in the mornings…so I bundle up for a presunrise walk in the rain.

Love has been the death of me.

I loved and believed a liar that everyone knew was a liar.

For allowing my joy, my vibrance, my hope, my enthusiasm, my trust, my love be so squandered, I am sorry. For any part I played in the deception of others or the wrecking of other hearts and minds, I am deeply sorry.

I do my best to breathe through the agony. I do what I can to find peace. My body, mind, spirit, and heart are broken. I believe I can rise again, if I can just collect these fragmented bits of self, collect my flesh and get my heart to beat coherently again.

I’ve been stunned, in a daze, since 2018 when I began to realize I had already been living a lie for a couple years at that time.

I allowed myself to veer off course, enticed by the idea of family, of belonging, of being seen, of being loved. I would say I regret it but I still don’t.

I want to live! I want to live! I want to live!

I am tired from trying.

I have no where to put this incredible drive.

My insides are fire.

Picture me burning and rising.

Guilty Sandwich

I bought a sandwich out of guilt tonight. I went to the post office after it closed. That was probably out of guilt, or a desire not to feel more guilt–as I forgot to ship it earlier. I told the customer I would get it to the post office tonight so it would be on its way first thing in the morning. This time of year everyone wants things faster and lots of things take longer. There’s a good chance it will still arrive on time.

So in order to keep my word, I ventured out past 9:30pm to drop it in a box. On the way, I passed a homeless man on the corner holding a sign emphatically. It was too dark to read it–my eyesight has been getting worse. I couldn’t read it, but I thought it might be a person I used to know. Schizophrenia mixed with drugs, alcohol, and family abandonment–a sweet soul living on the streets for nearly a decade now. The last time I saw him he asked for food and I gave him two bananas then felt guilty when I remembered I had cold chicken in the fridge. He swallowed them nearly whole.

So, when I passed this person in the dark, I thought it might be him, as I often do. Sometimes it is.

I drove back the way I had come, the way I go anyway, though I did have the thought that I didn’t really want to see him because I always wish I could help more, and I even why I try to it doesn’t help much.

I still couldn’t read the sign. He noticed me trying and showed it to me but I still couldn’t. I drove off, still unsure, and noticed it was 9:38. The stores close at 10pm and the closest one was nearly 10 minutes away. I have a little money on a card. I decided to go, thinking about what I could get someone on the streets to eat, still not really wanting to see him if it was my former friend, but also not able to bear not trying.

I made it to the grocery store and the entrance was locked. I went in the exit door. A woman who works there smiled and motioned me in the second round of exit.

I grabbed a few bananas and a couple apples, some hamburger meat for me later this week, some smoked salmon I saw on special. Toured the deli quickly, twice. Finally settled on a large ham and turkey and cheese sub sandwich. I got out the door with two minutes to spare, drove home and cut it into a few peices, not sure if anyone would be out there, though there are many homeless people in the area lately. Thankfully it’s not freezing, though it is cold. I didn’t have drinks, but I put two chunks of sandwich into ziplocks, and each of those in a paper bag with a small apple. One was larger than the other so I put a candy cane a friend left here yesterday in with the smaller one. I thought maybe if it was the friend I used to know, I could give him one for now and one for later.

When I drove back I didn’t see anyone there but I thought I saw someone lying on the sidewalk up the street. I wondered if it might be him just giving up there, with no one noticing. Even though it’s not freezing it will be later tonight. This is the world we are living in. I drove around the corner and saw someone walking into the alley, and someone else. Neither of them looked like my former friend and I felt a wave of relief and sadness.

Homeless people often pair up–this is what makes my schizophrenic acquaintance so vulnerable. No one is pairing up with him. He smells bad and he doesn’t make sense most of the time anymore.

I knew him when he was growing up and he was not always like that at all. He was put on drugs, put out on the street as a ward of the state, and he has only gotten worse ever since. I try not to be angry at his father and stepmother but sometimes I still am. His father and I have a history that goes back to before he was born.

It was two men pulling some carpet out of a dumpster to make a bed for the night. They were startled at first when I turned my car towards them, ready to be on the defense or be told to leave if I was a cop.

“Sorry to bother you–do you want a sandwich?” I held up the paper bags I had packed, and smiled, while also assessing the situation as best I could, aware that I was putting myself in a potentially dangerous situation.

“Oh, yeah!” the man’s energy changed and he smiled, relieved I was not a cop there to shoo them off, no doubt. He was not as hungry as my friend, or former friend has been lately, but he did seem grateful. The other man stood a bit father away, still unsure but looking hopeful.

“I have two chunks of a big sandwich and two apples here, it’s all I have.” I said, feeling awkward at my lie later, since it is not all I have, but it was all I had with me at the time–it was all I brought to offer.

They took the bags smiling, thanked me, and wished me a good night.

“Be safe.” –Our standard human address since the pandemic lockdowns.

I tried to drive off but ended up in a dead-end alley in front of a storage facility I didn’t know existed…with a bunch of desks outside…noting for later as I have been thinking I might need a new desk and these looked abandoned. I turned around and drove past them again.

“Have a good night.” I said, again, feeling a bit awkward and also feeling familiar with the situation. I have lived on the streets, though thankfully it was long ago and not for long.

I came home feeling better that at least I tried, and also very aware of how lucky I am, and how not so well so many men and a few women are doing out on the streets. It is mostly men. Mostly young and middle-aged men. These two were probably 30s or 40s. My former friend is in his early 30s. One sleeps in the alley behind my house regularly. It’s something of a growing crisis in human societies.

I slept under a bridge a few times when I was younger, and I know how cold and hard the pavement and the ground and humanity is. There were far fewer homeless people back then but it was a similar grind to survive. Good days and bad days. I try to treat people like humans as much as I can, and anytime someone asks me for help, especially when there’s no one else out, or not many, I feel lucky if I can help in any small way. I only helped in the act of humanity, to them maybe, and to me mostly.

I guess that must be enough for now.

~ZGALA, December 18, 2023

In Deep. Down to the bone. #CPTSD #Neurodiverence #Depression #Aging #DeathAndDying

It has been some years since I had a dentist tell me that I had irreversible and untreatable scary bone loss and infection in my jaw and sinuses. I can tell it has progressed, and lately, it’s becoming almost constant discomfort, frequent pain, and brain fog to say the least. I can see my heartbeat in my eyes this morning, and can’t seem to stop weeping. I feel alone and try not to feel hopeless. I try not to think about the people in my life who I have tried to rely on. I try not to feel resentful towards anyone, including myself. I wish I could have taken better care of my body. I wish I had learned to love. I wish I had figured out how to make a real family, be a real girl, love and be loved.

I am healthier than I have been at times, but older, always older. The race against time has been acute for…15 years or so now…in this way. I have nearly always felt aware of time in a strange way…I experience it differently from other humans, it seems to me…perhaps there is more of it to a neurodivergent brain. It’s hard to get a whole 6 hours of sleep. I came close tonight, but woke just after 4am.

My digestion and my head and my neck and arms all bother me nearly constantly these days. It wasn’t always this way, but it’s hard to remember times it wasn’t when I am in it.

I felt decent a lot of the day yesterday, but I did have a slight headache that varied and made me very aware that my perception, my balance, my inner ear, my hearing, and my sight, were all a bit compromised. When I assess how long it has been, and the extent of the burn of the salt water flush I did for a few days ran into my ears and up into my head, I think yeah, I need to kind of care that so many of need, and hardly anyone has the strength for, and also, it just creates more of that low vibe, victim-martyr-perpetrator loop.

Most people are younger than me now, it seems, though there is still a big faction of boomers, aging better than we might have expected. Those that remain are in their 70’s and 80’s and only a huge portion of them have dementia and diabetes and other forms of dysfunction. I think we could age much more beautifully. I could age more beautifully.

Beauty has been on my mind, as I age. To be attractive is to be treated well in our society, and to be ugly is to be used and scorned. I know things are not skin deep, and yet, my experience boils down to that in the long run. My parents did not see me and fall in love with me. My mother ran from me, and had to be coaxed into loving me. My father is still working on it. He send me a card last week, I haven’t opened it yet–just got it yesterday and I have only had a handful or two now in this life, and they tend to be emotional for me, just because of the lack of emotion, mostly. I appreciate that he is trying and it makes me terribly sad that we missed my entire lifetime. So much potential squandered. I try to stop crying so I don’t squander more, yet…been weeping nearly an hour and my body hurts, it feels like a genuine expression only I know it only damages me more–puts salty tears in my ears.

I need to clean up more, figure out how to survive, and be as beautiful as I can. Need money to navigate this terrain and more and more of it. This is the rat race we are all in. I try to rise about it. I need to make more life and love for myself. Money is secondary. I keep feeling like enough money will get the therapy and doctor and herbs and massage and neurofeedback and diet I need, but really, that all requires me to change my behavior and thoughts and it’s not like I haven’t been trying.

Threw up this morning for the first time in a long while…thyroid med and coffee and pain not sitting well, overall.

I don’t know what to do. fasting comes to mind. Moving only my fucking head hurts. It’s in the sinus and not so much in the brain, for this I am grateful and also, uncertain. After all, there are no pain nerves in the brain, so the pain I feel in my face, head, neck, and arms is likely spread farther than I can feel. I recall times when I have surrendered to a hospital bed, the soothing pain-free wash of an IV and the beeping of monitors for future carcasses plugged into walls. Those are not inviting or available options currently.

Maybe I gave up drinking too late, or too soon. Maybe if I stop smoking and drinking coffee…probably sugar. I don’t know how to find my way back to feeling whole, good, alive…maybe this is just what aging is. It doesn’t seem right to me. I think we–I-we could do better. It is what it is. My left eye weeps and my right hurts more. I’ve gained weight.

Then both eyes weep. Hours a day wasted just to weeping. It seems like there must be a better way to go about things, I just can’t seem to find it, step into it, allow it, become it…

Bandmates and I have had superficial conversations this week that I realize are probably as good as it’s going to get. My mother and I got back to the safe spaces of denial and pretending and smiling anyway. My son and I meet for meals and he flinches and feels distant when I try to hug him. The deep real meaningful conversations that I shared with Alex have been cast away as lies and I struggle every day with how to navigate the deep divides between the reality I see and the reality humanity seems to live in, which to me seems one of lies and poison and lies and lies and lies. I did a much better job navigating it when I was still drinking and able to dive into the illusion more. Be a liar too. I still am, just, not the right kind. Too disagreeable and impolite.

I push that off. I rally. I rise. I will hold myself as well as I can. I will hold space for my own healing, for loving myself anyway. I do my best to be kind and offer a soothing ear to those who want to lean into me. I do my best not to soak in everything people want to dump on me. I try not to dump on anybody.

I am painfully aware that my perceptions are not the same as most. The comments I get from people I used to believe loved me are agonizing reminders they don’t see me at all, and they don’t want to, and in fact, they will not. So, how now, brown cow? What then, magic hen? Fucking get up and move. Fucking make some more money and take care of yourself. Fucking clean up your fucking mess and leave this place better than you found it somehow.