I’ve written about this before, but it’s a problem with many layers. I really hope I’ve finally come to the core of it, because my need for validation has fucked up so many opportunities, relationships, jobs, situations, etc.
I’m going to quote an earlier post for reference: “I won’t get into my shitty childhood right now, but suffice it to say, I’ve grown into an adult with a tremendous void in her soul where a parents’ love for their child would typically go. I throw as much marijuana into that void as possible to try and plug it up, but that hasn’t worked so far. My weird comics ameliorate the wound, but it will never properly heal. Music gives me a way to express the pain, but it never fills the void. No random, viral deluge of likes or views or subs or sales is going to do it for me, either (not that that’s ever going to be a thing). But now, suddenly, I’m turning to social media again to try and pROmoTe mYSeLf, and find some kind of validation for my artistic existence. -pukes- The worst thing about being an artist, I think, is the constant conversation I must have with myself justifying my need for people to see my art and acknowledge my skill. It’s such an insidious need, and it ruins everything.”
I find myself standing at the edge of a bottomless pit. It’s clean, shiny, and gleaming black now. I’ve removed all of the gunk to expose the open wound. It’s a cold hole in the floor that drops off into an infinite void. It’s a hole that shouldn’t be there, but in truth it’s healed on every edge, like a body piercing. There is absolutely nothing that can fill it.
The last time I felt truly safe and truly loved in my mother’s arms, I was 3 years old. I didn’t lose her until I was 20, in 1998, but that day in 1980, as she held me in her arms while we rocked in the rocking chair in the living room of that little trailer, was the last time I remember her as a safe person. I remember the moment so precisely, because I remember in that moment telling myself that I must remember it well. (Yes, as a three-year-old.) My cognition, perception, and pattern recognition are part of my autism gift. I made that memory indelible in my brain. I’ll never forget that beautiful feeling. It’s what I imagine death feels like. I realize how morbid that sounds. What I mean is all of the pleasure chemicals that get released into your brain when you die, or if you are religious, the feeling of your god accepting you into their arms in infinite love and light. That kind of thing.
The character in the image above sort of embodies this endless search for a feeling of wholeness. For those who may read this and don’t know this guy, his name is Poltergeist, and he’s one of the antagonists in my comics. I haven’t gotten to his origin in the series yet, but to summarize it here for the sake of my mental wellbeing: his mother was murdered in front of of him at 3 years old, he was raised by a sadist who only took care of him because he couldn’t figure out how to kill him, and he lusts for death even more than he lusts for flesh. He can never fill the emptiness inside, and it seems that he can never die. As beautiful and powerful as he is, he believes with his whole heart that he is a worthless abomination, because no one has ever told him otherwise.
His confidence comes from his irresistible power to seduce flesh-beings. When he meets Ragdoll, he is intrigued by her so much because; one) she is not flesh, yet somehow both alive and dead, and two) when he touches her, it makes him feel something he’s never felt before— comfort. If he had his way, he would keep her in his possession forever, to play with and experiment on, but his Master bids him to destroy her. His struggle is essentially his curious nature versus the will of his abuser.
This is reflected in my real life by my own curiosity about the world and people versus the unconscious seeds of doubt planted by my abusers. I venture out to make new friends and see new things, but only ever find cruelty and betrayal; confirming everything my abusers taught me. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And though sometimes, people can be cruel and terrible, I must constantly remind myself that my perspective is permanently skewed due to traumatic emotional injury at very critical moments in my early development. Sometimes it really isn’t all that bad, but that big hole in the floor echoes every little thing into an overwhelming sound that doesn’t go away until I scream.
In most cases the scream comes in the form of my lashing out, melting down, or shutting down. It’s come to the point where I’ve uncovered every bit of the emotional trauma. As I said, the hole is shiny and gleaming black. The only thing left is to try and erase the physical memory of the bad lessons from my body— to let the Serpent have his precious doll to experiment on once and for all.
I’ve been learning about the vagus nerve, and how to reset it. Lying on my back with my nose pointed towards the ceiling, look right with just my eyeballs for 30 seconds, then look left for 30 seconds. My vision would get blurry at around 28 seconds, and my breathing changed. That’s a sign that something’s working. Afterwards, I exposed myself to the current stressors that were causing a point of pain in my life, and my reactions were very different than before the reset. There may be something to this. Let’s hope so, because now that I have absolutely nailed the cause of the problem, I want to make it stop for good. I never want to fall into that hole again.
