i wish someone could like, take my brain out of my skull, but not just like, kill me? like, take it out, hold it, gently pet it, maybe slip their fingers between the lobes, and I could just sit there, kneeling before them, watching their movements and feeling shivers down my neck as the faint sensations rush through my body. maybe with a little delay, like my soul is trapped in my body, and it takes a few seconds for the signal to make it back to me, so every time my brain is poked and prodded it's a few seconds before i can really feel the sensation. that way, when they give me a sly smile and suddenly clench their fist, reducing my brain to goo as it squishes out between their fingers and drips onto the floor, i have a few seconds of panic and realization before i finally die...
Warning: mentions of self-harm, suicide attempts, and desires to inflict pain on ones self
Under cut because I don’t want you to worry about it if you don’t want to.
Whenever I feel any sort of strong emotion, my next reaction is “cause pain to self” and I never thought that was a problem. And then I joked about it and they looked at me like I was crazy or sick and I came to this conclusion.
My brain is broken and here is why: depression.
For the longest time, I was depressed. Bad enough that I turned to self harm because pain was manageable and was SOMETHING. Bad enough that any emotion, anything, was good. Was something I can handle. Was something I could control. Was as “good” as it got. So I lived with this emotional void for a half dozen years and that became “normal”. Then, when I was in junior year, I tried to kill myself. I took almost a whole bottle of a medicine that was meant to help, that didn’t help, and I woke up with a tube in my throat, IVs in my arms, and my family surrounding me. I lived and I knew it was a mistake to try and end everything because I regretted it immediately because oh god I was unable to move but i was puking and I hated it I wanted to live so badly not like this not like this not like this! So I lived and I got better and I got more coping mechanisms and more medicine to help and I GOT BETTER. Not great. Not fixed. BETTER.
But then I noticed some things. Like how I would feel so intensely. How easily I would cry for simple things like getting mad. How GUILTY I felt when I cried for no fucking reason.
And I noticed my reaction to being embarrassed, being happy, being ANYTHING to any degree of strong (because everything was 0 or 100, no in-between and that sucks but that’s a different matter I think, and nothing I need to worry about right now, because I’ve been working on re-teaching my brain how to deal with that) is “cause pain to self”. It took a long time for me to NOTICE it, let alone REALIZE what it was.
Super happy? Punch a wall. Embarrassed? Scratch yourself. Excited? Pluck your eyeball out. Angry? Bite your hand.
I didn’t act on it, not often, not where it would cause damage. Not PROPER pain, just minor shit, like bruises and scratches. And I didn’t notice it, is the fucked up thing. I just acted without thinking. I’d fucking TRAINED myself to do it, no question, no thought, just emotion? Pain.
And then I thought about it.
I spent so long without emotion, without feeling, that pain was the one thing I could feel. So pain was constant, controlled. And when I COULD feel, it was too much. IS too much. So my brain sends an error message, cycles back to my brain, and my brain says “okay, feel pain, it’s grounding. pain is safe”. So now when I feel excited, I want to tear my throat out, I want to pluck my eyes from my head, I want to slam my fist into a wall, I want to hurt because its SAFE and EASY and COMFORTABLE, even if it isn’t GOOD.
So now I have to relearn how to feel, how to regulate my emotions, because I CAN’T KEEP HURTING MYSELF when I wanna FEEL SOMETHING because my BRAIN is too broken to handle anything anymore.
So I don’t hear my favorite thing, my favorite person, my favorite show, and cause myself pain
Because I want to be happy and I don’t want my happy to be pain.
I have the very strong desire to both have someone I can cuddle + make out with, as well as a desire to perpetually seclude myself from every minute aspect of reality for an indefinite period of time....
Me: Man I love Alice in Wonderland that's a good movie Anxiety: On any given day I like to think of at least 8 ways I could irreversibly screw up my life before breakfast Me: ... Uh... No you got the quote wrong... Anxiety: 8D
I don't know what it is that's wrong with me but I keep losing time and it's super scary?? I don't remember the last 2 hours ish and trying to piece together what I did is so confusing why is there half a chocolate cake in my room??? Who knows
Also the assumption that certain neurotypes/brain stuffs can ONLY come from trauma really plays into the idea that there is only one way to be psychologically and mentally healthy and normal and that every deviation from that norm must be explained and must have trauma origins. And like. Do you see the inherent ableism in that thought process?
I used to think this way about a lot of mental health things and now I don't.
(Although like. Yes PTSD is always caused by trauma. But that's pretty much the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that is, which is bc it is literally defined as being a post-traumatic stress disorder.)
