#postscripts personal

[lepusflocculus]

Singular funny interaction I get per year that can b made into postable content

[lepusflocculus]

I’ve known this guy for well over eight years now, he has consistently called me his best friend for the entirety of that time, I’ve never doubted that he does in fact experience what he calls Love for me (platonic), and I’ve heard his whole life story like thirty times over by this point. He cares about me deeply and maintains a vested interest in pleasing me and checking up on me. But y’know what’s crazy. I’m only in recent months becoming okay with the concept of calling him MY friend. And I do use that word lightly lol. But like, it’s crazy to me because.. he’ll say, y’know, do you wanna hang out? And lm thinking to myself for the first time ever.. I kinda do want to do that, yeah, I want to see you. I can see myself enjoying the time I spend around you. In doses. I don’t remember if I really felt that way about him ever before. And it’s hard because that’s not the kind of information I could or would EVER share with him. So clearly there is still an amount of separation and masking between us. I still feel as though most people are not capable of understanding me and that being around them will indenture my spirit to servitude. But like, I can be happy for him now. I never really cared when he celebrated anything, but when good things happen to him.. now, I’m like.. oh! Yeah! I am glad that happened!

Granted, I wouldn’t call my level of care for him up to normal standards, I still don’t give a fuck when he says he misses me and I still rarely to never pick up his calls or messages lmao, but like!! I can accept that he is a nice guy who cares about me now. And I believe in rewarding that care to the degrees I’m comfortable with. Part of it may be that I’m ‘healing’ but I think another big part of it is that he no longer begs for my attention anymore. He’s stopped taking it as any signal that I’m angry with him when I don’t respond, he just allows me to not respond. He’s made other friends who can match his level of sociality and doesn’t need to rely on me for a percentage of it. I’m actually internalizing the idea that I have the freedom to WANT to talk to him occasionally.

I have a feeling that the above factor also contributes to why online friendships feel easier to maintain. There is a lot less implicit pressure to “be there” for them, when they’re literally not “here” all the time. They don’t ‘need me’ to be available because they’re, like, doing whatever they do in Canada off their phones idk. Can we tell I’ve been missing my Canadian friend and doing nothing to reach out or resolve that feeling? I should talk to her…. (I’ll probably forget again)

Anyway feb talks about friends again with no grander lesson to reveal. It was just on my mind. There’s another person I’d like to write about some time but it’ll make me angry so I’m saving it for when I care less

[lepusflocculus]

Szpd is so dumb because the last time I remember being seriously triggered by somebody and feeling really actually like my autonomy was bring invaded was when I had this one friend over, we were high and just chilling in the basement or something, and I looked up to see them eating w their eyes closed. That is literally it. I can’t even recount this without clenching my teeth and getting irrationally pissed off again 😭 this is ridiculous. This is the shit I split over. Not sex, not sensitive conversations, not their bpd obsession with me, but the fact they allowed themselves to get comfortable enough in my space to close their eyes. It was like all my perception narrowed in on them and the sound of them breathing intensified and took up the whole room and I was like frozen staring at them in anger. I can’t really understand why THIS is so viscerally upsetting but it felt like someone came into a museum and just started flinging mud everywhere except I was one of the paintings so I couldn’t interfere. Like I invited them over probably.. I assume.. either way they had no reason to think they weren’t welcome or couldn’t do something, I’ve always appeared to have a very lax and chill approach with them so I’m sure the moment felt completely natural as to not even require a second thought.

But. Even so.

Something about me despises them and despises their presence and wanted them to suddenly teleport away from me and stop just EXISTING so MUCH in my space. Something about me resents the fact they don’t stay as coherent as me when we’re high, that they can’t or won’t separate their substance affected mood/bodily reactions from their higher thinking mind. Uuggh maybe I just gotta stop getting high with this person face to face because I always seem to mildly traumatize myself somehow over the smallest stupidest shit they do….. half of us are their friend and the other half are straight up disgusted by them so who knows what to do really 💀

[lepusflocculus]

In order to not be a hateful and avoidant piece of shit ALL the time (manytimes is okay) I’m trying to tell myself that it’s my choice to talk to or comfort people when they signal for needing attention. I’m not being forced to, they’re not holding their death over my head, they’re not going to hate me, I’m not going to cause them harm, I’m not being forced by the nature of the universe to make myself into a service for other people to better themselves through. It’s my choice. It’s just as well within my control to engage as it is to ignore. I’m choosing this. I can walk away whenever I want.

But then of course has to come the logically constructive thoughts that search for a loophole for everything and beg the question, is this very frame of mind another way of capitulating to demands? Am I simply arranging my behavior for them? Is this just some reverse psychology tactic to cope myself into thinking I want to be around people so it’s easier to bare? I mean, does that being true change it being helpful either? Do I have an obligation to myself to become palatable or to completely isolate? There is no correct answer I’m just turning pearls over again (à la mitski) (btw the actual answer is I have a stupid disorder that makes me stupid and this shit is not supposed to be that deep but it’s too deep to ME)

[lepusflocculus]

Maybe this is stupid, but I think that maybe having a “hard to pronounce name” (it’s really not. Like not at all) might have influenced the development of my schizoid behaviors growing up, at least partially or as a contributing factor on top of other bigger feelings.

Like, teachers constantly getting it wrong and constantly asking and mentally preparing myself for the awkward moment in roll-call when they pause and then look around the room and say it wrong or say “I know I’m gonna get it wrong, but..” and then I have to pronounce it and then they still get it wrong somehow later anyway, I’m realizing now that it perhaps has affected some of the ways I react to people. Or rather don’t react. Because eventually by highschool I did get tired of the whole thing and just stop correcting people and kind of sort of used it as a weird emotional self harm thing where I could lump teachers into a category of “adults who don’t care about you” because they don’t even spare the mental effort to say my name, and then I would make up scenarios where they overhear my name actually being called by someone else and realizing they’ve been saying it wrong and then feeling bad and apologizing like “aww sorry I didn’t pay attention to you at all :((“ instead of ever correcting them or telling it right the first time. Because seriously there’s only so many times I can correct a person who works with me every single day and forgets how to say my name every single fucking day before I would rather just respond to a stupid approximation of my name and that number is like two times only. Once if I’m not feeling generous.

Uh anyway I was going to say that I’ve been remembering this attitude I had around it and decided to interrogate this feeing for the first time in my life because I’ve met one whole other plural I can talk to in-person, and believe it or not, being openly plural to each other involves re-introducing yourself a large number of times. We actually had let them mispronounce our co-host’s name for a long time before getting the courage to correct them lol, but I could at least justify it there because of her having a genuinely atypical name/uncommon word for a name. Every time they have to ask one of us “is it (pronunciation), or (pronunciation)?” we always say “It doesn’t matter” because that’s the attitude we’d trained into ourself for the past decade. It doesn’t matter cuz you could get it wrong anyway and a name is just a functional way of referring to somebody, so as long as I know you’re talking to me, it really doesn’t matter if you say it differently from how I say it because we both know we mean the same thing. Right? Sure. A name is just a sound that I have tuned out and silently removed myself from identifying with so call me whatever the hell your heart desires. Correcting people is a way of mildly inconveniencing or embarrassing them for about half a second and that’s more of an impact than I want to be leaving anyway.

Point is though, this happened again last night with the whole “is it A or B?” thing and me saying “oh it doesn’t matter” by reflex. The moment passed and I didn’t think about it til now but I realized it kind of does matter to me. Cuz hey that’s my friend. That’s my friend’s name. I actually do want you to say it right and I want him to hear it come out right. That’s his NAME. It means something to me, and it’s not just a sound, and there is a correct way to say it. And I guess it has taken caring when it happens to someone else to notice that I might have actually cared the whole time it was happening to me… and it did irritate me so regularly that I just decided to stop caring as a way to prevent getting irritated like that. Because it felt like nobody (particularly adults) cared about me (particularly as a child).

Anyway moral of the story: if you have friends with names containing phonemes that don’t exist in your language, or who do share your phonemes but have names that appear to be confusing when spelled out in the English alphabet- it’s fine to not know but just tell them that you WANT to get it right. Yeah it is awkward for a couple of seconds but it’s better to clear that hurdle once and confidently be able to acknowledge their existence than to feel apprehension towards addressing them out of embarrassment. Because they can tell. And it feels sucky to think of your own name as something that makes other people’s lives harder. ….And also if they have a personality disorder they’ll probably just let you embarrass yourself indefinitely rather than speak up about it.

[lepusflocculus]

On one hand, I had very gentle parents, but on the other hand it took me until I was about 18 to even realize I had ARFID and they owned a restaurant. They were just so unconcerned with any of the myriad ways I was always falling behind. Like never eating. That was just a funny quirk my whole life. When I refused to try new things, it was accepted with little resistance. I used to be grateful for that because I thought- naturally, as a kid with a hatred for authority- “im glad they respect my choices.” And it’s a bit of a spiteful realization to know that I did grow up to regret that and wish they’d intervened, because that’s what adults always say when you set a boundary as a child (“okay, but you’re going to regret this when you’re older”) and like damn it I hate that you’re right, because I do. I really do wish someone had investigated that more or pushed me harder on it. It’s such a subtle way to not be participating in/able to participate in society but I feel now that not being able to relate to my peers on the very basis of food was a hindrance to me. And I probably wasn’t getting enough nutrients either lol. I guess there is that part too. But it’s mostly weird to know I never ate anything with friends or family. Those ‘food as a metaphor for love’ guys would have a field day with me. I feel the need to re-stress the restaurant part.

[lepusflocculus]

When I was in middle school I did this ongoing bit where I talked about the local meteorologist on the weather channel as if he were some big A List celebrity, and I’d say his name like you might say “t*ylor sw*ft” or “bryan cranston” or something. After a certain point I’d done that thing where it stopped being a joke and I really felt like he was a famous person. This all came to a head when he was a judge at a highschool talent show and I asked for his autograph, ironically of course, but didn’t even bring a pen or paper with me. I was gonna ask him to write it out on my phone with his finger I think. Somehow it was miscommunicated into “I want to take a picture with you,” and so we did. But now I just had a picture of myself posed up awkwardly with the guy from the weather channel who I have no particular special relationship to. The bit had become reality. What do I say, I just took this photo because it was funny? I mean, yes, that was why, but he was an older dude who had no concept of the absurdist humor I was making him into a part of. He really just thought some kid wanted a picture with him for… being on TV? That was a version of me that existed in someone’s mind. I had to abandon this routine.

[lepusflocculus]

Hello 👋 I have a question.

How did you& choose your system name? Being schizoid and a system makes choosing a name damn near impossible. How did you come up with yours?

Hi, good question.

The first one was just a pun about our body’s initials, “p.s.” and how that is also an abbreviation of “postscript,” to add another thought after the main portion of writing has ended. I just liked the way it shook out thematically I guess. I felt like I would be the type of person that needs to add one million PS, PSS, PSSS, etc, to clarify my thoughts endlessly if I wrote a letter. So I just repurposed the name we were already using.

Obviously the okayness with that name ran out tho lol. The second one was chosen during a really bad week so the person who made it up was kind of a flash in the pan, but it’s a portmanteau of the words “pierrot” and “pareidolia.” The clown and the phenomenon of seeing faces in shit that don’t have faces, like the man in the moon. Or particularly the rabbit in the moon. Idk, he was just rlly obsessed with the moon rabbit for the week she existed. I didn’t feel like changing it back or anything afterwards because the body was already using a different name socially by then too. That being said, I liked the implication of having a name with Pareidolia in it. It feels like im saying, “I’m not really here, you’re just seeing the shape of a person where there isn’t one.”

Choosing names does feel very impossible, I agree. I don’t think I’ve ever had one I totally loved or didn’t feel uncomfortable with at least once. My personal instinct is just to wear them out as long as I can stand because it’s less effort than changing it constantly. I think it helps if you can get stuck on something that gives more distance from you. Like, choosing a name you call yourself and don’t share anywhere, and then a name you have for functional purposes? Though everyone’s tolerance for being referred to is different so it’s fine if this advice doesn’t help much (sorry if so).

If u meant Vidi though, it came out of a username on a side account one of us ran for a little while. To me it feels like just a word and not a name, but for some reason it’s very tolerable as a name too. Good Luck on hunting one down if you’re trying, I do hope that you find something adequate. Not sure if this was a very insightful response or not but thanks for throwin an ask anyway.