#text: realization

[call-it-living]

Ephiphany

/TW: ped*philia themed OCD, parental divorce aftermath, childhood trauma, heteronormativity

With the help of my therapist, I had an epiphany about my past in my last therapy session. I don't know if I should detail it all because it's very personal and pivotal (to me; it probably wouldn't seem so from an outside perspective. I feel like fiction and media have kinda desensitized us to the most extreme of traumas so when it's something "regular" it underwhelms a general audience. Anyway, I digress.)

To give a rough outline, I connected my parents' split/divorce to the development of my worst form of OCD: ped*phile themed ocd. My POCD began at a very crucial point in their split: my mom moving out. Not only that, but for years before they split officially, things progressively got worse. Kids of divorce know this. My family got torn apart slowly but surely, until ultimately, my mother moved out. Then boom: POCD.

I guess I could get into the specifics, after all. Incase anyone suffering POCD, who just can't seem to understand the randomness of this theme, can take any solace in my revelation.

We all know that there is nothing worse than a ped*phile. They are the most corrupted and irredeemable members of society. Well, as my family broke apart, we saw less and less of extended family. Stopped having grandparents over for dinner, didn't show up to gatherings as much, mom didn't see dad's family and vice versa. I always just attributed this (gradual) loss of contact to getting older. After all, it was gradual; and it just so happened to coincide with me coming of age. I never thought much about it. Until yesterday. I put it together that, hey, none of that had to do with just getting older. It was a result of a family being destroyed. But for years my subconscious attributed this to growing up. Not only that, but my family also happened to be the blackest of black sheep. You see, on both sides of my extended family, my parents are the only ones to have divorced. My mom also happens to be gay, and guess what? The only gay person on either side of the family (that I know of, at least)! So, yeah. (Disclaimer: I myself am queer and am not trying to come off as homophobic at all! However, society is heteronormative. Therefore, my extended families are also heteronormative. So these two things combined did make us outcasts. At least, from my perspective). None of our extended family really reached out during this time of crisis. Or, maybe they did and I denied them since no one understood what I was going through (as my teenaged brain believed). I get it–divorce is messy. Late adulthood coming out is probably polarizing to these people, in this heteronormative world. So they probably thought it best for them to not get involved. Anyway, all this to say that this isolation born of a family torn apart made me feel like my family was corrupted. Like I was corrupted. Irredeemable. Inherently flawed compared to every other family (what a whopping conclusion, btw. I believed it, nonetheless). Do you see a connection? Well, apparently my subconscious sure did. And voila, POCD took over my life. My fears and doubts, this is how my anxiety chose to showcase them: by convincing me that i was a ped*. They are the most despicable people, after all. And I felt despicable, but had no understanding of why. So, brain went: mAyBe, just mAyBe it's because YOU'RE A PED@!! ugh, stupid brain.

Phew, this is a very revealing post, after all. Maybe it doesn't matter. How many people will even see this? It's more of a diary for me. Though if this helps even one POCD sufferer, I'd be glad to have posted it. That shit is hard. It's life ruining. I lost years to it. (Though perhaps I would've lost them anyway from dealing with my parents' split in some other unhealthy way). It was a lot to realize in one therapy session. But now I have this info, and knowledge is power. I just have to figure out how to utilize this in a meaningful way.

[call-it-living]

Realization: my trauma happened at a pivotal time in my life. I was allowed to quit things the second they got hard for my entire life. I never learned to push past my anxieties. I never learned how to commit to something. I never got to explore the things I like to do. I was emotionally frozen at age 15, maybe even earlier. Now, as an adult, I have to teach myself how to push through, explore interests on my own, and deal with these difficult feelings alongside a therapist instead of as a child alongside a stable parent.

This is a lot harder than it may seem. On paper, I just gotta do it. But I still have no motivation to do things or like things. I miss the time as a child when everything came easy to me. I was a gifted student, and I never had to study or try in my classes. I mean, they still stressed me out bc I am a perfectionist and probably have undiagnosed autism/adhd. But my winning feature was always that I was smart. "Oh, you always get your papers done in the end!" Yeah, mom, after being tortured by my own mind and behaviors. Hurting myself, exhausting myself. But I was smart. That was my value. That made up for every single shortcoming I had apparently (and I had a lot. Meltdowns and anger issues). Now I'm just regular. Except no, I'm behind my peers. I'm stunted and stuck. And while my journey from here is straightforward on paper, it takes a much bigger tole learning these new behaviors from the perspective of adulthood.

[call-it-living]

Anxiety relapse? //trigger warnings for POCD (p*dophile themed ocd) and internalized transphobia

I just spent almost all of today feeling dissociated from the identity I put out into the world. Not dissociation, rather feeling uncomfortable and just Wrong. I attribute this to my gender identity being different than my assigned gender at birth. But I have been unable to reconcile with the fact im not cisgender. I have been unable to conclude what exactly I am, due to a fear of being a man, and then subsequently feeling like I'm in denial for thinking I am nonbinary. I know that this is all anxiety, but I continue to get lost within it the way I have with many other things in the past. Some examples are: my sexuality, POCD (fear that I'm a p*do), deciding whether or not to go back to college, and many other things. Just minutes before deciding to make this post, I had a moment of "wait, I don't feel stressed out over this anymore" which makes me realize that it was just anxiety all along. It is always anxiety. I am still debilitated by anxiety bc it comes in and is so convincing. It feels just as urgent and awful each time no matter how many different things I've overcome (like, I no longer stress about being attracted to women, or fear that I'm a p*do, or even spend much time thinking about if I should go back to school).

I know this is no unique revelation. I know that therapists and psychiatrists and family alike have told me it is *just* anxiety a million times over. Yet I always have to come to this realization on my own. And it usually occurs multiple times for each specific thing that my anxiety hijacks in order to bother me. This isn't the first time I've had a realization about my fear of being trans being a product of anxiety. Yet it feels just as jarring as it did the first time.

Ugh. I just don't feel like myself. I don't feel connected to the person I present to everyone. I know I need to do something about it so that I can feel happy and free. Yet I'm terrified to. The only comfort I have is the fact I'm only 21. I'm still young. I still have a whole life to figure this out. In many ways I feel too old to not know something so crucial to my identity, but realistically I know that 21 is young. I just need to breathe, be kind to myself (despite really wanting to say negative things to myself rn) and trust that time will heal the effects of this anxiety I'm currently feeling.

[call-it-living]

Had an unexpected flashback and realization tonight

I swiffer mopped my bedroom floor tonight and lit a candle to make my room smell nice. I went in the shower, and when I came back into my room when I was done I had a flashback to my family birthday parties as a kid. It was caused by the combination of the swiffer cleaner smell and the candle, since one of the only times we really cleaned the house—especially mopping the floors and lighting candles—was before birthday parties. I literally laughed at how sad that was. The worst part of this is that it reminded me of how stressful those times were. Since it was the only occasion we cleaned the house, you could imagine just how much cleaning needed to be done. Not only that, but my mother would put so much pressure on my siblings and I, including guilting us for having created such messes in the first place (as if the house being messy was purely at the fault of 3 children...).

Messes and cleaning have always been 2 things that stress me out a great deal, and I just put together why. My mother would have meltdowns over getting the house ready, and I internalized the guilt with each time it happened. Two birthday parties, a Christmas party, and a fourth of July each year for many, many years. So, I've internalized a lot of misplaced guilt. I just feel so bad for my past self. I was just a kid, and I distinctly remember feeling the responsibilities of an adult. When I was a teenager I used to pride myself in my maturity, when in reality I just had so many responsibilities beyond what a child should've had, and I carried so much of my mother's emotional baggage for so long. It's just sad, and it's hard not to dwell on it. I just feel like crying for child me.

[call-it-living]

Comparing my struggles to "worse" situations turned out to be a waste of energy, and kept me stuck.

I was in the shower a couple nights ago when I had a very powerful realization: that having spent years of comparing my struggles and problems to other, "worse" situations was part of what held me back from recovering sooner.

My childhood certainly traumatized me in many ways, but it was the very fact that it wasn't "as bad as it could've been" that took me so long to realize just how traumatizing it was. Because I wasn't physically abused, it wasn't that bad. Because my parents weren't alcoholics or addicts, it wasn't that bad. Because my parents loved me, it wasn't that bad. Because I had both of my parents, it wasn't that bad. But the thing is, my family dynamic was toxic. It didn't matter that it wasn't my idea of "that bad." I was negatively impacted by this dysfunction regardless of if it could've been worse, or different, or scarier. This way of thinking–my very refusal to see how much the dysfuction affected every part of my life–is what left me confused for years. Because I went to therapy, I got myself help, and yet I was still unhappy and still lost and full of self-loathing. I knew my family was dysfunctional, but refused to see that the dysfuction had a big role in exacerbating all my problems. All because I felt guilty for my life not being "as bad as it could've been."

So, now that all the pieces have finally fallen into place (after a year of therapy with this therapist, my first successful therapy experience despite having been in therapy for about 7 years now) I am beginning to move on. Now that I finally found a name for it–codependency/family entanglement–I see the true damage that has been done. And I can finally take the upper hand to reclaim my individuality and unlearn all of my toxic coping mechanisms and codependent behaviors. It's gonna be a long journey, but I'm already learning so much. Such as: don't compare my struggles with others', because it will just hold me back!