...

i wish i could pour myself out of my myself. i dont mean to disappear or become a vessel, but to represent myself to others in a way that feels authentic and not like im playing some insane game of like mental frogger just trying to exist around other people. i already FEEL like a vessel. i feel really pent up and have been having a hard time understanding if my isolation is wholly to do with my own actions or inactions or if im also like genuinely offputting now. i dont necessarily want to be palatable but i have continuously opened myself up to others in ways that felt like pleas for friendship and have not really felt that reciprocated in ways that make me want to keep trying. what DOES keep me trying is how painful its been to have my world get smaller and smaller and smaller for years on end. i keep running in to the same hurdles in my brain.

at my most charitable i run into the external forces that make me feel terrible. i rattle the bars of my fuckin enclosure. navigating connection and community and shit from a nearly fresh perspective and a highly isolated one feels impossible. im trying, im doing it scared, but it feels like at best im bidding for a consolation prize. honestly i want a lot but realizing those wants feels further and further from my grasp. i want to make music. i want to understand music. i want to practice spanish, and to keep learning it. i want to read more. i want to be a better mind for my comrades. i want to have more comrades. i want bottom surgery. i want to make others feel good. i want to please others (lol). i want to have sex! i want to be seen! i want to feel hot and loved and supported. i want to have the space to create. i want to masturbate. i want to touch the lives of those around me in ways that aren't just like... its fucked up because it feels like genuinely what this all boils down to is that i really want connection with others. and when i get to this like super reduced bottom line ^^ the one where im like "i just want connection with others" - thats when i find a way to dig into myself again. thats a shallow want, and one thats further letting me hide that i have nothing to give. nothing to show. nothing to reflect back at me to help me understand who i am. i feel like a fucking vampire and im not being cute. at best i am able to talk about music i have listened to, or games i have played, or books i have read - but these are things that other people created in order to shape their presence in the world and the world itself! it feels like recursively its not really doing the same. i dont know. like its easy to handwave this whole rant as like "yeah ok you're being self critical" but it feels this dire. i feel so alienated that im losing my sense of self. i see my ex, staring darkly at her monitor and sobbing silently because she cant describe herself. i see her breaking down and dissociating any time she cant focus on something that pulls her attention. i see the ways that she willingly unpersons herself. i see it all bubbling up in me and it makes me hurt. it makes me hurt because i know how it felt to try and uplift her and embrace her and be spat at and turned down and ignored and it makes me hurt because i feel so distant from any shred of identity that ive had. its sinister. its like the trauma ghosts are just keeping me still and draining up whatever i have left. like i dont even fucking know how to rebuild from here. how do i get better from this. im trying! but im not sure if any of it will work! im apparently on a waitlist for therapy. im playing social games. im taking walks and trying to move my body. im reading. im trying to get involved with safe-ish events in my local community. and still it all feels like bandaids. idk. maybe life is gonna just end up being bandaid mummy. if it werent for my own experiences with suicidal ideation in ones i love, as well as the accounts i hear from ppl online and from others i think i could muster another attempt but so far every time i get close i just end up dreaming about self-harm and having intrusive thoughts of ways to do it, none of which are palatable enough because of how they leave tattered threads connected to all of the people who try so fucking hard to keep me afloat. this isnt like a cry for help right now, not any more than my day to day life has been, but its a frustrating reality of feeling like i dont even have the agency to opt out of being, much less the agency to be. i know i need to seize my ability to exist like i know i have to step up and actually do it. thats why i wrote this entry. it wont come without baggage though. at least understand that this has helped me regulate a bit. thinking about structuring the post as expression, even, has helped. its helped me reflect on how i may need to detangle people from systems in my head in a way that lets me live with a little more peace. im gonna leave you a song, post this, and go smoke a cig.