2024-10-01 anxious_brain
CONTENT WARNING.
The following contains mentions of: Childhood traumas; Workplace traumas; Psychological abuse; Physical abuse. All are from a personal and introspective point of view.**
You don't have to expose yourself to things that hurt you. Stay safe. ♥
My brain is a very anxious one. It does have an anxiety disorder, after all. I think my brain just needs a hug. Or lots of them. It's been told all of its – very soon to be 27 years long – life things that made it wire itself in the way it is today. It wasn't born like this, it just adapted to its environment.
It has reasons to believe the thing it believes, the question is what are these reasons? Like... hey. What made you fear abandonment so deeply, little brain? Tell me what it was, so we can work on it. Why are we like this?
Why do we feel like everyone we love is going to abandon us the second they're no longer here? Are we being "control freaks"? If so, why do we keep pushing everyone away as a way to control that from happening, because feeling pain now when we expect it, when it's in our hands, is better than when it's unexpected?
You do we realize what we're doing, right? Imagine a forest, and we're living in it. That forest, it's our relationships to the people we love. And to us it's not a matter or "if" it ever catches fire, but of "when".
We're so convinced that a fire is going to destroy the forest in which we live in, that we're willing to set it on fire ourselves as a way to have some control over the flames, to better protect ourselves and not be taken off guard by when it will inevitably happen... but the forest is fine, why would it spontaneously combust?
Our fear of relationships crumbling is eating us alive to the point where we'd rather push people away from us before they do it, because no matter how much proof we're getting that we're loved, it's never enough. You do realize that this is not normal, right?
Don't you see how fucking unhealthy this is? That we now have to warn the people about us? Telling them that they should expect us to, one day, start pushing them away to a point where we may try and actually manipulate them – something we've been wrongfully accused of doing all of our lives to gain benefits from others, mind you – into actually seeing us as this awful person that they shouldn't keep around in their lives?
We're turning them against our own selves because hurting them as a way to get them away from us would just add more scars, to us but also to them and because we're so convinced that we're going to hurt them in the long run, might as well convince them to flee away from us.
We keep worrying about seeming egotistical, about making other think that we make everything about us, because that's what we've been made to believe about us even though it isn't true. But at the same time, we have a hard time accepting that things are just not about us, even though it would do us good. We don't want things to be about us, we're terrified of it being about us, so we convince ourselves that it is.
We're worried about what everyone thinks and do when we're not there. We keep forcing ourselves into going to social events when it hurts us, just because we're afraid of people realizing that it's just better when we're not there. We try and think that "hey, they did invite us!" as a way to reassure ourselves only to go "well, they probably did it out of politeness" or some shit like that not even ten seconds later.
We've been going to these monthly events with other trans people where we talk about our lives and experiences since fucking November of 2023! It's about to be one year since we do this! Why are we still worried about taking too much space, about talking too much, about having someone coming over to us at the end of the thing to tell us "hey, I think this place would be better without you" no matter how many times we've heard the exact opposite?
How many people do we need to hear telling us that we're doing good in their lives and our community for us to finally believe that we can do something good, for once? This has got to stop! You do realize that we've been saying the same shit to our friends and our partner about "oh, I don't think I'll come to the next one" and "if I come, I probably won't say anything" for a week straight before the event, every damn months since the second one?
I mean, look at us right now! We want to talk to our friend about what we're writing... fucking go for it! She'll probably love it! We've written her like 10 messages that we deleted before sending her tonight, this is stupid! We should go ahead, we should tell her how we're feeling, she would understand, we're not gonna ruin her night...
No? We're not going to do that? We're doing the "oh, I'm afraid of taking too much space in her life and being a weight on her shoulder" again? Even though she's been saying to us "I want to see you" practically everyday for the last three months?
Ok, then...
Look at us. We're like "narcissists" without the self-worth...
Maybe we should just let go, see what or who catches us... but then again, we're convinced that there would be nobody there even though we've been catched over and over again when we tripped.
School and work did a lot of damage to us, didn't it? That's what it is, right? We've been the butt of the joke in what we thought was our friend group for so long that we're now incapable of thinking that we're not. We've trusted the wrong people and now we're paying the price for it.
You remember our first job, right? Yeah you do, you make me think about it way too often. Remember how we believed that everything was going fine, how we were for once trying to be confident and actually integrating... only to then being told face to face that our colleagues actually hates us? How fucking heartbreaking that was? We crumbled, crying on our way home.
They perceived us as arrogant even though we've been worrying about hearing that about us this entire time. It's what we've always heard. Now we know why we seem like that, we're just poor at communicating our emotions, autism and so on, but back then? We only had our insecurities about hearing the same thing over and over again. No matter how hard we tried to work on ourselves to make it better... it was never enough.
You and I got this stupid idea from the start of them having a second group chat where it was everyone but us. Why else would they be laughing randomly with each other without saying a word and us never receiving any messages on Slack if it wasn't that? But of course that wasn't what was happening. It couldn't have been, it was just our insecurities talking... right?
One day we almost got fired, remember that? How we kept being afraid of that happening? Of losing our job to the point of it eating us alive and it almost happening because we kept being consistently late to work no matter how hard we tried? We got a warning, but a colleague got fired. That's when we inherited his desk and PC. How many times have we been thinking about that moment when we opened Slack as if it was routine, only to find out that the machine's data hadn't been properly wiped because his Slack session was still logged in?
We didn't have time to realize anything that was going on that the first thing that appeared on our screen was the fact that the group chat we had manage to stop thinking about, was actually real this whole time. Messages were pouring in, jokes and memes and the like, everyone was there, except us. We just logged off from their session and even though that was more than 4 years ago, we still think about that moment regularly.
That left a mark on us, didn't it? You've learned a lot from that event. You're a very analytical brain, you're great at pattern recognition and that moment has been imprinted into that part of you ever since it happened. It now acts like a filter over everything we see. You're trying to protect us, I know. I guess you've been proven right when everyone else we talked to told us you were just seeing things that wasn't there one too many times...
That place fucked us up. We can't see things for the way they are ever since it happened. It's like with high-school. It's why you keep taking us back there every time we fall asleep, you're still looking for answers, a reason as to why what happened to us had to happen. There are no answer to that question because it's not the right question. The truth is that these were awful environments for us, that no matter our share of the blame, we didn't deserve half of the shit we've been put through.
That other colleague that randomly snapped at us about about the way we were writing our emails when they were the one that made us change our style, for no reason or pre-emptive discussion about the issue, when you were all just having a good time joking during a break. Do you think that was fair?
How about when that same colleague tried and convince us that it would be better for everyone on the team that if we would just leave. We even took the time to archive that conversation to have a written trace of it, just in case. Was that fair? Should I pull up that file so that we can look at it? We never did ever since it happened, but maybe that'll refresh our memories on how horribly fucked they were being to us. Do you think we can find a way to spin this against ourselves too?
Fuck me, we almost did it leave too! That's how hurt we were!
Hey, how about when the rest of "our team" just stood by and said nothing when the CEO was literally verbally assaulting us over voice message? Did anyone say something? Even send us a message of support? Do you think it wasn't that bad, when everyday we woke up on insulting voice messages to the point we got numb to it? Our partner cried when we made her listen to one not thinking much of it due to how violent that man was to us! Was that fair?
No, it wasn't. Let's face it, these people were pieces of shit. They were awful towards us the whole way through and it wasn't just us, they were being awful with the two new girls too! These two were actually being nice to us, the toxic rot from that awful work environment hadn't set in to their brains yet...
And yet, we've convinced ourselves that we deserved it. We can rationalize that we didn't, just in the same way that we did, but the latter always takes over. No matter what, we always think we deserved it. Like all the rest, like when our "friends" were just straight up harassing us in high-school, like when we like when we got threatened with a knife at our throat in the dorms, like when we that teacher literally tied us with tape up to a chair because we were moving too much... like when our father physically abused us...
We find it so hard to love, because we fail to understand the idea of being loved. We're in pain, little brain. We're hurt. And we can't keep going on like this.
So, tell me now, where do we go from here, you and I? What should we do about this? Because this can't keep going on like this. Look at how many anxiety attacks we've been going through these last few months, we're so exhausted from it that our time perception has been warped, our memories are all mixed, and we can barely get out of our own home...
This talk was hard on us. But maybe it's progress, maybe it can be the seed of something new? We're not well, and we have plenty of reasons to be the things that we are, the see the things the way we see them. Accepting that would be a good step...
Maybe we should do this more often, you and I. It does feels easier to process that way, to talk about us, rather than I. For me to distance myself from you as a separate entity even though we're the same entity, like talking to myself in third person, as if I was talking to a friend, because I would never talk to a friend the way I talk to myself.
I think it helps. Yeah, let's do that again sometimes.