the idea of forearm crutches is. so nice. i feel relief just thinking about them.

digesting early childhood trauma pt. 4

in this chapter i'm gonna touch on having to go to physical and speech therapy in school.

i remember being in speech therapy basically throughout my entire childhood with different speech therapists that were a part of the school. i'm pretty sure the first speech therapist i ever had was in 4th grade or so and i would be in a room with two or three other kids and she would help us enunciate. i actually didn't even know why i was there because i thought my speech was fine but a classmate told me i muttered everything i said (by this i mean not using my vocal cords to speak, just speaking very gravely and grumbly), which turned out to be a real thing that i just never realized i did.

i think around this time i also was being seen by a physical therapist as well, who would call me out of class and we would go to the, not even the gym but the fucking gym's storage room and she would make me do exercises and stretches that were extremely painful. i didn't know this at the time but i was later told i was knock-kneed, flat-footed, i had and still have a hunch, and i struggle to hold myself in a way everyone else does, basically. i have always struggled with my posture and the best way i can describe it is like, imagine pushing your stomach out as if you were pretending to be pregnant and if you look at yourself from the side, your lower back curves? that's just always how i held myself and that's just comfortable for me. but couple that with my hunch (which at this point it's almost as if my shoulders are stuck forwards) and the issues with my legs and walking, i looked extremely conspicuous.

my physical therapist would warn me that the bones beneath my legs were "rotating outwards" and that the exercises we'd do would help keep them in place. she also explained that my muscles were "underdeveloped" especially in my hamstrings (legs). basically what this meant for me (i say this in past tense like i'm any more flexible) is that, for example, i cannot touch my toes without pain so severe that my toes tingle and go numb. i am the absolute opposite of flexible, i cannot do a butterfly sit (sitting with your soles touching and knees pointed out) because my knees cannot touch the ground without severe pain, and im just really unfit in general. with my physical therapist i learned how to walk properly, which meant that she would walk beside me around the empty halls while everyone was in their classrooms and she would make me say "heel toe heel toe" and walk accordingly. we did other exercises too like superman (lying on your stomach and raising your arms and legs above you without touching the ground) which is absolute fucking torture for me because my body is literally unable to do that.

because my body has so many limits i was easily frustrated by the exercises she made me do and by consequence i resented her because she made me do the most painful and challenging things that i wasn't even fully like emotionally ready to endure. i don't think she understood or cared about just the sheer amount of pain those exercises gave me. so of course when she gave me homework i never did it and have honestly just given up on pushing my body at all and i am at this point, what do they call it, sedentary - i have spent the majority of my life lying in bed. i can't say i've ever experienced endorphins from working out, it's only ever been painful for me so i really have no motivation to do something that will only cause me more pain, you know?

by middle school we would all sit in the bleachers before class and she would stand in the corridor and stare at me to come with her but i would ignore her or try and hide my face so she wouldn't come get me. i think by the time i graduated middle school she stopped seeing me.

but in middle school i had yet another speech therapist who, if i'm not mistaken, took place instead of recess. i was there with 3 or 4 other kids but the room was extremely tiny. one of these kids was actually a girl who used to bully me named courtney which i should honestly talk about at some point but i think because we both realized we were stuck there and her and i seemed to be the only self-aware students in the room, her and i actually would crack jokes together and make fun of things together in that class, much to the disappointment and scorn of the teacher.

i remember it was in this class where i asked the speech therapist what i was doing in this class. i think i felt particularly motivated to ask this question because this was a class where the other students would incorrectly answer the most basic questions (we were given a packet of extremely simple questions in multiple choice, the first was what color is the sky, not everyone chose blue). the therapist said that i had trouble listening, which i will admit i definitely struggle with that today, but i was just like, if listening is my problem then how is speech therapy going to help? what about this class is helping me listen better when all we're doing is answering multiple choice questions in packets and answering basic cognitive evaluations on the computer? never really understood that.

overall i just felt as if the school had seen my autism diagnosis and thrown me in with just everyone else with some kind of disability and expected that to be what i needed and not at all infantilizing. i felt like they really lacked the awareness of the fact that people with different disabilities need help in different areas, and just throwing everyone into something like speech therapy where i'm in a room with people who have much greater struggles than me is not going to help me feel cared for.

i would go on but this post is already long as fuck so imma leave it here for now. but if you read this far, you are an angel, ty for reading to the end <3

Day 1

***Trigger Warning for most of this post!*** :(

 New vent account, I just have a lot to get off my chest, not right now per-say but in general, a lot has happened and I’m not coping well.

To start off, I’ve relapsed into self harm again

Not only cutting, but nearly everything I was able to get myself to stop doing.

 * I’ve begun to cut again, it’s now to the point where it gets deeper & messier each time I have a panic attack/breakdown (whatever the difference is).

* Im scratching & biting a lot more

* Punching myself until I bruise

* Weighing myself constantly, about 3-10 times a day, it’s in secret though since the scale is kinda hidden in my basement ever since my parents took it away

* Ive begun to check calories & count them. Before this past month, Ive never done this before & now it’s almost like a nervous habit! :(

* I’ve relasped into my an*rexia urges again. I’ve been having trouble with my body image & eating since about 5th grade; not to get too personal, but my mom was & still is hard on me, always called me ugly or fat because of an early puberty that made my body change quickly in a pretty gross way. Had a lot of acne since 4th grade;;; anyways, because of all that, and finding Onision, I was obsessed with his UhOhBro channel around 5th grade & took some of his more serious videos related to starvation & self harm to mind and tried it on myself because, despite him having a stone-cold hatred for it, I was a dumb kid and didn’t listen. So yeah, 5th grade I would starve myself or eat very little; 6th grade I kinda stopped but struggled with my clothing choice/identity more; 7th grade I struggled with gender; 8th grade was when an*rexia came back, more severely than ever, but it happened in short bursts over a few months, I also started cutting but very rarely; 9th I was much more happy & settled down just a bit, really figured out who I was; 10th things weren’t exactly the best, cutting came back & began to be more frquent but not deep; 11th was the worst, I’ve now been eating very little ever since school started, first day back wasnt exactly the best & I ended up cutting again for the first time in months moments after I got home.

 A lot more has happened since then and it’s only gotten worse. I don’t know what to do anymore

I don’t mean for any of this to make anybody upset or possibly relapse/get urges themselves when reading all this, I get so sad when I see others struggling too, I always try to help any of my friends or even random people online if they post a vent. I love bein there to support & help, even help get people to come out of serious relapses! But when it comes to myself, I tend to feel no pity, like I deserve this. There’s something wrong with me in my head, this has been gong on for years, every year feels worse than before, and yet everytime Ive gone to my dad, principles, teachers, or school counselors, they never help! They tell me off, saying Im fine, I dont need a therapist because therapists are scammers, or that I just need to be more positive & get over it.

Ive been told this for years, so maybe… it’s just me who’s to blame. Im the only one who sees what’s happening because it’s not really a big deal. I just make it seem wore than it is in my head. I have friends who care & ask if Im okay, ask if they can help, but honestly they cant help. They can support & I’ll vent to them but it doesn’t fix anything, I vent but it doesn’t fix my mind or my empty stomach or my hand reaching for my same used razor. Nothing has helped and I’m worried that after a while Im going to end up killing myself, whether it’s on purpose or it happens on accident when I go too deep. I have a lot I wish to do in my life, but at the same time, with all this shit that’s happened and how my life feels as if it keeps getting worse everyday, I will admit that at this point if I DID die, I guess I wouldn’t be too upset. I am scared of what will happen after death, nobody knows what happens, but I know that I am legally an organ donor, and I do have part of my will typed up in the case that I do die suddenly one day, so I guess it isn’t too bad.

I will be honest, Ive never been exactly suicidal before, but these past 4 months I think I’ve been legitamately suicidal and ready to go whenever I have a breakdown. Everytime I relapse I think of just ending it all right then and there, but then pussy out because I think about my few friends, my followers on other social media, my pets, my plants, and other people I wish to change the lives of in the future. I want to adopt a kid someday and give them what I didn’t get, treat them as I wished to be treated, help them grow up into the person I wish I had by my side growing up. They’d be my child, I’d be their parent, but we’d also be best friends. I wanted to start my own show, my own comic, my own booth at cons, meet so many people, get married, do music, so many things

but honestly, I don’t think I’ll live much longer after my senior year of highschool. I’m planning on finishing this year out, trying to finish my senior year, graduate, then I’ll leave this Earth with a bang. Maybe literally, or maybe through some other way of suicide, I don’t know. I might even do it sometime before I graduate. Not to make people sad, not for attention and pity, but because I can’t continue on like this, and I want the people who’ve wronged me to see what they did. I want those who refused to help, even when I was in front of them screaming & begging them to get me some kind of therapy or help, to see what they caused. I want them to see that I wasn’t just some sensitive crybaby that needed to get over himself, I want them to see that mental illness can run rampant in anybody & they need to be open to helping those who really need it.

 Ive been through so much. Ive been bullied, made fun of by my own mother, neglected by her, pysically/emotionally/mentally/VERBALLY/and even sexually abused by an ex partner of mine, Ive been literally harrassed, Ive been used solely for sex by nearly every single ex of mine, Ive been manipulated/guilt tripped/gas-lighted/made to feel as if my abuse was my fault, Ive been punished by my school for being abused by my ex! Yet everyone who has ever hurt me in these ways always got away with it scott-free. Why? I have no idea. I like to say that they’re let off the hook because I don’t come to school with black eyes, broken bones, bruises, and mascara running down my face. Abuse is abuse, it doesn’t have to have visible signs. Yet, mine does. I have self harm wounds, not because I blame them for making me self harm (as one of my exes once did), but because of trauma I still deal with that stemmed from their treatment of me. I have nightmares about my ex and her treatment toward me. I get SCARED when my mom comes home. I get nervous walking into school. I hate being touhed physically because it reminds me of so many people from the past getting physical and leaving me in the dirt afterward, even when I trusted them with everything. I hate saying I love you to anybody because of how little it means when others say it to me. Many partners would send hearts & “I love you"s, then throw me out like I was garbage.

I’m so tired of it all.

But maybe it’s all my fault. Maybe Im the problem. Im too quiet. Im too much of a pacifist. I hate confrontation. I hate violence. I hate hating people. If Im hurt by someone, even being abused, I always forgive and let them back in, and I get hurt again over and over. But on the rare chance that I dont forgive, when I do hate them with every cell in me, then for some reason, I can’t get them away, I can’t get them out of my life. They’re always around as a constantly reminder of what happened and how I was used and how I will never change, I’ll never be able to stick up for myself.

 if all that is going to happen in my life involves me being used for sex, money, or compliments to make others feel higher about themselves, then I don’t want to be around anymore. But I can’t just kill myself on a whim and call it a day.

I wouldn’t exactly say this is why I self harm, my self harm isn’t a choice, it just… kind of happens. It’s an addiction; scientifically, it has been proven to have addictive tendencies, which is why it’s so hard to stop once you’ve started/relapsed. I self harm because it’s an addiction that I can’t help, and becaue of bottled up, unresolved trauma that gets worse with every new day that I keep it bottled up for.

 This isn’t going to get better. Sorry for typing out so much too. I have an issue with piling all my thoughts and how I feel into multiple huge paragraphs, so there’s much more of that to come.

Also to come, weight updates & keeping track of what I eat/how long I can go with no food whatsoever. So far I’ve gone about 1/ maybe 2??? days straight, though I stayed home today so I did have to eat dinner, which caused me to gain 1 pound. But I lost 4.5 pounds in that day of not eating, so I can lose that 1 pound pretty quickly. Plus my metabolism is very very fast, so even if I did eat a lot I’d lose all that weight in a few hours/a day or two, depending on how much I ate.

This is day 1 of my further decline.

September 01, 2019