i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

1. Realization: my perfectionism may be an ocd-ish thing (a belief that being perfect prevents bad shit from happening) ... which is self-reinforcing because life includes bad shit and also me being perfect is impossible

2. I miss being able to do counted cross stitch. Also knitting.

3. There is a line between acknowledging the reality of sucky situations (good) and brainwashing yourself into keeping that as normal (bad) and I don't know where that is.

4. My brain really wants a mashup of "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" and the House Hippo PSA (and maybe also the #yuletide discord and the hippos there) ... only I don't know how to write that

5. I did a few art-y things but the image upload process here is annoying, bah. (One thing I miss about ravelry is the streamlined image upload.)

So I just realized (maybe re-realized idk) a serious flaw in my brain's Perpetual Ominous Warnings Of Doom (mostly to the tune of "I am going to fuck things up", with occasional sprinklings of "something bad will happen and you aren't prepared")

which is that something *will* eventually go wrong, and I *will* eventually fuck something up. Not because I suck, just ... that's the way the universe is. And while the endless anticipatory anxiety won't actually really have helped, the prediction itself technically came true -- meaning my brain will use it as proof that the anxiety itself is necessary.

Kind of like when a hoarder actually does find a use for a random hoarded item, just by chance, and uses that as justification for "I might need this someday" hoarding. Only the anxiety thing is worse because there isn't even the "accidentally helpful" moment; it's just feeling shitty in advance without actually changing anything.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this, or how to turn it from intellectual understanding to maybe calming anxiety down, or keeping it from backfiring on me, but ... huh.

random thing from therapy: I realized it's possible that what I label as "feeling guilty" might largely be just feeling *bad* from over-empathizing. Like, guilt should involve some element of fault -- me doing X led to Y, which is bad, therefore I feel guilty -- but my brain extrapolates that to someone else doing X leads to Y, which is bad, therefore I feel gui???+++ OUT OF CHEESE ERROR REDO FROM START +++

So I'm trying to disentangle, and wow is it hard. Logically I know that e.g. if a friend tells me their partner just broke up with them, since I am not responsible I can label my feeling-bad-ness as "empathy with suck", but it's harder when I maybe could have done something, e.g. my mom forgets to go to a concert, which is not directly my fault but I could have reminded her the day of.

How do y'all describe "feeling guilty"? How does it feel physically, and how do you separate guilt from just ... feeling bad?

I have noticed, especially in the last month or two, that I tend to crash both physically and emotionally right after going to bed ... which happens around 7, nowhere near when I actually go to sleep.

Not sure if it's a) my bed being haunted somehow (or more precisely I'm creating a feedback loop where my brain expects crash and therefore reinforcing it, sort of an inverse sleep hygiene thing); b) a neurospicy thing where I'm "on" during the day (because other ppl can see my screen and hear my sounds) and in bed I can relax that (no one sees my tablet but me, and I have earbuds) and it's just too much "on"; or c) something else.

If it's b, I'm not sure I can do anything to push past the crash...

Edit - fully crashed, as in couldn't track a audiobook w/o missing chunks, but then woke up 1am needing to pee. Feel very wonky and off kilter right now. Hopefully just a result of wonky sleep stuff but possibly because getting sick? Recording here just in case.

I don't know if "wanting Monkey to forgive me for letting her die" is a grief thing or what. It's an irrational, impossible desire/ I think it ties in to my ongoing struggle with feeling Not Good Enough, and probably just a sharper variant of wanting forgiveness for not being able to skritch her.

One of the people I follow on Twitter does kitten fostering and just posted a small saga of a handful of bottle-fed babies. Only half of them survived. I don't know how she does it. I know there's a difference between a cat you've known for ten years and a kitten you've known for only days, but you still feel attached, you still care.

The last few years I keep wavering between planning my "strategies" for future cats and realizing my current animals may well be my last. One of the things I would do if I had infinite money (okay I don't need it infinite just, like, billions, maybe trillions) and could care for animals myself is go to the shelter and ask for the cats that have been there the longest -- but I don't have either the money or the ability.

I'm trying not to judge myself for how much or how little I cry; I feel selfishly grateful that this gives me an excuse for a while for not getting stuff done, and sometimes I wonder if I'm *just* being selfish (but no, not really; selfish people don't worry about it, right?)

(I posted about her to FB last night; I'd been hesitant because it felt very "me me me pay attention to meeeeee" but then I had to laugh because-- what else is FB for?)

I know I have orange yarn; maybe I should make a mini Monkey...

I had a moment of clarity the other day ... I have (pretty much always had) an underlying feeling of Not Good Enough; nga for my dogs, nga as a daughter and sister, nga at writing, nga at singing, pretty much anything. It's not a logical feeling at all (it's often a manifestation of perfectionism, and/or reflects things I can't do because disability and literally no one but me expects it) and my reaction tends to be withdraw / hide / curl into a ball of shame.

I realized the other day that the proper answer/response should be "try harder", not "hide and be miserable". Like, I think a lot of dog owners feel imperfect, but the better response is "try to be the person my dog thinks I am", not "I'll never be as awesome as my dog expects, let me hide"

...the moment of *feelng* the truth of that has passed, and it's back to being intellectually true but feeling hollow. (I am fucking exhausted of fighting the "must hide" reflex for every damn thing.) But I wanted to write it down anyway in case it comes back.

I have sort of figured out that the waves of overwhelming panic-sobbing that make it hard to breathe and impossible to talk, kind of feel like grief (?!?). Which is weird because I haven't lost anything, but hrm.

So, ok, I have this ... weird inhibition about playing music out loud. I'm fine listening with headphones, but since I can't do those myself, that means I only listen when I have headphones on already. That's mostly at night, when I'm in bed. Singing along doesn't happen much -- it's embarrassing if headphoned, and I'm never not. It's been years, maybe decades, since I've just blasted a fun playlist and let myself sing along.

I keep poking at this mental wall, because I'd love to be able to do that. As far as I can tell, it's a combination of at least two desires/needs.

One is I don't want to bother anyone (more than I have to), combined with an overly sensitive meter for what counts as bothersome (i.e. anything at all). It's like I can only do loud things when alone. Between aides and roommate, I'm rarely alone, and I often just don't think of it as an option in the times I do have. Even if I'm watching a video, I'll often turn it off when someone shows up, because Noise.

It's not a logical thing: my roommate has a room with a door (and also can use her words if she needs quiet) and my aides are paid to be here and none of them would be bothered by what I listen to. It's just ... I somehow just can't, unless I'm alone.

(Oddly, video chat is exempt. I'm fine doing those on my computer with no headphones.)

The other is fear of judgment / mockery. This is a long thing: I remember as a young teen getting my first stereo system (CDs and tapes) and my dad brought along the CDs of Phantom of the Opera, with which I was obsessed, to use the Overture to test the sound of different players, and part of me was vaguely humiliated because it would out me as a Weirdo Who Liked Phantom. (Many of my interests at the time, including POTO and Star Trek, I was convinced were inherently shameful.) My genres are nonstandard, so there's possible weakness there, but also I listen to the same thing over and over again. Usually a playlist/CD rather than a single song, but sometimes even that.

(This is also why I never really got into things like Pandora; if I wanted to listen to X, I wanted to listen to X and not to things similar to X, and I'd rather listen to known comfort music over and over.)

I realized tonight that right now, when my roommate is out of town for a few days, I have times of actual guaranteed aloneness. That I could put on whatever and sing along.

...and I still got slammed with an almost visceral memory of someone saying, incredulously, "you're listening to that AGAIN???" Of someone begging me to put on something different. I don't remember if this was my sister (who would have been an older teen at the time) or in college, but I'm terrified, I guess, of getting that again.

On one hand I don't care if my aides don't approve of how I listen to music, and anyway they're all too nice to say something -- except maybe for "didn't you already play that". On the other, the internalization of "this thing I do is Not Normal*" is too old and too deep. So ... I don't know.

* ... I would not be surprised to learn listening to something on repeat is an autism and/or ADHD thing...

CW: food, dieting, self harm

( Read more... )

gah

want my robot body already

Last year I was super into Animal Crossing, though by December I was kind of burnt out ... not completely, but between Halloween and Toy Day there was a lot of eventing. But also I was bonding with my aide S, who also played, and I was planning island designs and stuff.

January was when S got hit by a car, and had to stop working abruptly because badly broken ankle; I heard from her once maybe a week oater, and nothing since. I don't know how she's doing, if she's still in the area, if she's even alive.

In some ways it feels like I had a trauma reaction, like my brain just shut down. I recruited a friend L to take over scheduling my aides, which is probably the only reason I survived January. (L has been helping since, because she likes doing it.)

I don't think I've touched my Switch since. Not just AC but anything. The Yoshi game had gotten to too hard levels, I never got far into Unraveled, and AC was just ... I couldn't. At some point I figured out the link with S and grief/trauma, so I figured I'd wait it out.

Recently Nintendo announced the Nov update for ACNH, and it's fucking AWESOME. I'm not as rabid about Brewster as some people are, but. Fences! Accent walls! Lights! Permanent ladders! Crops! COOKING!! New islands to visit! And it's the day after my birthday so basically a free birthday present? Hell yeah!

(The paid dlc looks awesome too but I'm waiting; I can probably afford it but I want to make sure I actually get back into AC first.)

The update literally had my jaw dropping, and I was getting excited about the game again. Yes there will be many weeds and things to clean up and stuff, but I have online friends that promised to help if I wanted.

Only...

I still haven't touched the Switch.

Partly it's that I'm out of the habit of having my aides get out the Switch as part of the morning routine -- all but one of my aides are new to this year. Partly I kept forgetting about it until after I'd in bed, and I'd think "tomorrow I will remember" and then the next day would spend the whole day on Twitter again.

Today I actually thought of it, during the day, when an aide was even here. And I couldn't do it. Couldn't even ask.

I feel so fucking broken.