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cabbitzillaBefore I get into this, I knoew several folks have a tendancey towards "it's all my fault, because I did [x]" responses. It's not. Nobody did anything wrong, so relax.
I'm in hiding. It took a poke from someone last night to actually realize I'd been systematically isolating myself and withdrawing. Again. Last night's poke is what prompted this post. I'm not sure what triggered it off this time around, but I know what I'm dealing with and why things are as they are right this second.
Fear. Of people. Of places. Of being seen. Of being vulnerable. Of a thousand different things, but it all boils down to a sick kind of nausea-inducing terror that rises in my mind at the idea of being visible to others. I've pulled away from the MU*'s, from the IM clients, from everything. After being prodded last night, I spent a long time sitting in the dark in my room, trying to sort through the jumbled confusion in my mind. I had a portion of it at least rough sorted when I hit my therapist appointment at two. And I returned here, and continued trying to make it make sense. At the moment, I have a single light on, no music, a blank background on the computer desktop, and this one lonely window; it's the only way I can focus enough through the turmoil to be completely lucid... if this can be called lucid.
All my life, I've been pursued by a pair of mental demons intent on wrecking my mind. The first is the gender malfunction that is my body. The second is a bit harder to put a label on, but it boils down to a lack of understanding... and which 'me' is really me. There are more than a few folk who'd snicker nastily at the idea of me as innocent. What they've seen is the raunchy-to-the-point-of-crass joker who's always a step, joke, or pun ahead of the world. It's a combination of in your face physical presence and a louder than life personality, arrogantly confident that nothing can catch it. Which is what I built it to do. It keeps folk at arm's distance, a sonic and flesh wall between me and the world. It works, and works well. Too well.
Behind that is me, for the handful of folks who've managed to find chinks in that armor and slip through. A lost child who stares at the world in confusion, and never quite understands -why- things happen as they do. Around me, everyone seems to have, at the basic level, some sort of social reflex template to rely on... and I'm without it. When someone hits me with something new, be it gadget or idea, my stock response will be 'acknowledgment with a hint of interest', something I've come to realize is usually acceptable, while I run off and find out what this thing is so that I know who to look at to see what their base response is so that I can emulate it. *shakes her head* And folks are going to look at that and go "what?"... which isn't far from the look of confusion that'd be on my face without the wall I've put up. It's not that my reactions in social situations are wrong (although that would sometimes seem the case), it's that they're not there. They simply don't exist. But I've learned how to fake it to give myself some time to try and figure out how the handful of folk I trust would react and then add it to the list for future reference.
Some have questioned my insistence that I have no morals, simply a very strong code of ethics. It's simply an extension of the mental dial tone that comes up in any sort of 'right' versus 'wrong' situation; my responses are carefully thought out and then programmed in, else I'd still be standing in the middle of the room of life and staring blankly ahead. It makes for a lot of awkwardness, and I've made more than a few horridly bad mistakes; faking something this basic is more complex than most would think. Social responses are the foundation for nearly everything, I know some people will immediately suggest that this is a problem of upbringing, that something wasn't taught to me. Such is not the case; mom -did- hammer such things into Leah and I both, but because there was nothing there to begin with with me, none of it made any sense at all to me. My emotions would (and sometimes still do) cycle rapidly without rhyme or reason, but there was never a connection to reality, because it was random rather than triggered by events. What I learned was mechanical: in order to survive, this had to be built or faked somehow. And it got me nearly to forty, but it's starting to unravel like everything else I've built...
Which brings me to now. At the moment, all I can do is halt the withdrawal; there's just not enough to roll it back the other direction, yet. It'll come, but it'll take time. But I know there're folks who worry, so I'm doing another of my "oh God, she's at it again" braindumps. I've reason to believe that there's a cheerfully brainwashed moppet out there who'll understand this mess better than any... for the rest of you, if it makes no sense.... I'm sorry, there's just nothing I can to do help. I... am going to go to my hiding place now, be someone else, and thump monsters. It doesn't require huge amounts of thought, which is optimal for right now.
I'm in hiding. It took a poke from someone last night to actually realize I'd been systematically isolating myself and withdrawing. Again. Last night's poke is what prompted this post. I'm not sure what triggered it off this time around, but I know what I'm dealing with and why things are as they are right this second.
Fear. Of people. Of places. Of being seen. Of being vulnerable. Of a thousand different things, but it all boils down to a sick kind of nausea-inducing terror that rises in my mind at the idea of being visible to others. I've pulled away from the MU*'s, from the IM clients, from everything. After being prodded last night, I spent a long time sitting in the dark in my room, trying to sort through the jumbled confusion in my mind. I had a portion of it at least rough sorted when I hit my therapist appointment at two. And I returned here, and continued trying to make it make sense. At the moment, I have a single light on, no music, a blank background on the computer desktop, and this one lonely window; it's the only way I can focus enough through the turmoil to be completely lucid... if this can be called lucid.
All my life, I've been pursued by a pair of mental demons intent on wrecking my mind. The first is the gender malfunction that is my body. The second is a bit harder to put a label on, but it boils down to a lack of understanding... and which 'me' is really me. There are more than a few folk who'd snicker nastily at the idea of me as innocent. What they've seen is the raunchy-to-the-point-of-crass joker who's always a step, joke, or pun ahead of the world. It's a combination of in your face physical presence and a louder than life personality, arrogantly confident that nothing can catch it. Which is what I built it to do. It keeps folk at arm's distance, a sonic and flesh wall between me and the world. It works, and works well. Too well.
Behind that is me, for the handful of folks who've managed to find chinks in that armor and slip through. A lost child who stares at the world in confusion, and never quite understands -why- things happen as they do. Around me, everyone seems to have, at the basic level, some sort of social reflex template to rely on... and I'm without it. When someone hits me with something new, be it gadget or idea, my stock response will be 'acknowledgment with a hint of interest', something I've come to realize is usually acceptable, while I run off and find out what this thing is so that I know who to look at to see what their base response is so that I can emulate it. *shakes her head* And folks are going to look at that and go "what?"... which isn't far from the look of confusion that'd be on my face without the wall I've put up. It's not that my reactions in social situations are wrong (although that would sometimes seem the case), it's that they're not there. They simply don't exist. But I've learned how to fake it to give myself some time to try and figure out how the handful of folk I trust would react and then add it to the list for future reference.
Some have questioned my insistence that I have no morals, simply a very strong code of ethics. It's simply an extension of the mental dial tone that comes up in any sort of 'right' versus 'wrong' situation; my responses are carefully thought out and then programmed in, else I'd still be standing in the middle of the room of life and staring blankly ahead. It makes for a lot of awkwardness, and I've made more than a few horridly bad mistakes; faking something this basic is more complex than most would think. Social responses are the foundation for nearly everything, I know some people will immediately suggest that this is a problem of upbringing, that something wasn't taught to me. Such is not the case; mom -did- hammer such things into Leah and I both, but because there was nothing there to begin with with me, none of it made any sense at all to me. My emotions would (and sometimes still do) cycle rapidly without rhyme or reason, but there was never a connection to reality, because it was random rather than triggered by events. What I learned was mechanical: in order to survive, this had to be built or faked somehow. And it got me nearly to forty, but it's starting to unravel like everything else I've built...
Which brings me to now. At the moment, all I can do is halt the withdrawal; there's just not enough to roll it back the other direction, yet. It'll come, but it'll take time. But I know there're folks who worry, so I'm doing another of my "oh God, she's at it again" braindumps. I've reason to believe that there's a cheerfully brainwashed moppet out there who'll understand this mess better than any... for the rest of you, if it makes no sense.... I'm sorry, there's just nothing I can to do help. I... am going to go to my hiding place now, be someone else, and thump monsters. It doesn't require huge amounts of thought, which is optimal for right now.
