:(

[sofiaviolet]

Well, internets, I am definitely experiencing a depressive episode that exceeds my medication's ability to compensate. :(

There are definitely some external components. Not sure if that makes me feel better or worse than Completely Random Brain Fuckery. I am probably experiencing a very extended sort of con drop, because I had 3+ weeks of New Orleans and parents and Doing All Of The Things (research, eating, shopping), 24 hours in Boston in which I had to Do All Of The Other Things (unpack, repack, work most of a day), then the con, and then more parents (they came up to Boston for a week to visit Ellie, so I got a few extra days with them post-con). Nothing to do but go to work, and I'm still part-time until the 5th.

It is also approaching five years since I was raped. Five years is a long time, and it is also less than a quarter of my life. I have lots of conflicting Feelings about this significant anniversary, and they can be roughly grouped as follows:

• It has been five years! Get over it already!
• It has been five years! You are allowed to still be fucked up!
• It has been five years! It is okay if you are okay!

The first one is fairly easy to dismiss, at least. I am grappling with the second (I am tired of my baggage and I want to at least hide it from people-who-are-not-me) and the third (I am actually kind of scared of being okay, okay? I don't get it either).

I am dwelling on it because I promised to make an item for shadesong's Blogathon auction (I made three things last year). She always blogs for BARCC, but the theme for this year's items is the strength/resilience of survivors. I have no idea what I'm going to make, and the openness of the theme doesn't actually help (last year, I used shadesong's fiction for prompts).

I probably should have made the Blogathon piece while I was in New Orleans. I brought a whole bunch of jewelry stuff with me, so it would've been possible. I could have hauled all of supplies up to my room and plonked myself down in the middle of the bed and made whatever came to mind and hand. (I'm amazed that I can sleep in that bed.) Same place - I probably could even have managed same time of day, late afternoon. But maybe it's a good thing I didn't - I would have been reaching for more bitterness than I am actually carrying around.

So my plan for the rest of the afternoon had been to catch up on my dreamroll, which I have not checked since Friday because spoons, but I think what I will actually do after I post this is play with my boxes of beads and whatnot. See what comes up.

Comments

[sofiaviolet]

That is a good reason to love a character. (I love my parents, and I also like them, because they were not full of fail. *clings to parents*)

I don't know that I could separate the toxic relationship from the most glaring incidents (which also includes other stuff like being nagged and cajoled into roleplaying rape scenes). :\

[cleverthylacine]

EEEEEEW. ***hugs***

I kind of feel (as someone who likes that kind of RP once in a great while) that if everyone involved in that kind of RP isn't enthusiastic and rarin' to go with it, it isn't RP, it's the real thing, at least to some degree, and that is the last thing I would personally EVER want.

But then there's a real gulf in the world of forced sex RP between the people who want it to be about how someone is so, so awesome that you just can't control yourself and wait to get consent (or conversely that someone is so, so awesome that they immediately know all your deep dark secret wishes and you don't have to go through the messy negotiation and pain, it just happens, exactly the way you want, right down to the part where you never have to admit that you do want it) and the people who really get off on the idea of shaming, hurting, humiliating and degrading people, and/or being shamed, hurt, degraded and humiliated. Which I don't get. I just wish there were a secret sign like Kushiel's Dart in the eyes of the freaky ones so I would know to run away.

I actually find this a problem with most kink to a degree though, particularly with men. I do not want to have sex with anyone who wants to make me feel like dogshit or wants me to make them feel like dogshit. Period. If I could set up a kink event where people were prescreened for maliciousness and the desire to make people really feel like dogshit (and not just pretend they do while loving it) I would be on that like a hot second. One of the reasons my psycho third husband is an ex is that he completely failed to understand that bdsm is not about getting your bottom to do things that s/he doesn't want to do or make your top make you do things that you said you don't want to do, and in fact must involve complete acceptance of the fact that if someone really doesn't want a certain thing to happen, you must not make it happen and you must also not get off on making it happen.

And the thing is, I really do consider violation of stated hard limits (or even continually repeated "I don't like when", "I don't want", "no, I really don't enjoy that") to be sexual assault. Because what the fuck else do you call it?

[sofiaviolet]

Yeah. (Have had to tell C. that while in theory I would like for him to hold me down etc., I don't actually know how that will work out. Because if I have triggers, that's probably where they live.)

I really need to read the Kushiel books, don't I. *adds to list*

Re: your last paragraph: co-signed. Seriously.

[cleverthylacine]

Er, no I didn't mean that as a rec. I liked the first two Kushiel books all right except for the part where she erased all her fictional Jews by making them followers of "Yeshua" (which was horribly offensive) but there's way way way too much grotesquely detailed nonconsensual sex that does not in any way resemble a good force/rape fantasy in those books and there's way way way too much grotesque abuse of one character to the point where I wonder how he gets out of bed in the morning. I do not actually think they are very good representations of kink either, though I realise I'm in the minority on that one.

The third and fourth books were unbearably awful (I couldn't finish the fourth one) in terms of general not-triggery but just plain unpleasant badness. I think they appeal to a certain mindset which I probably lost 20 years ago.

[cleverthylacine]

Also, you shouldn't have to separate the two. The only reason I know it's not the sexual assault is that the sexual assault happened when I was 17 and the last serious relationship happened when I was 36. So there was some time intervening, and I had mostly worked through the sexual assault by then, although the last serious relationship falling apart and the psycho-ex husband right before did bring some of those demons back up. I kind of have this huge really long history of relationship fail. :) Which is why even though I've done metric fuckloads of therapy over the past year I'm still scared of dating again. I know I know how to protect myself now in ways that I didn't and that I am more aware of my issues and able to defend myself and set limits/boundaries better.

This does not mean that when I think about dating again, the lizard brain doesn't go "omg fuck no fuck no remember what happened the last kazillion times you did that?"

[sofiaviolet]

Oh yes, the lizard brain.

Given the overall level of ick, I don't know that I want to separate them. It's just a series of bad events.

IDK if I want more therapy. I had so much of it for straight-up depression that I burned out. It might be a good idea, but meh.

[cleverthylacine]

What I'm actually doing isn't traditional talk therapy but EBT (http://www.ebt.org) and it's actually pretty effective with a minimum of having to tell other people what happened. :)