:(

[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

[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. :)