:(

[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

[harborshore]

♥, dearest. It's actually okay to be mostly okay and a little fucked up, or whatever combination of all of them you land on. Totally. And I know you know, I'm just, like, providing an additional voice.

[zillahseye]

I'm so sorry you're having a hard time in a lot of ways. *hugs* I'll be thinking of you.

[katieastrophe]

I hope you are still allowed to be fucked up because I think* I am, sometimes, and it's been longer than five years for me.

* I mean, how do you tell? Most of the time, I'm okay, and I don't blame myself anymore, and mostly, when I think about it, I'm angry, but then sometimes I'm inconsolable as well.

I don't know if I'll ever be "over it", at least in terms of the sheer fucking anger.

[fleurdeliser]

♥♥♥

[cleverthylacine]

I was 17. I am 46 and I am still kind of fucked up, partly because it was a sexual assault, and partly because it reinforced awful misogynistic lessons my family had been trying to teach me that I had until then mostly managed to roll for disbelief on.

It is okay to be fucked up.

It is okay not to be fucked up.

It is okay to be whatever you need to be.

It is okay to be mostly over it and still triggerable and still working out the kinks it left in your thinking, not all of which are even immediately visible within the first year or two or even five, which would be where I am.

I wonder about this fear of being okay. Maybe you're afraid that being okay and admitting you're okay will mean that you're not allowed to be triggered or have relapses, and you might. Maybe you're afraid that being okay will make you careless, because it's tempting to believe that you had the power to prevent something like that and hard to accept that even if you do everything they tell you to do (and who wants to fucking live like that) the difference between a woman who gets raped and a woman who doesn't is a man who decides to rape her, period. I know that I have a real fear of giving up my lifelong paranoia about lots of things because it's kept me from having some of the really bad shit happen to me, but in the end I have to accept that it is a bad shit thing that has happened to me and not a viable alternative to taking risks and maybe getting hurt occasionally instead of hurting all the time.

And maybe it's none of those things. Whatever it is, it's okay.

[heartequals]

Whatever you are is okay <3

[pinesandmaples]

There isn't a rule about how you should or shouldn't be.

[eledhwenlin]

*hugs*

[turlough]

*hugs you a lot*