Something To Hold Onto
I spend the most of my time alone in my own home. My parents do live very close to me, but not close enough so that I could call them over every time I'm having an episode. So I tend to deal with them on my own accord. Sometimes it gets really lonely: there is no one in the apartment with me, just me and my shaking body. I feel so isolated from everyone and the whole world: no one knows what goes on behind these walls. Maybe my neighbors have heard my uncontrollable sobs, but that is all.
The Aching In My Muscles
For quite some time now, I have suspected that all of my physical symptoms might be caused by fibromyalgia. A lot of trauma survivors develop this chronic pain disorder, including one of my biggest idols, Lady Gaga. I became aware of the condition through her, actually. When I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I was hit with a wave of realization: an artist I really look up to has that condition too. Gaga has talked about her mental health struggles a lot more openly in the recent years, and the more I hear her talk about what it is like to live with fibromyalgia and other constant post-traumatic symptoms, the more I find myself relating to her. She is, truly, one of my biggest inspirations; a supporting force whose art has helped me get through a lot of rough spots during the years.
Life Update: Anniversary
Things have been pretty rough lately. It seems like my mind is all over the place, I can't keep it fixated on one thought for longer than a few hours, and then it drifts off somewhere I don't know. For the most part, I think a lot of this has to do with the time of the year we are heading to: the beginning of summer. There's a lot of things that happened either at the very beginning of summer or during the breaks when I was a kid. That is definitely one of the reasons summer has always been my least favorite season. That and hot weather; it makes me miserable.
Strings Around My Ankles
I can feel my legs twitching, my muscles contracting. I can feel my feet stretching on their own accord, as if someone was pulling at them with a string. Every single muscle in my legs is tensed up and flexed, and I can do nothing but watch it happen and wail in pain.
The Pain Inside Me Wants To Get Out
They say that trauma gets stored in the body. And by 'they', I mean psychiatrists and other professionals working on the field of psychiatry. There is a lot of scientific evidence of psychological trauma not only affecting the brain, but the entire body. Human beings are not the only species experiencing such post-traumatic symptoms: the same phenomenon can be detected in animals like dogs and cats. I remember reading in one article on the science of trauma that because animals' brains are not able to comprehend and deal with the psychological trauma they might have gone through, they resort to physical reactions instead. These typically consist of shaking, trembling, and convulsing. That is the main method of dealing with trauma for animals.
They Should Have Just...
As a literature major, I know that meta text is very often frowned upon, and it is commonly not considered an effective way of narrating nor making an impression on the reader. Especially text about the process of creating the text is very bad and should always be avoided. It very rarely offers any important insight or serves a significant role in the context of the text, so all writers are told to stay away from it.
Life Update: My Girl
My girlfriend from the US stayed with me in Finland for almost the entire month of April. I dropped them at the airport yesterday at the time of writing this entry. Four weeks is a long time to spend with another person, and especially when that person is so very dear to you, after such a long period letting them go becomes that much more difficult. In other words, I have been feeling sad since she left, but I guess that is to be expected. Goodbyes at the airport never get any easier.
Selfish When Alive, Free When Dead
I haven't been doing that well recently. I don't think there's any specific reason for it, other than maybe the stress of moving and living in a new apartment completely on my own kind of got to me in a way. But nothing has happened that would've made me upset; I've just been hurting a bit more than normally. I guess it comes with the illness – ebbs and flows seemingly without reason.
Doormat
There comes a point in your life when you start to wonder why bad things keep happening to you year after year. Why people keep mistreating you, hurting you, abusing you. You are desperate to find any kind of explanation for it, no matter how irrational it may be. And when literally everything about the circumstances change – the place, the time, the people – everything but you, you wonder why that may be.