Life Update: Finally
This update has definitely been a long time coming. I feel like I have kind of neglected this blog and my writing recently, which is why I haven't been making Life Update posts as frequently as I should have. Because there has definitely been a lot going on in my life, both terrible things and amazing things. This time, we are talking about the amazing ones – at last.
One Word Fits All
I don't like to think of myself as one of those people who have arguments with people on the internet all the time. I don't enjoy arguing with anyone, and even debating is sometimes too much for me. I tend to stay away from heated conversation topics because my weak mind can't handle the pressure and stress of keyboard fighting. It is the main reason I have left various online communities in my time.
Spewing Out Slurs
Discrimination comes in various shapes and sizes, and I am no stranger to quite a few of them. Being a member of several marginalized communities, I have faced all kinds of bigotry in my time. Granted, I do want to make it clear that I have had it relatively easy when it comes to discrimination like homophobia, mainly because of my very loving and accepting family. In some ways, I have been lucky in these experiences, especially when compared to some of my loved ones. Though, that doesn't mean that I have been completely let out of the hook.
Too Weak To Take It
Weak. That is a word I've heard people describe me with for all my life. I can't recall the first time it happened, but it must have been pretty early on, maybe in kindergarten already. Weakness and sensitivity have – at least for me – almost been each other's synonyms. They're sisters, very close ones too. Overly sensitive people get labeled as weak because of their emotional reactions to things that others can just "brush off" and "not take so seriously".
Life Update: Fall-ing In Love
The older I'm getting, the more I find myself liking autumn. This makes it sound like I'm actually old, when I'm literally in my early twenties, but you get the point. When I was a teenager, I used to despise this season. I guess it reminded me of the school year starting too much, so the entire period of autumn got a bad name. But as I am growing and finding what it's like to have your own life as an adult, fall is becoming a time I'm more excited to experience year after year.
Chemical Burns On My Face
Whenever my girlfriend calls me things like "beautiful", I have a meltdown. Not because I think it's adorable when they say those sweet things to me, but because it triggers the shit out of me. It is so frustrating how my trauma prevents me from receiving genuine compliments, which leads to extremely embarrassing situations. Imagine telling your partner to stop calling you beautiful because it makes you suicidal. There's not a lot of things that I hate about myself more than that.
Tinshoegirl
I think I was around five years old when I first heard Kaija Koo's song "Tinakenkätyttö". I was hanging out with my then-best friend, and she had the song on her tiny Sony Ericsson mobile phone. She played it for me, and I fell in love with it instantly. For some reason, I only came back to it years later, when I had already entered elementary school. I rediscovered the song through my mom; she's a huge Kaija Koo fan, has been as long as I remember. We used to listen to her albums in mom's old Peugeot car that had a CD player. One of those albums that mom had was the record where "Tinakenkätyttö" was initially released on. I could feel myself traveling back in time, to my best friend's tiny bedroom, sitting on her bunk bed and kicking air as the crackly speaker played the song for us. A simpler time, I thought. I think I was around ten at that time.
Life Update: Looking For A Bro
I think men are amazing. Some of the most important people in my life have been men, and only a few of my abusers have been male. It has usually been other girls and women who have hurt me the most, which is why I have this general feeling of fear and distrust around them. In my eyes, men are more trustworthy than women, so I've naturally gravitated towards them.
Spread Thin
How much pain does one human being have to endure in their life for it to be considered "too much"? When is it justifiable for that person to give up and not want to keep fighting anymore? Why is it that some people in this world are forever cursed with the worst kind of luck, with the worst kind of pain, and then just expected to keep going like it's nobody's business?
My Body; A Broken Temple
I find it truly fascinating how psychological trauma can manifest itself in physical symptoms. How something that damaged the development of my personality can lead to chronic pain, muscle spasms, convulsions, and soreness. Sometimes I find myself questioning whether this is truly all in my head, if the things people did to me as a child were something more than what I am currently able to remember. Because I struggle to believe that the things I went through could truly result in something like this. How could a bunch of kids doing those things later cause me to develop massive issues with my muscles and joints? But then I have to remind myself that all this questioning is nothing more than a result of poor and very lacking education on the way psychological trauma works, how it alters your brain, and how your body will carry that damage within itself until the day your heart ceases to beat.