Cue the Waterworks

CW: emotional abuse, threats of self-harm (made by others, not me) and references to past childhood abuse (without details) I have a tradition I like to call 'Crying on Christmas Eve.' In the Before Times, when Americans were still welcome in the rest of the world, it was an annual pre-trip ritual I had to …

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Our New Normal

This month is always a weird time for me. Too many negative memories all clustered in one frustrating birth month. So, it's no surprise in hindsight, I suppose, why I've been feeling more dissociated, weird and generally "floaty" than normal recently. I always feel more dissociated, weird and generally "floaty" on Hallmark holidays, during my …

“Lavender, Where Are You?”

CW: Descriptions of childhood emotional abuse. There will come a point in 2020 when I can officially say that I have lived longer outside the 9th Circle of Hell than I have within it. I will not, unfortunately, be concurrently able to say that I have spent more time outside of Hell than I have …

No Praise Like Home

You know how trauma workbooks commonly offer a warning to stop, to practice self-care, and to return to a chapter at a future time if any material in it becomes too triggering? I have never paid much attention to those warnings, even during those years when my mistrust of the system was so intense that …

Messages in a Bottle #14: If You’re a Poet and You Don’t Know It…

Traumaversaries are weird. I have learned that it is entirely possible for me to feel stressed, anxious, rejection sensitive and floaty for days with no overt understanding of why I am feeling this way - even throughout events that should otherwise be fun in present-day 2019 - because my subconscious mind still remembers what my conscious mind …

Messages in a Bottle #12: Six Degrees of Kevin Broken

CW: descriptions of systemic abuse, abuse statistics, speaking out about past abuses This Message in a Bottle was literally previously a published blog post in March. But, the original version of the post was first password-protected, because, at the time, I worried that putting it out there simultaneously would somehow undermine the credibility of what …

Protected: Six Degrees of Kevin Broken

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Trust in Mental Health Treatment #5/Where’s Whoopsie #19: Ire of the Storm

The reason I am awake at 4am is below. It is also, apparently, in the papers (or, at least, the digital online copies of the "papers" since it's 2019 and I don't remember what any dead-tree paper looks like outside of my intimidating sketchbook...) I've been noticing an uptick recently in the number of media …

Offer What Light You Can

Content Warning: I began my Reality Journal on March 7th, 2018. Astute readers might realize that, if we are almost to the one-year anniversary of the creation of that journal, we have already passed the one-year anniversary of its inspiring event. I can somehow concurrently not remember enough details of that night because of dissociation …

Eek! Previews

Emotional flashbacks are tricky to recognize. You can become thoroughly caught up in the fight/flight/freeze responses of the past without even realizing you have shifted. And, even if you do realize you are in one, it can be tricky to recognize to what, exactly, you are flashing back. There are, after all, so many discreet …