Trash Gremlin

Reminder (for myself and anyone who needs it)

I am not "giving in to my disabilities" by asking for help

I am not "being demanding" for asking for accommodation

I am not "giving up" by using mobility devices or not working

I am not "letting myself get worse" by recieving aid, like benefits, that I need

I am not "being defeatist" by acknowledging what I can't do

It is not "sad" that I use assistive equipment

It's not "cringe" that I need support to do basic care tasks

And btw just because you can force yourself to do something on occasion while experiencing immense pain doesn't mean you can do it.

Accepting your limits isn't being a defeatist or a failure

It means a you love yourself enough to stop hurting yourself for other people's approval

I have so many mental illnesses and physical disabilities that I'm just going to start saying that I'm cursed

"oh I'm sorry I can't come today because The Curse is acting up."

Part of me healing and growing as a person is accepting that I am difficult to be around for a lot of people and not particularly likable by a lot of people's standards and thats okay

I am not inherently likable but I am not unlikable

I am not inherently lovable but I am not unlovable

I may be uncomfortable and unpleasant and upsetting for a lot of people to be around but that doesn't mean I don't deserve basic human rights, dignity, or respect

I don't have to be liked by everyone and it is not a failure to be weird and awkward and difficult

As long as the people who matter like me and as long as I am comfortable and not actively trying to hurt people it's fine.

I can be ugly and awkward and off-putting to the majority

That doesn't make me less of a person or less capable of being loved

I'm an acquired taste even when I make myself the best version of me I can be. I am never going to be the popular option anywhere

And that's fine

I am still allowed to exist as a being in this world and I am still allowed to accept love when it's given

Okay I'm starting to get annoyed

Me: it's annoying how people think being self aware cancels out mental illness

People who found that post: *equates being noticeably mentally ill with completely unmanaged mental illness and destructive "bad" coping techniques* but it's still good to be self aware because then you can form good coping techniques and get better!!! It's just the first step of many on the road to recovery

Me: ...okay but even managed I'm still mentally ill. That's the whole point

Look I am practically the poster child for well-managed mental illness

And I am still visibly and uncomfortably mentally ill!!!

It doesn't go away!

It's a part of me forever!

And that's okay!

But it's annoying when people act like I should just never have a panic attack again because I can say "I'm going to have a panic attack" and prepare for it

Or that because I know I'm dissociating that I can just stop

And also some people can't "recover" or "get better" even if they are self aware

And even people in recovery are still having to deal with mental illness. It comes back or they're triggered or something else happens

My mental illness is here to stay and I can accept that and other should too

So people make these temperature blamket where they crochet a row a day of the average temp

Okay but what if I do that but it's either my average mood score or my average pain score?

In fact;

Advantage to Mood: more varied, fun way to show my doctor how I'm doing with my mental health, fun way to track if I'm in a breakdown and at least I have something to do when I'm depressed. I can use rainbow yarn for manic episodes

Advantage to Pain: I probably only have to buy 5 colours as I am almost never below a 6. Colour scheme will probably be prettier, good way to show off how in pain I am and I will have a blanket at the end of the year that i can snuggle under when in pain

Learning to embrace that I'm ill has been better for me than fighting it.

Learning to accept and acknowledge that I am broken in many ways has made things better.

I don't work work right.

I see myself in many ways as a haunted doll.

The porcelain cracked and the dress stained and the hair tangled and messy.

I don't look right.

I don't work right.

I bring strangeness and uncomfortable energy with me

A lot of people don't want a haunted doll. They find them frightening and upsetting. Or they find them ugly and tacky.

Either way they would throw the doll away or try to fix it. Make it pretty again. Make it not haunted.

Only to throw it away when they fail.

But there are also always going to be people who see a haunted doll and want to pick it up and take it home. They'll even display it proudly, and talk about how the ghost is misunderstood and not evil. Or even if it is evil it's not without charm and not without reasons.

They will coo at it and brush it's hair and lovingly clean it, they don't mind that the hair will retangle or the dress will stain again. Because they provide the care willingly.

It's not easy to be a haunted doll.

The cracks hurt

The filth clings

The rage swirls inside without release.

But it's also okay to be a haunted doll

Being broken and haunted doesn't mean you can't be loved. It doesn't mean that you're bad.

You may not work right

You might not look right

You might make the room uncomfortable or bring strangeness with you.

But that doesn't make you unloveable

That doesn't make you unworthy

I want to be clear

I have done a lot of therapy

I have worked really hard on myself and my issues and how I interact with others

I am, in some ways, the poster child of "managing" your mental health. Especially for someone who has BPD/CPTSD

But I am still fucking crazy as fuck

I am still going to freak out because my husband isn't home at the time I expected and he didn't immediately respond to my message asking for an ETA

Logically I know he's just gotten busy or his phone died or he just hasn't seen it yet

But I am fucking crazy so I also leap the belief that he is dead

And when he does call to say he's on the way I am going to sob down the phone about how scared I was that he didn't answer and wasn't home at time while apologising for being insane at him

I get paranoid

I get clingy

I freak the fuck out if my loved ones aren't where they are "supposed" to be

I blow up their phone (even though I am actively restraining from blowing it up even more)

I sob

I scream

I panic

I feel sick

It's fucking hell on earth in my head

Even though I know I am being unreasonable and disconnected from the reality of the situation. It doesn't matter because even if I control my reactions somewhat I am still very emotional dysregulated

Normally if I'm losing the plot I contact my husband or my best friend to help me regulate but they aren't always available when I'm really dysregulated like this so I have to manage on my own and try not to get completely hysterical

It's fucking tough

I have a lot of coping mechanisms and ways to calm down in the aftermath and I can usually communicate while I'm freaking out that I am being paranoid and catastrophising. I can tell my husband that I know he didn't do anything wrong by hanging out with his co-workers and losing track of time but I can't stop myself from sobbing as I say it. I am still even when I am managing as well as I can going to be visibly and upsettingly mentally ill

My symptoms and my issues don't make me manipulative or abusive

And years of therapy and learning to control myself and my responses hasn't erased my mental health problems

I am very mentally unwell and that's always going to be the case

I can "improve" but I'm always going to be very very visibly mentally ill and have issues. Including issues that cause problems for the people around me and that's ok

That's part of who I am

Its okay to accept that part of myself

It's okay to not hate myself for being that way

It's okay

Had an interesting discussion with a mental health professional where I expressed frustration of only having a vague diagnosis of "in the CPTSD/EUPD area" (btw EUPD is just another way of saying BPD)

And she said that part of the reason for such a vague diagnosis is that there a growing belief that EUPD doesn't exist and it's just an expression of CPTSD

Which I have done no further research on but I found that really interesting

I will have to look into it eventually but that is very interesting

But again, this is just something one person told me

Unpacking my trauma in therapy with an actual trauma therapist who knew her shit involved unpacking just enough so I could confirm it did happen and that I'm not making things up

And then we repacked it all and put it away in a much better, more efficient, and much more secure packaging with most of it never being unwrapped or really "unpacked" at all

And I have the ability and choice to access and unpack stuff if I need to but also the knowledge that I don't fucking need to and it can stay right where I put it and that's okay too. Even preferred

You don't actually need to remember every detail of your past trauma and it's often better not to but it can help to figure out how to lock it down better and like, know it's there so you don't open it by accident

I needed a therapist for that but I'm not going to say everyone does

Sometimes, if you're like me, you need someone to respond to your:

"I would die for you, I would kill for you, you're my entire world!"

With:

"that's a neat offer and all but I have donuts and wouldn't you prefer a donut?"

Because yes.

I would prefer that.

Thank you

There should be a word for when you want to die but you're not suicidal exactly

Like I want to be dead but I don't want to do anything to make that happen. And even if I was in a life threatening situation I would do my very best to survive despite not wanting to be alive atm

It's the "sure death sounds good but I got too much shit to do" attitude

There needs to be a word for that feeling

So until I can speak to a therapist again I decided to try journalling again like I used to do as a teenager/early twenties person to vent and make a record of all the things going on in my head

Which I did a little today and it wrote like 3 A4 sized pages of stuff and it really helped

And I decided in order to prevent Kiddo from accidentally opening it and reading something they shouldn't know (for their own sake) I better label it accordingly

(a light purple notebook with text written in dark purple Sharpie that reads:

"Bryce's Journal of CHILDHOOD TRAUMA and the RADIOACTIVE WEASELS THAT LIVE IN HIS BRAIN" )