i'm so selfish, it's always about me
Some months just feel like bruises. I have more than a few of them, and Hellfire Gala month is one.
I’ve been going through a period of growth, which one might think would be related to how terrible and stressful and exhausting my life has been this entire year so far, but strangely enough, it isn’t really that related. Or maybe it is. I don’t know.
These days, I don’t really know much.
I do know that having other NDs to lean on feels like a balm, and having them understand things like RSD and overstimulation and making accommodations for each other. After years and years of being told I am unreasonable and a monster and selfish for needing certain accommodations, it feels like I can finally breathe, sometimes.
At a work dinner I was telling a writer about RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria), a thing I have that sounds like something I might have pulled from Tumblr, but is something that’s been quietly ruining my life for so long. I used to joke that I get butthurt too easily, and it’s true that I feel rejection more, sure, but it’s not just that. I feel like my whole nervous system collapses from just perceived rejection. It doesn’t have to be real. It doesn’t have to be rational. It could be something as stupid as a longer pause than usual when someone is texting back. A shift in someone’s tone. Being ghosted.
Each of these, a small apocalypse happening in my brain.
I grew up teaching myself how to interpret silence and microexpressions. That is to say, I grew up knowing I was easy to ignore, to neglect, to forget.
Parents who were busy or distracted, or just uninterested in yet another infodump.
Friends who drifted in and out of my life with the casualness of someone turning off a light.
Best friends that just leave without a single trace, or explanation.
I say that I want to not exist, but the truth is, most of the time I feel like I was never even real to begin with.
It’s too easy to just stop talking to me, and never start again.
I sometimes relate to the MPDGs in films because it feels like I’m fascinating and fun until I am suddenly too much. Too sad. Too loud about the things and people I love. Too queer, and not even in the right way. I don’t know, and I guess that’s what RSD loves best: the unknown. My brain takes all the silence and rewrites it into all the reasons I am not fit to be human.
And then it’s Hellfire Gala month, and everything feels better and worse. As always, I get to see so many beautiful news of queer joy online… then read about how it’s the opposite here. The hatred always get louder in June. The crackdowns and book bannings get worse. And I’m just too tired of it all, and I haven’t even got into how work is slowly wearing me down into a full burnout these days.
It’s hard to be “proud” when there’s nothing to be proud of, and you’re to exhausted to exist.
And it’s impossible to feel safe when you’re constantly bracing for more stupid shit.
Things always feel so much harder this time of the year, and the work stuff is making things even worse. The amount of times I almost couldn’t regulate myself well enough to prevent a complete meltdown in the bus or train this last week, the last few months, is a little scary. The amount of times I’ve just been biting my lips and blinking back tears while staring out the train window not wanting to make eye contact with anyone…
It makes me want to disappear first.
After all, they never wanted me around.
I always had to be the first one to ask to do stuff together, maybe I’m just being a burden and they’ve probably just finally decided not to bother.
Maybe what my mother’s been telling me all my life is right: I am too much, I’m too selfish, I’m a monster, I shouldn’t have been born.
This isn’t one of those newsletters with a neat ending.
Sorry.
Like I said in the beginning, though, I am going through a period of growth. I’ve been spending time with people that seem to enjoy spending time together, weirdly enough. And they enjoy it enough to help me navigate my RSD and other stuff, and actually reach out when they need me, too. It’s making me feel a little more corporeal every day, and feeling corporeal kind of feels strange, huh. Is this how normal people feel?
And yeah, my brain issues has nothing to do with the people who made me cry so much from just spending too many spoons trying to figure out why they’re mad at me, and how shitty they made me feel on the daily, and because of that I do feel like even saying how I feel feels selfish because I’m making it all about me, but well, this is what life with RSD is like. RSD isn’t rational at all, and despite knowing that feelings aren’t facts, knowing something and feeling something are entirely different things, and I read that this month pushing my feelings down isn’t quite the thing to do. And I guess, feel free to pretend I don’t exist.
It’s not like I don’t do it to myself, too.
Things I Enjoy
I can’t leave this newsletter a complete bummer, so here are some stuff that’s been good in my currently crap life:
Finch | This is a self-care app that is just so freaking cute, and it makes me actually do things like drink water, take a short break, and er, eat lunch. I’m obsessed.
The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall | I am buddy reading this for Pride month (my only attempt at doing something “celebratory”) and it’s just oh so relatable and good so far. Funnily enough, I suggested the buddy read so that I would have something to distract my brain with so that I don’t get into an RSD-induced spiral.
Looking For Group by Alexis Hall | An ARC I am reading right now, and it’s just a fun queer romcom? I do think this one might not be as enjoyable to people who aren’t gamers, but idk.
Gamer Friends | I love all my gamer friends, be it D&D or MTG. The amount of times my mood shifts from staring-at-the-ceiling-with-no-spoons to oh!-I-am-excited-to-see-everyone-again from a single, “pin pon, what are u up to?” text message is <3
The title is from the song, “I Endured Childhood Trauma and All I Got Was This Stupid Internal Monologue” by andie schoen.
When this goes out I will be with my family on “holiday” :) But I will not forget to tell you to… Drink more water!