SUGARCOATED EVIL

Compassion is something that’s been reoccurring heavily in my mind since the last quarter of 2020. This morning I had an interesting conversation with an old friend about past trauma, abuse, and personal growth. There is no silver lining or positive spin. What happened happened. I’m so happy we kept going and made it this far, and are still going. The focus has been on practicing kindness and having more compassion for others. It’s been hard to recognize a need for self compassion some days, and then to find balance in the two.

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

Pema Chödrön – The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.

by Maya Stein

“You have to make an alliance with your anguish,” he said,
“not wage war against it.” And I thought of all the fists
I had shaken at misfortune: games lost
because the shot clock ran out,
a good meal scorched in a forgotten oven,
money dropped on a dress worn only once,
the bully in 6th grade, the math test in 9th,
the wrong outfit at Halloween.
But of course, this isn’t what he meant.

If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the perilous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from one another.

I think a lot of us are hesitant to make any declarations about this year. I saw some posts on social media describing while they understand a new year doesn’t automatically solve these huge problems in the world, this demarcation brought them some relief, like an exhale, like some finality to a shitty year and a belief in the light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines coming out.

I’ve been struggling so bad with existential dread regarding climate collapse, this mass extinction event happening in real time right before us, political extremes, rising polarization and fascism, there’s so much. This is something I wrote about earlier with the Fermi paradox and great filter and other stuff. I mean, Russian number stations creep me out. It’s the unknown, it’s creepy. I’m still trying to make peace with my death, with the fear of not knowing for sure that when you die you’re done.

The therapist recommended some books and other content for me to try and get exposure of what other people have thought of, and to see if maybe I could get a little more relaxed with the topic in general even if I don’t take any of this content to heart. It’s spiritual but doesn’t lean heavily into any particular theology. It’s interesting and I don’t mind reading into it, it’s much kinder and more forgiving than the western flavors of religion. These concerns weighed very heavy on me while intoxicated with Adrian on NYE. It wasn’t so much my own eternity that broke me, it’s understanding each year won’t get better. These divisions between people are distractions from real problems that will end us all, and Adrian reminds me the world will be just fine without humans, which does and doesn’t comfort me at the same time, it’s weird. It is the collective human suffering we will continue to witness. It will accelerate and get worse, and I can only observe. He asked me why I felt responsible for any of this when I cried that I’m smart enough to see what’s coming but not smart enough to solve it. I don’t feel personally responsible for this system, I grok when he explains creation requires destruction, but I struggle reconciling with destruction so much.

Neither of us want kids and we each have a multitude of reasons, mine mostly being health related but I’m so distraught with this world sometimes, how can I subject someone else into this who didn’t ask to be here? And I know that sounds fatalist as shit and I don’t mean for it come across that way. I’ve fought very hard to live, to survive, and to progress in ways I want. My life is very worth living even with the obstacles and issues in it, but this is only going to get harder. I told him I’m worried I’m too weak to witness this, I’m worried I’m not strong enough to endure and survive this world as it changes and gets worse. The logical conclusion is do your best, you don’t have to do anything else, just do what you can.

That’s the other weird (but appreciated) thing. I mentioned even though the worlds going to shit I’ve simultaneously done better over the years, especially this last year in managing my health and overall quality of life. I joked it’s like I figured all this shit out just in time for the world to end. At least I won’t be facing all these things by myself, we do this together.

As we got closer to midnight we reflected on past relationships, people we’ve loved, people we still love, situations where we wish we did better, ended better, all that. He still reflects on and worries about exes he’s hurt, and he tries to honor that by learning from those mistakes so he doesn’t repeat them, and living life as best as he can. It’s the same on my side. I’m so grateful that four relationships that ended, from individuals who mean so much to me, eventually met back up with me later in life after we’d both had time to grow and reflect on what had happened. Andrew, Ram, Kelli, Brandon, you all mean so much to me. It took years, but I’m glad we found each other and are friends again. I’ve been keeping my distance but I can see the work my meta is putting in for her own mental health and self care. I hope we’ll be able to reconcile a friendship too, if she wants.

Adrian had brought up a while back trying to find and then reach out to Josh just to send a little message that he meaned a lot to me and that I was doing alright in life. Part of me assumed that might be a welcome status update, part of me worried it might be overshadowed by negative feelings and memories. I stated this. When talking over NYE I said I assumed if Josh ever came to Seattle, regardless of his situation, he likely wouldn’t contact me. No matter what, I hope he chooses happiness, it still makes me sad I can’t be a part of it or witness it.

Josh, I don’t know if you ever see this site anymore. I’ve never once regretted loving you, one of my biggest regrets in my life was how the only way I saw to stop the cycle was to end things chaotically. It was cruel, and I didn’t have the strength to reconcile how things had progressed. I wish you could be in my life in some capacity, I wish I could introduce you to Adrian. I wish after a few years, and with some growth and wisdom and desire we could reconcile. I believe that you still care for me in some capacity, and if you carry anything it’s your own regret mixed with the pain I’ve caused you. Of all the people I’ve had to part ways with, and I’ve hoped for a better reunion with all of them, my heart’s desire has never been so strong for anyone else as it has been for you. I could only dream that we’d be in the same space, and that you would make it known.

You know how I blocked dad back in March after decades of trauma and him almost throwing mom down the stairs (commencing the divorce) and then he sent a Christmas card?

That card had two checks inside. At first I wanted to torch it, then I had this shower thought to cash the checks and donate to BLM in his name. ?

Mom didn’t like this because it was antagonizing since he’s anti BLM and pro 45. She said vengeful intent wasn’t okay, I want closure and finality. I talked to my therapist about it, she thinks my idea is brilliant. It’s action that fits a trauma recovery, trauma transformation, and strength model. Trauma makes you feel trapped. You have options. Trauma makes you feel blame. It’s not your fault. There is a sense of power through community, and we eventually find personal power again.

When she asked me why I wanted to do this I realized it’s not only because I didn’t get any justice as a child, or from Clark County when he pulled a gun on me, or when I was denied a TRO, or when he did every skirting legalities shitty thing he could over the last two years, but because I never had any recourse or control. My positions were always reactionary and defensive when I couldn’t opt out.

So after discussing the why behind my choice, I explained to mom this was my way of finally taking control. This is a reclamation, and it sends a message. I’m not accepting your “gift” in some delusional idea that some money will absolve you and make things better. I’m converting your bigot money and putting it to work for good causes. Mom was on board with this.

The money from one check went to New Beginnings, an organization dedicated to ending domestic violence. The other went to The NW Network, to end abuse in the lgbt community. And since I brought it up, I included BLM Seattle-King County (just not with the gift money). Taking something shitty and turning it around into something good has dissipated the immense amount of frustration and disenfranchisement I’ve been feeling for a long time.

How are there so many frivolous things in here, while so many important things have been left unrecorded? Seems to be a “weight” and bandwidth issue. The world has been upside down for a long time, but it’s just accelerating and becoming more scary. I’ve had existential dread and fear issues I’ve had to start working through with my therapist. A lot of it is climate collapse and this mass extinction event so much of the population is oblivious about. Water future going up on the stock market set me off pretty bad, I was livid. There is this strange lack of “milestones” in all of these tragedies and happenings, but the water one seemed to really mark the occasion, it registered in my mind as the beginning of the end, even though we’ve been on this destructive path for so long and some are assuming they’re die before shit really hits the fan so they get to age out of the problem, while others bank on Elon to get us to Mars or anywhere else. We’re pouring so much time and money and resources into something that’ll either likely never happen or won’t advance fast enough for a mass exodus to another planet, and even so why can’t we put that kind of effort into saving the first home? Maybe it’s better we can’t reach other places to wreck, and I hate thinking that so much because I value life so much. I value my life, I value the lives of others and want to see us go on. I dream of an Altered Carbon technology where stacks can go into sleeves where things like autoimmune and other ailments can be edited out, where you can needle cast and see other planets. It all sounds like an amazing cyberpunk dream, but I’d want it without the even worse from many centuries in the making class warfare and disparity, poverty, and overall unfairness in the system.

I had a bad time in a mental loop about the great filter and the Fermi paradox after the bf happen to bring it up in passing. He felt absolutely awful about it, but he didn’t know my mind fixated on this kind of stuff, or that I’ve spiked my anxiety on these things at 3am out of nowhere by myself on my room. At least that time it wasn’t 3am and I wasn’t by myself. I could talk it through safely in his arms. This is what got me to bring it up in therapy, instead of only primarily discussing polycule drama, which was good since this existential weight seems to be getting worse. Therapist recommended some materials to watch and a book. Bf recommended Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, so I grabbed a copy and hopefully my ADHD will calm it’s shit enough for me to read and absorb the material. I am embarrassed to admit I am still trying to make peace with my death, but now I’m trying to find that peace. I feel like I’m doing a shit job, but I’m not holding it in like a bad secret that’s just going to eat me from the inside out.

Earlier this year I was reflecting back on situations and interactions I’d had through the years, and wished I’d been more kind and patient, that I’d ended things better when they needed to come to an end. I wish I had more compassion. This is still a work in progress. Recently I caught myself expecting the worst in my meta because she “calibrated” me to expect it, she taught me I couldn’t take her words at face value, or that her actions were theater and would say on betray her. That is incredibly exhausting and that’s not who I am. I like to believe what’s being presented, it doesn’t mean stick my neck out and blindly go with everything, but I’ve had to remind myself more than once that empathy is not the same as condoning what happened, it is not approval. I am trying to revert back to taking things at face value. It’s been really hard, I don’t see her making real effort to meet me half way despite the gestures I’ve been hearing about second hand. They feel trivial compared to the “real work” that hasn’t been picked up, but now that I’m writing this out, it feels harsh. I don’t want to be dismissive of progress, it again I would expect incremental progress to build up into real initiative and change. I keep hearing she’s just not there yet, she might not get there. But she’s getting closer in acquiring the help she needs, so that’s good.

Today I spoke to a former gf on zoom for a couple hours. We hadn’t spoken since 2017. We were a thing a long time ago but remained friends until we got into a heated argument. Her and I both have our own sets of difficult health situations to manage, and she put in a lot of work to figure out how to heal and improve her quality of life. I’d done the same in my own way, and felt that wasn’t being acknowledged when she got upset at me for not doing what she recommended. I think we all want to share information we’ve found useful, or want to communicate what’s helped us to basically everyone. But the thing is these steps are not a one size fits all, especially when it comes to diet. We all have a unique physiology, different needs, triggers, and reactions. I think it’s fine to make a helpful suggestion, but it’s a problem when someone gets mad because the recipient decides it’s not for them, or they’re not ready. This is what sparked that bad interaction. Today we caught up on what’s been going on in each other’s lives the last three years, and health came up and was a little reminiscent (but civil) of the last time we had this dialogue. We agree on some points but not others, this time I felt better prepared to discuss such topics.

I’ve made various, slow, changes over the years for health. I dropped gluten in 2012, but got very sick due to stress and circumstances in 2013, started to pick myself back up in 2014 and got my career back, got more physically active in 2015, and was kind of stagnant in 2016. I tried to sustain and do the right things from there. This year has been difficult due to incredible stress and limitations, this is true for everyone. I read up, I made more dietary changes and restored my insulin sensitivity, resolved my hypoglycemia, chronic nausea, and inflammation and burning in my intestinal tract after eating. I didn’t know these things were fixable, doctors and I always blamed it as side effects to other chronic issues. Those other chronic issues are also being managed better now, which I am grateful for. I am tackling gynecological issues again since they’ve increased in severity recently. I’ll be addressing those in office mid January, hopefully this resolved smoothly. But I guess, even despite all of these challenges I’m still finding ways to handle my health and finding options that are more optimal. I found a resistance band system that allows you to lift heavy without the same risk of injury, and taking advantage of variable resistance training has been beneficial too. I’m still dealing with tight muscles and need to organize a space to pick yoga back up, I’ve been negligent there since the move, but I’m getting things done around here slowly. This has been an ongoing endeavor that picked up speed over the summer, and I hope that I keep learning and improving.

Today was nonstop and I slept over 10 hours yesterday for some recovery. It was a pretty intense weekend for a few reasons but it got me to reflect on a lot of interactions in the past. I thought about a lot of relationship successes and failures. I questioned whether my approach in these situations were the best ones, even if I thought I was in the right. It’s made me realize I justified a lot of things under the excuse that I was reacting, or setting boundaries, or that my patience was tested and is finite just like everyone else’s. This might be true in some circumstances, and I’ve always tried to do the best possible at the time with the information I had, but looking back I can see where I used a hatchet instead of a scalpel. I can see where I lacked kindness. Even in anger or pain or sadness there’s a line, and instead of stopping when I made my point, sometimes I kept going because I didn’t see any point in shielding or watering down where I stood. I’ve always gone for transparency, so that’s how I viewed these actions. Regardless of situations and their catalysts, I wish I’d had more self control and showed more kindness to the people I interacted with, even if it was the last time I spoke to them (especially if it was the last time I spoke to them).

I thought a lot about redemption. I thought about my ex and the friend he raped. I realized he explored plausible deniability in a situation and knew what he was doing, but I wondered if he ever felt remorse and if it was enough to prevent him from harming someone again. I’ll never know. I thought about the people who hurt me and if they were redeemable. A couple had reached out to me in messages a while back, and I decided to reread them. I responded to them both. The first one was an apology and acknowledgement that they took away my autonomy and didn’t get consent to push for a scenario I never wanted. They took ownership, they understood I didn’t trust them and they broke our friendship. The first time they wrote to me the apology seemed very self serving and more about their own comfort. The second attempt was much better but I didn’t know how to respond. I responded the other day explaining this. I also talked about the reflections over the last weekend and how it brought me to redemption. It made me realize we are all capable of terrible mistakes, and that I hoped we were all capable of redemption, myself included. So while I admitted o struggled in differentiating a genuine offer versus one that’s deceptive, I chose to believe him, and thanked him for continuing to try to reach me and for doing the work to not perpetuate pain. He responded back and it was good.

The other message was from an ex gf who remained good friends with me for years until she became aggressively adamant about me not being serious of taking care of my health because I wouldn’t do it her way. I’ve never been into woo, or pseudo science. If it worked, it would be science. I don’t care what anyone else does as long as they don’t push it onto me and that’s what happened. We stopped talking almost four years ago when I finally pushed back on it and she sent a nasty message and ended it with it I responded she’d block me. Way to say whatever the hell you want without having the guts to see the response. I sent a pretty long response and didn’t pull any punches, not gaf whether it was read or not. So I was surprised to find a lovely message mentioning friendship this last April. Again, I didn’t know how to respond until this last weekend. I said I appreciated her reaching out and would also like friendship. I haven’t seen a response so I don’t know what that means yet, but I won’t worry about it.

I told a lot of people I love, that I love them. I don’t do that enough. I don’t know how much longer I’ll live, or how long they’ll live. There’s so much uncertainty and chaos in the world I’d rather speak up now. I reached out to a couple individuals I needed to apologize to. I never thought I’d choose actions that would be toxic, I didn’t see or own that until there was enough time and distance to observe it. I’m very sad that these interactions happened and that I reacted so poorly. I don’t know if I’ll ever hear from these people again, and either way it’s okay. I’m trying to be softer, slower to anger, more accepting. For years I’d always fear giving anyone the inkling that they could walk all over me, I prided myself on being assertive, and sometimes when I leaned into aggression I found pride in it. There is a time and place for everything, but I think I learned in too hard and too often sometimes. I want to do better, I don’t want to reflect back in a few years with so many reasons to be sorry for how I interacted with the people in my life.

Let’s talk about beauty for a few minutes. This is a strangely subjective and universal topic. Standards have fluctuated based on timeline and geography (much like religion) and a lot of people like to wax on about it being in the eye of the beholder. Let’s get personal for a moment. We deal with a society that inundates us with “standards” of Westernized beauty that impacts us all, whether we meet those standards or not. When I was a little girl my heart was broken because I was nowhere near Marilyn Monroe. I hadn’t seen Bettie Page yet, and hadn’t realize brunettes, let alone Asians, could be considered beautiful.

I had partners in my past tear me down, neg me, make me self conscious about my weight, or I had issues about my bust being smaller than what I thought appropriate for my broad shouldered frame. I am half Scottish. I am half Korean. I have said I have an Asian face on a European woman’s body. I am a hybrid, and I didn’t have much representation growing up in media that looked like me. I am very fortunate that through the years my body image improved as I became empowered. This went hand in hand. I came to understand that I have intrinsic value regardless of my appearance, but that I am also a beautiful woman. I have lips, hips, tits. I‘ve felt like walking sex, I have felt the power of taking ownership of my femininity, to be wild, glamorous, and I know what it feels like to be worshiped upon the alter that is a shared bed or space between me and my lover. I am fiery passion. You can smell the confidence radiating from me, it’s in my sweat, it’s in my blood.

I have privilege because of when and where I was born, and what I look like. I understand that I am not going to be everyone’s “type,” but that I hit a pretty broad spectrum and that I’ve turned heads even when I’m not someone’s usual type. This isn’t being said flippantly or to be an arrogant bitch. This is being said in a tone of victory. It is the most punk and feminist and liberating thing to realize your own beauty and intangible quality, to be self validated, and to overcome all the unnecessary bullshit life throws your way. To wake up and see the most beautiful woman in your life in the mirror every morning, on your own, or an absolute mess next to your partner after a wild night of crazy sex, with a full face of make up, or bare faced with tangled hair. To find people in your life who you cherish and who cherish you back, and who honor you the way you honor yourself, that is a true blessing.

There is a play off of namaste I recently got on a shirt that says “the badass woman in me honors the badass woman in you” and I absolutely love that concept and I try my best to live it every day. We still deal with issues regarding intersectional femininity, we still have toxic masculinity and TERF bs and gender roles and ridiculous standards for men and women and everyone in between to combat. We don’t need to tear each other down, the world is hard enough as it is. We need to lift each other up in solidarity, we can all succeed together and are not dealing with the zero sum game some would like us to believe we’re in. I am beyond disappointed that at any age, but especially at my age now, that these conversations still need to happen. Coming at me or anyone else is a terrible idea that serves no one, but trying to come at my appearance means you already lost, and I have no sympathy for the hole you’re digging yourself into. How dare you come after one of my friends, the fucking audacity. You are ugly on the inside, and that’s something you’ll have to work out on your own. You can’t stand beside me, you’re nowhere near worthy. I don’t tolerate or suffer fools, and I won’t start shit but I will always finish it. This is me in all my crowning glory, authentic and unafraid to paint myself as I see fit. I am fucking gorgeous and here are the selfies to fucking prove it.

I don’t really know what to say, the existentialism has been so incredibly heavy. I don’t remember a time it’s ever been this bad. The worlds on fire, apocalypse bingo feels as much a reality as it does a joke. I’ve never simultaneously felt so insecure and sure of myself. How is that even possible? Pending actions… pending decisions. I don’t want to be hasty, they may not even be necessary. There’s a difficult gray area between not wanting to make a decision too soon when you can wait it out and see how things unfold vs. using that as an excuse to not take action at all. My shits so trivial compared to the real problems in the world. All I know is right now my hearts aching and I don’t know what it needs.

I’ve been bad at managing all this accumulating stress and haven’t been able to sleep more than 4 hours at a time for weeks. Now I’m dealing with the lovely SLE symptom of ulcers in the back of my throat and it’s painful af. I’m run down, I need things to change.

I’m half asleep in bed thinking about this last weekend. After all this isolating I’m glad Adrian and I figured out a safe way to spend time together on the weekends again, I’m still wary and understand even mitigating to the best of our abilities isn’t a 100% guarantee but I’ve already mitigated and accepted the risk of going out and picking up food or scripts in masks and sanitizing whatever comes into the house. Our corporate offices are doing what they can.

This last weekend I took a rare long weekend and we spent a lot of that time cuddled up and enjoying each other’s company, played with rope and shiny things, binged scifi, enjoyed dim sum, burgers, and then sushi the last day (it had been a while since I banned non cooked food for the last couple months). We watched the protests unfold in Seattle, we didn’t know how to process it, friends posted their first hand accounts locally. Friends across the country got maced, tried to provide aid when possible, and got out when it was their only option. I’m worried about a huge spike in covid cases due to the protests, but I understand why the protests are happening and support them. I’m too weak physically and in health to participate, it makes me feel useless in this situation, but all I can do is try to pay attention and share info when possible.

Saturday morning we watched boats move across the sound through the fog. I was tearful, then I ugly cried. I mourned Jösh and I never making it to Seattle. Acknowledged the irony of him wanting to originally move here, but meeting him because his gf chose SF. Adrian knows I love him and Josh very much. I love you both very much. He said he was sorry I couldn’t be with someone I cared for so much, and would be sad if he couldn’t see me. He understood the situation and why I walked, and why there’s still a little grief inside me. I mentioned the last time I really reached out was due to an earthquake in Hokkaido, and apparently there was an earthquake in Hokkaido this last Saturday but I didn’t know until I checked my work email yesterday. Some timing.

This morning I wondered if I hadn’t gone to Vegas, if I’d skipped that and went from Phoenix straight to tech in Seattle if we’d ever end up meeting. Then I remembered you took a photo outside my apartment a year before I moved in there. Maybe I would have already been established in the company here, maybe I would have ramped up faster when the company was younger before the people who gave me trouble ever had the chance to mess with me. Maybe I would have been more invincible and wise navigating this corporate bs, and maybe I would have seen you speak at that conference across the street from my apartment. Maybe I would have sought you out after and hit you up for a discussion. I might have invited you to one of my favorite happy hour spots to continue to conversation and would have eaten up all your time, only to discover all the things we had in our past that made us who we were and made us realize there was something more than just superficial small talk. Maybe you would have invited me back to your hotel in Seattle, like you did in Vegas. Maybe you were at the Westin, or Andra, or Grand Hyatt. I don’t think Hyatt Regency was built yet in 2015. We might have been up all night talking about Arizona, music, anime, food, I would have showed you my Spotify instead of an old iPod touch. Maybe I would have stayed the night, or maybe I would have suggested you walk me back to my apartment instead since it was a couple blocks away and I wanted to show off. You might have done your best to practice restraint, or you might have kissed me, unless I got to you first. You know I have the worst impulse control, but you’d just be figuring this out first hand here. You might have suffered through me making tea, and black sesame pancakes and bacon the next morning. Or depending on how late we slept in we might have walked a couple blocks to my favorite brunch spot for unlimited mimosas and waffles. These were all things I wanted to share with you when I moved to this city and got to know it. Do I believe we would have met in a different location in a different year if I had skipped an entire state? I can fantasize about it for a morning. I used to think we missed the mark in Arizona, maybe not. I wondered if Vegas was just a disaster, but I gained so much during that time. I have a lot of people I’m grateful to have in my life from that time. I got 6 years of hacker summer camp in due to proximity and sheer will, and I reconciled with a parent. It’s not worth trading off and losing, as much as I feel getting here sooner would have been an advantage professionally, personally, and financially (especially with the housing market).

I almost met Adrian a year earlier than I did because I was supposed to be at a Beats Antique show downtown. I can’t remember why but I didn’t make it, and my wifey recognized his wife and they all connected. It’s probably best I met them at their house party, I’m not sure if we would have had the same opportunity to connect this way if it had been at the show. The polycule had a very different dynamic then and was fairly new. How are we all from Arizona, or have ties to that state? Adrian caught my pause when I first saw him, it registered and he likes to bring it up sometimes. I say that someday I’ll meet someone else who makes me pause and then they can make fun of me and laugh about it together. He’s not really making fun of me, I think he finds it endearing. He was the second person to see it happen since he was the second person to have that impression on me, and he knows you were the first. I don’t know if you caught that too when we met, or if I did a better job recouping since it was in a professional setting and I could at least try to focus on talking to someone next to you.

I don’t think any of this really matters or know if any of this would have changed outcomes. It’s a little wishful speculation. I had three states to meet you in, and even if we’re not in each other’s lives now, I feel like something would be missing if we’d never interacted even if I didn’t know what it was or why. I still wish circumstances were better.

Or maybe it’s just the mind. There’s that whole thing about your cells in your body replacing entirely at 7 years. That used to bring me some comfort that my body, the one I have today, is one my rapist never touched. I don’t know if that’s a credible fact or if that’s a popular misnomer. I haven’t been compelled to go verify it.

This evening acid went up my esophagus and burned my throat so bad it felt like I was drowning. This hasn’t happened in many years, and it’s stress. I downed some almond milk and then water, I’ll have to be careful for a few days with what I eat. I thought I was doing an excellent job avoiding irritants but I know it’s stress getting worse lately. I started getting regular muscle spasms again, it’s my system’s warning shots, it’s the last stage before constant intense migraines, never ending pain, and an inability to continue working. My mitigations like massage and botox for tmj haven’t been available since January and my stress hasn’t gone down or sustained, it’s increased with less relief and very few outlets.

I recently switched PCMs and I like this one. After some reluctance I decided to try a muscle relaxer again, hoping it’ll be a helpful tool until I can get back to other things that helped manage symptoms, and hopefully won’t be too sedating.

So here’s what I just realized at 2am, today is my rapist’s birthday. Once I know details about some people they just stay in my brain, even if I hadn’t thought about it for years the recall is still there even if I’d rather delete that info and save space for more important things. It is unfortunate a good friend in Arizona who shares a name with a former lover, also happens to share a birthday with the biggest predator I ever met. Seeing today was Josh’s birthday on social media reminded me of what else lands on this date. Things have been stressful for everyone, things are on fire and nothing is normal. I was already in steady decline and working to calmly slow that roll, and try to turn it around… but I guess my cells still remember what today is, and I’m spitting up avid and I feel nauseated and awful.

There’s some irony in just breaching the topic of consensual non-consent, I didn’t even realize how close we were to this date when that conversation was happening. I like the idea of taking something and changing its context, and being able to rewrite the script while knowing you have control and the ability to cease as needed. I can also see it being triggering or bringing out an unexpected reaction, I guess we’ll see how that goes.

It finally sank in last summer I couldn’t go back to a baseline or reset to “before,” but that’s not a loss. I didn’t have to hang on to things that didn’t serve me, and what I’ve been subjected to doesn’t get to define me. Sometimes unexpected things strike and I need to remember this.

This stomach acid and all the icky feelings that come with it need to go away.