Wear Purple

Tomorrow is May 1.
I didn't know it until today, but May is sexual assault awareness month, and there's this campaign. 'No One Asks For It!' encourages people to wear purple in a show of support, and it's all across Canada, which is pretty neat. It's a simple idea, and it'd be really cool if it caught on and the hashtag trended. It's listed as an event on Facebook, and I'm sure would be easy to find - I decided to keep the link out of the post.
I love that this is a thing, and I'll absolutely be wearing what little purple clothing I own. Though I do worry a little about how much I publicly involve myself, especially on social media. I don't think I can take any prying questions about my experiences. I think, though, that it's important to try.
I find it hard, sometimes, being in the positions of both activist and affected. I feel like it's important to be vocal about these issues, but it can get really uncomfortable when you, as a victim, inevitably feel some sensitivity. It makes it hard to lead a rally.
Tomorrow is May 1. Sexual assault awareness month begins. #NoOneAsksForIt.
I am an 'affected'. I am a victim. I am a survivor.
It's been years, and it's still harder than I would've imagined. I don't like to talk about my experience or really give any details, but I feel very connected to this campaign. I wish I could be stronger. I wish I didn't equate strength to being able to 'get over' a trauma. What I mean is that I wish I had my PTSD under control, and knew how to cope, and was able to advocate the campaign and talk about myself, rather than uncomfortably always speaking in the third person and making everything objective. .....But that isn't where I'm at yet, and that's okay. I'll get there. This is the year that I decided to eventually go into PTSD/trauma treatment. When I'm ready. When my therapist thinks I'm ready. For now, this is the best I can do. But it's real, and it's important.
Tomorrow is important. It's important that people are participating and paying attention. It's amazing, and the support is beautiful.

Illuminated by Forty-Nine Candles

It's been two days, going on three, so I feel like I can safely say - without 'jinxing' anything - that I'm feeling better than usual. I'm feeling better than I have in months. I'm feeling better than I have since 2014, probably earlier.

I haven't cried since Monday. I haven't felt so anxious or depressed that it was overwhelming since Monday. 

I feel productive. I feel good about school - I feel like I'm doing well and that there actually is some 'light at the end of the tunnel' that is my 'high school' career. I want to get up in the morning. I don't feel sleep-deprived. I have energy. I'm enjoying things. 

I feel like, at least for now, I'm out of 'crazy mode'. I feel like I can switch to 'girlfriend mode' and do all the things I want to do with my boyfriend. Or to 'student mode' and work harder at school. It's nice. I know that this spell of feeling better can't last - it never does -, but I feel so good. I don't even feel that good. I don't even feel happy.. but I'm actually experiencing positive emotions and I can't remember the last time I've felt.. normal. Above my baseline, at least.. low as it is. I don't know how to feel what I'm feeling, though. I feel like this, feeling good, doesn't belong to me. Like I don't deserve it. I feel guilty for feeling good. I feel bad for feeling good, because I just don't know how to handle that.

It doesn't matter, though. I'll take it. I know this won't last, so I'm just.. trying not to think about it. I'm trying to just live it, this period of feeling good, and allow myself a break from the stress of literally always being in a low mood, almost completely unable to feel anything positive for more than thirty seconds. It's nice. It feels.. smooth. Like ice, but comfortable. Warm. Like a water slide at a public pool, all warm and cleansing and bright and easy and happy.

I know I'm going to have to face up in May, but I'm trying my best to ignore that inevitability.*

I'm trying my best to feel the sun. I'm feeling good about so many things, without even trying. School. I've been making progress, and I'm finally almost at the end of the booklets for my philosophy course. Therapy. I feel like I'm learning about myself and accepting so much, and I feel really good about my individual therapist. My boyfriend. He's been just as stressed as I have - in completely different ways. I'm just feeling good about things, like I'm accepting things. I've been reading and playing video games, and I've been eating. I've been able to eat more normally than I think I have in a long time. I feel good about being awake. I want to be awake. Clearly, I'm still in a state of surprise about this.

With this Saturday being Beltane, I'm feeling like the way I'm feeling isn't coincidence. Well, it probably is... but with this being an auspicious time, religiously, I feel like the Goddess - and maybe the God, too - has something to do with it. Like somehow maybe this is a reward of sorts for beginning my foray into Wicca.

I'm just feeling good, and I'm trying just live it, not dissect it. I'm treading uncharted waters.

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*My diagnosis of PTSD is related to a trauma that happened in May.

Hellmann's

I feel like Bilbo. Thin. Butter, stretched over too much bread.
Only now, I'm not butter. I'm.. Mayonnaise. Someone else's condiment, borrowed, because all I've got is gone, but all I hear is people urging me on. I feel like I've spread out all I have in the time that I have, and everyone is telling me that there is so much... but there's not. I feel like I've lived to capacity - had enough experiences, enough loves and losses and failures and trials and errors and mistakes and rejections and... enough. Just enough. I've lived as much as my mind can take.
But my therapist and my boyfriend and my best friends and my family and the people who aren't much more than Facebook friends, they all think there's still room on my slice of bread. They don't see it completely covered in the paper-thin layer of butter that just can't reach any more. So I borrow energy, drive, light, power, from another, and I'm going over that thin layer of butter with a glossy layer of mayonnaise.
It feels contrived. I know that I could make that mayonnaise my own, but I don't even want it in the first place. What I want is to be gone. Gone, burnt up and mentally somewhere in oblivion or a void or a beautiful shiny white empty place where nothing external exists. I go to that place sometimes, when I'm dissociating. It's beautiful. It's calm. It's quiet. It's safe, and nothing exists but my mind..... and my mind is, for once, silenced.
The mayonnaise fills the holes and gaps in the butter with therapy sessions, nights spent close to my boyfriend, embarrassing attempts at finishing school, waking up in the morning, doing anything. Everything I do now is mayonnaise. My butter ran out, and somebody shoved this jar of mayonnaise at me and said, "Keep going."
It doesn't feel authentic. It feels empty. My current existence... empty.
I reach for the knife, the pills, the keys to lead me astray.. and I have this jar of mayonnaise. Like I should be done, I should be gone, but something, someone wants me here and I have no say in the matter.
I'm just tired. I'm so incredibly tired, and I'm done. I don't know how I go on. It's not like it's because I want to. I feel fleeting positive emotions, but even in the moment they feel foreign to me, like they don't belong, like I don't deserve them, like they've gone the wrong way and are lost here.
I just want that beautiful mental silence. The wonderful shiny white endless nothing where I have no thoughts, no body, nothing. I just want to quiet my head.

Speedbump Update

Looking back to the last time I posted here: I was a mess.
I still am, really.
I'm just a bit more anchored to life than then.
I started group DBT; this morning was my second group. It's a group of all women, and they all seem nice enough. I think I'm still too anxious to think about making a friend there. The group itself is.. confusing. The week that I started, they were doing one of the 'hard' parts of DBT. (Dialectics.) So, it didn't quite take, but I have at least a year of this to get it right. Today.. this week is mindfulness.. it makes a little more sense.
I've still been having my individual sessions with my therapist, and they're going really well.
I'm a rollercoaster in black-and-white. I get down, so down - 'pits of hell' down - and when I start to feel better, I start to feel worse because I shouldn't be allowed to feel good, or I don't deserve it, or I start feeling worse simply because I'd even instantaneously felt some relief.
My going to the Wiccan Church is helping... it's really great. I even made a friend there. Everyone else is wonderful and nice and welcoming. My therapist thinks this - religion - is good for me. Having a higher power to place faith in when I need help.
I don't have too much to tell, it'd just been a while.