Eerie Anne's Journal

[Eireanne]

April 7 2022

I never wanted to be single, I hate being alone, but I don't know how to be with someone, I don't even know how to make/keep a friend, because what happens over and over again, I don't know how to just talk, unless I'm complaining about myself and I don't know how to interact with other people, and I try, but sometimes I say something awkward, and then suddenly they don't want to talk to me anymore, and it's always just one tiny thing and I don't ever understand why, so I just get sad and lonely and I don't fit in anywhere. And I don't get invited to things, because I'm single, so I sit home, not knowing how to interact with people socially, and improve, so I can get to a point where I can start meeting people and possibly meet the type of person who is going to want to be friends with me, let alone is going to be in a relationship with me. And I'm spending all of this time alone realizing I need to learn how to get to know myself, I don't even know how to have an opinion, I didn't have that development and I don't know how to do it on my own because I've never experienced it, I don't know how to reparent myself in this way, I'm as clueless as my parents. 

[sanmagic7]

 

[Eireanne]

  @sanmagic

[Eireanne]

I woke up grieving today.  I managed to either go back to sleep (doubtful, I keep waking up at 4-5am, thanks hypervigilance and trauma brain!) or falling into this state of rest my mom taught me when I was young - I've always been a poor sleeper, and she would stay up watching TV until 3am, fall asleep on the couch, have my dad wake her when he got up for work (ironically, 4-5am) and she'd stumble into the bedroom and go back to sleep...which is the story I tell, except I remember needing to tiptoe around the living room/kitchen because she was asleep on the couch while I was trying to get ready for school.  It's easy for my brain to see the pattern recognition of neglect that a child growing up with a mom passed out on the couch must have felt - needing to take care of myself from a young age (8 + also taking care of my brother, doing my homework in the bathroom, etc.) and her getting mad that I woke her up by closing the kitchen cabinet door too loudly.  In my own home, I just leave them open all the time, (I DGAF).

I tried to avoid grieving, because I need to get some important things done, like focus on prepping for the job interview on Monday, I really need to get my !@$% together, the voice in my head keeps panicking that we are missing our window for people to be willing to help us, and I barely have ANY people to begin with, so then the isolation kicks in, making it sink deeper, and then the things I'm grieving kick in, so I decide to watch this documentary, and I relate to them so much, these traumatized, abandoned children who also play the what if game.  I used to think I was cursed, or that I must have done something terrible in a past life for me to have to deal with so much karma...and how I will beg not to have to do this again, this atonement for not learning enough, not understanding enough...this sense of being rejected by the world resonates so strongly with me, I wonder sometimes if I wasn't a holocaust victim in a prior life...and definitely burnt at the stake for being a witch...

And I didn't pick the holocaust documentary to like..."attention seek" the grieving or anything - which is how my mom would treat me all the time, like she never validated my feelings and once my brother was born, and even worse, when he got older and started displaying his sociopathic tendencies...she never attuned to me.  There was always something else needing her attention, and mostly, it was probably she couldn't get out of her own head (which is a trait I also won in the genetic lottery - also, I LOOK just like her...so when people are worried they turn into their mothers...I feel like I had no choice).  I don't think I spent enough time with anyone as a child to have developed any sort of personality.  My parents did not communicate successfully with each other and would often use me as a mediator.  I don't remember being a child...but I have memories of being bullied in school.  I just never fit in, there was something "off" about me.  I don't know what it was, so I just assumed it was my looks.  The story I tell myself is that if I were more attractive, people would be kinder to me. But no one has any compassion.  Everyone can't get out of their own heads enough to see my pain, and if I point it out to them, well, then I'm needy.  To be continued....

[Eireanne]

One day, I'll start writing things out in linear order and tell an actual story, but for now, everyone gets fragments...and I appreciate your kindness in holding space for me...I still feel like (again, the theme of being told I'm too needy) I'm doing exactly what I keep accusing everyone else of doing - not being able to get out of my own head enough to hold space for others here...I'm so sorry my friends, but I hope there's a way out of this well...I've been down here in the dark alone for so long...it takes everything I have in me just to get through the day sometimes...and not even in a depression way, although my grieving on the couch today does probably have the visual of being depressed, honestly, it was at that performative moment that I decided to actually do the grieving I'd been thinking of for so long...I had pictured it in my head so many times it felt performative...and then again is why the trigger that my mom saying things like, "how long are you planning on acting like this?" Instead of validating and attuning to me.  She couldn't even do it for herself, she was so jealous of me, and I had NOTHING.  She gave me nothing is what I wanted to say, but in my grief I realized all the things she didgive me. Then I had to add that to the list of things I was grieving....More to come.. 

[Armee]

 

That's a lot of neglect, EA. I'm sorry you didn't have anyone. Don't have anyone. I'll be rooting for you in the interview.

[sanmagic7]

allowing yourself to grieve is a sign of strength, to my mind, EA.  i do believe it'll help you get to a more linear place. i'm sorry for all the neglect. i wish you hadn't had to go thru it.  it's horrible.  best to you w/ the interview.  love and hugs

[Moondance]

My hopes and thoughts are with you as well for your interview on Monday. 

Caring to you EA
 

[Eireanne]

I only felt I was lacking when I would go to other friend's houses and they'd have Christmas and we wouldn't...I gave myself Christmas the year I moved out on my own, with a real tree and everything (life lesson - never again), so I didn't feel the lack, you know, I would just invite myself over to other people's...other families houses...because then I didn't have to feel the lack. Which is why I invited myself over to N's for thanksgiving...it just sucks so hard sitting home alone every day of the year, and I feel it twice as hard during the holidays.  I think I just don't even care any more, I just need to accept this is the rest of my life...the life I so desperately tried to avoid having that I made bad life decisions...so I just need to grieve and let it all go so I can heal.

Do you know the grief associated with putting up a tree and not having anyone to share it with? It didn't used to be a grief...back when I still had hope, I would put up my Christmas tree in the bedroom, so when I talked to my virtual friends I could turn on my camera and show people my tree...it's the same sort of relationship I have with all of you, I talk, you listen, I get my needs met...I'm used to that level of intimacy - the intimacy of the interwebs.  Like in that movie The Net with Sandra Bullock. 

I have craved a Christmas of my own my entire life.  I guess the universe misheard and thought I meant a Christmas on my own.  When I lived with R, we decorated it with a combination of both our ornaments, maybe? I honestly don't remember if he was involved at all.  I bought myself presents and wrapped them and put them under the tree for me to open...and I know there's a picture of us somewhere, where I'm siting in front of the tree leaning towards him and smiling and he's...not.  When I lived with M, his parents brought all his ornaments down from enjay from when he was a baby all through growing up, so it became more his tree than mine.  Everything there was more his than mine.  When I lived with D, he started putting up all the ornaments he shared with his ex-wife on my tree, and couldn't grasp that I didn't want that, that I wanted something for US...there really never was an us, he was more of roommate than anything else, just more of the same lack of intimacy I've experienced my entire life. 

So I stopped putting up a tree.  What's the point?  The last time I did it, I realized it was broken? Or D just couldn't figure out how to put it together, or put it away with missing pieces from the previous year? So we went to Target, bought a replacement after the holidays (on clearance speaks to my thrifty spirit animal) and I hid it up in the closet so when he went crazy and stole all my stuff, he didn't get that...but what is the point of putting up a tree when I literally have no one to come over or share the holiday with.  It's just the spoons needed to decorate and then what? The spoons to put it all away...better to not decorate at all and use the spoons for recovery...which I won't have any holiday to distract me from, since I won't be invited anywhere...and can't seem to find an activity partner to do any of the things I want to do...so it's honestly not that big of a loss anyway because when you think of it, it's not my holiday anyway, it never was.  So the grief is for never feeling a sense of belonging, and never feeling included, and always feeling like I'm imposing because I use the "if I am not here, I'll just be sitting home alone" (guilt) rather than the feeling of being asked, "please it wouldn't be the same without you" - because when I am there, there is not that sense that anyone feels that...and I'm just an outsider, looking in at another family's traditions, but having none of my own.  It sucks, and it's hard and I don't know why these are the cards I've been dealt. 

[Eireanne]

Moondance, Armee and sanmagic - thank you so much for being my cheerleaders...I am hopeful about the interview, but not prepared, and honestly I'm looking at it as practice more than anything...I feel I am totally capable of doing the job, but not quite sure it's what I actually want to be doing...I'm keeping an open mind.  I think my time is better spent focusing on my trauma and grief right now...

The work situation - the HR investigator still wants to follow up with me and get a statement and she is required to follow the investigation to completion regardless of the fact I've already been eliminated.  I found a number of other people from the disabilities group I founded also got their positions eliminated.  I know some of them are successfully suing the company - not successful in the fact they are winning, just that I was unsuccessful in finding an attorney to take my case - it's too complicated, they said.  The issue is, I can't hold space for bringing up the events that caused relational trauma to the point I could no longer function AND look for a job at the same time.  Both things are true and there's not enough me to hold them both concurrently.  My brain simply cannot handle working on my resume right now, no matter how many times I try...it's easier to give in and let the grief that's been flooding my system like poison out...maybe if I do it enough I can find closure and truly heal.  Thank you for suggesting it's strength sanmagic. 

[Eireanne]

I'm grieving N

N was a friend I met playing a game in my phone.  I have had to be very creative over the years to try to find friends...I try everything, but nothing seems to work. Then the few friends I do have become family to me, because I learn the things I should have learned as a child in my own family the things I observe.  Before that, I didn't even understand anything was wrong, this was the way I grew up, I had no basis for comparison, I didn't know I was lacking. 

So I met N, her husband and kids and we played this game together, and slowly, over the course of many years we've been a part of each others lives...I even lived diagonal to her sister for 2.3 years...and I have trouble telling the story linearly because there are two truths...possibly more, and I see them all.  I saw in her a mom, because she likes to tell this story...her hero story about being there for these boys that were friends of her son, and taking them in, and all the stories about her showing up for people and advocating for them.  I wanted, no NEEDED her to do that for me. 

instead, she starts telling me these stories, and saying, "you know this already, right? I told you this before" only she hadn't...any of it, and I realize I wasn't even a part of her life anymore, here I was, all this time giving her the space she needed because she was "dealing with a lot" and she kept applauding how much I was adulting...because what I learned from her is to be a good friend you only spin things positively, so I'd tell them about my accomplishments and then quickly divert the conversation to them, I needed connection, I wanted to hear about how each member of her family was doing, and in telling me, she was able to get HER need for attunement met.  But I was holding everything in.  Because that's what being an adult is - not telling other people about your problems, just telling them that "you are enough" and you can solve your problems without help from anyone! In isolation! without another human being to weigh in with their perspective so I can see things from a different light. 

I thought about all the times she disappointed me.  In misrepresenting a road trip to key west - because I wanted to experience going to Key West so bad, and it was my one opportunity.  The times she was at her sister's house, I could literally SEE her house from ours...and she wouldn't even say, "hey, I don't have time to talk, but come over for a quick hug - in everything she gave me, I realized it was more of people giving me what they think I want, what they hear I want when I grieve what I've never had...I need validation...instead she does a "grand gesture" and I used to think that was what I needed...but now all I have are false memories of "family" when in reality she wasn't filling my need.  I needed someone to hold space for me while I grieved, instead she gave me A space...once.  When things were really bad, she sent me back to him, and then distanced herself from me, and continued to talk to him.  So I've never been able to share what happened, with her, with any of them. 

When I moved here and things got really bad, she sent me food.  She sent me a mug that says how much I am loved...when I asked her a recommendation for an air fryer, she bought me such a complicated one, I still haven't been able to figure out how to use it over a year later.  I really should just get rid of it, I don't use it.  But I keep wanting to try.  Then nothing...and I'd attempt to talk to her one in a while, then I invited myself to Thanksgiving, because of the years that I had always wanted to be there, but instead was forced to be somewhere else...and now that I was free, and really wanted the feeling of belonging, I went...and didn't feel it.  I don't belong with her family...as much as I try...and she gave me the illusion I was when her daughter was experiencing something, she asked me to check on her...like I was family...but her daughter wasn't really all that appreciative...not me, but that her mom was focused on mitigating her own trauma, instead of prioritizing hers...I tried to offer the perspective that in asking me to talk to her it was how she was doing that, but I know too well when N does what is best for her and doesn't of just asking what that person needs...I suggested she tell her...and she just said, "you know how it is trying to talk to her" and honestly, she never talks to me...so I ended up deleting her...I met her daughter and held her before N's husband even did, and haven't seen her since...which is what I knew would happen...I'm just not really a part of their life, and I realized I hadn't been in quite a while.  At first I thought it was the pandemic, but she was hosting virtual space for her family, they were playing games...I told her how left out I had felt to not be a part of that.  She told me it was very stressful - her family isn't doing well - further evidence for the story I was telling myself that she was my friend, she just didn't have the capacity with everything she was struggling with...only she wasn't struggling, she just wasn't considering that I should be included.  I didn't realize I hadn't been included until she started mentioning all the things that she assumed I knew...and then when I needed her to step up and help me with things, she said it made her feel bad to be asked to do things.  When I said can you just make me part of conversations again, I don't even remember how to have one...she said she didn't really have time for that either.  But then she wanted to do a "grand gesture" and I was so viscerally opposed to the absurdity of the suggestion I replied, "I don't even know how to respond to either of you right now" and was told, "ok" and never heard from either of them again.

I know the story she's telling herself is that I only wanted her around to do things for me, but I seriously needed someone to hold space for me while I grieved, and someone to take care of me so I could put my burden down for a bit, and just someone to hold me so I could finally let go...none of that is what I got, and what I did get...is cold comfort compared to what I needed.  So I grieve because she wasn't the friend I needed, and she's made it clear I'm not the friend she needs, so...there.

[sanmagic7]

  there's grieving space in this hug, EA.  no strings attached.  love and hugs

[Eireanne]

I decided to continue the holocaust theme by watching A Small Light on Hulu.

The reason why both the holocaust resonates with me and why gratitude doesn't work for me is...

While yes, I can be grateful for everything that I have (I am and I acknowledge it daily) even gratitude is a source of grief for me.  Much like Anne Frank felt...I have felt trapped in the house...that feeling of pressing my hand up against the window and wishing I could be part of the world outside.  I don't mean I'm agoraphobic, I go for walks, but I don't INTERACT with people...do you know, I'll say hello to people I'm passing on the sidewalk and say hello and get a non-answer.  Not just strangers, but one time, it was this woman who I had gone out for coffee once about a year ago...right before everything in my life took a crash course in trauma on a monthly basis until I broke. 

So yes, while I CAN (and am) very grateful for how many things I DO have, I really want to feel validated in being allowed to acknowledge all I don't have.  And the fact that I'm consistently asking people for help with the things I need and they are consistently IGNORING me...and then I go for a walk and people I walk past ignore me...well it's hard not to feel like a ghost sometimes.  And I don't go out, not because I don't WANT to go out, it's because I'm never invited anywhere, and any time I do go out and do something, I feel like a ghost doing it.  And when I sit in the house, I feel like I'm not even part of the world anymore.  Sometimes I feel like walking over to this author's house - she wrote about ghosts...and asking her if she would be interested in inviting the neighborhood ghost over for a cup of tea.  I need to connect with people but whenever I have the opportunity, I have NOTHING to talk about.  I TRY...it goes terrible, until I inadvertently steer the conversation over to my trauma and I know WHY I'm doing it, but I can't stop.  I don't realize I've even started sometimes. So I just want to be mad about the things I DON'T have and have that be ok, instead of being reminded that I need to focus on gratitude. 

I'm so tired of asking for things and not getting them.  I'm so tired of everything I have being tied to something I lack.  I'm so tired of being touch starved.  Typing *hugs* is not a substitute for physical contact. (that doesn't mean I don't appreciate you all leaving me hugs!!)  I desperately need to be held.  I'm so tired of the same things happening again and again and my friggin Cassandra Complex to see what is going to happen and be desperately unable to stop it, no matter what course of action I take.  I want to talk and talk and talk until I get to say everything I've been holding in, and I realize I will need to mask if I go back to work right now...start a new job right now, unless the environment is a good fit.  I needed the medical leave, I needed to take the time to get back on my feet and I'm not there yet.  My procrastination is my brain telling me I'm not ready yet, and I don't know what part that is...am I coddling myself or should I reparent myself and teach myself better discipline?

Time to prep for the job interview...more later

[Eireanne]

I'm unpacking so much, and there are so many layers to things that it's hard for me to explain without jumping all over the place, so I hold it in, or let it run through my head like a movie playing, changing from one scene to another, coming upon all these clarified bits that I really should jot down, but don't, and then when I do, I feel it's performative. 

That I can't separate out me planning my grief, or, more accurately, thinking about it over and over until I finally decide to do it...but there's that shame in my head from my mom never actually validating or comforting me.  I remember collapsing on the floor in tears because I couldn't go on and she'd roll her eyes and call me Sarah Bernhardt.  I needed compassion and empathy, and I just got disinterest.  Annoyance.  No wonder I had dreams for years about her betraying me.  But I am not even grieving her, I'm grieving it all, my Cassandra Complex kicking in again, losing my job again, not wanting to go on, not able to express what I mean so I'll be understood, thinking that everything I say and do is misinterpreted to the point I don't even know what's real. 

Driving to the interview, I miscalculated.  I thought if I left at 12, I'd arrive 20 minutes early, and I thought what if that's too early, but immediately thought, no, better to get there too early, so I got my stuff, got into the car and headed out, only the driving directions said I'd get there 10 minutes early, not 20 (like it just said in the house), and as I got onto the highway, the delay of 10+ minutes due to an accident turned into 20+ minutes, which meant I was no longer early at all.  I tried to keep it together, but as we inched down the road at 10 mph, I started...thinking that I ruined my chances at the interview, because now I wasn't going to be on time, trying to figure out what to do, do I send an email? How am I supposed to compose and email while I'm driving? Why can't we get their faster? And I started thinking about all the times I was trapped with D in the car speeding...when we weren't even ever late for ANYTHING, and I can't even go above the speed limit without freaking out, and I'm so CC about getting into a car accident again, I don't even want to be driving, so I'm clenched up and afraid and late and I just started screaming...just to get it out...I'm sure it looked like road rage, but I just started sobbing and screaming why? why can't I ever catch a break? why can't you just get me there? Why doesn't anything ever work out for me?  But I got there, and I didn't even look frantic or panicked, I apologized to the woman who met me in the lobby, which is the one who gave me the phone screen, and I explained to her what happened, I really think the interview went as well as possible, but I also know I have no shot at getting this job. 

This has happened to me time and time again, but in the other times I had everything memorized and I was polished, now I had to bring visual aides and my laptop, and referred to my notes quite a few times...I thanked them, but didn't really explain the accommodation, and I'm sure as always there's a candidate who has "just one more thing" than I do...and honestly, breaking down like I did in the car like that, I am not ready to go back to work...but now that I'm really out of a job I have to be realistic.

Going back to the type of work I have been doing feels like a death sentence and makes me curl up in bed and not want to get out.  It's not depression, it's just grief, and I want to grieve until it all comes out and I can have some sort of catharsis, but there's even grief within the grief, so how do I get it all?  My therapist alluded to a list, and I asked her to send it to me.  Last session, I asked her again to send it to me, and she said she was gathering a few things to send to me all at once...it's been two weeks and I still have nothing, so I'm about to just make my own list.  I think it's more logical to have an organized way of grieving, instead of jumping from one topic to another, just really focusing on one thing until I uncover the root of where the grief is, and just going to my therapist with that. 

I'm grieving because I keep watching TV in which people in crisis are surrounded by people they love, and everyone has at least one person who won't give up on them.  Meanwhile, all my friends are standing idly by while I slowly hit rock bottom.  Every time I think it can't go lower, it does...and I've been here too many times before.  It's not enough to remind me that I can get myself out of it, I just know how much EASIER and FASTER it would be if I had support.

My touch starvation is getting really bad.  I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin.  I keep having to wrap myself up in a blanket but then I'm too hot, so I go outside for a bit...I just wish I had a place I belonged.  I wish I knew what it was like to feel loved.  So yeah, not depression.  Just me accepting reality. 

I start thinking if I were more attractive, my life would be easier.  Maybe my mom would have been more interested in me, but I looked just like her and she didn't like herself.  Plus, I acted like my dad so she doubly didn't care for me much.  And I thought the other day, how sad it was that I was such a disappointment to her, but then I realized the perspective, she was also an incredible disappointment to me.  She didn't equip me with any of the tools I needed to survive this world.  She didn't do anything to make me feel any shred of self esteem, or confidence, or worth.  Some days I feel like writing her a letter, explaining to her the lessons she taught me.  I've got a box packed of all the things I want to send to her.  I'm just so lost in it and not knowing how to parse out exactly what I'm feeling.  Because it's all wrapped up together like a ball of tangled yarn and I just want to untangle it...but I can't, so I curl up in a ball in bed and feel like a ghost.  It doesn't matter what I do or don't do, nothing ever changes, and everyone has already moved on without me.  I just can't figure out the rules and there's no one who wants to hold me.  Sigh.

[Eireanne]

Imagine if Germans celebrated the anniversary of Kristallnacht every year by setting off fireworks all night...this is what the 4th of July feels like to me.  I just can't grasp the need...when there are reports of how traumatic this is for pets, the environment...we literally have air quality alerts on the daily...but I lie here on the couch...writing the journal entry in my head, thinking it has to be a captivating story, like they say on LinkedIn, you have to sell people a captivating story, so my brain starts creating this dramatic story...and I think, is even thinking about what I want to journal about me being performative? Why can't I let things go? What am I really upset about...

It was exactly a year ago today that I set in place the first domino piece that led to the collapse of my career.  Doesn't that sound so dramatic?  My mom's mocking voice says...only my mom would never mock me...she was just what?  Too? I got so good at tip toeing around the house...it wasn't something I did out of fear, it was just ingrained in me....to run down the stairs barely touching the steps so I didn't clomp (like my brother) but my mom would just tell me she was going to have to put a bell around me, because I scared her all the time...I do that a lot with people...it's why I feel invisible.  People just "didn't see me there" they have literally walked right into me.  Like i don't exist.  And I think of all the men that have used me without actually knowing anything about me, or even being interested in anything but a specific part of me, which, as soon as they obtained....would stop speaking to me...

and it's the anniversary of when he stopped speaking to me...not in a calendar timeline, but in the CC of events....I hate that I see what happens before it happens.  Like the car accidents I couldn't unsee...it's making it harder and harder to drive..and I again, don't mean it in the way of being agoraphobic, I don't have any hesitation about getting into the car...I can't control it, it's happened way too many times already....i never know what to do, do you say or not say, drive or passenger, my intuition only leads me TO it, not through it.  And I wish I had someone to talk to, to explain, without it becoming a self fulfilling prophesy.

So last year, my PTSD was really bad.  I was watching the Handmaid's Tale and having EF at the way Serena Joy treated June.  It's how L treated me.  It was the first time I could see psychological trauma acted out...so I connected with the ERG for veterans and I asked them what PTSD resources we had at my company, so he reached out on my behalf to HR, and the response we received was that for people with mental illness could request a day off with a doctor's note.  And I realized how woefully underserved the people who needed help the most (myself included) would NOT be getting at my company...so I set off to be the change I wanted to see.  I connected with the leader of DEI and told her X, I founded a group for people with disabilities, I learned how to advocate for myself, and was encouraged to set boundaries.  Only, once I did, things got bad for me.  L started noticing I had an attitude.  I said no, this is confidence, this is me seeking autonomy - and that was unacceptable.  So she started setting me up to look bad, and I would anticipate it every time, because I had gotten so hypervigilant, but much like the lead me to, not through - I knew she was going to do SOMETHING I just didn't know what it was going to be.  And I TOLD my manager, watch, this is what she does, but each time she would do it, and I would say see? My manager would start gaslighting me into trying to get me to say something different happened.  And I'm not clear on why.  I kept telling her, she needed to be literal with me, I couldn't understand what she was alluding to, but what I was hearing was I needed to say and do everything L wanted me to do so I could continue to work here and if I don't agree, my position is going to be eliminated, and then I can't process anything, because all I hear is that my position is going to be eliminated, so I start fawning, and I agreed to everything - step down from Able, stop doing events, stop improving the office, stop tryign to change policy, stay in my lane, keep my head down, my mouth shut, so I did.  She kept me isolated from everyone for 3 years, I lost everyone, my friends no longer checked in on me, hadn't...ever really...no one was there for me when I was trapped in an abusive relationship, no one offered their house to me, everyone was "going through it" and I had to "understand" but Not one person I know had NO ONE...and I didn't have no one either, but then...I want to make a list of what it is I actually did have, and do have, and the actual extent of it...

and people will say "oh what a good exercise, to be grateful of what you do have, and to focus on your abundance, you'll realize you have so much more than you actually do, and so much more than others...and it goes back to, I'm not ungrateful for what I DO have, but I literally am touch starved to the point I've developed a sensory processing disorder, and I'm afraid this is what every day is going to be like for the rest of my life...and then I realize, I've been saying that every day of my entire life, it's time to face facts and realize this is all it'll ever be, and just be ok with it, focus on finishing up the projects, giving everything away, reading the last of the books...and just being the ghost I've been my entire life.  The pictures I keep up just remind me that was as good as it was going to get...I didn't realize that was all I was going to get. 

So I grieve for how many things I'll never get to experience.  And I lie here, body having EFs from all the 'murica going on outside...and just mourning the person I'll never get to be.  It doesn't mean I don't fully appreciate moments when I'm in them...it's that they happen so rarely that I tend to ruin it by finally having another human that sees me, and acknowledges me than I word vomit about my trauma because I need to verbally vent about my situation and have it validated....and it's this loop I feel trapped in, so what do I focus on, the grief? the looping? I wish my therapist had given me that dang list.  Grrrr.