I May Be Fucking My Chances Of Going To College Right Now, But At Least The GPA Is High Enough That They

...well that's a new memory that I just unrepressed.

That's definitely something that a 12 year old me was told and repeated to herself whenever something happened...

I tend to think that it wasn't so bad and that I've remembered all the big bad stuff but I guess I haven't. Leads to the memory of my twelve year old self admiring her friend because he's using tough love and he's so honest to her about how bad of a person she is and helps her fix it.

(She didn't really do anything wrong, but he yelled at her about it and hit her)

starting a collection #blackmold

Confessions from an emotional abuse victim:

#4 Anniversaries

Trauma anniversaries are a hard thing to deal with. They can come from any sort of trauma/traumatic event, but mine are from my hospital stays and large arguments or events with my abuser. The hospital ones definitely suck, but they don't affect my everyday life as much as the abuse ones.

The hospital ones are mostly restricted to the past. I remember how I felt, or certain events that happened. Occasionally I get quick flashes of images in my head of what the place looked like. Yet overall, it's confined to the past and if I can manage the feelings or distract myself, I usually will be able to reduce the suffering until it goes away.

The abuse anniversaries are a whole different type of hell. Unlike the hospital trips, the events from the year or so with my abuser bother me constantly. Year round, 24/7. Not confined to moments of struggle or anniversaries, I get memories and bad thoughts all the time.

Anniversaries take that base level and crank it up to 1,000. My reactions to triggers get more and more violent, usually toward myself, but sometimes toward others. Any little trigger can set off my brain into unimaginable terror. It also affects my thoughts on myself and how I act. I become more startled by people treating me nicely, and just have the feeling that I don't deserve anything other than emotional torment from others.

These anniversaries affect my emotional health and my social life horribly. One specific example is the time I went on a midnight walk with some friends at a sleepover. We passed by my old middle school, where most of the events took place. This was on or near the anniversary of one of the worst fights I had with my abuser. When we got back to my friends house, I was a little stirred, then two hours afterwards, I had a terrible meltdown. Everyone around me was very kind, but it definitely felt horrible.

This time of year, I'm dealing with the anniversary of the day I fully fell into my abuser's trap. I'm questioning all my interactions with others and scanning my every move as to not bother anyone. If someone around me feels bad, or apologizes, or seems off in any way, I put the blame onto myself.

I wish I could frame this one as a more positive, uplifting, never-give-up type of post, there isn't really a way I can do that in my current stage of recovery. I guess all I can say is; trauma anniversaries are valid triggers, and if you know a friend or loved one is approaching a hard time of year for them, be kind and supportive. Trauma affects many people in many ways, and not everyone experiences it the same way, but the best thing to do is show kindness and compassion.

He had to live off just his clothes and a sword for most of his memorable life, so the second he gets a permanent place to live and a stable environment, he goes out of his way to fill his space with cool things that make him happy since he now is able to have things with no function or use other than just being cool and fun. Nico Di Angelo would totally be a maximalist, and he takes regular trips to the city with Will just to visit a bunch of thrift stores and antique shops. There is no shelf or table in the Hades cabin that does not have some sort of statue, picture, bone, or book on it.

headcanon that nico di angelo is actually very maximalist, and the hades cabin soon looks like an old antique store

Flattening Nico's realistic trauma responses to "edgy" or "emo" is legitimately one of the lamest things this fandom has done.

my brother and I have very different opinions on my cat’s weight

Stop shaming people for their body count

Who cares how many people she's killed so long as you love her and she looks pretty with blood on her face.

I put together an audience to watch me practicing my audition song for the school musical. They're very kind and non-judgemental. Except the one standing next to the computer. He bit me.

Sometimes I just remember the one moment when I felt really cared for after a year of abuse from my 'best friend' and months of strained relationship with my parents after I had pushed them out during that year, then left them with the broken aftermath of their very traumatized, very expensive, daughter.

I was in the ER. Not a rare occurrence at the time. It was before one of my inpatient stays that year, but I'm not sure if it was the second or the third, they all blur together. I usually would have to spend a night there and wait for a bed to open up before being admitted, and that was how it went this time. In the middle of the night, I woke up with a nosebleed from the dry hospital air. I didn't really know what to do. Any normal person would get up and go to the nurse's station and get some tissues or something, but being a mentally ill child who was just yelled at by her mother the day before for saying she needed help because the hospital bills were already stacking up and going to the ER cost a lot of money, not to mention the inpatient stay, I didn't want to inconvenience the nurses (it's literally their job) so I just laid back with the back of my hand over my nose while I waited for it to stop. Swallowed a lot of my own blood, but I was already in such a horrible mental state, broken to my core to the point I wanted to leave mortality, that I could care less as long as nobody else was affected.

The bleeding stopped and I did the best I could to get the dried stuff off my hands by licking my finger and rubbing it off, but it was dark, so I couldn't really see if it worked. I went back to sleep and then woke up in the morning and did my usual ER routine of sitting in the dark because I didn't want to have to go out to ask the nurses to turn on the light (lightswitches weren't in the rooms for safety reasons or something idk). When one of the nurses came in to bring me breakfast, she turned on the light, but I didn't notice there was still dried blood on my hands and just ate my breakfast in silence because I never asked for them to turn on the TV. I always waited for them to suggest it since I didn't want to inconvenience them (again, it's literally their job to do that but I still felt bad asking). When she came back to take my tray, she noticed the blood and asked about it. It was only then I realized that blood on the hand of a mentally ill child in the ER because she could hurt herself is easily interpreted as literally anything other than a nosebleed. I panicked and started explaining myself, and to my relief she believed me and I wasn't put on a 1 to 1 (I had to experience that at some point later and it sucks). She left to go get me a wipe to clean it off.

She came back and I was sitting on the floor next to the weird little plastic round side table thing. I was expecting her to just throw it at me or something and leave me to clean myself up, but to my surprise she sat down in front of me and (after asking permission to touch me) started wiping my hands for me. She was just so careful and sweet about it. She called me 'honey' and it left me with a warmth in my chest that I hadn't felt in over a year.

It's kind of odd but I just look back at that memory with a weird sort of fondness. To her it was probably just a normal day on the job, but for me that moment meant so much. She was also probably just using it as an opportunity to look me over and make sure I was telling the truth about the nosebleed, but still. I was just this scared kid who felt like she was so worthless that she couldn't even ask a nurse to turn the TV on for fear that she would be loathed, and this woman went out of her way to lightly scrub the blood out of my nails.

Nowadays I'm doing better. My mental state has improved and I've been working on moving past that all, but I think that some time this past week was the 2 year anniversary of that day, and it just goes to show how far I've come. From being surprised and comforted by a psych nurse's gentle touch on my hands (the first human touch I had felt in months), to casual hugs with my friends and a year and 7 months out of the hospital as of yesterday.

My LEAST FAVORITE type of question as a theatre kid is the ones that are obviously just meant to prove that others are doing something wrong.

"So do we put our hands like this or like this?" "This is the right way." "Okay, I thought so but I saw SOME PEOPLE doing it the other way and I was pretty sure that wasn't right"

I don't mean when it's like a clarifying thing that nobody is sure about and has never been specified before and everyone is doing something different or something you yourself are struggling with or unsure about.

But when it's entirely obvious that just a few people made a mistake and did the wrong thing and they seem to know it was wrong and will fix it next time... just why?

It pisses me off so much especially now after I've done performing stuff for a while because I remember the intense shame I would feel when a castmate would openly be criticizing a mistake that only I made, in the form of asking a question. I almost quit choir freshman year because the person who sat next to me did that so often and was so judgemental that I felt like I wasn't welcome at my current skill level (the same skill level that a lot of the choir was at).

Honestly, I'm a strong believer of letting the director/instructor point out mistakes and fix them, or asking for help with mistakes you made or things that you are unsure about. Be kind to people with less experience or there might be nobody left to continue once you graduate.