If I could

If I had to or could pick a new name to suit my Non-binary self, it would be Austen.

That is all.

I’ve got my best suit on and I’m ready

I’m becoming happy again. Now that she and I are totally and completely not speaking. This has brought a level of calm and content that I did *not* expect. But I guess I had finally had enough. Much like she probably had as well. Despite everything, I will never stop acknowledging the wrong I did in that friendship. She had every reason to be as fed up as I did.
It’s heart breaking. But things are meant to change.
So now…..

And now I rise…..

I want to tell you

That the moon tonight is gorgeous. And that the full moon is tomorrow.

I won’t of course. I really did mean it when I said I would no longer contact you.

It’s better that way after all.

But it’s still a pretty moon. I hope you’re looking at it too.

I’m not fucking crazy

Ok I know that’s ableist language but it is my inner voice and I think it’s important to represent it for what it is.

But I’ve figured out the dance between me and former BFF.

I’ll say something she finds “too angry” or whathaveyou, and she gets upset with me. So begins the silent treatment.

I HATE being ignored. It is a trauma trigger for me.

Eventually, after being ignored for x long, I start to panic over “angry thing” I said and start to apologize and mitigate it.

I am still ignored.

Start pleading for forgiveness. Still Ignored.

Start to feel suicidal, because clearly you are unforgivable and if you could just *control your temper*….

Still ignored.

Her emotional MO is to ignore anything emotional and to give the silent treatment when she is actively upset with you.

Being ignored, particularly while pleading for forgiveness, is a MASSIVE trigger for me. I’m not saying my triggered behaviour is her fault. It is not. But it does mean there is a reason for my behaviour.

There isn’t something wrong with me. I am not broken. I am not crazy.

I am traumatised.

And unless her emotional MO changes, we just can’t be friends.

I think I can start to accept that now.

Wow.

And there’s a moment when

So thinking further about that silent treatment trigger, how it leads back to my mother being ignored and me having to talk her down. By which I mean to try and talk her out of suicide.
I don’t know how many times this happened.

It might be only twice. It was more than once.

Only

And I remember sitting at that table and just…..talking to her, calmly, or feeling more calm than I should have in that moment. But my sister was (very fairly) falling apart at the situation, so fuck, someone had to do it.

So I did it. More than once. And I didn’t even notice it at the time, but it’s like a part of you just….goes away. That sense of safety that comes with Mom. That trust of adults to at least appear like they have it together. To be cliché, that innocence. Not that I was innocent.

It’s hard to explain. But a piece of you just kind of snaps off, and you never get it back.

Well.

Until my best friend did that to me. I got suicidal and she gave me the silent treatment.

And I’ll admit it, I lost my shit. And I just now realize that part of me didn’t go away after all.
They were just so far fucking down, locked away.

And she is feral, my friends.

Like, holy shit.

Repeating Patterns

You ignore me when you’re mad, that is your MO, always has been. Complete silent treatment even when I beg.
Even when I beg.

My anger my be abusive, but your behaviour is cruel.

And it triggers the fuck out of me. My mom’s husband would give her the silent treatments for days and she hated it. She would beg and cry and he would keep ignoring her. She would threaten suicide, and he would ignore her.

You do the exact same thing to me.

I only just realized. I hated him for what he did to my mother. And I was angry that she accepted it and let herself be treated that way.

And here I am repeating that pattern with you.

Fuck that noise. And fuck you for thinking you’re so perfect.

And over and over and over

Yet again I pick up my heart from the rubble and stuff it back in my chest and move on.

Sometimes I wonder how many times I can have my heart broken. How much I can grieve.

Because there’s a lot of grief.

A prayer

I’m not religious — at all. And I am not in any way a fan of the Alcoholics Anonymous model for personal reasons. But right now I am chanting this over and over in my head. Because it encapsulates everything I need right now.

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I am hanging on to something I desperately need to let go of, because I cannot change it.

Sigh

My heart hurts. I really miss you.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Jeff Healey was a guitar god. The end.

So the gender thing has been in my head since Elliott Page came out.

In my head a lot.

So I don’t feel like I was born in the wrong body. And I have never felt like I am a man.

But I don’t feel entirely feminine. Or I feel feminine in a slightly masculine way?

My inner self when I was a child was always a boy. Favourite characters? Feminine boys. Who did I write about? Boys. Traumatized boys more specifically.

I know that biologically I am a 43 year old woman.

But I am definitely, oh my gods definitely, genderqueer.

I feel like a feminine guy or androgynous NB person. Or genderfluid.

Fuck I don’t even know. It doesn’t actually matter in the end.

It doesn’t change anything.

Not to me, anyway.

But for the record.