Greater Than Lesser Than

This is so weird. I keep cycling through two different feelings, and it’s not me being crazy, it’s just me trying to sort my head out. On one hand, I’m happy that I have a life which is really good, that in fact all of the things about me people thought were creepy and fucked up turns out to be healthy and normal and even better than normal because it means I have a larger potential than the majority. On the other hand, I’m realizing just HOW MUCH was taken from me by psychiatry, and that is really upsetting. Sometimes my body still has memories of violence that come into it, I have odd fear that shows up about being violated again. I’m realizing that the four hours of four point restraints was actually a sexual assault, and that’s scary. (Thought stream: I am a sadomasochist, I have some extreme submissive activities I enjoy and bondage was one of them, the restraints were non-consensual and punitive, I had wanted to use the phone which is why I was restrained, and in fact it did feel like rape, worse even. It was more force than the rape I had experienced beforehand.) I’m realizing that I have a lot of healing to do, and a lot of trauma in my body.

One really nice thing that happened this weekend is someone touched me in a loving way, for the first time since the hospital. I don’t know how to explain to you what it feels like to own a hated body for so many years and suddenly be touched in a gentle caring way (although I am a sadomasochist, so “gentle” is relative). It totally blew my mind. And I hadn’t even realized I could feel like that again, or ever. I’m really amazed, the experience brought my body back to life in a way I hadn’t expected. I had hoped that would happen, but feeling it is very different than just imagining it. Suddenly I don’t have a body that can feel only pain, and that’s really intense. Still, it makes me sad because I didn’t realize I had been carrying so much of my pain and so much of other’s hate in my flesh. I want to scream, or something. And I’m trying to hide the sad parts of me from people, because I don’t want them to hurt me again.

I don’t know how to trust people, except for a tiny few. And I’m also realizing that by being myself again, I will be confusing and odd to many, who might judge me for it. I don’t want to walk around with pamphletes on what geniuses are like, but at the same time I’m terrified I’ll end up having a friend or friends with a savior complex and this whole painful thing will happen to me again, and I’m not sure I could survive a second round of it. I feel vulnerable and defiant and sad and angry and just really fucking confused.

Mostly I’m sad that people must have hated me so much to do something so awful to me, and it makes me wonder why they hate me? Am I really so awful? That’s really hard. I talked to a friend who asked if I was going to see a counsellor for it and I was just like “Fuck no!” I don’t trust the mental health profession at all. And in a way that is sad, because it’s driven me away from certain resources. But in another way, I would rather be alive. I may see a counsellor at some point, but only if they know something about psychiatric survivors and gifted people.

I’ve decided I have to take my recovery into my own hands. I’m looking at thoughts that are in my head, trying to figure out what bad things I tell myself and learning how to deprogram and reprogram myself. That sounds kind of bad, but I’m doing it to myself, I’m not in a forced deprogramming situation. I’m going to be studying the Logical Fallacies and Neurolinguistic Programming and see if I can fix my head without drugs or someone’s outside opinion. I’m also going to be looking into how ritual abuse survivors recover, because I think that’s the most similar area of trauma to what happened to me. Basically I’m switching my research focus for a while to recovery, to getting myself out of this shit and not relying on anyone else, because I’m scared to death of everyone else.

The issue too, of course, is that I have emotional overexcitabilities, which makes this really intense. I think I can do it though. I have to, obviously I can’t depend on the traditional psych system to help me, not when they did this to me in the first place.

The funny thing is, the person I trust the most right now, besides Cuz Deanna, is someone I hadn’t expected at all. It’s actually really nice, it’s so unexpected that it gives me hope. I don’t know who my friends are going to be anymore, people got really used to me being The Crazy Lady that I don’t know how many can actually follow now that that label is gone.

And it’s ironic, when I think about this word Normal. Normal used to be something to aspire to, when I was crazy, it was the way I should be, the way I would be when I was fixed. And I was Less Than. Suddenly my diagnosis is wrong, I’m not crazy, I’m a genius, and acting like geniuses are supposed to act, with the same personal issues geniuses generally have. And suddenly Normal is Less Than.

I don’t think being Normal is a bad thing, unless you inflict it on others!! But it’s funny, when I said Normal and was coming from a psych patient perspective, people could feel good about themselves. Now when I say Normal it means the average population outside of Gifted people, and it makes people feel bad about themselves. What the fuck? That is a total mind fuck that is.

Did you know that when a Sun dies it becomes a diamond? That image is so beautiful. I don’t want to be dead anymore, but I do want to be a diamond.