Time: 22:46
Listening to: ルシファー
Topic: Health, site purpose, Slow Damage
TW: CSA mention
I started writing this diary entry on the 15th but I've been so tired that I really didn't have it in me to properly write out all my thoughts until today.
Lately I've been so tired that I've been regularly falling asleep outside of home. No matter how much or little I sleep I feel utterly exhausted the next day. Part of the issue is I've been waking very frequently. Even if it's just for a few minutes at a time, waking up a lot during the night means I'm not getting quality sleep. It's a little worrying because I've actually been falling asleep for an hour or so at work. Sleep deprivation makes me feel like I'm losing my mind a bit but at least it still isn't as bad as it was back in middle school. Back then my insomnia was so bad that staying up for three days straight was a common occurance.
The Slow Damage special interest has been continuing in full force. I've started a project where I'm using Powertoys to extract the text from the game as I do a full replay of it. So far I replayed 2/4 routes but I decided for re-writing my review and writing more fanfic it'd be helpful to do a full replay. Having a set of docs I can ctrl+f any line will make anything in the future so much easier than it is currently. I'm very particular when I write fanfic. I do a lot of Googling and double checking against canon so I can make stuff decently accurate and then build on top of it. It actually feels great to have something which I feel so passionate about again, even if my feelings on the game are super messy.
Tangentially related to Slow Damage, I think writing that review and just saying publicly on this site some of the specifics of trauma I've been through was good for me. Back when I was a teenager I made accounts as a place to publicly post vent art and general discussions of PTSD. As time went on I deleted those accounts since I didn't need them as much. However, I think they did serve a purpose due to their publicity but anonymity. The thing that's really tough about trauma is it's scary to talk about it in any sort of candid way. I don't worry about my image per se. If people don't like me, they find me off putting, cringe, weird, disturbing, for speaking about my reality then that doesn't matter to me. Rather, what gets to me is the vulnerability and conscientiousness of others.
PTSD can be rough because there's a strong sense of shame and loneliness. Trauma is isolating so having spaces to speak and express it in a healthy way is very important. (Again, this is why I love menhera art so much). But it can also be upsetting to others, especially CSA. It's upsetting for people so I'm always worried about things getting through filters, not being blacklisted properly. But also... to what degree can I control that? If I post stuff on my personal site behind warnings I logically know I've done what I should. It's not useful to keep everything bottled up (last time I talked about this publicly was maybe two years ago) out of a misplaced sense of guilt and self-blame.
I often think that I apply standards to myself that I never would anyone else. Would I get angry at someone for creating vent art related to trauma? Would I reject a person for making vent posts? Would I blame them for making me uncomfortable if I clicked past trigger warnings and read something upsetting knowingly? Of course not. All of those scenarios are really silly. But I still tend to apply them to myself.
I talked to my therapist about intrusive thoughts recently. Typing out stuff like this makes me realize how I can get into repetitive or overthinking patterns. One of my friends was diagnosed recently with OCD so it's got me noticing the way repetitive patterns and such can be unhelpful for me. I definitely don't have issues on his level but thinking about how overlapping concepts apply helps me a lot sometimes.
A positive development in the mental health vein is I did post some menhera vent art on the subject. I'll put it in the menhera shrine later once I get that up but not in the main art gallery. It turned out pretty well and I'd like to talk about some of the symbolism and stuff I included. It's all a little on the nose but I don't think that's a bad thing.
When I write diary entries I often feel like they come off a bit negative in the writing but they don't feel that way in my own mind. Certainly there's venting and negatives but I also don't feel especially emotional when I write these. The negatives have a sort of solution attached, in my mind. Writing about it feels equally like just getting it off my chest and a statement of purpose. These are things I want to change. Or I'm doing something because it's related to some difficulty. Or this is something that comes from living as myself and dealing with my specific quirks for so long. Most of life is out of my control. If I were to sort many worries into boxes, only a few would be actionable. The ones that are have to do with myself. To a degree, I can work with myself and make changes when things bugging me are internal.