Written September 2021.

last night i pulled a horrible, important muscle in my back and now standing, walking, and sitting are really fucking PAINFUL!!!! it’s not an easy pain. my mind and my body finally coming together.

anyway in the middle of this period tremendous pain, i want to unpack some of my feelings since my brain is finally taking accountability.

if i were being true to me, here’s how i’d exist:
Me to a random stranger who catches my eye: “hey, no offense, but your energy is off the charts. i think in another life we would have been soulmates, friends, lovers, or something in between. wanna come with me?”
Random stranger: “Actually, yes.”

That’s how I feel about certain people I’ve met or interact with! I doubt many people are still reading these newsletters, but that’s who I am, really. I’m a kind person who likes other people. It’s so hard to exist in this way when your mind is like mine. I want to say I’ll grow and change into the woman hiding inside, but she’s fucking ruthless, and she scares me with her intensity. It takes all of my energy to keep her at bay. Even now she’s taunting me, waiting for another chance to get out. She’ll learn her place, eventually, though. We all do. She’s just… tougher than most. Endurance art, amirite?

I think what scares me most about this psychotic episode is not that I was living out some of my favorite tropes in real time. No, I can make peace with the fact that my mind is incredibly imaginative and sees patterns that aren’t there. What scares me is how part of me was enjoying it. On some level, I enjoyed believing that someone could be so interested in me that it would become obsession. I can tell you exactly what that means for me: my view of love is clouded. But… in those clouds I felt comforted in a way that only comes from true, radical acceptance. Own me, I thought. No refunds, then.

“So, what?” I thought to myself. “Someone can hear my thoughts, someone can see all of my secrets, someone has seen my entire life and now they’re coming to get me.”

I feel on some level that’s fucked up, right? My rational, righteous mind was fighting against this idea of ownership. It caused me to lash out. It caused me to run full speed directly into an emotional wall. My higher self was telling me it was better to die than to be owned. But part of me was begging to give in, to just admit that someone could see me and still need me. And I realize that I was in love with a ghost of myself. No one will so intensely claim me that it breaks me. Only I have the power to do that. Am I understanding agency? Or am I still delusional?

Thanks for reading. One day, this pain will have meaning, if we let it.