If you hadn't seen my more offical gemlog post here's the backstory behind posts called "ephemera"
Basically, these are unindexed posts that I'm still putting in the RSS reader. They're for feelings and experiences that feel so in-the-moment I don't want them easily read a long time after the fact.
TW: talk of suicide, sexual violence, self-harm
Please note that no matter what you read here I am not an immediate danger to myself. If anything, the pressure release of actually admitting how bad things have been will help me *not* make a permanent mistake. If you want to talk to me you can always reach me at left_adjoint@rawtext.club.
That being said...
I've had a hard year. One of the hardest of my life. And given that I'm an incest survivor raised in pretty severe isolation by my vile father, I want to say that the bar was fairly high on what "a hard year" is.
I've been suicidal a lot. Do you know the concept of hesitation marks? The idea that just before you have a deep cut you flinch a little and make a small one? I've been having "hesitation marks" but for suicide attempts. It's been small things, stepping in front of cars when I don't think they'll be able to stop in time, going down to the train platform, walking repeatedly by the sleezy no-questions-asked gun shop run by the conspiracy theorists. I technically haven't attempted suicide this year but I've repeatedly been in a place that feels too close to that for comfort.
Part of it was the way that my recent ex, a whirlwind relationship over the summer in which an old dear friend over the course of two months escalated their controlling and sexually violent behavior by the day, treated me. A lot of old painful trauma scars were ripped open back to gushing wounds. I've been very insane from it, torn up inside and---if I'm being honest---parts of my body are torn up on the outside too.
The rest...the rest is something I'm trying to figure out if I'm brave enough to talk about.
On the other hand, do you know what's so fucking weird? Professionally this has been one of the best years of my life. So much hard work has all started paying off this year specifically. I've been getting awarded grants, I'm building out a makerspace, I've gotten involved in so many projects and won the respect of a lot of very cool people who didn't even know who I was a year ago.
And yet it all tastes like ash in my mouth right now.