Editor’s Note
Some of us are journalers! Even during the toughest times in our lives, we journal on, whether it’s just to cope or to prove to ourselves that we are actually in fact experiencing what is happening right now. This series came directly from Laneia’s brain, much in the way Athena was born from Zeus’s head, and so while we hope to have further contributions to this series from Autostraddle team members down the line, it is Laneia who’s starting us off! The concept? We are presenting, without commentary, excerpts from our journals during one of the worst years we’ve experienced. (It can be any year! Just our personal worst!)
Thank you for bearing witness to some of our most vulnerable moments. You might wonder, dear reader, will these entries be sad? Will they be funny? The answer is yes.
They’ll also serve to show us that we lived right through it. Laneia is actually fine these days. She’s even writing again.
This has felt like a 3 year long nervous breakdown.
[Redacted] asked in the car had I not ever just felt that sexual connection with someone I didn’t know, where I just wanted to be with them immediately? and I said no. And added “except for you” to make it better, but it’s not true. I don’t want anyone to touch me ever again as long as I live.
Even though I know I’m gay, I sometimes think I’d be — not happier but just, it would be easier to keep mechanically and mindlessly reliving that trauma than to look at anything head-on over here, or try to be honest, or try to be happy.
I kind of feel like I gave this a good run, you know? The trying. I don’t know how much is left in me. I could just go back to nothing real. I could write my children letters and be gone forever.
The internet knows me better than [Redacted] does. Just! No real interest in me, actually me.
Wanted to reach for [Redacted] twice last night but stopped myself both times.
You’d think we just met. You’d think I was nobody.
It’s just baffling.
This isn’t going to work is it
Genuinely fearing for my life tonight. [Redacted] is unhinged. And no, asshole, that is not what gaslighting means! A literal dictionary living in your fucking back pocket filled with all the new words you just heard yesterday that you could LOOK UP AND USE CORRECTLY before you scream them at me while you throw boxes across the dining room.
Not great Bob
I don’t think I’ve eaten real food in a month.
It is utterly ridiculous and humiliating how many times I’ve checked my phone over the last hour and a half.
What to Do When Your [Redacted] Leaves You
- Chill four (4) beers
- Watch one (1) episode of Derry Girls, then all of them.
- Consume beer one by one for hours.
- Buy Booksmart
- Order sushi
- Watch Booksmart twice in a row
- Text your [redacted] throughout
- Block your [redacted]’s number
- Read twitter
- Smoke
- Sleep for four (4) hours
- Let dogs out, then back in
- Text your [redacted] once
- Unblock your [redacted]’s number, block it again
- Open blinds
- Shower
This is so fucking inconvenient!
Jesus
So bottom line is that I thought we had one kind of love and we didn’t. So like, I just forgive that time and let it go and keep my own self. I’ve known me longer anyway. Easy!
For shopping and thinks:
- Did I project an idea onto [redacted] for eight years? Can a person sustain such a lie to herself for that long? (Yes and you have so much proof of this you absolute dumbass)
- Was it ever as good as I told myself it was?
- How to trust again ?? (Maybe a solution: scoop brain into ice cream dishes and walk into traffic)
- Books for reclaiming a body.
- Anything for reminding myself that I’m safe.
- Unlearn the physical stress response in my jaw, shoulders, lungs, tin can head.
I don’t even know how to process this kind of sadness and grief and fury. Do I just make up my own way? A way that’s kind to me. I could do that, I think. I could forgive myself.
I have taken off my ring tonight.
I’m so incredibly sad today. [Redacted]’s days off are just impossible to get through without collapsing in on myself. I’m trying to keep it together because I still have to get Eli packed for Seattle. I feel like I’m holding my breath, all day. The truth is that I want the best for [Redacted], and I’m devastated that that’s not me anymore.
Shhh shhh shhhhhh get up get up. Go do something. I love you you’re ok.
I took the boys to the airport before sunrise and just everything about it was so lonely and empty and my sadness stretched out for what felt like the rest of my life. Like being little in the backseat at night, going down a dark highway and trying to take in how big and unknown everything is on the other side of the window, but also not really wanting to because it’s terrifying — you know you’ll never turn down that road, or that one, not ever and you’ll never know those places, and it’s so scary to think of it all being out there all the time but it’s ok because you don’t have to deal with it, you’re safe — and then realizing that actually no one’s in the car with you. Like the only things I still knew were the stars in the sky. And even those disappeared with the sun eventually.
Today was impossible.
Do not prove her right. Don’t prove anyone right about you.
I’m trying to find the optimism and calm that I had yesterday but it’s like I was a different person.
Eating an apple damn sandwich while I stare at my green pool and oh my fucking god is this really my life right now.
Fucking jesus okay.
- Feeling so sad that I could scream until my throat bled and if I cry into the cement floor one more time this week so help me god
- Should I take a day off?!? How do I work?!?
- THE WORD SAD IS TOO SMALL TO BE THIS FUCKING BIG FUCK
I’ve always been terrified that finding this kind of space and time would kill me once I got it — that I’d regret so much once I finally had the freedom. Now that I have it, and it’s so dark, I wonder if it really is bad and sad or if it’s everything I’ve ever needed. Just, am I scared and upset because this is wrong, or because it’s right and I don’t have a map?
Got out of the house yesterday.
I didn’t cry.
I’m realizing that I don’t know how to be?? A person? I don’t understand where the balance is between being needy and being shut down. I would rather check out of humanity altogether than keep trying to figure this shit out. NOT DIE just not be in this miasma of personhood and words and money anymore! And I think I have to stop being around people because I keep fucking this up and then they’re disappointed and confused and they would’ve been better off without ever meeting me. But like, less dramatic.
I didn’t cry today either.
I have all these voice memos now. It’s impossible to lie to myself out loud and I just keep talking, for hours.
It’s so hard for me to keep any forward, healing momentum. I’m at least able to find it every few days, but it’s so frustrating to lose it over and over again.
Ok I’m serious!
I have to drag myself out!
of this! ditch!
To Do:
- Move the body around
- Remove all visual signs that [redacted] was ever even within earshot of knowing my Starbucks order much less fucking living with me.
- Interact with all areas of the house. Sit in a closet! Walk around on the ceiling with a glass of ice water and never trip. What if you moved a chair somewhere else.
- Remember [redacted] was not a good enough [redacted] and had shown no real desire to change that. For years, you sweet stupid baby.
- Remember that this is a freedom.
They love me and they keep telling me it won’t always feel like this and INTELLECTUALLY I know they’re right but the fact that I’m already out of tissues again and can only keep down plain rice BEGS TO DIFFER.
Maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing right now, and probably that’s fine. I guess I don’t need to know what I’m doing? Like maybe/probably I’ll fuck some of this up, but maybe that’s fine because maybe everything’s just always fine as long as I’m alive and being nice to myself.
A safe space to say that I feel so stupid and ugly and old and I put up V’s Lex ad and I cannot believe ! that this ! is!! my life !!! Meeting a total fucking stranger from Ohio at her actual hotel room which is in fact at a resort and then there will be drinks and sex I guess? Do I even know how to have sex with someone else? with the lights on? This is both pathetic of me and above my station. Like who do I think I am but also I am definitely not this, am I? Am I.
Ok I do know how to have sex with someone else with the lights on.
