I’m currently sitting on a collection of essays exploring the emotions and themes I experienced after being raped two-ish years ago, and how those evolved over time.
oh fran <3 i'm typing this through tears right now because of how much i've felt all of this and how many of these thoughts and desires I had and wanted over the course of what happened to me
i still don't understand why any of this happens, it makes so little sense and sometimes it felt like i was surrounded by pod people or blade runner androids and desperately tried to find my way back to real humans and always failed
thank you, so much, for your writing, it's the first time i've been able to experience the 'being seen' and community that people have dm'd me with over the years and told me i gave them, and i understand now how powerful and important that is
"It feared not having information, not having a choice. It feared what others might do if I wasn’t constantly tracking and predicting and placating and over-explaining and researching and planning and regulating."
So sensitive, insightful and thought-provoking as usual, Frances!
I don't know what to say except... I feel for you, and would be happy to validate you each and every time? I think most people are pretty bad at thinking what they can say to people that have been through horrible stuff, like yours. Words and acts of support and empathy seem the way to go; I think we sometimes try to minimize the horrors or make (lame) suggestions just because we feel it will be just unhelpful to stay in the 'I recognize and feel your pain, even if I have no idea how I can be of help'.
I just want to say what I've said in previous ocassions, even if it seems trite or useless: you are someone I respect and appreciate a lot, and you matter to me, and I think I'll always be happy and willing to help you in anything that is within my power to do.
Beautiful piece. I haven't been through the precise configuration of suffering you have, but the feeling of the relentlessness of reality is familiar -- where you want to tell the universe no, please stop, it's actually too much, but no matter how strenuously you object, it just keeps going. I wish I had something more helpful to say than that I was once obliterated by reality and am not obliterated anymore.
I comment this on every one of your posts, but you are such a good writer Frances. I always feel something deep after reading one of your posts, because you express your experience so clearly and with so much heart.
I think I've been very lucky to only rarely have had to deal with rough things, and while I don't think having to go through something is a competition, there is a messed up luck where I have not had to experience anything even approaching that of the many people I'm close to (and the many, many, more people I'll never know). But I have felt ever, but thankfully close to never, the sort of 'this is simply too much, and even though this is now past the point of too much for me, the world continues the same as it did before, and I no longer know what to do in a world that is the same whether I'm beyond my limits or not'. And then one day I woke up and things were fine and nothing had been too much in a long time, and that was great, but also annoying — because I wanted to be okay and to know what to do in those moments of beyond overwhelming, and maybe it turns out there was no way out but through.
I have also noticed that I now, and maybe always, comfort myself with a kind of nihilism where I think 'nothing truly matters', and somehow believing that makes me feel this feeling of things mattering even more now. I am kind of prone to dissociation, which is mostly fine and low level, but sometimes it does spiral in on itself too much and it's very weird to see the world innately through a lens of complete disconnect. But I think I now feel that if nothing matters, than there's nothing wrong with the fact I'm going to keep going on despite the universal indifference; the nothing cannot stop me from persisting, or from ignoring it.
Also I really liked the line "What even is reality, if not what we and the people around us see and know?" because I related to it, and the line "Either all eight billion of us had to agree on the gravity of what happened to me, or I had to find proof once and for all that I was nuts." because it captured an absurdity that is nonetheless real.
oh fran <3 i'm typing this through tears right now because of how much i've felt all of this and how many of these thoughts and desires I had and wanted over the course of what happened to me
i still don't understand why any of this happens, it makes so little sense and sometimes it felt like i was surrounded by pod people or blade runner androids and desperately tried to find my way back to real humans and always failed
thank you, so much, for your writing, it's the first time i've been able to experience the 'being seen' and community that people have dm'd me with over the years and told me i gave them, and i understand now how powerful and important that is
"It feared not having information, not having a choice. It feared what others might do if I wasn’t constantly tracking and predicting and placating and over-explaining and researching and planning and regulating."
I felt this so hard.
So sensitive, insightful and thought-provoking as usual, Frances!
I don't know what to say except... I feel for you, and would be happy to validate you each and every time? I think most people are pretty bad at thinking what they can say to people that have been through horrible stuff, like yours. Words and acts of support and empathy seem the way to go; I think we sometimes try to minimize the horrors or make (lame) suggestions just because we feel it will be just unhelpful to stay in the 'I recognize and feel your pain, even if I have no idea how I can be of help'.
I just want to say what I've said in previous ocassions, even if it seems trite or useless: you are someone I respect and appreciate a lot, and you matter to me, and I think I'll always be happy and willing to help you in anything that is within my power to do.
Beautiful piece. I haven't been through the precise configuration of suffering you have, but the feeling of the relentlessness of reality is familiar -- where you want to tell the universe no, please stop, it's actually too much, but no matter how strenuously you object, it just keeps going. I wish I had something more helpful to say than that I was once obliterated by reality and am not obliterated anymore.
I comment this on every one of your posts, but you are such a good writer Frances. I always feel something deep after reading one of your posts, because you express your experience so clearly and with so much heart.
I think I've been very lucky to only rarely have had to deal with rough things, and while I don't think having to go through something is a competition, there is a messed up luck where I have not had to experience anything even approaching that of the many people I'm close to (and the many, many, more people I'll never know). But I have felt ever, but thankfully close to never, the sort of 'this is simply too much, and even though this is now past the point of too much for me, the world continues the same as it did before, and I no longer know what to do in a world that is the same whether I'm beyond my limits or not'. And then one day I woke up and things were fine and nothing had been too much in a long time, and that was great, but also annoying — because I wanted to be okay and to know what to do in those moments of beyond overwhelming, and maybe it turns out there was no way out but through.
I have also noticed that I now, and maybe always, comfort myself with a kind of nihilism where I think 'nothing truly matters', and somehow believing that makes me feel this feeling of things mattering even more now. I am kind of prone to dissociation, which is mostly fine and low level, but sometimes it does spiral in on itself too much and it's very weird to see the world innately through a lens of complete disconnect. But I think I now feel that if nothing matters, than there's nothing wrong with the fact I'm going to keep going on despite the universal indifference; the nothing cannot stop me from persisting, or from ignoring it.
Also I really liked the line "What even is reality, if not what we and the people around us see and know?" because I related to it, and the line "Either all eight billion of us had to agree on the gravity of what happened to me, or I had to find proof once and for all that I was nuts." because it captured an absurdity that is nonetheless real.