i'm a creature that can exist at rest alongside things unknowable, unseen, and unfathomed. i grew up in haunted places, finding refuge in the places that violent folk feared. how silly is that? me, running terrified from too many bullies, finding them unable to cross a simple threshold into a scary place? they literally abandoned their quest because they were less invested in hurting a queer kid than they were afraid of a building their family had told them lies about.
naturally, that and places like it became my regular haunts.
it wasn't long before i became haunted myself. the teasing never ended, but people stopped trying to hurt me physically. absorbing weird energies had given me an aura shift. at the last second, they would change their mind. decide that what they were about to do wasn't worth it. bullies fear the unknown. this likely plays a fundamental part of whatever individual psychology creates the bully itself.
in my case, by the age of nine things within had settled into an existential state of flow. i was in control of nothing, could do nothing, i just had to roll with the horrors and do my best ride the tides of life as they crashed against my various works. becoming so comfortable with the unknowable placed me into that category.
unknown.
maybe it's that unknown quality that made it so hard for people to believe me. this human exists aloofly, untethered by certain common concerns and consumed by other uncommon ones. and now we touch upon what this has become.
a journey exploring the perils and pains of what happens to a human when they are harmed by someone everyone trusts. when no one will take their accusations seriously. and let's be clear. this pain, this experience, this trauma is not uniquely mine.
far, far too many people experience these agonies every day. for some reason inexplicable to me, believing an assault survivor is extremely hard for most people. with the way this shit is all too common? and the way people for whatever reason open up to me about their traumas? i've been tending to these wounds in others my whole life. and invariably, i get told something along the lines of "thank you for believing me."
can you imagine that? thanking someone for believing you? i never understood it. who wouldn't believe? understand? try to get it and do your best as someone who has already been brutalized opens their heart and soul in sincerity, seeking comfort? it shouldn’t be a risk.
something that was not wanted was forced upon a person. it’s been told to me in a dozen different ways. i’ve sat with people through the tears of examining these experiences and realizing that they did nothing wrong.
that what happened to them wasn’t their fault. full stop. no quibbling.
i never fully understood or appreciated how strong those people were, opening up like that. i accepted it as extremely tough, as a delicate thing. something to be taken seriously and given every effort and grace i was capable of. i suspected it was a part of the healing process, not keeping it inside anymore, and that it was very important to treat such occasions with the respect and dignity they warranted.
my story isn’t special or uncommon. an abusive ex took what he wanted, after a series of escalations atop routine patterns of harm. and when i tried to talk about it i got told it didn’t happen. couldn’t have possibly happened. there is just no way that person would have ever done that.
when i tried to ask for help i was told that i must have misunderstood the situation. that i should be the one comforting him about having to put up with my being upset.
that it was too much for people to handle, talking about such serious topics. that i should be grateful it wasn’t worse.
a couple of important folk said vaguely supportive things in the tough conversation and then stopped talking to me entirely. people i knew for years. thought i was close to.
thought i could trust.
believe what you want.
but this is what happened.
this is how iggy died.
Beginning recovery of kurrupted log segment 857219.
12-01-22
///wanted to do a fun intro //it’s not in me // not much seems to be // very hollow
it’s a special day and i can’t fully participate in that because i keep fucking crying over everything that devon did to me // abusive behavioral patterns // anyone that took any interest in me got cut out very quickly
not something i particularly want to explore. i don’t want it to be that way. ignorance not malice, etc, etc.
he told me multiple times over several weeks that we weren’t family, or even friends
he raped me twice
the things he said bothered me way more than the things he did
i died every day
0411AMPST
12-30-23
recovering is slow.
im just grateful i am able to appreciate the good things about the now times.
idk how much longer this is gonna keep ruining me. hope it isn’t too much. v tired of feeling this.
i work through the tears. food gets made, people get taken care of. but i recognize being a shell. distinctly no fun at all.
and it’s not the same. i get a dozen little joys and wonders every day in my life here and it’s so important to me not to disparage or discredit that. i don’t have to go through any of this alone and there’s so much good fulfilling, loving, and caring going on that i rarely feel crippled though i know that i have been.
despite being an absolute mess i’ve been trusted and included in someone’s Goals and i’m able to help out a little here and there even in this state. plus it’s just a good place that feels like home and gives me so much to look forward to every week.
when i’m not putting out fires i’m crying over what happened to me and over how long it was truly going on for.
so much of these patterns are part of a good loop.
i always do so much better when there’s a place to be and people to help.
kindness and loving environments bring their own perspectives. being treated well draws such a clear comparison to the times when we weren’t.
this lens is helpful to me. the pain of being so mistreated by someone i cared about so deeply is weathered by the resonance. that sense of what always hurt, felt wrong, got pushed aside and never talked about?
aspects of it were spot on. i was not safe. i was not being treated well at all. i was being degraded, abused, and sabotaged on the regular. and i put up with it. i thought the lies and the pain and the unfairness of the rules were just the cost of loving someone so openly damaged.
someone who wanted and needed and deserved extra effort. that extra effort resulted in a situation where he did what he wanted and faced zero consequences and i got thrown under the bus over every little manufactured misunderstanding.
people tried to get close to me during devon’s first stay. devon drove them away, usurping all contact with them and telling them i wasn’t available for anything, even friendship. number of people devon was casually seeing during that time: three that i knew about.
going over all this doesn’t seem to help. i know these facts cold by now. but i’m the only one. and i don’t know who else to talk to about it, even after all this time.
he is one or two steps removed from so many things in my world or orbit. part of me is still screaming that i should be warning people. i think that’s just residual empathy and concern for derek. i told him way back when what devon did to me the first time around, how he led me on, lied, and left. guess he forgot.
i hope he doesn’t get the rude awakening i see on those tracks.
“it’s got nothing to do with me” (you introduced them)
the voices inside aren’t always kind, or coherent, but are for sure wise and they never shut the fuck up about people that are hurting me.
i used to think i had to push that all aside, to ignore it and muscle through the mistreatment. don’t think about it too much, or you’ll get resentful. or something.
maybe it’s okay to be resentful of being mistreated. maybe that’s a sign that something is very off and wrong and needs to be addressed, changed, and dealt with.
so i started pruning.
as part of the moving out and moving in with another human and two more cats i decided to give up most of my belongings. i was able to find good homes for a lot of it and a good place to give the rest away. several objects i’d previously cherished found themselves on the go pile. i hadn’t heard from the people associated with those objects in ages and each had plenty of iffy memories associated with them.
the same lens that showed me so much of devon’s abuse put a lot of other things into perspective for me with regards to other people. he wasn't the only person i'd opened up to about transitioning, just the last in a long line of folks who shut it down instead of embracing it.
it takes so little effort to be there. to be present. to stay in touch. people say otherwise but then they go and do it constantly. with the people they value. it got harder to ignore some of the boxes people kept me in when we were “close.”
and then some folks are just backbiting jerks who aren’t ever going to appreciate something like me.
as infinite as my heart seems to be, there’s way too much pain and scarring for me to hold spaces for people who won’t inhabit those places. tears every day, over trusting and being hurt and the endless cycle of doing that over and over and over and over again.
Em said that pruning is important because the energy and life being sent to these dead, vestigial things, can damage the larger, living organism.
trying to remember that pruning is a surgical process. this feels like trying to amputate a gangrenous limb with a hatchet. good patients get a rotting belt to bite and the dregs of a decade old bottle of rubbing alcohol. there's enough to sanitize or swallow, but not both.
i’m not a good patient. i let it fester. the last thing i fucking want to do to anyone is disconnect. even the people that seriously harmed me get a tremendous number of passes. i don’t ever want to be the reason someone gives up hope.
in short, it fucking hurts. and that pain is important, perhaps somehow representative of the pains involved in peopling. and de-peopling as necessary.
i’m just grateful that it’s easy to be at peace. it’s a tenuous, unstable thing, but it exists within me. and i know that i will get through this, i will face the things and grow.
every time i get hurt i heal better.
i think it’s because i try real hard to learn the lessons. how did i fuck up? what pain did i cause? how should i have handled this differently?
i look for those answers and i find them in some unexpected places, but i do find them. and when things go wonky i find that it’s not exactly easier, nor precisely rewarding, but i can usually find a few ways to not be as shitty the next time that scenario rolls around.
and there’s power in that, somewhere. because my whole world erupted around me and decided to start slinging lava everywhere. and i was able to weather so much of that storm without fighting back.
do not mistake me. in those awful moments, i chose not to fight. i would not have been able to do so without crippling another, physically stronger human. part of me saw that in and of itself as part of his plan. so i did a familiar thing and vanished into a different moment.
i thought that the only way to minimize the harm to everyone else was to allow the harm to me to be maximized. devon couldn’t get the rise and reaction out of me that he wanted, so he escalated from emotional abuse and social gaslighting to physical abuse and theft.
like so many other things about these last couple of years, Em’s the only one who noticed. she saw what i was going through and how i was handling it. she gave me a place to stay and held me while i cried, night after night.
someday i’m gonna feel safe again.
5/12/24
4:17am
~
one trouble with the high insight, high empathy build is that it accumulates too much cursed knowledge.
in six days it gets inked again. we might have the ritual pit ready by then.
it’s just a different set of problems. the luck of the situation.
it gets to be this. it gets to grow with her. it’s not alone inside or out. it breaks every 33 minutes, but is otherwise at peace.
feeling an urge to find a random 2fort server and turn a steamroll into a stalemate or a stalemate into victory. i guess perhaps because that is a thing i can do.
maybe digital archery is relaxing in ways similar to using one meatspatially.
but i need my fingies to finish the projects. shouldn’t waste them basically just ruining people’s fun.
we’ve become so reserved. beyond the fourth-guessing caused by abuse and various abandonments, it’s just so incredibly iffy a thing now, to influence. to potentially hurt.
the memory web hurts to be in. this city hurts to be in. the world itself is being hurt / held hostage by absolute monsters and there’s very little i can do about any of it. despite what we can do. it’s all disparate threads now.
so it all hurts to be in. despite getting to be this, whee.
something something wishes / dreams.
we’ve seen this.
and it’s better than it was. it’s definitely kind of a curse.
but we get to have so much fun.
goodbye for now.
A249M:2.13.25
NOTation v6 {it’s NOT just a note taker any more!}
every day it’s “i am tired and i do not want to be here anymore.” there are always glimmering anchors, though. every day i get things done and make progress on something or something else. yet the covid times continue, and the trauma times continue, and every day something terrible happens with wide ranging consequences for so many people.
and so many seem unaware, uncaring. of the people that survived the last eight years? many who were posting memes about it then are posting memes about it now.
facing down fatalistic despair is something i gotta do before getting out of bed each morning so idk how to let ALL THE THINGS overwhelm me most of the time. but that do be taking a toll, especially after so long in covid times, and now what looks real hard like fash times.
pretty much everyone i care about is in constant and increasing danger. and i paint my nails and i worry and i help the folks i’m able to and i try real hard to also take care of me.
not doing a great job of that.
got what seems like a handle on us, tho. the interior facets and absorbed ones and all the other parts and pieces and errant scraps of various things we felt compelled to be. we enjoy making or embracing more, collecting the tools, knowledge, experiences, we sometimes see it all so clearly, the rhythm of what we get up to movin in sync. the kinetics of inner souls flowin. it’s wild.
kinda been making music again. what’s next, porn and video game assets? stimming on guitars has been basically lifesaving in the way building mazes and cities have been. we'll never stop creating things. portals, interdimensional tree paintings. yard magic. night magic. moon magic.
multiple callings kinda sorta being fulfilled in the limited ways in which there is a need and we've access. life with emma. ongoing transformation. the joys of cat.
it's all pretty darn nifty until reality and the horrors of the near future intrude. until one of the day's dozen spikes wrecks me. until another person goes away.
reconnecting with people is weird. in the years since it happened i’ve been very “the person who hurt me has sealed and will meet their own fate, i don’t have to do anything” about the whole devon raping me thing. also acab. there was a zero percent chance of pursuing a path where another trans person could be subjected to the system. and besides, acab.
the nearly no one believing me part made it real difficult to trust anyone. on top of a long time spent not trusting most everyone. but living is healing, and i’m starting to feel like i could try to start living a life again and that by its very nature is going to require me to deal.
some people aren’t gonna wanna hear it, especially after all this time. i’ve already been so surprised and hurt by this endless game of “will they believe or blame the victim?”
i let so much happen to me because i felt like i deserved it, and somewhere along the process of feeling the various facets of it all i started learnin and understandin and before long it seemed like i was immune to someone’s bullshit. i could just breathe and be and none of it got to me anymore and then devon chose to violate me about it because i guess how dare he not be the center of attention, idk i never figured it out.
a few weeks later i for some reason tried to say “hey, no hard feelings over that whole raping me business, idk why u did it but nbd since ur super important to me” and he went and did it AGAIN and idk parts of us went away and haven’t really been back since. maybe won't ever. iggy's just. gone. they aren't hiding, we've looked. they're just. gone.
and since i can’t do fucking anything on easy mode this whole assault victim recovery plotline is running in the same episode as “which random person i’ve known for years is going to suddenly and explosively stop talking to me because i’m trans?”
it’s easy: if ur worried at all about “the transes in bathrooms or sports” you’re a fucking monster and should probably go die about it. end of discussion kthxbai~~
most days i just can not even anymore. there are fewer and fewer days i even want to. oh but the alive days, they’re so bright and fun and full of whimsy, mirth and glee, and other things seemingly just for me.
11:41 pm
3/7/25
i’m not better. this hasn’t healed. but it is healing. and i can see bits and pieces of what it’ll look like on the other side. i wish i’d had more help. i think we could have conquered this in a few months if we hadn’t been mostly alone. but we had enough; a special moment to hide in and a partner with a heart of gold helped keep us alive when other fates seemed best.
so we remain. growing, healing, and getting better bit by bit.
that might not be enough for tomorrow.
but it’s enough for today.
some of us survived.
and so far, we persist.
the pacts had been fulfilled. the balance was restored; sort of. it would have to do.
we longed for elsewhere and had discovered several cracks in things that would get us there.
it had taken years. our bones buried across continents. living as a magical reservoir, transferring energy between oceans.
absorbing abuse and eating sin, always a ghost. manifesting when calamity strikes and then vanishing into an occasional memory. always wandering, never safe for long.
so we injected the shapeshifting goop to prepare the body while mixing the potions that would prepare the mind.
a relatively simple spell, really.
the infinite daydream, caught forever between a heartbeat. it was best to not be found at all in such a condition.
we’d taken steps. the moss would have us, then the mushies, and finally the bog.
it was great until we woke up.
what the hex
we thought.
it was supposed to be nothing or something else
that was the deal
too bad, something whispered.
we haven’t finished with this flesh, said another.
menacing sounds emanated from nearby:
these secrets are yours, if you wish to learn them.
others hovered, seeking agency.
entire worlds on the brink of existing, or not.
scaled hands gripped ours as a tentacle slithered around our hips.
something with a whole lot of eyes and even more snakes was smiling.
it’s so close.
just a little more pain,
it’ll be perfect.
the fangs hurt, the venom was soothing, and so began another kind of transformation.
NEXT TIME ON TRUTHQUEST: ARE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS VANISHING INTO FOG? DOES THAT WATER TOWER REALLY MOVE ACROSS THE STREET AND BACK? WE'LL NEVER KNOW AND WE'LL NEVER STOP LOOKIN INTO IT!
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