Honestly, the concept of a healthy-functioning human being is to me, an alien concept.

I just think it's so incredibly fucking weird that everyone has a kid, that kid grows up, and for like, 99% of those people (or so it seems to me, I guess I might be biased) mature and function and do relatively well. Even the ones with physical/mental illness(es) and/or substance misuse issues generally can function, somehow. Some use drugs, some use medications, some see a counselor, some like my Lav pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, but they get the job done.

They "rise to the occasion" [of being an adult and paying your own bills and having some facsimile of a "life"].

They're young. They get out a lot. Do a lot of things. Generally function well and are able to carve out a niche for themselves in society with relatively little trouble.

And then there's me. And a few others, I'm pretty sure. I dunno.

I just. All day I think about, "What if I could have a job, a career, get out every day, do something meaningful with my life?" and it seems like an impossible catch-22 (or 21? whatever) between my pain, which crops up randomly, and my inability to communicate with others (Borderline plus Bipolar plus suspected high-functioning autism and foreign chemicals in the body will do that to a person), that I'll ever be able to just........................................

Get up in the morning and go. Y'know?

I've kinda done it before, I've gone to college part-time, but I only ever took a few classes at a time and recall feeling extremely, extremely overwhelmed with *even just that*. And that was with the assistance of Suboxone, Vyvanse, Concerta, mood stabilizers and anxiety medicine. It was still so fucking hard to do anything at all.

The sense of being overwhelmed was just so much, man.

Like I remember one of the most overwhelming things was navigating computer programs and such and MLA format, which was the bane of my English, Comp and Rhetoric class existence. I felt like even the simpletons (sorry for using such a pretentious word) in my class could very very easily grasp how to navigate and properly use this technology, but I couldn't. Did that make me stupid? I dunno.

(Retrospectively, I think it was a combination of feeling overwhelmed plus my autistic traits, but whatever, that's just my opinion.)

I hate being a shut-in. I don't think it's romantic or cute. I could make a writing career out of it or some shit, but it's just *not all that mentally healthy to be isolated for long periods of time*, and "mentally healthy" is the place where I wanna be.

I was on the phone with Lavender I guess a week ago and she asked me when's the last time I've been out of the house, and I just lost my shit and started laughing hysterically. I didn't know how else to respond, and that was pretty telling. (She works three jobs btw and is seemingly mentally sound despite a really disturbing amount of trauma having happened to her throughout her life.)

But, being isolated from other humans opens a person up to perversions.

I don't just mean the sexual kind. I'm generally kind of demisexual (which means you don't give a shit about sex unless you're just, like, totally smitten by somebody) with total asexuality taking over here-and-there, and don't have any weird kinks or any weird thing like that, except one, I've never practiced it with anybody at all and have absolutely no desire to ever do so.

What I mean when I say "perversion" is like. Unhealthy romantification of stuff.

Lacking empathy.

Like for instance, my friend said to me some months ago when I was more active on tumblr, that it was so fucking weird to her that people post photos of their self-injury scars on tumblr (and other sites?) and all the "sick girl" or "broken doll" type blogs, because she's a recovered cutter herself, and I was like, "Yea, I don't get it either. It's fucked up."

And in principle, I do think romantifying SI scars is totally fucked up, and it triggers others. It's just all-around gross and icky.

But I do it. In secret. And when I get like this, isolated over long periods of time.

Recently I cut myself so bad I had to go to the ER (which I never have before for cutting), I lost enough blood to be faint-feeling and nauseated. (I didn't tell you about that! Or why I did it. It's a fucked-up and personal story, you don't want to know anyways.)

I took photos of the aftermath, not intending to post them on an open forum or anything. (They were accidentally showing on my thigh in one of my photos I posted in a very large and populous genderfluid group I am a member of, I couldn't even tell they were there, and I got reported for it and almost banned.)

I keep various sorts of photos of myself (including a whole bunch of bodily photos which are only shared with Lavender and only occasionally, it's for me to stop hating my body by being forced to look at it, I guess) and I have one folder where photos of my self-injury aftermaths are kept.

And I generally don't share those.

But sometimes, I look at them.

I can't tell you what I get out of it. It's not perverted in a sexual sense, it's perverted in a bloodlust sense, in a sense of, "Mm, yeeeeea no, I shouldn't get any kind of good feeling when I see these. But yet, I do."

I shared them with one person who we'll call S, who also self-mutilates. We kind of basked in the sick fuckery together. He shared his with me. They were much more mild to the point where I almost thought mine would flip him the fuck out, but he was totally calm about it.

We're the same kind of desensitized.

Several days later I learned he'd cut himself again and I felt like, "Shit shit shit shit, seeing my fucked-up ass cuts must've triggered his desire to like, do it to himself" and I told him I felt that way and he was like, "Nah, I did it before I ever saw those photos of your's."

S is also someone with whom I've entertained polyamorous notions because both of us are poly, but it hasn't gone too far yet.

Anyway.

My point is, is that it's sick, and I shouldn't enjoy it.

I just wish that I fucking hated my self-injury scars and wanted to get them covered up with flowers and words of empowerment like seemingly everybody else.

And it is my eventual plan, I guess. But I'm not there yet.

My reaction should be repulsion. It's not. It's an incorrect emotional reaction, and that's why it's perverse and fucked up, and that's why isolating yourself for years is not okay and never ends well.

Anyways. I kinda tangented.

My point is that I really do just want to be a regular member of society, honest to god. I really do. I envy people who can breeze through medical school like it's nothing, just a milestone they were expected to complete, and did. The work was hard, but very easily manageable. And for me, even simple things are impossible.

I kind of feel that I'm a degenerate that way. A self-destruct machine. I think that's the title of a Nine Inch Nails album, or song or whatever. Anyways. (Nevermind, I was thinking of Pretty Hate Machine and Mr. Self Destruct, which isn't even on that album, lol.)

I know y'all are gonna tell me this is one for the therapist, reversing that mindset of being certain that I will always fail.

I study psychology (well, did), I know how counselors handle people like me. I had a counselor for 2 years and she was lovely.

So I guess it's all riding on my Disability, now.

And so I guess this one goes out to all the other introverts with sick-fuckish tendencies who know better and try their damndest to do better. Keep riding out the storm and hopefully we'll come out on the other side together someday.