duality seems to be part of my life, and sometimes i can't even sort it all out very well.
it's in the way i think, the way i see. the way i listen or understand.
the world is two or three, things moving sideways rather than in a straight line.
i often find myself on the other side not knowing how i ended up there.
some days it scares me. other days, i love it.
most days, it's just the way it is, and i can only go with whatever my head wants to make up that that day, hour, minute.
we have talked a little about darkness, and i want to talk about it more.
talk without thinking, as soon as i start thinking, the words lose their meaning, and i'm left all alone in my own darkness again.
[do you need any trigger warnings? this gets dark.]
people use to talk about two sides of the same coin.
there's darkness and light, as an example.
male an female for another.
i have problems understanding how male and female work.
my understanding seems incomplete, or i seem incomplete.
it's impossible to figure it out, one day i know for sure, the next, every concept of gender has completely escaped my mental grasp.
but this was supposed to be about darkness and the two sides of that coin.
because the darkness is that different to me, or within me.
light on one side. the light seems simple, easy to deal with when i don't feel like rejecting it.
the darkness is different. it seems to have two sides to it. or maybe more.
i have been struggling with depression and anxiety for a while.
not this while, but the last year while. and the year before that.
the years before that again, were only lost to depression.
this is supposed to be relatable to gender in some way, but i'm not sure i'm able to do that.
my genders mix too much, i'm only rarely sure of what i am.
there was a long time when i didn't understand the depression at all.
it's a really weird thing, to live in a world where color doesn't make any impression.
or maybe it does, but that only enhances the darkness.
something has been wrong most of my life. i couldn't relate to people in a meaningful way.
i couldn't find that motivation to do anything at all.
all the things that people told me about motivating factors, made no sense.
the reasons are hidden in darkness.
i was once again, this last weekend, reminded of how some of that darkness came to be.
i react quite badly to abuse, and to love. and i have no idea if this is a reaction to abuse, or something that's always been inside me.
maybe the cause doesn't even matter, the darkness has always been there as far as i can remember.
i cried a lot as a child. but i can only remember rare occasion when i cried out of sadness or despair.
i cried when i was scared. and i cried when i was angry.
something seems to have been different about me as a child, i never rebelled, rarely got angry.
or so it would seem, but i cried a lot when i was angry.
that feeling of rage might have been too overwhelming for me.
or i might have missed out on learning how to deal with it in a normal way because negative emotions weren't permitted for me.
i was most definitely afraid of being beaten up, losing the little affection my parents ever gave me, or the opportunity to ever meet friends again.
they had the power to lock me in the house, to abuse emotionally so severely that i didn't even dare try to run away.
so i never learned to deal with rage, or maybe i never really had a normal reaction anyway.
i got angry with my parents a lot, which of course means i cried a lot.
crying was the only way i could release anger and frustration in a safe way.
i was quite terrified of the impulse to destroy.
i never wanted to just scream. i wanted to burn the house down, but didn't because it was my only "home".
i wanted to break everything that could be broken by my hands, or feet.
maybe i was afraid of expressing anger because i didn't know if i could stop destroying if i ever were to begin.
i'm thinking that depression came about because i had too much anger and nowhere to direct it.
so i turned rather self destructive instead. and fled reality by reading fiction.
books had worlds where i could be whatever i wanted to be. preferably a pirate or fighter pilot, but medicine man or warrior worked too.
i really just flipped that coin of darkness, and instead of being angry with the abusers, i became angry of my self, who couldn't stand up against them.
killing myself also seemed like a much better option than killing my sister's parents. i love my siblings after all, and always have.
i never acted on those feelings. i only felt them, and let them destroy me.
the gender stuff in all this would be how a whole side of me was never allowed to express itself in childhood.
the boy was never nurtured, and i think he'd be much better at dealing with anger than this girl who ended up unable to react with anything other than wanting to kill and destroy. not like i understood this much back then, and i may still be wrong about it.
when i high school, bad things happened because i tried to be a good girl and failed to realize i was doing it wrong.
my image of a woman is on one side the mother bear who protects with her own life if needed, and on the other side an ideal that doesn't really exist.
and then when bad things happened, sexual abuse by someone i thought i could trust, i tried to take it like a man.
that's not how a woman deals with thing, probably. i don't know though, because i'm no good at talking to women about women stuff, so there are things i have no idea how are supposed to work.
but i try to take it like a man, and not being a man, i fail hard. quite an obvious result, don't you think?
but then again, i also am a man, so failing at it really only made matters worse.
understanding how much of a man i really am when i just grew up a little, didn't really make things better though.
there's something lacking to my manliness, sides of me that i don't understand.
a very debilitating anxiety grew out from failing my responsibilities as a... man.
it's kind of hilarious after having tried so hard to become a perfect woman, but that's what happened.
all this leads to a darkness that wishes to destroy me, and it wishes to destroy the world.
it took time to sort out, a really long time.
when i looked at myself, trying to figure out my feelings, i find a girl who's been left behind. at different ages.
they all have different feelings about what's going on, and what went on back then.
acknowledging them and allowing them to rest, telling them that i would take care of everything for them, was one key to getting out of depression.
another one was to find that guy who's been trying all my life to fix things without ever succeeding.
he really needed some comfort too.
i think he's the one who's been holding me back when i wanted to do stupid things.
he has a calmness about him that the female side doesn't know how to find.
i kind of learned how to switch modes. it works about the same as turning on or off a light switch.
except that light switches are much more tangible, and thus easier to use.
the light is something that the feminine, happy, and fabulous me loves. "she" can enjoy it in a way that the less feminine side doesn't feel a need to.
but "he" doesn't like the dark much either, so he totally likes enjoying the light with her.
but this last weekend, darkness was triggered again, rather unexpectedly.
it's a highly destructive darkness, perfectly feminine in its nature, directed at a neighbor who violated my younger brothers.
of course the manlier side of me is angry too, but he doesn't feel that strong a need to torture people half to death for the rest of eternity.
for a few days, i've been struggling to pull myself out of that darkness. and failing.
my rage burns hot, and it's kind of difficult to not burn innocent bystanders.
i'm really glad i have that other side to me, who can pull me away from that dark bottomless pit, put rage on a chair and tell her to stay.
the calm is kind of cold, it can go ice cold if need be. that's another great way to (frost) burn other people though.
but it's easier to control, a cold person can still pretend love and affection when it's needed.
i really like the balanced and happy me better.
feeling the love i have for my family is much better than just knowing it exists somewhere in there and i'd regret later if i disregard that knowledge now.
well. i think i feel a little better having written this.
would be funny if anyone read the whole thing through. there's no real need to do that, the need was for me to write it down.
i've found that giving my darkness some room to be, makes it easier to deal with than trying to shut it in a tiny box and pretend it's not there.
