stardust_rifle

Only in my brother's head would "memorizing all of the combos for a specific fighting game character and practicing them over and over again" be considered "cheating".

we're unpacking the trauma back closet and it's pretty impressive how many of our Issues can be traced back to "the only reason they bully you is because they want to get a reaction out of you" being parroted at me by every single authority figure in my life

I can remember reading a post by this one person who had mobility problems. A lot of their dreams/nightmares revolved around not being able to walk or move, and they thought that this was related to being forced to walk when it was physically damaging to them.

I was reading that, and then I realized that a lot of my dreams and nightmares center around blinding lights and/or loud noises.

You know, when I was younger, I was told two things. I was told that A: If any physical contact made me uncomfortable, I shouldn't feel like I had to do it, and I should tell an adult and B: If an adult wants to touch you, it's rude to say no.

I was somewhat confused by the contradictory ideas, but I never brought them up, and attempted to puzzle through them on my own. I remember arriving to the conclusion that Idea A must be wrong, because it was much less strongly reinforced than Idea B, and dropping that as an idea would lead to less conflict in my life.

The thing is, I have very severe sensory processing difficulties. Any kind of skin-to-skin contact provides the sensation of insects crawling on my skin. Hugs are deeply uncomfortable, as I don't like being restrained. As a result of the fact that every touch is a Bad Touch, I eventually just started...zoning out? I don't know if that's the right way to describe it, but when people touch me, my mind just goes blank and I freeze up.

I just think it's interesting, about how we cordon off sexual and non-sexual touch into two different boxes when it comes to our understanding of consent.

I may hate my mother for a variety of things, some of them rational, some not, but at least I don't hate her for her dietary restrictions like my brother does.

I just suddenly remembered something else that happened when I was younger- it was before one Christmas or one of my brother's birthdays and I went around begging my parents and all my relatives "Please, please don't give him any NERF guns or toy weapons or anything that he could use to hurt me, because I'm terrified that he will hurt me with them" and every single one of them laughed it off like "Oh, look at M, she's so terrified of her baby brother, don't worry, he wouldn't do anything to hurt you!"

And I don't know what to do with this memory and I'm feeling *vaguely waves around* in this Chili's tonight, guys.

In one hand: he clearly shoved her underwater, sat on her chest, and held her limbs underwater so that she couldn't fight back, leaving her with a deep-seated fear of water and persistent nightmares.

On the other hand, she scratched up his arms a bit while trying to break free.

Fuck my extended family for treating these things as equal in weight and tricking me into thinking that they were too.