stillflight: White background. A solid red silhouette of a songbird with one black eye. Behind it is a black silhouette of the same bird with a white eye. (analyzing shadows)
I think about it sometimes because it was shockingly awful and I think I know why but it's difficult to talk about. It wasn't "a bad trip." I didn't hallucinate or act out. It was just that the specific intoxicating effect of marijuana did not mesh with who I am as a person. On a fundamental, very fucked up level.

A marijauna high makes every emotion feel deeply significant. It forces you to notice each one and feel it. The thing is, I can understand why so many people find this enjoyable or a meaningful experience. I am not like many people. I am a very broken person. I am emotionally repressed so thoroughly, so viciously, that it was uncomfortable to be in this headspace. Forced to notice my emotions. Things being significant was upsetting for me. Sober, I flee from meaningfulness. I avoid strong feelings. Nothing makes me more sick to my stomach than feeling like I want to react strongly to something minor. Sandpaper on my brain: the idea of tears about an inconvenience... or joy about a convenience. How'd I get to the point where emotions are so prohibited that I'm not allowed to feel happiness? What do I think is going to happen? So when I was high, if something made me feel happy and the happiness felt significant, and I couldn't look away, I wanted to gruesomely and bloodily rip my own soul out of my body.

Was I punished for expressing emotions as a child? Well, yeah, I know I was, but it couldn't possibly have been so harsh that this happened. I can't face emotions or experiences or meaning. I shy away. It's too... too something. Hard? Painful? Scary? Vulnerable? None of these. When I touch too deeply into a feeling, I feel revolted in my body the same way I do when I touch a gross texture. You know how some cars have lane sensors and buzz the steering wheel if you drift out of your lane without turning the blinker on? That is my brain. When I drift out of my stoicism lane, it senses it, panics, and buzzes.

Art is my blinker, I guess. Songs. Paintings. Stories. "Books must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." (Franz Kafka.) My ice sheet is so thick that you might think there's no ocean at all. It's just a myth, and you're swinging away with the axe all day long in the blistering cold for nothing. But I know there's life under there. It might not be majestic whales and happy dolphins. It might be zooplankton, niche-specialized squid with 20 foot tentacles, and some kind of weird echinoderm. But it's worth chipping away at the ice for. And I do that with art. It feels safer to experience meaning when it is presented to me through music or literature. I am allowed to cry about something I locked away in the recesses of my mind if a song is my filter and maybe I don't even realize what I'm actually crying about. I wept until I heaved watching a music video where two people walking by save a man from jumping off a bridge. I hadn't realized until then just how scarred I was by seeing those people walk on by when I was gripping the railing and ugly crying every time I looked at the suicide prevention hotline phone number plaque. In the throes of a song, I was allowed to cry. But when the song ends and I'm left alone with my thoughts, back deep down they go.
stillflight: White background. A solid red silhouette of a songbird with one black eye. Behind it is a black silhouette of the same bird with a white eye. (analyzing shadows)
Along with being a wanderer, I have always been drawn to the "generalist" trope/archetype. Adaptable; opportunist; go-with-the-flow; whatever the right word for it is. I've thought it may be simply an offshoot of the wanderer archetype, or possibly caused by my theriotypes (raven, opossum, raccoon; I even thought raccoon and opossum were archetypal theriotypes at one point because I was so drawn to the archetype of the generalist). But I've been like this for most of my life. In any given category, I kind of draw from everything. Listening to every music genre, for example, or every tense when I write. I eat all kinds of food. I am content to live in almost any environment, I'll find positives to anywhere. My headmates' Pinterest boards are all quite cohesive; mine is a mess of wildly different interests and aesthetics. I'm adaptable; I am autistic of course, so some certain changes are tough for me, but for the most part, it is so easy for me to fall in step with a radical alteration to my life, or even just a slight one to my everyday.

Jury is still out on whether this is a full archetropal identity, or just something I relate to. With the wanderer 'type, it was immediately and strongly obvious. So I'll have to apply my thinking brain to that question. But thinking about this has made me realize something else, an in on a question I thought was unrelated.

Could this be why I am able to feel like I am so many wildly varying species? Why my brain is capable of experiencing identity as all these animals that couldn't be more different? Isopod and osprey, mosasaur and opossum... Some people say it's too difficult for your brain to handle having more than around five theriotypes so it's very rare or even impossible, but then, most people also have a certain defined set of music genres they listen to and don't stray too far from that vibe. Most people prefer some fiction genres over all others.

It's causing me a bit of a crisis, because I have long "thought" that while I admittedly and regrettably had more theriotypes than most, I was just five animals. Just five, and that was ok, I could be five right? It's not too out there, it's not too far away from the more common 2-4, it's still totally legitimate in the eyes of other alterhumans who I desperately want to see me as respectable. I'm totally not a faker KFF. I even invented a whole new label so I could get away with talking about being these animals without admitting the damning statement, "I have ten theriotypes."

I don't know. I have to think on it. Maybe confront my real reasons for continuing to renunciate that "these aren't theriotypes, I am these but I'm not at the same time, it's eternal questioning, I'll just never know if I am these." Maybe continue with what I've been doing, refusing to distinctly list my theriotypes in public alterhuman spaces. Which has been so freeing and come so easily; I talk about my species when it's relevant, I have no need for a public dossier on my species identity which anyone can peruse on a nosy whim. And I have indeed realized that even just that has made me talk about being a hawk and a mosasaur and a vulture so much more. I actually find it more natural to talk about being these species when none of my species identities are tied down by the label "theriotype." I talk about them with the exact same openness with which I talk about being a raven, osprey, isopod, musteloid or opossum. I'm sure that is a big glaring obvious bright red sign...

I need to be able to abide by and glory in ambiguity. I am, after all, the monster named Cento.

stillflight: White background. A solid red silhouette of a songbird with one black eye. Behind it is a black silhouette of the same bird with a white eye. (analyzing shadows)
I knew I was already diagnosed with a mood disorder as a very young child, but I always thought it was dysthymia. Recently I had a conversation with my dad where it came to light that what I was diagnosed with at age 6 was cyclothymia. When I was a teenager I felt like I might have bipolar, and people in my family did too. I researched it extensively and talked to my dad (diagnosed bipolar) about it. Since my assumption that it was dysthymia, I had retired the notion. After all, I didn't ever really have highs and lows, mania, or severe depression.

I have been on mood stabilizers for six years.

I feel stupid now saying it out loud, but it is possible that being on Risperidone since I was 17 has minimized my bipolar symptoms to that I didn't think I had any, so I disregarded the possibility of being bipolar. I have tried self-discontinuing or self-lowering the meds a few times and none of them ended well. My depression and mood swings do become severe. On the meds, my depression is kind of like dysthymia -- I feel low sometimes, there's a constant background hum of malaise, I have self-doubts. Like an overcast sky. Off the meds, or even just on a lower dose, my brain becomes the Torment Nexus. Overcast sky turns into a hurricane. I self-harm, agonize, fall deep into violent self-loathing, spiral, spiral, spiral, until I end up climbing up on the railing of a bridge at 12 am.

I would say I'm not sure how I survived 17 years like that, but a) I'm sure my natural off-meds state has worsened while I've been enjoying the benefits of blissful ignorance, and b) I literally tried and failed to kill myself multiple times from ages 14 to 17.

Things to talk about with a psychiatrist if they exist in this town. (After multiple times trying to get a referral and being ignored, I'm starting a conspiracy that the hospital here does not have resident psychiatrists and just hopes no one will notice.)

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stillflight: A crude medieval drawing of a raven on a green hill against a blue starry night sky. Surrounded by a goldish brown border. Snippets of text can be seen in the top and bottom left corners, not enough to read. (Default)
Cyril

February 2024

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