Life has taught me to keep people at a distance, to not trust, to not depend, to not open myself up. People have seldomly shown themselves to be worthy of trust, and so I live a guarded life, involving as few people as possible and relying on others with extreme rarity. I have subconsciously programmed my existence to avoid actions and circumstances that encourage and form intimacy between myself and another human. I recently started ruminating on what these things are, and I came up with a list longer than eleven, but these are a good start.
Category: In My Own Words
These are all my thoughts, opinions, and other things.
I’ve Lost My Christmas Spirit
I have not so slowly or subtly been losing my Christmas spirit over the last few years. I've gone from Lady Buddy the Elf to the only reason I have a Christmas tree is because someone else made it happen.
I Am Not Trauma Bonding
I am not trauma bonding. I will give the rundown of my past to new people in my life because I want them to find out the violence I've endured from me and not a tweet or Instagram post. It feels like the polite thing to do.
What Self Worth?
Self worth is something I place a high priority on... in other people. It doesn't even exist in my emotional vernacular. The entirety of my life, my worth has based on my appearance and what I can provide to others. Worth and love have always been transactional. I'm no innocent, but I have been left to fend for myself, scrounging for and happily accepting any love, even if all the only love I can find has been coupled with abuse and rape.
I Have Been Self Censoring
"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." Friedrich Nietzsche
Happy 168th Homecoming, Cornell College
Happy 168th Homecoming to Cornell College. I doubt they've had 168 homecoming celebrations. Did homecoming even exist in 1853? (Cornell University sure didn't. Ha! We're the older, smaller, and better (not a subjective opinion, at all) cousin—literally—in Iowa. Easily confusable, I know.) As a die-hard alum, I filled my house with flowers in school colors in honor of homecoming.