Today’s mice are taking a break from their laundry to celebrate pi day! Ignore all of those knives on the table behind them. Those are for something else.
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Today’s mice are in the other three prototype(kinda) dresses! The one Babs is wearing was going to be a cinderella’s mice dress, but, well, hiding the ends for the sleeves didn’t go so hot, so it didn’t turn out. Oh well. Cass’ dress is the first iteration of that top with the big ruffly skirt. As you may note, its rather short. And not very ruffly. It has been improved in future versions. Stephie’s dress isn’t technically a prototype, it’s just a little thing I made up cuz I had some yarn left over from something else and didn’t know what else to do with it.
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a lot of our emotions are muted. anger is one of the few that isn’t, likely due to ASPD and NPD. it’s honestly quite gratifying to be truly enraged, because we’re actually feeling something. we feel shame less than we otherwise would, but when we do feel it, its edge is only slightly dulled. only a few things make us truly, genuinely afraid, all having to do either with weakness and vulnerability, or with our trauma. otherwise, it’s just an adrenaline spike (and an adrenal insufficiency flare, and a combined hypoglycemia & hyponatremia episode…). there’s a lot of things we feel–well, rather, think–that we may describe as sadness, but are not actually sadness, and sadness itself is heavily muted. we don’t feel guilt or remorse or empathy, of course; not just muted, but a complete incapability. same with friendship.
in specific circumstances, we can feel obsession. it comes across as “love”, sometimes as “romance” to those not in the know. obsession is the lens through which we write all of our romantic stories. we’re obsessed with the game that is our special interest, but it isn’t love. we actually quite despise that game for numerous reasons, but there is an indelible obsession, bordering on infatuation that we hold for it. it’s extremely frustrating to experience, hating something that we cannot stop thinking about.
the same goes for fondness, although that’s more genuinely analogous to love (and friendship) than obsession. we feel it for our cats, for our niece, and–to a degree–our friend. that fondness is why we don’t get sick of our friend even though we see her relatively often.
with a lot of our emotions, we don’t feel them per se, we think them. with some of them, our body responds to those emotions even though we don’t actually feel anything–crying at certain videos, giving us panic attacks, making us yelp and cry out when there’s a jumpscare in a movie or video. there’s no emotion, just a physical reaction tied to a thought. and we know that’s not how emotions are supposed to be because of the few we can feel, anger most notably.
there’s other things. we’re extremely protective and territorial–again, as a result of the NPD/ASPD combo, related to a combination of anger and obsession (and occasionally, trauma-related fear). we can also get very jealous (again, NPD mixed with anger issues). a lot of the emotions we do feel are related in some way to NPD (and sometimes ASPD) and/or trauma. when we say “i feel…” most of the time, it’s not a feeling, it’s a thought.
that being said, when we tried to talk about what we suspect–what we know–to our ex, and when she tried to defend herself lecturing us and saying we were faking and talking about how we were just “bad at communication”, but also “you’re still valid!! except your probably faking or overreacting and you’re wrong about your brain and i’m right (even though we’ve barely talked for a year and a half and you haven’t shown any vulnerability up until now for two years), but still valid uwu!!”, the only thought running through our head (until a cooler-headed headmate could break through) was “i hope you kill yourself”, and everything else was pure emotional wrath.
(it has not, for the record, killed itself.)
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i know exactly what i am. i don’t know why i hesitate to say it. i don’t know why i can only summarize it and describe it.
or maybe i do. it is, after all, what our ex lectured us on how it’s just us being “traumatized and autistic”. we’d offered her just one single piece of vulnerability, to see how she’d react, whether or not she could be safe again…
it’s just unfortunate that this was the piece of vulnerability we’d offered, and now the idea of discussing it in specific terms feels unsafe. even here, our fingers and mouth seem to gum up when we try. i suppose we’ll just keep describing it instead.
there are people who we admire. who we like the idea of connection with. i don’t know that we’d actually like connection, though. brief conversations and interaction from a distance are fulfilling enough. our NPD makes us jealous of those who can have connections, many different connections, significant connections–but when we try to copy them, or when we even just think about it in something other than the abstract, our skin crawls. we have one primary chosen connection, and that’s–largely–enough for us. otherwise, we fulfill ourselves with daydreams and writing.
even though we’re not a person, we like the idea of being one. our NPD makes us really enjoy the idea of people connecting to the characters we create, but we always forget that we then have to make the next move. our characters cannot make it for us, and we cannot stay detached. after long enough of attachment (smothering, suffocation), we don’t just hate the attachment, but the character we made it through. we get exhausted and angry and burned out. we need to be alone and distant to recharge–isolated. the impingement of other people makes us feel malleable, as we feel forced to reshape ourselves to make them happy. because if we don’t, we’re the ones in the wrong. we’re the ones making people uncomfortable. we’re the ones causing problems. so we have to keep our mouths shut about our actual thoughts, repress everything until it explodes and we break down.
in spite of our NPD making us yearn for other people–to praise us, look up to us, boost our ego and self esteem–we’ve always been most relaxed, most at ease when completely and utterly alone.
(we just wish it weren’t so unsafe to be alone. we just wish there were support systems in place for those who don’t have a social network. we are disheartened by the fact that we either have to force ourselves into situations that are not just uncomfortable, but completely agonizing and which destroy our sense of self and make us feel as though we are being controlled, or risk suffering and death because we don’t want to be controlled.)
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i think the yearning for friends and for friendship comes from seeing other people with friends being happy. people are always so happy when they’re with other people.
but we’re not really a person. there’s nothing there internally. and when we try to engage in friendship, 99% of the time, everyone involved gets burned. people see us and expect a person, but get nothing. and in their attempts to make us into a person, our existence is smothered. we flail. we gasp. we choke.
we don’t want the friends, per se. we want the happiness. but we mask, we pretend to be a normal person, we try to engage in the whole friendship thing.
we like playing characters. but there is a reason that every single character we create ends up suffocating us, there’s a reason why we end up hating every single character we create, and the character is supposed to be able to feel friendship, and we just can’t. and because the character is not an autonomous entity, but rather is a paper mask over our face, when the character engages in friendship, we must necessarily engage in friendship. and where the character should thrive, we begin to lose air. and the longer we keep up the character, the closer and closer we get to the brink until, eventually, we hit burnout. we crash. the only thing we want is solitude and isolation because we just put ourselves through yet another exercise in futility, as we tried to make friends and be a person when we are fundamentally incapable of doing and being either of those.
and for all our efforts, we still never feel that happiness we longed for int he first place.
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we’ve been very disconnected from our existence as a cetacean the past few days. we’ve been extremely doggish instead (for reasons i will not get into). even while swimming.
my existence ebbs and flows. some days, my porpoise body is so viscerally felt that it feels like if i do not tear off this shell on purpose, it will rip apart and expose me of its own accord. but others, it is so faint that i forget its there unless i focus on it. focus on the clumsy movements of my flippers, on the disorienting feeling of breathing through a hole on the front of my face, and not the top of my head. of not having a tail. or a dorsal fin. at least, not ones that exist on the shell.
being a porpoise stuck in a human-shaped shell is bad enough. being cursed to also be a weredog is nigh-unbearable. every transformation has been into a doggish form, with paws and a muzzle and a voice that whines and howls, with long, semi-floppy ears and thick, soft fur.
we don’t hate being a dog. in fact, our discomfort around being a dog is something we’re trying to fix. but in the end, we’ll have to pick one or the other–porpoise or dog. if we wish to be a porpoise, we must excise our doggish self. and if we wish to keep being a weredog, we can never return to a porpoise form.
these two sides to us are deeply discordant. one longs for land, the other for the sea. one wants domesticity, the other a wild life. one seeks softness, the other freedom. one desires comfort, the other self-sufficiency. these traits are, in and of themselves, not at odds–but when they make up everything you are in a severe dichotomy, when the choice is only land or only sea, and only domestic or only wild, and only softness or only freedom, and only comfort or only self-sufficiency, reconciliation between the two that does not cut one or the other out is… not feasible. we can’t be both. we can’t have both. no matter how much we wish we could.
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aspd is such bullshit sometimes. “delete those posts, you’re being too vulnerable and pathetic” what posts? the ones talking about my gender? i’m being too vulnerable and pathetic about my gender in those posts? the ones that i posted on my pathetic-and-vulnerable-about-my-gender blog? the blog with the express purpose of holding all the posts where i am pathetic and vulnerable about my gender? those posts? on that blog? “you were being TOO pathetic and vulnerable” thought so. die
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sometimes people refuse to believe i have ASPD because “but you have morals! you don’t [bad thing]!”
yes. i have morals because i have to consciously think about what is right and wrong, and why certain things are right and wrong. i cannot rely on my emotions or empathy or whathaveyou to base my morals around them, because i don’t have those. and if i want to be allowed into any community as i am (intersex, trans, autistic&schizophrenic, dyslexic, physically disabled, dissociative&amnesic, on and on), i have to at least mimic some form of morality. because i only have three choices.
(1) neglect to care about morals, but have to suck up to people who would otherwise hate me. not an option - this gets me used, this leaves me without control, and it leaves me vulnerable to abuse the moment i step out of line or express any idea that won’t shatter their fragile little minds. that is untenable, i refuse to be controlled or vulnerable on anything but my own terms.
(2) neglect to care about morals, and be isolated. not an option - first off, a social net makes life significantly safer, and while i can be reckless and impulsive, i’m not completely at the mercy of my every little whim. second off, i have NPD, and so rely on other people to boost my ego.
(3) build a moral code with my own two fins to try and fit in with those most likely to care about not hurting me. - via process of elimination, this is thus the only true option i have. the people who are most likely to accept a multiply marginalized person like me are other multiply marginalized people, especially those with the same or similar marginalizations, simply because they too have an interest in preserving their own lives. further, some of my morals and politics are selfish in other ways; i have a vested interest in the concept of UBI because i have problems with authority and anger issues, and i am physically disabled. i have a vested interest in, really, anything that will make my life easier. the future where i am most likely to avoid being a cog in the capitalist machine (and thus, unimportant, controlled, and used) is one where the capitalist machine has been thoroughly dismantled. if i want to surround myself with people who will work with my best interests in mind, i have to have a moral code that they will accept.
obviously, there are still problems with the third one. namely, it leaves me with a much smaller social circle, as those who do adhere to those same morals and ideals are few and far between. even among leftists, schizophrenics, narcissists, and antisocials are used as scapegoats. “Trump is a narcissist!” he is a billionaire who has rarely–if ever–faced hardship; just by dint of his behaviors and attitudes not causing him distress or dysfunction, he does not have NPD. “right wingers are delusional!” they are in community with other right wingers who mindlessly validate each others’ thoughts and rile each other up, feeding on fear and anger at the idea of the Other; just by dint of their beliefs being shared by a wide community and culture (even if they’re wrong), they are not delusional. so onwards and so forthwards. but i am more likely to find people who are safe for me in these spaces than i am just about anywhere else, and if any of these people are serious about their politics, no matter how evil they think i am for things i can’t control, no matter how much they use my disorders and mental illnesses as a scapegoat, i will (hopefully) ultimately benefit from the world they strive for far more than i will ever benefit from this one.
“… but sociopaths can’t have morals, they’re all criminals and abusers and evil CEOs!”
sigh.
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Loch Ness Monster pooltoy who loves to play… I consider this a WIP bc I was gonna try to actually give it some texture
Anyway yeah you have to blow her tits to inflate her… UwU
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it is truly exhausting deliberating how to present myself in a new place. do i be open about the schizophrenia, the ASPD & NPD? how open should i be? am i allowed to unmask? should i unmask? what pieces of information should i share so they feel safe, and what should i withhold so they feel safe? saying things that might scare people is a bad idea if i want acceptance, but will they be more scared if i don’t say anything about it and something related to it happens? will they even be scared if i say it, or are will they be understanding? will they be kind, possibly? if i wait until i have my foot in the door, so to speak, before i say something, will they be more likely to accept me? or should i never say it at all? what will happen if i don’t ever say it? what will happen if i say it now?
i spent twenty minutes writing a very simple intro, just trying to predict what i should or should not say, what will make others feel safe or unsafe around me, whether it would be better to say something now or in the future or never. and now i have a headache
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a part of me wishes there were more porpoises around (since i’m the only porpoise i’ve seen) because it feels weird being the only one, but i also know that if there were other porpoises around, my first reaction would be defensiveness because i’d feel like they’re “taking my Thing”, especially if they were the same species of porpoise. which is stupid, obviously. my NPD makes me feel as though others should only be “allowed” to be porpoises if i like them enough, if they’re high enough in my internal hierarchy. if it’s someone i don’t know, or worse, if it’s someone i don’t like, it feels like they’re “stealing my brand” in some way. even though i don’t have a brand, and i’ve only just recently accepted porpoisehood myself. unfortunately, acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of that feeling and thought process does not actually undo those feelings or thought processes, and in some ways makes things worse, because knowing it doesn’t make me stop makes me feel out of control, and a lack of feeling in control is a quick road to a crash or breakdown.
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Today’s mice are dressed all in sparkly blue for one last time. Until next winter. Or if I decide the sparkles should be back.
