AFTERMATH Pt. 1

[stephadoomable]

What happened after. This is what I've been struggling with. Needing an outlet but at the same time, fearing talking about it-for several reasons. I have these constant fears that this journal will cause tension between me and Keenan. That everything I put down in writing will come back to bite me in the ass because so far, it has. I have fears because despite Keenan seeming supportive of me starting this journal due to my need to work through my own shit and the therapeutic power of writing, he also expressed his own fears that all I would use it for would be shit talking him and writing love letters to Jesse over and over again. I didn't know what to say to that. Of course that is not all I need to say or talk about but to work through the shit of what happened after, I do kind of need to do a little bit of both of those things.
Also, and entirely separately, I'm also just afraid of facing a lot of this shit. I feel like the only way I get through most days is by compartmentalizing, suppressing and ignoring it all as best I can and just... pretending everything is OK. Fake it 'til you make it, right? But... if I'm being honest, which I am really trying to be here despite my fears, I really did get just as emotionally fucked up and traumatized as everyone else involved. I take the vast majority of the blame and find everyone else to be either mostly innocent (Keenan and Jesse) or entirely innocent (Diana). So the bottom line is, I feel responsible for everyone's suffering including my own. Even though I feel like I deserve it, that is a huge burden. Add not knowing if Jesse is OK, how he's doing, what the state of his life is... there's so fucking much guilt and anxiety and worry with every thought of him. It's been 2 months since we've spoken now. The only way I can see myself in terms of Jesse and his life now is that fucking F4. Dropping out of the sky out of nowhere, causing massive devastation and then disappearing into a clear sky, leaving the survivors to clean up the mess. Then add what happened with Keenan... and I have what I feel like is my fourth round of PTSD. I just keep stacking them up like poker chips. My next step, is going to be confronting what happened in those first few days after. Starting to dress those wounds. God it's going to be so hard, and I really don't want to but... one positive thing I will take from my experience with Jesse is learning that you have to talk about things and process them and work through them or you'll never be able to heal. He helped me to address those first two traumatic experiences with Jeremiah and Max and that was so powerful and healing. Now I know I can do that myself, and I want to try. So... with the help of this journal, maybe I can tackle the next two most traumatic experiences... at some point... maybe even learn to forgive myself and be OK with me again? Time will tell. In the words of Schmendrick the magician: "There are no happy endings, because nothing ends." So for now I will just say, to be continued. We'll talk again soon.

Comments

[kjorteo]

I mean, a situation this wouldn't have happened if there wasn't love there. You're not the type to do something like this casually just 'cause hey, why not, seems hot, could be fun. (That sounds more like my job, ehehehe.) And whatever amount of right or wrong judgments one wishes or doesn't wish to assign to any of this, it's just a sheer basic fact that completely losing contact with someone with whom you felt that love, not even knowing whether they're okay or whatever became of them or what, frickin hurts. We're not here to say you did nothing wrong (we're not here to apply "okay" or "not okay" judgment one way or the other at all, honestly) but just 'cause we love you and we want our (our? my? our?) dear sister to not be in pain, all I can say is that what you are experiencing right now is a very human emotion, and a very human reaction to a very human situation.

Again, not to say that the aforementioned F4 was totally fine and no one got hurt or anything like that, but just to say that you're not abnormally bad for these thoughts and feelings that so many people in situations like yours have experienced before. You're like... equally bad as the rest of us? You're human. I do hope Keenan doesn't hold these feelings against you, because goodness knows you're not feeling them on purpose because you just thought it'd be cool to hurt him for funsies or anything like that.

(Again, Dreamwidth has per-entry privacy settings to keep any combination of him, us, or anyone else from seeing them depending on whom you trust and how big a concern that is, if needed.)

Compartmentalizing and suppressing parts of yourself is... well. I don't know if you're in any danger of turning out like us; something like that usually (not always! There are no set in stone rules! But like, very often, at least?) involves someone who's neurodivergent or mentally disordered in a way that impairs their ability to understand and cope with life's challenges being hit with incredibly tough trauma at a very young age. Think autistic children who were sexually abused, for example. When you're in a state where you don't have the tools to process what you're experiencing and your very soul just... splits, shatters like a broken mirror, and oops, all the broken off shards, all those compartments you've compartmentalized away talking to you in your head with their own voices now. When you talk about being at war with yourself, I suspect you mean that metaphorically and poetically, not... to the "No, literally, Ardei and Kurt were fighting at one point and I had to sort them out" extent we've faced. So I want to say I get what you mean and boy oh boy have we been there, but on the other hand, maybe we haven't, maybe we're thinking of something else entirely.

But I will say that anything you can do to forgive and be okay with yourself is good, and essential for that healing you seek and you deserve.