Today I’m grateful for…

The feeling of inferiority I get when other survivors share. I know you can’t compare and damage is damage. But I’m so ready to dismiss my experience as “not a big deal” that when I hear others who had it way worse, I can’t help but feel I’m being a big baby, “what you went through is nothing”, “nut up and move on already because you have nothing to complain about”. I would NEVER say this to anyone else, but this is my internal dialogue. Then I have to do damage control for my inner child that was invalidated and dismissed. 

The lack of sleep I’ve gotten all week. One of the ways my CSA has made life unmanageable is that I can’t go to sleep unless everyone else is. So if Cubu stays up until 12 working (2 hours past bedtime), I’m also up. By then I had opened TikTok, which I hadn’t been on in months, and we lost track of time until it was 1:30am. I needed some mindless time but if I had just given myself that time during the day, I wouldn’t have sacrificed sleep for it. And if I did sacrifice sleep, I should have spent it staying up talking/cuddling with Cubu since we haven’t had much time together this week. 

my inability to take up space. I joined a new SIA meeting that required a phone call with the person who operates it and what should have been a 5 minute phone call was 45 MINUTES. I spent the whole time trying to speak up, berating myself for not cutting her off from her spiel. “You talk about how much you value your time, just fucking say something, get out of here! We can’t get these minutes back! You’re spending precious life on this wacky woman, let’s go!” But I didn’t cut her off. Worse, because I compulsively react to make sure people felt heard, I validated her and honestly facilitated further conversation. It was awful. 

Being bummed that I had to rush my grocery trip today. I go once every two weeks, I look forward to it every time, it’s one of my favorite things. So to be doing it on a time limit felt bed AND if I had just hung up on that woman, I would have had plenty of time 😪

This odd sense of dread I have when I have to spend time with Cubu. I enjoy it every time, we’re always laughing and playing around and having fun. But for some reason I just dread it. I have not been able to figure out why.

Forcing myself to have sex, feeling like crying beforehand and stopping myself because then he’d know, feeling guilty for deceiving him, feeling guilty for doing myself an injustice, all around confused and sad but laying down after was nice. I wonder how long I can continue with the way things are before it gets noticed.