day98 - 'active 1m ago'
dear luci,
i can't stop checking to see if they've read my messages. i can't stop thinking about them, thinking about things I would like to say, but might no longer be able to. i keep wondering how the thought first took hold. when? with whom? and in response to what? it's hard to believe, genuinely, that they were “poisoned” against me. these are five different individuals, they're not prone to these games of social ostracism. so I must've done something bad. the fact that I don't know can just as easily be used against me, a sign that I'm too wrapped up in my own bullshit that I can't see what's so clear to everyone else. It's clear that the magnitude of what I have done has revoked my right to ask for an explanation. So I am forced to stare at messages left unread for days as they go on with their lives. and I still love them.
I'm angry at Him, to my delusional, distressed mind it seems impossible they'd all reach this unanimous conclusion without an impetus to do so, and He seems like the obvious choice. It's not possible that I am a normal person trying her best, it is however far much more plausible that I'd be actively manipulating him for all four years of our relationship. every mistake I made can be chalked up to “I'm sorry I got caught.” I never tried to be better, not earnestly— every apology I made was simply a fawn response, and when I thought I was safe, I resumed my behaviour. maybe that's not what He thinks. Because I don't know what He thinks. Because I don't fucking deserve to know.
Hot Allostatic Load
Hot Allostatic Load, or HAL as I'll be referring to it from now on, is an essay that was written 10 years ago. It's a testimonial of pain. It describes the social, psychological, and physiological consequences of being ostracised by your community. Of being the subject of false allegations, emotional abuse, and continual harassment from people you considered peers or friends.
HAL explores “disposability from a transfeminine perspective, […] It's about being human trash.”
I re-read HAL today. It's not just the story of one person's agony. It's about how easily and how violently transfemmes can be ostracised and de-personed by their communities. For their transgressions, real or imagined. How vindictive this type of “justice” can be.
“I was threatened into not defending myself, gaslit into silence, told that people knew “things” about me that were never explained. When I asked how I could do accountability, when I said I would do whatever they wanted, they said that I was “incapable” of accountability, that my crime was unknown and my sentence was permanent. That is the point where the body starts to die”
“A common punishment for infanticide in the Middle Ages was living burial. This was a feminine-coded punishment, often reserved for women, one that allowed execution without having to actually be there at the moment of death. This line of thought pervades feminine punishment to this day.”
“This is why my first months in therapy were spent convincing me that I wasn’t a sociopath, crazy, abusive, or any of the other terms I had been brainwashed with. Abusers don’t spend years disabled by those thoughts because they don’t care if they hurt other people.”
On January 18, 2015, I woke up from a dream[…]. I wrote it down, like I’ve written down all my dreams for the last eight years.
“She was my abuser. She came to my house on the island. I begged her to stop what she had done, to clear my name. She would not. It had been two years of being abused like a child because of her. I turned to walk deeper into the house. I looked back. She had a knife. She stabbed me. It was the happiest dream of my life. Because finally an abuser had done something to me that people would pay attention to.” Hot Allostatic Load (Porpentine)
I have fucked myself royally by setting up a comparison to my own situation. I'm not the target of a wide-spread harassment campaign. I've lost ~5 people. Not everyone in my life. I don't even think I'm a fucking victim here, for Christ’s sake. But this isn't the first time I've been de-personed1.
- The first time (that I can remember) was in 2021.
- The second time was in August 2022.
- The third time was in September 2022.
- The fourth time was in December 2022. This spurred on a mental breakdown that changed my life. I began intensive therapy to ensure this would never happen again.
- The fifth one began rather quietly in December 2023, and grew far louder in the proceeding months.
- The sixth one has been occurring unbeknownst to me for the past two? months. If my paranoia is to be believed, it spans two unrelated social groups.
You'll read this, my track record, and begin to wonder why it has happened so often. You, like me, will find it easy to draw a single line of continuity between these events. What did I do? what do I keep doing? I don't know. Because every time I devote myself, mind and soul, to Doing Better. I do therapy, I dig deep, I try to make sure it never happens again. Nothing.
I think it is because I'm abrasive. I grate on people. My tone is too dry. I come off as flippant and uncaring. Easy to love, easy to lust, easy to hate, easy to disgust. My body is desirable until it is disposable. All it takes is one moment. One moment that, for another, might be easily made up for. No. I rack up points on my scorecard until it is too late.
I am proof of the HAL effect.
“Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build inside the storms. Move a single inch and call it a victory. Mold my sexuality toward immobility. Lie here leaking water from my eyes like a statue covered in melting frost. Zero affect. Build like moss grows. Build like crystals harden. Give up. Make your art the merest displacement of molecules at your slightest quiver. Don’t build in spite of the body and fail on their terms, build with the body. Immaculate is boring and impossible. Health based aesthetic.”
Sometimes I truly believe my death would be the only atonement I could offer.
That's too bad.
“Living was my sole attempt at innocence.”
It's all I can do. No matter how sad. How tired. How hurt. How angry I am. This will take its toll on my already disabled body. Perhaps it will be their lucky day if it finally kills me.
Sweet dreams, Luci <3
My criteria for de-personing is as follows: Any situation wherein I have been ostracised, excommunicated or frozen out of a social group for perceived wrongdoing. Conciliation has not been an option. I have been considered "unfit" to atone↩