A lot has happened in my life since I last made major changes to the site. First of all, I'm home from treatment (and I went to treatment in the first place, but that's an entirely different topic that I'll have to get into later). It was definitely important that I went, but I don't really want to think about it right now. That's a page (or five) for future me to add later.

I guess today what I need to talk about is how divorced I feel from anything human. This was really upsetting me yesterday (7/19) too, but I didn't write about it. Now I think I have to, though. I'm finally working on my website again, but having to pick layouts and visuals and stuff like that triggers me a lot. How do I want to be seen? How am I seen? What makes other people capable of picking and choosing these things? Do they do it without fear? Do they do it without shame? What makes other people so different from me? That one, at least, I think I can answer.

At the core of this, I guess, is this feeling of being... utterly subhuman. I just don't understand people. I can't connect with people, and going to treatment didn't fix that for me, and I think I know why. I don't know if I'll ever feel safe enough to talk about why. I don't know if I'll ever feel safe enough to think about why, and the only people who are going to understand what I mean by that are... people who understand it. I don't really want to be clear about what I mean by that specific thought. I think anyone who knows what I mean knows what I mean, and that's enough.

There has been this massive internal resistence to journaling recently. I can't even write down benign things about what I did on any given day. 'I watched this movie today. I did this little activity today. I went outside today.' Doing that hurts. Writing down my feelings like this is confusing to me because I don't even really know why I'm suddenly able to do it. I guess it's the desperation--if I don't do it, things are going to keep feeling bad, and they'll probably start feeling even worse. I don't want to suffer anymore.

I'm thinking about this journal I used to write in when I was a little girl. When I found it again as an adult, all of the pages were ripped out. The only thing I could see was the impression of whatever pen (?) I had used at the time, and you couldn't make anything out. A little bit of drawing. No legible text. I've lost all of that. I'm scared that the same thing is going to happen to this website someday. I'm really trying to put everything that there is of myself--which isn't much--into these pages. We all are. And I'm scared that someday I'm going to lose that too, just like I've already lost everything else I'm thinking about right now.

People say that they care about me and that I bring them joy and all of these nice things, but I can't help but feel like none of that is me. Like none of it is real. I feel like my whole identity is this fabricated shell and like it completely imprisons me because no matter how genuine I try to be nothing will ever eclipse the fact that I am artificial. Fundamentally. Not by my own choice. Not my by own desires. Not by my wishes. As Bret Easton Ellis would say, "I am simply not there." How can you give life to something artificial? You can't. Only God can do something like that, and I don't think that God likes me very much.

I don't understand the world. I don't understand how things work. There are people who are "like me" who have seen the same sorts of things I've seen who are so real. They're such people! They're so full of life! They're so complex! And I just feel like a hole. A bottomless hole of needs and confusion and probably other holes too. I'm not sure what it is about me that makes me so broken. I don't understand how to put myself back together (because it's my job to do that, even though I'm not the one who ever wanted or chose this life--although saying that makes me feel guilty because it feels like a lie, like this is all my fault and I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking otherwise). It's not that I don't want to be positive or happy. I just don't know how to do that when I don't feel like I have access to any of "my" "human" "thoughts" or "feelings" or any of that stuff. I'm a derivative. I'm a shell. I'm not real. I don't know how to stress enough how disturbed I am by how completely inhuman I am. I am completely lacking in the qualities and characteristics that make someone human. I don't know how to explain it. I just am.

I'm sad, but I think I'm going to stop now. I don't know if this helped. Maybe being "seen" will help. Maybe it will make me feel worse. I guess there's only one way to find out.

Thanks for reading and sorry about the mess.