MOOP!

Content Warning: non-detailed allusions to my shitty abusive ex and the shitty relationship we had

I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:

First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.

Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.

And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.

But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.

Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...

However, I talked to ksatyr....he is *way* over-reacting. You think you're not ready for a relationship? I'm sorry, but this is a demonstration of not being ready for a relationship.

...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY¹" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth²". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old³.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.

2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P

3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!

I am reading Tess of the Road, and it's quite good, but as I commented to SamSam, if I'd read this book in 2009 it would've _destroyed_ me.

(The rest of this entry mightis gonna get pretty dark pretty fast. Content Warnings for sexual/emotional abuse, and spoiler warnings for Tess of the Road. Also it's written almost entirely for me and no one else, so it's probably at least half indecipherable.)

( Onwards, with infinite limbs![1] )

She has all my love, because, apparently, I love myself for the strides I have taken. Good.

~Sor
MOOP!


1: Yes, this is the reference you think it is, I was raised well or at least weird

2: Actually maybe three, does Alanna learn from a whore? I'm pretty sure she learns about Girl Stuff from George's mom, how explicit is it that the mother of the king of thieves is a prostitute?

3: I'm not making a reference, this is an arbitrarily chosen number

4: There's that adage, that old wives tale, about skin cells fully replacing themselves every seven years? I made special note, the year it became true that my current body had never been raped.

Trigger Warning for rape, emotional abuse, mostly mentioned with dark humour and obliquely but some more direct

( Having finished writing, it doesn't get that bad, but have a cut regardless )

Anyways, that's apparently where I'm at. Raise a glass in December for thirteen long years. Another half-decade until I reach the age he was, and yeah, I know how that sounds.

Be good to the ones you love. We are all fragile this year.

~Sor
MOOP!

(PostScript, for those who may be new: In 2007 (the year I was 17/18), I dated a man eighteen years my senior. Perhaps predictably, it did not go well. You can find more information in the very punny "therapy" tags (therapyfilter and therapyblatant being the most common)

Edited to Add: I just spent the last hour doing just that, and look, if you like the way I write and can handle some depressing shit, I think the therapyblatant tag has some of my consistently sharpest writing that I've ever done. This is a fucking horrible thing that happened to me but damn do the scars look amazing.

And as I lamented at one point, how much other writing could I have accomplished if I didn't have to spend literal thousands of words on this?

Trigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse. Excerpts from an 18 year old's diary (it's cool, I got their consent to post 'em)

I said to a friend "November is a crazy month for me" and haha, we're all crazy with work and politics and Arisia nonsense¹ and trying to get our lives in order, but no. That's not it at all.

November is quite literally crazy-making for me. It is by _far_ my worst mental health month in the year, every year, and it has been getting harder the last few (or maybe I've just been paying better attention.)

Part of that is straight up seasonal. The light goes away, the weather gets cold, and it's before the soft joy of December lights shining out from every house². It's often the first time in the year it snows. This year there's been multiple days of bitter-cold rain, which is awful to bike in.

Most of it is anniversary effect --there's a lot of really fucking bad things³ that have happened to me in Novembers. Obviously two years ago was shit for everyone, but there's other little sense-triggers that hit me "oh, it's the month where _that_ happened, of course." and so many of them are just _shit_. I still mourn the lost hard drive from my first semester of college.

And part of why I mourn that missing hard drive, even eleven years on, is because I desperately wish I still had access to the Behind the Walls file from August-November 2007. BtW is my version of a diary, an unfiltered, utterly private text file where I can say what I need and know that no one else is going to read it. It's been largely supplanted in my modern life by my use of 750words, but gods, from February 2005 to March 2010, it was a _critical tool_ for keeping my brain on straight⁴.

And from August to November, 2007, it was a detailed account of the sorts of things I was experiencing in my first semester away from home. Including the dissolution of the relationship I was in for most of 2007, which was a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship with a man eighteen years my senior. I call(ed) him kSatyr⁵, and it took me nearly four years⁶ to be able to say in public "I am a survivor of emotional and sexual abuse".

BUT, and here's a crucial thing. Right after my hard drive died, practically the very first thing I did on the replacement was start up BtW 2.1⁷ and start writing again, because I'm not a complete idiot.

Which means when kSatyr raped me in a new and irrevocable way on the morning of December second, and we _finally_ fucking broke up, I was able to record some thoughts about it. And a few tumultuous weeks later, riding the confusion of two breakups⁸ in three weeks, I was able to make the post I'm going to excerpt from below.

( This post is the first time I ever said 'aloud' that I had been raped. Obviously, hella trigger warnings. Also, this is an excerpt of the diary of a pretentious eighteen year old. You're reading the public-facing diary of a pretentious twenty-nine year old, but still...be warned. )

This entry got way longer than I was necessarily expecting, which is _completely normal_ for me when writing about anything, and double-normal when writing about my rapist. If you wanna have more dark-humour coping-mechanism funtimes you can peep TherapyFilter for everything I've ever posted publicly on the subject¹¹.

I feel better right now than I did an hour ago, which is important --writing is good for me.

But seriously, by far the most important takeaway from going back eleven years into my diary and reading the ramblings of an 18 year old madwoman, is that...it was rape. It was definitely rape, I said so with absolute conviction then because I knew it from the moment it happened. I didn't use the r-word again after that for almost eighteen months, until I saw the pretty coloured shirts on a clothesline and it broke back into my heart.

It drives me _fucking bonkers_ that this is still something that affects me. It's been over a decade! I have healthy [sexual] relationships with wonderful people! Why can't I get over it?! But then I remember that it was a big deal, and it was a _huge_ affect on my introduction to my own sexuality.

And the dying shards of a control-freak who couldn't stand the existence of my own independence are always going to echo at me hard at certain times of year. February 22nd is bad. December 2nd is bad. I do what I can to survive.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Absolutely do not comment about Arisia in this post. Thank you.

2: I like Christmas Lights more than nearly any other holiday _thing_. It is so good and necessary for us to drive back the dark.

3: I don't have time to find it now, but I remember posting one year about how the last week of November/first week of December is a huge up-and-down of good and bad memories, which makes it even harder. I can't just shut the whole time out of my mind if I am also celebrating 11 years of dancing and the memory of the first time the city ever sang into my heart "you are home".

4: Hell, even this modern computer has a version (the first two lines read "Welcome, little child. Be not afraid." which I think is lovely.) I've got about six entries this time around, the most recent from mid-2017. It's a little strange what gets put _there_ specifically, but I'm glad I have it for when I need. (Lots of things that end with the line "I'm not actually going to post this" --dreamwidth entries that weren't.)

5: The k is silent. It's a pile of stupid in-jokes. The funniest (the darkest) one to me is that in retrospect, naming your partner after a particularly rapey kind of mythological figure means it shouldn't be a surprise...

6: It took me _much_ longer to name him --I think the first public post to do so was the ten year anniversary of us starting to date, so like, only a year and a half ago. I was protecting him or something? And eventually I just didn't care anymore? If he didn't want a narrative where I call him a rapist, he shouldn't have fucking raped me.

7: BtW 1.0 was on Dmitri, my teenage-years desktop. 2.0 was on Seren, my college laptop, 2.1 was on Vera, the replacement harddrive for aforementioned computer which lasted me until like 2013 before being replaced by my new and current box, Kela. Dang, the girl's been working for five years now, she's a good box.

8: Magus broke up with me before we started dating. No really! I got the "we're just friends" talk like...six weeks before I got the "so I keep finding moments where I want to kiss you" talk, and I think that's brilliant and hilarious. But it was...a weird emotional thing at the time. Don't be eighteen, kids. It's not good for anyone.

9: Technically speaking, kSatyr was my second sexual relationship. The first took place over the internet, and when things started to get too hot'n'heavy for me (somewhere around text-descriptions of touching each other's genitals) and I said "can we step back?" the answer was "of course, and I really hope you haven't been dwelling on this because holy shit yes." and they did and we did and it was great.

I am consider *that* person to be a friend. They were the second person in the world I ever told about what happened, after Magus.

10: "Your Kink Is Not My Kink" (Usually followed with "But Your Kink Is Okay")

11: Why is it called a filter when it's public posts? Because it started in August 2009 (about a year and a half after I broke up with kSatyr) with only four people allowed to see the posts. I've not bothered to un-filter the posts, but I've gotten a *lot* more liberal about putting people onto the filter --if you wanna see them and can't, go ahead and ask me.

If you're new here, you might not know that trigger warnings go both ways! The entry above has references to rape and emotional abuse, and the occasionally not-so-enlightened words of my 18 year old self.

Trigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse talk. Happy anniversary! :p

So I guess I should talk about it.

Ten years ago today, I started dating kSatyr. Officially like, with the whole "will you be my boyfriend/girlfriend" conversation. Things were...already not good in some ways. I don't have good notes from that far back. (I don't have any notes from late August to early December, because that was the hard drive that died and the diary that disappeared and oh I miss it I miss it so.)

I don't think he'd raped me yet, at that point. I know I was already dealing with his whinging, demanding, broken-brained manipulation and emotional abuse. I have no excuse for it, I never have really, except that he had a desperate all-encompassing clinging need which only I could fill, and I was too young to know that's not attractive.

It was years after we broke up before I ever heard the line "don't set yourself on fire to keep other people warm".

I hope he's figured out how to fix himself, in the time since. Goddess knows how much effort I've put into the trick. I'd be surprised if he wasn't willing to put in the same, except this was a man twice my age who acted decades younger than me, so actually, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I wonder sometimes what narrative he tells himself about how it all went down. I wonder if he knows he raped me --I know it would kill him to hear me say it. Good. Let my truth choke him. I haven't even tried looking at his livejournal since I got Kela --and that's been, gosh, more'n three years.

(After we broke up, he told me I had to defriend him, and that I had to make all my posts friends-locked. I told him I wanted to keep writing publicly, that sometimes I have people reading my journal without accounts of their own (Hi Tailsteak!). He told me if I wouldn't acquiesce, he'd tell my mom how far we'd gotten, you know, sexually.

I called his fucking bluff. And eventually, I did unfriend him. I don't know when he stopped reading my journal. The last time I ever talked to him was in 2011. The last time I ever _will_ talk to him was in 2011.)

A lot of this has already been gone over, exhaustively, in TherapyFilter. Or more exhaustively in BehindtheWalls versions 2.0 and 2.1, and in thousands and thousands of my 750words. I have written _a lot_ about kSatyr, and the damages he left behind.

I don't really feel damaged today. Just tired.

In nine months and ten days, it will be December 2nd. It will be the ten year anniversary of being free from him. (Nevermind the hooks that took another year and more to pull out. Nevermind the four years before I could again hold Emily in my arms. Nevermind the scars on my mind that will never totally go away, because this is always going to be a part of me.). I am planning to celebrate that day. I will let my friends know if they can be a part of it.

Be good to each other. We're all we have in this world.

~Sor
MOOP!

Trigger Warning: Rape and emotional abuse talk. Happy anniversary! :p

Thin air's as sweet as water when your body begs to breathe
And so I leave when I must leave, don't weep for love I couldn't save
And all of us who dare to live are brave.
(Neptune, SJ Tucker)

followed by

I want to witness the beauty of your repair
The shape you've grown
For you are made of nebulas and novas and night sky
You're made of memories you bury and live by
(Never Look Away, Vienna Teng)

followed by

We are never ever ever getting back together
(Erm, aforementioned song, Taylor Swift)

And it's a weirdly good night. All three, sung along to as I bike home, nice and loud. Later, I'll listen to to Oasis by Amanda Palmer (And it isn't my fault that the barbarian raped me) and Lisa Carew from Jekyll and Hyde (I am not the weak young thing you're seeking, kSatyr. Someone 17, obedient, and sweet. I am not the protogee to waste your time on, I'm complete.)

Last year was sad and angry. It involved a lot of tears, and making it almost the whole day without remembering. This year, I remembered just after midnight¹, and again when I woke up, and while I was too busy most of the day, there was time to think about it a bit on the commute home. While singing along loudly to the music in my ears.

It's been nine years. The Kat who started that relationship was over a third of my life ago. She's a faraway persona now.²

I'm feeling pretty happy tonight. Stable, occupied. Hang on, little spider from nine years ago. It gets worse before it gets better. But it does get better.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Technically, this is s00j's fault. It's her birthday! Last year, the tipping point was her posting something about her birthday that reminded me of the date and I hadn't really thought of it until then. This year, she posted on twitter just after midnight and YEP, ASSOCIATIONS! But you know, happy birthday SJ and happy birthday Miss Marsha, YAY FOR AWESOME PEOPLE!!!!)

2: SUPER FASCINATING PRONOUN USAGE HERE. I am deeply intrigued, but no, I'm pretty sure I was cis at 17. Mostly cis. cisish. At any rate, I didn't get serious about the agender thing until I was like 23 or 24 and yes, I need to make a serious post about that sometime.

In most ways, I resemble my mother more than my father. Not just appearancewise¹, but in terms of personality, I find it the greatest compliment ever to think I am growing into my mother. We are both loud and exuberant and goofy and while my cult of personality is a lot less trained than hers, gaw-damn if we can't both make people like us³ just by being unrepentantly our own awesome likable selves.

But my father's influence is definitely in there too. And things that come from both of them, like my sense of humour. My weird, goofy, sharp-edged, teasing, ultimately good-natured and really really stupid⁴ sense of humour. Makes sense! Your family is the often ones you spend the most time with for the first mumbledy years of your life, humour is super cultural, naturally it'd rub off.

So I have my parents sense of humour. And this means there's one more adjective that's worth presenting, and it's the one I want to talk about. My parents sense of humour is dark. Like, "my mother's family were cracking jokes about her mother's death on the drive home from the funeral"⁵ dark. Meanwhile, my dad and his and his are all doctors, and if any field makes your humour darker, it's medical.

So nothing is sacred. Anything can have a joke made of it. Anything. I have danced on my grandmother's grave. I think she would approve.

Now, even before there was a term for it, we all subscribed to the idea of "punching up" as much as possible. Our humour is gallows-dark, but it's meant as a coping mechanism, a way to deal, a way to laugh at how bullshit ridiculous and hard life can be. I knew how to recognize snark and sarcasm before I even knew what they were. We're mostly not cynical --mom and I especially subscribe to the "it's easier to just have fun" side of things-- but we recognize that the world is deeply and troublingly flawed, and a lot of bad shit just happens sometimes.

Now. With that background out of the way, my point:

( Trigger Warning for sexual and emotional abuse, for gallows humour, and for generally being dark and profane )

But if you're the sort of person who'll give me a high-five for a sweet zinger, or sarcastic right back with me, or at the very least, aren't gonna be any more uncomfortable when I talk about this past than if I talked about any other...maybe drop me a line and let me know?

I can't be the only funny freak out here.

~Sor
MOOP!

PostScript: You may have noticed that I have pretty much given up entirely on masking my abuser. Because you know what? They were a fucking asshole to me, and they are almost entirely out of my life, and I don't have to protect them. Someone goes all "but I know who that is and he's my best friend and how dare you accuse" and decides that they don't wanna be friends with me and my "vile lying ways" anymore? Good.

I see no point of directly dragging their name through the mud (and using their wallet name could open me up to all sorts of legal funtimes that I'd rather avoid), but it's been four fucking years since I saw or heard from them last, and I just have no patience for hedging anymore.

So yeah. My stories don't work if I can't comment that they're satyr aligned, and above much else, I am a Storyteller. You want me to tell good stories about you? Don't fucking abuse me, mate.

1: I definitely look like my mom. Every once in a while a photo from Markland will surface where even *I* have that moment of "...but how are there pictures of me if I wasn't alive then?"

If this trend continues...honestly, I'm not particularly bothered. My mom is utterly adorable and has muscles like an ox and I'm all for it. 'bout the only bad is the idea of having bigger boobs², and that may not even be a concern if I never get preggers.

2: I should make a post sometime about my relationship with my small breasts. It is overwhelmingly positive! I do enjoy admiring extensive cleavage, but not enough to ever want to swap.

3: Good things from NYFaeFest: The gentleman running grounds crew, who said at one point he wanted to take me home, and also routinely described me over the walkie as "anyone need help from someone smart and capable?" *melts*

4: *drops a bag of frozen bananas on the floor, is confused when no one else cracks the fuck up*

5: Well, lots of the family initials make words, like mom was R-A-P and her sister was S-A-P⁶ and their mom was R-E-P, which isn't really a word, but I guess it doesn't matter since now she's RIP.

6: There is a small chance I am forgetting my aunt's middle name and it's something else. 'sbeen a while since I heard this one.

( Annnnnd let's cut the relevant footnotes too, because what's the point of having Trigger Warnings if you only cover half the post. TW: sexual/emotional abuse. )

They say your skin, your body, your self is replaced every seven years. Give or take, it's hard to tell, and I'm not here to discuss the science of it just now.

I'm here to say that, if we accept that premise as true, this body has never been raped.

And that's important.

~Sor
MOOP!

(But when will my mind be made new? Hopefully never --I'd rather keep the pain than destroy any part of my memories-- but damnit, I want a year when December 2nd (and January 25th, and Valentines Day, and February 22nd, and and and) doesn't hurt.)

TW: Allusions to rapist/sexual abuse

My dreams last night were long and had an impressive narrative, where I (and so many others) were trapped in a prison-slavepen-hunger games potential-space of doom. Most of the dream dealt with me running about, trying to avoid the evil overlord and save everyone.

And then at the end, I had returned home -to my parents home! I walk upstairs to my bedroom, with maybe someone like Veronica at my side, a close friend who I'd rescued, and all I want is to just flop about and relax after my ordeal but no, sitting in my room is my asshole rapist ex.

I raged. I ordered them out of my room, despite their pleas to be heard, despite their bullshit apologies --at one point they were apologizing for something that was awkward between us (they had stood me up on a date?) and I pretty much exploded at them and told them I didn't hate them because they stood me up that one time, I hated them because they had routinely raped and abused me.

I remember in the dream the idea that my parents would come help me kick them out, and I also remember deciding (lucidly?) that no, my parents would wait, and have my back, but I was more than capable of doing my own kicking out.

And that's how it went. The dreams are getting stronger, so am I. I've never said pointblank to my rapist "you raped me" --too much emotional abuse tangling the wound. But if they ever forced their way back into my world, oh, you bet those words'd be out of my mouth, directly after "fuck off" and directly preceding "bye now".

(and to end this post on a nicely dark note, isn't it ironic that the one person I've ever had who most wanted me to think of them every day got their wish?)

~Sor
MOOP!

TW: Allusions to rapist/sexual abuse.

Trigger warning: Like, I am not even subtle in discussing the fact I was raped. Also gross emotional abuse.

Having posted a giant fucking wall of text to the 'Read-The-Sorkin-Manual' tag, I decided to poke my nose into what else was collated in there. In addition to a whole bunch of stuff about introversion that I really need to address, I found a bit where I was talking about my abuse, and mentioned how my abuser had said repeatedly I was "scared of sex".

In the entry, I had about three sentences of a footnote being kinda angry and dude-not-cool. The second I reread that sentence, and remembered that it was a phrasing my abuser used all the time on me, I just had my brain suddenly snap into place, and I am livid.

( In which I let off steam, talk about sex, and rip this jackass a new one, because how dare they. )

Trigger warning: rape, emotional abuse.