On forgiving and dying

[Trigger and content warning]

I don’t believe anymore that any of this is real. Does that mean I’m crazy?

Apparently not.

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Doctor after doctor came to the same conclusion. Do you want the labels again, which for some time I thought mattered?

Autism with PTSD. No delusions, no hallucinations, no psychosis. The last team that evaluated me also came to the conclusion that I’m an ‘extremely anxious woman’, based on the startle responses they observed. Fascinating, because I’ve always been willing to throw myself into the fire.

The fire was hot and I didn’t feel it, for the flames were made of me. I guess you really are your own problem huh?

I find myself wondering now if there is a universe where the ground can forgive the sky for abandoning it - and then I consider that without the sky, there is no ground, and vice versa.

The result of making the inner like the outer may come with a very specific loss: the realisation that the world isn’t real. At least, not in the sense that it is backdrop. Rather, it’s co-author of thought.

I lost the world and it lost me before that already. Most days I just spend hours listening to the same song on repeat to ground myself to not leave it completely. I’ve had the conversations: sometimes half-arsed, sometimes serious. That I would rather evaporate than stay a bit longer. That I would rather dissolve than grow horizontal or diagonal in a shape that does not truly exist. Because how can I hold something that is not real? Why would I even want to?

Hope is the illusion that begs for a different shape. It’s the mind painting things into existence - but ultimately, even that is a bogus tale. I gaslight myself every day now to not believe it.

I tried a lot. Medication. Therapy. EMDR. Writing back, writing forwards. Two different hospitals. An MRI, EEG, every test in the book.

When I’m close to almost letting my body go, I do a mushroom trip these days because it temporarily reduces the PTSD symptoms for a few weeks.

Not eating also helps (there’s actually some interesting science behind that). Sometimes I fast for three weeks - it’s very doable unless you’re extremely underweight.

But when everything is a metaphor of a metaphor that came before, new things are just that: a deeper level of change. In these layers of change the universe - you - keeps building with the same blocks, just organised in different ways, existing with the knowledge of it all becomes tiring.

One time during general anaesthesia, I didn’t ‘go’ completely. I ended up in a static room filled with stardust. I was there, and I was not. I was everything and nothing at the same time. I was calm. It felt like home. A place I since long back for to visit again.

And as I keep myself ‘grounded’ with loops of music to breathe the illusions once more that keep me tied to my duties - simultaneously, I’ve started to talk. To people who don’t want to hear it. To people who shame me for it. To people who are hurt by it. They do not want to know that I see through it all.

I keep asking, am I mad? Going crazy? And all I get is the same response: no.

I wish they were wrong.

Reality is subjective - keep that in mind. I am writing in loops because I knew long before today where the beginning and ending would be.

I told a tale once of my reality and was never, when things were at a calmer stage, challenged for it, by the only person who could. I cursed them, because if they would have, I could finally consider the classification of mad and question my experience. If I was told: this is not how it went, perhaps I still had a reason to doubt my sanity. Instead, I had to settle for that yes: I remembered it right. If I didn’t, it wouldn’t be a kindness to stay silent.

What he did do? Lied to the police about my job. Said I had none while I had the same job as him and made money with it and even gave up my photo studio so I could focus on working on projects (with him). He didn’t deny what he was accused of - stayed silent - but for some reason, humiliating me like that and making me look like a jobless person accusing someone who was actually working, was something he was okay with. And they didn’t notice. Because nobody notices.

Some people can lie their way through life and get away with it and everyone seems to be okay with it. But you didn’t want me to be okay with it, did you? Told me I had to be a good human. In my confusion, it felt like an obligation I had to honour.

I would like not to remember anymore but I am doomed to live backwards. I was born in darkness and I think I never escaped it - just embraced it.

I’ve made a point of just sitting still most days, staring into the nothing. And on the other moments when I have to be, I am lost in repetition and cycles of loving and breaking.

I wrote a book about it and burned it. Then I wrote another and burned it too. I made five documentaries and never released them, just destroyed the timelines, for I know it does not matter what I have to say. Perhaps me writing this is finally acknowledging that. But to who really? I don’t believe you’re real either.

“Can you make me a promise. That if you ever, ever decide to do something terrible to yourself. To give up on life and go away. Promise me that you’ll send me everything. (…) I cannot let you go in vain.”

A good guy wrote it to me recently. I didn’t make the promise, because the thing is, it does not matter. I can go in vain. I’ve been long gone for years anyway. I lived in the mind of someone else all this time, in a treehouse. We had many conversations and adventures there, fought a few wars, and the conclusions we drew about everything were just another recipe for more breakage. I wrote about it, hid the blogs about it, then saw parts of it manifest outside the space where I buried them. It was just another confirmation: this all? It’s bullshit. When you can see what’s coming from far away, the road isn’t interesting anymore.

I have little left to offer but the ghost of me. And I am loved - it is not that. I just regret being part of change. I would like to be part of the undoing of it all. I’ve seen myself die a million times and every day I try to not follow the potentials, but the pattern I’m within keeps begging for it, sending me signals, killing me off as characters, as metaphors, within allegories, tiny pixels. I don’t even perceive me unless I dream. I am just awareness seeing concepts. Dark, light, it’s all the same. One cannot exist without the other. And soft and loud is just another metaphor of change. I am a pattern unfolding and slowly crumbling.

I’ve probably written better things - but I burned those things too. I don’t need them to exist outside of me. Maybe because I realise I don’t want to leave a true trace of my soul behind, because then it might be captured in an algorithm and I’ll be forced to live on forever and I’d really rather not. If I’m given another chance at this thing called existence, I’ll decline. Let me be a rock or the dust in the air instead. Let me be the things that are not alive.

What brings me joy is helping and seeing others succeed but for some reason I feel nothing when I do. I remember this as a very recurring thing, anytime I was praised or got a pat on the back, it just didn’t spark anything for me. But seeing a loved one climb up? That’s lovely. So let me be the water from which life forms.

But didn’t I become a wave too? I wasn’t just water, still. Believing someone wants a storm might explain that.

Somewhere deep in my medical records during my hospitalisation, a nurse wrote: She does not respond to compliments; as if there was something wrong with me because of it. Since then, I’ve learned to performatively - when I remember to somewhat function - say thank you, but really? I could care less. I remember a period of a few months when I did care about someone’s opinion, but caring only brought pain that helped me see the duality of it all more and now I only see structures and fractures and zeroes and ones and binary systems.

There’s nothing sad about it.

It’s easier to swallow anything when you can deny your own existence. When you can absolve yourself like that. When you can say you want to forget the man you cannot forgive (I’m quoting you here) or the woman you harmed who is gone. It’s easier to place yourself outside everything, blame her, not him.

Self-exoneration framed as wisdom, prose or art. What a cheap trick of the mind. A moral alibi for a rotten carrot pretending to show responsibility while cosplaying a redemption arc, rather than showing true action. I asked you to make it real, but you seem to refuse still. I should be offended because of what you’ve done: rage-baiting me, causing more drama, but it really is authentically you, isn’t it?

You would kick my bones even after they’ve fallen to the earth.

I refuse to be a character in someone else’s world building.

“I thought I’d accept Losing You eventually, but I can’t.”

I miss the circus and its clown. The stupid make-up and goofy tricks when they still confused me, the smoke and mirrors, deception, the coffee with poetry in bed, being fucked with in the head, yeah, it made me cry. But God, it was complex and keeping me busy, wondering what the hell was going on. Not knowing, not understanding, gave me a reason to explore and haunt. All these layers, riddles and mazes you built. It distracted me from everything. The bullshit that is life. And yes, you made me want to die.

But now? I want to even more, because there’s nothing new anymore. There are no better conclusions coming my way. Everything has become predictable - even you. I found the patterns, wrote a map, thought you wanted me to (“I like it when women call me on my bullshit”), but now, what am I left with? I would like a loan on novelty and not being able to see the future. A subscription on not being bored. I would like myself a little more naive again, back at the start. I would like to be wrong. I am not the way you found me, it’s now hard to impress me. And more fakery and mixed signals and pretending? It does not.

Imagine if you had just said: yes, it was for you. Instead of telling the internet or a mutual friend that you still love and miss me and are afraid to talk to me because of fear of legal trouble and imaginary child support (…. lol).

If you troll me I can troll you right back darling. And as far as trolling goes, I’ll turn it into a craft.

Imagine if you would answer me, since I cried after I heard you screaming in metaphors. We could build the time-machine we meant to create. Undo the horrors that came to be. And no, I won’t paste the Skype conversation now about it. You know it very well. Why we had to go back in time to fix two things. Can you imagine what it does to someone, when they truly believe you did it, and also, on purpose? When you do not challenge their memory personally, at the end of everything, after the nations went to war? When you don’t tell me, ‘My love, you got it wrong. You became sick because of what I did to you - and that is my crime. And I loved you so much I never told you or anyone when you left the hospital - I rather wanted you to see me as the only monster, than show you the one I created myself, because I fucked with the soul and synapses of someone I loved and feel guilty because of it.’ I still wish you would tell me so I can believe myself mad. I’d rather be crazy than sane. I’d rather you rewrite (restore?) my memory than keep it alive. And maybe, after seeing Losing You, I think I could believe you if you tried. So why don’t you want me to? Do you like the costume of goblin by any chance? Still rather wanting to be notorious than not famous at all?

It’s not a kindness to let me believe I got it all right. Unless I did.

I guess you really are your own problem huh?

I went to the circus and met a clown. When I left and expected a man to face me and tell the truth, I met a clown once more.

I guess I really am my own problem. Because I don’t live in the now. I live in the past: still hoping for better, for before. I guess I just can’t let go.

It’s 2023 and I’m ready to hurt someone.

I’ve never had such violent thoughts before.

I break something dear to me: I’ve never broken anything physical until now. I want to drive into buildings and set myself on fire. I smack my face into the wall. I pull out my hair, because I don’t want to take the hairs of others.

I cry to her, tell her how terrified I am of the sickness consuming me. I do not want to be, for what I’m becoming is violent. I’m scared of hurting those I love and I’ve hurt enough. She doesn’t look upset this time when I say it. All I see is realisation.

I spend the days, weeks and months making meals for family to try to make amends for the empty vessel they have to deal with. When I can, I organise get-togethers. I try to mend relationships between people that no longer talk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. I manage to win an unprecedented court case - ask the news to not name me this time because I don’t want to be seen anymore - and come into a little money. I use it to help those around me and buy a handpan for myself too; I don’t use it to prove the past. I message people who I’ve not treated nicely during my panic and say sorry. I work on my theory trying to explain how thoughts can merge and glue and stick and come to be, then send it off. I am met with fascination and wonder and someone willing to listen. In my sanity I might have found madness making sense. I force myself to laugh, go on vacations and trips and send people postcards and with every hour I’m growing older I can feel my lips growing bolder. I am a clown myself now, performing life and joy for all around me.

My case is getting closed. I read the remarks: the summary of everything that was done and didn’t work. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder with dissociation and derealisation. It was a long trajectory. I know the prize I’ve won. I kept going for years and trying, just to get to this point: Untreatable.

“I am ready,” I say, describing my wish.
He stares at me. Doesn’t look surprised. Of course he’s not.
“You’ve properly thought about this?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really sure?”
“Yes.”

And I hope, of what I do leave behind, it will not be my soul, but the idea that you have a choice. Regardless of what anyone thinks.

You have a choice. To say no more, yes, to be ridiculous, or even say: once more.

And I am chasing sunlight and seeing now, beyond the lines of human beings. I am betting on the rain and lava and rock formations, let me grow from decay and all the layers, so I can become a mountain. A peak - the meaning of my name.

I would just like to not be.

To hell with it, as they see through it too now.

Let’s indeed call it all art - a nine year ARG that started in 2016, accidentally.

Please forgive me and forgive yourself too.

We were magnificent, weren’t we?

PS: Unlike you, I will always credit you (see description video) as the source or inspiration.

I understand now you didn’t like it when I / the blog ‘disappeared’, so I put it back online for you.

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This article is part of a series. Please see The Dark Side of Justice for more information.

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