writing down some thoughts before sleeping

Yeah. I'm here. Writing down some thoughts before sleeping. There really isn't more to it. 

Ok so. Is my instability noticeable in my posts? Because.. well, I am. Unstable. Like, ok, I'm stressed as always. Got a lot on my mind. I can barely focus on anything for long these days. Though I have to admit, I started getting into my characters again. I wasn't for several months this year, actually. But everything else? Yeah, my mind is out the window. No, it's in freaking space. 

I have a hard time not thinking and stressing and making myself paranoid over things I have to do in a few days. Gotta face the reality. And that scares me. Like hell. 

I have medical appointments (yeah, more than one) scheduled in a few days. I'm terrified. Excited, too. Because answers.. hopefully? I have bad imposter syndrome though. It's very bad. And internalized ableism. 

I haven't been active on here in a while, so I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I know I tend to easily talk about my mental health conditions (including highly possible ones) on here and a few other parts of the internet. But honestly, I'm not proud of having/possibly having these things. They aren't trends. It's not quirky behavior. I hate being like this. I constantly wish I was normal. But online.. it's like maybe, just maybe, I can pretend to be confident and not absolutely hate myself for being the way I am. The only way I can see myself continuing on is to at least try not hating everything about me, including how my brain works. I'm desperate to find a bright side to all this mess I have going on with me. This isn't fun. I don't want this. But.. just like, what's the point in hiding it online? I can be more myself on here than anywhere irl. Not just about neurodivergency and mental illness. 

And why do I talk about the potential disorders my characters have? Well, it's just something I've been very interested in for a long time now. I've been very interested in psychology for years now. Clinical psychology. Learning about disorders and conditions. For myself, for my characters. Occasionally, just the general curiosity. But I tend to relate most things in my life (irl, online) to my characters in one way or another. My characters and story universe is a devoted interest of my mine. Is that a surprise? No. It shouldn't be. 

Sometimes I wish I could stop being so invested in all this stuff, but I really can't. Not entirely. It's a double-edged sword. Writing about mental health explicitly, wanting to fight the stigma. But also writing about certain labels also puts my characters in a box. Maybe someone else can read what I write and come to a conclusion that a character relates to another disorder..? So, it's a dilemma. 

But yeah. Neurologist. Psychiatrist. Gonna see those. Uh.. ok. Will I post about my appointments afterward? I don't know. Probably not. Not right away at least. It's always on my mind since I'm terrified and paranoid. But also excited. I have mixed signals into how I should feel. Just.. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. 

It's around 2:30 am. I'm typing as fast as I can. I'm not reading over what I'm saying. Is anything I'm saying coherent? Am I making any sense? I have no idea.

Have I ever went into my memory issues on here in the past year? I should accept that I have something wrong with me, that it's not normal to not remember so much. I can't remember shit. My friends were concerned. My therapist and doctor were concerned. Anyway, I hope I'm not just being dramatic about all this. 

I barely remember anything before the ages of 12 and 14. Maybe 15, but that feels like a stretch. I forget so much. I'm just a ghost in control of this flesh prison human body getting by day to day. My working memory isn't that good. 

Late 2020 and early 2021 were very bad for me. More mental health stuff in 2020; more physical health stuff in 2021. I was messed up for a long time earlier this year. There were so many reasons why I wasn't active on here for a while. And even before that long break, I didn't post that much. I had my reasons. And no, this isn't that post where I'll explain everything. I'm not sure if I ever will. 

Around this time last year genuinely scares me. Earlier this year, I talked to some people about how much I can barely remember from late summer/fall/winter 2020. Well, mostly the fall. But still. Well, not barely. More like full-on can't. What was I learning in my classes then? What was I doing in my free time? I can't remember. All I can remember is grief and intense anxiety over my own mental health shit and being stressed out of my mind over a few other people I was close to back then. It fucked me up. Plus, withdrawal. I think I was also in withdrawal then. Not getting into that though. And all that grief and stress feels so disconnected from my 2021 self. I can't remember the details, just the physical pain and severe grief and stress I felt every day. 

I also had the worst episodes of derealization I ever experienced in late 2020 through the first half of 2021. There were breaks, but that shit lasted hours and even days at a time. I genuinely felt that I wasn't real, that my environment wasn't real, but I think worst of all, I truly felt like people I was texting weren't real, actual people. That my friends weren't real. And that's terrifying. It made me treat them, and other people, as if they didn't exist. That I was just writing my thoughts out to the void, maybe to a bot. It ruined my friendships. I fucked up.

That's a brief rundown. Is that the right word? Screw it. I don't care. 

I haven't experienced that in a while at this point, but the fear that it'll return is always in the back of my mind. Feeling disconnected from reality isn't fun. I hate it. 

So..... yeah.

And I had physical who-the-hell-knows-what's-going-on-with-me pain up until this past summer basically. That sucked. It really, really sucked. Everything's a blur. I can remember some things but everything's blurry. I can't see the past in detail. It's like looking back at myself when I'm not wearing my glasses. It's all blurred. Maybe I can make out a few things, but nothing's in focus. That's what it feels like.

I'm so disconnected from my past selves. They're not me. 

Who am I? Who is the real me? I don't know my identity. I don't know who I am. Not entirely. I hate not knowing. It's hard to have a sense of self when I can't remember so much from my past, including how I was a few months ago. It scares me. 

I hate being disconnected. I hate how bad my memory has become. I hate all of this. 

I'm assuming all of that is why I got a referral to see a neurologist. Maybe the physical pain I experienced every day also plays a part in all this. It's not normal. Tell me it's not normal. 

But I want to be normal. I know I can't be. I just want answers. I want confirmations. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, and everything isn't as bad as I fear it is.

What else? Hmm......

I have no real pronouns preference. They all feel "meh" and shrug to me. I started testing out being called he/him online a short while back. Being called "he" sounds nice. Being referred to with masculine terms are nice (dude, guy, bro, sir, etc.). I'm cool with it. I don't consider it my obvious favorite though. I'm generally apathetic. I still accept she/her and they/them. They all feel "meh" *shrugs* to me.

Gender identity still confuses the hell out of me. I don't know the specifics, but this year made me believe more than ever that it feels like I'm probably not cis. I've started accepting that I've been feeling like I'm pretending/lying to everyone, that I'm pretending to be someone I'm not. And the strings are wearing out; the mask feels like it's slipping. I think about masking a lot. It's getting harder and harder to keep all these masks up. Mental health and gender. Yeah.

This shit's confusing. Like.. fuck.

I'm not reading over this. I'm tired. I keep typing "This" and "this"... omg shut up, me. 

I also want to make posts about my characters in other ways, but I'm scared. How I'm aware and scared of making my characters become stereotypes. What the hell have I done? I'm aware. I know. I'm trying to fight it, but I don't know if I can dig myself out of this hole. Am I redeemable? I don't know. I have paranoia. I constantly feel like scum. I have pessimistic thinking. 

I don't really see them that way for the most part, but I know how easily they can be interpreted the way of being stereotypes. Do I have originality? I don't know. 

There's so much I want to say about Jack in particular. This dude.. geez. I have so many thoughts. So, so many.

Oh and the relationship that Fierdan and Soulless have. It's fucked up on so many levels. I feel like I never really explained it straightforward. And I want to. But actually doing so terrifies me. It's fucked up. Soulless is.. well, a demonic bastard. But Fierdan? Fierdan in Cincernum? Fierdan leading up to being there? Oh god. Fierdan is fucked up. There is nothing okay with any of this. It's cursed. That's the point. There is nothing healthy and decent about any of this. It's worse than you think. Probably. Going into explicit details might destroy me. But I want to explain it all. But.. fuck.

Basically, their relationship mimics various types of close ones. It wasn't always extremely toxic, not from the start. It just evolved to become worse and worse as the years went on. What are they to each other? I don't know anymore. Everything keeps changing. What the hell.

Parent/Guardian ~ Child. Teacher/Mentor ~ Student. A twisted form of friends. Puppet ~ Puppeteer. Master ~ Slave. A very twisted and sinister form of lovers in a toxic relationship. Manipulation. Exploitation. Abuse. That's what defines their relationship basically. They're all of those things. They're none. What the fuck is going on? 

Soulless's age is unknown. Indefinite. Unknowable. Not human. Ryen made Soulless the way they turned out. Is Soulless a brother? No. They're not a sibling to Fierdan. Or Ryen. But learning Ryen's involvement in making Soulless the way they are? No wonder Fierdan hates him.

Just.. Fierdan and Soulless represent toxic relationships. It's dark. Various types of abuse. Fierdan being under Soulless's control. Like a goddamn puppet. It's sickening. Thinking about the graphic details about what happens between the two of them horrifies me. If Fierdan became manipulated over several years to Soulless's control in his life and even his actual mind.. of course he couldn't say no to everything. The point of story 1 is that he gains confidence over time to step away and fight back. That takes such a long time. Duke helps with that, even if he isn't fully aware of it himself. If Fierdan lived in constant fear and lived while being controlled and manipulated, not knowing what it's like to make decisions on his own, can it even count as consensual the things he did with Soulless? Sure, Fierdan did those things, maybe Soulless didn't force him to do all of them, but was it ever really his conscious decision? If he had the choice not to, would he? And besides, manipulation and other forms of abuse were all Fierdan knew. Consenual? No. No, no, no. 

Like.. there are reasons why Fierdan wants to kill Soulless. There are reasons why he hates Soulless so intensely. What they've done together and what Soulless did to him is just so fucked up. All of it greatly contributed to Fierdan's PTSD. All those traumas. A never-ending hell.

Haha, my mind is twisted. 

Fierdan in Cincernum. Just.. fuck. Damn.

....... That's Fierdan in Cincernum. Designed more pretty than how he actually appeared there. He looked more androgynous than masculine, maybe even feminine. All and none. Barely alive. The puppet of melancholy. A toy designed for Soulless's pleasure and entertainment.

Oh and he's definitely not just a victim. There's nothing pure and innocent about this version of Fierdan. He did some fucked up shit. Haha, he's problematic. 

............ This tangent ended up longer than I thought. I wasn't even focusing that much on it. Just.. yeah, Fierdan and Soulless in a nutshell is a huge "What the fuck!". Yeah.

Appointments.. I'm scared. The point of this post is what I said in the beginning. Not this. Please don't let it be this. 

.... I ended up listening to the songs I put in the last post and thinking about the scenes between Fierdan and Soulless towards the end of the time I was writing chapters. One scene in particular. Damn, that was messed up. What the fuck.

Thoughts dump. Dumped them all here. 

I'm not rereading this. 

So, that's what's been on my mind. All and nothing.