As I mentioned in the audio above, I got an intuitive nudge to go to Cali early. 4 days early, in fact. So far it has worked out…frighteningly well. We’ll get into it.
First, I wanted to share this little nugget specific to my life – there are very few tunnels in and around Phoenix, but this is one of two I do occasionally drive through. It sits around the edge of maximum distance for everyday travel from my house. It’s right next to downtown Phoenix on the I-10, the freeway that is a straight shot to LA. In childhood, it became the “Roadtrip Tunnel”. More specifically, “Disneyland Tunnel”. A portal from mundane to magical. It has maintained that symbolic meaning throughout my life. The tunnel means going to San Diego ComicCon, Steve Merchant’s stand-up, and in more recent years, the various apperiences of my favorite YouTube guys.
The other important landmark on Phoenix->SoCal roadtrips is Morongo. I didn’t get a shot of the two most important markers – the giant dinos and the windmill farm – but those were especially important to me as an impatient little kid. Seeing them meant we were over halfway there. Not too long now!
I got EXCEPTIONALLY lucky with my hotel room. I’ll just share the little tour I sent my dad-
Yesterday I decided to go to the San Diego Zoo. I have a seperate post about it, since all the pictures and mini audiologs create a sort of virtual walk-with-me. That post is [here].
As I was winding my day down and looking for some sunset beach time, the creeping dread that a run of too much luck can cause in traumatized mind started sneaking it’s little tendrals in, like the shadow hands in Don’t Starve that try to steal your fire.
Back at the hotel, I got served a reel on IG that was equal parts validating and devistating. It described a more specific presentation of c-ptsd that can come from trauma inflicted in infancy to toddler age. It describes me to a T. The only thing I don’t see in myself is a flat affect. My explination is a cold personality is less socially acceptable in women. It comes across as bitchy, which is a hard No if you aren’t conventionally attractive. My tinman suit was crafted for people pleasing, and so we divine and perform the appropriate emotion for the circumstance. But, I don’t think anyone could argue I don’t intellectalize (detogatory).
The way he describes the infant adapting to the rejection was so hauntingly like what I described many months ago, in my intense hip opening – feeling like a seed starting to sprout, but something deep inside me enacting Emergency Protocol: We’ve Spawned into Dangerous Lonely Wintery Hell. You are alone, helpless, laying in the silent snowfall, and the wolves will find you soon. Some internal process was halted, and I was permanently stunted.
I broke down watching this. For so long, I have sat with this personal truth that felt so cruel and ugly to believe without evidence. How can I acuse my own mom of something like that, with nothing more to go on than a feeling that wants to be called a proto-memory. So many times I’ve felt the urge to slip back into warping my reality to protect my mother’s feelings. This….it’s not proof. But it is resonance.
What he said about connection not being safe is perhaps the missing puzzle piece when it comes to understanding why I have been so motivated to do this blog, despite knowing that putting your diary on the internet publicly is not advisable. Essentially, I created a panopticon desensitization chamber. A fishbowl of oneway glass. There was always the POSSIBLITY of perception, but nothing direct. Some deeper part of me knew I was in a catch 22 where my trauma could not be healed without an inherently retraumatizing act – being seen and held emotionally. My lizard brain would veto it before the rest of my mind even knew what was happening. The tinman suit WAS me, and I could no more step out of it than Tony Stark could rip out his heart doo-dah. This was my subconcious’ creative – and somewhat embarrassing- solution.
There was one other important effect of this blog – little by little I have created a self-portrait collage. Within it, I see evidence of Real Robyn peeking through. Somehow, she doesn’t actually look like a horrible monster to me. I kinda…like her. I can’t say many other people do, but I do. I see myself without the mirror of other people’s perception, which was warped beyond belief from my rejection dysphoria.
This realization helps me have more compassion for the inadvisable nature of what I’m doing. I have a very specific, difficult, often invisible trauma that two decades worth of clinical mental health intervention couldn’t scratch the surface of. I had to figure that shit out myself. I don’t know if what I am doing is “right”, but I think it has been good. That’s enough for me, at this point.
>>robyns_ramblings 