numb3r_5ev3n (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
numb3r_5ev3n) wrote2017-04-20 10:07 pm
numb3r_5ev3n) wrote2017-04-20 10:07 pm
Entry tags:
File under "posts I have been meaning to make for a long time."
One of the reason I keep returning to the same fandoms over and over is that my interaction/consumption/fanfic creation around said fandom is like a snapshot of where I was, mentally and emotionally speaking, at that point in my life when they first became important to me - especially before I started blogging.
I used to journal in spirals, but the ones from my late teens/early twenties are mostly either in storage, or lost or gone. And I've gotten to a point in my life when I realize that stuff from my "memory palace" (as it is called in the Silence Of The Lambs/Hannibal mythos) is also getting lost or missing or altered.
Also, it was helping me get through stuff. There were periods of terrible loss in my late teens and early twenties in which I was never able to get back even a semblance of the well-being I had before, ever. I would have the epiphany of, "you know you're still allowed to exist in the way you wanted to, right?" and then I never would.
There are mental snapshots and impressions of the way things were before everything went to hell. Sometimes, I see an edge or an outline of what might have been had things been allowed to proceed in the way I had wanted them to. Part of the problem of being in a co-dependent relationship with a person with borderline personality disorder is that they get to define who you are - and the moment you try and grow or change out of that role, you've suddenly mutated into this frightening thing they don't know, or have become a horrible, evil impostor - someone who is a fair-game target for any vengeance they feel like taking.
And I think back upon my old Buckaroo Banzai fic, for example, and realize how much of that was influenced by the narrative of being someone on the receiving end of that kind of blowout. Because I was, IRL.
So much of it was because I'd been happy for the first time in my life - for the first time in my life - and then I wasn't, again. My childhood was a haze of confusion, humiliation, rage and depression. So when the perfect situation seemingly popped up, and then it all went south, it was like the Universe making a correction. "Oh, excuse me - you weren't supposed to have that. We're taking that back. See here, in the contract? It says right here that you're supposed to be an emotionally isolated, obsessive compulsive rage monster living a life of quiet desperation and self-loathing. So sorry for the mix-up! My bad."
And I still have mental snapshots of the longest period of happiness in my entire life - which I managed to capture, along with the eventual collapse, in my fic at the time.
And I keep going back to those fandoms because I can feel even those snapshots starting to fade.
And I know it probably seems selfish and regressive. "Why do you spend so much time dwelling in the past? Why don't you make new friends and new good memories?" Well, partially because I kept getting pulled back into the same types of cycles with the same types of people for nearly fifteen years after that. I'm in a good place *now*, with good people *now*, but it took twenty years or so. Also, because stuff happened last summer to cause me to re examine a lot of those events and see them in a new light. And because I need a template, a basis for comparison of what "happiness" feels like opposed to the depression that I'm used to. And for most of the other reasons you don't go up to a mentally ill person and go "Why don't you just xxxx?! See, all better!~~~ :D:D:D:D"
But the thing was, I needed to find out how to find my way back on my own, without getting back into the cycle of co-dependency. And my life has been full of people trying to force me into the other half of their co-dependent binary system (or one of several nodes to feed upon.)
It's gotten to the point when I can generally recognize if someone is genuinely interested in me as a person, or as just a bolster for their own ego, playing a role in their own film that they have running in the back of their imaginations - or as a resource that they can drain dry, and string along until I've recovered enough to be useful to them again.
I didn't really mean to go into all of this. I meant to talk about fandom. And how it's gotten me through so much.
I used to journal in spirals, but the ones from my late teens/early twenties are mostly either in storage, or lost or gone. And I've gotten to a point in my life when I realize that stuff from my "memory palace" (as it is called in the Silence Of The Lambs/Hannibal mythos) is also getting lost or missing or altered.
Also, it was helping me get through stuff. There were periods of terrible loss in my late teens and early twenties in which I was never able to get back even a semblance of the well-being I had before, ever. I would have the epiphany of, "you know you're still allowed to exist in the way you wanted to, right?" and then I never would.
There are mental snapshots and impressions of the way things were before everything went to hell. Sometimes, I see an edge or an outline of what might have been had things been allowed to proceed in the way I had wanted them to. Part of the problem of being in a co-dependent relationship with a person with borderline personality disorder is that they get to define who you are - and the moment you try and grow or change out of that role, you've suddenly mutated into this frightening thing they don't know, or have become a horrible, evil impostor - someone who is a fair-game target for any vengeance they feel like taking.
And I think back upon my old Buckaroo Banzai fic, for example, and realize how much of that was influenced by the narrative of being someone on the receiving end of that kind of blowout. Because I was, IRL.
So much of it was because I'd been happy for the first time in my life - for the first time in my life - and then I wasn't, again. My childhood was a haze of confusion, humiliation, rage and depression. So when the perfect situation seemingly popped up, and then it all went south, it was like the Universe making a correction. "Oh, excuse me - you weren't supposed to have that. We're taking that back. See here, in the contract? It says right here that you're supposed to be an emotionally isolated, obsessive compulsive rage monster living a life of quiet desperation and self-loathing. So sorry for the mix-up! My bad."
And I still have mental snapshots of the longest period of happiness in my entire life - which I managed to capture, along with the eventual collapse, in my fic at the time.
And I keep going back to those fandoms because I can feel even those snapshots starting to fade.
And I know it probably seems selfish and regressive. "Why do you spend so much time dwelling in the past? Why don't you make new friends and new good memories?" Well, partially because I kept getting pulled back into the same types of cycles with the same types of people for nearly fifteen years after that. I'm in a good place *now*, with good people *now*, but it took twenty years or so. Also, because stuff happened last summer to cause me to re examine a lot of those events and see them in a new light. And because I need a template, a basis for comparison of what "happiness" feels like opposed to the depression that I'm used to. And for most of the other reasons you don't go up to a mentally ill person and go "Why don't you just xxxx?! See, all better!~~~ :D:D:D:D"
But the thing was, I needed to find out how to find my way back on my own, without getting back into the cycle of co-dependency. And my life has been full of people trying to force me into the other half of their co-dependent binary system (or one of several nodes to feed upon.)
It's gotten to the point when I can generally recognize if someone is genuinely interested in me as a person, or as just a bolster for their own ego, playing a role in their own film that they have running in the back of their imaginations - or as a resource that they can drain dry, and string along until I've recovered enough to be useful to them again.
I didn't really mean to go into all of this. I meant to talk about fandom. And how it's gotten me through so much.