this is going to be a long journal, full of typos, grammatical errors, wrong punctuation and arbitraty capitalization at best. it is also going to be very personal, emotional and intense. i understand if you are not interested, you may skip to the end of the journal or abort reading it entirely. i'm trying to tell my story and it's up to you if you want to read it or not and up to you to decide what to think of it. for i'm going to unload a lot of things that i've come to realise recently, that i've been carrying them around for literally all my life without sharing and processing them. here goes nothing...

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so, introduction is done. what now? where to even start... maybe let's just get to the damn point instead of prancing around, because as you can sense from the attitude and tone in my writing voice, i'm already getting frustrated and agitated even thinking of them, but yes, daddy issues. the clichee and trope that has not only been done to death in media but is almost a meme in itself. but.. the abuse still happened...

i have terrible fear of spiders and insects with thin and long legs. something about those hairy strands wiggling on their own in a jerky way messes with me on a primal level since early childhood. i am fully aware that the only species here that have those long extremities are not only harmless, but couldn't even hurt me with an entire army while i could step on them in their entirety and squash them like a mad and terrible god. but my brain isn't. and since your squishy, stretchy and rubbery queerish boy here isn't exactly what you would call a "manly man", he thought it would be the right way to teach me by holding one of those ugly bastard's corpse into my face, pushing me into a corner. it took me a few weeks until i remembered his face: a smile of joy.

smiling is a bodily response to signalise safety and release tension. "hey, everything is good guys, no need to worry!" i have had trust issues my whole life because a smile to me might have also always be a sign of danger. i feel like i can distinguish a real smile from a fake smile today easily of course. a lot of time has passed. but on some deep level, i'm still that little child in that corner of the room, where this big evil man is smiling while torturing you with fear. the one who was supposed to protect you. if it wasn't for my mother coming into the room and immediately putting a stop to this and scolding him, i don't know how far he would have gone.

other times he told me what to say before his adult friends and family. i was being made to show how well i can do this and that to impress private guests. brought up to be an insufferable bragger and a truly cringeworthy child. another bonus for making friends. and if i didn't perform? well, i distinctly remember several examples but the first one that always comes to mind like an everpresent shadow is how i was asked as a child by some adult friends of my parents while they visited us, why i named my pet turtle "Leonardo". well... can you have a guess why a fucking child in the fucking 90s would name his fucking pet fucking turtle fucking Leonardo? forgive me the vulgarity, but this seemed to me like the appropriate "planes, tranes and automobiles" moment to drop that f-bomb. regardless, my answers were wrong, because if should have spoken about the famous original renaissance man himself to brag about how much i know or whatever he was thinking. what i want is dumb and bad. i should do this to impress people i don't know or care about. again a lesson, internalized from early childhood's vulnerability by someone who's supposed to be your guardian.

the list of examples goes on and on, and if i think deep enough, i'm sure i'll remember even more hurtful things. growing up to realize you're also on a very diverse and weird whatever spectrum, i mean, how would you someone identifying as a rubber lizard that can inflate and stretch infinitely describe when putting it on that sexual spectrum anyway? who feels less like having a clear cut self but a unique soullike substance that is our brain with a body that simply grew around it, if you like it or not. and now we have to make sense of this mess... i don't know what kind of pride flag would fit to me and i don't really care. live and let live has always been a motto that felt 100% right to me to the very core.

"but this has been so long ago, move on." yes,.. and that's where i am at now. after almost four decades on this strange rock in space, i find myself nowhere closer to finding the answers to so many questions. but when i manage to slow down, i can see it from a different view and realize how much time has passed. i don't have to be scared and frustrated anymore at all those things. i need to learn how to trust people more and i also need to learn that not everybody is potentially trying to hurt me. maybe that's why the thought of being helplessly inflated or stretched out while being cuddled and cared for is so appealing. even if i wanted to defend myself or run away, i can't. i have to accept that someone is taking care of me now. it sounds ridiculous on one side, yet it is still the real feeling i'm experiencing. life is indeed strange.

to move on i also have to make amends, because having been trapped in those negative thoughts made me believe i was in the right when i often wasn't. i have hurt some close people over the years, sometimes without even knowing, and i feel terrible about it. if i could, i wish i could tell them i'm sorry. everyone. i don't want to hurt anyone, i don't want to fight. i'm soft and squishy, but i've become hard and brittle.