My Story

CW; childhood trauma, suicidal ideation

Years ago I wrote a thing about being a shut-in. I would like to say that everything worked out. I got my life fully on track and everything changed! I now live in a house and I go to expensive therapy twice a month and I have so much good health-care that every day is so pain free and relaxing that I dance in the street and break out into song.

Truth is, it has been a hard road, a road that seems to have ended up back where I started. There were ups, I have traveled, I have interviewed for jobs, I met friends, made new friends, reconnected with old ones. I have conquered massive struggles with mental health. I have uncovered my trauma and then taken steps to heal. There has also been pain, poverty, lost teeth, lack of healthcare, job firings and contract jobs lost, even homelessness.

I find myself in a situation that hasn't changed enough. Life has a way of pulling you back down. If you are poor a lost job can mean you are living out of your van or in your childhood room. If your teeth are going bad and you don't get them filled, the cavities turn to decay, which turn to root canals, which turn to extractions and bone grafts. A series of failed interviews goes from not getting your dream job, to not getting any job, to do I skip phone bill or car insurance?

One problem becomes two problems, and those two problems make it harder to cope with the new problems. Problems are like a big target and the world has a way of pummeling you. It is hard to code when your teeth hurt and there is chaos in the background. And you cant afford coworking space until the project is finished, but you cant finish because your brain is exhausted by the stress. Oh, the fucking stressssssssssssssssss. The stress is the worst.

There have been very dark days. Days spent wondering if I could keep breathing if I should keep living. Lots of days spent wondering "how the fuck did I get here, how is this my life still?!" Poverty and trauma quickly becomes a hole you cant climb out of. There has been no upward class movement here.

These days we all know what it is like to live in isolation. We all know what it is to experience a trauma. We know the pain of going nowhere not because you don't want to but because circumstances outside prevent it. Unfortunately for a lot of us the circumstances of the pandemic, were for a lot of us, the normal.

What is return to normalcy when the pandemic felt like more normal?

I think a lot about who I am to demand more. So many sit on disability waiting for housing, so many live out of their cars. A lack of quality dental care is practically a defining characteristic of lower class in America. Who among us does not know someone with cracks in their teeth. Who does not know someone falling through the cracks.

What audacity and sheer arrogance for me to demand of the world more.

I surely haven't done much to deserve more. In my wake I have left countless failed projects. I have messed up contract jobs so bad that I have been threatened with lawsuits. I have made so many promises to so many people I failed to keep.

The days I failed to deliver on promises were the worst days. I didn't want to disappoint everyone. But invisible disabilities have a way of disappointing everyone. You can be trying your hardest and feel like you have done nothing. It can make the traumas no matter how terrible they were feel like you deserved it. Someone this broken is clearly deserving of the worst.

I have kept one promise. I have stayed alive. I have kept going. I have kept breathing. I have woke up every morning, after the darkest of nights, and did the whole existence thing again.

I cant lie though. I have grown tired of it. It weighs on you for life to stagnate this much. I turned 30 during the pandemic in the same room I have lived in since my teens. Most of the last two decades of my existence in the same spot. A spot where I experienced traumas.

One thing I have learned while healing from trauma is that we tend to internalize that we deserved it somehow. Especially for those whose traumas are shameful. I was molested. I am also queer. I was raised evangelical. I spent the better part of my childhood believing I was evil and broken and that the bad things happened to me because I was broken.

Not being able to meet your basic needs is fundamentally traumatic. You start to internalize after enough fuckups that the traumas were right, that something must be wrong with you. That this continued suffering must be your fault. And people in their discomfort will often re-inforce that. I have been called a loser more times than I can count. The autistic queer who has never had a significant other that still lives at home! How pathetic!

Just like real traumas, the trauma of not meeting your needs becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. Trauma creates trauma which creates more trauma.

Where does self-worth come from when your experiences reinforce the idea that you have no value. Who can experience true healing from traumas when we cant escape their impacts. When no matter how hard we try we cant make a life where our needs are met.

When everything tells you that you have no value you eventually start to believe it. Most days you believe it. Most days the toxic voices will win. Some days though they don't. Some days you'll wake up and say "fuck this. I'm kicking life's butt today". Those days will be enough to keep you going.

For awhile, all I did was remind myself of the stats. They became like a mantra. I would remind myself "1 in 6", "1 in 6". I would tell myself that all traumas are valid and no pain is made not pain by how it happened, or who it happened to. I would remind myself that whatever I am feeling that someone out there was feeling that too. I would find those people. Finding those people -- finding community, that would keep me going.

The narratives we tell ourselves matter. I have been stuck in a story written for me long before I was even born. Stories about uncles that killed themselves and his brother (my father) with his own traumas. Stories about a mother just trying to survive the violence of men. Stories of a step-father horrifically abused; stories he'd remind me of "how I was lucky he wasn't his father". Stories of drug addictions leading to neglectful parenting. Stories of poverty and of people stuck in situations they couldn't handle.

Often stories are hard to face, hard to accept. It took me years to accept my traumas. I had nightmares for most of my childhood. Hallucinations starting in my teens. The night terrors were so bad that I would dread sleeping until well into adulthood. I spent years so paralyzed by the avoidance of trauma that I just wouldn't leave the house. Despite all that, I went well into my 20s convinced the problem was entirely me.

You can write a different story for everything. A deeply traumatized human becomes a deeply depressed human. A person with triggers becomes a person that is unstable, avoidant and has anxiety. I have wrote viralish blog posts that I now cringe to read.

I desperately wanted my story to be one that was different. I just wanted to be the gifted queer kid that made it in tech. I wanted to escape and go to SF. Run a startup, make tech dollars, change the world, be something! I wanted to transition. None of that happened.

All we become are stories in the end. None of us either good or bad, none of us more or less than we are. We are made real through the stories told about us and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives.

There are horrific and painful and sad parts of my story but there are good parts too. There are friendships and hugs. Days where I felt so happy I could cry, and cry I did. Learning to cry, I did that too.

These stories were made possible through the internet. I grew up isolated geographically. A queer giftedish nerdy kid living in pandhandle of Idaho in a tiny town; there weren't many opportunities for friendships. The internet was all I had. Everyone this pandemic learned how real internet friends are.

We used to believe in the power of the web. It used to feel like everything was possible. It used to feel like we could write any story with it. We were gonna build things that changed the world! We were gonna democratize everything and in turn make the society a place where people that never got to write their stories could write one. Stories of success from nothing, stories from hardships, stories of pain turned to joy, stories of changed lives.

For awhile, especially after all the failures, I thought my story was inevitably going to be a dark one. I wasn't destined for anything but living under a bridge or dying jumping off one. At times, like when I found myself living out of my van, it really felt like I was gonna end up exactly there.

The thing about stories, is that we often end up writing what we think should happen rather than what could happen. We tell ourselves we don't matter, so we don't ask for help. We tell ourselves we will never get the dream job so we never apply. We tell ourselves we will never escape poverty or build a better life, so then we don't.

I started to internalize that I deserved more when I realized we all deserve more. Who was I to label myself undeserving and broken when some of the kindest most deserving and wonderful souls I knew were like me. I knew they deserved their basic needs met. I knew they deserved more. If they deserved more, then I had to accept that I did too.

I'm asking the internet for more. I'm asking the internet for a different story. I'm not promising I'll build the next unicorn startup. But I know I will build something. I'm not promising I'll change my life tomorrow. I promise that I will get up and try. That I will write another story.

It is said that what matters for startup funding is not the idea but the founders. Ideas are easy, god knows every smart person has an idea for a crypto or juicer startup. Everyone wants to build something, everyone thinks they can build something that will change the world. Not everyone has a good story though. The best stories start with an underdog. I mean, who thought we'd build all this on JavaScript?! Fucking javascript

I think my story will be a good one. Maybe you'd like to help me tell it?