#processingtrauma — Public Fediverse posts

I think I’m starting to figure out why I’m so reserved/”cold” emotionally.

When I was a teenager, like 13-15, I was a HOPELESS romantic. I would write fully fledged, and ultimately fully produced and orchestrated songs for my crushes and create massive works of art across a variety of mediums that took months, sometimes years, to complete, at an age when most boys couldn’t be arsed to get a girl flowers unless their mothers or sisters prompted them, ESPECIALLY if that girl scared them shitless.

And I was intense about this art. If someone inspired a piece, they’d probably end up knowing. I was intense about EVERYTHING. I was often the teachers’ favorite, I knew the answers to most questions, I HAD done the homework, I had an excellent memory, and I wasn’t afraid to kick anyone’s ass if and when it came time for trivia in almost any subject. I was a pompous dick about it, too 🤣 I was gonna win by a mile and I knew it. I wasn’t the type of person in high school that guys wanted to date. Be friends with, if they were daring, but not date.

The transition from hopeless romantic to cynic came at about age 16-17 after endless rejections and being told to tone myself down over and over. I began to hate my happy, romantic side. After one final diplomatic rejection from the guy I had written “My Island” about and being told to tone myself down one final time, I marched into my long term hairstylist’s office as soon as she was free and told her to cut all my damn hair off and give me the pixie cut I’d desperately wanted since my headmate Castor had cut our hair short like that when he was 10. I buried the rest of my sentimentality with that haircut, too, and started playing my cards close to my chest.

I still wrote huge things for my crushes, but that, too, stopped after I wrote my album The Places We Come Home To in 2018 for my first husband when I was 20.

I hated it so viscerally that it took two years to release a proper follow-up to it, Light on the Final Day, and I had written that record a few months BEFORE most of Places ever occurred to me.

It would take nearly three years after that for us to release any kind of proper follow-up to Light on the Final Day, something broke in me so badly. And it wasn’t even really me that wrote any of it, Metacognition (2023) is Eight’s masterpiece.

And for someone used to writing and recording several records a YEAR, this devastated me.

It’s taken being in several lovely partnerships to get me to uncover a FRACTION of that sentimentality. I still really can’t write happy things without cringing or feeling sick, but I’m getting there. I’m immensely grateful for their patience while I unfuck myself.

-Allēna

I think I’m starting to figure out why I’m so reserved/”cold” emotionally.

When I was a teenager, like 13-15, I was a HOPELESS romantic. I would write fully fledged, and ultimately fully produced and orchestrated songs for my crushes and create massive works of art across a variety of mediums that took months, sometimes years, to complete, at an age when most boys couldn’t be arsed to get a girl flowers unless their mothers or sisters prompted them, ESPECIALLY if that girl scared them shitless.

And I was intense about this art. If someone inspired a piece, they’d probably end up knowing. I was intense about EVERYTHING. I was often the teachers’ favorite, I knew the answers to most questions, I HAD done the homework, I had an excellent memory, and I wasn’t afraid to kick anyone’s ass if and when it came time for trivia in almost any subject. I was a pompous dick about it, too 🤣 I was gonna win by a mile and I knew it. I wasn’t the type of person in high school that guys wanted to date. Be friends with, if they were daring, but not date.

The transition from hopeless romantic to cynic came at about age 16-17 after endless rejections and being told to tone myself down over and over. I began to hate my happy, romantic side. After one final diplomatic rejection from the guy I had written “My Island” about and being told to tone myself down one final time, I marched into my long term hairstylist’s office as soon as she was free and told her to cut all my damn hair off and give me the pixie cut I’d desperately wanted since my headmate Castor had cut our hair short like that when he was 10. I buried the rest of my sentimentality with that haircut, too, and started playing my cards close to my chest.

I still wrote huge things for my crushes, but that, too, stopped after I wrote my album The Places We Come Home To in 2018 for my first husband when I was 20.

I hated it so viscerally that it took two years to release a proper follow-up to it, Light on the Final Day, and I had written that record a few months BEFORE most of Places ever occurred to me.

It would take nearly three years after that for us to release any kind of proper follow-up to Light on the Final Day, something broke in me so badly. And it wasn’t even really me that wrote any of it, Metacognition (2023) is Eight’s masterpiece.

And for someone used to writing and recording several records a YEAR, this devastated me.

It’s taken being in several lovely partnerships to get me to uncover a FRACTION of that sentimentality. I still really can’t write happy things without cringing or feeling sick, but I’m getting there. I’m immensely grateful for their patience while I unfuck myself.

-Allēna

Hi, I (Allēna) am back in front and low-key panicking…

I know that the people who know me will probably be like “what else is new” but I’ve honestly been so hung up on the fact that it’s been ten years since Xavier died this month that I forgot that all of the albums that I wrote and recorded in the wake of losing him will also be turning 10 as well until I saw a video of my Painter Guy headmate playing my arrangement of “Heroes” by David Bowie on a piano he found in the hospital we go to??? So that’s kinda fucking me up.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUvyJXxl9de/?igsh=MWFlYTdtcTY4MnJkZQ==

I honestly didn’t think I would live this long. I know a lot of people when I was 18-19 certainly didn’t think I would live this long (I was a hot fuckin mess and it took me years to get out of that tailspin) so while I’m none too happy about having to figure out how to promote a metric fuckton of albums on what is soon to be the ten year anniversary of their release, I am also trying to be compassionate toward tiny grieving past Lēna and keep in mind that I didn’t have a blessed clue that I would live to see 28-29, my depression was so goddamn bad and I was constantly trying to blot myself off the face of the Earth and writing albums instead of doing worse dumb shit. As badly as I want to go back and kick Past Lēna and to some extent, Past Eight in the ‘nads for writing and recording music like they were running out of time in 2016-17, they really didn’t know what the fuck else to do and had just lost Xavier. So I can’t really be all that angry. That being said, a bitch is fucking tired and I don’t have anything close to a promotion strategy for any of this shit. I don’t even have regular access to a piano anymore.

So yeah. There is all of that to contend with.

Wish me mother fucking luck.

-Allēna

“salvo ii”

last night I made you a promise 
of a spiral staircase worth walking down 
a poetically just sort of kick to the chest -

your heart nearly stops on a good day
screaming odd time flutters when you're distressed 
well, I've got some words 
that will keep it pounding 
right from the box I keep 
locked tight in my head 

I don't know why I love you anymore
I'm just as much a prisoner of the emotion 
as I am a prisoner here 
the confusing as fuck 
fact of the matter is, I 
just do 
I feel like less than half the person
than I did three years ago when this 
began 
and the time has come for me to 
break these unseen chains for the last time 

and I don't know what keeps me from exploding 
spite, sheer force of will, practice, 
compartmentalization?
you say you want better for me, then deliver
if you can
otherwise I'm no better off than I was
with the manipulative would be jailers 
that attempted to control me before

so sit with this, torture yourself like I know you will
when you see it
let it burn a hole clean through 
and simultaneously cauterize 
what's left of your mind
I don't fight with guns, fists, or steel
I fight with words and the silences between them
and win 
and frankly 
that's much worse

-Allēna 10/23/2025

#anger #angryPoetry #cptsd #depersonalization #derealization #domesticViolenceAwarenessMonth #Processing #processingTrauma #reactiveAbuse #sadPoetry

Well, I had therapy yesterday…

this session actually felt productive.

I’ve been wondering for a long ass time why I write the way that I do. It feels like I’m possessed much of the time. Once I start on a project, I find it very difficult to stop, and if I’m not working on a project, even if there is no specific creative urge, it induces paralyzing anxiety. I feel like I constantly have to be working on something or else I feel like I go (more) insane, start climbing the walls, what have you. I’m a perfectionist about my work, too – if it’s not up to a very high bar that LITERALLY NO ONE ON EARTH is holding me to but myself, I panic and find it very difficult to share it.

I’m also VERY rigid in other areas of my life. I am severely anxious about a lot. I have a damn near pathological need to know as much as possible, especially if it might possibly involve me, no matter how mentally taxing learning all of this information might be day in and day out. I feel like I have to know. Additionally, I feel like I have to be doing something about what I know, lest the doomspirals begin in that way, as well. I hold people to very, very high standards as well because if they fall short, it makes me VERY anxious, like my life could fall apart at any moment, someone could get hurt, etc..

I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. We all have.

I talked with my therapist about much of this yesterday and he said that it sounded like I was describing obsessive-compulsive disorder. Initially he recommended seeing a psychiatrist about it, but I reminded him that due to my trauma with all of that (see: all of my posts about my mother DIYing MKULTRA with psych meds, etc.) and the fact that while it does suck to create this way, writing and creativity is my lifeline. I don’t know what I would do without it, and I am processing a lot of my trauma when I write. So ultimately we determined that that probably wasn’t the best idea since it wasn’t necessarily harming me and in fact doing more good at this point in time.

So, that’s my confession for you all. I quite likely have OCD and it’s the root of much of my creativity, perfectionism, and a whole lot of other shit. It feels less like a death sentence to admit that than I thought it would.

Until tomorrow (or the doomspirals will get me, haha),

-Allēna

#MadStudies #mentalHealth #OCD #processingTrauma #therapy #tragicBackstory

Well, I had therapy yesterday…

this session actually felt productive.

I’ve been wondering for a long ass time why I write the way that I do. It feels like I’m possessed much of the time. Once I start on a project, I find it very difficult to stop, and if I’m not working on a project, even if there is no specific creative urge, it induces paralyzing anxiety. I feel like I constantly have to be working on something or else I feel like I go (more) insane, start climbing the walls, what have you. I’m a perfectionist about my work, too – if it’s not up to a very high bar that LITERALLY NO ONE ON EARTH is holding me to but myself, I panic and find it very difficult to share it.

I’m also VERY rigid in other areas of my life. I am severely anxious about a lot. I have a damn near pathological need to know as much as possible, especially if it might possibly involve me, no matter how mentally taxing learning all of this information might be day in and day out. I feel like I have to know. Additionally, I feel like I have to be doing something about what I know, lest the doomspirals begin in that way, as well. I hold people to very, very high standards as well because if they fall short, it makes me VERY anxious, like my life could fall apart at any moment, someone could get hurt, etc..

I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. We all have.

I talked with my therapist about much of this yesterday and he said that it sounded like I was describing obsessive-compulsive disorder. Initially he recommended seeing a psychiatrist about it, but I reminded him that due to my trauma with all of that (see: all of my posts about my mother DIYing MKULTRA with psych meds, etc.) and the fact that while it does suck to create this way, writing and creativity is my lifeline. I don’t know what I would do without it, and I am processing a lot of my trauma when I write. So ultimately we determined that that probably wasn’t the best idea since it wasn’t necessarily harming me and in fact doing more good at this point in time.

So, that’s my confession for you all. I quite likely have OCD and it’s the root of much of my creativity, perfectionism, and a whole lot of other shit. It feels less like a death sentence to admit that than I thought it would.

Until tomorrow (or the doomspirals will get me, haha),

-Allēna

#MadStudies #mentalHealth #OCD #processingTrauma #therapy #tragicBackstory

y’all get a two for one special tonight. this one’s called “queer pressure”.

after careful consideration, i have determined

that i didn’t know what it was like to put space between the 
world and me, so i held everything and everyone at
an artificial distance while seeing too close, held everything
i ever earned in a vise grip and let myself slip into
the grip of my vices

i stared into the void so long that it blinked before i did 
and then i mistook the deep nothing of it for your eyes
until there was nothing left but a deep, deep hole

here’s the thing about an addiction, though -
admitting you have it is the first step toward vindication

-Allēna 8/2/2025

#cptsd #gay #lgbtqia #nonbinary #processingtrauma #queer #queerpoet #recoveringaddict #trans #transgender #transmasc

y’all get a two for one special tonight. this one’s called “queer pressure”.

after careful consideration, i have determined

that i didn’t know what it was like to put space between the 
world and me, so i held everything and everyone at
an artificial distance while seeing too close, held everything
i ever earned in a vise grip and let myself slip into
the grip of my vices

i stared into the void so long that it blinked before i did 
and then i mistook the deep nothing of it for your eyes
until there was nothing left but a deep, deep hole

here’s the thing about an addiction, though -
admitting you have it is the first step toward vindication

-Allēna 8/2/2025

#cptsd #gay #lgbtqia #nonbinary #processingtrauma #queer #queerpoet #recoveringaddict #trans #transgender #transmasc