That Very Quinn has Moved @ThatVeryQuinn@witches.town

I hurt someone's feelings in the process of explaining that, at the very least, I don't feel feelings the same way other people do.

Well. I fucked up.

My therapist insists that this is all ptsd stuff.

She's trying to get me to start an emotion journal, and to compare how I feel to something readily accessible to better understand and pinpoint them.

I oftentimes wonder if I'm not a very clever facsimile of a human. I'm good at playing emotions. I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about what happiness or sadness feel like.

I can describe physical sensations though. Knots in my stomach belie a discomfort, perhaps even worry. I don't know what I'm getting at.

I also frequently wonder how capable I am of lying, manipulating and hurting people. People insist I am a bad liar. Or that I empathize too much to manipulate or hurt people. I'm not so sure.

Empathy is sticky. I don't get caught up in it the way people insist I do.

I am very good at playing normal.

Saw Thoroughbreads tonight. Great movie. Has me musing on emotions, or rather my conspicuous difficulty with them, however.

She has me lend my bed to her boyfriend for a weekend. They pop the inflatable mattress I'd been sleeping on for half a year. I sleep on the couch for a week.

Things dissolve when she finds another bright and shiny person to latch onto. I worsen in BPD symptoms. We break up.

I still don't know if she was poly. I still want to reach back out. I still feel a need, an emptiness where she took something.

I still need to know she's a failure to get along in life.

I still have a hard time admitting that what she did was wrong.

I don't know. That's not nearly all of what she did. I'm done now.

She teaches me that I am a natural bottom. I learn I can take almost a whole fist with no lube.

I learn this in 10 seconds.

She convinces me that I can't be trans because I use my penis during sex. I go back into the closet because that makes sense.

She assumes the role of domme. I assume the role of sub. I learn that I'm too loose to go walking for a mile with a plug in my ass.

My symptoms get worse. She notices. She uses it against me. I learn that BPD is evil and nasty and since I am not evil and nasty it can't possibly be me.

Our first sexual encounter takes place that night.

I say I'm not sure I want to do this. She looms over me, "Do you trust me?"

"I don't know."

Repeat it a few times. I relent.

I assume she feels good. I don't. But I'm happy for the attention.

Over time she gets it in her mind that I should move into her apartment, so she single handedly kicks out her other roommate. I'm happy to have a friend.

She has a boyfriend. She insists she's poly. I'm still happy to have a friend. She talks about maybe having a threesome with him. I happily agree, thanking God it never happens.

Then at 19.

I'm 19, I'm out, I'm trans, and I meet Laura. Laura's 23. We meet in a social anxiety therapy group (RED FLASHING LIGHTS). She is incredibly well read, well lived and very interesting. I am... 19. And so emotionally wilting that I spend most of my time in the group watching everyone else talk.

She befriends me quickly.

Within a week or two, we are fast friends. Around this time, she tells me that, to her, a sexual relationship is the purest, highest form of friendship. She complains about how a pair of her other friends declined and they haven't been talking much since (RED FLASHING LIGHTS).

I don't remember much of anything up to the age of 14, so there's a good start.

Then at 14, my first solid memories are of dating a woman 4 years my senior (18), out of desperation for positive emotional attention. Thankfully no sex happened.

Flash forward a few years, I dated a girl my age whose mother treated me like I was a potential rapist. Didn't last long.

Another year or so, I'm 17 and coming out to myself, and in college, I date a 23 year old woman for a week and she lies to me about damn near everything about her. Doesn't last long.

I just. I have a long history of fucked up relationships with women, both platonic and otherwise.

Maybe it's because I don't spend time with basically any men, but while I know they're trash intuitively , I just, I guess I haven't internalized it as much.

And even more, nobody gets why I'm friends with that guy still, despite him being about one of the only people who reviles her (one of my abusers) as much as I do for what she did to me.

Because nobody takes my sexual and emotional abuse nearly as seriously as the guy who spit in my face once and that really bothers me. It makes it difficult to come to terms with.

Like, haha yeah men are trash but I would love it if we could all take a moment to reflect upon this pedestal we put women on and how it affects the people who have been hurt by women.

I'm remembering this time I hung out with this girl. We had like, one sexual encounter that was kinda meh but she invited me to a friend's party, so I went.

She straight up forced a kiss on me in public and it was super fucking gross and I keep coming back to it and thinking, "it was only a kiss and it was just awkward. Not that bad a thing."

Is that weird?

Basically whenever a cis man asks if I'm a bottom or top I can say with 100% certainty he wants me to put my dick in him and I am 100% not into it.

Cis dude at the beginning of a conversation: So are you a top or a bottom?

Me: Uhhhhhhhh, no.

Trans girl at the beginng of a conversation: So are you a top or a bottom?

Me: 😍 Versatile 😍

It is in fact, not that deep, but its important to me, nonetheless.

Seriously though the intro to Alive 2007 kills me all the time, with the back and forth "Robot" "Human"

That's kind of why the recognition that I am, in fact, human, is such a vital part to my recovery from trauma that I'm including a line from a song by Daft Punk in my back piece.