a destructive habit i've been training myself to abandon is seeking anger with deliberation. in it's less harmful forms this looks like checking AITA all the time or looking for awful Instagram poetry to roll your eyes at. more insidious is seeing an expression of solidarity go viral on twitter and reflexively scoping the replies for naysayers. tossing aside the empowering essence of a message in favor of the hopelessness suggested by the existence of its opposition. for a lot of my life i would do this so reliably that seeing expressions of solidarity on social media would make me sick to my stomach in advance. i didn't even need to see the replies anymore. i merely needed to imagine them.
if i was on Team Suffering i would be giddy hearing that solidarity itself had been robbed of its power on social media. this habit is poisonous. it has to stop.
i still check the exmormon subreddit hourly. i've done this for like 13 years. at the start i leaned on that community for support. but that trauma is processed. the missionaries don't look for me. my family has lost interest in reconverting me. it's like i finished a popsicle a decade back and i'm still sucking on the frayed and splintering stick in case there's still a molecule of juice i haven't tasted yet. it's pointless. i'm addicted to the misery.
