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Minor freak out over the word "Caedromantic."


Honey_Badger

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Honey_Badger

Okay. Hi, I'm Badger -

(This is where you mumble "Hi, Badger,")

And I've had PTSD since I was nine, so this is going to be a tough one. For, uh, reasons too long to fully explain, I went from "I'm a late bloomer," to "I'm ace and therefore can't be aro too because that's too many things wrong with me," to "I'm ace but I obviously can't be aro because I have C-PTSD," to "well I was probably Aro-Ace before that, so..." and then tonight I stumbled on the word caedromantic (the feeling that you're unable to do romance because of trauma,) which... I don't know, guys. On the one hand, there is a definite feeling for me that my PTSD keeps cropping up and making it impossible to have whatever a normal life looks like for somebody who's Aromantic, Asexual and mildly obsessed with writing mysteries.

But on the other hand... I'm not sure how I feel about the idea that another part of me was taken away. Not that I don't deal with that lingering doubt anyway.

I want a partner. I want to watch really terrible movies with someone. I want to get up at night and be able to hear someone else in the house. I want someone who won't abandon me the moment they get a chance at romance. I don't know if it's that I want to be part of a family of two, or if it's something else, but I have always wanted a permanent best friend, someone who understands me more than anyone else and even accepts my weirdness. I want a Watson. I have always been this lonely in my soul.

But the person who I thought would be that to me? That person destroyed my childhood. He psychogically and emotionally tortured me for almost nine years. To this day I am sometimes afraid that he will find me and kill me like he said he would. And I don't know if I can ever really have the thing I really want, because I don't know if I can ever trust someone enough, again, to hand them the keys to my soul.

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Dodecahedron314

*hugs Badger* I can't say that I know what it feels like to be in your situation--of course I don't, I haven't been through the same things you have. As such, there's no way I can tell you what's the right or wrong way for you to identify--and neither can anyone else, for that matter. You've been on AVEN for a while (longer than I have judging by your post count), so you already know that. So, this post won't be me suggesting identities or offering reassurance specifically on PTSD, or even on relationships in general, because I'm just not qualified for that.

Instead, it's just going to be me saying that there's hope. I can't say how I know that, or how it will manifest, only that there's always a possibility for things to get better. Recovery from anything takes a lot of time--that's just the nature of the beast, as it were. The rebuilding process takes time, and sometimes that process will look like some demented IKEA bookshelf where you can't even tell if some of the parts they're talking about in the exceedingly cryptic instructions were included in the box in the first place. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't--but one way or another, you'll have your bookshelf in the end, even if you have to go about it a bit differently than the instructions say.

I don't know if that extremely weird metaphor helped any, but in any case, keep on keeping on. It's entirely possible that you might find that hex wrench in the strangest place. :cake:

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