jtthomas | Thinking things through

with a knot in my stomach because it's not the first time I've had these thoughts.

Cut for family issues, slight but not urgent mental health stuff, and general confusion.

So I've known for quite a while (um, third grade? I realized recently this started way before I had thought it did) that I really didn't want to live with my family any longer than strictly necessary. At the time, I couldn't tell for the life of me why. I just knew it wasn't working.

But over Thanksgiving break, on Saturday in specific I made a joke to myself that it'd only take two weeks before I was back in the mindset of "it can't be all that bad, you can make it through winter break, at home, without a problem." Would you guess what intrusive thought took hold on Saturday, two weeks since I said it.

This is after I spent a week once back at school constantly misgendering myself mentally and wanting to scream over it. My mom at least understands that the deadname is dead at this point, but my dad can't even comprehend that much, and neither of them gets pronouns at all. I don't have the spoons to try to explain stuff to them, and no printer at home to leave them a convenient how-to sheet. So a week of just screaming mentally, followed by now trying to remind myself that yeah, the home bit of things isn't as cool as it's made out to be. Just gotta get out if I can.

I think what's really scaring me this time is that my prediction time was actually accurate to a t. That's not normal at all for me. Like, I get weird dreams (prophetic? not quite the right-feeling word, is there a different option?) and I'll yell at myself to check the clock / calendar in the dream. And by the time I jolt awake a second after checking the clock / calendar in the dream, the time's out of my head and I forget what date and time to not be in the same place for. But the moment that the real life bit of it happens and I go through with every action from the dream, in the right location, looking around, eyes darting to all the identical places, I remember the time and date I warned myself of the instant before I look at the clock. The worst of them happen when I have no convenient clock or calendar. I have no internal timekeeping mechanism, it seems at this point, and my brain just cannot comprehend what it is supposed to do with a pile of sleepy stuff.

But this is the fourth time in my life that I'm awake when it happens, and every time, it's scarier than the last because I feel like I'm joking with myself when I say it initially but I get this hold of panic on my heart when it hits for real. The first was my grandfather's death, predicted twelve hours in advance to the minute. I can still remember where I was when the prediction happened: Spanish class, basement of the high school, laptop a minute off, laughing because there was no chance I was right. Then there was a dog problem when I couldn't stop thinking about the dog in question for a week beforehand despite having never met it in person, and then a tiny fire on campus when I'd smelled smoke for three days. And this. Yeah, I'm pretty out of it from how startled I am right now. These waking things leave me panicky and it's not fun.