somebody sent me a personal story
   they had maybe shared it a lot; the font changed in the email like it
   could have had a copy paste going on
   it was emotional, it sounded real
   it's been a long time since i've held real emotions
   I feel like crying, reading their story. I barely comprehend that I
   feel like crying.
   feeling well up in me, and reach that break in my mind. it's been a
   long time now, and my body seems to know how to hold feelings a little.
   just a little.
   I know my mind will break if I feel them too much. something that has
   happened so much.
   it's so real.
   I miss life.
   what happened to us is so horrible. but maybe it is just another one of
   those horrors of the world. it can feel like the worst thing ever, the
   most intense thing ever. our brains are capable of holding that such
   things are extreme. but maybe it is just another of those experiences.
   this person, they talked so clearly, they seemed able to hold their
   feelings so fully.
   I miss feelings.
   I used to be a very empathic person, in some ways. I always thought and
   said, when somebody else had a feeling, it would be 3 or 10 time as
   strong to me as feelings of my own. but I was on the autism spectrum, a
   nerd often not attending to others, and I wouldn't always notice other
   people's feelings, despite caring for them so very much. I imagine many
   others have had that experience.
   my feelings guided me throughout my life, and this always seemed to
   work well for me, when I had them. I found that by listening to and
   attending to my feelings, I could help others, that these feelings were
   like a secret way to interconnect with everything, and share deep
   appreciation. sometimes it could seem almost telepathic. but still it
   was hard to move past my selfish habits.
   now with my mind and heart broken in that psychotic, dissociative way,
   no treatment, no understanding, no logs ... things are so different. I
   feel barely human.
   humanity still exists out there, though.
   humanity is so real.
   holding these feelings from this email I received, I don't know what to
   do.
   it used to be you could enter a community -- any community -- and share
   care with people's feelings, and this caringness would grow. a sense of
   connection and trust, and quickly we would be working together on
   things we all cared about.
   this seems no longer the case. my emails to join mailing lists bounce
   until my amnesia around why I am even joining them is stronger than
   much else about them. I post psychotically, disrepute and disrespect
   myself and others. the things I read on this list make little sense to
   me, as the things I post.
   these exchanges from the heart, in this personal email, seem like they
   broke through this effective censorship.
   I have not read an email like that in years.
   I do not expect to read one like that again, for years, but you never
   know.
   Here is one for you. I'm sorry it is shallow. Finding my feelings is
   like fishing determinedly for a lost ring. The largest bass in the
   lake, but rings do not bite very readily.
   honestly being brainwashed makes me want to scream like heck when I try
   to feel about it, and when I consider things like that the screaming
   becomes a way to influence and control me for the parts of me that
   learned to obey. it seems pathetic.
   yet this email I received was shared from a place of hope.
   Hope is something I know and trust very well. I do not believe in real
   failure, real ends. Only short term
   Reincarnation is derivable from the nurture side of "nature vs
   nurture". History repeats itself: so we do, too.
   When I imagine hope for my mind, heart, spirit ... it is not something
   I know readily how to imagine. I also don't often imagine hope for
   those communities we are destroying in our work of sharing right wing
   memes, something I do as well, somewhat subtly. I mean that seriously.
   I know genocide is caused by this work.
   But I imagine strong hope for us, for life, and for things being made
   right in the end. I do not waver in my belief that what is right will
   come through.
   I spoke with a religious teacher once (at a Jain temple) who helped me
   hold hope for my soul.
   I know emotions we share publicly can severely endanger our freedoms. I
   have done this already, and am not scared for myself here.
   If you are going to mind control me with your heart, I would far prefer
   this to the other options.
   Be well.
   Be nourished, and be very well.