sometimes the words that heal are ones written by people who've never met you, whom you may never know you've met. Sometimes the words that healed me weren't words about me, weren't words by anyone who knew me, sometimes I struggle to write any words at all. Sometimes the echoing silence, the silence heavy with pregnant pauses, means solitude; sometimes it just feels like solitary, like I'm alone amidst the weight. The weight, the hands, the mouth, the words that wandered further than they had any right to.
Sometimes the words that heal are scraped from millions of pieces of text on the internet, molded into exactly what I need to hear by careful prompting
Prompts like: what is my emotional truth?
Responses like: That gap between knowing and feeling is where a lot of the pain is.
Prompts like: Why am I not wrong? Why do I want my feelings to be objectively wrong, evil, incorrect?
Answers like because then I would be able to change it. I wouldn't have to live with this weigh
I know the answer. ChatGPT is only useful if you know the answer. But the gap between knowing and believing, knowing and thinking, knowing and feeling - ChatGPT words fill that gap like glue from a gluestick - just enough to reach through the chaos. The words are unreachable without technology, though I've been writing into a void for a lot longer.I'm writing into a void currently, writing to avoid healing, avoid saying outright what it is I need to heal from, since my idiot self used Facebook to create this Penana account and therefore my real name is tied to everything I write here. So I can say not who hurt me nor how I may someday heal, if I ever do. I hope someday I heal. I hope I'm getting closer, though fear I'm drifting further from where I most want to be.
Sometimes the words that he are just words reminding me other people read my words at all. Comments on my stories, or fanfiction, or poetry. Just proof that I matter outside of my family, outside of the four walls and two cars the majority of my life has been lived in. Messages from my friends also serve as words that heal, at least, when they remember I exist. Which i don't blame anyone for forgetting - I forget I exist half the time, nevermind other people. Those words that I use to forget about my own existence, they heal too. In different ways.
The words I write to forget my own existence heal more, the myriads of words typed in 4thewords, made manifest in monster battles against butterfly-lizards and giant spiders and void monsters and winter Owls and knowledge Owls and glitch creatures and Sibawenese mountain people, and little galatic rams with stars swirling around their heads from knocking themselves into objects to guide others with the stars that swirl around their head when they hit it. Alderbam is the name of that last monster, the one I am currently attempting to Master as I type this. Just to a level one, meaning having battled 10 times. I also often feel like I hurt myself in service of others, albeit less literally. 4thewords is a world far from the one that hurts me, and that too heals me.
Of course real published words also heal me. Words about horror and queer joy and identity, authenticity, the various forms of failure. Words like Tumblr replies and fanfictions about TV shows from five years ago and ones currently airing and I write words words words hoping and praying someone might find some semblance of healing in them, and one high school musical fanfiction did do that for a commenter. That knowledge that I helped heal someone lives rent free, lightens the load my soul still bears, the one that keeps me quiet even here about my problems, that has me hanging up on crisis text lines and confiding in robots and writing fanfiction for every month of the year. My own words ploughed through 2025 - whumpuary, February ficlet challenge, whumps of march, march of pain, angstpril, April showers, Maylancholy...
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