Macie A* > Recent Status Updates

“Nothing gets past the person that lives in your house. The person you entrust with your child. The person who spends hours in your home when you’re not there. The person who has access to every room, every drawer, every letter, every inch and every hair on his head.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

“At first she wasn’t sure she could pull it off but she knew that love gives you the power to do all things. So much waited for her in the very near future.”

“It would take time to fully shed the woman’s persona from her being. She was to not only assume her identity, but to physically become the woman. Only now was she realizing how far she had burrowed into the woman’s life. ”

“She had treated clients over the years who suffered from OLD - obsessive love disorder - and she was not so blind as to miss the telltale symptoms of the disorder.”

“Hybristophilia, which was defined as the phenomenon of an individual being sexually aroused by and attracted to a criminal offender.”

“Other online counseling platforms are based around the concept of treating sick patients. We help healthy clients become healthier.”

“He knew too much about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It was a progressive nervous system disease for which there was neither a cure nor any great treatments. Receiving an ALD diagnosis was akin to being handed a death certificate.”

“I find myself mimicking them. My father always said to meet people where they are.”

“Self interest always takes precedence. The people that are supposed to help - that get paid to help - will still choose themselves.”

“This is another time I need to sit still.”

“She wants me to panic and react and give her what she wants but I’m too old for this.”

“The only thing worse than being judged is being dismissed.”

“She always thinks of the nice reason why people do shitty things. It’s like my mom used to say. You want to know if someone’s a bad person? Don’t listen to what they say, don’t think about how they make you feel. Look at what they do.”

“How the abuse she suffered growing up drew her to a controlling kind of husband. It’s hard for her to be open about these things. Seems to have done her good, too, cause now that she speaks about them, she’s not carrying them on her shoulders any longer, hiding who she is.”

“Sometimes I go out to the tree. People know not to bother me there. It’s a little space for myself. Funny thing is, now I have that private place, I don’t feel so inclined to keep my guard up all the time. It’s a slow process, but I’m learning to be more open.”

“With Jo one to be frustrated with, there’s nothing to disguise all the thoughts in my head. Truth is, I swapped out drugs for an addiction to something else. Love. Religion. I never really changed what was underneath. The problem, the hard part, is you. What you become because of it. That mix of hardness & neediness. Pull me close, push me away.”

“Institutionalized sociopathy.. it happens in young or second-generation cult members. People who are still laying down formative emotions. The human mind will adapt to most any situation. If it has to, it will learn not to register so much empathy. IE. Young men in bad neighborhoods, where gangs or the mob are prevalent. It’s survival. You simply have to shut some things down.”

“You can quit thinking I had some black-widow plot or get ahold of the money our husband didn’t have. In case you’d forgotten, the person who paid most of our bills was me. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“But I just can’t do normal. It freaks me out worse than anything. The thing with growing up, with half an eye on danger the whole time, is when the danger goes away, you’re kinda left with nothing. It makes you twitchy. Just got so sick of thinking all the time. About what to look out for, who was gonna come through the freakin door.”

“All that feels like it happened to somebody else now. Like I can’t even get myself to feel how I felt. But you know what I can remember? The drugs. That mad, desperate life where nothing mattered.”

“…withdrawal. When you regularly flush the human brain w/ unnaturally large quantities of chemicals, it takes time to rebalance. Sometimes the rebalancing is never quite complete. You bend the receptors.”
“Some have reported deleterious side effects including severe headaches, involuntary muscle spasms, poor sleep & diminution of cognitive faculties like memory, concentration & decision-making abilities.”

“… your upbringing at the Homestead might have had an effect on your memory. When members take part in a prolonged mediation or prayer. It changes the brain.”
“Constant prayer releases chemicals. It’s a reason why victims stay in cults for so long. They become addicted. A little like drug addicts. There are side effects…”

“I couldn’t even really tell you what I was saying. Only I enjoyed saying it loud. I’m not one for even raising my voice as a rule. Girls are seen but not heard, the way I was raised.”

“When I was a little girl, my mother told me your head is a bunch of boxes. The way to get through hardship is to stay in one box.”

“Compartmentalization. You learned to compartmentalize. It kept you safe.”

“Pretending everything is fine. It’s, like, her superpower.”

“Even weirder than that, she kinda sucks you into it. She’s like a repression tornado, scooping up any feelings in her path.”

“The mind is its own place and in itself it can make a heaven hell and a hell heaven.”

“Each time those moments of hope hurt more.”

“Addiction issues go hand in hand w/ sociopathy. Antisocial personality disorder is a coping mechanism. A way of dealing w/ unbearable events in childhood. Many relentless traumas forced you to adapt. You learned that love was unreliable, that adults were cruel & unpredictable, that healthy emotions only led to pain & suffering. As a child, you had no way of knowing how high the cost of losing your empathy was.”

“Good feelings. Devotional. Satisfaction. Loyalty. You can’t feel those unless you have your own identity.”
“I’m saying you could be a hero. With the right mentality. You could also be a very good villain. It comes down to the choices you make. Whether you believe there are people who genuinely have your best interests at heart or you think you’re on your own. Feelings are hard.”

“The prevailing characteristic of antisocial personality disorder is an absence of a sense of self. Difficult to have feelings about or for other people if you don’t know how you exist separate from them.
For comparison purposes, emotions are like colors and those with antisocial disorders only see black and white.”

“There is nothing inherently wrong with sociopathy. As a person with psychopathic traits, I admire your kind greatly. I was born this way. You were forged. Most people are broken by intolerable trauma. You chose to win. Repurposed yourself not to feel stress. Cauterized the emotions that were causing you problems. What a gift, to surgically alter the entire function of one’s brain.”