I love bugs. Most people think of them as these scary, disgusting things that are lower than animals, even if
they belong to that kingdom. But to me, they're endearing. I obsess over them. I feel bad killing the clothing
moths that eat away at my closet. I stop to admire the June beetles who fly erratically into stairs, windows,
and other man-made monoliths, no doubt damaging themselves in the process. And sometimes I see kissing bugs.
They're very beautifully colored, black and red. My favorite color combination. This color combination is meant
to signal danger in the animal kingdom, but the kissing beetle on its own is relatively harmless to predators.
They don't have venom. But they do feed on blood, human blood, and where they bite they leave itchy bumps. This
is what makes these bugs some of the deadliest insects in the world. If you give into your natural instincts to
itch this bump, you're putting yourself at risk of rubbing the insect's waste into the scratched skin, which
carries the deadly parasite responsible for chagas disease. If left untreated, years down the line, you could
succumb to heart failure due to complications from the parasitic infection. But still, I can't help but think
these bugs are beautiful. They don't know they carry this parasite. They just want to live.
I learned
how to type when I was 4. I don't think I can remember a life where I wasn't online. I've probably met so many
people online, that I think by the time I hit the double digits, I had already spoken to and made more
meaningful connections with other 8 year olds online than I had in my personal life. Being homeschooled didn't
help much in that regard either. All things considered, I was lucky that it wasn't until I was 11 that I had my
first severely traumatizing online relationship. Of course, where else would this have happened besides Discord?
Our conversations moved to Snapchat too, after a time. He was 3 years older than me. I was still in elementary
school while he was a freshman in highschool. It's been a while, so I can't remember a lot of the details. I
remember sending him lots of photos of myself. I remember my parents restricting my phone access because I would
stay up until 3 AM regularly trying to convince him not to hurt himself. I remember when he forced me to jerk
off on call for him to convince him not to kill himself. I remember when I opened up to him about what I was
into, and he called me a horrible person for having noncon fantasies. Funny how that works. I remembered when we
broke up because I started to get really into my online roleplay group. It took until the next year for me to
realize that the 9 months of obvious guilt tripping, emotional abuse, and sexual coercion was anything to be
concerned about. I remembered ratting him out in his server and leaving after he called me attention seeking for
coming out as trans.
For a while, I would go back to our conversations, reading them over and over and over
again... I need to keep rereading them or I might forget. I need to hold onto the memories. I'm not sure if this
is a form of self harm, or preventing myself from becoming emotionally numb, or what. I don't know. I just know
that pretty recently, Discord removed DM conversation archives with deleted accounts. The 9 months of
conversation between us were wiped. I deleted all of our Snapchat conversations a bit after I turned 13, in a
desperate fit to cover up anything that I had happen to me when I was still going through the worst of the
aftermath. I need to scratch the itch.
One of the last things he ever sent me was a message apologizing for
hurting me. That he said he's sorry for the fact that he's probably permanently irreversibly damaged my
psychology. I have never told anybody this. These words are the first to contain this fragment of my personal
history. I don't think he ever intended to hurt me, but there was a subconscious loneliness that drove him to go
to such extremes to get what he wanted from me. We thought it was love, but it was probably more primal beneath
the surface. It was just feeding. Feeding that desperate urge to be loved, feel like someone understands you.
Completely unaware in the moment that with that action, you were changing my life irreversibly. Twisting my
brain's neurons, leaving me with a permanent melancholy that hasn't left me 7 years later.
But still, even
after that, I've found myself repeating this pattern. Maybe there's something that attracts me to these people
who seem so hurt and outcasted by the rest of the world. Sometimes they end up being sweet people. Sometimes
they bite. I've been through so many partners since then, I think the count is nearing 20, but I've lost the
exact count... I somehow keep finding myself with people who will sit there and put me through absurd amounts of
emotional distress. Once a week I'll have to talk them down from hurting themselves, or out of suicide, or I
have to watch my every word in case I've accidentally caught them in a mental slump and something I could say
unthinkingly will set them off. Relationships degrade into nothing but emotional outbursts and endless sexual
pestering, and I still go back. I go back to them. When we finally block each other, I go to someone else just
like them. I keep itching. I keep itching that fucking bite. I know I shouldn't, I know I should stay away from
those bugs, but I want to help them. I want them to be appreciated. But they keep biting me. And it's killing
me, but I know they don't mean to hurt me. They just need to be loved. We all need to be loved. I just wish it
didn't end like this. I keep itching. I keep itching. I keep itching. Why can't I stop itching?