A strange impulse of memory.

There are sometimes images that can evoke strong reactions in me, no matter how long I go without seeing or remembering them.

I had a moment like that a couple days ago that I wanted to write about, because it actually stunned me for several minutes and stuck with me until I went to bed that day.

[TMI - pretty squicky :/ involves a great deal of talk about vomiting, and some mention of non-consensual sexual fantasies.]

We've been watching Boogiepop Phantom lately, which is a pretty heavy and difficult show to watch. Besides all the separate but converging perspectives, converging at a single moment in time (that 'pillar of light' first seen in the first episode), there's some pretty disturbing imagery and themes that come up.

The show delves a lot into dark urges and desires -- not so twisted as some of my own fantasies, but pretty close. A lot of the characters represented are people who are maladjusted in some way: disdainful of the world or themselves, painfully shy or avoidant, unable to latch onto a reason for existing beyond what pleasure they can get in the moment. And so on. There's just this pervading feeling of hopelessness -- why bother to live, when even the few things you can enjoy are fleeting, and most everyone is too focused on their own needs/survival to care?

Anyway: 6th episode. It's about a girl who died young, whose mother is reminiscing about their relationship. She had to raise her daughter alone after her husband died (I think it was either accident, or serial killer. Forgot which.) The girl, it turns out, was deeply upset by her father's death, but her mother insisted she shouldn't spend too much time crying, and get back to her schoolwork. Because the mother outwardly showed no weakness from the loss, the girl decided stubbornly that she'd follow suit, which led to some damaging psychological results.

At one point she saw her mother with another man, just by chance. She never actually knew the whole story: that to keep her job, so her daughter could keep going to school, her boss was basically coercing her into an improper relationship. All she saw was that her mother seems to have gotten over her father's death, and was already seeking companionship with another man. The scene struck her so deeply that after that, she built an instant revulsion to intimate contact with men.

The revulsion was so deep that she would actually feel sick to her stomach when confronted with it. It happened with a boy she liked who ended up trying to force himself on her, and then later on when she went to a male doctor, who wanted to examine her stomach -- with some obvious sexual innuendo. The latter event horrified her so much she vomited into her hand right in the office.

I've always had this thing about vomiting, since I was young. It's kind of fear, and it's kind of revulsion. I've learned over time to be able to control that spike of emotion, because I don't want to be so terrified by it that I can't function if someone I care about gets sick. Or if I'm in a public bathroom and someone happens to be sick there. Or if it happens during a movie I'm watching with others.

It's just inconvenient to be afraid of it. :P Even more so if I'm the one who's sick. Most of the time, if I can avoid vomiting, I do. I have to be really violently sick to let myself do it, because the thought of doing it is just horrifying to me. Disgusting, too, but I mean... that's relatively normal, I think. No one wants to see the contents of their stomach.

Where does the fear come from? Well, for one, I associate a certain amount of shame with vomiting. That's why it's come up before with Ryshassa -- more than once, actually, when I've fantasized about her abuse. I'd imagine her so revolted by herself she'd just empty her stomach, sometimes during rape, or having flashbacks of it when alone and vulnerable. There's a feeling of release, but also of a profound emptiness... she's vomited out her self-disgust, and afterward becomes pliant, doll-like, unresponsive.

Fear and shame are often very closely related for me. The first memories I have that might have triggered this are all young childhood ones, when I've vomited in inconvenient places and angered my parents for it. My memory is so fuzzy on these, in fact, that I can't remember if it was my dad or my mom or both who got angry.

The first one, I think, was when I puked at the bottom of the stairs, where there's carpet. I couldn't make it to the sink or the toilet, and it was a mess. I was so young then I only really remember the impression that people were displeased with me.

The second is when I was somewhat older (7? 8? Not really sure) and went with my parents to the grocery store. I was sick and I vomited on the street. Someone (again, one or both parents, memory is unsure) was upset at me for not saying I was sick earlier. It started a small scene outside, I think. I remember going into the store feeling desolate that I'd been blamed for being ill.

Since then I could never stand to vomit, or even the sound of someone else doing it. It's like this instinct in me that you're just not *supposed* to, that it's shameful and wrong, disgusting and inconvenient. At the same time, I also have this unfortunate condition to find shameful things attractive at times, which complicates the whole thing further. I suppose it's similar to the kind of degradation that you see in hentai at times, girls forced or coerced into urinating or defecating (fortunately coprophilia is WAY beyond even my worst fantasies, ugh). But it has even more of a squick factor to it because it's only a bodily function you do if you're sick -- whether stomach sick, or bulimia sick, or psychosomatic sick. :/

That whole mix of reactions doesn't happen to me EVERY time I see/hear/experience vomiting, though. It just so happens with this Boogiepop episode that the character doing it was a young girl that looked a lot like I did when I was younger. Not to mention she was also emotionally repressed, as I was at that age, struggling to appear outwardly strong while suffering quietly. So it stunned me for a while -- the instinctive vomiting disgust, my own tangentially related experiences, and the self-degrading thoughts that briefly resulted. Ryshassa, experiencing abuse she cannot help but accept; Ryshassa, vomiting in disgust for having been used and enjoying it.

Having written all this, I want to clarify (again) that by no means do I think this sort of behavior should be encouraged. I mean, the thoughts that I have, the impulse to desire abuse and wallow in degradation... this is sick and wrong. My main impulse in writing about it so openly is because I want to be very open about just how sick it can be when left unchecked. I'm getting better lately at controlling it, but it isn't always so. The hold my past can have on me, the impact of my emotional abuse, is formidable and sometimes difficult to escape. But it must be done, if I care at all about my health, both physical and psychological.

(I will say that Boogiepop Phantom is a very good anime, though. It's not simply a "shock factor" sort of show; it's complex and mature, and makes you think a great deal about what inspires you to live... or die. But that particular part of the show I detailed above tends to trigger me, a fact I tend to forget every time I watch it. :O)