The way you stand there with a piece of chalk in your hand

A strange freedom, a quiz companion, and a left answer

🗓 May 31, 2026: 🗓 

This is Laura from my laptop screen. She was a quiz companion in the “test your knowledge” sections of a training thing. When you get a right answer, she smiles at you.

There was something about her I recognized but couldn’t recall. I kept feeling like I should navigate back to that tab to check on her. While looking at her closer, I actually a little bit thought she was going to start talking to me. I didn’t look away. And in a way I was right. Not long after, I had a sort of daydream about talking to her at my locker in I think 8th or 9th grade. I told her about these strange non-memories I had at that locker.

Later in the daydream, we had migrated like 60 ft down the hallway, and we were talking to a third person. I also felt like she was communicating to me in my mind. It was a story of how she was manipulated in a very similar situation that I experienced 8 years ago.

Later, I wondered if Laura was a personification of my subconscious, and she depicted herself in a similar scenario to help me publicly tell people what happened to me 8 years ago. Like she knew I would tell it if it would help someone else realize they’re not alone or help them tell people what happened to them. Like how you can find strength you didn’t know you had when you’re doing it for someone else.

It kind of reminds me of a story of a mascot I heard on a podcast. The mascot talked about being able to dance and have fun and do all these things in their mascot costume that they didn’t feel comfortable doing as just their regular self. That seems really unrelated now that I’m proofreading this, but I’ll just leave it anyway. I also wrote this: just because something is easy doesn’t mean you’re taking the easy way out.

Side note: I want to share with people how writing all these posts is helping me realize new ideas. I think sharing ideas, especially verbally (even just for speech-to-text), signals to your subconscious that you value it. I've noticed my subconscious sometimes points to parts of what I wrote to look closer, and I discover a new idea. And it turns out to be probably more important than the idea I planned to write about initially. Even if you don't have an idea, you could just write that you want to share an idea but need help remembering one. This doesn't happen for me as often if I only think the thoughts.

Back to the main story. Whether it’s Laura’s actual story or my story or someone else’s story, I think the point is that the story is important, and it’s not a fun thing to write about or put out there that you experienced or fell for. 1️⃣

There’s this other aspect of Laura. In the training I saw her in, it would show her smiling when you got a right answer, which actually did feel encouraging to me. I think it’s important to accept encouragement when it’s actually felt, even if you don’t know why.

Or maybe there’s something you don’t recognize in the moment but realize later. Like the way her arms are so straight at her sides reminds you how your teacher used to sometimes stand like that with a piece of chalk in her hand.

Also, if you accept the encouragement, it’s like you’re communicating to your subconscious that you still value your emotions. And your subconscious might start communicating with you more again because prior to this, maybe it thought you weren’t or couldn’t accept messages or encouragement. Or maybe your subconscious, or at least part of it, never gave up on you and has been sending you messages all along; but maybe they were paired with fear or shame or dread, and you didn’t interpret them as messages, just as scary stuff. 2️⃣

While writing this post, a story started playing in my mind. In the story, some people apparently exploited or abused me while I’ve been in this state of not knowing what reality is. Somehow, they now have to experience what I experienced as some kind of punishment?

There’s this idea of an icky full-circle moment where the survivor (me) is discovered and unknowingly gives her abusers a generous farewell advice instruction manual (this fb post) on how to cope with their new life better than she was able to until just recently. But for some reason I’m still not told what’s going on, and people don’t know how severe this actually is.

Like I don’t want to write about specifics; but hypothetically, if this is actual punishment, then in the society I live in, it’s considered cruel and unusual punishment. I’m getting a scary feeling this is happening right now and I need to stop it.

This is another aspect of the scary thoughts, this sense of sudden urgency, like the bad thing is happening right now and I have to act fast, but there is no action I can take because I don’t know what it is or how to help.

Edit:

Even though the full-circle moment feels icky, it’s like my thought recording has a tendency to have story identifiers like that. I just had an idea right now that real life not requiring story identifiers or structural themes is part of what makes real life the real adventure that it is. It has never needed those things to prop it up, it is its own life force.

I’m wondering if maybe this is a good place to ask for help on how to proceed from here. (Edit: I was specifically attempting to ask my subconscious for help, which I don’t think I’ve done before. While proofreading this, I noticed I didn’t actually write that, though. I just asked for help in general.) 3️⃣

After a brief reprieve, the story starts back up again. My subconscious is comprised of a group of men, allegedly. I allow this continuation of story to just play out (because I don’t know how to stop the thoughts anyway) and not interact with it or involve myself with it.

It’s like the men do seem like they do want to help me and feel like they understand me because they’ve been in my subconscious. So they know the ins and outs of my fears and coping mechanisms and all that stuff. Again, I just sort of let this happen. It’s been going on longer now, and there are more details, which makes it feels more concrete and uncomfortable. 4️⃣

Footnotes from subconscious?

1️⃣ I came back to this spot later to correct something. At first, I thought it was to add that the "fell for" wording wasn't how I felt about my situation from 8 years ago. In that situation, I was scared I really hurt someone's feelings and would have accepted whatever manipulation if it meant I could communicate to them what the misunderstanding was. I had so much guilt but also didn't even know if the situation was real or not. 

The "fell for" wording is signaling a lower-severity version of the event where no one's feeling are hurt, which is really the only severity level I can think of where someone can "fall for" a manipulation tactic, since at higher levels, it doesn't matter. When I wrote that sentence, I was optimistic that the version of my story people could relate to would be a lower-severity version. 

I think it's good to consider alternatives to why you brought yourself back to a certain passage or idea to correct something. Maybe it's not the obvious thing.

2️⃣ I think with stories, people are used to looking for "full circles" with past ideas. Like the idea that a single thought could come from multiple sources. In a personified scenario, maybe my subconscious sent me the same thought at the same time that other sources were sending me that thought. So it just looked like a single thought. And it completes the circle because the idea was foreshadowed earlier.

I have this strange freedom right now where I don't have to accept any idea I don't want to. All these thoughts are up to interpretation right now. Like literally everything in reality (that I'm capable of thinking of?) is up to interpretation because I have no idea what's going on. Also, maybe this is exactly what was supposed to happen and there's not actually any problems or misunderstandings.

3️⃣ I felt a connection or a presence of some kind, and I felt safe for a little while.

4️⃣ I feel like my subconscious reminds me that I would never have to be okay with that idea. I don't have to be okay with anything I don't want to be okay with. My subconscious reminds me to take a step back and realize that sometimes allowing thoughts to happen can feel very similar to allowing the situation to happen (the situation that the thoughts are about).

To date, I haven't found a way to stop the thoughts from happening. Maybe if I just started screaming as loud as possible for as long as possible, it would drown the thoughts out during my scream. But in my experience, they just pick right back up again.

My subconscious reminds me that all I'm doing is allowing the thoughts to happen in the background while I'm doing my own thing, trying to live my life. This does not equal consent. I am not giving my consent to accept any of the content within the thoughts. I have NEVER given consent to any thought (that I'm aware of?)

I feel like I've always been aware of that, but it's strange how much I need to actually be consciously reminded. Like it's such an obvious thing, but when it's happening to you, it doesn't feel obvious. For me, it's just survival, no living, no thriving. I get pulled into a walking lifelessness that I do not consent to. I don't know how to stop it.

The story actually stopped after I wrote about that. Just to clarify, the intrusive thoughts didn't stop. I'm adding this last paragraph hours later, and the intrusive thoughts are definitely still there. But I think that was the first time a story abruptly ended like that. I don't know for sure if it was the first time, because there's probably a lot a don't remember over the years, but I can't think of a single time that happened.