u/lookingfortheothers

Hi my lovely, frozen friends.

First of all I want to thank you from the heart for being there for me for years. When I was succumbing to the pain you all were there with love and understanding, and when I needed to prove to myself that the pain wasn't meaningless, you let me give you my love and care in return.

This sub is absolutely magical for what it does. Freeze types don't get a lot of understanding elsewhere, because "just get up and fix it" sounds like such amazing advice to people who don't know.

I'm back because I don't need this sub anymore, and I think it's fitting I try to share with you what I learned on my way out (of permanent freeze). I hope this is allowed despite the creative format. Mods, let me know if I should move it elsewhere!

Rules stories are a popular concept in the horror subs, and who doesn't like a good story? They bypass our regular defenses and let us see a greater light. It's very much a (my) succes story for everyone who is sitting at home feeling hopeless and lost. So with that in mind, here's how I learned the rules that got me out of the dungeon.

the rules are:
1: don't hurt yourself
2 don't hurt others
3: eat, drink, sleep: you're not ascending to godhood
4: you have to fail

the other rules are:

1. you've already felt this
2. you've been here before
3. It was always you and you've already done it.
4. Stay with it. Stay with us. You can do this.

So. To get out of the dungeon, you have to climb the staircase. It's a really bad staircase to climb, and you're going to want to break the rules almost immediately. Don't. Unless it's to follow rule 4, in which case, keep up the good work and see you next time.

We're all sitting here in this dungeon together. People who aren't prisoners keep yelling jeers and insults at us. "hey, why don't you LEAVE" they yell. then they laugh with their friends and go about their business. "Oh my goodddd, look at those losers in the prison!" it goes on and on.

Now, (sadly) they're right in the sense that you could theoretically try to climb the staircase of horrors, if you're willing to first eat yourself. This process is what we usually call things like "healing, becoming more whole, reintegration, therapy, staring the beast in the eyes" etc etc. It involves getting to a place where you can see that you are in fact a human being worthy of leaving the dungeon. It is also called "change"

Change is of course something all humans hate. It's why the assholes yelling at us from the outside keep walking past the dungeon when there's literally a whole world out there they could enjoy instead. It's why they have petty fights with their spouses and why they commit endless small cruelties towards their children and other lessers.

But let's not get distracted by the normals. Smug or not. They're basically not important to us down here, Now. We have to each decide if we are willing to eat an entire person, namely ourselves. It's going to hurt. It's going to suck. It's going to feel really, really bad. You'd have to cry and accept it too. You'd have to look at a child version of yourself dressed up, uncannily accurately, as your abusers, and you'd have to love that child and then swallow it all down. No squeezing your eyes shut and thinking about something else either. You have to accept that you'll do this.

It's doable, though, it is. In fact, it is exactly ONE degree less awful than just sitting in the dungeon. You'll figure that out in alternate rule 1. Most of you have already been there. It's in fact why you felt that alternate rule 2 is familiar. You HAVE been here before, many times. Yes. that is the process.

So let's say you do it. Pretend for a moment. You eat your many selves until you realise you can't immediately find any more, and you're standing here, suddenly out of the chains, able to look around without fear. Good. In a way you've already done it. In another way, no, you haven't. But don't despair. Despair is for people who had better childhoods than yours.

You're ready to start climbing.
(you might have been here before)

As you climb, a new perspective opens. Your heart beats faster. and faster. Sometimes, you get so scared by the unfamiliar feeling that you stumble down the stairs right now, crying and wheezing and discovering a past self that was so, so stressed that they burnt out, at an age where burnout shouldn't be in their vocabulary and probably wasn't. Well, I'll point to rule 4 and remind you that you're on track. Right on track! Now look at the version of you who would rather die than feel stressed again, and love that person so deeply that you can be willing to feel stress on their behalf. Then climb.

Your pulse is racing, but you're good now. It's this climbing, really, it's exhilerating! You reach a little alchove, where an angry man is sitting at his desk. The man hands you a form to fill out. It's all the stuff you haven't had to deal with in the dungeon. Then he hands you another and then five more as you're looking for a pen to get started on the first. Now he's yelling at you and weaving a broom around, something about everyone doing their part, and he keeps handing you shit and this time when you fall down, arms full of folders, you break so many bones that you consider just staying there. At least here on the rock bottom you don't get smashed to soup by gravity.

This one really hurts. I won't lie. Looking at all the selves that failed at even the simplest tasks, that can't even brush their teeth at night, that don't even have a set of clean underwear to change into. Their pain is tough and oppressive. Literal exhaustion. It's like eating a tractor wheel with broken teeth. The yelling from above is much worse here. They think you're gross for being human soup. "Get some bones, asshole" they yell, and you wonder if they ever though about how one might do that. What kind of bones? Does the bone implantation surgey remove the old ones, and how expensive is it?

Still. THEY're the assholes. No actual doubt anymore. Who yells at a bag of human soup? You'll show them. Yes, you will. Because someone else just fell off the stairs, and they're begging you to help them. They are parched, they need water, and you do have some of that. Go get them that water. Get a glass, a cup, an empty tin or get a bottle, get them water. Now!

But there's trickery afoot. There always is. It's you. yeah, it's you lying there, broken and mangled and crushed by an amount of responsibility that no one could face. It's a test. If you can give yourself something to drink, you'll have passed it. Try, what's the worst that can happen? I'm literally asking.

Almost done. You also need a thing to eat. I don't care if it's a dandelion leaf, dog bisquit or a half a jar of old marmelade, you eat something. You do it. Look at that poor person lying there. They can't function if you don't feed them. If it was me lying there, you'd already have gone and come back with something nice. Maybe some bread or similar food along with anything runnier than bread. So do it for yourself this time. I know you can be brave.

Alllllllllmost. It was sort of a trick again. you also need to rest. I know, I know, you've been "resting" for decades here on the dirty floor, and you were so ready to start climbing the horror stairs. Well, my friend, you've been stuck. I'm sorryy to call out out like this, but that's not rest. I won't ask a lot of you, but you won't get further before you do this. Rest like you were floating in a calm, blue ocean on a vacation flyer, like you didn't have complex trauma so bad it's basically killing you. Put on a cartoon or sing a song or lie down and nap, just breathe and imagine imagining resting (that's free) or whatever you would do if you wanted to feel safe on purpose while your body rested.

Now look from the outside at this person doing their best to rest: nervous, guilty twitching around the eyes. A pit in their stomach like they wish they could scream for approximately ten months straight. All those tears they still, STILL! haven't finished crying. Pretend for a moment that you're looking at a friend (because secretly you are). Do you not feel sorry for this friend, who is so tired and exhausted and sad? I know you do. Your empathy is ridiculously large for having survived so much. Poor friend! Let's tell the friend it's okay to rest, no?

Love the friend that is you. Love this person who simply CAN'T right now. Yeah, love them so much they become a part of you. Like a child. Your body, flawed as it might be, is a loving gift from our monkey ancestors, and it likes to feel calm. It would very much like to lie in a pleasant place and eat sweet fruits and to feel joy. Let's put that goal on the list, okay? For the ancestors (not the recent ones, fuck those guys)

Now, when the monkey suit that houses you is ready, is fed, hydrated and rested (even if it's only by a little bit) you get to try again. But this time with intention. A staircase is not just a concept in a story, it's a real thing. Step upon step placed above one another. You'll have to start with the nearest one. the stone it is carved from cold and damp under your naked foot. You'll have to sometimes use your hands to climb, because no one can climb this gigant thing in perfect, bipedal form.

And now you've actually already been climbing for a while. You didn't even really notice. It's going so well. You're flying (get it, entering flight mode?) up these little steps, confident, stronger. All this from nourishment? Magic trick! You walk by the angry man at the desk again. He's got a cart loaded up with papers and junk and cleaning supplies, and he's pushing it down towards you, yelling about what a terrible person you are, but something interesting happens. The monkey flies into a fucking rage and throws the entire cart down, man and all. "Send it by mail, fucker" it yells down at them, stomping up further than you've ever been before.

Now the devil grabs a hold of you. This staircase is easy. Fuck this staircase if it thinks you're going to succumb to the horrors again. You're ready now. You'll sweep as you go! Might as well call your pal from school up too. You'll go TALK to a STRANGER about STUFF! yeah! Unstoppable! What rule 3??

When you wake up, the angry man is attempting to bury you under a cartfull of papers, junk and cleaning supplies. Your head hurts, but on the bright side, nothing seems broken execpt your spirit. You start filling out some forms, then you wash the floor with your tears. Then you go back to the chains and wonder if it's too late to put them back on. Life was simpler when you knew your role. When all you had to do was be miserable on the bottom and no one had seen you fail yet. There's a little crowd gathered at the windows far above. They're cheering at your going to the chains, exchanging money from bets they put on your progress. "Try again," one of them yells while throwing small change at you one at a time. It cuts your skin open every time he hits you. Maybe getting really into some sort of horrific addiction would quiet the bets?

The chains don't fit anymore. Tears fall unbidden from your eyes. All that eating and moving has given your muscles some definition they never had before. You wrap yourself in the chains and fall asleep.

When you wake up, you're nearly halfway up the stairs again. You don't remember starting the climb. Muscle memory? It's pretty far down. Too far to jump. Climb back? But you could also keep going. see where you land..

The staircase swirls around you. You're fully into flight mode now. Bursts of energy soar through you like an entire life of repressed action is trying to catch up to you. Your head spins. If this was a childrens cartoon, we'd be at the part where the main character is loosing themselves to the plot. But you do remember now why you're all the way up here. There's a new order to your thoughts. You remember the friend, you remember the monkey. So against all the rules of children's cartoons, you eat and drink and sleep. You listen too music, you express your thoughts.

And when the monkey yells NO you change direction SO fast. That's what you might call intuition, gut feelings. Instincts.
And when the friend says "can we do this thing, please?" you listen to that too. Because this friend of yours has honestly really seen enough shit, they deserve a little fun.

Now. You do fall back down. Sure. Constantly. But it's routine at this point. The angry man gets placated with a bit of form filling and floor scrubbing. The thousands of stairs actually do feel a little better than sitting in chains, but you also do allow yourself to sleep in them sometimes, just for comfort. Never to stay at rock bottom, but a visit now and then gives you a strange sense of purpose: to leave them behind.

But also also, actually you're getting so f----ng goddamn sick of dumb shitty stairs. Have you not been climbing them forever? Are you supposed to keep f----g climbing or what? You find that the carousel has stopped and the fun and games are gone, and now here you are, no more shitting illusions, just stairs, stairs, stairs. And, what, no one to thank you for climbing them either!?! Why is it always you climbing these fucking stairs????? (I'm sorry reader, my english swearing is boring and tame. I'd attempt to direct translate some better ones, for amusement's sake, but my native swears are mostly devils and cancer...)

Suddenly you're so sick of stairs that you just... step off the edge and fall. Now, you've been climbing for months. This fall will certainly kill you. Versions of you that you've never seen before gather around your falling body. All dead. Grizzly. Varying states of decay. These are all the times you were ready to leave the world behind before. These are all the times your mind broke and fractured under the pressure of life and you did die a little kind of death in your desire to see it all stop.

The youngest one is the worst to look at. You don't remember being this age. You don't remember any one these yous. They are you, but none of them feel like they could exist, There's the person you were when you first understood that you couldn't rely on others. How old is it? Can it even talk yet?

As you fall, by your own, angry choice, you remember rule 1. The one you're breaking. You broke it. And here are these disgusting, broken things, haunting you, looking at you with so much sadness and... what is that in their eyes? It feels like malice.

They look at you like you just gave them a gift.

They look at you like they want to consume you, every single part of you, so that it was all in vain. The monkey stops screaming for a moment and considers a world in which it wont get to leave this dungeon and have fresh fruit. Can monkeys cry?

The friend is sobbing into your shoulder, apologizing for being so weak. For not stopping you. It sounds like it's heart is breaking in real time.

ANd then there is the dead children. The oldest might actually be an adult, but only barely. Theyre reaching for you now. You know that you will die if they touch you. Ironic, isn't it, that you're here BECAUSE you decided that anything, even nothing, was better than the stairs?

Just as you think the thought, you're back on the stairs. The dead are gone. The monkey is screaming in something like relief or shattered trust. The friend seems catatonic. ANd what's that below you on the stairs, just where they're curving out of sight? Is that an eye watching you with hunger? Or.. a snail? Let's say it's a snail, that sounds nicer.

You continue up the stairs, and now you're so close to the exit that you can see the faces of the people who have been yelling insults. They look terrible. Ugly things. You hate them. They've been standing there this whole time having a wonderful time at your expense. ... You could send the monkey after them. Let it rip their faces to shreds. To shreds, you say? You don't. The little snail thing is looking at you, and besides, you're here because you're leaving, not to get thrown back down for bad behavior.

Still. It would be great if they'd leave. Or if they knew that you're currently, out of the kindness off your heart, not sending a ravenous monkey at them.

Two children who look exactly like your abusers are standing above you on the stairs, holding hands like horror-twins and joining in the abuse.

God, you're exhausted. You lie down carefully across a few steps and cry. The onlookers throw trash at you and laugh and yell. Some of them demand that you entertain them. Some of them are trying to make you jump. Most of them are just yelling. A few people walking by see the trash being thrown and assume the window is a trashcan. The garbage covers you like a disgusting blanket, and you take a couple of powernaps there, relishing the familiarity of their abuse. It's going to be hard to fall asleep without all this. Maybe you're already out? Safe and sound in the comfort of their abuse and garbage. It's a lot better than the place you came from, and it's FAMILIAR. It's nicer than your childhood, but it's not an entirely new world.

Choose your own adventure time:

To drift off to sleep and get carried back to where you feel at home on an avalanche of trash, scroll back to the start of this story, then consider reading it again for a comeback.

To face the unknown, which will cost you all kinds of horrors, keep reading

You get up.

You look warily at the horror twins before remembering that you know this one. It's you. You make models of your abusers to try to avoid their worst sides, and now your abusers live on in these little rugrats. It's not really your abusers, it's just kids. You sigh. Smile at them, a little forced, because this is so overdone. "guys, we don't talk like that here."

Two scared little faces peek out under the masks. "We don't?" one asks. The other one starts sobbing. "We've been bad, oh no oh no oh no."

The masks are yelling abuse at everyone and nothing. You hug the kids and remind them that you've all already done this before. The worst, most shameful parts of you are what you're running from, and really, they just need a hug and to be comforted like after a nightmare. The jungians would call this the shadow, but it's really just scared kids. Reminded that they're a dysfunctional coping mechanism who did a very good job protecting everyone at some point, you accept that you carry those with you and everybody integrates all nice. (good thing that this is a story so we don't have to get into all the difficulty of this step, huh?)

You shake the monkey awake, get the friend to their feet and you even go down and pick up the little snail that seems to have gotten stuck in a burger wrapper. You put the snail in a chest pocket, hand the monkey half a banana and start singing a little song about resistance and courage with the friend. Then you resume the climb. You move past the windows, and the room above you feels dark, cold and empty. Still, there's a light somewhere. No direction to it, and it's not even illuminating anything, it's just there.

As you keep walking, the friend and the monkey trail behind. You know they'll continue, but you're feeling so alone now. Nothing to cope with, other than the eating of food, the tasks of everyday life that you're getting ever better at. The drinking some water and the getting some sleep even if it's nightmares. You practice active dreaming and the further you ascend the calmer your nights become. You give yourself frequent breaks (too frequent, the inner critic/angry office man say, but they have no idea about REAL life) to do things that make you feel good, even if it's just by a tiny amount. One day, you literally stop and smell the flowers, then you wonder why people don't do that more, when it's such a commonly available piece of advice. The people who stood at the window know nothing about this. You pity them.

One day while getting yourself the too expensive groceries paid for by your too cheaply valued labor, tired, but not as sad as you used to be, you sit down on a bench or staircase somewhere and look at the clouds before going on home. And it hits you. You really are alive in the world.

You. At this moment. Are alive in this universe. At the same time as everyone else you can find running around. We're... we're all here together? And this is life?

Then you smile at a stranger, who smiles back, and the weight of that moment hits you so hard that-

You wake up at the bottom. The angry man has built a castle out of your failures. But you're the protagonist of this story, so you overcome the depression and you climb the whole entire thing again, because why not at this point? Let's go, who cares! Those flowers were actually worth it. The sound of a pigeon cooing somewhere is inexplicably calling your soul.

Back, after evermore struggles, in the empty, luminous void above the window, you remember the snail. You had put it in your breast pocket and left it there. Feeling remorse, you pull it out and the dark brightness illuminates a perfect little shell. No more snail. Even that is lost here on your thousandth climb. It strikes you as odd wehn you cry for it. The corpse snail of everything you were never allowed to be, of all the ending you didn't meet but longed for to a point where it feels like a loss to be standing here.

Deep inside this darkness, you bury the snail- but it looks like it is it's own little casket now. A seed. You bury it. By your foundation, by your heart.

Goodbye little one.

I'm sorry it was that dark.

The monkey and the friend come tumbling down the staircase towards you in a screaming mess, and you're seriously confused by the metaphors here, who ARE those two anyway? What's the point of all this? Structural dissociation? A trick to make you feel empathy towards yourself? BOTH?? But you don't get to ask that, because they're screaming, yelling about the Big Catastrophe that's coming.

You wipe their eyes and pat them on the head, and you tell them it's okay. That we can just climb some more and at some point something will make sense. (Right?) They come with you, but as they walk past the snail's grave they tremble and sniffle and start talking about how death is coming for us all. You realise then that you no longer crave it. All it took was apparently a few good enough days of looking at clouds and not feeling quite so suffocated by dungeon air and now you'd actually very much like to be alive.

The others scurry upwards, eager to go see all these things you've been talking about, the monkey sings a happy song about how flowers can sometimes mean fruit to come, and the friend want's to find out if clouds could resemble favorite subjects. You watch them, feeling a quiet hopefulness as they leave you to your climbing. If those two dunderheads can enjoy life, then your plan to try the same might be just so crazy that it just might work.

You wonder what that feeling is called, not being accustomed to feeling new feelings and very enthusiastic about the concept, and you decide to name this gratitude. It's good enough to just be grateful about a little, private joy, like watching ants cross a sidewalk or giving yourself an icecube and a fancy straw before sipping your water as you watch a movie before bed. Making your coffee without staring at a phone. You realise you've been finding these little joys everywhere lately as the monkey and friend have helped you discover that you are able to feel safe enough to breathe freely.

just, safe enough.

The darkness glows brighter, and you're beginning to wonder how that is. How you know. You look behind you, but there's nothing there. you look down, and finally, you're blinded by the full force of the sun. It's been you all along. You're the one doing all this. You are...

You are shaking. The ground you stand on is shaking. Something is very, very wrong, and maybe this is the end after all? As you whimper with fear, as the staircase falls away under you, the light grows brighter still, but so does the darkness. A shoot shoots out your spine.

You shake your head. What?

A shoot. Shoots out of. Your spine.

WHAT??

No more questions. The leaves grow out between your brigthly shining ribcage, branches forming above your head, roots anchoring your feet into the cosmos, the world is breathing with you and you are breating with the world. The light is so bright and wonderfull that you almost forget how afraid you are. You feel so small. You feel tiny. You feel like.... a copy of a copy of a copy. Like a thousand exhausted layers of paint on top of something that just became alive again. A face below your face, below a hundred brittle, see through faces like yours, is laughing with love, and joy, and relief. A face much, much bigger than your own, is much more alive than anything you've ever seen and you know what? You're fucking tired, actually. You've been climbing this staircase of 4f responses and learning to regulate, learning to become a person again, you've been doing it since the last one gave up, and the one bfore and the one bef- etc etc. It *is* about structural dissociation, it's been your best strategy, but you're feeling dry, crumbly and old like the layers of the famous onion.

"Oh my god," says the godlike angelcreature that's somehow both below you and all around you. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea I was even real. lol wtf is life."

It stares of into the distance for a moment.

"Flowers, huh? You like em that much?"

You nod weakly. "..and coffee and fun distractions" you manage.

"Yeah." The angelbeast says, nodding along. "I've seen those. Cool. cool."

you want to ask a lot of questions, but you're lying in it's hands and it's SO much nicer than the chains or the garbage. "Can I just take a nap?"

"Oh, shit! Yeah, of course! Uh. yeah. ...Monkeysuit, crazy. wow. yeah. I'll... try it on. You sleep, buddy."

You lie in the soft, friendly darkness and sleep. Finally. The confusion is everpresent, but it feels like you're going to get your answers. At some point a person steps up to you, quietly, with respect in regards to your most holy of naps. There's a kindness to the presence that feels familiar. You feel safe staying where you are, how odd.

"Hey, thanks for running the show for so long," it says in your voice. Well, a voice that sounds like if you never felt like you were drowning in work and papers and fear. "You've been a mask on top of a hundred masks for so long that you've become a person in your own right," your voice says.

"All of you have. It's a mess in here! I might have to find out who likes who so we can put you in groups and let everyone have turns at the wheel. I'm going to make the turns a lot more fun though. OK?"

You remember some of this from your endless nights researching how to escape a metaphorical dungeon. You nod, too sleepy to really care about turns and wheels.

"You want me to call you next time we're smelling flowers?"

You smile and close your eyes. Flowers. Yeah. oh. and: "...movies," you mumble.

There's an impression of an infuriatingly cheerful thumbs up in your space as it leaves. You don't mind, though. Your monkey body is flooded with real life, home grown endorphins from this dead child/snail/tree seed/angel-person who woke up when you saw what you are made of. You make a note of reminding it of rule 3 before you turn around in your impossibly soft, clean bed and sleep some more. You earned it.