Click here to support PTSDog: Healing for Kace by Kace Alexander

Click here to support PTSDog: Healing for Kace by Kace Alexander

This is a face of invisible disability. My name is Kace. I also go by K. C. Alexander, an author of SF/F. I'm a genderqueer human being (occasional outer god) that struggles with cyclical depression. I have always had traces of depression, but as time passed, they got worse and worse.

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Some updates are good ones. Some are just...buddy checks for the soul, I suppose.

You're probably very much aware of the recent political news. Most are talking about it—some in the frame of calling out the violent behavior, some excusing the whole thing as "just talk". I don't have much to say on the subject itself. Most genuinely good people will understand the right side of this one.

What I can do is talk a little bit about what this whole thing means to me—a victim of past trauma, a survivor of suicidal depression, a fighter for self-worth.

When I look at social media, at the news, at messages from opinion-havers, my susceptibility to deeply embedded memories means I can't help but put myself in the place of the ubiquitous "women". The victim. "Them". I hear not that "they" are possessions, prizes, things to be owned and trained and discarded, but that I am. That I am here in this society to be grabbed by the pussy, that I am here to be fondled by men at will, that I exist to be the sacrificial lamb to sate the wolves.

I don't see anybody's face but mine in that moment. I listen to people talk about who normal it is for men to talk about raping me. Groping me. Claiming me. Owning me. Not them. Me.

Which isn't to say I am not aware that this goes beyond me. That millions of women, binary, cis, and otherwise, are in this position.

But that's logic and empathy talking, and in that space, all I've got going for me is fear and survival.

I don't want to be raped. I don't want to be fondled. I don't want to be claimed or owned. I don't want to be molded, to be encouraged to look strong at everyone else but fold to the whims of a man who doesn't want strong. I don't want to be catcalled. I don't want to be cornered. I don't want to be looked at.

But society says that when it happens to me, I earned it.

So I don't want to go out.

When I go out, I put on a mask that crumbles but by it, day by day.

I have reached the part where it's easier to stay inside my apartment than to force myself to breathe through the panic and disgust and self-hatred that wells up when I prepare to step outside.

And that isn't right.

I don't want to lock myself away in order to feel safe.

So, friends, I lay this all out in raw honesty and hope you understand why a service dog would help. How having the unmitigated love and care of a trained companion would help me on my Sisyphean road to full independence again.

I hope it explains, even a little bit, why I struggle. With news. With people. With myself.

Everyday is a battle and I'm still not sure I'm winning the war. But I am desperately trying to make sure I have all the tools to fight with.

Thank you, all who have shared and donated, for being so kind and generous. I keep fighting.