1/31/25:

Listened to Tyler's new album again today, especially this song. Also caught up on my fave podcast, Behind the Bastards; recently they've been covering Oprah Winfrey. At some point, the host mentions Winfrey, in her early childhood, leaving the newly stable home she'd found for the promise of a complete set of parents- unfortunately one that did not pan out. It's a really heart breaking few episodes, but there was something specifically he said. something like "she was so haunted by the prospect of 2 parents" or something like that, and yeah. anyway.

tyler's probably put it best, this idea of being haunted by a ghost you don't actually recognize. i haven't seen my mom in over a decade, a brief few uncomfortable meetings before she took off again, and before that it had been half a decade since i'd seen her. and yet we look so alike that when someone gave me some of the first photos of her i've ever owned, i thought they were of me. there is something so surreal about looking at a picture of a woman who suffered the same fate as you, this unique wound we both shared, two hands reflecting their stigmata, one who looks so much like me. one who wanted to go into the same field as me at one point, one who i'm now realizing had such similar tastes in games and shows

that i'm the only one left.

1/26/25:Did some light errands today, got myself a couple small presents but mostly for my sister. Cleaned around the apartment. Few days ago, worked on my video essay draft, made a proper framework essentially. Still have a lot of reading to do for it! And probably some drawing, for reasons I won't say here for now. If i end up posting these video essays, i probably won't link them here even if i'm super proud just bc i don't want to mix this page with anything youtube related. ick. been feeling like i've been upplaying my trauma again recently, which is never a good sign for my mental health, bc that's the serious copium showing. been also feeling shitty about not studying recently, or doing certain hobbies. usually when those two overlap, i know something is really up. wish i could tell what but i think it's just been the onslaught of really difficult to deal with little heartaches in life.

had something sad happen that i don't even want to talk about right now. i just feel like it's my fault (even though my partner, Negative, swears he doesn't think it is), and bc of that even mentioning it fills me with guilt. idk as much as i want to blame myself i know i tend to get really upset over this kind of shit. even despite that, i still managed to get a few things done this week. oh, and my tilt table test was negative, which is great since it... doesn't mean I don't have POTS lol (roughly 33% of people with pots have negative tests, it's not great lol). doctor still thinks it could be pots but need to see my OTHER cardiologist first. hoping this explains my insanely high tachycardia (172??).

Negative made a tasty pumpkin tomato soup for me tonight tho. i'm planning on making a page for the two of us, to share recipes we like, shows we like or want to watch, and just things about him that aren't overly personal. I also want to make one for my Oma, but that one i might just have to make in VSC and leave there lol. my haircut is a little crooked and my ocd will not stop thinking about it. it's so weird how people will flirt with me and i almost think like. do you realize how stupid my hair looks right now. but i guess not enough to care. makes me think they're almost doing it to make fun of me but that might just be the bullied weird girl in me surfacing. AH i have ketamine tmw and also a dentist appointment and i'm so anxious. this is just a cleaning but i'm finally able to show them the occasional issue i have of one of my upper canines slicing into the bit between my teeth and inner lip, where it sort of rests. i also have so many other issues i need to call my doctor about this week and schedule but i'm so fucking tired. i'm so tired. it's so hard knowing that it will trigger my ptsd so badly for some of these things to the point i am already losing sleep and my ability to eat just thinking about it, and literally have been for months. doesn't help insurance is making everything so much harder. america is also falling apart, and i'm so worried about it. it has been for years, but it's rapid now. wish i could say i was happy to see libs waking up but they'll settle back down as soon as another dem gets in, if another dem gets in. worried sick for my immigrant friends, and for me as someone with chronic health issues and woman status.

Think i might just go to bed, if i can. if i can't sleep, i'll get back up and see if my friends are around for gaming.

1/7/25 addition: ok with the clarity of sleep, I definitely was way too harsh to myself yesterday. at that point, my quick action was the only kindness anyone could have granted him. Also, I'm literally trained in this, so it's not like I didn't know what I was doing. I really need to treat myself with more respect, there was no need to beat myself up yesterday. Part of having amphibians is that they die sometimes. It is what it is, and since the roads were undrivable, there was literally no other option but me doing it myself. Crazy how you'll literally work in an aquatics lab for several years doing both care and research (and coordinating animal care, mind), and STILL the ptsd/guilt ocd wants me to die (guilt ocd is actually so fucked up they should luigi the ceo of ocd). Also, my insurance denied my upper endoscopy, which is super cool since i'm naseous literally every day. AND, my apartment is leaking, and they can't fix it rn bc it's too dangerous to be on the roof. fuck me, man. at least my landlord, for a landlord, is very reasonable, diligent, timely, and polite. please god just let me have a break. idk if i even mentioned it here but like. my partner literally got into what could have been a SERIOUS accident last week (hit the median wall, spun out on oil across 4 lanes of traffic on the most dangerous highway around here and only the car got fucked?? dear god luck 10 builds) and he just dropped a ton of money on a new car (he had just gotten a new one a year ago as a gift to replace the previous civic that was full of problems). like jesus christ what is going on in my life!! it is not pouring this is a damn monsoon!!

I know I still need to move things around here, but I just needed to bitch. I had to put my newt down today, Wooper. There aren't any vets in the nearby area who would treat him, and it was kidney related, so nothing could really be done. With the weather like it was, too, places were closed too, even if I felt safe going out in it. So, I did it myself. If anyone ever needs advice in ethically putting their newt down at home, I suppose i'm your guy. It was fast and painless, and his suffering is over now. I'm just so sick to my fucking stomach about it. I have a lot of wounds regarding animal deaths and animal abuse from my childhood, and they're all still too raw for me to deal with. I feel like the scum of the earth, like an absolute fucking monster. I had just bought things to upgrade his tank with, too, and was in the process of smoothing them out to prevent him from hurting himself. The guilt is crippling, even if I don't think there's anything else I could have done, and I feel like I can't even talk about it with other people bc i feel like i should be that level of ashamed?

I just wish I was better, in every way, for everyone in my life. I wish I was less annoying, more concise, more consistent, less sickly. Less me. More dead. wish my stupid fucking heart had just stopped and that wooper got to keep living instead of me. if my heart is going to pause, can it just do it forever instead of pussying out and half assing it as usual? i really can't even die right.

Realized I'm going to need to rethink how this diary page is setup. I have a few ideas, mostly revolving around making seperate pages for archives of older months. Hopefully I'll be able to lump things together consistenetly by month, but that'll depend on how frequently I update this I suppose. Might be easier based on rough season.

I feel.... kinda awful, in a way I'm not able to name. It's the holidays, I guess, and while I am spending it with people, I guess I still miss having a pair of parental figures and their children to spend the holidays partially with. Even if it was only for a couple years, and even if looking back there were so many signs I missed, it was lovely. Maybe that ache will never really leave me. I was also a bit curt with a friend of mine last night, but I just am not as better as people seem to think I am. Yes, I no longer crave death, and I consider that huge, but it's taken a lot of work piecing together a life for myself. And it still takes work each day to keep this little hope I have for myself now alive. Each day I have to prevent it from crumbling back in on itself. Yes, I know life is bleak and horrible and meaningless; I know better than most my age the cruelty humanity can sink into, but I want to live in spite of that. My agoraphobia is a constant uphill fight, and sometimes I cannot help others with their boulders when mine is already too much. I just wish I was better able to communicate that with her.

I also think the feeling of my old foster family's expectations are getting to me. The women there are disposable at best, and I am an evil sinner and a waste of a woman for wanting a better life for myself than to stay under the patriarch's dying thumb. But since they cannot have me, they will settle for my younger sister. they've ruined her chances at leaving that state if she wants to go to college. they've ruined my chances of helping her get out of there to go to college. someone must take up the mantle as the head of this massive family, and since my mother is gone, and i, the patriarch's next in line, ran away 5 years ago, i suppose my sister is the next best thing. better still, she's impressionable, and isn't aware of the family's evil in the same way i am. or really at all ig. being raised in a cult was so much funnnnnnn (visibly shaking and biting and tearing and-).

i just hope she manages to stay out of the worst of it. i want her to have a better life than me, better than whatever human-shaped cloud of trauma i turned out to be. even if things are never really that great for me, maybe she can have a real life.

when i was a kid i used to say "i want to go home", knowing damn well i didn't have one, or that i wasn't at all wanted. i said it a few months ago, for the first time in years.

12/11/24:

I went to Galaxycon this weekend with an old highschool friend, and through them I made three new amazing friends! I might even be working at a maid cafe convention popup this spring, all thanks to them!! My friend is so cool, and so are these new ones; I feel truly lucky that I have been gifted with such incredible people around me. I realized I didn't feel nearly as bad after socializing as I have in the past, and if anything, I feel... alive?

Now that it's over, but with plans to go to more conventions more often and meet up with friends, I feel frenzied in my need for expression and desire for perfection, but almost in a good way. It's overwhelming, after being emotionally numb for years, and it's certainly difficult to channel, almost like a newborn animal pathetically trying to use limbs they've just been given. I have so many interests so suddenly, and while I have a lot of time to do them, I still find my energy lacking. I'm also feeling the crushing weight of needing a career looming over me. I'm not ready yet. I'm better, but god I just want a little time to enjoy life now that I'm physically able to. Still, I hope I'm able to drive myself to create more, while I have the time.

There is a bit of grief in my heart, though. It's the holidays, and as usual I have no parents to go home to see, nor can I see my sister without dealing with her adoptive parents. Or, otherwise known as my former foster care parents. Not only that, but my friend from HS I went to the con with still lives back where I'm from. They've got a better chance of seeing her than me, but I can't stomach dealing with my old tormentors anymore. Maybe I would be able to stomach the ten years of hell they put me through if it weren't for everything else I found out about them and the family, but I can't now. I hope she can understand that some day and can forgive me. I never wanted to stay away from her this long, nor did I want to miss every second of her high school years. But I go to cons, and me and my friends? We're queer and autistic little sinners openly, and we're free and alive because of it. I think about being queer, growing up in an area where being a woman meant being a housewife, and everything I threw away to get where I am now. Everything I have now, everything I've made for myself clawing and scraping a life from the earth, finally five years free of it all and for the first time in my life, happy-ish, and I thank my wicked dreams.

11/27/24:

Trying out the diary page with this entry, so hopefully this works. I've finally got a finished enough framework of this site to export it out of VCS. Recently, I've been dealing with some rather intimidating health problems for a 23y/o. I love being at the cardiologist and being the youngest in the room by far/s. Between that and the sort of haze I've been in recently, I've found myself desperately seeking some kind of anchor, some root to cling to while I wait for the storm to hopefully calm. Perhaps it's a side effect of ket therapy and too much weed, but I also think part of it is tied to how confused I am to still be here.

I know a lot of us joke about not thinking we'd make it to our 20's, but I really, really did not think I'd make it this far. I feel like someone handed me the keys to my life at 17 and wished me good luck. But I know that someone was me, and yet I feel so distant from who I was, and who I am. When I stare in the mirror, instead of seeing what's in front of me, it's like there's nothing there. The idea of who I am, physically, emotionally, mentally. I keep trying to grab at it, but I'm just clawing at water rushing between my fingers. People tell me that I have such a sure personality, that I'm so confidently me, but I couldn't disagree more. Someone once told me I was much like Shinji, and while it stung, it only hurt because of how accurate it is. I want to run away, from everything. I'm finally at a place in life where I no longer want to die, but I've only just got there in the last couple months. I have 23 years of wishing for the grave behind me, and a future that I was never really promised. Maybe it's the lack of family and every other side effect of growing up in the system, but I just feel like I'm a specter more than a person.

I guess, to quote one of my least favorite characters from a latest hyperfixation, "I'm just working on my life being a place I don't have to fucking escape." I no longer just have to focus on surviving, but when that's all you've ever done, how do you live? I hope maybe documenting my thoughts will at least ground me, somewhat.