~7:00am Oct 28, 2023
Mood: pretty
Listening to: daine - MODEL3 ⧉

weird day. i had a lot of things to do in the morning so i would have enough time to paint my nails, and i ended up being awake 20 hours. i knew i would have to wake up at 7pm so my mother could give me the flu shot before she left. i went for a nap at 5pm, and i don't remember the dream i had, but i remember thinking it was pretty horrible and being too numb in the dream to even be scared of it. all i know for sure is that i woke up exactly 2 minutes before the alarm went off still in sleep paralysis. actually i don't know if it was paralysis exactly. my hypotension is so bad that i routinely fall below 60 or 50 bpm when i'm asleep, and when i regained control of my limbs i literally felt all the hot blood rush into my clammy arteries. it took a second for me to realize i was drenched in sweat too, and i almost never sweat. it makes me think my heart might've stopped or got really close to stopping while i slept. definitely somewhere under 40 bpm. my hunch tells me it's related to my stomach cramps. my vagus nerve has been so incredibly overactive the last few days, i think it triggered in my sleep, and i only started to wake up when it calmed down. i have reason to believe this is the same thing that's caused my grand mal seizures in the past, and i have no real evidence that i didn't have one today. recalling what it was like the last seizure i had, i didn't feel any unique aftereffects, and i don't feel any now either, besides the normal flavor of fatigue on vagus days. this is one of the main reasons why death no longer scares me, i brush up against it fairly often. i regained my composure as quickly as i could and met my mom for the flu shot, only to find out my cousin had 2 of her friends for a sleepover. would've been a really awkward day to die. seriously though it would've been nice to know that was going to happen. i can't walk around freely at night without being noticed. i haven't eaten in over a day. i went back to bed and immediately passed out in spite of all the little girls screaming all evening, waking up again at 11pm.

anyway, i saw the fnaf movie. it was so ass i loved it lol. i could tell very early that it wasn't going to be lore accurate, which is fine. it told its own story. not a lot of it made sense, super campy, lots of stuff was contrived, but it was so fun. matpat cameo killed my ass fr, dude couldn't even keep a straight face when he said "but that's just a theory". even the credits song being living tombstone was ass (i've always disilked living tombstone's music ever since my mlp days). overall everything was just as scuffed and weird as i could've hoped for. perfect fnaf film.

i went outside for a bit to see the moon, too bad it's warm and cloudy. october has been such an angry month. i remember towards the beginning of the month i said i was sad and jealous that i can't do things for halloween or really express myself at all. changing my about page, adding some graphics, and painting my nails helped a little bit, but again i'm not satisfied. i need true freedom. i need to escape. these feelings have been building so long now, i think my anger is starting to overpower my fear. i'm still terrified of everything, i just have this urge to do something. for once the urge isn't leaving, it's only festering. i've always felt like a defeated broken will animal in a cage, up until last week. i'm at the point where i think i would rather have the ugliest loudest meltdown in public than spend another second in this house. all this anger and hatred makes my soul feel corrupted, impure. like i have to be a good and pure little angel for good things to happen to me. no. angels don't have free will. i feel like i have to become evil and terrible to tear my free will away from my abusers. i'm tired of waiting for good things to happen. i want to make good things happen.

out of curiosity, after writing this i checked the horoscope pertaining to the lunar eclipse today, and it tells me i have an overwhelming desire to break free and destroy obstacles.

~2:30am Oct 27, 2023
Mood: bread
Listening to: Sybyr - Spectrum ⧉

i've been doing a lot of nothing. i wake at 8pm everyday when my f*mily yells across the house to hold conversations between floors or blasts music when they shower as they get ready for bed. i join voice chats just to listen to everyone else talk. i leave them at sunrise, listening to my f*mily yell between floors again as they get ready for work. i exercise then pass out until 8pm again, sometimes on the floor. my increased physical activity is increasing my appetite, but there's not enough food for me to eat, and i don't feel like eating anyway. anything i force down is unsubstantial, like plain bread. my stomach cramps regardless. i spend the hours between on my ipad catching up on critical role in bed. i'm too tired to do anything more.

hopefully things start to look up today. my friends are planning to stream the fnaf movie. i almost never watch movies, but i like fnaf. they don't care for fnaf at all, they're just in it for the meme and are hoping it's laughably bad. the full moon is tonight, halloween is soon, d&d is tomorrow. ideally, these are all things i should be looking forward to, but right now i can't help feeling unsatisfied. i want so much more out of life and everything feels so unattainable and overwhelming. frankly, i'm tired of telling myself to be grateful for what i have. it feels like i'm gaslighting myself into contentment when my life actually just sucks. all along i've been saying that people have it worse, so i shouldn't be angry. no, i'm too angry to be content. in my last therapy session, the probable conclusion we reached is that my body is reclaiming the emotion of anger, and i might be in the process of grieving my own past, starting with the abstract grief i experienced from my great aunt. i don't really know. whatever it is it's messy. i think i'm going to paint my nails after my shower. i love it when the full moonlight reflects off the gloss.

i've been thinking about getting into status cafe. it's very barebones and comfy in a way. i don't even know what i would post. actually, it was weird. earlier when i looked at the site for the first time, i saw an old online acquaintance of mine on there. i haven't spoken to him in over a year. i contemplated sending a message saying i bumped into him and wish him well on his new site, but idk i felt too awkward to do it. i don't really want this site of mine to be discovered by people who've spoken to me in the past.

~11:30pm Oct 23, 2023
Mood: acidic
Listening to: star૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა✩ ft. harvest & Starshower - dontwantit ⧉

happy asexual awareness week (a bit late)!! been spending a lot of time these past few days processing a few specific things, battling in the gender trenches so-to-speak lol. i don't think i'm quite prepared to collect all the thoughts on it yet, but it's probably going to be a long entry. i contemplated treating it like an essay, though i figure my feelings on it could change as quickly 2 weeks or so and it's of such a personal trauma perception nature that it belongs in the diary, less created for publication or presentation to others.

in other site news, i resumed progress on one of the reviews. i hope to have it done by halloween, but we will see how my motivation strikes me. i made a promise to myself that i wouldn't beat myself up for not making the completely arbitrary deadline. i also hope i'm not hyping it up TOO much by the way i talk about it. i would like to take my time and focus on one upcoming page at a time. ideally, the next project will be the sybyr shrine, maybe i'll read a book and review it instead though.

as for real life, it's stabilizing slowly but surely. tonight is going to be freezing temps, which i've been looking forward to for so long. it sucks that the next few days are going to be quite warm again, but whatever i'll take what i can get. my daily home exercises are consistent now that the worst of the pain has mostly subsided. slept wrong though so my spine is fucked today. my mother brought a flu shot home from work on friday, although i was sleeping and then showering while she was here, then she left early, so she didn't give it to me. i should mention my mother lives alone elsewhere and visits our house after work some days. she normally shows up on mondays too, but didn't today, so i woke up "early" to meet her and she never even showed. i wonder why, but not enough to ask. once i get the flu shot it might interfere with my exercises. my whole body feels like heartburn, gross warm and stinging on the inside, except in my bones not my throat. i imagine it has something to do with the fact that i haven't eaten anything all day. i don't feel like eating, but i am kind of excited to make a sandwich. is it sad that the meal i look forward to the most in my house is a turkey, lettuce, and mayo sandwich on rye bread? it slaps ngl. their cooking sucks, and they stopped asking me what i need from the grocery store again. not like they usually do, it lasted maybe 5 weeks in august-september. so i haven't even had the luxury of lunchmeat for a while. when i asked why there isn't any last week, my grandmother said she decided that normal people get tired of eating the same thing all the time, knowing full well that i'm not normal and she didn't ask me either, so she just wants me to be suddenly normal. passive aggression gets on my nerves so fucking much. coward.

it's a bit amusing to think 365 days ago exactly was when i resolved with myself and said outloud i'm ready to get my life back. is it weird to remember dates like that?

~10:30am Oct 21, 2023
Mood: sorer
Listening to: ativansocial - i have no sense of what home is ⧉

i feel like i've been on the verge of tears for the last 12 hours. i wish it would just come out already. i tried to go outside at normal time, but it was too warm and humid and it felt like i was choking, surrounded by crickets. cloudy too, so i couldn't even look up to take my mind off things. i just kept my head down and thought the same usual thoughts i try to run from. i feel like i don't have much to say, yet my mind hasn't stopped racing all day. shit, even if i had a lot to say, i wouldn't know how to organize it into coherent language. lightning round i guess. i'm having depression sleep and i can't bring myself to get up before getting 13 hours. my sleep schedule is ruined again, ash on the wind. my new schedule is going to be one that likely overlaps with seeing f*mily during the day, disgusting. my grandmother made an off-hand comment, she asked "how did therapy go" even though it was on tuesday and i told her it was pushed to wednesday, when i reminded her it wasn't today under my breath, she didn't hear me and thought i gave a usual non-answer, prompting her to ask "do you think it's time?" time for what? "time to look for a new therapist. clearly she isn't producing results," i wanted to die on the spot, just crumple to the floor in a pile at her feet instantly dead, just to spite her mental wellbeing forever. she clearly had an agenda before even asking me, and didn't care what my answer would be. why even bother asking? just tell me to my face you hate me. stop dancing around the issue. stop pretending you care. stop pretending like you care for my success. stop pretending like you know what's best. stop pretending like you know who i am. i woke up today 10x sorer and i physically couldn't do the daily exercises on day 2. i feel like i'm letting myself down already. i don't feel like attending D&D tonight with those people i don't feel myself around. i owe so much student debt that's due today and i don't even think anyone in the f*mily knows. i don't even know if my mom, who holds the bulk of it, knows. i don't feel like parenting her and managing her finances for her and doing it for her because she REFUSES to do anything with technology. i don't know how to make a payment. i don't have the money or income for it. one of my friends commented that it sounds like a warzone. i wake up everyday in a minefield. i think if i were to gain an income and the ability to function at a store, i would blow it all on so many frivolous appearance thingies. i'm so trapped. my world is so painfully small. i can't handle being seen by anyone. i can't handle seeing myself. gender. gender and society. why does nobody care? where do i belong? who am i? it's raining this morning, the only tolerable kind of morning. i would stand out there and let the raindrops and wind hit my face, but it's too bright.

1/7/24 edit: the lyrics of the day's song were written here, but they have since been added to the lyrics page. it didn't exist yet when this entry was first written.

~2:30am Oct 20, 2023
Mood: sore
Listening to: Silent Hill 2 OST - Fermata in Mistic Air ⧉

i spoke to my therapist yesterday over the phone and it went fine. i woke up early for it but accidentally fell asleep, only to be woken up by the phone ringing. it made me feel super embarrassed and my chest burned for a little while. either way i told her how i'm angry, which she observed is very rare for me. and i said it's put me in a drained depressive episode. since i was never permitted to feel emotions early in life, anger in particular, i have an automatic internal shame response for experiencing emotions. which sounds ridiculous and pathetic on paper. it's a learned defense mechanism of mine to instantly retreat into my mind and rationalize/analyze/intellectualize why i'm feeling the way i feel, rather than exist in my body and simply feel what's there. as "practice" letting myself feel emotions i've decided to ride out the depressive episode for what it is. i know it'll end on it's own eventually, so there's no use forcing myself to do shit and beating myself up when i don't have the energy for it. i'm just resting until i feel better mentally. probably some kind of trigger that needs time and care to return to normal.

i have noticed my motivation starting to return today. i wrote some more on a small ongoing project until hunger took over. today i also decided to start exercising again. i stopped last march because i had a vicious stomach virus, and it started getting too warm anyway and i was overheating too easily. it's not much, just stretches, thigh exercises, and core exercises. i can't really afford to do much because my joints suck so bad and i'm at risk of permanently damaging them, especially my knees, so squats are out of the question. still, focusing on thighs and core helps with my balance. extra stability decreases the chances of falls and knee/hip subluxations. as an added plus, i get some fuckin hot abs. i like to feel the pain of muscle soreness. it's nice to build some muscle, i am very underweight (120lbs), and i can't gain weight by eating, i've been this weight since i was 14. i'm grateful that i've never had much of a problem with my body image, i know a lot of people struggle really badly with it. i think i am pretty aesthetically attractive. not conventionally-- hm, maybe yes conventionally to some extent. but i don't think it necessarily helps my social situation. people tend to believe attractive people can't be disabled, and some people hold the opinion that it's more likely an attractive young person is faking for attention. especially when it comes to mental health diagnoses. i suppose i'm not subject to as much scrutiny as i could be, since i am masculine-presenting. it still makes the prospect of breaking down in public that much more terrifying than it already is.

i've been wanting to play some horror games to get into the halloween spirit, but i don't have quite enough motivation to do that yet. idk what i would play either.

~7:00pm Oct 16, 2023
Mood: depressed
Listening to: lil soda boi - crush ⧉

the past few days i've done very little besides stay in bed all day. i'm not even spending much time online. i'm sleeping a lot, which is good, but i'm not taking care of any of my other needs, which is bad. the usual youtube channels i would watch to mindlessly pass time haven't been uploading anything. i can't focus long enough to read articles or websites. my therapist almost last minute cancelled my appointment for tomorrow, but it'll be by phone on wednesday now. that really sucks, over the phone i tend to not talk about what's really bothering me. generally i think i don't talk about things that i think will take more than 45 minutes to talk about, which at this point feels like everything. now it's like i need to talk about multiple things and i can't fully make it through 1 thing. i debated letting the appointment get cancelled this week, but i thought about the state i'm in and i decided i need SOMETHING. either way, there goes my reason to shower. it's going to be mentally much harder to bring myself to do that now.

over the weekend, i was able to do some stuff. friday night i played r6 siege with an old friend for the first time in several months. i performed really well, i probably ended the 5 hour session with 100 kills total, had several 1vX clutches, and top fragged every match with 7-12 kills per. so i'm a little glad that i haven't lost my touch. mentally adding it to the future shrine list, since i love the game and the esport. saturday night i played baldur's gate 3 with the usual group for the first time in a month. still not much closer to actually finishing the game even though we're basically right at the end. still waiting for it to be done with, even though the game is really cool and fun, i simply don't have the energy for it. to be honest though the true highlight of my weekend were the walks i took. it's sitting at a very comforting 8C with gentle wind. seeing my breath frost as it leaves my lips is one of the only reminders that i'm still alive. if i could hold the cold air in my lungs forever, i would. i've been able to catch a glimpse of a couple taurid meteors too. "halloween fireballs" they're called, because unlike most meteor showers these ones tend to fucking explode in air, and they happen around halloween. also apparently increased fireball activity happens every 7 years, and this is around the 7 year mark. unfortunately it's a weaker strength shower so there aren't a ton of meteors.

idk, if you were to ask an astrologer, they would tell you that the days surrounding an eclipse are much more difficult. not sure i ever believe horoscopes like that, but in this case it's true. more likely it's because this last week is full of painful memories from last year. unless that's also part of the star prophecy or whatever. meh, my whole natal chart is apparently very accurate. i mean, it even says aquarians as an air sign draw life and strength from breath, which is pretty specific and relevant, and almost all my closest friends are geminis. i'll never know if astrology is real, but i can't prove nor disprove it, so i try not to let it dictate my life, although i do like to study it just in case there are lessons to be learned. that's the approach i take with almost everything religious, spiritual, and philosophical i guess. last week when i was explaining the meteor showers, calendar, zodiacs, and a little bit of astrology with someone they called me a star witch and i was really flattered, like it might've been the only compliment i've ever felt wholly good about receiving.

oh, also a close friend of mine made a short 10-minute narrative browser game, which i might as well link here ⧉. spoilers ahead: it's about being too socially anxious to ever leave your bedroom, so you spend all your time learning things online and stargazing to vicariously experience the world. we've never really talked about our lifestyles much, but it's literally exactly how i live my life. it really hurt and made me cry, but i didn't tell him that. i have a feeling that he may read this someday. he's slowly getting into neocities. it ends with the player character having a dream about walking out the window and touching the sky. i'm not sure if that means they found the courage to leave their room and experience everything they ever wanted to, or they found the courage to finally kill themselves. that's almost certainly intentional. it very much feels like i'm sitting at the same crossroads.

whatever time Oct 13, 2023
Mood: angry
Listening to: 93FEETOFSMOKE - if my dad saw he'd be mad at me.. ⧉

happy friday the 13th in october. wish i had something nice to write today but i don't. i had a dream that triggered something, i don't remember what it was about, all i know is that i'm angry. i'm so full of hatred and resentment. i guess it all started last night. the power went out for about 2 hours. my whole life is nothing but staying in my bedroom on my computer, so what did i do? nothing. i did nothing. i stared at the ceiling and dissociated for 3 hours. i spent an extra hour than i had to because i didn't snap out of it, and apparently in that time my f*mily made some brownies. i thought that was pretty cool, i love brownies. it turns out though that in the 30 minutes they existed, 3/4s of the whole tray were eaten by 1 person in 1 sitting. maybe this is petty as fuck, but i don't care. not only do i live with a narcissist who keeps pressure on everyone with her existence and everyone else defends her, she can just take whatever the fuck she wants and nobody does anything about it. i hardly ever have anything to eat in this fucking house because of my diet, sensitivities, and preferences, and the one rare time there are brownies they're taken from me. there's always a cake in the house and everyone knows i fucking hate cake, why don't they just eat that instead? they do every other time. then i felt pressured to eat as much of the remaining brownie as i could before the morning, since i knew they wouldn't last to noon. but i don't want to fucking gorge myself on 1/4 of a tray, it'll make me sick. then all these fucking thoughts crept in, like i'm so fucking selfish and entitled, even though i'm not the one who ate 3/4s of it in 30 minutes in a house of 6 people with 1 who has nothing else to eat. but what the fuck am i going to do about it? there's nothing. you literally cannot win a dispute with a narcissist, and everyone else is going to treat me like i'm the fucking problem. and it's inevitable that they're going to say some shit like "all this over brownies?" no you fuckhead, it's everything.

so i went to bed with these thoughts and they must've translated into some horrible dream shit because i woke up hysterical and i don't know why. all i can think about is every injustice that's ever been done to me. i'm angry at the brownies. i'm angry at the narcissist. i'm angry at my family for taking her side. i'm angry at my body for having a fucked up stomach. i'm angry at my f*mily for never protecting me. i'm angry at them for never guiding me. i'm angry at all the women who took advantage of me. i'm angry that they lied to me. i'm angry that it's possible for someone to do that someone else. i'm angry at my past therapists who told me that anger is ugly and all my fault. i'm angry at myself for being angry. i'm angry that i used to hurt people when i was angry. i'm angry nobody helped me when i cried for help. i'm angry at the hair getting stuck to my face. i'm angry that my house is disgusting and full of junk and mold and bugs. i'm angry that my perception and nervous system have been permanently damaged. i'm angry at the vacation last year when i said i wasn't going to be pushed around by the narcissist anymore and my grandmother told me i'm just as bad as her. i'm angry at all my surgeries. i'm angry at my father for staying. i'm angry at my father for leaving. i'm angry at my mother for leaving. i'm angry at my mother for coming back. i'm angry that i'm embarrassed over being angry. i'm angry that it feels like i don't belong anywhere. i'm angry that my life and happiness have been stolen from me. i'm angry that it's nobody's fault. i'm angry at the world for being the way it is. i'm angry that i'm broken.

whenever i get angry, i automatically feel defeated. i've always known it solves nothing, it only makes my situation worse. when i had no control over myself as a small child, i would just get punished over and over. locked in the bedroom for 3 days no food no drink no bathroom. they told me i was born bad and i deserved it. i feel completely powerless. i feel guilt and shame over a very basic emotion. it's just aimlessly projected pain. i feel no relief or release by being angry, it just vacuums back into the bottle. i can't feel justified being angry at anything, not even my abusers. i'm too compassionate and understanding to blame anything. i mean, my ex is most likely fucking dead. what's the point of being angry then? like dostoyevsky's notes from underground, i'm so wretched and motivated by spite it hurts. i want to be motivated by love instead, but i can't love myself. i keep trying to but i meet myself with spite. i try to give myself love but i don't know how to receive it.

what's worse? having happiness in childhood and losing it all at some point, or never having happiness so you didn't really lose it?

~12:30am Oct 12, 2023
Mood: mired
Listening to: Sybyr - Rated Under ⧉

i'm very sluggish, i feel strange. today i slept for 6 hours, remembered i needed to eat something, did so, then immediately slept for 6 more hours. when i envision myself right now, i see an endless light grey plane #a3a3a3 of nothingness. my physical movements are slow and deliberate. the back corners of my mouth feel full of milk. i want to do something, but there's nothing i want to do. i don't even feel like writing nor reading, but i have to occupy myself somehow. i can't stop biting my nails. well, not exactly biting them as you would expect. for the last year i sort of kicked the habit when i started painting them, so instead when i need an oral stim i just glide my nails over the surfaces of my teeth, or when i'm not right i bite them without clipping them off.

earlier i finished my randomized run of pokemon black 2. nobody else who agreed to play the seed made it past the 5th gym. my final team was my starter venusaur (garlic), typhlosion (cinder), meloetta (meret), octillery (cuddle), landorus-therian (ugly), and dialga (lucky). not too happy with the team i ended up with honestly. i was using nuzlocke rules for encounters, and every pokemon i caught besides 7 or 8 were really not able to pull their weight or had glaring flaws/overlaps. unfortunately for me, octillery was my only water type and landorus was my only flying type and my only physical attacker. i absolutely needed them for hms. the other 2 good pokemon i encountered were krookodile and garchomp in the end-game, but i couldn't include them on the team because of the overlap with landorus. meloetta was really awkward to use because of the whole changing forms thing, but i never found a psychic, normal, or fighting replacement. or really any replacement i guess. turns out she doesn't even learn a fighting move until level 78 anyway. obviously dialga carried everything, but i didn't want it hogging all the exp. ultimately didn't matter much since almost all the mons on my team were exp sinks, that is to say, slow growth rate, and it took so much more exp to level them up relative to the norm. it didn't help that roughly 60% of battles were against not fully evolved mons, which severely cut down on the exp being yielded to me per battle. i went through the whole game significantly underleveled starting at gym 3. had to grind for a few hours just to stay within 10 levels of the basic trainers in victory road. that said, i didn't hate it. i still had fun, and it gave me something to do. it just wasn't very satisfying. i think i should make a pokemon shrine. i have too much pokemon experience and love and knowledge and attachment not to talk about it. i'm also into the competitive scene, singles and recently doubles, and it feels like i've had an infodump brewing about it for years.

i don't know where i was going with any of this, i just needed something to do. i can't really think straight.

~4:30pm Oct 10, 2023
Mood: nauseous
Listening to: Corbin - Diazepam ⧉

updated my therapist about how i handled my grief, she says she's happy and proud i found something that worked. i also reminded her that i'm looking for a life coach. every single thing in societal daily life feels like too much to handle. i feel so stuck, and i'm too overwhelmed to leave my house, and i don't have anybody to help me. like, i've only been to a store and made a purchase maybe 5 times in my life. i've only been in a grocery store maybe 3 times and all of them were at least 13 years ago. the way my brain works is that everything happens in steps. if i don't know the steps, or if i get stuck at a step, or god forbid i skip a step (very likely to happen during high stress) and have to retrace my steps, my brain shuts down. i see all these daily life things as a social dance, and boy am i bad at dancing. everything has all these steps, and everyone else is so naturally good at them or practiced that they don't even have to think about it. that's not how it works for me, there are no routines or tasks that i can mindlessly accomplish, not even showers, i must focus on every step every time. i can't read the social cues for what should be intuitive or what's expected of me. my therapist tried to reassure me by saying the vast majority of people are mildly dissociated when they're going through the daily motions, but that doesn't help. that means if i fuck up a step and freeze like always, it'll snap everyone out of their dissociation because i'm failing the dance. i'm prone to going nonverbal too, so if that happens then i will for sure break down. my therapist said my brain might be interpreting things as scarier than they actually are, and sure, i know that, but that's just a polite way of saying "you're overreacting". i don't really care if there's a mismatch in my reality vs the social reality, it's my reality, by definition it's what's real to my perception and interpretation of the world. i know it's not impossible for me to achieve, i desperately want to find my path in the world. i just feel like i need someone to teach me these things and speak for me when i'm fucked and leave with me if i'm really fucked. i don't have anyone like that in my life, so i hope that i can pay for a service that does that.

speaking of, 365 days ago my relationship ended. i guess technically it for real ended on the 14th, but even more technically it was over months earlier. i just see the 10th as when everything crashed and never recovered. when it ended, not only was there the abandonment triggers and the grief and the abject hopelessness and y'know all that messy shit of course, i also felt like i lost the last lifeline i had for someone who would've helped me learn how to do daily life in society. truthfully i'm pretty sure she never actually intended to help me with it. i would say i decided today that i can do it after all, but that would be a lie. i always knew i COULD, i just always acknowledged i can't do it alone. instead i decided to honor myself in a different way. last year on october 10th i completed every achievement in hollow knight, and i was excited to tell her that i achieved a goal of mine, but i never got the chance to because of the coldness, avoidance, and drug use. it made me associate my greatest achievement in my favorite game with my heaviest trigger. which fucking sucks, because i have a hollow knight tattoo that i can't look at the same way. maybe i'll post a picture of it on the site someday. so i wanted to reclaim it, i finished that no nail upgrade no focus challenge run i started and stopped last month. with a completion percentage of 69% no less. nice ( ` ꒳ ´ )

i have faith in myself. i have hope. i just need to take my time and not feel guilty about it.

~9:30pm Oct 8, 2023
Mood: vacuum
Listening to: zodivk - trustnobody (+) ⧉

idk why my panic disorder is getting worse. it's pretty much to the point where i get 2 mini panic attacks every minute. it's becoming hard to know when one ends and another begins, or really if one is ending at all. my chest feels simultaneously hollow and full of mercury. i feel like something is sitting on my chest until my ribs finally give and there's nothing but a warm squelch. like crushing a cream filled chocolate egg with the heel of your palm. the intensity is different too. maybe 10% of them advance to a new stage where my entire body goes warm and numb. one of them woke me up from sleep today, and i've had 3 since, not to mention the idk 25 smaller normal ones. i keep trying to do all this healing and i get new and worsening anxiety symptoms. what fucking gives? i really don't know what to do about it, as far as i know nothing causes them, nothing alleviates them, and they come on without warning. all i can do is live with them and try to forget them i guess.

last night i took a walk. it was as cold as i hoped it would be. the southern sky is gorgeous too. i saw a shooting star in pisces, which i instantly thought was odd. the active meteor showers are orionids and taurids, both of which are obviously not pisces, and neither of them are close to their peak activity yet. the only way i can explain it is that it was a taurid that was just really far from its radiant and streaked going in the same direction too. either way, i love seeing meteors and this one was special in its own way. i'm also kind of excited for venus to be back in the sky soon, both venus and jupiter will be visible at the same, and those are the only 2 celestials besides the moon and sun that show up on my garbage camera. last night the thought struck me: why is it that nobody else comes outside to witness this beauty? and i guess the clear answer is that it's cold and the middle of the night, and people have like actual obligations and responsibilities to sleep at night for. idk, i just think of how many people there are who simply never look up. how many people don't know anything about the sky events like meteor showers and never plan to see a single one. it is so hard for me to comprehend how somebody could be so indifferent to the stars. i am a stargazer through and through.

i also found a stray pill in my bed earlier, which means i never took it last night, forgot about it, and fell asleep on top of it all day. what a fucking vibe fr. hopefully it didn't cause my worse panic attacks but i highly doubt it.

~10:30pm Oct 7, 2023
Mood: stasis
Listening to: lil soda boi - grey hoodie ⧉

the temperature dropped ~15C very quickly this afternoon. the warm days left as fast as they arrived. it's going to be single digits (C) finally during the night. the autumn breeze is saturated with that characteristic earthy sweet scent of leaf decay. i don't really know why i love being cold so much, but i do. it's not like i run hot, plus i'm quite sensitive to any temperature. there's just something viscerally calming about surrendering to the cold. last december i went for a walk outside in -21C and i got the early stages of frostbite! call me crazy, but i was so excited to feel the painful sting and see my skin change colors. don't worry i was cautious and knowledgeable enough to not take any lasting damage. i hope i get the chance to experience it again in the winter, along with some snow. it didn't snow at all last year. global warming fucked up the snowfall in the last 10 years or so, we hardly ever get any here anymore. it's exciting just to think about it! for now i'm just welcoming the cold back by letting it cradle me in my room.

last week when i was taking a short walk, i noticed one of the neighbors put up decorations for a birthday on their lawn. big letters spelling out "happy birthday" staked into the grass. that's unusual. my first thought was like "oh that's nice maybe i should leave a lil anonymous 'happy bday :)' note on the front step". then it suddenly hit me minutes later that people don't ever do that, and if i actually went through with it, people would probably be scared. i thought how silly everything about it is. at least that's how it is in american culture i think. people don't interact with their neighbors unless there's a dispute, which is pretty common in the west as a whole i'm pretty sure. but at least when it comes to america, people interpret any step onto their property as a total invasion, an attack. people get shot dead over it too often. so why then do people decorate their lawns for the entire neighborhood to see if they are afraid of them all at a baseline? especially for a personal event such as a birthday instead of a shared festive holiday. the basic intention of telling someone "it's my bday" invites the other person to give you well wishes. on the other hand, it's not ok to approach someone's house. it's strange to me that this particular family would mix that social contract with a completely opposing social contract. it's like they themselves didn't get the de facto memo, but probably still hold the same expectations that nobody should approach them. it's akin to how people in america ask "how are you" as a default greeting, but if you ever reply with anything besides "good", you're a fucking weirdo. being too happy or honest is a mistake, even though they literally asked. all these little social rules are so conceptually foreign to me. i've lived in them long enough to know most of them, but they never quite click. i've sorta come to accept that i never will, and the people who are worth speaking to are people who don't think less of me for making those "mistakes". that's the story of how a lawn reminded me i'm turbo autistic :3

~12:30am Oct 6, 2023
Mood: emotionally drained but good anyway
Listening to: brakence - argyle ⧉

my day ended up being pretty ok. i could be jumping the gun but i honestly think my self-confrontation worked, somehow. i got good sleep again, slept at a decent hour and woke up a decent hour. rare. in some ways i'm still recovering from yesterday, i don't have a lot of mental/emotional energy, yet i keep thinking about things that provoke emotions. some positive, some negative, most are both. today i let them all wash over me and recede like a cold grey tide. my skull is swollen with emotional fruit juice today. most of the daytime i had a good time with friends, i had a long stimulating conversation about theoretical quantum mechanics and how it affects our philosophical beliefs. personally i liked the line "i am an abandoned tamagotchi".

i have a very specific trigger around warm sunsets. this first week of october has been kinda warm, to my dismay. there was a strange energy at sunset, my house was empty aside from me, which is rare at any hour, but much rarer after dinner time. typically that means something bad happened, but i figured nobody would tell me if something bad happened even after they came back. i stood at the front window in the deep twilight, absorbing the quiet darkness, riding the triggered memories until they went away. it felt like an ending, obviously it wasn't though, not in a literal sense. in the dark i was able to eat leftover spaghetti alone, which is great. i hate eating in front of people and normally i have to wait until 1am or so to eat anything alone, even then it's a 50/50 if my grandfather decides to sleep on the couch right next to the kitchen. it's ironic, despite wanting connections with people, i only feel comfortable with myself when i'm confirmed alone. i have the urge to start a big bonfire. i haven't spent an evening around a fire in at least 9 years, another rare good childhood memory featuring my great aunt.

dear reader, i love you. i love everybody. lately... no not lately. i feel unlovable. i think every time i post/say anything everybody is going to wince at it as if i fucked up. i logically know that's not how it works, my perception is just ruined is all. i can affirm myself all i want, but every thought and action is filtered through that unconscious belief. i think i've come to the conclusion that i'll never be able to fully heal that on my own, you can't heal what you never had, so i'll have to find unconditional love at some point to learn what it's like. what a fucking terrifying and hopeful prospect. i need to be ready to receive love, but i need love to become ready for love. i'm not ready for it, but by that logic i'll never be ready for it. it'll just... happen, and it'll trigger the fuck out of me, no warnings no preparations are possible. i guess i should focus on tasks at hand instead. imagine being present, couldn't be me.

~4:30pm Oct 4, 2023
Mood: grief
Listening to: E77EX ft. twinflamegirl - GGGIVENCHYYY ⧉

got 8 hours of sleep for the first time in 2 weeks, so that's good. my great aunt's condition is only getting worse, turns out she has stage 4 lung cancer in her brain. it's strange, i'm not really attached to her as a person, but i have grief anyway. in a way, she's already been dead to me for nearly a decade. not in a spiteful or vindictive way, just that i knew i probably wouldn't ever hear from her again, and i never did. this week i'm dealing with very abstract and deeply buried grief. like i said last time, she was one of two people who i felt safe with as a child, and i lost both of them young. news of her imminent death definitely brought up some repressed feelings, but not in a way that's overtly emotional. subconscious type shit, like these recurring nightmares and this muted sense of extreme guilt. every time i go to meditate and confront it, it falls through my fingers like sand and ash. i tried in therapy yesterday, but i couldn't dive deep enough over a phone call. i had a feeling this would happen. i've decided to write about my experience with her for two reasons. so the thoughts can't vanish quickly before i process them, and to preserve the good memories i once clutched onto when i needed them the most.

as a kid i always went to her house for a week every july, a small rural house on a river bank in the middle of the mountains, nobody else within 2 miles. it was so removed from the troubles of the world, with no light pollution in the sky. i was always interested in space from my little childrens books about pluto or whatever, being able to see it with my own eyes was something else entirely. she even bought a telescope for me one year. we loved to hike a mile or 2 upriver with our big inner tubes and then float down all the way back to her backyard. as a child i was so tormented and angry all the time, but everything was always so quiet and timeless there, and she was always so patient. she respected my food sensitivities and learned how to shop and cook accordingly for me. we stayed up late watching movies i was probably too young for lol. i felt like i had a place there, the closest approximation of a home i ever felt. my body remembered the last time i was there, in the summer of my worst year, during my first abusive relationship as a 15 year old with an adult. back then, not even her or the familiar retreat could relieve me. i ended up staying in my room there for what felt like weeks, in reality i think it was only 3 days, completely chained in dissociation. i was stuck in flight mode for the first and only time in my life. i needed to run but there was nowhere to go. i decided to go back to my house early because i wanted to see my bed again. i expected her to try to talk me out of it, instead she understood and respected my wish, she was only disappointed that we couldn't spend more time together, which was foreign to me at the time, and i could only interpret it that she was disappointed in me. little did i know that would be the last year i ever went there or spoke to her. she moved across the continent the following spring. upon reflection, i think this is my only regret in life, that i wish i could've enjoyed the last time more. it feels like i took it all for granted, even though logically i know i didn't. i was only a kid after all. to a lesser extent, i also wish we spoke after that, but as a traumatized teenager that wasn't my responsibility, as much as the rest of my f*mily kept reminding me it was on ME to call her. that's where all this guilt stems from. there's also some resentment towards the person who abused me because she essentially stole it from me, much like many other experiences, and i cannot forgive that.

this whole present circumstance has me thinking a lot about motherhood. my great aunt never had children of her own, despite her being a double widow, and i always kind of wondered why. i never got the chance to ask if she was asexual like me, i only discovered it years later. regardless, even as a kid i wondered why my mother or grandmother couldn't be more like her. why was it that my immediate f*mily wasn't interested in my safety or happiness? why did they never listen to me or consider my needs? it confused me for so long, because they would say that they were, but they didn't act like it. i know by now, they were traumatized and shut down all along too, they simply didn't have the capacity to. while my grandmother is very nurturing, she is resentful and two-faced about it and holds it over people, always keeping score. i can tell my mother received the same amount of emotional neglect i have, and despite her articulating how she does indeed feel like i'm a metaphysical extension of her soul and body, she could never nurture me, and left me to fend for myself in the same cycle. i can't necessarily blame them for it, but i also don't have to forgive them either. there are still consequences, and one of those consequences is that it ruined my perception of the world, myself, love, and duty. it all makes me wonder how a woman who isn't a mother could be a better caregiver than a woman who is a mother. i think about my own feelings of empathy and antinatalism and wonder if my great aunt and i are more similar than i thought. i doubt i'll go to her funeral, i think i'll burn a candle in private instead if i can.

i cried a lot writing this. maybe i'm weird for posting something like this online. maybe nobody wants to read something like this while they're just trying to scroll. maybe i could've achieved the same processing if i did it on pen and paper. i don't think i care. i think this helped me, and ultimately it's my sanctuary. i don't want to be a wounded healer anymore, i want to be a healed healer, and i'm trying to heal myself first.

~3:00pm Oct 1, 2023
Mood: conflicted
Listening to: Trill skeleton - Face Your Fears ⧉

i was able to sleep a little better today. 5 hours this time instead of 2. my dreams only get progressively worse and more vivid. i've come to realize that i'm essentially an executive functioning nightmare. i only recently learned that sense of time is part of executive functioning, which is something that i have literally never been able to keep track of. i remember back to my past therapies that made me feel guilty all the time as if it was all my fault that i wasn't eating or sleeping normally, that everything was a conscious decision i had full control over. here i am like 10+ years later, and while it's relieving to know i'm not actually guilty, that doesn't change the fact that i have no control over it and i don't know what to do about it. my f*mily to this day still tries to put me down by saying i can't make it on my own because i can't even feed myself right. when it comes to basically any confrontation with them, i go nonverbal. it's a relatively new thing. at first it really bothered me, but at this point it's a relief in a weird way. i started looking at it like now i don't have to worry about coming up with something to say to a brick wall because i can't even if i wanted to. pair that with my new learned skill of walking away mid-conversation, and i actually feel pretty good about myself, despite my house being the most tense and frustrated it's ever been. it's just not my fucking problem anymore. i don't owe them anything, not even explanations, especially when they refuse to listen or understand.

it's whatever. it's october. i fucking love october! halloween is easily the best holiday. it's geared toward being self-expressive with friends, unlike all the fucking f*mily-oriented holidays. what's a little funny is that i used to hate halloween. as a kid i hated trick-or-treating so much. i still had joint problems that made me hurt so fucking bad walking around for hours, i was super overstimulated by the crowds of people and going door to door, i hated the sensory feelings of cheap costumes, and overall i was constantly embarrassed. it was never worth it either, i don't have a sweet tooth and i never liked candy. basically i got forced into it every year because my f*mily wanted me to get candy for them. when i got old enough, i guess around 11, i put my foot down and said i'm fucking over halloween (i couldn't go out that year anyway because i was still in surgery recovery). i spent many years after that being bitter/indifferent and isolated in october. i don't know when it changed, it was pretty gradual. truthfully i was always into the aesthetic, i'm a fucking cringe edgelord after all. as much as i love it now, i can't shake this underlying intense jealousy. i feel like i missed out and now i'm stunted. this is like the only time i ever have the desire to decorate, but i've never decorated anything so i don't know how. i have this desire to do something with my appearance, anything, but i've never done anything so i don't know how. i want to express and i don't have the knowledge, means, or self-trust. it's really frustrating to feel like i don't know myself and i can't experiment either. i'm trapped in so many layers. the jealousy is directed towards anyone who i perceive as more expressive than me, which is like almost everyone, which is probably a projection or something. i'm aware of it, so i don't act on it or treat anybody unfairly, but it builds pressure in my organs. i wish i had anybody to ask, but yknow even if i did the obvious follow up question is like "what do you want" and i don't have an answer. and like, for what? if i go through the trouble of changing my appearance i would want to be seen. i literally don't go out anywhere, i leave the house once a week for therapy and that's it, i get out otherwise maybe 5 times per year. i don't even run errands. ugh, my brain is going in circles. i don't know, i want to stop feeling trapped and jealous. if i were to make any goals this october it would be to be more expressive in the spirit of halloween, i just don't know what that means, what the endpoint is, or where to start.