Have an entry.
Jan. 12th, 2025 02:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsuki_okami212Written months ago.
I knew it had been a long time since I last wrote a journal entry but damn is time blindness a wild ride. I had no idea it had been so long. I really regret stopping and I honestly don't remember if there was a reason or if I just drifted away and kept forgetting to get back to it. There's so much I can't remember now that I could have been documenting. But I can't change what I didn't do, so I'm trying to push past the shame of a dropped habit and try to pick it up again. I don't know how often I'll get a chance to sit and stream my consciousness onto the screen since I do best with a physical keyboard than having to split my focus to the touch screen keyboard which requires it.
I'm hoping to look into seeing if I meet the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis in the next year or so because I feel like that, dissociation and other possible factors are why my memories are so often vague/tenuous without another person who was there to illuminate them with details. I wish I could give a summary of all the years between now and 2009 when I last posted anything (I did -NOT- succeed at that reading challenge, that much I know). Not that anyone I know reads my journal or has any vested interest in keeping up with the events of my life or happenings in my mind, but I like to imagine that I'm writing this to someone. The idea of speaking into a void with no acknowledgement is too damn depressing to me.
One thing that past me would probably be flabbergasted at is that very nearly precisely 15 years ago, Mo and I developed from acquaintances to friends to friends with online roleplay benefits and finally into a real life romantic relationship. It's not been a utopic road since then by any stretch but we've endured and grown stronger together and individually. Part of me says I should detail the trials and tribulations we've faced from within as well as without and the rest of me isn't interested in spelling out times that were often painful/stressful. Mo is going through a hard time from an outside source and it's really hard to see him suffering so much emotionally and mentally.
When Mo and I first got together, it was overwhelming for him and it didn't help that a "friend" threw an incel type hissy fit about the fact that I hadn't "given him a chance" in dating among other rant topics. He was so -angry- despite having been previously told I didn't see him that way. He had just decided on his own that we had a connection that couldn't help but lead to a romantic relationship and couldn't handle that I had found myself with feelings for someone despite having also told him that I wasn't interested in dating anyone. I regret that after I tried to cut the friendship off, I had to depend on that person for something face to face and I was a lot weaker about staying strong against people trying to sway me face to face. Due to that failing of mine, both Mo and I were subjected to several awkward and uncomfortable interactions with this person. Thankfully things somehow drifted to a point of disconnection from that person at some point.
Trying not to anxiously over-indulge the completionist tendency to want to explain every detail and traumatizing detail of that person's behavior that led to the initial cut off attempt or the further sketchy behavior. If any individuals I know in real life want to ask questions in private, I'd be willing to discuss it but it's just too much for an attempt at a recap/catch up entry. Or I suppose I could eventually make an entry about just that.
My last real journal post was shortly after I'd been unjustly, maybe even illegally, fired from Value Village. That's a whole drama on its own that could also take up a whole entry just for that. I was out of a job for a couple months then got hired at Baskin Robbins for...I don't remember, 8 months or so? Something like that. I didn't mind the work itself but the management and behind the scenes details on top of ending up as the only employee set to open and close daily was not sustainable. I still wish I hadn't forgotten to report some stuff to the Health Department but oh well. Eventually I got through another awful round of job hunting and got a "Front End Supervisor" spot at Michaels. Which wasn't bad once I started getting used to things but I ran afoul of their points to termination policy that, as far as I'm aware, they've since gotten rid of and got fired about 8-9 months later.
After that I was out of work for around a year and in my initial panic, put in a notice to vacate on the apartment I once shared with my older sister. Honestly not sure why I didn't think to ask if they'd let us withdraw it so I could have discussed our options with my sister but somehow that didn't occur to either of us. I ended up re-homing my dog Snuggles, a choice I still regret even if he would have made a lot of things more complicated, and moved in with one of my long time friends and her family for a while. When they moved to Ohio for 6 months or so, I found myself moving into the unoccupied but not empty house that another friend's parent's owned. I was granted a place to stay as well as a paid 'under the table' job to clean up/clear out the house that had been left an artistic hoarder's disaster zone.
At the end of that process and before serious reno work could be done, Mo and his family moved in and let me stay. Though it really wasn't very long before he and I felt the urge to leave the nest so to speak and get our own place. We had that apartment for a year, the little backyard cottage for three years and we've been in the current problematic house since 2016. It really doesn't work for us anymore, even after circumstances led to the occupancy rate rising to 5-6 people before shrinking to us and my younger brother with his dog. Even if the younger brother and dog were to leave, it still wouldn't be a place I wanted to continue living. I'm worried that something in the house (hidden mold? idk) is what killed our 10-12 year old cat Hemmingway and could already be affecting the lungs of our recent ish addition to the house, our cat Nugget.
During our time in the backyard cottage, Mo's mom Becky had a stroke and was unfortunately left with conditions/physical limitations that affected her mind and body in ways that left her unable to care for herself. When we moved into the current house it was with the half baked notion to get certified to care for her at home vs her staying in the private nursing home she landed in. But between the cert hurdles, her care requirements and various anxieties, that never happened and it hurts so much because maybe if it had, we might have noticed the throat cancer soon enough to have gotten her treatment or at least made her more comfortable in the time she had left. But without her staying with us, the pandemic made it impossible to see her during lockdown/restriction times besides the general refusal to be the reason she or anyone in the house caught Covid. I wish I'd been more attentive to her struggles to speak on the phone that only grew over time. She passed away in early February last year. I was alone with her in the hospital and wished I had waited a bit longer to get caught up preparing to stay with her overnight because it wasn't long after everyone who had made it there left and I want to believe I went to her side just in time to hold her hand as she went but the uncertainty of that hurts so much.
Life in general has been rough for a long time. Between Becky's stroke, Trump's presidency/the 2016 elections, the pandemic, Hemi passing, various other things, Becky passing and the rise of facism in the US/around the world and it's no wonder my medications just manage to dampen my depression/anxiety. Or that I've been in steady burn out for longer than I can say. Since mid-December last year, for the first time I went from having a stable full time schedule to unsteady/unreliable hours and got to the point of developing stress ulcers. Which is saying something given the levels of stress I endured in the past regarding my mom and other things.
Speaking of my mother, I had to finally cut her out of my life. When, I don't remember, but I had Bryant (younger brother) help me with the actual actions because it was just beyond unsustainable to keep letting her emotionally manipulate me beyond my capabilities to help her and cover our own crucial needs like rent and food, not to mention bills. I let her back in briefly after getting struck by a car as a pedestrian in August 2022, but it wasn't long before trends started to repeat themselves and I took the initiative myself to block her. Despite the absolute necessity of it, it still hurts to have to maintain the boundaries and I struggle with my ingrained/programmed impulses to try and solve all her problems. But now more than ever before, I don't have the means to even try, financially speaking. It gets harder than ever to not renew contact when I hear about the ways she struggles and how bad aspects of her health are but I know for a solid fact that I can't risk the same patterns starting up and finding the rest of my life deteriorating to try and keep her boat afloat while she/her significant other seem to be actively drilling holes in the hull.
Other family members have been a problem as well. My older brother has been homeless/housing insecure for a long time with the questionable exception of time spent in jail/prison. At some point we made the (in hindsight) mistake of putting a shed in our backyard for the intended purpose of giving him a place to store his belongings when we should have gotten him a storage unit or something. Because he took the shed as seemingly an invitation to become a squatter in the backyard; which led to a lot of problems re: missing items other people had back there, the accumulation of junk/rats, noise/utilities/etc problems and unwelcomed visitors. That last factor eventually developed into a chronic second squatter with mental health struggles. The two of them are part of the reason that we don't feel comfortable/safe in our home even when they have supposedly left or found some kind of housing because we can't trust that anything is true or will last even if it is because of their pattern of behavior/events that have returned them to our property. But at least we're taking measures to try and end the pattern by clearing all the stuff and sheds from the yard.
I don't want bad things for either of them but I hope she really stays gone without my older brother around and that he's able to make a lasting/stable life for himself in Idaho where he recently moved to. I can't handle dealing with him but I really just want to know that he and even my mom are healthy and have stable lives. I have kind of rollercoaster relationship with my older sister because of a lot of interpersonal conflict in our personalities, and ways of seeing/approaching other people etc. I'm currently in a no contact status with her too because of related struggles to the above.
I recently started trying to apply for new jobs because it's increasingly problematic to lack steady full time hours and my current managers just keep saying they don't have a spot for me to get that. Should have had a spot at Benaroya Hall but instead of addressing a behavior they didn't like that was fixable, they just rejected me. Anxiety and imposter syndrome make job hunting really stressful but I really don't have a choice.
Not only is it not financially feasible to have inconsistent hours but I can't even begin to really be an effective caregiver for Mo without the ability to reasonably schedule appointments well ahead of time and be sure that we can keep them. I'm really worried about his legs because his left leg has really ballooned and he says that it's a more recent thing but I think it's been a growing problem for longer. But we can't afford Lyft rides to appointments to even try getting his legs massaged/wrapped for the theoretical 6 weeks they say it takes to get through the reduction phase to the maintenance phase of being able to use off the shelf compression garments. Spent a ton of money on the custom Farrow wraps but we haven't been using them at all for ages and weren't able to keep them on for long even when we were trying.
I really hate how it feels so overwhelming and hopeless that there are options and solutions out there but it's all so expensive and even with a new law about coverage for lymphedema, I feel like too much is still out of reach. Though there are mental barriers to some of it too, like Mo having an almost phobia for surgeries etc so it'd be a hard task to get him to agree to some of the procedure options. I want to try and get him a device that helps with the massage he needs and has trouble performing on himself but I don't know if he could handle it from a claustrophobia/sensory issue view point.
Been taking things cluttering the house to the spot for free stuff in the neighborhood, recently carpet cleaned the spare room and did more laundry that will get folded....at some point. Wish I could handle multi-tasking better but feel like I'm either dissociating or overwhelmed with all the things I want/feel like I need to do and what I should be doing etc and unable to do any of it. I probably shouldn't have got coffee from upstairs.
I really do need to try and do this more often because it feels like there's way too much stuff inside my head all the time. Have so many videos on my Watch Later list but also shows and movies I want to watch and if I had the time to really hyperfocus, books to read and games to play. But I can't manage my time well or keep focus to feel like I ever make progress on any of it. I'm either on the bus where I have to be careful with what I'm doing because I'll miss bus stops or be left at a bus stop and be late getting to work or home. Or I'm at work and typically I'm not being paid to work a site to do what I want to do, though honestly there are sites where that happens because all I'm being paid to do is be a body in place. Or I'm at home where there are chores to do, a partner with whom I want to spend time/who has needs that require help etc plus a cat that needs cared for too plus at least basic hygiene care for myself etc.
To that last bit, I'm already often overwhelmed but I want to get a second cat but Mo isn't interested for a few reasons so it's kind of stressful. I know we need to be more financially stable first but I feel like getting the second cat would pay for itself if they help Nugget exercise more to help with her constipation issues because too often I don't have time/energy etc to play with her enough. Though I also worry about her breathing too hard because of air quality issues in the house. Hoping the landlords will be willing to pay to get the air ducts cleaned and need to point out the damage to the underside of the eaves of the house. We did get a broken window replaced recently though.
Think I've reached my capacity for this for now. Talk later.
I knew it had been a long time since I last wrote a journal entry but damn is time blindness a wild ride. I had no idea it had been so long. I really regret stopping and I honestly don't remember if there was a reason or if I just drifted away and kept forgetting to get back to it. There's so much I can't remember now that I could have been documenting. But I can't change what I didn't do, so I'm trying to push past the shame of a dropped habit and try to pick it up again. I don't know how often I'll get a chance to sit and stream my consciousness onto the screen since I do best with a physical keyboard than having to split my focus to the touch screen keyboard which requires it.
I'm hoping to look into seeing if I meet the criteria for an ADHD diagnosis in the next year or so because I feel like that, dissociation and other possible factors are why my memories are so often vague/tenuous without another person who was there to illuminate them with details. I wish I could give a summary of all the years between now and 2009 when I last posted anything (I did -NOT- succeed at that reading challenge, that much I know). Not that anyone I know reads my journal or has any vested interest in keeping up with the events of my life or happenings in my mind, but I like to imagine that I'm writing this to someone. The idea of speaking into a void with no acknowledgement is too damn depressing to me.
One thing that past me would probably be flabbergasted at is that very nearly precisely 15 years ago, Mo and I developed from acquaintances to friends to friends with online roleplay benefits and finally into a real life romantic relationship. It's not been a utopic road since then by any stretch but we've endured and grown stronger together and individually. Part of me says I should detail the trials and tribulations we've faced from within as well as without and the rest of me isn't interested in spelling out times that were often painful/stressful. Mo is going through a hard time from an outside source and it's really hard to see him suffering so much emotionally and mentally.
When Mo and I first got together, it was overwhelming for him and it didn't help that a "friend" threw an incel type hissy fit about the fact that I hadn't "given him a chance" in dating among other rant topics. He was so -angry- despite having been previously told I didn't see him that way. He had just decided on his own that we had a connection that couldn't help but lead to a romantic relationship and couldn't handle that I had found myself with feelings for someone despite having also told him that I wasn't interested in dating anyone. I regret that after I tried to cut the friendship off, I had to depend on that person for something face to face and I was a lot weaker about staying strong against people trying to sway me face to face. Due to that failing of mine, both Mo and I were subjected to several awkward and uncomfortable interactions with this person. Thankfully things somehow drifted to a point of disconnection from that person at some point.
Trying not to anxiously over-indulge the completionist tendency to want to explain every detail and traumatizing detail of that person's behavior that led to the initial cut off attempt or the further sketchy behavior. If any individuals I know in real life want to ask questions in private, I'd be willing to discuss it but it's just too much for an attempt at a recap/catch up entry. Or I suppose I could eventually make an entry about just that.
My last real journal post was shortly after I'd been unjustly, maybe even illegally, fired from Value Village. That's a whole drama on its own that could also take up a whole entry just for that. I was out of a job for a couple months then got hired at Baskin Robbins for...I don't remember, 8 months or so? Something like that. I didn't mind the work itself but the management and behind the scenes details on top of ending up as the only employee set to open and close daily was not sustainable. I still wish I hadn't forgotten to report some stuff to the Health Department but oh well. Eventually I got through another awful round of job hunting and got a "Front End Supervisor" spot at Michaels. Which wasn't bad once I started getting used to things but I ran afoul of their points to termination policy that, as far as I'm aware, they've since gotten rid of and got fired about 8-9 months later.
After that I was out of work for around a year and in my initial panic, put in a notice to vacate on the apartment I once shared with my older sister. Honestly not sure why I didn't think to ask if they'd let us withdraw it so I could have discussed our options with my sister but somehow that didn't occur to either of us. I ended up re-homing my dog Snuggles, a choice I still regret even if he would have made a lot of things more complicated, and moved in with one of my long time friends and her family for a while. When they moved to Ohio for 6 months or so, I found myself moving into the unoccupied but not empty house that another friend's parent's owned. I was granted a place to stay as well as a paid 'under the table' job to clean up/clear out the house that had been left an artistic hoarder's disaster zone.
At the end of that process and before serious reno work could be done, Mo and his family moved in and let me stay. Though it really wasn't very long before he and I felt the urge to leave the nest so to speak and get our own place. We had that apartment for a year, the little backyard cottage for three years and we've been in the current problematic house since 2016. It really doesn't work for us anymore, even after circumstances led to the occupancy rate rising to 5-6 people before shrinking to us and my younger brother with his dog. Even if the younger brother and dog were to leave, it still wouldn't be a place I wanted to continue living. I'm worried that something in the house (hidden mold? idk) is what killed our 10-12 year old cat Hemmingway and could already be affecting the lungs of our recent ish addition to the house, our cat Nugget.
During our time in the backyard cottage, Mo's mom Becky had a stroke and was unfortunately left with conditions/physical limitations that affected her mind and body in ways that left her unable to care for herself. When we moved into the current house it was with the half baked notion to get certified to care for her at home vs her staying in the private nursing home she landed in. But between the cert hurdles, her care requirements and various anxieties, that never happened and it hurts so much because maybe if it had, we might have noticed the throat cancer soon enough to have gotten her treatment or at least made her more comfortable in the time she had left. But without her staying with us, the pandemic made it impossible to see her during lockdown/restriction times besides the general refusal to be the reason she or anyone in the house caught Covid. I wish I'd been more attentive to her struggles to speak on the phone that only grew over time. She passed away in early February last year. I was alone with her in the hospital and wished I had waited a bit longer to get caught up preparing to stay with her overnight because it wasn't long after everyone who had made it there left and I want to believe I went to her side just in time to hold her hand as she went but the uncertainty of that hurts so much.
Life in general has been rough for a long time. Between Becky's stroke, Trump's presidency/the 2016 elections, the pandemic, Hemi passing, various other things, Becky passing and the rise of facism in the US/around the world and it's no wonder my medications just manage to dampen my depression/anxiety. Or that I've been in steady burn out for longer than I can say. Since mid-December last year, for the first time I went from having a stable full time schedule to unsteady/unreliable hours and got to the point of developing stress ulcers. Which is saying something given the levels of stress I endured in the past regarding my mom and other things.
Speaking of my mother, I had to finally cut her out of my life. When, I don't remember, but I had Bryant (younger brother) help me with the actual actions because it was just beyond unsustainable to keep letting her emotionally manipulate me beyond my capabilities to help her and cover our own crucial needs like rent and food, not to mention bills. I let her back in briefly after getting struck by a car as a pedestrian in August 2022, but it wasn't long before trends started to repeat themselves and I took the initiative myself to block her. Despite the absolute necessity of it, it still hurts to have to maintain the boundaries and I struggle with my ingrained/programmed impulses to try and solve all her problems. But now more than ever before, I don't have the means to even try, financially speaking. It gets harder than ever to not renew contact when I hear about the ways she struggles and how bad aspects of her health are but I know for a solid fact that I can't risk the same patterns starting up and finding the rest of my life deteriorating to try and keep her boat afloat while she/her significant other seem to be actively drilling holes in the hull.
Other family members have been a problem as well. My older brother has been homeless/housing insecure for a long time with the questionable exception of time spent in jail/prison. At some point we made the (in hindsight) mistake of putting a shed in our backyard for the intended purpose of giving him a place to store his belongings when we should have gotten him a storage unit or something. Because he took the shed as seemingly an invitation to become a squatter in the backyard; which led to a lot of problems re: missing items other people had back there, the accumulation of junk/rats, noise/utilities/etc problems and unwelcomed visitors. That last factor eventually developed into a chronic second squatter with mental health struggles. The two of them are part of the reason that we don't feel comfortable/safe in our home even when they have supposedly left or found some kind of housing because we can't trust that anything is true or will last even if it is because of their pattern of behavior/events that have returned them to our property. But at least we're taking measures to try and end the pattern by clearing all the stuff and sheds from the yard.
I don't want bad things for either of them but I hope she really stays gone without my older brother around and that he's able to make a lasting/stable life for himself in Idaho where he recently moved to. I can't handle dealing with him but I really just want to know that he and even my mom are healthy and have stable lives. I have kind of rollercoaster relationship with my older sister because of a lot of interpersonal conflict in our personalities, and ways of seeing/approaching other people etc. I'm currently in a no contact status with her too because of related struggles to the above.
I recently started trying to apply for new jobs because it's increasingly problematic to lack steady full time hours and my current managers just keep saying they don't have a spot for me to get that. Should have had a spot at Benaroya Hall but instead of addressing a behavior they didn't like that was fixable, they just rejected me. Anxiety and imposter syndrome make job hunting really stressful but I really don't have a choice.
Not only is it not financially feasible to have inconsistent hours but I can't even begin to really be an effective caregiver for Mo without the ability to reasonably schedule appointments well ahead of time and be sure that we can keep them. I'm really worried about his legs because his left leg has really ballooned and he says that it's a more recent thing but I think it's been a growing problem for longer. But we can't afford Lyft rides to appointments to even try getting his legs massaged/wrapped for the theoretical 6 weeks they say it takes to get through the reduction phase to the maintenance phase of being able to use off the shelf compression garments. Spent a ton of money on the custom Farrow wraps but we haven't been using them at all for ages and weren't able to keep them on for long even when we were trying.
I really hate how it feels so overwhelming and hopeless that there are options and solutions out there but it's all so expensive and even with a new law about coverage for lymphedema, I feel like too much is still out of reach. Though there are mental barriers to some of it too, like Mo having an almost phobia for surgeries etc so it'd be a hard task to get him to agree to some of the procedure options. I want to try and get him a device that helps with the massage he needs and has trouble performing on himself but I don't know if he could handle it from a claustrophobia/sensory issue view point.
Been taking things cluttering the house to the spot for free stuff in the neighborhood, recently carpet cleaned the spare room and did more laundry that will get folded....at some point. Wish I could handle multi-tasking better but feel like I'm either dissociating or overwhelmed with all the things I want/feel like I need to do and what I should be doing etc and unable to do any of it. I probably shouldn't have got coffee from upstairs.
I really do need to try and do this more often because it feels like there's way too much stuff inside my head all the time. Have so many videos on my Watch Later list but also shows and movies I want to watch and if I had the time to really hyperfocus, books to read and games to play. But I can't manage my time well or keep focus to feel like I ever make progress on any of it. I'm either on the bus where I have to be careful with what I'm doing because I'll miss bus stops or be left at a bus stop and be late getting to work or home. Or I'm at work and typically I'm not being paid to work a site to do what I want to do, though honestly there are sites where that happens because all I'm being paid to do is be a body in place. Or I'm at home where there are chores to do, a partner with whom I want to spend time/who has needs that require help etc plus a cat that needs cared for too plus at least basic hygiene care for myself etc.
To that last bit, I'm already often overwhelmed but I want to get a second cat but Mo isn't interested for a few reasons so it's kind of stressful. I know we need to be more financially stable first but I feel like getting the second cat would pay for itself if they help Nugget exercise more to help with her constipation issues because too often I don't have time/energy etc to play with her enough. Though I also worry about her breathing too hard because of air quality issues in the house. Hoping the landlords will be willing to pay to get the air ducts cleaned and need to point out the damage to the underside of the eaves of the house. We did get a broken window replaced recently though.
Think I've reached my capacity for this for now. Talk later.
