brainsick

I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell…

“That was definitely a thing that happened.”

So much has happened. So much. I thought things would untangle over September; they really didn’t. They tangled further. So dot points, because I can hardly think in a straight line.

Let’s start with the medical shite.

  • the cancer scare has been downgraded to “if the next exams come up clear, you’re all good!”, which I am endlessly, crazily, gloriously grateful for. Not just for my own sake, but for everyone who was worried about me. (Apparently my Dad took it very hard; I feel horribly guilty about that, which is stupid and I know it, but…there it is. :/)
  • we have an answer to all the symptoms: ME/CFS. (Sod the CFS, actually, I’m just using “ME” because that’s what it was originally called, and is far more accurate a term.) I have myalgic encephalomyelitis. I’ve probably had it since I had COVID the first time.
  • this means that all my future plans — turning my life around and becoming a doula+midwife, which I was so serious about I cut eight inches off my hair to mark, y’know, a decision made seriously and happily and with hope — are now in the bin. I don’t have a big enough ‘energy envelope’ to go back to university studies. Any of them.
  • I’m going over everything I do on the daily to try and get better at knowing where my limits are, what triggers things, what helps, what hinders, etc etc etc. It’s important, and knowledge is power, bluh bluh bluh, but it’s just…so frustrating and trying to condition myself into basically stalking myself is unfun. Yeah. Unfun. And saddening.

Emotional shite.

  • It’s really fucking difficult to cope with people you admire and dare I say, love, associating with people who purposefully went out of their way to hurt you, for god alone knows what reason. (Clout, I guess.)  But I’m not like She Who Must Not Be Named; I don’t dictate who my friends can and can’t be friends with. It just…hurts. To see layouts by someone and links to someone who didn’t even have enough honour in them to come directly to me with their problem, but instead spread it all over a certain forum. Lying.
  • Sometimes I just wish I’d never started making fanlistings whatsoever. I’ve quit absolutely now, and quite frankly find a lot of the staff members outright dismissive of problems I brought to them, in good faith. I am done with the vileness that is T(A)FL; but I just wish I’d never started, back in ’16. The community is a pit of vipers.
  • I just realised; fanlistings in general are probably one of the things that exacerbate my ME symptoms (because yes, emotional and mental turbulence also sucks up your energy).

And we’ll end with the far more palatable Things That DON’T Suck!

  • Our local pale-headed rosella couple have decided to start nesting…in my brushtail possum’s box. Poor Eustace has been essentially evicted from his former home and Helyanwion and Vilyaranel have moved in. Eustace essentially shrugged his shoulders, and just moved “over the road” to the first possum box. Bothered? Nah mate, that takes too much energy. XD
  • It’s absolutely delightful to watch the rosella couple go in and out of their new nest, peeking outside when a sound worries them a bit too much or just out of curiosity. I think Vinyaranel has already laid eggs, or is going to very very soon. ♥
  • Recipes for my family that have the tick of approval: Mum’s Teacupcakes, and mulberry muffins. Also, Dad declared that my peanut butter fudge is better than his favourite lollies. I just about passed out. Gonna have to do a pantry restock very soon…and pick more mulberries!
  • I’ve almost perfected my microwave cinder toffee. Almost. And semi-successfully made a cake-in-a-mug into really tiny cupcakes! No idea where I found those tiny little muffin papers, but hey!
  • Started beta-testing a cute game called EverGrove Idle: Grow Magic. It’s just your regular sort of idle game, I think, but…I’m kind of in love with a couple of the characters already? The visual-novel romance part of the narrative unrolls as your reach certain levels, and I’m just like…(⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄  when can I ask Seren to marry me she is my silver sparkling star she is EVERYTHING?! And can I kiss the Warden if only to see him smile? fdjskalfdja;j
  • Playing all the Tsuki games now, but still loving Odyssey the best. I’ve unlocked the area between Momo’s teahouse and Bobo’s ramen cart, FINALLY! First thing I did was put up a row of very bushy trees between the two, plopped a waterfall beside Bobo’s cart (ambience, y’know?), and as a sign of trying to keep the peace…we have a Peace Lemon tree. It belongs to both of them — because lemon is a common tea accompaniment, and Frith alone knows what Bobo puts in his weirder creations, so. They both share the fruit of the tree and try to get along, as far apart as possible and with a line of greenery between them. XD Sigh. I wish I could create a bedroom for Pipi, or put more elegant things in Scarlett’s loft…(I need to do a whole stupid post about Tsuki nonsense, don’t I? XD)
  • pondering starting up a new Stardew Valley game, seeing as there’s going to be a lot of sitting around and stuffing energy into an envelope desperately in my future.

Murasaki Shikibu was wa-la-wa~, change my mind. Not sure where to put that, so it’s here, and also, you’ll never change my mind. ♥

heavy

freaked out about some stuff so I made some fudge. as one does. first time using condensed milk + the microwave; we’ll see how it turns out.

I just…do not like this timeline. at all. I don’t belong in it, it’s breaking my heart a little more every day, it’s horrible and savage and fucked-up and just poisonous. living in it is like breathing in noxious fumes every day. I keep trying to remember that there’s wonder and beauty and magic(k) in this place, but it’s so damn hard. it’s difficult to breathe and difficult to live and just…difficult.

these are difficult times. it seems like such a weak word for what’ s going on, both on a interpersonal and intrapersonal, micro and macro level, but that’s what it is. it’s difficult. or, well, perhaps Difficult. there’s a capital there; you can hear it. all heavy.

a tale of stranger fortunes

I am never, ever speaking about the weather, my mental health, my physical health, productivity, and level of creativity if any of those things are good ever again, because I just jinxed the living flip out of myself on all those levels, and then some. It’s miserably humid and rainy, I’m Extremely Sad™, my back is so painful that I literally cannot stand up for more than five minutes at a time, I have completed nothing since the sixth because of all those reasons, including my mother’s Mother’s Day gifts, which makes me feel like the biggest ass on the planet, and the most creative thing I’ve done lately is make two origami cranes.

Hopefully saying this is like…anti-jinxing myself and things will start looking up tomorrow. Or the day after, I don’t care. Can we at least do away with this BS back pain nonsense? Please?

Only good thing that’s happened: my brother broke up with his abuser. BIG YES. I mean, I doubt he’s escaped her hideous, nasty, malicious, manipulative little claws forever, but…who knows. We can always hope. I’m not happy that he’s alone, I’m happy that his abuser will now hopefully leave him alone…for a few weeks, at least. Vile cow. (Not sorry; I refuse to extend any respect towards that creature. I am sick to death of her, and people like her. I do not apologise.)

We have a new Pope! Or, er, I guess the Catholics do? I’m not quite sure whether the Pope is everybody’s big Catholic or just the Catholics’ big Catholic. Either way, he seems like quite a nice fellow, and he’s anti-MAGA (or as close as a holy person ever gets to being “anti-” something…again, the semantics!), so fingers crossed. It’s always just nice to have good folks in powerful positions.

(I also learned that the Room of Tears is literally called that because so many Popes end up weeping there, for many reasons. I don’t know why, exactly, but I did find that strangely touching.)

I’ve been deliciously devouring the McKinney translation of Shounagon-oneesama’s Pillow Book and have gotten to the parts I never reached before in my original interrupted reads, and…siiiiigh. ♥ She’s just…SO delightful. Ito wokashi, even. ^_~  I deeply enjoy Dr. McKinney’s translation “voice”, and I love that she chose to translate so much more of the text (or texts, to be precise — there are four main variants of the original text; the one that Dr. McKinney uses for the most part is the “Sankanbon”, considered one of the most accurate variants) than Ivan Morris did, and much, much more than Arthur Waley — not that I dislike either of their translations, mind you! Dr. Waley’s writing was poetic and beautiful, and I’ll always have a soft spot for Professor Morris’ translation, because it was so obvious in his translation and footnotes that he admired Shounagon, if not being outright fond of her — and it’s presumptuous of me, but I honestly have a silly dreamy thought that Shounagon would have been rather fond of him, as well.

And I’m so full of thoughts about Shounagon’s Empress…she seemed like such a sweet soul, and the love between her and the Emperor seemed so genuine. Plus, how close and happy her family was, and it was so obvious that Regent Michitaka was so, so proud of her — of all of his children — and he expressed himself in such a jolly, honest, playful way…it’s heartbreaking to think of how it all ended. I was planning to read A Tale of False Fortunes when I finish The Pillow Book (or even before), but I’m not sure how much more sadness I can take! Ah, poor Sadako…if only you could have had your fairytale ending in that life. ;_; 24 years is far too young to die, and far too young to shoulder all that tragedy all alone…aaahhh, I’ll have to change the subject or I’ll start crying!

Apropos of Japanese translations and whatnot: why do letters with a macron (ō, etc) look so ridiculously ugly in some fonts? Either the letter itself is weirdly bolder than a macron-less letter, or the macron itself isn’t aligned with the letter below it…it’s so frustrating! And let’s not even mention that ō itself doesn’t appear to have an ALT code that actually works? I suppose I can use a circumflex o (ô…ALT+0244, for the record) in a pinch, but using a macron for long vowels in Japanese transliteration is the universal standard, so why is it so ridiculously tricky to utilise?! ><;

what if I’m a siren singing gentlemen to sleep?

i dropped off the face of the earth, or at least…i tried very hard to.

i didn’t succeed, quite obviously.

am I disappointed?
I don’t know, any more. I don’t…want to die. Not really.

I just wanted the pain to stop so badly. I don’t remember much…hugging my pink cat to my chest, wetting his silly spotted fur with my tears, apologising to him.

I still want the pain to stop. I want to go one day without crying out of frustration, or pain, or despair. Or for any reason, come to think about it…

Give me wings, starlight, and shimmering shadow things…

horrible days.

things broken. crying, a lot of crying. pain pain pain physical pain pain. angry at people who play at being mad but really, are fine — they’re housed, pain-free, lucid, have lots of friends, a supportive family, a steady income, they can go out of an evening or even simply walk to the local store, and the ability to look stone cold sane when they need to.

because they are.

I wish I had that luxury, of flipping my madness off like a light-switch, but it appears God cursed me;
     I’m downstream braiding flowers into Ophelia’s hair, whispering my goodnights to the sweet ladies.
          I don’t even have Lady Elaine’s blessing of a lovely face; nobody will ever lend me grace.

dreaming of a desk, and a shelf, and a room of my own.
I’m sure the anti-depressants will start working any minute now.

any minute now.

rain & a softness for broken things.

another bad night, of which I really do not wish to speak…which seems entirely counterproductive in a diary, I’ll admit, but I have never made claims towards being wholly sensible nor logical, and nor shall I. not today at least. I will just note down that over and over, I’m very surprised at my own MacGuyvering skills. if something breaks, and I have a screwdriver and drawer of miscellanea at hand…I can probably rig up a fix for it, or at least a temporary one until its replacement gets here. it almost seems a waste that I don’t have, nor do I want, children. oh, the toys that would go on endlessly with Mama’s knack for repair~

a grey and rainy day to match my low mood. I wished to move some items from my residence into the storage shed yesterday (which I could not due to pain keeping me abed yet again…); luckily I got them out of the way this morning just before the deluge started. I jest, really — it’s not a light rain, but it isn’t a roaring bucketing-down like yesterday. I am thankful for that, for my head’s sake if nothing else. Poets who write reams about how romantic the sound of rain on a tin roof is honestly don’t seem to have spent that long under one while it’s happening, I have to say — there comes a point where your brain simply cannot interpret it as white noise no matter how hard it tries…

(thank all that’s good and pure for noise-cancelling headphones!)

at a low ebb.

today I am full of ire and indignance and frustration and unseelie feelings. I want to scream, I want to rage, I want to sob into my pillows…but I cannot. I need to stay in control. expression doesn’t help; undamming the reservoir during a flood makes everything worse, so much worse.

keep control. keep silent.

but nothing changes if nothing changes.

a butterfly trapped in a chrysalis. a flower doomed to remain a bud forever. a moon forever gibbous, never reaching the full.

on and on, etc etc, same as it ever was.

there must be some way outta here…

anyway….

I hope I’m not jinxing myself by saying this, but I’m terribly afraid my laptop computer — my mirror in the tower (I should have named him Shalott), my lifeline, the one who knows me to the absolute — is starting to tire out. I am hoping and literally praying that this isn’t the case, and he’s just slightly sick of humidity and summer heat, but he is ten years old come March (perhaps that is 80 in computer years? He’s a fine old gentleman, I love him so…), so it wouldn’t be surprising…but it would be horrifying. There is no possible way I could replace him at the moment — I don’t have that kind of money in my situation, and thanks to certain people* throwing about the words “grifter” and “get a job”, I can’t even begin to consider crowdfunding or asking for financial help.

(Here’s the thing: holding down a job when your nerves are literally fraying is actually impossible, my other disabilities notwithstanding. Employers tend to prefer healthy and able-bodied employees — trés fou, non? Here’s another thing: mind your own business, you vile, odious, horrid little cretin.)