Demian's Random... What?

Love cyclic depression and anxiety. I'll have a period of time where I'm doing fairly well, and then I'll have a period of time where I'll think I'm a piece of shit and the world is ending and it's all my/our(humans) fault.

Almost done with the Foreigners series by C. J. Cherry. On the second book of the last trilogy (I don't own the most recent book yet) and having it be about building a rail through some different territory is feeling rather anti-climactic after everything that preceded it lmao.

I've been playing a lot of Caves of Qud and having quite a bit of fun with it. I think literally the only reason I've gotten as far as I have is the optional 'roleplay' setting which means you can check-point in settlements.

Tomorrow I need to go a lot of places. I need to pick up dog food (if they haven't sold it yet, I didn't get a call saying it was ready just that 'it would be in on Fri' and that was last month loool), get my T shot, drop off some library books, pick up some games, and pick up some of my sis' drugs.

I'm so tired. I think it's partly because my sleep schedule has been screwy. I've been going to bed around 5am every night, 4am if I'm lucky and coordinated, and the last couple days been waking around 3:30pm and today around 4pm. I don't like waking up just as the sun is going down. So I'm going to try to get to sleep 'early' tonight or at least before 5am. I've got to get it at least under enough control that waking up at 8am on Sat for the library book sale won't absolutely wreck me.

And I'm partly as tired as I am because I took what's become my monthly shower on Sat. I'm hoping to drag myself into the shower this Sat as well, so that it might not poop me as much as it has. The water heater betrayed me and ran out of hot water quite a bit before I wanted it to and needed it to, as I wasn't quite as clean as I would like. :/

Every so often I doubt being disabled but then remember that taking showers exhausts me enough that I don't do them more than once a month and it takes me like three days to recover. That I'll fall asleep on the couch like an old man if I've done too much. Grocery trips tire me out, watching TV/movies tires me out, interacting with people tires me out, almost everything exhausts me besides reading and (sometimes) playing (certain) games, or if it doesn't then I've had a month of not doing much of anything and everything else is balanced.

The title is a little facetious but last night I had (with my sister) my first encounter close call with a deer in the car (while I was driving). We'd gone to a different city to get a new internet deal at Xfinity. While we were at Xfinity we started asking about food option recommendations. One of the ladies described a fusion pizza place, where it's indian and italian. She talked about how 'it's at the end of a super dark highway but you'll come across a corner all lit up with light. And sure enough that was true. We pulled in, we got our pizza and fries (very good but I'm getting my sis' pizza next time), ate a tiny bit in the parking lot (I was very hungry) and we left.

As we drove back towards the city I noticed that someone had pulled over to the side of the road (in the rearview mirror it had its emergency lights on, don't know why they pulled over) then we drove for like two minutes before my sis said "deer!" and I watched as this deer almost leisurely walking out in front of my car, turning her head to stare me down as she continued walking and I hit the brakes but I also knew if I tried to go for a full stop I'd hit her anyway so I let off the brakes (I'd already let off the acelerator) and I swerved my car like a motherfucker around that damn deer and kept driving.

My sis described it as "some fucking fast and the furious type driving" and admitted that she was almost positive we were gonna hit the deer or go into the ditch/brush/couldn'tseewhatitwas.

So an Xfinity employee was responsible for me almost dying (lmao) and me and my sis saved each others lives: her by warning me which gave me just enough time to 'think' about what to do ('think' in parenthesis because it was part thinking part total instinct) to use my driving skillz to save us both.

It's funny, cuz driving to the pizza place on the highway I was thinking, 'gotta be careful on this road'.

I'm just glad no one was behind us, might've changed a lot.

Can’t cut-text since for some reason my iPad doesn’t like putting down the correct font of the quotation marks dreamwidth prefers haha.


So. Grief. I think the 1st year my dad was gone I was either numb or overwhelmed. I think I spent a lot of it recovering from the amount of stress and pain (both physical and mental) of that last year and a half of taking care of him.

This year I miss him more, it’s a little like a constant ache now. Pretty much every day I say some variation of “I miss you”.


Day before last was pretty upsetting. My sis made a new guy friend and for some reason I have an almost phobia of men which I don’t know why, more women than men in my life have hurt me and the most supportive pillar of my life was my dad. She asked me if he could come over and I kind of squirmed and was vague about how much I did not want him to come over. We finally agreed (me with reluctance) that he could come over on Sunday.

So on TUESDAY I wake up in my room, and I hear a man’s voice in my sister’s room. And my heart sank. I did not want to meet him when I’d just woken up. It was lucky that I had PANTS I could wear in my room so I didn’t have to sneak by in my underwear. Went downstairs PRAYING that they would stay in my sis’s room. Managed to go to the bathroom (and cry a little, feeling that my sis had violated my trust) and took my morning meds. I gathered up some entertainment from my room and went back upstairs to my room, unfortunately my sis’s door was more open than it had been and she said “Hey Damien!” And I said “HEY.” And went into my room.

I texted my friend the whole situation. And then I called the pharmacy to make sure I was gonna get my meds that day. Then I called my therapist.

Last couple of days I've been feeling really anxious, vaguely melancholy. I dunno if I mentioned this but I feel like I've reached the "I miss him" stage of grief which if my dad is any example with his mother, will be what I'm in for probably the rest of my life.

My stomach has been upset recently as well. I've been feeling bloated and sensitive.

I've also been feeling rejected recently. Don't know why, my sis is good to me (and in fact I don't appreciate her enough) but my godparents have been busy and I've wanted to talk for a couple weeks now but they were on vacation, then busy, and now (which my selfish brain understands a little better) a good friend of theirs and my dad's has been diagnosed with cancer herself, and she's been going through treatment.

I feel a little sad, and frustrated, because Daddy was holding distance from them (the last time we were there was when we were momentary climate refugees) me and my sis didn't get to interact with them as much as I would like, and now I feel like I don't know then (but I want to) and they don't know me (which I'm afraid of).

I've just been magnifying my negative qualities recently, it's been extra hard to see my good qualities and instead focused on how I feel like I would like to be a good person, but that I'm not, not really. I talk a good talk about ethics and doing good things but I can't seem to find the energy to be a good person. Then I'm lonely because my one friend is pregnant and works and is renovating a house and doesn't have time for me and I understand and I should reach out more because she responds when I do but I also have the same problem I did with Sammy and she didn't reach out first so I felt ignored.

Then I'm reading a book called the No-Self Help Book by Kate Gustin which is kind of breaking my brain but also seems pretty relevant to me. It's like a different book where one of the things said "every time you see yourself going down the spiral of dramatic tell yourself somewhat humorously 'oh no here's my soap opera again' and hopefully make your problems feel smaller and make yourself aware of any overreactions.'"

I'm so frustrated with myself but it's like I don't have the will or energy to get out of my own way. I need to think of what might be holding myself back, maybe figure out what it is and then hopefully interact with it in such a way that I can convince myself that it's safe to do things.

I'm also running on seven hours of sleep right now and my head has been hurting. Life is hard *whines*

But really, I'm extremely fortunate. I don't have to work (which I'm vaguely terrified of doing) I have shelter, food, water, plenty of entertainment, a loving sister and godparents, and a doggie, and a safe neighborhood to live in, and good neighbors (except for the lady that screams for her free-roaming dog at all hours of the day it seems).

I’ve been feeling insecure about friendship recently. I am a neglectful friend. I don’t reach out a lot. I don’t consider myself good at ‘having fun’ with people. I am quiet and introspective until I’m not and then almost all of my energy is surrounded around myself and expressing my ideas.

I do consider myself a good listener and like to think that I give good advice but I operate pretty much all of my empathy and understanding from a basis of my own experiences. Even my writing is mostly myself expressing different versions of myself. I’m obsessed with the way I come up with thoughts and ideas.

I don’t know how to trust or rely on other people. I don’t know how to relax around other people. I’m always scanning myself for something that I might be doing wrong. I think a problem that I have with offline friendships (maybe? Lord knows I haven’t had many!) is that I operate them from a position of future wrongdoing. I feel like a bad person in progress.

Some of the reading that I’ve been doing is that mistakes are a part of life, and mistakes mean you’re alive and you’re learning, etc.

I guess I might try to think about what an ideal friendship would look like to me? And yet that’s very self-centered isn’t it? I want friendship because I’d like to know someone who likes me and is willing to support me.

I have an offline friend that I’ve been feeling insecure about recently. She’s a really awesome person but we don’t seem to have a lot of “having fun together” similarities? I like reading, she doesn’t. She likes watching movies and shows, I don’t.

She’s a successful adult who will be having a baby soon and I feel like I’m in arrested development and the only thing that ties me to adulthood is the fact that I’m paying bills and taxes. I’m also not sure how to be friends with someone who has a child and might interact with that child. It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with someone who has a kid, it’s that friendship at all is a new dynamic for me let alone friendship with a new parent!

I also feel as if I’m the only one reaching out recently. At the same time I’m bad at reaching out to do “things” together, and I don’t want to always be complaining about my life, etc. At the same time she hasn’t ghosted me yet? So I guess as long as she continues to respond I still have a friendship?


…

I have been in semi-regular contact with my godparents, we actually went the other weekend to a cake store for me and my sis’ birthday and they got me a book called “Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar… Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes” which is really sweet of them because I like to pretend that I’m a philosopher lmao. My godmum is being really good about my love language too, I told her I think it’s gifts. If someone gives me a gift it’s proof both that I exist as an entity in the world and that I exist as an entity in this world that someone likes enough to think of a gift for.

I also have a hole in my finger from where the dermatologist I finally got to see cut a flap of skin off to get it looked at in a lab. I’m terrified of infection because someone I follow on twitter got sepsis from a cat bite. I think ever since my dad died I’ve been a little bit of a hypochondriac.

Recently I went through like two weeks of pretty bad jaw pain and it’s only now calming down. I was worried it was an abscess but the dentist I saw looked at the tooth I indicated and xrayed it and didn’t find anything which good I don’t want an abscess cuz I’d probably have to have the tooth removed. My doc is indulging me, I’ve got a chest x-ray scheduled for my potential breathing problems (probably anxiety and habitual shallow breathing) and a pulmonary test for the same thing.

I’ve been really wanting to go to the coast recently. I want to actually look at hotels and maybe spend like a week over there. Find dog-friendly hotels and beaches (and maybe smuggle the dog into beaches where she’s not allowed in a little bag or a scarf-harness-on-my-chest…) and just… enjoy the ocean air and slather sun screen on and just hang out on the beach all the time… and maybe grieve the fact that the last time I was there was with my dad for his last trip to the beach.

God, ever since he died I’ve realized that there was so much I didn’t know about him. I don’t know why he liked the squid in varnish that he got from the fossil shop. I wish I’d wandered around with him and held his hand and asked him about what he was thinking. This regret makes me wonder more about the people around me. At the same time i feel as if I don’t have the memory space to remember everything that I want to so I feel almost compelled to create little dossiers on my friends and family lmao. I can see interviewing my loved ones to get to know them haha!

The thing that keeps me the most in check when I’m irritated with my sis is the knowledge that I love her and I don’t want to fight with her. Any angry words I would speak would just make me feel worse in the long run.

Next time I get frustrated or irritated I might just want to realize that I’m probably feeling overwhelmed or overstimulated and I might even state such with her the next time I’m feeling the way I’ve been feeling with her several times now. :/ and like my sis really isn’t doing anything that’s bad or logically irritating, it just feels like my body is… triggering me a little. “I’m sorry, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and I just want to focus on watching with without any interruption thank you.” Something like that…

<3 Anyone reading this is awesome <3

Lots of things have been happening... and not happening. I saw my therapist and she brought up some uncomfortable thoughts, so uncomfy that I might not talk about them even here. But! There was a moment of serendipity.

To get to my therapist's office from the parking garage that is 'free'(my therapist has like an 'up to two hours free' voucher for her office) I had to go through an alleyway, which slightly sketched me out because I'm a scardy-cat. When going back to the parking garage I went through the same alley-way (I was a bit turned around lmao) and at the end of the first alley there was a nondescript building in like a sort of half-basement and I noticed on the window it said something like '[the county] Geneological [place, I can't remember the whole name lmao] and I stepped forward and saw if it was a place I could actually go into, and there was a little red sign on the window that said "come in!"(or something like that) and so I went in.

There was an elderly lady at a welcome/information desk with an older desktop computer down a small carpeted flight of stairs, and then there was a middle-aged lady at a four-seat desk further in the back on a laptop. They both looked up at me, and the elderly lady (kindly) said "Can we help you?" and I gathered my thoughts and cleared my throat and sheepishly asked "I don't know if you can help me with this, but I'd like to find a grave?" and when they said sure I explained "My dad died a couple weeks ago, and I'm trying to find his mother's grave, to see if maybe we can intern some of his ashes with her." and they gave me their condolences and looked stuff up on their computer. The elderly lady found an old picture of my grandma and I gave her the party-fact that we talk about sometimes, which is that as a young woman my grandmother was almost the spitting image of the queen as a younger woman, and the woman looked more closely at the picture and said (with some surprise) "your dad was right!".

The middle-aged lady in the back (I'm realizing sheepishly now that I should have asked their names) said "I think I found her obituary!" and I went over to her computer and there it was! I'd been looking and looking and made a (free) membership on familysearch but I was reluctant to sign up for ancestry dot com because I didn't want to pay for it lmao and ancestry was what they had (obviously as they were a geneological group). And there she was. I took a picture thanked them profusely and then went on my way. I might go by this week on Thurs (which is when my next therapy appointment is) and give them some money and maybe ask a few more questions.

I also called the number my sister gave me of a woman who is a part of a family (that I don't want to name even though apparently I have like a(n almost literal lmao) million relatives) on the East coast that we are connected to by my grandmother (my mom's side of the family can fade into the distance as far as I'm concerned lmao). She's the 'historian' of the family and I wanted to ask her where my grandmother was buried, but she explained over the phone that she couldn't do that but that she would look up our potential connection to that family and then get back in contact with me. It was only after we'd hung up that I realized that I'd just finished talking with a relative...

...I'd also come out to her to explain any incongruousness with my records while before stepping out of the closet leading with "I hope this doesn't change your opinion of me" but I used to be [old name] and am now [my name]" and somewhat vaguely referenced that I'm a man now. And she said that of course she didn't mind and that she'd treat me just the same, and then when I thanked her for that while saying that some other people might have reacted badly she said "Well, it's between you and our lord Jesus Christ. I don't have to like it- I don't, but it's between you and god." And like... thanks? relative that lives in (oh god) Florida? And like, I'd gone into the phone call itself with a zen attitude, and listened to her talk about her life (she's got an interesting life) and hearing that I was like (in my head) 'oh, that's slightly disappointing, but at least she's gonna treat me like a human being?????????' LMAO.

SO. I'm going to look up the funeral home that apparently arranged my grandma's funeral and hope that they have a record of where she's buried (and hope that it's not in fucking UTAH with grandpa).

We're still waiting on my dad's ashes, and the death certificate(s). So we're in kind of a legal limbo right now regarding bills and money and other stuff. Which is SUCH a fun feeling.

I'm feeling more sureality. It's like daddy's just in the other room. I keep wanting to go to him and share things and having a little 'oh.' every time. Everything that reminds me of him makes me go 'oh.' right now. I'm reading fanfic and going 'oh' at freaking random points. I feel also that my grief is hiding in another room as well, and some of it leaks out from time to time, and I want to open the door to it, so that it doesn't build and maybe explode out of the room. It's like letting off pressure every once in a while. I'm trying to cry when I feel like crying, and feel the grief when it comes to the surface.