Demian's Random... What?

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.

CW descriptive talk of panic attacks and bereavement

Saturday night I had the first severe panic attack I've had in what feels like years. I was strangely cold, I've been turning off the air conditioner in my room and the night before last I literally put on a sweatshirt and pants. My lips were tingling and turning numbish and I had a really bad headache (crying too much).

Started crying really hard when the funeral people got there to take the body away, seeing them wrap him in plastic, then cover him with the body bag was really really hard. It was also incredibly hard to watch them load him up in the (white lol) van and drive away.

I feel like there's been a long period in my life, where whenever he drives away in his car or goes somewhere I like to wave... liked, to wave before he turned the corner and was out of sight, always with the mild fear that he won't come back. And this was the last time. He's not coming back this time, he's not gonna wave out the window with the sign language for I love you as he drives away.

So far the nights have been the absolute hardest to get through. My whole body likes to start screaming at me the most during that time. The absolute worst part is that what feels like a gigantic rock likes to sit in the top of my stomach and just roll around painfully. It like literally hurts. My apetite has been absolute garbage because of it but I'm trying to force myself to eat.

One of my sister's friends says that grief is like a rock that gets smaller over a period of time. Something that I read recently is that grief is like a cycle, it comes and goes. The better periods get longer and longer, but that total absence- like, no one in my life is ever going to be able to fit into that space in my life.

He was in my life for 31 years. He was one of my greatest protectors. He was pretty much my best friend. He loved me unconditionally and in the past days before he died he told me several times that the English word "love" was inadequate for what he felt towards me.

Last few nights have been tearsworthy. Saturday night was panic attack, I took a xanax (which I have for panic attacks), and took tramadol for my head pain.

The next day was better, I didn't have as much panic attack symptoms and did not have as hard a cry but I DID have some pretty bad insomnia and some pretty bad pain in my stomach. Got like an hour sleep then got up at 5am. Slept later that day for a few hours. Went out and picked up some drugs. Gave myself my T shot which started off the intense tears which had been building for a while.

Last night was... okay. I talked with my godmother during the day which helped me to cry a lot again later that night, I took another Xanax after the big cry later since during the phone call my godmom said that "that's practically what it was invented for" lol. I've been taking my other anxiety medication but it's not really touching it which sucks.

I also read that moving the body can help since the body is really going through a crisis in this particular moment. So I decided to get my stuff together and go work out for the first time in YEARS. Luckily a dude let me in when both of my keycards didn't work (I later realized that the one that might have worked was in my wallet lmao) and I worked out for about an hour, switching machines as needed. I did a machine that was like stepping but not which was uncomfortable after a while, I walked on a treadmill for a while, and then when my back started hurting I switched over to a bike and pedaled for the rest of the time. I want to talk to my PT about stretching properly before I go anywhere near weights however.

Anyway, like I told my godmother, it's early days yet. Shit sucks.

Hello! I'm still alive.

My dad's cancer is growing again, the oncologist things that it mutated to adapt to the chemo we used. It's not looking good. The last chemo really knocked him out: he's lost a ton of weight, he can only use a walker to get around (which has been great fun in our shithole of a house) and he's not sure he wants to continue treatment. We'll learn more about the new chemo the oncologist wants him to go on when we go to the appointment on Tuesday(1). The nurse practitioner we saw (who is the main nurse for the oncology place we go to) said that without treatment he should probably go straight on to hospice.

Because of this me and my sis have kind of become his caretakers. My sis is taking care of the day meds and food and I'm taking care of the night meds and food. I'm tired all the time and I pulled a muscle in my neck moving it too fast when I went to roll over in bed. It sucks because I feel like I spend more time caretaking him rather than actually spending quality family time with him, and he has mentioned that he's lonely. It's really hard because ofc my dad is ill, but neither my sister or I are spring chickens anymore (if we ever were).

My chronic fatigue(2)/depression means I'm tired all the time and I get wiped out really quickly. Stress seems to build up really quickly in my system and my body doesn't seem to handle it well either. My sister's ADD is acting up and she's struggling with her doctor to get medicated because as it is right now she's having extreme mood swings, depression, and having trouble remembering things, as well as important things like giving herself her medication.

Sis is doing most of the housework. He psych told her to go out and get some sun so she's been doing the blackberries in the backyard and is now clearing a path to the side of the house to our crawlspace where the plumbers are gonna have to go when we repipe the house(3). She's washing dishes, doing laundry, occasionally moving stuff around.

I'm the secretary and the chauffeur. I take my dad to his appointments, park in the disabled parking (because we finally have a disabled parking sticker just in the nick of time), get a wheelchair, help him out of the car, roll him in, and take notes during them, rinse repeat getting out of the doctor's office and taking him home.

A bummer is that my car (which is the main one we're using right now) doesn't have a trunk large enough for the wheelchair we have to fit so we're also thinking of using the money that was meant to buy my sis a truck(4) to instead buy a car that's a size lower than an SUV but isn't quiiiite as small as a four-door car. I don't fucking know. I just want something that I'll drive... later, and have something I can fit a wheelchair in and take my dad places he can enjoy and maybe my sister too, my car is a two door, and full of shit anyway so family trips would be... problematic lol.

Then we're trying to renovate the house: repipe, get a new roof, get pest control in, get rid of that asbestos ceiling somehow, declutter, get stuff out to good will, drop off books we won't read at the library, install a garbage disposer, get a new recliner for my dad to sleep in (furniture buying is hell for disabled people I don't know how normal people do it), etc.

We do have home health coming in. My dad is having PT come in twice a week for three weeks and then once a week for another three. We're also going to get Occupational Therapy to come in. Palliative care is coming in for a consult on Wed, we're getting meals on wheels to come in and assess on Monday, I've got games coming out on Tuesday and Friday that I'm looking forward to(5) which a not-so-anticipated trip to the neighboring now 15 mins away.

And this is all practical stuff, not even going into any depth on the emotional side of things: what I'm going to do after my dad passes away (get a grief counselor immediately). I feel like there's this yawning/gaping black hole with teeth just floating around behind me wherever I go and for the most part I'm able to ignore it but it's spine chilling when I pay attention. I feel like I'm holding it together fairly well (with a few moments of suicidality when it gets really bad, but people know about it, and I know about it and I can mitigate it (my psych has point-blank told me to take more anti-anxiety meds lmao)) but I feel slightly brittle, and I worry about what will happen to that crust around me and that gaping hole behind me when he does pass away.

I'm gonna stop here for now. I'll try to be better about writing here more often again, but as usual, this seems to be the place for me to dump all of my drama looooool. Love you whoever reads, hope you're having a good one.

[let me know if you want me to put a cut-text on this to be polite, I'm just too lazy at the moment]



(1)(which was supposed to have been last week, but he was out of the office and his nurse aide wasn't able to tell us much besides "I'm not really qualified to tell you about this" and shades of "shit sucks" in a very empathic kinda-in-a-hurry-way. I miss our old oncologist but he fucked off to Hawaii to teach at a university. I am jealous.)

(2)which my PT is not actually totally convinced is CFS because I don't have some of the symptoms needed for a diagnosis, but I don't know how to tell my family that "oops, this horrible thing I've been talking about to validate being exhausted all the time isn't actually a thing it's [unspecified *shrugs shoulders* thing] instead. Which I might appreciate advice about if anyone is still out there haha.

(3) They're gonna have to take walls down, and they looked up at the ceiling of the computer room and said oops, that's popcorn asbestos probably and we don't fuck with that you need to get an abatement person out here, and now I'm wondering if Mesothelioma is in my future HAHAHA.

(4) because we thought we'd get her to get over her driving anxiety before we learned she's legally blind without her glasses and has no peripheral vision and the eye doctor told her seriously to not drive.

(5) Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, which is done by the same art people who have done Danganronpa, a series that I love, which looks like great janky fun. I really love their cliched over-the-top characters, which is coming out on Friday. And then on Tuesday is the remake of Harvest Moon A Wonderfull Life + Another Wonderful Life which is now Story of Seasons A Wonderful Life, and I'm particularly excited because there's same-sex marriage and even apparently an option to play as a nonbinary character.

I had something very startling happen tonight. I don't know if it was an allergic reaction or what.

I took a bite of strawberry cheese danish, and I was talking to my dad as I chewed, and suddenly I felt this weird sensation at the top of my mouth, but more in the back. And it started to hurt, like little tendrils, and my face hurt, and my head hurt, enough that I was wincing and couldn't talk very well. Nothing swelled up, my dad had me take an allergy pill and I scrambled to get some water,

as I sipped on the water, it got a little bit better, and I sipped more, and coughed, and sipped and I felt something at the top of my mouth slip away.

I feel almost like what I had eaten had actually somehow gotten stuck at the entrance to my sinuses
Or like a layer of frosting had gotten stuck on my soft pallette

I described it a little bit to my dad as a reverse brain freeze. Instead of feeling cold, it was tingly, and burnt. Like brain acid reflux.

It was strange enough that I really had my dad thinking about calling an ambulance but luckily it didn't last more than a minute or so and my airways were never actually constricted.

I took a picture of the tart, and I took a picture of the ingredients list, and I'm gonna call my doc tomorrow.

On another note, I need to talk to my doctor anyway about moving a specific medication to my allergy list. The pain med my doc prescribed me is one I've taken before (though I didn't remember this at the time, and only found out when I found a reference to it randomly flipping through my journal) and it takes care of the pain, but it also gives me a headache that's worse than the back pain, because at least with the back pain there might be a position i could sit or lie in that might make it better. There is no escaping the headache. I also looked at the prescription information and it says that one of the most worrying side-effects is that particular headache sooooo

It's my 30th birthday today and I don't know how I feel about it.

My negative self-talk has seemed to swell today. I almost want to hide in a closet and ride it out because I have a sinking feeling that I'm going to be rubbed wrong much easier today. Like, feeling left out when I go downstairs and hear my dad and my sister talking together, my sis thinking I'm a ghost when I make noise in the kitchen, my sister singing happy birthday in a mocking(teasing) voice.

I took one of my anti-anxiety meds as soon as I got downstairs though so hopefully my mother's voice will sink back into the depths soon. Interesting to compare my mom to a siren, but like, the kind that drags you down and drowns you. and it's not that she has or had a beautiful voice, or that I really believed everything she was saying, it's just I got used to her saying it. It's been two decades since I last heard her voice in person and yet she's still in my head.

I have this desperation in my head for normalcy, for being normal. I think it might be because even though I know that there's no such thing as a universal normal, there's still this desperation that if I can attain such an impossible thing that I'll be accepted, by my mom, by friends, by romantic partners (even though I haven't had one) and no one will throw me away.

So even though I'm lucky that I don't have to have a job right now, that do have time to screw my head on straight there's still this sinking feeling and voice in my head that's trying to tell me that if I still don't have my shit together at thirty then will I ever?

And like logically I understand that I don't have to have had a job by now, have friends, have a romantic partner, have a clean house, etc but apparently there's something about this day and this number of years specifically that has me freaking out a little bit.

So I think today is going to be a little bit of a minefield where everything will be hitting me a little bit harder, but I just need to remember to take it easy, keep up with my self-affirmations, and not be too hard on myself.