Crow Puns And Other Bullshit

also
i thought i'd fucked up my sleep schedule with caffeine last night bc i was up till like 4:30 and wired.
I can now say after getting a few hours of sleep and waking up STILL WIRED that it was not caffeine!
DATS HYPOMANIA BAYBEE!

 

ol-< had a talk with a friend who said they were enby. it's the friend i had a crush on, who i steadily realized would never ever be an option even platonically because they're very intent on the idea of finding an amab person who'll be understanding of the ace/majorly sex repulsed thing and don't like afab people at all.
i used the term egg about myself, and when explaining it i said that they'd been an egg too, before they had the 'gender is dumb' realization.

they then said they didn't id as queer or enby or anything anymore, wanted nothing to do with the lgbt community, disliked how much emphasis was put on the self in everything, disliked every interaction she'd ever had with stuff online, wanted nothing to do with queer spaces, etc. and had no interest in finding other people with similar situations or experiences.

this after me baring my soul to them, over multiple years. this after me admitting i loved them and telling them it was okay that they didnt feel the same, because i knew it'd never work and i just wanted to get it out bc the secret was killing me.
this after me, less than an hour before, admitting that i was glad my parents were dead bc they never would've accepted me as queer, and how worried i was about ever finding a partner or someone to love again, and the distinct fear that even if I did that I might get assaulted again or have my trust ruined, but how happy i was that there were tons of people with similar experiences and worries out there

idk how to feel, its like whiplash.

and now im crying because i feel hurt, but its... none of my business in the end.

we literally say i love you to eachother every night, and it hurts when i think about it bc i love her very dearly as a friend, but there's always that vague sting of "it's not REAL love, you're just convenient, the second she finds an amab person you're going to be replaced immediately because that's how this is starting to look"

she wants things i can't give her as a friend, and I'm not equipped to give her anything as more than that. and i know the second she finds the things i can't give she's gonna be off like a shot. and then i won't even have my friend anymore.

it feels really selfish to say but christ im lonely and i'm angry god forgot my dick and im frustrated and can do literally nothing about it lmfao.

 

im on the third night of insomnia/no sleep inside of a week.
two nights insomnia in a row with fat naps to subsist on, then a day of 14 hours of sleep, then normal sleep, now insomnia again.
i'm also having a weird second period inside of a month...? like... spotting level but consistently coming for like 3 straight days now and idk why.
so that all kinda blows.

but i got to visit my friends and had a blast. i'm working on baby's first bujo, and a reading log to incentivize reading anything from books to fics to manga.
I've lost 8 pounds since i was last weighed. i've been trying to remember to eat regular meals or at least have a granola bar now and then to compensate for when food just doesn't sound appetizing aside from food I shouldn't have so I don't turn to that as a viable alternative to what i DO have.
i order textbooks on the 10th, and school starts on the 18th.
i restarted stardew but i'm not very far in so i've not gotten to see any of the new content that he added ages ago.
i've been trying to exercise or stretch every day, and slowly unfuck my habitat.

i'm still pretty broken. i'm still in pain, i'm still fainty, i still get depressive spirals but i don't panic as hard about them now all the time.
but i'm sure as fuck hanging in there.

 

so that vibe didn't last long.
school has started and while the first week i was doing fine, the episodes of random shit in my brain has continued.
sleep interruptions, racing thoughts, disorganization, trouble starting tasks and staying organized, trouble memorizing and thinking.
i fell off the bullet journal after the first week. i need to get back into it, it has potential to be very useful.
exercising and stretching fell apart because of depression.
spent a good week sick as a dog and in extreme pain from my covid booster affecting my lymph nodes under the shot arm.
went through another "why am i even bothering if there's no proof i can do this as a job" round
more panic
more anxiety
more depression
psych called me up because he hadn't heard from me in a while and now im on weekly appointments again, though i canceled today because of another no sleep episode
and because i wasnt up to talking about the intense bpd swing happening throughout it.
brain has proof im a monster due to the fact i systematically gather information on people i get close to and know how to hurt them badly and could at any time, so they can't hurt me first.
brain wants me to start fights, cause drama.
brain wants attention.
brain wants people to hate me as much as i hate myself.

idk what's up, really. idk how i'll be next time i report in.
but i'm trying to hang on.

 

so as i stated in the front page recently, my psych thinks I might never have had BPD at all, and was misdiagnosed. Mostly because I have such a massive wad of specific repeated trauma and trauma responses that it can all link back to the c-ptsd or the depression or the anxiety, which are also tied to that. I'll bring it up to the psychiatrist next time I see him I guess, and converse with that. It wouldn't change my treatment that I know of, but it'd be on my record at least. I've been diagnosed with this since I was in Italy, and it... fit but didn't fit I guess? He explained the difference to me but I lack the words right now. Interesting all the same though, I will say.

I started doing more intensive therapy work with my psych, and picked up a copy of a workbook at his recommendation: "Repeat After Me: A workbook for adult children overcoming dysfunctional family systems" by Claudia Black. He said it's kind of the bible for folks with fucked up childhoods who came from abusive backgrounds or lived in a situation around addicts or alcoholics or other stuff, and from what I've done so far I can see why he talks so strongly of her. She's writing from a position of "I've literally lived this, and after studying psychology this is a way to help get you through this and kind of rewrite your brain so you can move past the trauma that's still clinging to you." I've only done one chapter but it brought me a lot of insight already, like why I always retreat to my room, or someone else's bedroom if I'm visiting their home, and why I feel uncomfortable in living rooms by comparison. Why I felt like I had no support growing up (I didn't, surprise), etc. etc.

I also brought up the "I can't do leisure activities like reading or playing the new games I desperately want to play even when I have time, if I'm not actively creating I get cagey and upset and distracted and stuff." thing to a friends server. more revelations. it's ALSO prolly linked to the c-ptsd, in that I used to do these same activities as escapism from the abuse and bad situations. So now even though I'm safe, I go on high alert expecting the abuse and bad stuff to be lurking somewhere about to get me from the corner as soon as I relax. So. I'm going to re-contextualize it, and make it about connecting with the media instead. Comfy clothes, warm drink, maybe annotate the book as I go chapter by chapter. I'm gonna read Harry Potter again with a friend and book club style it so we can discuss stuff that we missed catching as kids. I've got a stack of books I want to get through too, and a few more I'm ordering, that I want to be able to read. I've got books I've already read that I want to go back and annotate too. I have games I want to play and enjoy, and I believe I'll be able to do it once I get my brain in order a bit more.

This'd also explain why I've been struggling to keep my head above water in my literature class lol. I can't relax enough to connect with the work, and bc of brain fog and the stress and anxiety I can't retain info for shit, so forget deeper meaning hunting or theme noticing.

Bit by bit I'm making progress.

 

i apparently love getting low D's so much on exams that i did it again, this time with my anthropology midterm. :)

I'd like to make myself very small now. Very small, and a lot less stupid than I apparently am.
I literally didn't find out till YESTERDAY that there were weekly packets of info with all the terms that needed defining and over a hundred questions per chapter with their right answer selected to study from.

I'm going to pass if I'm careful and lucky but like...
idk.
i wanted to pass like a normal person and get an A or a B.
these results just make me feel more and more like a broken person.

 

calmed down. started doing my therapy workbook's second chapter. it's about letting go of control, and what would happen realistically, and all that stuff so I can start more healing work.
realized while talking with friend that the whole crying but not wanting anyone to see it is def a control thing, but wanting to be entirely silent and lying if people ask what's wrong is uh. bad.
which evolved into "I'm afraid to let go of my self control because if I told anyone what I was thinking I'd get put on psych hold at the local hospital"
which evolved into "Oh, that's related to the whole thing from before. And that I was explicitly told I'd be put in the hospital if I did anything crazy, by my mom, as a tween, when she found out I'd scratched myself on purpose.
which evolved into "oh, i should. probably not downplay that shit to my own doctor. that's probably bad."

so now i've texted my psych the whole thing like a confession, so now the cat's out of the bag so to speak, and I can't take it back.
i feel kind of woozy.

 

having some ups and downs still.
worst of the depressive spike finally ended. i've self harmed twice. only, the second time remained and remains visible still on my inner forearm. i felt so self conscious about it. embarrassed almost, despite being desperate for it to be there in the moment to reset my brain.
hanging on with school work. kinda. mostly. barely it feels like but ive only missed one assignment total, out of four classes. looks like i'll be doing one more semester at my community college before transferring to the big school.
my one singular bnha fic, still not done but getting there, has over 22k hits since October. i'd forgotten what it felt like to be noticed for my work, it's refreshing to know i'm not screaming into the void or writing nothing.
finally on the beta blocker. no idea what its doing so far yet aside from making me feel kind of weak/shaky sometimes, and messing up my sleep. guess we'll see i guess. most likely have to do adjustments rodeo too.
not really sure what i'm feeling. permanently exhausted pigeon mode.
i'll be 33 in less than a month.

 

had a nice long talk about the kink community and size acceptance and lgbt stuff and all kinds of things with a very nice professional dom lady from australia who's in a fandom server I'm in. she's very sweet and knows her stuff and it left me feeling very nice. but it also left me sitting there wondering at myself trying to figure out if I felt so badly about myself because I'm fat. If that was all there was to it, and how shallow that was if so.

realized "Oh. Wait." like hearing a gun cock behind me in the dark.

full flood of the gender dysphoria I've been shoving down and not thinking about for a solid year since I chickened out and canceled on the trans clinic.

so uh.

i guess i'm gonna use all my tools i learned in therapy to start approaching that subject again.

 

Whelp. Time flies, huh. Decided to come drop a lil update since I kinda disappeared lol.

• Gender stuff settled out a lot suddenly. I'm settled into she/they and content. Body image still hard, but working on it. No longer any issues of feeling like I'm crawling out of my own skin.
• Psych work is going strong still. I'm in weekly therapy and have been for quite some time, and am on stable medication. Lot of c-ptsd work and anxiety work, an trying to see how it interacts with my physical health in different ways.
• I've been divorced for five years now, as of October 1st.
• I changed majors and changed schools, after more work with my therapist and his suggestion sounding good. I'm at a proper university now instead of the community college, and the difference is amazing. I swapped from psych major to a social work major, and am really really enjoying my professors and the classwork a lot. I'm even passing my math class, which is great since it's the only one I need to take for my degree on this new plan. I'm even anticipating going for my masters.
• Physical health is still McFucked but. Eh. Whatcha gonna do. I'm trucking along. Working on getting a sleep apnea diagnosis currently.
• Still single and not sure whenever that's gonna change lmfao.
• Realizing I've got a much stronger amount of dissociation than I thought I had has been an entire ordeal I almost want to say separately entirely from the psych work, because it feels like it's its own battle and beast. It's a handful.

Overall... Yeah. That's about how I've been. Ups and downs, but hanging on.

 

Welcome back! Hopefully the bads you feel sort out and the goods you feel keep on and bring more with them.

 

That's def the goal!

 

So in September I got a bad migraine/eye pain and suddenly had blurred vision in my right eye. Like, notably blurred for some, couldn't ignore it, I could tell something was up even when using both eyes. When hours passed and the migraine left and the blurred vision stayed, I wound up going to the ER because I was concerned. 11 hours of waiting room later I spent 12 hours in the observation bay getting MRI's and eye exams to make sure nothing serious was wrong. They couldn't see anything in MRI and the doctors deemed it ocular migraine and essentially slapped me on my ass and sent me home to see a specialist later.

The specialist appointment is tomorrow, Halloween. My eye is still blurry, but the intensity of the blur increases and decreases at random throughout the day. Sometimes I'm getting teal blue bars overlaying my vision for some reason when I read. I've been getting migraine/eye pain off and on still, all only on that side. idk what to expect tbh. if they say its nothing and i just need new glasses i'll be grateful, yeah, but like... why did it happen so suddenly and persist. why do i keep getting the Same Pain?

 

appointment went well!! eyes structurally look fantastic, no issues with peripheral vision either. she says, though, that my prescription looks like its changed a chunk more than usual for that eye specifically/in general. so it may be like. discovery syndrome. where you dont notice somethings off till something draws ur attention to it then you cant unsee it.
working theory rn is that my right eye's been fucked up for a while with my glasses and it reached a point where it couldnt compensate anymore and is straining itself now to keep up. BUT i have to make an optometrist appt for new glasses bc since my prescriptions so high + i need prisms they couldn't do it there.

 

Got cleaning. got some fillings. i gotta go back in december for more fillings. and a root canal site i had done before at the dentist that no longer takes my insurance is infected. so they have to have me go to the local college to try getting help. and it might be out of pocket. ive got no idea what im gonna do about that lmfao. but i start antibiotics tomorrow.

 

ough these antibiotics are making me so goddamn tired...

also, very lame, my laptop's screen is indeed slowly leaking. its just going to keep getting worse. so i need to make a new commission sheet but goddamn it i am too busy to hustle four hundred bucks for a replacement i found that'd suit me orz

 

reading Blue Period again bit by bit, halfway through volume 2. Ugh. I love it, the vibe is great, but it definitely gives me the same "why did i not go to art school" like honey and clover gives me. i know i chose not to because i needed something more stable, something that wouldn't rely on me as an individual to hustle up work. i know that was a good choice in my case. ...but god i still love art. there's such a desire to get even better at it but i can't exactly take art classes right now. maybe i can just settle down and do a bunch of studies like i keep saying i will, get better at the planning stages so i can express what's in my head better.

i lacked confidence in myself as an artist enough that i didn't think it was worth investing that much money towards bettering my skills. and i'll have to live with that decision forever. but with the internet at least, there's nothing holding me away from resources that even ten years ago didn't exist. i can still have art.

 

gonna have to get that tooth pulled. the treatment isn't covered by my insurance, and it'd be over a thousand dollars up front, and it'll just stay infected till treated or removed. so. that's fun.

also hearing murmurs and whispers in my head today for some reason. i was hearing them off and on before the stressful news. headaches. not sure what's up with that, i already took my meds.

 

headache is likely from the TMJ flareup from the dentist jerking my jaw around to work on my molar. fucking ow. it's even making my sinuses hurt on that side. bonus: that's the side my eye is fucked up on too. so I'm also blurry on that side. and headache can be from that too. all around discomfort lol.

therapy was good. he told me it's okay not to have any big goals. it's okay to only focus on today because the future is overwhelming. as long as you're doing your best today, you're doing plenty enough. the future is just made of many todays, it's not some specific point, it's all just today in different times. which is kind of comforting because any thoughts about the future immediately overwhelms me. i can't think of the future without combusting in on myself.

voices still there but it's more like white noise murmuring now.

 

i think the murmuring is finally stopping. my head feels funny and my ears feel funny like im straining to hear something in the background but there's nothing but the video i'm listening to with my headphones. i hope they stay gone longer this time.