Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #925
Despite yesterday's big, cold rain, the heat wave continued. I woke up at about 7:30am, and... it was still too hot and much too humid for it to be safe for me to go out on my bike. So I stayed home.
...My genetics and developmental circumstances... both of them aren't very good. And so I've got all these weird problems that arbitrarily limit what I can do. It's annoying as shit. I bet you could go out on a bike on a day like today and barely even break a sweat...
It's all right though. I played some Subnautica. I finished the base I constructed near my Lifepod:
So as you can see, I made a huge glass observatory out of two stacked Multipurpose Rooms, so that the creatures, safe inside the stacked Alien Containment Units, can look at more than just sterile white walls.
...Don't worry, I'm not going to leave them in there. Once I have all five Cuddlefish, there is a safe and beautiful place in the wild that I intend to put them, where there's lots of food and no predators around to hurt them. I think they'll be happy there; just gotta wait a little longer until it's safe to put them there. As of right now, I have to pass to and from the place I intend to put them, and the last thing I want is for them to get hurt by twirling into my path while I'm trying to steer my Prawn Suit or a Cyclops Submarine down there...
In any case, the upper garden I intended to cultivate is now all done with:
...My second base, down in the Lost River, is still under development. But I'll have pictures for you once it's done, don't you worry!
I got up to tend to some basic bodily needs, and found that a package arrived for me! J brought it in!
...One of the folks who regularly reads here has since become a dear friend, and due to how often I write about tea and my wish to share it with you, they invited me to join this tea club, led by someone who is incredibly knowledgeable about lots and lots of different teas and the phytochemicals within them! There's a whole Discord server, where they vote on which tea to try next. The leader then orders it, and divides it up between the participants. There is a monthly payment involved, naturally, but my friend eagerly offered to cover my first month, and the leader offered to cover my second month. Further payments will be made through secure means; I'm looking forward to it!
...But I didn't get to try it today; on my way to actually tending my needs, I stepped on the floor in our laundry area, and... it was incredibly squishy. Alarmingly squishy. "What-The-Actual-Fuck" levels of squishy. Panic-inducingly squishy, even. So we pulled the carpet up to investigate, and... well...
Distraught, we called several plumbers before we found one who would answer us. They came, and... essentially, this happened because these houses were poorly built (don't even get me started on the history and all the corners that were cut during their construction in the 1970s; we didn't know until afterwards...). In an area like mine, if you install copper pipes beneath concrete slab, they're prone to breakage because of the way the soil moves with the seasons – expanding and softening in the warm months, contracting and freezing in the cold months. To put copper pipes beneath a concrete foundation in my part of the world is... not good.
...So the cold water pipe for our laundry area is all fucked up now. The person who came to help us shut off the valve for it, and thankfully it's not leaking anymore. He called some folks to help clear up the resulting water damage, but there seems to be a lot of it; goodness knows how long it's been leaking like this before it leaked enough for it to be discovered by us. And that's dangerous in some respects, because our area of the world is fairly humid, which is ideal for the growth of things like mold and fungus and all kinds of nasty stuff that produce spores that can then grow inside your fucking lungs and kill you horribly.
Oh and rotting. Don't forget general rotting. Which compromises the structural integrity of whatever holds this house together.
...Oh fuck. I remember this dream... I wrote about it here. Do you remember? Read this:
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
...
...I wonder just how long this pipe has been fucked up...
...
...I read through that dream again just for shits and giggles, and... Sephiroth, ya know... while clearing out the closet under the stairs to make a path for the plumber to get to the hot water tank where the water meter is (because the closet was packed full of various random stuff), we found one of those plastic sealed fruit cups – oranges – rotted all to hell. One of these:
...None of us had any idea where it came from, and we all marveled for a moment at how gross and weird it was. I didn't think to take a picture. The contents inside were all brown and gushy and awful-looking, so without a second thought, I just threw it out. I...
...
...What the fuck.
...
Well, in any case, while waiting for the restoration people to get here, I breathed life into today's wishes for you; there's... something grounding about it. Even if it's difficult for my dyspraxic hands to make the folds, at this point, there's still a practiced certainty to it, a routine, ritual-like quality about it that makes me feel less on edge if I do it while I'm in an anxious state:
Afterwards, the other people came and set up a machine that will ventilate the affected area:
...It's a machine that blows hot air continuously over the soggy area to try to draw out the moisture and evaporate it away. And I guess it sucks up whatever water it can, too. But it's loud, and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner, and the air around it smells... musty and gross. Which, I guess is to be expected, all things considered. But still...
...We're definitely going to need to have the plumber come and cut into walls to redirect the cold water pipe, because I don't think there's any cutting through the concrete slab. But it may be the case that there are sections of floor and sections of wall that will just straight-up need to be cut out and replaced. We're definitely going to need to replace most of the carpet in this area; I have no idea how in fuck that's gonna work. The whole thing seems... unfamiliar and uncertain and very scary, but... the plumber promised he'd walk us through all the steps, up to and including dealing with making a homeowner's insurance claim...
...At very least, this should fall under “sudden and accidental water damage”, which will be covered. We're covered up to a hundred thousand dollars, I guess. But I have no idea how much it's gonna cost to pull up and replace a carpet, pull up and replace sections of wall, pull up and replace sections of floor; I've never dealt with this kind of problem before.
...And throughout the process, my body... was prepared for the ghost of my mother to show up through J's or M's interactions with me. If this had happened in my mother's house, in the past, she'd have made it my fault, for not having noticed it sooner somehow, for not having the foresight to periodically check the water meter, or any number of small things that I never would have been able to anticipate, despite her expectations.
...The fact of the matter is that in those days, when she was angry or afraid, she didn't handle it well, and she dealt with it by hurting someone society told her that she was allowed to hurt. And that someone was... me. The child she never wanted in the first place, the child she expected to be hypercompetent, only to result in her feeling insecure about herself when I actually met the expectations she intended for me to fail.
...In her eyes, whenever there was problems, it was my fault. In her eyes, whenever money or time needed to be spent, it was my fault. And every time, I was given a tirade accordingly, about what a lazy, useless piece of shit I am, about how easy it would be to get rid of me, how much easier her life would be if I wasn't a responsibility she had to tend, and on and on and on.
My body expected M and J to react the same way, because M doesn't like problems, and J doesn't like things that necessitate spending money. My body expected them to take the same, “you should have had the common sense to foresee this and taken steps to prevent it before it fucking happened, you stupid, useless, ungrateful little fuck!”
...That is not who they are. But that is how it was with others for a long time. And I believed those words were true for a long time. Faced with uncertainty, I get scared, and sometimes when I get scared, I forget that the way I was treated before was highly abnormal and unacceptable. And so my brain starts thinking like, “if they get mad and start screaming at me, then I deserve it because it's my fault anyway for being bad at tending the house.”
...But it's not true. And rationally, I understand that that's not true. But even knowing it rationally, I still apparently need reminders from time to time.
...That's okay. I'm still building my library of experiences that defy my old experiences. I am still building my repertoire of experiences that were once unsafe, but are safe now. And the only way to build that repertoire is to be exposed, now, with reasonable people, to situations in which I would have been abused by unreasonable people, so that I can prove to my brain that I never deserved to be abused for things that weren't my fault. So that I can prove to my brain that I never deserved to be abused to begin with.
The situation is stressful. But I know, ultimately, that it is good medicine. It teaches me that even big problems like these are just problems with solutions, not insurmountable crises that must be paid for with my suffering.
...And then, something else happened. Arremo, one of my cats, found a weakness in the rebuilt cat barrier, and exploited it. He got out of the fenced-in area. And that is not good, because we are near nature trails, which are teeming with any number of predators. There are foxes out there, coyotes, birds of prey, and also parasites like ticks and fleas and... then there's also poison ivy. And beyond that, there's also cars and people, some of whom have absolutely no qualms about picking up a stray cat to use as dogfighting bait, or worse. And even without all those things, we still can't have our cats running around and killing the native wildlife. Allowing a cat free and open access to the great outdoors is, at best, irresponsible.
So I went outside with some catnip to look for him, calling his name every so often. Along the way, I found this weird, noisy, grey bird who was yelling at... something???
I also found this chipmunk, lying contentedly in a pile of dropped birdseed:
...The juxtaposition between “noisily angry” and “peacefully content” with these two creatures was... interesting.
Despite it being hot and incredibly humid, I walked through most of my neighborhood and through some of the nature trails, looking for Arremo, worried because the storm that had been building all day in the distance was starting to rumble ominously over my area. Even a couple of neighbors said they'd help me keep an eye out for him. Not knowing what else to do, and on the verge of the asthma acting up, I went back inside... only to have Arremo saunter back into our yard from the fenced-in area of our neighbor next door.
...We promptly scooped him up and brought him back in. And then... J decided everybody deserved pizza and cookies for all of today's trouble. So away we went. And I got some incredible pictures of the sky along the way:
...J and I got pizza first.
So we got slices for J and I to eat there, and slices to bring home to M:
And then... inspired by the scenery, I took a couple more photos. You'll have to actually click this one; it's a long photo, and this medium tends to make long photos blurry:
We got our cookies, and went home with our prizes:
We surely didn't eat all of the pizza or all of the cookies; there are plenty of leftovers for tomorrow.
Currently, it is storming out. Or... well... it's storming in the far-off distance, so intensely that it's still lighting up the sky crazily:
...If I didn't know better, I'd almost think that Ramuh came to pay us a visit, hahaha...
…
...I... should wrap up today's letter before the power or the internet go out, sheesh.
I love you so much. Enough to share with you my joys and struggles, just to show you how I move through them. Just to show you that, even if you move through these things clumsily like I do, you're still lovable and worthy. That you still get second chances to try to handle old things in new ways. I dunno what's going on for you where you are, but... I'll keep being over here, having faith in your safety, and having faith that you're on your way home.
I'll write again tomorrow.
Your friend, Lumine
