#raye speaks

[rayethefox14524]

Cain killing Abel in the bible because nobody had died yet and so they didn’t know it was a possibility vs Caine trying to alter Scratch’s mind and causing the first ever abstraction… ooough….

[lightofraye]

In Memoriam

Before I proceed, I want to put warnings--content/trigger warnings. In this post, there will be references to cancer (also, fuck cancer), death, biological processes, grief/loss.

When we think of cancer, when we speak of it, I've noticed often times the phrase "evil", "monster", or some other dark term is used. Because it seems to be such a merciless, cruel thing to happen to people. It seems to strike without reason, taking the best and worst of us, young or old....

Today marks 18 years since my mother passed away from cervical cancer. She didn't have to die, not really. In a way, she chose to.

You see, my mother had an intense mistrust of "mainstream" medicine. I'm not sure where it came from, honestly. It was... it was a slow conversion. She kept turning to alternative means to treat problems, mainly our day-to-day diet (lord, we went vegan, Atkins-like before Atkins was widely known anyway), and various other kinds to "cure" our ailments, never accepting that some things can't be fixed by diet alone!). Then she kind of went off the deep end....

When she learned she had serious fibroids, she decided to try different "healing" creams to balance out her hormones, convinced it'd "dissolve" the fibroids. When she began to have heavy, intense bleeding, she chalked it up to the fibroids and not other issues.

Such as an abnormal pap smear test result... that she never followed up on.

It'd continue for years.

She even turned to an alternative doctor who told her yes, he saw the fibroids... but he also saw some seriously bad stuff. This doctor told my mother to go see her ob-gyn and get this checked out.

She wouldn't... up until she collapsed from the heavy bleeding in a grocery store bathroom stall. She finally turned to mainstream medicine, got it checked, got the biopsy....

It was Stage 2 cervical cancer.

She was referred to an oncologist. He, of course, brought up chemo and radiation. She refused, wanting to try alternative treatments first. He accused her of having a death wish (I was there, I wish I was joking!). He basically burned that bridge with that approach.

I can't help but think that... if he had said "Okay, I'll work with you. How about we monitor the cancer as you try it for a couple of months? If there's no improvement, will you try chemo and radiation then?"

Maybe she would've accepted it. I don't know.

So she turned to "mistletoe extract" injections. For a little bit, it looked like it was working. She was doing better.

Then... she developed increasing pain in her right leg. The doctor who originally told her to go see her ob-gyn stressed to her it was likely her cancer growing and getting worse. She didn't listen.

Then... she had increasing pain. Increasing issues. She got thinner... paler. She was so stubborn. There's numerous trips to the ER where they just prescribed her pain killers and sent her on her way. It took a referral to a specialist (I can't remember what they handled, maybe a different oncologist?)... and the blunt message.

"You're terminal."

I wept. My mother... she was just resigned. She transferred to home hospice care. She didn't want to die in a strange building. So my elder brother and I--we were living with her at the time--took turns caring for her.

She stopped eating. Stopped drinking. She's put on IV fluids and a kind of controlled dilaudid treatment. One night... it's as if she's aware. Her mind was going. She said her final goodbyes.

Then it's just her shell, her body, for two and a half weeks, that lingers, stubbornly. I'm the only one who was there who witnessed her last passage, the "death throes".

February 8, 2007. Just a few weeks shy of my 27th birthday.

She never got to see me graduate from college. She never got to see me married.... or divorced. She never saw me become a mother. She never saw me become a survivor, a fighter. So many things.

I have her eyes, I'm told. A deep brown with a starburst iris. My son has those eyes too. I resemble her greatly, I'm told. I don't have her curly hair... or her thinner nose.

Instead, she gave me her creativity, her love of art and writing. She loved books and reading. She loved cats as well, which I definitely inherited.

She had a lot of regrets... and sorrows.

I don't know if there is an afterlife. My relationship with God (or the Divine or whatever you want to call it) is complicated, to say the least. If there is, I hope I see her... and have the conversations we never had but should've while she was alive.

I miss you, mom. So very much.

[shibarinu0000]

i see so many shifters being like 'yeah im creating this new reality' or something like that, like sis?? you arent creating ANYTHING, you're just traveling to a different reality out of infinite ones

[newbornwhumperfly]

a life update y’all! 💖

so…. i dont do a lot of personal posts but i mentioned a while ago i was going to graduate school & now i am going to be in scotland in the next very few days and classes officially start then too. its gonna be difficult! more work, more intense, than anything i’ve ever done & i’m honestly scared fuckless - i know i can do it but it’s gonna be scary and hard. so i wanna say i’m … almost certainly gonna be way less active than i usually am.

i’m gonna be six whole hours ahead. which means that the timezone will be hell on conversation with my loved ones & that includes this lovely community and the friends i have made here.

it actually breaks my heart a little to be stepping away at all - this community has been my refuge, my sanctuary, from so much stress this past year a half. your feedback, your engagement, your creativity is all such a blessing, you don‘t even know.

my program is for a year & i’m honestly gonna need a lot of patience, a lot of prayers, a lot of leeway. quite honestly, i’ve under an incredible amount of mental, emotional, and spiritual stress for the past month & often feel drained and exhausted and scared despite doing very little work. these next couple of weeks especially are going to be terrifying and intense and exciting and require diverting more of my ever-shrinking focus and energy from this place i love so much.

i really meant to write more - there was a lot of time for me to do so before school started & i honestly deeply regret not being more creative when i had the time and freedom, especially when y’all were so kind and encouraging to me! i hope i will still have an audience for the things i’ve begun, despite how long they sit on a shelf.

thank you all so much for your patience in advance & thanks especially for engaging with my work even when i struggle so much with fulfilling it.

it means more than you all can know 💖💖💖

[rayethefox14524]

“Now hold on guys, wait wait wait! I MAY have the ability to add temporary modifiers to make adventures more interesting, but that’s it! If I did anything more… *chuckles* Trust me, it would not end well.”

“Scratch. The first abstraction.”

HEY. HEY CAINE AND KINGER, WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN???? WHAT HAPPENED TO SCRATCH??????? HELLO??????????

[rayethefox14524]

Only two groups of fans winning this episode and it’s the ones nobody expected🙃

[rayethefox14524]

I just realized; Caine’s name is based on several things, one of which being canine teeth

CANINE TEETH

SCRATCH

[rayethefox14524]

AMAZING DIGITAL ABSTRAGEDY SEX SCENE