I’m just so tired of constantly being on the shitty roller coaster that is my mom’s medical and legal drama.
I feel like I’ve become the parent and she’s become the problem child.
And I just want to scream and cry and run away from everything and live my own life. I’m almost 26 and the past four years of my life – and especially the last two – have been wasted constantly worrying or putting out her fires for her.
But I feel so guilty for wanting that because she’s my mom. And she always was, when I was growing up, a great parent to me. And for most of my life, we’ve been super close and she’s been my best friend.
So I feel like the world’s most selfish, inhuman asshole for wanting to just sever myself entirely from everything that has to do with her. To carve out every last hook she has in me and every last hook everyone in this shitty fucking life back home has in me and just go.
I want to just be free of everyone else’s shit that I always end up shouldering.
I just want to start over new in somewhere far away.
Besides taking a while to find time to work on changing my username in places I still used old ones (often can't get online or else feel too tired to work on it), had some heavy stuff happen last month.
My dad, who besides being one of my biggest supporters of my love of cosplay and my passion for gaming, has been struggling for some time from losing a leg a few years ago. He loves going out for walks & traveling, and using a prosthetic leg was hard on him. In June he got some weird infection on his remaining foot, but instead of going to see a doctor immediately to deal with it, he unwisely stayed at home and the infection got worse until finally my mother couldn't handle his stubbornness any further & called an ambulance to get help.
He was doing okay for a while in the hospital after they treated him & performed surgery to remove his big toe (where the infection started), and was fine aside from sounding goofy on the phone from meds making him act high (better than being in pain). But early on the morning of July 6th, only an hour after being checked on by a nurse and seeming fine, my dad passed away suddenly. The hospital did their best to try to revive him, yet sadly they were too late. T_T
Going to miss him terribly and already do, because he was my first best friend and we'd had many adventures together... even if just walking to the convenience store to get a soda as an excuse to have time to talk to each other about anything on our minds. He was the reason I got more into cosplay when my interest started waning, thanks to his encouragement & letting me borrow his own cosplay (FF9 Black Mage, inspired by the ones you fought in the game) for a local cosplay meetup, which led to me making a lot of dear friends and becoming better connected to the community.
As me and my family deal with debts and other issues resulting from our loss, I'm moving forward holding close the happy memories of my dad and hoping that I can possibly obtain the same amount of zeal that he'd had for life, indulging in creativity, and having fun...
This is basically a rant about rl stuff, so I cut it.
I'm a shy introvert. I went through a training for a new job that lasted 7 weeks and the material and tests were sooo tough. I chatted with people, got along with them, studied with them, but I made zero friends from it. I feel really conflicted about it. I wonder if there's something wrong, that I was unable to form any deeper connections over that length of time. On the other hand, I don't think I really wanted to make friends with anyone there? I'm not sure. And then there's the fact that no one really asked me to hang out, outside of studying.
Then I caught COVID. So I've been sick for more than a week. Getting better, but still coughing. I wasn't able to go to orientation with my class, and I felt relieved. I liked them, but I would have felt bad about getting excluded again. There were a couple of people who I might have asked to hang out, but I'm not sure they would have said yes.
I always thought that this would get easier as I get older and...I don't think it has. I feel more comfortable with myself, but I still have social anxiety, and have a personality that doesn't really fit in with the main crowd.
The good news is that I'm done with training, slowly feeling better, so I should be updating my fics soon. I wonder if my angst will get channeled into my stories. lol
the only good thing you get from chronic anxiety and constant panic attacks is that when something generally legitimately scary happens to you you already have the mechanisms in place to counteract the adrenaline fallout
Yeah, I did a big dumb and went a few months again without posting in here. Whoops. But hey, it was summer, and I was too busy to stop in here! That’s good, I guess. Though as much as I’d been hoping the summer would be full of adventures, that unfortunately wasn’t how I spent it...
The fun beginning, at least = Like I’d said in my last post, I got to be staff again for a small local convention called “Kobe Kon” that’s held inside a mall up north of where I live. It’s debut last year was a blast & I’d highly enjoyed being staff, so it seemed that this year would be even better since they’d had more time to plan for it than last year. Well, that’s the not-so-fun part. As much as I love everyone I work with (most of the staff are friends of mine), it was kind of chaotic and not as well-organized as it was last year (wtf?!), and after the con was over I learned it was mostly due to the convention head being stubborn & kinda egotisticly dense when it comes to listening to others’ advice or making improvements on things that don’t work. So, um, yeah... that sucked. Anyway... Regardless of the little hiccups & awkward things that happened during con, still was able to have plenty of fun. Not sure if I’ll staff next year; maybe if friends want me to badly enough and I have a place to stay.
Sucky parts that kinda ruined the rest of it = Right after Kobe-Kon, just a day afterwards, I had to spend the week helping my bestie pack & move everything he owned into a storage locker. He’d been unable for months to find a suitable roommate to help him pay rent on his apartment, and his cries for help from friends on Facebook had gone rudely ignored. So here we were... having to worry/work like mad to save his stuff from being lost forever (the place he lived in has ZERO tolerance for people needing longer than 1 week to move out). We took turns packing the hard stuff, and while another friend helped load things into their car to take to the locker, I had the joy of distracting my bestie’s ESA kitty (so she wouldn’t get in the way/get hurt, etc.). Sadly, despite all of our
efforts to get everything out of there in time & because of not having had enough space inside of the locker, my friend lost some of his furniture - the entertainment center (which also acted as a dresser/paper organizer), two end tables, and the epic dining room table (a polished wood table that’d had ornate feet resembling dragon claws holding orbs). Owning very little furniture already, losing those was hard on him. Then came the worst part - the neighbor letting him stay with them while he was to be looking for a new home, suddenly decided to yank away their hospitality and told my friend that he only had a week to stay. UGH. We were at a loss on what to do. Most low-income apartments/plans rudely make people have to wait up to 6 months or more before being able to get a place. Scared and desperate, he reached out to an old online friend for advice. Luckily, that friend offered to pay his way to come live with them. The hard part: It meant living in another state and missing everyone & everything that he loved here. My bud made the sacrifice, and so far has been doing his best to stay afloat in his new home. I miss him terribly, and he misses me just as much, but at least he’s not homeless.
Then the other sucky thing that happened (a.k.a. the thief of my summer) = Like only a week and a half into August, there were a bunch of forest fires that took place in several parts of the west coast. The smoke that filled the air from all of them became a serious health hazard and soon was at toxic enough levels that people were urged to stay indoors, on top of it shading the sunlight & making it look like a scene from Silent Hill in my neighborhood (creepy asf). The very few times that I dared venture out into the smokey bad-smelling muck (mainly to buy groceries for my family), it felt a bit like I was travelling in some post-apocolyptic world since I had to wear a face mask (which didn’t help much, but was better than nothing). And by the time the smoke began to lighten up enough to be safe to go outside, it was already the end of the month. Thanks to the stupid smoke, never got to do any of the things I’d been hoping to do or have any fun random adventures with friends, and it honestly feels like I was robbed of both joy & health (felt sick for a week after the smoke left).
So as we head into fall and soon the holidays, sure hope that some awesome things will happen to make me forget my “lost” summer...
