Pandora’s Dollhouse (Trigger Warning)

I recently learned I have to play as an adult. There is a drive to create with in me that has always been there, and I think this is my inner child trying to escape. In the last month, which on some levels feels like more than a life time and on others barely any time at all, I have begun to play. I have also focused on eating twice a day at least, and without much preamble I can say I have only missed a few days and i still ate at least once on those days, instead of once or not at all.

I did not expect the effects of my discovery of play to be so drastic. I am a bit more emotional than I would like to be right now between hormonal fluctuations and pain, but those aren’t the only things responsible for my feelings being unleashed. I have found my innerchild locked away was not alone at all, but held on to happiness, sorrow, and joy in even greater potency. I have always been prone to passion, yet my passion feels less like a struggle now and more freeing. My creativity is sneaking out, even when my brain is so fogged over by hormones and pain I cannot think, and I am drowning in ideas.

For the first time in my life it is not terrifying to have too much thought and not enough to do about it on my mind. I am trying to pace myself but I want to race to the finish line of every idea NOW. I am thinking back to that moment at the end of November when I went and got that first Doll. She’s not a very good doll and I have mentioned before I am never buying Bratz again, but my Bratz doll was one I didn’t know if I wanted. I was paralyzed with a fear that I would pick the wrong doll. I was afraid too that I wouldn’t really want to play like my brain kept whispering.The moment I opened her packing, my hands shaking so much so that my carer did most of the unboxing, my heart racing and my mouth dry with terror over the unseen phantoms of wasted money and poverty I found something else.It seems I opened Pandora’s Dollhouse, and it was not full of unimagined horrors, but it was full of pleasure.

I have been playing every day, for the most part. Somedays I have been too tired to do more than eat and stare blankly at people while they try to communicate with the hormonal cement that was once my brain, before I pass out into sleep grateful to escape the confused body. Each day I flesh out older ideas, come up with new ones. Some days this includes my cutting doll hair or fine tuning their appearances in other ways. I am saving up to buy brushes so I can repaint faces, so I can recreate and change what these dolls are. I am making them my own.

I understand now the hairless barbies, I understand why I have hidden from Pink. Pink symbolizing feminine, that forbidden thing that I never quite meshed with. I understand why the idea of toys makes me cry in terror. I was unworthy for my entire life of these plastic idols of perfection, too imperfect to even get to pretend without punishment to be somewhere else doing something else. My brain became the attic where ideas were hidden away so that they could not be destroyed and I stopped being a child so quickly to survive it. I remember crying night after night after I decided to never play again. It hurt. This was my first brush with insomnia that I can recall, based on thinking. Not on pain of the body but of the mind.

I can pull up the experience as if it was now, just as when I imagine things I can overlay them on reality. I laid in bed listening to my siblings breathing as they slept, looking at the toys. I had been yelled at for ideas. I can’t quite recall the idea but it included Barbie not wanting Ken. My sister’s barbies. She had rejected Ken because he was not her ideal mate. I remember reminding myself that it was bad to say no. That I was a disobedient daughter and I had to get better at saying yes all the time so I didn’t go to hell. A hell I fear not because I was there. I grew up in hell.

My mind became a dystopian wasteland and I lost my love of pink and girly that night. I put it so far down so I could be a good person. My adoration of black and death is in part rebellion, for those things too had to be locked away. It was easier to lock pink down because the color has never tasted right or settled right on my brain, but most pastel shades of anything are adverse to my perceptions. I like rich colors, they feel better. When I touch them they feel alive. When I see them,t aste them, smell them. There is something more than a hint of a bitter flavor. I associate pastels with death. I tried to hide from joy because I associated joy with playing.

I wonder little now why by the time I started school I was already too weird for others. I was not just Autistic but I was a four year old who did not play. I did not understand that I technically played with my neighbor. That was different. Boy Toys were just as forbidden but they did not get me into trouble at the house. I think merely because my parents presumed my brother played. With in two years I did not play. I would read books, because most books did not get me into trouble. I would watch TV, if allowed. I would try to stay with in the boundaries.

This feeds my love of science fiction too. The struggle in the original series of V is about people who try to conform and fail, on one level. The original had depth of history behind it and many layers but it was the person unable to conform that was quickly persecuted for being a scientist. I failed to perform. I failed to adapt a way to play and not fear hell. So I built myself a mental hole and crawled in it. This was of course out of more than a dearth of play, but the abuse that inspired that lack of play.

I opened the first doll, and I have stuck to my rule. I am about to face the big challenge on my rule about unopened toys. Tomorrow I go to the comic book store for the last time. I go only once a year minimum and a maximum of six times. This is it. The end day. I face my action figures, that I must unbox. I feel afraid again.

My toys scare me. I know that by playing with them I am subverting parental messages. I am also struggling against a life time of training myself to not think. I am horrified by how much energy I have expended turning my brain off. I do this often before bed, I find ways to melt my thoughts so I can just go to sleep. I am not sure I am accurate on my reasonings now, I have always presumed that was due to physical pain. I am considering trying to not melt my brain sometime. I am considering a lot of things.

There is no closing Pandora’s Dollhouse. Inside of this dollhouse the seeds of creation live. Each child is given seeds to plant in their minds, and those that let them grow or have minds that are weedy such as in my case, can grow up to be creative and brilliant. They can do anything because they learned how to create worlds with in worlds as children. Pandora’s box has been demonized but what if the hope left inside was just a child’s toy? A small bit of creation?

Give your children toys and love, and they will change our world. It is not technology that is the root of progress but the teddy bear, the doll, the basketball, and the stories from the playground. Giving a child a toy is the equivalent of giving a scientist an unlimited budget for their works, it is the same as curing cancer, it is in fact what could have lead to the idea for the cure in the first place. A child’s toy is merely the key to training the brain on problem solving and for breaking down boundaries.

I now have toys marketed to girls and boys, and the only thing that could make them better? If they were just sold, no previous gender applications involved. Imagine a world where anyone can have a doll and that is awesome and wonderful?

Oh, and one more thing. My favorite toy isn’t one of the Monster High Dolls (at least Until Ghoulia Is Mine). It’s a Barbie named Becky who is the school photographer, has almost normal human proportions, and uses a wheelchair. One thing is for certain, unlike most houses in the world, Pandora’s Dollhouse is always accessible.

A New Year Looms

So I have been not writing about things I want to, for personal safety reasons, which I know is reasonable. Yet I have been thinking about years past and future. I have been having interesting experiences. Gothmas, Christmas, Yule, and any other names people have for their winter holidays on or near the Solstice has passed. Channukah too. Kwanzaa is in full swing and I have found this year I am innundated with gifts. This is a contrast to other times when there was little.

I think back to each Christmas this time of year, then to each year I did nothing. I think to each experience before. I can say this is in the top five Winter Holiday Seasons. Yet I am feeling physically crappier than many years. My body has decided to feel like crap, rather constantly. I don’t know what I could do to fix it but, I am just trying to ride this one out. The regular periods are punishing and play a huge part. By the time I recover from the previous one, I am knocked back on my behind by the next. They are regular in as much as with in a given two month period my brain gets clogged with hormones and I can barely think through the pain. I then throw clots that I cannot get anyone who could help me to either find the source of the issue or properly treat them (cutting the uterus out is not proper treatment until we know WHY I am shooting clots) to take the bleeding and clotting seriously. Fist sized things are being pushed out of a hole I would like to keep not pushing things out of. I feel it. I am told I shouldn’t feel it but I do. This has sapped me.

I am also looking at transitions. A part of me is restless. I am still unsatisfied with the communication with my caregiving company and I am aware despite my carer’s best efforts of some behaviors that are unprofessional. I find out because I do call them, I do try to communicate with them. I even do it their way. They aren’t providing the gloves she needs for cleaning. This means, especially with an uptick of gushy bits which makes sanitary precautions a requirement, she is paying for gas and more. So despite what my case manager recommends I am looking at other places. I think as long as I can work with my current carer at least until I move out of this state, I will be fine transitioning to a new place and she and I work really well together, so benefiting her benefits me.

I am restless in other ways. I have begun to paint again, sort of. Not on the canvases I expected. I am repainting dolls, their furniture, and I am learning that I give an amazing Barbie haircut. The first of the salvaged dolls has been rehomed, my niece got her for her Winter Holiday Gift. In this discovering that I really like dolls a lot, I have also found that MGA , the maker of Bratz and a lot of other dolls, doesn’t like customers. I bought a “rare collectible” Bratz doll because I like dolls with red hair. I deboxed her due to my new rule, if I buy it I must use it not stare at it on my wall longingly. I am even working on opening some figures I have had for a while. I am failing on that scale. I get the scissors over the packing and start to cry. It hasn’t been so hard with the dolls, after the first few.

So this lovely Adri doll with her giant rats nest of unbrushable hair, her clothing that was torn before she was packaged and looked really worse than anything I could make, and her earrings had already lost just half of their paint. The rare collectible looked as bad as the Barbies from the Fleamarket I had gotten to salvage. So I called MGA. MGA made it clear they didn’t care. They sent me a random assortment of earrings, which don’t match the ones that my doll has. They refused to acknowledge the other issues and said to wash her hair.

I washed her hair, which on the next call I was told invalidates any help they would give me, and her hair was worse. This doll also looks like she is the daughter of a certain Chucky, despite her appearance in box. So, I was faced with a dilemma. The store wouldn’t take her back, because I lost the receipt, and she was/is very terrifying with her matted hair and giant head. Once she was wet she was so heavy her head almost came off of her little spindly body.After her hair dried I found it was worse. Far worse actually.MGA was willing to send me a new doll if I was willing to pay fourty dollars in shipping for a ten dollar doll. I hung up after stating to them that I was not going to buy another doll, and that their business practices surely cost them a great deal more than just a single customer.

So I did the sane thing when faced with a horrifying unreturnable doll. I got the scissors. Soon I will post pictures of the results but I cut all the doll’s hair that weren’t Monster High or my Becky the Barbie with a wheelchair. The Monster high and Becky dolls had no hair issues. I found I have a talent for doll hair styling as a result. The doll cast as the mad scientist also looks sane now, until you rub her along a convenient cat, then she can look electrified. Rub her hair along your hand and she looks nice again. I felt that she should pass for normal, like all horrible sociopaths in my life have managed.

In turn I also developed brand loyalty with Mattel. Yes, I do follow their illegal things and yet none of these doll companies have not done similar things. Mattel is a bit hysterical about the name Barbie, which is silly on some levels but on others… they think their doll is wholesome looking. This does make me laugh a bit but when I called them over my mispainted Draculaura doll, the same day as the MGA call, the treatment I received was radically different.

The same receipt applies for both dolls, Draculaura was sold out at the time/still is sold out. So I explained my situation, and with in seconds I was not put on hold but was told based on the mispaint and damage that I would be sent a replacement. No shipping charges. I have the doll and she is so much nicer than my first Draculaura. Yes, both were deboxed. I am pleased to say that Mattel has been nothing but polite, they treated me like a valued human, and since my Duece’s leg keeps wiggling I may ask them for a repair kit or somesuch for him. There are options even on their website, under customer service, for replacement forearms and hands if you lose your doll hands.

I wish I could write about the heavier things. As it stands, I am considering starting a new blog and attempting anonymity so that I can. I want to write about the things that are a punch in the gut. I also question my ability to remain anonymous. I fail at that rather grandly every other time I have attempted it. I am too much myself to pass for anyone else it seems.

I also will be writing about negligent doctors once my head clears and I fire my current one. She, like the carer agency, seems to think gloves should be just latex and that I should pay for them. Because who needs sanitation? (Me, I require it). She has more issues than this, and lets just say, she has achieved maximum fail status and will be removed from access. Then I can tell you all the “fun” dirt.

So as I sit here staring at a new year, I am left to wonder… in a year when I am sitting in the darkness mulling over the last year… what will I find? I know it can only get better. Each year has been almost always better than the last. I am facing a move across the country with in one to two years, I am looking at a romance I did not expect and I have found people will pay a lot of money for something I am good at. I am learning fast on the doll making business and I am finding a great outlet for the creativity I had thought was lost.

Old wounds are healed, newer wounds healing, and a year waits for me to step onto it. I imagine this is like fresh snow or a square of sand with nothing on it. Soft, imprintable, and it is all mine to create something beautiful with. I will try to write more in the next year, and if I still feel stifled, I will notify those I can about the new site and move on from there. Though I love this blog and am very attached to my name.

Porcupine and the City

I am sitting up late tonight, because I hurt and don’t want to go to bed yet. I am having the PTSD tingles. I also am feeling some annoyance at my feelings. I am liking Hello Kitty objects, some Barbies are “cool!” and I want them. Dolls in general. My world is a topsy turvy land of confusion as I branch out and grow. I run into a few videos as I watch my normal stuff, and some not so normal stuff. It’s like the videos are stalking me.

I find a series of make up tutorials that break my heart first. The creator of them (not named because I will not link to self aggrandized abuse) is a person of color. She spends half her make up regimine erasing signs of life, the other half using make up tricks to try and look like a white person. In general only one video is slightly cool that I watch. The one with vampire make up. It’s cool because for a few seconds she does the same thing I do. Except of course her make up system requires that you risk your eye health with eyeliner on your eyeballs. I mock her with M for a while, trying to delve into the feelings. He and I both are just shocked at her.

I move along, stumbling onto a parody of the above person. The parody is demeaning to women in general but over all addresses the same self hatred. I inspect the user’s videos and find a video about hugging asians. As M is Asian I watched it, deemed it hilarious and linked it to him saying I now knew how to hug him. We laughed a bit, but I was curious about who he was parodying.

I saw something in the reality of the parodied person, again not linked because I won’t feed the self hate. It took an hour of just processing and my attentive little moments to figure out what it was that drew and repulsed me to this person. Apparently they are a sensation on youtube, which could mean a career in this age of technology. Their sensationalism? Being a fat disabled woman who is angry and pushes everyone away with their acerbic tongue. There is little wit, and the perception this person clearly has is that everyone else is stupid. No one has value, nothing can be gained by her or us. I was stunned, and decided to write a bit about the revelations I saw.

I saw myself as a teenager, raging and screaming for attention, hungering for love, and in pain that I felt no one else could understand. With in the end of the first video I knew this person had a disability. There were the tells that I can spot. I have the ability to consistently identify people with hidden disabilities based purely on my own years of trying to pass for normal. It’s a twitch here, the slight hunch of the shoulders, references to always being tired. Six videos later, as I am grasping for what it is that has me so unnerved the disability is revealed. The cavalierness of the reveal is refreshing, there is no self hate in that aspect yet the entire portrayal of this New Jersite is one of rage.

Reducing yourself to a single facet is never healthy, and yes this is youtube and I hope that this personae is not carried on in the real world but I once did the same thing. The same behaviors where I pushed everyone away. I sometimes want to still, as I find my pain left unchecked makes me a porcupine again. I will say or do anything to be alone because pain makes me vulnerable. I will say anything and do anything in order to survive in those moments and your existance invalidates mine for reasons I cannot understand.

The charm of the person wears thin rapidly, the honesty is nice but not the cruelty that is there hiding something. What bothers me about this video? This person is older than I am. I always expect people who have lived longer to be wiser. Not smarter, as wisdom comes in many flavors. Yet this person is left feeding on rage. I wonder if she would still be a ball of rage, harming herself by pushing herself into this mood to record rants that rarely go anywhere… if people ignored her videos.

Yes, she could be classified as a human troll, and she has declared that her shouting at the world is for justice.

The reflections of who I once tried to be stared at me in the face and I cried for her pain and for the echoed pain that I never quite shook. I understand what bothered me, it is the knowledge that if she acts this way at all times she is lonely, the knowledge she is in pain, and that people are encouraging her to continue to lash out at the world. There is a difference between being constructive and destructive and it takes a lot to not go into destructive. I screw that up still but is she trying?

I want to reach out to this person but I know that is not a valuable task for my energy at the moment. They are being given fandoms, possibly money, all to act out like this. I can say I hope I am wrong but that refraction through my mind of these images and sounds has left me deeply shaken.

Suddenly my worry that I have so many pink things in my house now (a doll with pink hair, some of the barbie furniture I have yet to paint, three doll dresses and the USB Hubs that I got years ago as the non pink were ten dollars more) I am not so worried that I think Hello Kitty is cute and I am wondering if my letting myself near the softer things I like is another sign of my starting to let go of that stiff rage I had felt. Had.

My default emotion is no longer rage, anger, sorrow, etc. I am most often contented. Not jubilant or happy, technically by the average standards I am depressed still. I probably always will be depressed if I am measured against other people but I am good. In my heart, in my mind, and mostly my fingers I am good.

I am creating again. Soon I will make videos of dollies murdering one another. I am spending time on writing. Soon I will be linking to a story I wrote, which is based in that same pain and anger that I was thinking of as I wrote this.

So as this person who remined me that I once was a porcupine too lives in New York, I hope that they find a place of comfort. If you are a porcupine too, don’t be alone. You do not have to be. Now if yo uwant to be then do be alone, but people will love you for you. Just the right people can be hard to find.

I may not write again until after the Holidays. I have Sprite’s Birthday next Tuesday as well as Yule, Tuesday, and then Gothmas on the 25th so that there is still a celebration. With really smart animals who understand when their birthday is, can’t cheat and go “here, lets open it all now.” I tried that once.

Oh and I did win a disabled barbie doll on ebay, M covered the fees, so soon enough I will try to repaint a dolly to look like one of my fantasy imaginary people who is disabled. Now being on a Barbie I am not sure I can make the doll fatter but I may try. I hear Bondo is great for sculpting dolls.I am continuing to work on the dolls I want to create in my head. The ideas branch out further each day. Especially the more I see how often Barbie really does fail at being anything positive. Doesn’t mean I don’t own a few because I do now. They will be made into monsters and other not ordinary barbie things for the Murder Dolls videos!

I sometimes wonder, what gifts I have been given to come so far. From the unwanted unborn child starved and punished before birth, to the little girl who didn’t understand why no one liked her on sight, to the rage filled teenager who started to build a bomb to blow up her high school days before Columbine due to years of abuse and torment and became afraid of herself, through to the adult who had become convinced the only wayto be a real person who mattered at all was to work and never do anything but…. to the homeless person with a disability, to the disability rights advocate who has never had so much love in her entire life and has more love than seems fair, but I am not giving up a bit of that love.

I am so blessed to have come so far, seeing the echoes of past in another’s pain broke my heart. I wish I could help her so much.

Fever!

Yep, I am sick again. Actually because I am writing this it should be evidence that I am improved enough to sit at the computer. I may have discovered (in the most vile and painful way possible) the source of that not a period bleeding. I think I am getting infected cysts in my uterus. Swell right? Swell is a pun if that was unclear based on the fact that yes, abscesses do that. Since the last time I was violated my body has not quite healed, and I am still fighting chronic infections there too.

This december has been GREAT despite this fact. Actually I just sent off some lines for Batman stuff, catwoman stuff, was told one of my bits of acting was good enough to make the character possibly reoccur, I got a role I wanted which means I basically talk to myself for a while in this episode of Green Lantern…

and that’s just the last three hours!

I have a phone that works so well I can do anything I want on it. It is the nicest phone beneath the Blackberry/ipHone/Android smartphone level. It was also the bestest Present evar! My phone died, though I am still selling it and the person buying it thinks they can fix it. I sold it cheap, because well accessories will work either way…

My tree is covered in presents now, and the cats are being hilarious. I will eventually figure out how to upload the videos to youtube and I will link to the footage of Sylvani trying to get into his present, if it turned out okay. He and Sprite are targeting only their gifts, which is amusing. They are acting worse than children trying to figure out what is what. Vani is also trying to open my boxes of stuffs but he can’t defeat Mattel’s plastic.

I have some Monster High stuff under the tree, a few other doll things, and I have been crafting despite the fever stuff. That infection seems nearly passed. I can hope at least.

This update feels a bit inane but in general things are good or I can’t talk about it for reasons I also cannot talk about. There is a lot of that, and some of THAT is great too. That sort of silence manditory thing makes me want to change blogs, but… I am not good at hiding. I would be obviously me, and I don’t want to abandon this blog so I won’t. I just think on it when I want to write something and cannot.

In amusement land by the by, I scared the crap out of some Librarian when I asked her about a potential ADA violation. Her brain shut down with the words ADA violation and she seemed as if she would die. The head librarian could and did answer my question and that was that. I just found her reaction to the words ADA Violation a bit amusing. She went from amiable and intelligent to a startled rabbit like creature hopping through the forest of Doom.

Emotions

I have been quiet again. The last few months have been dominated with the rare type of thing I won’t blog about until a few months later, and then all of you who read my blog will go “Oooh that’s why Kat has been awfully quiet.” I just wanted to make sure people know I am still here.

 

Actually a few interesting things have been occuring. On Facebook I have noticed more of my non advocate friends have begun to talk about various advocacy and civil/equal rights related topics. It is interesting because a few of these people threatened to block me on Facebook if I didn’t stop advocating. I told them to block me of course, I am not going to stop resisting an abusive world structure for them. I don’t know how much of my fairly constant battering at the gates has gotten to them or if perhaps they just had a wake up call but this is a good third of my non advocate friends. Twenty or so people. Most of my friends are advocates.

 

I am also preparing for the holidays, and at the moment I am having a backlash from a PTSD free November. It’s not much but today I just keep crying. Of course there is an agitator but that is category No talky. So I cannot explain. It should be over soon, except the unending bits. It could be worse I suppose. The cats are really enjoying the holidays, which is great. I have so many amusing moments with them, and I think that this is one of the reasons November was so EASY. I am still feeling this startled sensation in my mind when I think of November, because there are MEMORIES there.

I got the cats their toys, including some low cost (ten cents or so each) jingle balls. They are getting two a week for our advent calendar. Now whenever I touch the cheese in the advent calendar, they are there, excited. I will have to get a picture of this soon, there is video for a friend who had never heard of an advent calendar. I trust you to google, I am on the edge of frazzled and am writing this to soothe myself. The backlash feels like all my emotional and psychological wounds ripped open. It is a vulnerable feeling but I am definitely okay. This sort of feeling also shows just how much healing really has happened. Which is significant.

Sylvani has been the most boisterous when it comes to the packages under the Gothmas tree. I get reusable velvet boxes when I know there will be annual gift giving so Sprite’s is there, Vani got his this year, and there is M the carers, plus the advent toy box, and Sprite’s birthday package, as well as Vani’s Big Toy. Sprite’s Big Toy was her medication from M the Bestest Friend and heart ouchy fixer. I swear, just talking to that man can act as an emotional surgery sometimes. He doesn’t always know what to say, because sometimes there is nothing to say. He was willing to drive out if I needed him when the snap hit. That is real friendship.

This man bought me a bunch of dollies, my cats got medicine, and he was willing to spend a LOT of gas money. I love him but sometimes I worry I don’t show it enough. He has the same worry so I think we’re okay there. I am working on getting to California, a part of me wanted to pack up today and just go. That almost happened actually, but if I just go I won’t be able to survive and therefore I must wait a littlewhile. Which is fine. I finetuned the plan.

I also have been feeling creative again. I painted, the pain in my hands wasn’t that bad, though writing is still supremely painful. The clay, the painting, and the stories I am writing for the movies I will be making with the dollies. All of this is in a realm I had left alone for a while to heal. I had worried in my thoughts, and sometimes here that I would never create again. I repainted some Barbie furniture and again, pictures eventually (with the dollies of course so you have to wait for Ghoulia Yelps) but I actually am better at the repainting than I used to be. I have a red leather fainting couch in victorian style for fashion dolls. No one else has one because I made it myself.

Back to the cats and Christmas, it does tie in but I think my writing shows my jumbled state at the moment. I am all over the place and that’s normal for this sort of thing. I have a few unwrapped boxes, why wrap them when the people who sell them do enough wasting of environmental resources for shiny packing? Plus the boxes are preeeetty. Once Sylvani found he just cannot get to the toys in the boxes, and he and Sprite both try at least once a day; they have been peaking like naughty children, He began to try to OPEN my boxes. (Monster High toys, Mattel’s difficult packing).

 

When the squirt bottle dissuaded this tactic he went for the stockings on the wall. They are already stuffed and yet it wasn’t his stocking he went for which has the catnip in it, nor sprites which also has nip and some jingly products. Mine. No idea why, but he tried to get that thing DOWN to find out what it is. He is as bad as a two year old.

I did get a few presents early, which is a boon of not having a real religion. I can have my presents whenever I get tired of waiting, but I am enjoying the cats struggle with the boxes for now. Sprite is a bit miffed at me because her curiosity is burning. Vani has tried to be SUPER adorable. Both have been really great about not attacking the tree too. There has been sniffing, each has poked an ornament or two with a paw and then they left it be. This is a tree with a LOT of temptations in fragile glass. If I were a feline I could not be so good.

They both have opinions on Christmas Music too, Vani likes Rudolf. Sprite and I loathe Rudolf. Sprite likes the cheerier songs like Winter Wonderland, and I prefer the melancholic White Christmas. I am also working on the not hoarding thing. It’s going okay so far. I have eaten every day three times a day and most days a small snack since the Uh Oh moment. I feel good physically and I am able to look back to a year ago. Comparatively my health has improved drastically. I am pink, not this sortof dead color. My skin has yet to recover fully from the anthrax and other stuff and it may never. I knew that for a while. I just want it over.

I think things will never quite feel over until I am gone from this state.