Will I… (Trigger Warning)

 

I have been trying to hold back my level of suffering from the world. The various support groups for autism, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, PTSD… every single one this is a reoccuring theme. I know why. Not only is being in this level of pain dangerous but it makes you vulnerable and often this is when people abandon you, attack you, or they cannot comprehend what you are trying to tell them. I do not as a rule cry when I feel so much pain but I silently sit and try to find the cause to fix it or I just learn that this is my new life. I must always be prepared for the permanence of my agony. There are people who are lucky enough that this is not the case.  I cannot stop hiding this, even when I try sometimes. There is the element of fear. If everyone knows that I can barely breathe for pain, then even the predators know. (Oh hello predators. Yes I will tazer you even when I hurt.)

This song is from rent, it is called Will I… thus the title of the post. I could die from the on going issues I have at any time. My heart could fall to pieces, a literal broken heart. I could have a heart attack from my stress and high cholesterol. I am bleeding internally somewhere, I could run out of blood. I could kill myself. That is why I am writing this post. You see, that is the whisper in the depths of what might be my soul. If I die it is over. I do not live out of some doubt about an afterlife. I do wonder but that is not a consideration in any of my choices. I do not stay alive for other people or the cats. I love many people deeply, so deeply there is an ache of joy. I guess a mental pressure sore from all the goodness. I stay alive because I want to.

I am afraid of dying and missing people. I am afraid of lingering in pain without dignity. I am terrified of being tormented by doctors as Ihave been lately. The nightmare is not the diseases or the pain. In fact some of that is better. I officially no longer am diagnosed with epilepsy but still have a seizure disorder of some sort. The some sort is not defined by science. Yet NOT having epilepsy is a miraculous thing.  It is a wonder to me.

I spend a lot of time advocating, and passionately burning for the world. Now I am just burning. The pain is in every nerve, even though some of them should not be communicating with the brain. My blood pressure is up, my heart is racing, and this is omnipresent. I have had to fight around government shut downs for my needs, but I did this. Yet all I want is to have someone hold me. Something no one can do at all. Maybe ever again. I just want to be held in a soft space of beautiful harmonics without actual sensory input. This dark space has no reality. I often find this song in the undercurrent of my psyche because it holds most of those things. Yet I do not have to wonder. No, my life will never get better. I will always have some agonizing wrong. Yes people care. I have never known how much people care, I think I do then it seems to grow. Maybe I grow. Maybe not.

I am terrified. I feel the race of time, not just because bleeding internally is very bad but I need this resolved for my mental health before november. My PTSD is at a peak height and I am not sure what I will be enduring medically but I know I will survive it if I can. Will I be allowed dignity is the true question. I am afraid to die and leave people I love, this is new to me. I never cared before. I always lived for things like spite, revenge. My revenge has been to build my life up into something I was told I could never have. I look around this space I live in and every corner has a marker of love. Every doll I own someone else gifted me, the Gothmas tree that needs its decorations and makes Sylvani happy, the pile of scarves I know will be useful and necessary that are clean, the myriad of tiny touches. My life has been a life of grief and loss. Now that I have things I want to hold on to I am afraid I cannot survive this. It is not a lack of will to live, it is a lack of trust in my doctors. I have no faith in even the best of them. Why should I with the ineptitude I have fought against for so long?

So I am left to wonder. Yes, I am in pain. No I do not know if I can survive this. I will try.

One more thing: The man who wrote Rent? He died from a condition similar to EDS called Marfan. That runs in my family too but I lack the features that mark it. That is LUCKY for me. I sometimes wonder if the pain he felt and held too close contributed to his dying, if that is why Rent hits the notes I sometimes NEED. Just a little tidbit for people who may not have known.  I do not reach for the anthems of survival that are broad and direct, they ring hollow. “I will survive” does not match my spirit. Even when that is indeed the attitude that I display as I emulate the bronco and buck for my life.

 

I am jagged glass

shattered now

pick me up

fear the cuts

I do not intend

Yet I broke

can you lift me up?

Will you laeve

I am broken

Never repaired

yet I was beautiful

I am beautiful

Shattered glass

so many sharp edges

yet it is true

I am beautiful

Well Practiced Survival and the Art of Happiness (Potential PTSD Trigger Warning)

I hit a speed bump tonight. My brain splatted as I hit the mental pavement and I am sitting here stuck. The speed bump? Happiness. I am happy so it makes me sad. I keep thinking about why that is and I suspect it has something to do with the tenets of survival. I have well practiced fear, anger, sorrow but I have almost no experience with happiness. Happy was the fleeting moment that escaped so quickly and I held on to for years. I can name my happiest moments and its a very limited number. 1. Comic book convention last June, 2. Sprite and the first time I had a flashback and she was there, 3. Gothmas with M, 4. My first time being published.

That last one I had to struggle to pull through the mists of time and survival. I was thinking too about the domestic violence cycle and how cut off people are. I grew up without friends. Even now my friendships are limited. Some of that is the autism factor, I just struggle there but a lot of it is because I trust very few people. How can I trust you? You might be out to get me. I am working on this alone but I do not want to. I never wanted to do it all alone. I never wanted to have to figure out how to beat domestic violence by myself. It should not be about clawing my way up ever. Yet it has been.

I have been trying to find a therapist for five years. Since I escaped my exhusband. I thought I might not make it. Maybe I should settle for one of the quacks who try to lure me in with promises of touching me while praying but I do not think so. I don’t think my wanting to mock this person for being what I perceive as a predator on the vulnerable with their unproven techniques and faith healing is going to be a valuable moment in time. I still survived him alone. It was not even over then. It is just over. Does that make me now really a survivor?

Yes and No. I was a survivor all along but in a way not being afraid has opened up all of these memories and painful things. Its over so now I can process. I am thinking on things from when I was five, that I never considered before. My brain is just now allowing itself to sort through nearly thirty years of stuff. Not all of it is bad. Not all of it is abuse. Not all of it matters. Yet it is there burbling around. If I think of my friends instead of them I end up with my first day in Kindergarten at the age of four, walking in and being called weird before I said a word.

I think on the isolation that goes with abuse and I want to try new things to see if its actually my way or if it is a side effect. I grew up surviving and being too out cast and bullied for friends. Am I so alone now because I just never learned how or is it because I am afraid of my own friends? I don’t know. I do not feel fear when Ithink of each individual. I feel happy. Yet I worry.

I talked a lotof this out with a couple of my friends. I have had friends for seven years now, but it still amazes me when I can say that. One suggested a support group. I looked some time ago, I believe last year, but figured maybe I should. She went to bed and I began to google. I found many local support groups. Tons for folks with cancer, tons for things I do not understand such as video games, and yet for all of the domestic violence groups listed with the local news papers, online in google, and even with the various agencies that help you get out if you are not disabled the only groups are for the ABUSERS. Oh there was one for single parents. Not a one for women. There is one for soldiers with PTSD but I am not a soldier. There is one for everyone but me. I still wrote some down and may call but I already feel that is an intrusion. I do not fit by not having a child, by being a woman, by not being with my abuser now.

I am not at a point where I can just remedy this by going “Okay we meet here, come on ladies and lets survive more.” That is not what I can do right now. I did it before for another need. When I first was disabled I helped with creating a chronic disease support group. Then retreated from it because I was not ready. I will not make that mistake again. So I am left hanging between faith healers and the disabling abusers getting help and my own independence. It cannot just be a side effect of abuse or I would not have survived being alone but I am wondering why I am supposed to do this part by myself too.

I do not want to. I want the experience of people who do not get frightened by happiness. Or people who do but can tell me what the difference between estatic, joy and elation is. My brain cannot stop pressing on the happiness to see what is wrong with it. There is no room in my head for joy. I want to change that but I am lost out at sea without a compass or the north star. There are no maps. It is just silence and placid and gentle waves. I do not know how to be gentle. I do not know how to let go of the anger. I am still angry at my abusers but it is smaller every day. They are dead. I out lived them and can focus on doing more than just clawing through every day.

I am also very tired. I do not want to spend the rest of my life fighting alone to figure out if its okay to smile all the time. My face is sore. Its not the usual sore of the jaw dislocations Its my mouth. From smiling. I keep doing so for no reason. I keep laughing more and more. This is not just a side effect of the surviving either. This happiness started growing long before my exhusband died.  The sensations when I stop thinking or just feel are not the same. It is no longer a hard sandpaper or stabbing pain. It is not a pain at all. Nor is it really emptiness. It is soft and quiet there. The passions are still burning in me but they do not scream to be heard over my sorrow. It is simply quiet, and I have never had that either.

I never expected the thing that would make me cave in on asking for help with my PTSD and other struggles would be happiness. I suspected someday I might have a challenge bigger than I could face alone. This is not even true. It is just that I know I do not have to do it by myself and I do not want to.

I am a ship at sea, no port to call home. The current pulls me, so I go to roam. I am a ship at sea, the waves a song to me. Far from even the open road. The winds rise and my ship sails on, to new lands will I go? Tomorrow I may find land ahoy but tonight I am just adrift in the sea.

No Fear!

I have been struggling since my discovery that I am free of reasons to be afraid. Some of this is my consistent issue with the identification of emotions, which is not new and I found out is an actual diagnosable medical thing so I will be perusing. No idea if there are treatments or “trainings” to help identify feelings but it is good to know I am not alone on that. I found this out from an article about autism. The term is alexithymia. The discovery has helped me to cope with some of the not knowing. It removes it from “I am a sociopath aren’t I? Why don’t I ever know what I am feeling?” territory and puts it firmly in, “Well it is okay to not know” ville.

I am happy my exhusband can no longer harm me. It feels very good. I also have a spot of sad. Then comes these confusing emotions I have never felt before at all. It took me a little while to figure out why they were so confusing and then I realized, I have not ever had a chance to feel them. In my entire life I have not had one day, until now, where I did not have a reason to be afraid. I was born into a toxic wasteland of abuse and fear, and while I managed to not live that way as an adult most of the time I still had the fears of my family seeking me out for escaping. There was a very real fear until I was freed enough that they would harm me to force me to comply with their abuse and to make me go back to it. They tried, but I endured it and then came out the other side. There was also the fear that my father, the murdering sociopath, would decide one day to harm me. Being someone that he felt threatened him, especially in our adult encounters, was incredibly dangerous. I destroyed one of his marriages in a fit of rage at the age of 13 by telling the woman the truths I could make my mouth say of what he had done. When he did not deny it, she left him. I had never expected that because it was new to me, and he told me he would kill me. By the time he died I was married to the Ex. After surviving being caged and harmed, he continued to try and kill me. My brain has no idea what to do.

I am experimenting in ways to build on these good feelings or to even express them. The colors for good are still those dark jewel tones, blacks and the image is fire and air and water and earth all twisting up. Its a bit explosive, but it is not a bad explosion and I do not have the ability to paint it. Even writing this much I feel the torrent and my heart races, but it races differently from fear. I think it might be excitement. Its a good rush of adrenaline. I am doing things that get me closer and closer to restoring my life to where I had carved it into being before my Ex. Not entirely the same, it could never be as I am no longer that same person. I consider that a good thing however. I want some of the activities back, and I want to see in person some of the friends I feared he would harm. Little things at first, when I try to do more my health is hurting me some and then I am left to struggle with the energy drain of these strange emotions. I crept outside and sat there at night several times. Its not yet summer so mostly it is quiet though the sirens are getting more frequent and later at night. Still, I am outside. I am planning more than a month ahead for small things. Once my wheelchair is repaired I am going to the museum. Those things. Writing this blog is also one of them.

I am sitting here trying to formulate the words to explain things I have no way to, no experience for and the only words that fit are it is like a second childhood. I am reborn. I feel the urge to go running and playing. SO I am. Albeit slowly because my body is not nearly as energetic as a child’s. I have found that not having nightmares has actually disrupted my sleep because it is so new. Yet my sleep feels better. I am less exhausted even when I wake up startled by my dreams of sexy shirtless elvin firemen.

I feel like I can do anything, and I suspect some of the sad is in not having felt this before but despite those pockets of sad I feel… well I wish I could tell you. I feel as if I get not just a new chapter but an entirely new book. Book Two in the Series of Kateryna Fury, maybe three. My life is full of blank pages to fill with adventures and happy memories. So I will. I rebuilt myself to happiness and there is something like satin against bare skin about living without fear and knowing that I, with the help of very dear friends, made my life this good even with the fear. I have an awesome life. I have found too that this story which has haunted me for months and I have been working slowly on writing is no longer something I am afraid to write. It had no ending. It is a dark and somewhat frightening story but the ending exists now. I had not yet felt the things that I needed to in order to let the character feel them too. No fear.

It is strange to me that my brain reaches for things to be afraid of. It is seeking them out and trying to fill what feels abit like a void but none of those fears fit and my emotions kick that away before my logic does. I am working on trying to visualize happy things that might fit that spot. Is it a want? Is it a need? I have no way to know. Something about the unknown is frightening, but this unknown is a kaleidoscopic whirl of potential and I am going to start exploring.

The Phone

I know that it’s something other people with Autism happen to deal with. The Phone. I sit here staring at it every day. It takes me four hours to make a single phone call. Which of course comes after I plan out my calls sometimes four days in advance. The phone… it feels like an enemy despite the fact that my phone isn’t even a smart phone so it lacks the most basic sentience. Not certain if Smart phones are sentient but my carer’s Blackberry says it’s thinking all the time so I will suppose it’s a very stupid smart phone since it rarely gets past the first thought of the day.

I hate my phone. From the phone bill, which if I was willing to risk being out without a cellphone could be less, on to the talking. The talking is the worst part. Why is it people shout into the phone? I know I am quiet and hard to hear but most of the people I know literally yell into the phone. When I had roommates I started asking one of their guests to go to another room since every time she was on the phone she began to yell. The roommates got louder too but this was usually because our phone was a piece of crap landline, and even I had had to yell into it so I wrote that off.

The phone fills me with foreboding. If I could translate that feeling into a story the phone would be the killer in one of my gory little trips down violence lane. The phone did it. Not the man, woman or mutant sewer alligator. It was the act of saying “Hello?” The silence at the other end, a crackle that could be breath and then you are dead, in the dial tone of terror.

This is about how it feels to make a call. I know the phone won’t actually kill me but this supposedly innocuous device creates a whole new level of communications challenge. Even texting can be difficult for me if I am tired or if my hands won’t function. Coordination is never a guarantee. Texting is the best part of a phone however, as I know when it is my time to text.

Sometimes waiting to talk on the phone I pull up a clock, so I can watch the second hand. This helps me to feel less like it has been an eternity since the other spoke when it has been a single breath. I am always angry sounding on the phone, but this is because I am focused on hearing you, understanding you, and frankly, knowing when it’s my time to go.

I often hang up on people too early. I don’t get the phone right, which bothers me. I feel self conscious with the phone. I can’t see you. You always sound hostile to me when I can’t see you. Then the phone brings me bad news. Whenever my student loan people call it’s never what I expect. “We approved you for this deferment but the department of education says your doctor isn’t the right kind of doctor.” Yet, they can’t explain why my doctor is not qualified to sign the paper. They don’t even understand what they are saying so I hit the end button before I yell at them for being stupid. Why would you hire someone who cannot understand and explain what is wrong with the papers? I already took care of this but am I to be a mind reader? Am I to infer that they wanted an MD not an Osteopath? They don’t know the difference and I don’t either. Luckily my doctor’s office does and someone else there can and will sign the papers.

The phone. It’s stalking me now. The only useful thing about the phone for me is the alarm clock. I do have internet on my phone but that is merely a back up in case my coping mechanisms fail then I can wait patiently while I poke at the buttons and read something on wikipedia. It’s about staying calm. In that moment the phone is the worst computer ever.

I suspect the advent of the video phone will eventually occur and I wonder if that will be worse or not. What about those six am calls from idiotic office workers who don’t comprehend that I am sleeping? Will they be more awkward since I don’t wear clothing to bed? I think that’s the entire reason why videophones aren’t what we use anyway. The video phone would level the playing field by making certain EVERYONE feels as awkward as I do on the phone.

Soul Lobotomy

As being a goth requires thinking on Death, I seem to fit that quite well. Of course not all Goths are actually death obsessed but I myself have always been. You see, I do fear death. It is not my death I fear, I accept that this is an inevitability. It is the deaths of others. Sprite is not handling Nymph dying well, and her behavior has started to reach the critical point when she begins to self mutilate. I am left remembering my own deeds of self destruction, and yet most of those times others would think of were the acts of them not me. It is a strange tangle. So in my worry for her I spent the day on the phone with the vet, who worked with us via telephone for free.

Our options are find a cat…. or trying antidepressants. I am certain that you all know what my decision was and my vet strongly recommended the cat over the drugs. I have crystalized the thoughts enough as to why she cannot be the only cat, and M my friend helped that by flat out asking why it is okay for me to put her emotional needs above my own.

I don’t think I am of course, but with animals and love in general I am a thousand times bitten and a million times shy so I never recover from a loss. The trust and love of any living being is far too rare for me. Sprite also keeps me alive and happy and healthy. The trifecta of need is met with in her compact furry form. So much soft fur, so much amazement.

So what is it that has her in such a state each time she is the only cat?

Some Sprite facts.

She has never been the only cat, except with me. The formative years of her life were spent first in a hoarding situation with a cruel cat hoarder. Yes they think they love cats but when you cannot care for them and there are so many that they are starving and just a trapped Pride of ferality, you are being cruel and need them rehomed. She then moved there to a crowded foster home. A shelter, a multi cat household with five cats, including herself. Then, back to a shelter. Another multicat household. A shelter where to save her from being euthanised she entered yet another cat household with a slew of people and cats. Two cats per person and at least five people, though I think it was way more. I forgot as it’s been a long time. Six years in fact. Then she moved in with myself, my roommates, and their two cats. She struggled to deal with just two other cats. IT took her over a year to adapt to that, and at first she self mutilated over being lonely.

Then I got married. She needed stitches from her self harm fit, and we got William Shakespurr. Even typing his name makes my ribs hurt, so there are regrets but not between Sprite and myself. After rehoming him once she started self mutilation there was Nymph. Sprite hasn’t been so depressed in the entire time I have known her. She is in some moments a shell of who she was. My eyes and nose have the tingle feeling that I associate with crying when i think of her pain.

So do I drug her and spend exactly the amount I have after rent for food and other bills? Nope. I am going to find a cat. The cat won’t be big, I will not risk my health for this cat. I won’t get the poodle off of Craigslist I found. A dog I could pet! Wee. It would be fine until it barked, licked me, had to pee, wanted to go for a walk, needed grooming, a bath… and of course there’s DOG food. Ick. We have a few caterviews coming up. The first one I feel won’t happen as the people with the cat first asked for 1000 for a mixed breed cat of no special intellect. They admit she’s a very stupid cat. Then again she was more likely spoiled than stupid, as the humans adopted her instead of a child. They cannot afford pet rent anymore. Something I do not contend with here thankfully. So we moved on.

Yet it was in this that my fears came to verbalisation. You see, I wake up and my first thought is rarely, “God damn I have to pee.” That’s my third thought. My first thought is, and has been since my first night with her. “Oh god is Sprite still alive.” My second has become, “Oh God is my secret love’s name here still alive?”. It leaves me shaking. Then I breathe, realize yes, Sprite is here. Go pee, and check to see if said lover is still alive. This has gotten worse since Rose died and a lot worse after losing Nymph. I am prone to going to my bedroom if Sprite is sleeping and waking her up just in case. I had gotten past that need just a few years ago. I will try again. By past, I do mean I just didn’t do it every few hours every day. About once a month.

In fact my fear that my loved ones will die was an issue with my ex-husband, as I would sometimes have to wake him up if he was too still or quiet. I would wait hours, biting my nails, trying to not cry and when I could stand it no longer I would touch him. Breathing isn’t enough, I need actual movement preferably with snarls of “I am sleeping go away”.

Somehow this lead to a promise that lead to a discussion of Greek Mythology, the details would give away identities of people who must remain secret so, shh… In the discussion of the Greek Afterlife aka Tartarus, I mentioned I would rather be in the torture section also called Tartarus instead of the Elysian fields or the very boring sounding waiting dock where people who cannot pay the boatman’s fee end up. No, the Elysian fields sound horrible to me. They are after all intended as a Utopia but one person’s Utopia is another’s meloncholic vision of sadness.

Imagine waiting forever for your loved ones. This is what you do there. You wait. They must die to join you, you are not aware they are dead, and so you spend your days at home, doing small things like cooking or cleaning. You do not remember them fully you just know you are waiting. You do not even know you are dead and the urge to explore or go beyond the simple tasks is removed from you.

What if you don’t have a loved one? What if your loved one goes to Tartarus instead? What if they become immortal? Do you wait forever? What if they are one of the chosen few who is allowed something else at the discretion of the god Hades? You are left to remember nothing forever. How is that utopian? It sounds more like a lobotomy of the soul to me.

As it is, I have found no conception of the afterlife suits what I would see as heavenly. Golden streets sound hideous and wasteful, and a heaven as the Christian Heaven was taught to me with no pets, gender segregation amidst other kinds (not wholly a universal tradition) but where there is need to fear attacks from hell, where again thought is not prized… this seems wrong to me too.

I cannot think of any widely known traditions that don’t make me sad, lonely, or a bit angry. Probability factors? All three. Some of my sorrow is my depression and aching heart over the lost friends. A lot of it is the sensation of insult that even in death I am relegated to doing what others would deem right for me and not what would make me happy in these supposed places.

I guess heaven would require me to be fulfilled by myself. Even that possibility is a requirement. I would demand full disclosure, instead of fading to a shade of my former self as the Greeks put it. So as I think of Rose and Nymph and what their heaven’s should entail i want to be remembered, I want them to know they are dead if THAT will make them happy, and if they want to wait for me great. If not? That’s fine too. I dislike the image of my friends being leashed until I die. In a way it’s a sort of a chain unless people become hermits.

Your mother loves her husband. He loves her. Your parents love you. They love your siblings. You and your siblings marry and have children. You die, you and your parents and siblings are now all dead and waiting. Your children and grand children are alive. They reproduce, or even just fall in love or make friends with people on the deep level. Now you are all waiting.

The waiting never ends.

Anyone up for a Soul Lobotomy?

A Year After Survival (Trigger Warning)

It was a year ago that I was sitting in that place, full of filth and disease. It was a year ago that Anthrax threatened my flesh and my mind was as damaged. It has been a year since in desperation I misdialed the number that lead me to finding my current apartment where I met my case manager who shares my name, where I escaped not just the first but the second bad carer, and where I began to heal. It has been a year.

It has been a year of utter devastation in some other ways. It has been a year of great loss. Death has haunted me my entire life from being forced to help my father kill on to the loss of every pet Grandma ever took in to shelter for us or my mother helped rehome, the death of my best friend, the death of Nymph, and the deaths that I felt uncomfortable mentioning. That would be the deaths of allies in advocacy, some of my heroes, but death has been here. In some moments I feel death is mocking me for living by taking everything that is important to me. I think that’s grief. I know it isn’t the actual facts as death is merely a part of life but my feelings do make it ache.

It has been a year of distance. I have started to step away from people that would perpetuate the year of Torture, people that do not understand this is not normal or healthy. Or family that does not respect that I damned well have a right to live in peace without being treated like a monstrosity for not doing things their way.

It has been a year of tears. I have cried more in the last year than I have in most of my life, yet this is a wonderful thing. Though it means I am wounded and grieving, when have I not been? I cannot remember any moments without pain until the last few years of my life and this year has held a majority of good.

It has been a year where I have admitted I am in love with someone. I have been for a very long time, albiet against my will. I love myself. I love Sprite. I love Rose. Still. Death doesn’t cancel out love. I adored and loved my little Nymph friend. I love M my friend. I love. I love. I love.

It has been a year of hope. I started to dream again, not the literal way but the hopes and dreams of a life beyond struggling to make ends meet, a life beyond this desolate place where I have never been able to leave. I hate New Mexico, and I always have. it has been a year of great achievements. Partly because I am still here and kicking.

My 26th Birthday is approaching and I am going to have people over to celebrate. I feel strong enough. I feel safe enough. I still want to flee this place. Yes it has been a very hard year. What year isn’t going to be hard? I have a laundry list of illnesses and disabilities, I have a mind that just won’t shut up, and I honestly cannot imagine life without a challenge. I truly think it would be boring.

This year I have learned some things about myself…

1. I have a very interesting life. More so than many people have. My life could be a great work of fiction, it would make a great movie series because each year holds enough action to make Harry Potter wish he had my level of danger, daring, and doing. I would still not wish this life on anyone but I also wouldn’t change it. My life has never been boring. I cannot say I haven’t been bored, but it’s been a very long time and that’s why I stopped enjoying school that first year.

2. Love. I has it. (Imagine a lolcat saying that if you would please.) I have always been capable of great love, like all my emotions when I love someone animal or human it is with all of me. There is only a set of extremes inside of me, so my love is extreme and comes with a side package of loyalty and trust. You can of course get rid of parts of this but I will always love you once I did before. I love my father. The evil bastard. I am still glad he is dead. I love my mother. The pathetic damsel in self imposed constant distress. I am still not going to invite her in, as that’s the rule with vampires of all varities. I don’t love my grandmother. I never have. She has always been a caricature of torment to me, even when torment was normal and acceptable in my world of Hitler fanatic parents and abuse. She’s always been worse than my father. I will sadly always love my exhusband. The thing is, I will love who he appeared t be not who he is. I will love the love of my life who knows who they are. There are no caveats there. I will love them and there is nothing anyone can do to stop that, even myself. I did try… I will love Sprite forever. I find the idea that she is my furry wife or soulmate, the wife thing starting as a joke about the supposed women’s duties which she does. She feeds me, clothes me, holds me and satisfies most of my needs but not the carnal ones is accurate. I glanced at her just now sitting in my new wingback chair and she looks so sad right now, and we both are because… I will always love Nymph. Even though she is gone and even though I had to let her die, I will always love her. I will probably always love the next companion Sprite gets. That happens sometime this month.

Yes, a year of love. I will always love myself. I didn’t used to. Even through the years of survival and struggle, even being “better” than the text books tell you someone with my level of PTSD, disabling, even with Autism, even with taught body hatred (fat, not blond, not able enough, just not good enough for anyone (Thanks Mom!)). Yes, Even then I never quite got the hang of looking at myself and seeing a person of value. I came close, a few years ago I started to get there most days. For the majority of this year I have loved myself. When puking from pain and or illness? Check. When unable to shower for two weeks because it hurt too much so I ended up wanting to claw my skin off to make myself clean? Check, that’s why I didn’t let myself lose my flesh to my fingers. Even when I felt it was my fault irrationally and that somehow I deserved being penned in a room and starved and raped? Yep. I still felt beautiful and at peace. That one really threw me for a loop. I haven’t felt that the abuse is my fault for most of the time since this started. The nifty side effect is, I don’t see ugly people anymore. The majority of people outside my door or online or people who aren’t movie stars are all stunning to me. Movie stars hate themselves usually, they abuse themselves and that does uglify them to me. Self hate isn’t pretty.

I love.

This has been a year of food. On my birthday I am going to make (with my carer) a food I haven’t let myself have for three years. The last time I ate it was when my ex was a fiancee. Penne Rosa. This decadent dish is my favorite. It pwns lasagne. I didn’t even notice I had deprived myself of it. I did so out of anger with myself, so I must forgive and eat the deliciousness. It’s expensive to make and very rich food. It’s something I learned about when I was a chef. Yet despite depriving myself of Penne Rosa without acknowledging it subconsciously I have eaten very well this year. This last year has the advent of Meat Cake into my life, the flavor is very rich, it’s not salty but it isn’t plain. It’s meat cakey. It is the most delicious savory food I have had in a while. I consider pasta’s sweet. I have reclaimed the Quesadilla. Despite living on them for a year, two months ago I found they no longer make me want to puke. So snake food is a go. I have had the advent of the Dilly Bar into my life. Butterscotch or cherry please? Some of the changes are based on the local area discovering Gluten Free, so I now can have bread or pizza at my whim (and ten dollars total ingredient cost, not twenty for cardboard). I also started only eating food that tastes good. THis happened in January.

This has been a year of the evolution of appearance. I stopped hiding under horrible black hair. Black hair is great on other people, and I can pull of the sickly goth look with it but despite being Goth, looking like I am dying isn’t something that feels right. I like being on fire, not literally since we’ve been there before, but with my red hair, my fierceness showing in my eyes and rich red lipstick. I figured out that anything I wear is goth. I am a goth. I am wearing it. Still not a fan of blue though. My war against only wearing black was lost. I feel comfortable there, I feel sexy. I still do wear other colors, mostly reds and greens. Still. Despite trying to listen to what other people said my fashion identity won out. Some of the evolution is the loss of ballgown length skirts. Wheelchairs don’t like them. They like to eat them. So I must streamline my tastes. Alas. Alack. It’s a bit fun actually. I also started wearing black eyeshadow more often. I am still waiting on that corset, it apparently was lost in the mail and the company I am working with is not getting repeat business. That’s been going on for over a year now. When I get it, I still want to take those sexy photos. Unshaven lets are sexy.

This has been a year of creative goals. I haven’t been alive enough in recent years to write music, act, create, share. In the last year I have written several audio dramas, some are still in need of work. One is being produced and I have a voice acting role in it. I’ll share when that comes out and it will be free. I am composing a soundtrack for something that should air on most radio stations nationally, potentially internationally. I am writing a book on PTSD. I have had requests for a book on Autism, as I explain both in a way the Nuerotypicals understand, without them thinking (at least supposedly and this is my goal) that everyone with this label is the same. I am writing period. I am considering writing three books at once but for that my head may explode.

This has been a year of discovery. I am discovering it’s okay to not like TV. Sure, I had roommates with TV addictions and that contributed, but TV doesn’t work well with the way my brain works and that’s JUST FINE. I don’t have to be a big TV watcher. I also no longer want to write for TV, because TV and I just aren’t a match. Frankly, that’s a stress relief to admit. There is a reason that after becoming a TV/Movie critic I broke down for a while and had to quit. TV is TORTURE. I get physical pain, and I can’t see for crap so why bother? Audio dramas are more suited to me though some still fall prey to those isms that annoy me, anger me or otherwise fill me with epic disappointment… more often I find that the writers are more independent in their creation, and therefore they get a more “open” piece. The editing work I have faced with mine has been mostly grammatical errors. If there is something that I am told to change because being a wheelchair user who can kick isn’t real, I also learned I can say “I am a wheelchair user and I can kick like a donkey. I just fall over afterwards” and explain the whys, the editor accepts this and lets me know. It’s an open dialogue. Much better than the editors I had when I wrote as a kid. Then again I am an adult now, so there is a lot more respect for me instead of incredulity at my age etc etc etc.

I discovered a wheelchair that fits your needs means if you can walk a bit, you do. I am more physically active with my wheelchair than I was without it. It’s exhilarating. I am also mentally freed of unnecessary pain. I am not sure unnecessary is the right word, perhaps it is treatable pain that isn’t treated? That felt too long and needed qualifications. I have discovered that living alone is best, so even though I am in love and would marry said loved one if it was merely a matter of mind and heart that marraige won’t work unless we get a house with two kitchens and two bedrooms (well… three, Sprite needs one too). I have discovered that people get my jokes, even the bad ones. If I list all my discoveries my word count will be in the millions.

I have discovered that I like my dreams being nightmares for others. Today I dreamed I lived in a sitcom world, in fact I moved in with the family from “Family Matters” though some of them were from “The Fresh Prince of Belaire”… it was great but I was scared. I was scared that they would figure out I wasn’t belonging. I was scared that being not a TV type would get me ousted. I am not sure why my mind selected those shows, perhaps because Will Smith was a childhood crush? Perhaps because Urkle’s awkwardness made it safer? I was still scared and in my dream even wondered if my consideration of what a nightmare is, is different than others. A nightmare means you are terrified. I am not afraid of hoardes of demons but I am afraid of Uncle Phil telling me I am just not good enough. Also stairs but then, I can’t get up them.

I have discovered I dislike most comedy films, as their humor relies on othering people and as an outsider it hurts instead of humors. This of course is well known to many. I have discovered Twilight worries me for the safety of Stephanie Meyer. I suspect she is in an abusive relationship or will be, as her inner soul shows a romanticism of very dangerous things. I have discovered that when Sprite is sad she cries loudly, and I cannot. I don’t “boo hoo”. Just as when I fight physically I am quiet. It’s not ninja as some have accused me of but it is the knowledge that being loud means you get hurt more. I am trying to cry with sound now.

I have discovered that mathmatically based on the sale ads my friends in California have sent me food may be cheaper there than here. Also, the foods I can eat are more plentiful. I secretly dream of fresh strawberries that won’t rot before the week is out. I have also discovered that housing is so expensive there it is beyond my ability to actually comprehend it. There is a literal disconnect in my mind.

In this last year, I have embraced my dreams. I have begun to not fight them, but to let them flow. I learned at a young age to control my dreams, and I wish I had not despite it being fascinating to be aware I am dreaming. I wish I had known I sleep better if I let myself dream about stabbing someone to death. The person is always evil, and I am always saving the defenseless. It is not murder but romanticised heroism. It still scares me, and I wonder what others dream about that they feel is wrong. I have had more sex dreams too. I no longer interrupt those but ride the passions out to see where they go. Usually? Orgasms. It has been a year of sleep. I still face insomnia but I am less tired, less angry, less cranky, and more able to face the world when I sleep and dream.

It has been a year of thought. I have not stopped thinking in my dreams or awakeness for over a year. I can usually sleep through it but as I wrote about before, sometimes it is so bad I can’t sleep. I have always been this way but I no longer tell myself it means I am crazy. Well, I am but I think it’s a good thing. Non crazy people tend to be very dangerous and terrifying.

It has been a year…

So what will this next year hold for me? Will I die before my next birthday (27)? Every year a doctor tells me I will… so far they’ve been very wrong. Will I go a whole year without someone trying to hurt me? I really hope so. Will I write seventeen novels and leave poverty behind and build a castle outside of LA with two kitchens and a cat kitchen? Probably not. The novels? Okay maybe one or two… The Castle? Give me a few years.

Will I start my band? Yes! We’re up to two other musicians now, which is real progress. Will I make my CD? Yes! Will I keep blogging? Yes! Will I get another cat and love it even though I really don’t want to and didn’t even want to get Ny because I was afraid she would die and am doubly afraid now for Sprite and future cat? Yep. Will the cat die? Probably not. Will I ever have that damned yard sale I have been trying to have for a year? Nope!

Will I survive another year? Yes. In fact, I believe in this next year I will thrive. I know for a fact I will begin making jewelry again. I already have. It’s super slow based on my limits but I will make it. I am learning to make chainmaille, and I will have a chainmaille shirt (not made by me, I want it before I am 70), I will go out after dark sometime too. I will have sex. I will buy a glass dildo. Possibly to use during sex but I may be selfish and not share that toy. I will keep going on and on.

I admit sometimes I wonder if I will even know when I am dead because I haven’t stopped. I am a clockwork humanoid in some ways, ticking on and on. Yet the rest of me is in fragments of my imagination. Sometimes I am a barbarian warrior woman, somewhere between Red Sonja and Xena. Sometimes I am just a princess, with the means to protect the people who don’t have enough and cannot fend for themselves. Sometimes I am a demonic seductress. Sometimes, I am a butterfly. Sometimes I am just myself and I am somewhere else.

When I seek out peace, I find it in my mind again. It has been a recent return to that quiet garden in my mind. Now there are new roses growing and new butterfly bushes too. It is still quiet there, this is the only place a lack of music is not a worry mentally. I have missed my secret garden, and I find though I did not tend it, I never really have. It has always tended me. It is here that my glass hearts grow and often break. It is here that my mind is a mix of vines and flowers, towering trees and hollow logs with new lychen and moss growing over them. It is here that the outside world and inside meet. This is my subconscious and it is where I often look at myself, and I wonder. This is a place where Sprite cannot follow. This is a place where I once mistook Heaven. This is a place I have not had for more than a year, and perhaps it was a memory from never.

In the last year I have unrepressed a hoarde of memories. Perhaps they are the demons I slay each night? I am aware of multiple murders by my father, both very similar. I am aware. I have acted. It is a pain, but this is the necessary pain. If I leave these memories buried they will poison me. The little girl that screamed so long is not screaming anymore. She still cries but she is now sheltered in that garden and at times she laughs and plays with the other people there. All of them are me. The orphan girl. The innocent one. I never really knew her before. I know talking of my past identities this way is also what caused people to try and force me to think I had fractured my mind and was dealing with multiple personalities. I finally understand that doctor’s diagnosis. Even my mother knew it was wrong and argued with her, which speaks volumes. Yet, I am aware that each trauma that locked a part of me away killed the previous identity.

In this last year I have been reborn. You have witnessed this birth through my writings and I am aware now that if any flower represents me it is the lotus with it’s many layers and blossoms. I am on a journey through each of the lotus layers of my life. My sensei told me that once and he said that he could not explain it to me but i would understand it one day, perhaps when I was very old but he hoped that I would do so before I was “ancient as the stones”. Remembering him, I remember why I am who I am. He did not act alone in the previous years to shape me but he set this foundation of fine stone. Without him, there would be no Kateryna Fury. There would be no person here. There would be no memories left. I would be dust and ashes long forgotten or remembered only with my mother’s hatred. There would be tear stains and bloodstains at most, no one would notice I was gone.

It has been a year of Survival. Yes, I survived. Yes I fought harder and harder than I thought possible. I did not fight alone for the first time in my life. I did not starve. I did not hate myself. For the first time that I can remember I do not feel like Frida Kahlo’s broken column. My pillar is whole. It has been rebuilt, not replaced and not forgotten. It still has cracks, yet it is stronger than it has ever been before. I may live alone, but I am not alone.

I also know this is visible to others, though I didn’t think on it or expect that this would be so. I look alive. I no longer am carrying the burdens of forgotten crimes or crimes that i didn’t need to carry. That alone has set me free. Though I am sad at this moment, I am not shattered. My heart is reborn. I am the Lotus. I am the Warrior. I am the Writer. The pen is not mightier than my sword, but it is as double edged and I carry both.

Paw Steps In the Stars (Trigger Warning)

Nymph left us today, and the experience is one that I didn’t know how I would feel. Every other loss in my life of such a companion as she was during a time when I had no control in my life even over my own food, I was a child as well not a woman and those caused so much pain as the experience was full of suffering, deceit, and often the death of the animal was a punishment against me. My dear friend Nymph’s last moment was perfect. There is no other word I can use. There is nothing I would chance, except her having been ill at all and as it was, she had a very good life.

The veterinary center that I go to is amazing, the set up protects the humans and the animals, it was a guided journey in absolute kindness. Furthermore I am aware that the staff became attatched to Nymph, her illness effected so many people, not just me. I didn’t have to be alone, M the Carer was with me. I gave her the option of waiting outside during the process but she did not do so.

They set us up in a quiet room, the lights were dimmed which was nice for both Ny and myself. Sprite doesn’t like the darkness but that’s alright. Sprite climbed into the bed they had set up for Nymph and laid down, which I think made it far easier for Nymph to do the same. Ny was curious and wanted to poke around the room. Sprite was not, for the first time in a new place. Instead she and Nymph held one another. It was beautiful. We were there settling in for a good half an hour, this gives the humans and the animals enough time to relax. There is enough time to change your mind if you want, and nothing happens until you, the pet friend are ready.

Sprite and Nymph both met a few nurses, and Sprite for once let people in public pet her without any balking, she just made sure that Nymph was okay with everything. We played music, I set up a play list on my MP3 player and brought speakers. The playlist is the songs that I like, Sprite likes, and the ones that Nymph responded to most favorably. I felt a bit unsure about playing her favorite song at first, during the process but it was fine with everyone. Though Rob Zombie isn’t excactly what was expected I am sure.

I went with her favorite song because for some reason the Devil’s Rejects makes her dance, run, AND play. She had been fighting the Nurse a bit, she didn’t want them to touch her. So I hit play and she put her head on Sprite. I put my hand on her after they gave her the medication, and the first thing that happened was her pain went away. She was awake and alive at that point and I felt her being her again.

Pain changes how your body feels, from the texture of your fur on to the way you hold yourself. Nymph hadn’t felt like her at all for days. This is how I judged her pain, besides asking her. She felt soft, warm, and she purred. Then she was gone. I felt her go but I also felt Sprite’s awareness as I was touching her too. She was sad immediately, and pressed up into me, pleading for a bit. After the doctor and nurse confirmed that everything had gone as it should they laid Nymph back with Sprite and I cried. M the Carer hugged me, which was what I needed at the time. That need surprised me but she was good about my redirecting where she touched me, because I knew she didn’t want to hurt me and she confirmed that.

We sat with Nymph for almost an hour after, I was okay to leave before Sprite, but Sprite literally would not let go. So I let her process and be sad. I knew she was ready once she was out of the bed, even though as soon as I reached for her she jumped back in. We played most of the playlist I set up, and Sprite for a time had her head on the speaker. She is even now very sad. She was alarmed we didn’t bring the body with us, but she does know Nymph isn’t going anywhere else.

My vet’s office will be mailing me a cast of Ny’s paw. I have one of Sprite’s and I will reframe them together. Likely I can use the same frame, since neither cat is giant. I came home, I talked with a few people about some unsavory things but that is life, they were careful with me too and made sure to ask if I was up for the conversation. As it is about Murder, I had to be. If I put that off it would hurt me more.

Then I talked with friends. I realized I was fighting my natural resting patterns and let myself go lay down. It started to rain immediately, which explained to me why I hurt so much bodily. Mentally I feel the same peace that hit me when Nymph felt like Nymph. There was no wrong in this decision, just right. I had the right facility, the right doctors, and the right day and time. Any longer and Nymph would’ve been tortured. Any shorter and she would’ve not been in enough pain and it would have cost her days that she could enjoy. I never expected peace.

I expected guilt, anger, sorrow, doubt, but peace was there.

It was in my rest that the glass shattered in that empty house and the ice cracked further. In that house are my regrets, losses and it is a house on a foundation of pain. The entire house collapsed as I let myself remember every moment I had with Nymph. Her first steps in my house as Sprite greeted her with a big lick and her last morning here with me. Her delight when she realized Catnip is VERY good, and her frustration that Sprite wouldn’t let her pee at the same time. I don’t think we had any bad moments, though our worst was indeed the moment she became sick and I knew I had to take her in. Yet even in this there are so many good memories.

This morning I woke up, and before I could even shift I realized I had a chest full of cat. This left me with a bit of a pain in my back but that’s fine for Nymph.Sprite rarely stays on my chest but after my walk yesterday predominantly stayed with Nymph. She even let her pee at the same time. She dislikes sharing her litterbox, yet it was what Nymph needed. Yesterday was horrible for her, Nymph hurt so much that all she could do was lay with Sprite. Today she was too weak to do much, though she made a valiant effort at hiding from us when she heard me say, “Okay lets get the cats ready to go to the vet.” She went under the bed, not as far as before as we blocked that off but enough that I couldn’t get her, then she went to try and get under the shelf. That was hard to see as her belly was so full of fluid that she couldn’t fit where she should’ve.

Even then she purred for me. She was only wanting to avoid the other people with their poking and their prodding. That was at a minimum too, and that she purred in her last breath is something I am grateful for.

During our settling in time, as I watched Nymph I told her what I think Kitty Heaven is. It is a place where I would love to be myself frankly, not the death part but who doesn’t want rivers of fresh milk full of fat fish that jump into your paws, plump mice that run through rows of catnip, growing everywhere, and where cats are made out of stars?

The storm has concluded it’s fury as I write this, and this is the second time that a storm has mirrored my grief. I will still be sad when I wake up and she isn’t there. I will be sad when she doesn’t poke my feet trying to figure out how I can be so big. I will be sad when I think of the things she loved to do. I will not be sad when I think of the pain she did not feel. I will be happy as I think of her as a cat made of stars, she sparkled even in life and I would expect that she could be no other way in death.

Fragility

I try to never admit that there are parts of me that are fragile, to myself. To you? Sure. There are very few things that I don’t write about, and the few things that I do not write about are either things that could endanger my safety or things that scare me too much to think about. Fragility is the only one that fits into that last category, at least when I admit the full grasp of the depths of broken that go along with my upbringing. I do not know how to mourn. I feel like something cracked deep down inside, it feels like an old wound and it is just there.

I know a huge contributor is my tears, they burn me. Why would I want to cry if it could end with me having blisters and no skin? It is unpleasant and yet I do cry sometimes. I am crying now. I amtrying to not cry infront of Ny because I don’t want her to be sad. Sprite is doing the same, a sort of clownish over playfulness that turns off the minute Nymph curls up in the bathroom or in bed. I told her flat out when we got home and I have never seen Sprite look so sad except for twice. When I was sick and almost gave up on living a year ago, just before I found my current home and when she was electrocuted and was on the edge of dying. Both are very good reasons to be sad.

Sprite is the only reason I didn’t kill myself and instead called just one more number. I had held the knife to my wrist and she let out this sad meow. It was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it but she didn’t say no, she didn’t say please, she said love. Sprite loves Nymph. I love Nymph. I want to be strong for Sprite and I don’t know that I can.

I am emotionally fragile. I talk about the whys a lot but not the actual inability to handle emotions. This is PTSD not Autism. I know that my actual processes if they were normal would be different but with PTSD there aren’t processes for emotions. There is numb and then this internal scream that won’t stop once numb goes away. When the scream stops, the emotions like grief are not really gone but they are smaller and the other emotions hide them.

This is why my mother told me I was a monster for obeying my grandfather and not crying for him after he died. His last words to me were, “Always sing, it makes everyone happy even if they lie and say they hate it, and never cry for me. I want to die, because I hurt and there is nothing left for me to do in my life.” He had cancer, and he did die of natural causes. I wanted the doctors to die too, I was so angry and I was told all grieving is are tears in public when everyone else dresses like a Goth.

I know better now, but I don’t have any real tools. I almost lost my cool today because I cried in public. I couldn’t hold the tears back until alone time, partly because the vet was on the verge of tears. This says nothing about their professionalism and everything about how amazing my cat is. She had the entire office wrapped around her tailtip with in minutes of our first visit. In fact, I felt safe enough to cry there and that is my vet’s office, forever and ever. Until I move like I always have sworn I will at least. Eventually I am going to write about palliative care and animals, because animals and the disabled get a short end of the stick on medical care. The very fact that the first thing my vet said to me was, “Okay, lets talk about how we can make her comfortable,” instead of the usual FIP line of, “Well nothing to do now, let’s euthanise” shows the very real difference in care that these people have.

Nymph has days to live, and yet I will always love her. This also confuses me. It always has. The first cat I felt this strongly for died from FIP, I was not home and I have to say I don’t know if my mother lied to me because the cat was symptom free, and she didn’t tell me for years what killed him. I still think an abusive husband did it to punish me for talking to the cats like a “weirdo”. He didn’t seem to understand that this cat, a wild cat that came to us with his sister both of whom despite being my sibling’s pets officially only played with me was my friend not just a pet.

This sense of fragility, to describe it in my head the image is antique glass. A thin sheet of glass with the bubbles in it, it can warp the outside view slightly, making everything softer but it’s too thin and once it cracks you cannot repair it. It is in a house that has various repair, a good strong foundation but this glass is in every window, and every window is cracked and for some reason it cannot be repaired. IT just cracks further each time there is great pain in my heart. My heart is not the same as this glass, though it is similar. My heart has recovered from so much pain it is more like a statue that no one ever finishes, but it beats and moves. I think the glass house with the cracks is haunted too. It’s haunted by all the love I wasn’t allowed and all the feelings I had to put away. No one lives there, it’s an empty space that holds screaming. I don’t like this house. I don’t like fragility.

I know I cannot take endless amounts of pain, at least not more. Pain has been a life long companion. Pain is the big sister to my Depression and Rage. Those are the triad of emotions that I know best. I can handle pain. It is the sense of overwhelming sadness, or love, or hope that throw me off. Hope is the worst thing I have ever experienced. Yet I want more. I say I don’t but I do. It’s soft, like Sprite and Nymph and it purrs. Hope is a feline emotion. It’s that first moment when I wake up and I feel the heat of the cats against my back, it is when Sprite head butts my chest and climbs up to lay on my shoulder, or when she makes me laugh by playing Farmville by herself. Something I haven’t been able to let her do since my couch broke but we’re working on that because it makes her happy. It’s the best feeling besides love, which I often say I don’t want because it overwhelms me and it cracks that glass when who I love is lost. Rose cracked the glass. Nymph cracked the glass the moment I met her. I looked at her and I loved her and that terrified me.

What happens when this glass, which I know is related to my endurance, cracks all the way? I am very much afraid of that. I can hear it cracking. It isn’t the same as the ice that cracks under my feet in my head with this. I am surrounded by shattering. I don’t know if I can take more loss. I am now terrified and a part of me wants to run to my mother and grandmother and let them destroy me because I might regret this once I lose them. It is the self beneath the ice, which is the numbness come to think of it, that knows better. I am not drowned under the ice but there I am in that space which terrifies me mentally. It is a dark space but it is the space which I am most comfortable. It is my face under the ice which makes it scary. I am crying there. I can see my eyes, so blue through the ice. I can see my face. I am that pale in reality, but for some reason I fear the ice breaking. What is under the ice is where I put the anger that scares people, and me. My anger has always been demonized, and I can handle it but can I handle it if the ice and the windows are gone? A house with no mirrors made of glass that is shattering slowly and ice that is cracking.

It is a house built by a child long ago. It is a house with a memory I don’t want to come out. In reality that is what scares me the most about my fragility. It has always been there and I have shattered twice before. What comes out when I shatter? I never remember. Each time I have shattered I look at it is as if I have died and been reborn but this time maybe it is healing to break the windows? I cannot know until they break and I don’t like this feeling.

I dreamed of Rose, telling me she would take Nymph’s pain. I dreamed of this the night I woke up and Nymph was so cold, her fever was gone and she was finally resting well. I woke up and there it was. Hope. That was when the cracking started. I was so afraid to actually hope and this is why. I knew on Monday she wasn’t going to live but I wanted to be wrong. I am tired of knowing things. I am tired of having so much knowledge that I cannot help but be right about facts in the worst of times. Fact doesn’t always let you hope, and for someone who is not very good at feeling anything, fact is easy to hide behind. Still. I cannot change the broken glass, and there it is. A part of me honestly hopes that when the windows shatter and those ghosts come out, one of them includes forgiving myself for the sins I did not commit, and when the ice melts I pray that I find it was me all along, and though that image of myself scares me it is likely similar to why a lot of people cringe when I am angry, especially when I am quiet in my anger, and that it was me all along and nothing changes except that maybe, I buy new windows and live in the house. A part of me wants this victorian manner to be a safe place. Maybe it used to be. Maybe it is the house that innocence built and hate made empty. I will find out. I do know that when Nymph is gone, I will be forever changed.

I was forever changed the moment I met her. I was forever changed the moment I felt her temperature. I was forever changed by every moment between. Every choice. Frankly, I have never had an experience where I felt so supported by so many people before, perhaps the ice is melting on that loneliness I don’t ever talk about, because it has been there for as long as I can remember. Nymph and people like her, those fleeting moments of people that change you, the people who once you meet them are gone once they do whatever loving they can? Like my sensei, like some of my teachers, like everyone I have ever loved, each of them does the loving they can and then we part, they are the best people I know. Not all of them are human but frankly, my cats are better than many humans ever could dream of. How many people can say they have a cat that teaches them french? Sprite of course.

The fragile part of me that is breaking it is not all of me, it is my core. It has broken before and I am still here. It has been burned, it has been beaten, until it shattered. This time, with the pain no one outside of me is hurting me. It is merely a part of life. I have decided several things, first and foremost if any of the research labs locally want to use Nymph’s remains to help find a cure for FIP then that is what will occur with her body. My belief is for cremation so that is the second choice. Nymph doesn’t care, she said so. The nurses at the vet’s office were shocked when I asked if they could contact these places for me, one said she hadn’t ever thought anyone would think of that. They ask sometimes but not always. The second thing is in Spring I will plant two trees or permanent type plants. One will be a rose bush, the other I don’t know yet. These will live here and whereever I eventually move to, because I will I promised Nymph someday I will live in a state that makes me happy, I also promised Rose that, she demanded it one day, I will plant the same plants there wherever I end up permanently. If no place is permanent then there will be a lot of plants. I think Ny’s may be a butterfly bush.

Finally, no matter what happens when the ice cracks, which does mean it is melting because this is very thick ice, no matter what comes out of the house of broken dreams, the house that innocence built, that haunted house in my soul? I will keep on living. I am constantly walking on a knife’s edge of depression and suicide and that has been for my entire life. I feel happiest when I am at my gothiest so I am going to resume showing that on my outside. If it makes me happier, why am I ignoring it? Pushing it away? I remember when I made the choice to try and blend in more for work but I don’t work a traditional job, when I do work well, I can wear whatever the hell I want!

I also will write that book about PTSD, and I think what comes out of that house may be chapters or a segment on how emotions change when you are no longer nuerotypical. I also forgive my mother for something, I feel it. That actually annoys me, because I don’t like forgiving her she’s a horrible mother and screws up constantly. I still do love her but when she does not change the hate and pain she causes, there is no reason for me to forgive. Yet, I forgive her for not knowing how to feel. I realize when her father died from all sorts of lovely genetic conditions her mother who has always been a broken piece of humanity, and in this case the worst of humanity, she didn’t let my mother grieve. My mother stopped growing up at the age of eight. As did a lot of me. I forgive her for not knowing but I will never forgive my grandmother. I already told Grandma Murray that, because she asked me after yet another emotional attack to do so. I will not forgive repeat offenders, but my mother’s offense was ignorance and childishness.

This does not mean I am going to let her into my life en masse, I don’t think she wants that anyway. It would also be very bad for me. I have hopes about what comes out of this space full of cracks, and I really do hope a part of it is my innocence. Who knows, maybe my dreams of demons will fade away and the dreams that are “normal” and “healthy” will suddenly spring up? Though that my scare me too. Whatever comes, I will be here. I promised Nymph. I promised Sprite. I promised myself. That last promise is the most important of all.

If I can figure out how to love, then grieving though not an easy task is one I must learn. It is a part of love. You can only mourn the dead if you love them.

A Light In The Window

There is a light in the window to your soul.
The rose it blooms brightly in that light.
The light is a fire that none can match.
That light flickered out tonight.
It was not tears that drowned it for you were of joy
It was not pain that muted it, for pain did not destroy
It was life itself that took it, as life with you fled.
To your God I bit thee go
To your heaven I bid thee go
My heart wishes you safe passage
I know you would not wish to end so soon.
So I will plant a rose on the morrow, and I will remember you.
You had your thorns
You had your fire
I will burn up the town as we did together
I will not forget you
You who saved me from a loneliness I did not know I had
My friend, my companion, until your very end.

Nymph is still alive, but there is another loss. One I knew was imminent but I let myself deny, for as long as a person is alive there is always one more day in the human mind. I have mentioned my friend Rose before, though not by name. Names matter when you are living but when you have died no one can use this information against you, though nothing bad was ever said only good. Rose was my neighbor, and she died tonight. I would not have known for a few days except that her family has also befriended me, and I was told tonight that I am family by her standards and so we will continue on, I support them and they me in our mutual grief.

Rose was a fire. She was someone that could always make me smile, she always had a good joke and even when she was not happy there it was, this spice. She had none of the cliches of people her age that the media shows. If anything she was better at being alive than me. She taught me a great deal, including the fact that it’s okay to be lonely. She didn’t let my numbness when I moved in push her away but instead decided I needed her and that she needed me. She taught me the safe places to wheel around, she taught me how to navigate a few parts of side walk that are terrifying to us both. Together we took on the world.

I will miss her. I will miss Brownie aka Brown Dog. I also knew she was sick. I knew that she would not live forever, and a part of me prepared. Yet I am a bit stunned, not numb because numb doesn’t hurt like this but more in shock. She and I had plans tomorrow morning, we were going to go out because we both needed it. She hadn’t seen me for almost a week, because of my own illness and the issues with Nymph. I had decided to deal with it and spend time with her. She is important to me, and always will be.

Rose, upon seeing my butterflies and action figures promptly made me six more butterflies and offered to make matching swords for them. She thought it was a brillaint home decore scheme and we talked about comic books and movies, we talked about life itself. Rose even met my mother and once she knew this woman was my mother offered to be a surrogate. I told her that was what Sprite was for and she thought it was a great idea as we make better friends. She taught me some things about being alive too.

I just found out. I did not cry infront of her son, because he is barely holding on and therefore I could not hurt him with my tears. I helped him escape the locked gate, one to which only two people have a key. Rose also was an advocate, and she and I took on the established acts of stupidity by the apartment manager often. She would do it her way, which is more direct fighting and I would do it mine with written complaints. When the manager saw us together he would go into hiding when he could. I enjoyed our talks. I enjoyed her dreams. They were contagious too.

Rose also made sure I was eating when I was between carers, she is the friend I may have mentioned in those early posts after Him. She knew I was in trouble and even now she told me in the year we were friends she has never seen someone change so much. I was like a plant with no water when I came so she made sure I had what I needed. This went both ways, and Rose also always respected when I needed to be alone. That is rare in a friend and someone as extroverted as she.

So I will plant a rose in my yard for her, once it is the proper season. I will never forget her, but I also may take some time off of writing to mourn. I will keep everyone updated on the situation with Nymph and if I get sicker that too, but nothing else for a time. Even those updates may be belated. I need to be sad. Rose was like her name, sweet, beautiful, and prickly. She was perfectly matched and she loved the cats.

Brown dog tried to come to me as soon as he heard my voice, I was offered his keeping. I did not accept but was honored to be chosen as well. I will see Brownie again, and Rose’s son. He is my friend too. He thinks I am amusing and likes to make vampire jokes because of course no vampire is as giving as he thinks I am. I may be that giving, I am not sure. It doesn’t feel like giving from here to love people as much as I do them. My mind is full of images of Rose, moments, there weren’t any bad times. We disagreed but we did not fight.

I also know that I will pass on the light she gave me, for it only grows with each person loved. It was Rose’s idea that I try to get another cat after the “monster cat” as she thought of William was gone. She was instrumental in my getting to love Nymph, something that also helped me to feel more alive.

To those who love someone as much as she, there is no real death but life in memories.

Rogue Agent (Trigger Warning)

RageOMatic asked me a question on my last post that I had not been able to answer. I was trying to find the answer, and for the last week or so had thought on this daily. Tonight the answer hit me.

First here is the comment that he left:

How do I step out of the cycle on this one, Kat? If I start crying for all the abuse in the world, I’ll never stop crying again. (Ultimately, I think I don’t cry for the same reason you don’t scream…no compelling reason to stop.) How am I supposed to feel? What should I do? How do you need me, an able bodied, white male, to respond to you?

I think the most profound thing you have said to me, so far, is “I am a rogue agent in the cycle of abuse”. Abuse reshapes your soul to either be sheep or wolf, the abused or the abusee. My grandparents, my parents, my older brothers and sisters, all got the same “training” I did to avoid being harmed by being the harmer, but I stepped out of the cycle.

When I read about the pain you are in, emotional and physical, the wolf wakes up. I want to find the abusers and abuse them. You are not my only friend who carries scars on her body and soul from abuse. I want to find people, and choke them. I want to see in their eyes the look they have so frequently caused in others: the moment when one realizes no fight, no strategy, no inner strength, no god, no anything, will save one…only the whim of the abuser.

I know that’s wrong…so I push those thoughts away. Now I have to fight the sheep. the first thing the sheep mindset says is what you describe is only horrible if its true. If you are lying to get attention, then you become someone lying to get attention. That’s disturbing of course, not nearly so disturbing as the truth of what happened to you. It’s so much easier to believe a woman was only abused enough to lie about the abuse, and not so abused as to be accurately describing its toll on her. Then, the second part of the sheep mindset…well even those parts that are true aren’t that bad…because abuse makes you stronger!

And with a snap, I’ve minimalized your pain, and said you are lucky to have it. All three ways, I’m agreeing with the abuser: (1.) Abuse is a good way to motivate people. (2.) It’s the victims moral flaw and not the abuser’s. (3.) It’s good for victim anyway.

First I want to respond to this comment because this comment is so multilayered. Then I will explain how I was given the answer by M, my dear dear friend who often lights the way on my path when I am confused.

First, Abuse does not make you a sheep or a wolf but instead a victim or a predator. Often both. The Sheep and Wolf metaphor is a part of the mind playing into the lies we are told and sometimes tell ourselves to cope with abuse. It’s okay to just be a person, even if it means you are a person that has been hurt.

Stepping out of the cycle of violence is the most dangerous act a victim can make, and frankly I don’t believe that a person who has taken on the role of abuser can stop, because then they are letting go of a mispercieved “power”. This is an opinion I hope is wrong but it is based on my experiences and some of the challenges I faced when I tried to be the abuser. I did make that choice and those memories and choices are the few things in this life I actually and actively regret.

I understand wanting revenge. In fact, I will be upfront with you on this, if I ever meet my exhusband again I will kill him. If my father rises from the dead as a Zombie I am sure as hell going to take him out. If my Grandmother ever speaks to me again she will meet the wall of silence that I have decided is all she deserves from me. For her that is a fate worse than death. Revenge can be a great motivator for changing patterns. It can be the carrot, if I am alive, living well, this torments them.

Revenge can be a reason to not die. It has it’s purpose but revenge cannot be the only reason you live or you start to poison yourself. Eventually you have to find something past it. In fact my statements above are less about revenge and more about protecting myself. I am not going to seek out my exhusband, because that would be self abuse. I will defend myself and if he dies in the process which I beleive would be a necessity, then I am in the right. My father as a zombie? Off with his head. He’d be eating brains, so since I have one, again self defense. With my grandmother, this choice is difficult because I am aware it causes her pain. I decided that minimizing my pain and regret factor is worth her suffering, because in reality nothing I can say or do will stop her fear of dying alone and the cycle of abuse that follows when she realizes that someone may just want something from her, her other fears feeding into her personal cycle.

Another element to wanting to seek and destroy the abusers is two fold. 1. Having been a victim, it protects you from being victimized by them. 2. An element of this is wanting to protect other people. Neither of these things is actually bad, but when you are raised in a world where self preservation is something “sinful” and you are taught to fear it, you will lie to yourself about the why. I still do and have to actively catch myself and correct the thoughts. Knowing someone is hurting at the hands of others hurts because of the human collective. This is why I cry when I hear about bombings, murders, and child abuse. It hurts me emotionally.

In fact I believe that the factors I listed above actually are the cause of this current war in Iraq. The emotions of the people in my country were played with so that abusers could go and hurt people in the name of protection. 9-11 was actually around the time of my self awakening, and I believe that the abuses and lies by the US government played a part in this, because they were the same sort of lies my father told us about other people (specifically people of color or other minority factors).

I don’t think you want to see their pain so much as you want to prevent it, but I may be wrong. However, that was my personal truth, and it may take some digging through the layers of feeling masks to find out what your personal truth is. When feelings are forbidden, it is natural and “healthy” to put a mask on. It’s a survival instinct. It stops being healthy when the situation goes away. Some people perpetuate the abuse because they don’t know how to function without it. Some tell themselves they like or deserve it and seek it out. Then another set of Victims and Abusers come into play.

This is part of stopping the internal cycle that is hard. No one can see your thoughts but you. I had to retrain my reactions to people. On top of this I had to learn to deal with PTSD, and I had to learn things that I know now are basics for small children. No hitting. No biting. Sharing. I still am fairly awful at sharing. I wasn’t just developmentally delayed or socially delayed but my parents emotionally stunted my growth without thought of what this would do for me socially. Social skills are something abusers take away and I am still mastering some of them. (The Autism plays a part in this, but not as much of a part as most people think.)

What you call the sheep mindset is a response to programming. I always called it trying to eject the tapes, because I noticed for me the voices in my head were of my abusers. The lies that I told myself were mine, belonged to my parents. As Victims we first learn to minimize our own pain, and the post you questioned me on was an excercise in not minimizing things. I still did to a level and may someday write part two of that post but I am not there yet. Instead of punishing yourself for “Agreeing with the abuser” try relabeling things. When you think a thought you know is toxic tell yourself to stop and state the truth.

This is a method I think I found in one of my mother’s many self help books. Most of them to me were worthless but I remembered either reading or hearing about this method and it seemed reasonable. I don’t know what I read but what I did was carry around a small notebook, a tiny pen, and I would make a page for every day, then I would make a line for each bad thought I had to correct. The first day I used four of those tiny notebooks at least. Every thought I had was really repetition and regurgitation of abuse. I had to give myself a goal to do this because it is hard. So I told myself that once I went a week without having to correct myself I would get a soda from the school vending machine. Admittedly I had to steal the money to do it so it wasn’t a perfect scheme but it was a goal.

I then had to make the goal realistic and aimed that I would only use one page in a month. It took years. I actually left the school I was in before then, was sent away to a mental hospital, kicked out of that mental hospital, sent to an exclusive school for broken children (my mother’s words), and was allowed to return home before I managed it. That means it took me over two years.

I didn’t realize until last year when I was writing one of the many unpublished things I putter on that I had really taught myself how to think. The cycle of abuse works because we become afraid of thought itself. Thought shows on your face, it brings up those feelings that make the pain come, and so you must only think safe things. Add in an omnipotent being that has hated you from the womb, something you and I share, and you have no reason to actually think or learn or do anything but what you are programmed to do. This is brainwashing. Admitting that makes me want to cry a little, because it’s something else that I know falls into that spot where I want to dismiss it.

Your statement of steps is active abuse, even if you don’t share it and don’t act on it. I will state you are the victim and abuser when this is all in your head, because it hurts you. If I am unaware that you had these thoughts and even with the awareness I am not actually harmed or the harm is much less than what you have as you have then entered your own self hate and punishment cycle, if I am guessing correctly. I still do at times. I am practicing not giving in there, and though I no longer carry around a notebook I still have to stop myself at times. If I am alone sometimes I will shout at myself in the mirror, arguing with those tapes. sometimes seeing that I am really a person and not a valueless fleshpile makes it easier to stop them.

I also want you to keep in mind that the tapes are a part of what makes PTSD work, and I don;’t know if they can ever go away. You may sheer the sheep but wool grows. This is a life long goal and fight.

Now the truths about the lies that you asked about

1. Abuse has never motivated anyone. If anything that omnipresent sense of dread that is in all my memories up until my adulthood and sometimes thereafter made me want to not move, not breathe and live. Abuse is the best demotivator.

2. Sometimes the victims have yet to speak, this would mean that everything is morally bankrupt, and with good people in the world such as you, even when you don’t believe it or M who keeps me from forgetting I am a person on my worst days this cannot be true. There would not be cats like Sprite, there would not be disability benefits, and there would not be medicine if everything was flawed and evil.

3. If it were good for the victim it wouldn’t break people and have people die. This does not mean those victims were weak but instead that they just broke.

Stepping out of the cycle here is possible. I think this is the hardest part of the cycle of abuse. I had to learn to love myself. I could think for myself once I knew I deserved to do so. Not just that I deserved my thoughts but that my thoughts are things of beauty even if there is a bit of tragedy with in many of the experiences I have had.

You are supposed to feel as you feel. Feelings simply are. Anger is not a bad emotion if you do not weaponize it. Anger simply is. My favorite emotion is Joy, and even as I am writing this I feel joy, because by asking these questions you are freeing yourself. You may have to do so again and again but you are trying, and trying is the only way of doing there is. I think the reason I cannot cry is why I don’t scream, but there is a reason to stop. I am just not sure I would know how to do so. The reason to stop is because of life.

And on the last question you ask, respond to me as a person above all. For that is simply who I am. That is who you are too, so remember that. People are fallible, and you will have days when you cannot stop making tick marks, days when you lie about it to yourself and make less than you should, and days when you run out of paper. Then there will be days when you don’t think the toxic thoughts about your worth, and when you can see other people around you through your own eyes.

M helped me find the answers because we were talking about a Patsy Cline Song, and Jonah Hex. Jonah Hex is like us. He is the product of severe abuse and cruelty. He is trying to make the world better in his own way but he is actively stuck in his personal cycle, and has no help getting out because of the judgement of others that take a scar on his face as a sign of his internal wickedness. A scar made by abuse.

When I read Hex I listen to Country Music. The Patsy Cline Song A Church A courtroom and then Goodbye is for me a reference now to my wifetime. My marraige was short, but before it became bitter it was sweet. I really did and DO love my exhusband. I love the parts of him that were good, the parts he chose to throw away.

He tried to devalue me and instead showed me a part of the abuse I was still in. In my life the only nice things I let myself have were investments in the future, so that I could save money in the long term. So my computers are always expensive but they last a long time. (Five years is a looong time in technology and I can jury rig things for a lot longer with this one if I just don’t save anything to my main HDD.) In fact, I so rarely bought anything new for myself and then it was an item of need.

My nice new clothes he took away? I needed them because I had nothing to wear LITERALLY. I am actually about to go buy pants because I need them and again have almost none at all. My shiny new Batgirl statue is a symbol of my being deserving of want. I deserve to want things. Instead of that being a dreadful affliction, a sin, or something bad… it’s okay. I may not buy everything in the world but as with food deprivation, depriving myself of the things I desire causes me to binge.

I can throw away the sales ads from the stores now. I no longer have to try and fit new trash in with old. I am still working on unhoarding my home but it is clean, the only things on the floor are furniture, wheels from my wheelchair, and cat toys. There is no filth, no piles that I have to climb over, and even better? I don’t hate myself for wanting and for the things I have.

Furthermore I also have something for you and everyone that reads this my dear Rageomatic. Love.

Love is a constant. It is not a weapon. It is not harmful. The idea that love can hurt you is silly. Not everything that has been called love is actually love. If something is called love and it hurts, it is something else. Pain is not beneficial but is a warning of something harmful. It is a sensory antibody. I love. I love everything and everyone. I admit even to loving those that hurt me. Love itself does not mean you have to open the door, open yourself to more pain, but instead the love of yourself is why you can step away from the cycle, and why you are not alone.

When you can love yourself and admit it to yourself, you can give yourself permission for joy. Joy doesn’t fade either but sometimes other feelings occur but that makes the return of joy all the greater.

This is my gift to you, and to myself. Thank you for asking your questions.