Everything happened, is happening, will happen so much: a time kompression story (2019 in review)
I have no words for how exhausting, how overwhelmingly soul-crushing this past year was. Time is relative, and the closer you are to death, the slower everything seems to move - to the point where I hold a personal theory that the afterlife is merely your mind coping with its final moments. And while I'm in (relatively) good health and no (immediate) danger, this year has felt like dying a million deaths, like having my heart torn out of its home and fed through a wood chipper.
I burned out again, though this time it wasn't so much because of overwhelming myself. I managed to handle three of the nine things I "wanted" to take care of this year...
...and one of those things turned out to be an uplifting heartfelt message of belonging by a human being who actually thinks that my friends are the scum of the earth and don't deserve rights. For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, it's better that way. For those that do, well. That's a scar that's not going away for a long time.
That whole fiasco took me out of commission for most of October, and then a forced move from Texas to Florida knocked me out of the loop for the rest of the year - and things aren't in the clear yet, because we still have to keep fighting to get our medicaid reinstated for things like the right and ability to live. So I've spent the last quarter of a year - which has felt like at least two years on its own - in the pits of despair, feeling like nothing can go right and just trying to keep my head above water both emotionally and financially.
Before that? Before that things were 'fine', I guess, in the sense that everything was on fire. Our former housemates were starting to create friction with the family, my significant other had a moment of "I don't think you actually love me", my daughter has shattered no less than three smartphones this year. Games were my escape, and most of them were good - Hypnospace Outlaw, Bloodstained, the rerelease of Romancing SaGa 3, City of Heroes revealing it wasn't really dead and was hiding in the shadows in true superhero fashion. (But in this case, as previously mentioned, one bad apple quite literally spoiled my crop and left me crippled right in time for the world to cave in.) Near the end of the year, Arcade Spirits and a return to Hypnospace and Stardew Valley picked me back up and dusted me off, and now I'm at least... moving, one foot in front of the other now.
Or should I say "we"? It's... awkward, and something I don't know how to quantify, but I feel like I should come out as... maybe plural? Plural-curious? I don't have the slightest idea of how to explain what's going on in my head but in a lot of ways bipolar has left me of 'two minds' most of my life. There's been times I felt like I lost control, or like I spent way too long arguing with myself, or what have you, and I finally put faces and names to those feelings. Whether they're full-fledged others or not we're not sure about, but I've found it most helpful to view it as, well, a sword - a sword is made of a blade and a hilt joined together, right? One part to defend the wielder, another to attack assailants. If I ever find myself mentioning "Emias" or "Sumire" in any of these posts in the future, those are... still me. Facets of me? Their own people? It's not something I'm sure about, since unlike in the case of my plural friends, there's not one person up front with most of the experience while others come in, it's more like... these two have always been here, and are the Yin and the Yang of Sword.
I've got a lot of thinking to do, and a lot to worry about, but... at least I'm thinking, now, and it's not cynical pessimism like it was for most of my life. Things might be looking up, but it's still a rocky path to get there.
man, I talked a lot and really said just about nothing, huh?
tl;dr: fuck TERFs, fuck the holidays, fuck the government, fuck heteronormativity, and most of all, fuck 2019. I'll be glad to watch this fucker burn in the past while I move forward.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Original at https://swordianmaster.dreamwidth.org/120690.html
I burned out again, though this time it wasn't so much because of overwhelming myself. I managed to handle three of the nine things I "wanted" to take care of this year...
...and one of those things turned out to be an uplifting heartfelt message of belonging by a human being who actually thinks that my friends are the scum of the earth and don't deserve rights. For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, it's better that way. For those that do, well. That's a scar that's not going away for a long time.
That whole fiasco took me out of commission for most of October, and then a forced move from Texas to Florida knocked me out of the loop for the rest of the year - and things aren't in the clear yet, because we still have to keep fighting to get our medicaid reinstated for things like the right and ability to live. So I've spent the last quarter of a year - which has felt like at least two years on its own - in the pits of despair, feeling like nothing can go right and just trying to keep my head above water both emotionally and financially.
Before that? Before that things were 'fine', I guess, in the sense that everything was on fire. Our former housemates were starting to create friction with the family, my significant other had a moment of "I don't think you actually love me", my daughter has shattered no less than three smartphones this year. Games were my escape, and most of them were good - Hypnospace Outlaw, Bloodstained, the rerelease of Romancing SaGa 3, City of Heroes revealing it wasn't really dead and was hiding in the shadows in true superhero fashion. (But in this case, as previously mentioned, one bad apple quite literally spoiled my crop and left me crippled right in time for the world to cave in.) Near the end of the year, Arcade Spirits and a return to Hypnospace and Stardew Valley picked me back up and dusted me off, and now I'm at least... moving, one foot in front of the other now.
Or should I say "we"? It's... awkward, and something I don't know how to quantify, but I feel like I should come out as... maybe plural? Plural-curious? I don't have the slightest idea of how to explain what's going on in my head but in a lot of ways bipolar has left me of 'two minds' most of my life. There's been times I felt like I lost control, or like I spent way too long arguing with myself, or what have you, and I finally put faces and names to those feelings. Whether they're full-fledged others or not we're not sure about, but I've found it most helpful to view it as, well, a sword - a sword is made of a blade and a hilt joined together, right? One part to defend the wielder, another to attack assailants. If I ever find myself mentioning "Emias" or "Sumire" in any of these posts in the future, those are... still me. Facets of me? Their own people? It's not something I'm sure about, since unlike in the case of my plural friends, there's not one person up front with most of the experience while others come in, it's more like... these two have always been here, and are the Yin and the Yang of Sword.
I've got a lot of thinking to do, and a lot to worry about, but... at least I'm thinking, now, and it's not cynical pessimism like it was for most of my life. Things might be looking up, but it's still a rocky path to get there.
man, I talked a lot and really said just about nothing, huh?
tl;dr: fuck TERFs, fuck the holidays, fuck the government, fuck heteronormativity, and most of all, fuck 2019. I'll be glad to watch this fucker burn in the past while I move forward.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Original at https://swordianmaster.dreamwidth.org/120690.html