I can't sentence structure, so list:

• I really should have backed up my PC ebook settings into a different folder before I uninstalled+reinstalled.
• Difficulty swallowing is a symptom of dementia.
• The Croods movies are surprisingly good.
• Funerals suck even harder when you're in the next-of-kin row.
• The old "I'm recovering from surgery" excuse only lasts until the next relevant person needs and gets surgery.
• I thought grief would feel like intrusive thoughts of sorrow, but it's mostly feeling like a thick, foggy static/panic that is hard to think through and also everything non-physically hurts.
• Dhalgren is confusing and long. No, like, way more confusing than you're imagining.
• Being a mom keeps getting harder. Always worth it, but ever harder.
• I do not like reading a book with death magic, finding death abruptly all to pertinent to my daily life, and finding that the next book on my to-be-read pile starts at a fucking deathbed. Do Not Want!
• I can't even fathom how much my mother must have done to help me throughout my entire life. So often, I didn't even see it. Now it's gone and I am at sea.

Stats:

• Percentage of household requiring emergency medical care in 2021: 100%
• Time since last crying jag: <1 hr

Found and reposted this and now I shall have a hard cry again before breakfast.

Apparently my new default reaction, upon being asked to do something that I want to do, is to burst into tears, repeatedly sob "no I can't do this I'm not good enough" and and flee in the hopes of ceasing hyperventilation sometime this year. That felt just awful. I think it wasn't an actual panic attack, because those usually feel like somebody physically reached into my chest cavity and squeezed, but this was a goodly amount of shaking and "do not want" all by itself.

I don't know why I reacted like that. I had a bad morning, emotions-wise; maybe it left me ill-prepared for, let's say, life. Splendid.

Now that the physical fear reaction is pretty well over, I get to cope with the consequences of fleeing in terror. I'm going to owe an explanation to the person who asked me. That should be about as fun as getting dental work. I don't know how to start that: "Sorry to abruptly bail on you, but I have the emotional stability of a needy puppy"—no.

"...but my anxiety flared up and I needed a little while to get myself back under control." Maybe, but I don't think it's ever accurate to describe myself as "under control". "Controlled by my emotions," maybe, but never the other way around.

Fuck. I can't even deal with the fallout of my own inability to deal. I just want to put all the barriers between myself and feeling this way that I can.

What the hell am I doing. If I can't get anywhere with this incessant navel-gazing, then I should at least do it while accomplishing something tangible instead of thinking into a textbox. Then I'll have at least one improvement on a magnificently mishandled day.

This isn't going to fun to write, but I aim to do it so I can move on.

I learned young that friends leave; I could only rely on my family to stay. Come 1999-2000, my parents split and filed for divorce. I was also due to move away from my hometown. I was alone with a broken support system.

That was when I really found SciFiSites, which is long dead now. Back then, it was a revelation. I'd had a account before, but no steady internet service with which to use it. In my new home, I had no friends or family - but I had SciFiSites, where there was always something to read or do.

I made that site my life. I would wake up at night (so I didn't have to see anybody all day), get online, stay up all night, and all day, and all night, and then sleep all day. I was a profoundly unhappy person. I used the site like a drug to dull my pain. It didn't fix anything, but it let me pretend I was okay.

On January 17, 2000, my SciFiSites character was adopted into the House of Elf. It made my day - my month, even. I felt like I had a new family to replace my broken real one. This was right around the time my parents' divorce became final, crushing my feeble hope that they would somehow get back together. But that didn't matter, because I had a new family, a better one that was there for me at all hours. They never told me I was sick and needed help (even though that was true). They "understood" me, or at least they didn't push me to better myself.

This unhealthy behavior lasted until SciFiSites, later theSciFiVine (TSFV), died around 2002. I tried all the imitator sites, but none of them were family to me, the way I wanted them to be. I got frustrated with them, irrationally angry that my coping mechanism had been yanked away form me. Bit by bit, I had to find healthier ways to deal.

I've been thinking a lot about TSFV lately. January 17 became jainajade's birthday. This year will be 14 years since her adoption - even taking her adoption date as a birth date, she would be old enough to drive! (In South Dakota, kids can drive at 14. Rural life occasionally has benefits.) I loved TSFV dearly and bitterly grieved its loss. It took me much, much longer to grieve the death of my actual family unit as I had known it, or imagined it to be.

Over the intervening years, I'd had a lot of frustration with various TSFV successors. Only recently have I realized and acknowledged that this frustration (and sometimes hot rage) has nothing at all to do with the newer sites - it's all me, furious that anyone would expect me to be a grownup and deal with my own demons. I wanted a ready-made online family again, refused to acknowledge what I wanted, and then raged endlessly when I didn't get the thing I couldn't articulate. How dare they. Didn't I have a "right" to have all my emotions soothed, just because I wanted them to be, even if I lashed out in the process?

Oh.... no. No, I didn't; no, I don't; no, it's not okay to hurt other people just because I'm already hurting.

But I did, then. I raged; I took every inch I was given; I strove to take more, as if it were due me.

It was not.

Nobody said so much as an unkind word to me, and I tried to make out like they were mean to me. No, Ree. Nobody was cruel except me.

So I'm trying to consciously get myself over this. I am working to recognize each of my fellow roleplayers as individuals instead of a single hiveminded entity. I've failed this in the past, been called on it, and ignored the well-meaning warnings. This will not stand. I can't let it.

I have started carefully looking around the most TSFV-like site, doing my best to accept what it is and what they offer my account level. I know I have some strikes against me, due to my past shitheadedness. That said, nobody has said a single unkind word to me there, however well-deserved; they have been unfailingly kind. I don't know if I can actually fit into the sort of writing they do there, but I want to try. I want to know that I tried, and if it doesn't work, I want to be able to identify the difference: if I can't keep up with their posting rate, if the writers I fit best with are in timezones/schedules too far from my own, if I skew too PG for their tastes or they too NC-17 for mine. Differences are honest and fine.

Letting myself act like a group of people don't deserve respect, just because they don't want the same things out of writing that I do? That is not fine. That is not honest.

So I am looking around there, remaining watchful lest my past misdeeds try to rise up within me again. If I can't treat the people there like people, then I need to wish them the best and get myself gone from there, 100%. Nobody there has done a single thing to deserve me running roughshod over them.

But if I can comport myself like the daughter my mother raised, a decent human being, then I might actually form some sort of human connection with those people. Maybe even learn something about the drive that keeps them going: new content, every single day; stories begun, stories actually ended and in frigging print - good stuff.

I need to at least try.

Today I got pretty freaked out. (The planned course of events got all tangled up: one appointment got cancelled and another changed time. The place where I was going to spend the interim period became unavailable partway through. I had no book or video game to distract me from my growing tension. UGH.)

But I am still proud of me, because it all got worked out okay. I sorted some unneeded papers out of my purse and found my mini Rubik's Cube in the pocket, which gave me something to do while I waited. (Frustrating doesn't automatically mean unfun! Rubik's Cubes are both fun and frustrating for me, in varying proportion.) As soon as I got home, I set up a rule in my webmail: when I get an email from the schedule person, forward a copy to my phone. I should have done that sooner but at least it's done now.

I also really wish I had a Game Boy Micro to just keep in a zipped purse pocket, but they are rather expensive for what they can do, relative to my budget. If I can keep my purse from accumulating too much detritus, I should have room to carry my already-owned DS instead of buying a new, unnecessary device; if the DS won't fit, Rubik's Cube to the rescue.

I feel pretty good.