#a lot of this is stuff i processed as i was doing things and seeing stuff. i didnt even actually talk to anyone about this djjdjsjdjd

[furiousgoldfish]

Someone asked me privately 'How to break out of brainwashing', and I thought the response might be useful to anyone else abused and going trough this. It goes into personal experience and osdd, as well as having mentions of suicidal thoughts, so be ready for that if you're reading on.

"I'm unsure that I can tell you exactly how to break brainwashing, because I can only ever partially do it, and only because I also have a dissociative disorder, I think without this disorder I wouldn't be able to do it alone, even partially. I can explain what I did though, and how I think a person might be able to do it with some outside help if it's available.

So for example, when I was small I've been brainwashed to believe I was a demon, and would often be punished for that crime, and I was too little to have any way to suspect that my caretakers would have any reason of lying to me, and a lot of the stuff that was done to brainwash this message into me was done under circumstances of pain. That's how brainwashing usually goes, it's a repeated message that is given to you when you're specifically vulnerable, have no defenses or arguments against it, and often under circumstances of either physical or psychological pain (if you're badly berated, humiliated, treated with contempt, that also causes intense pain that would seal the brainwashing).

So because I have a dissociative disorder (I have osdd), I split into two parts, one who had all the memories, and beliefs from the brainwashing, and was convinced they were a demon, and a second part who had only minimal memories, was completely detached from all of the pain of the situation, but still also believed to not be human because there were no messages received that would lead to any other conclusion. So basically similar, only one part had complete brainwashing, and the other had some, but was detached from the pain situation, because that's how osdd works, it enables part of you to live as if you weren't traumatized. Because this second part did not have the memories of pain, they were able to break trough brainwashing just using logic. It was still painful, because you have to acknowledge awful things like, your caretakers lying to you, for an evil purpose, having to acknowledge that you weren't safe, that you've been exposed to some extreme cruelty, sometimes having to cut your bonds with people you love because you see them for who they are. Your worldview shatters and that can take months or years to make peace with.

But the thought process was just questioning and breaking trough the logic of the situation. I questioned why I feel constantly guilty and ashamed for even existing, and what caused it, and the reason for that was intense shaming, guilt tripping, accusations, character assassination, punishments. I was receiving messages that I deserved only pain and shouldn't exist. So I questioned why was that, and what did I do to deserve that, and it turned out basically nothing severe; I was acting as a normal kid and would get shamed for stuff like, needing to eat, needing resources or money, saying no, standing up for myself, accidentally annoying someone, being perceived as a nuisance when I was just being a kid. So then why the shaming and the violence and being called a demon and punished for it? Because people who raised me were insane and needed some excuses for torturing a normal child who just happened to live there. Studying the situation further revealed that their acts of punishments coincided with when they were in a bad mood or just annoyed at something else and needed to lash out, rather than anything I did or caused.

Now if I was still connected to the emotions and pain inflicted on me during this brainwashing, I would not be able to break trough it using logic and arguments because the pain would completely overcome my logical side of the brain and I wouldn't be able to argue it out with myself because the pain of just thinking about this would make me suicidal. That's why brainwashing is so difficult to break trough under non-dissociative circumstances, it's just too dangerous to be exposed to that level of pain, and non endurable. It's also why brainwashing is usually done under circumstances of severe pain, so that the person trying to break trough it would be stopped by pain from having access to any kind of logic and they would submit to any message being told to them, just to avoid further pain.

This is also why I haven't been able to un-brainwash the part that is still connected to that pain, they cannot under any circumstances accept that they were a kid who was tortured for no good reason because that's too devastating and there's a barrier in their mind stopping the from even thinking in that direction. They won't indulge with logical arguments.

I do think a person who doesn't have a dissociative disorder could break trough brainwashing with some outside help. Brainwashing relies on the person always receiving the same messages about themselves, and on being resistant to any opposite messages; they make you believe that anyone telling you otherwise is trying to hurt you, lie to you, trick you, etc, it makes any opposite messages difficult to accept or process.

But if there was an environment where the person was consistently receiving un-brainwashing messages that counteract what the brainwashing was, eventually their brain would adapt to the new message, even though it would still be very painful, and there would be a lot of inner conflict, going from one view to the other, being unable to see which messages are true, sometimes succumbing to the pain of trying to fight it because the pain is overwhelming. But for example, if someone is brainwashed to not believe themselves as human, but they're in an environment where it's consistently pointed out how they have a lot of things in common with humans, if their similarities are amplified, they're treated as human, and any abuse or ham of them are being depicted as wrong and evil, it would eventually cause the person to doubt the brainwashing. Not right away though, at first you'd just think 'all of these people are fooled and they're just not seeing the reality of what I am' (that was me for years). But after years of consistency their brain would have to consider that maybe they are human if there's overwhelming proof of it and that maybe something was off with the original messaging. They would still have to go back in memories to challenge it and they would need support in fighting those messages.

Sadly the current environment of capitalism doesn't offer many options of breaking such brainwashing because people often treat each other transactionally and as resources and indulge in some level of manipulation and devaluing others to get their way, so abusive messages might just get amplified instead. Which is awful for people who were brainwashed and can't fight that kind of subjugation due to painful triggers that stop resistance.

I'm also not completely out of brainwashing myself, it's still very difficult to conceptualize that I didn't deserve everything that happened to me, and that I was just a kid. When I think about it I have to distance from myself and re-affirm to myself that it was 'a child', I can't think about it as 'me', because I still hold some connotations of having deserved this, or it being correct that it happened to me instead of anyone else. It helped me to find out that similar things happened to other children because it's very easy to see that no other child deserves this, other people are truly human and never deserve anything like this, and I could start comparing myself to them to some extent and grasp the idea that I also don't deserve this, since nobody does. But I still find myself somewhat tainted by it and different on some fundamental level, in which all of this had to happen, even though I wish it didn't. I guess it's complicated! I don't think I am able to completely break out without outside help, but since I don't have any, this is how far I am able to go."

[raintemper]

Moon and Pebbles!! Yippee

oh the woes of being a flesh creature surrounded by supercomputer gods,, I got sad drawing him hhh

more about them under the line :>

Moon! She, like Suns, was one of the first successful projects and were both more of test models/therapeutic companions than anything else. They were both restructured to fit their new functions but Suns has obviously undergone more significant changes... Moon is kept inside to assist with research and computational stuff. She's a lab cat. She's generally looks more like a normal creature, and has a friendly appearance because her creators (i guess it would be the ancients) would be seeing her frequently and would rather a friendly face, something that is easily perceived as nonthreatening, as opposed to Suns weaponry and NSH's extra limbs and spikes. She doesn't have the screen face like NSH, so expressing emotions comes mostly from body language. Moon is not outside at all so there is no need for solar panel components like Suns or NSH. She has internal stored power that can last for quite a while but still needs to be recharged? I imagine the neuron fly drones would also assist in that department. The drones still function somewhat like her portable processing servers/braincells. She has also programed a defensive protocol into them, they can create small bits of electricity to use in dire moments. Initially programmed to keep track of NSH's samples that sometimes escapes him.

Pebbles is a purposed organism. He is a whole entire organic cat. He was born in the lab, in a chaotic time when resources were low. He has a mark of communication. He also has a brain chip where he can access (basically) the cloud where the others upload information. He is also a lab cat so this is crucial to his role. He did try and remove it once when he was younger and it backfired horribly and now he has a mechanical ear and eye. He still feels out of place for obvious reasons, being the only creature of organic origin amongst his peers.

He is closest to Moon who had a role in caring for and raising him. She did not know a thing about caring for a living being but did her best. Pebbles does not like being confined to the facility. The suggestion and influence the brain chip has on him sometimes clashes with his thoughts. He is very aware of the limitations it puts on him to not leave. He envies NSH and Suns a lot for being able to do what he can't. He often downloads the maps they create and read NSH's sample studies in his spare time. He also likes seeing the lizards NSH brings back, from a distance.

I think in the time that Pebbles exists, NSH is not very active. Due to the low resources and chaotic season, NSH is often in low power mode. Which means less expeditions outside and more time just, half asleep. And when the weather becomes more sustainable, NSH would be sent on long outings to gather as much as possible before being powered down again. So instead of hearing stories from NSH, he sought out Suns and UI instead. (Actually I think everyone is kind of low power mode here, Suns does not wander as far).

erhm i think he tries to leave the place and then gets sick or something,,,im still thinking..

[theeio]

ToA Sketchbook PDF interest update:

Yep I'm locking in - lets do this.

Link to the original post / interest poll - There's still some days left to vote for how much you'd be willing to pay for the Sketchbook PDFs, but I settled on some things:

I'll be publishing the Sketchbook PDF on itch.io

I'll be splitting the sketchbook into different parts, in chronological order. This keeps it more accessible price-wise, and I'll still have an option for the full collection!

I do know that some folks wanted the PDFs to be arranged according to subject, so I could summarise the contents and summary of the art/subjects to expect in each PDF, so you know what you'll be getting.

I'm planning on giving each PDF a unique cover! If the scanning/cleanup process doesn't kill me, I'd love to do some exclusive artwork for this project as a thanks for the support and interest if you were to buy one of these!

If my health allows, I may even consider inserting some new sketches into each PDF 👀

As for updates: I have already done a quick mockup of a PDF, testing the quality, scanning, formatting and exporting process and I think I have a rough idea of the workflow! I'm going to be starting the scanning today, which is going to be a huge undertaking, wish me luck T-T ! I'm guessing that and cleanup may take the longest, and the timeline is unknown rn but I'll give as many frequent updates on this as I can.

And now for a very important question:

Would you like something more polished in this sketchbook PDF (stuff I already posted + "nicer" unseen sketches) ? or would you like me to also include the more raw, incomplete, and bad drawings too? When I say it's almost every art of ToA I did, I really do mean it.

Why I'm considering sharing the more raw stuff is because I feel like there is a lot of misconceptions/insecurities around the quality of a sketchbook, and the pressure of an individual to make every drawing-even in their own personal sketchbook-perfect. I thought I could include the good, the bad and especially the ugly to hopefully break that stereotype of every drawing needing to be perfect, and to show the very real process behind my art.

And why I'm also considering against that is because YOU guys are the ones paying for this PDF, and you may want to have something of more quality XD !!

I don't think I've seen many artists go for the TRULY vulnerable/raw/scrappy route in the sketchbook PDFs I've seen and bought, so its important that I throw this out there to see how y'all are feeling about this. So:

please only vote either the first two if you are planning on purchasing these, thank you!!

[dreamerimpossible]

His reaction when you say someone else's name during sex.

Warnings: +18 content, unhealthy relationships, mentions of violence, dark content, toxic behavior, threats.

Characters: Jeff the Killer, Masky, Hoodie, Laughing Jack, Ticci Toby.

Jeff the Killer

He covers your mouth and proceeds to fuck you even more violently than before. He chokes you and thinks he's suffocating the person you named. Your legs will shake after that. When he's done, he looks at you angrily; you know he's about to make a jealous scene. There's screaming and abuse. Neither of you can control yourself. He kills the person. You make a scene too; he continues it: there's a lot of stuff lying around. You have hate sex. He makes a jealous scene, then remembering what happened, you get angry and continue the argument. Just a big vicious cycle.

Masky

He stops. He looks at you through his mask. I'd like to say he'd fuck you more violently and get even, but he'd probably get really angry, and that would make him not want to have sex anymore. He yells at you and blames you. Lots of threats and reminders that he has you in his hands to do whatever he wants. He's a scary man. The only way to get him to stop acting like this is to tell him that you don't care if that person dies or not. The next morning you find something meaningful from the other person on your nightstand; you have to hold back your scream; otherwise he'll think you lied to him. Depending on how you react, that will be his reaction. If you have no reaction at all, he'll relax, thinking it was just a little slip-up on your part.

Hoodie

He plays with you. He records you and degrades you. He leaves videos for the person you named to see. The videos are embarrassing, you repeatedly moaning “Hoodie” until your throat hurts and your voice cracks. Your naked body with bruises and scratches. You with your legs spread wide open as Masky and Hoodie take turns fucking you. You in the woods in handcuffs as you sat naked in the grass while he masturbated and you waited for his cum with a fervor absolutely unknown to you. You're begging Hoodie to touch you while he makes you say the dirtiest, most lustful things you've ever heard. You in different positions... I think you get the idea.

Laughing Jack

He'd be amused. He's a sadist. I doubt he'd be interested in sex without some extra incentive. So that just makes things better. Maybe he'll kidnap the guy and tie him to the bleachers as the only spectator of his circus show and force him to watch as he uses you sexually and plays with your body no matter what you say. It all ends in a sordid game of laughing jack, and you frankly think it would have been much better if he just felt jealous. But you know what he's like; you know the boundaries of his sanity have been pushed and taken with him, so you'll probably ask for more and more pain and be glad that the guy is so disgusted watching it.

Ticci Toby

He stops abruptly. Someone could get hurt. You didn’t know who: him, the guy you named, or you. You didn’t know; it depended on how well he processes things. You back away from him slowly, with fine rigor, not letting him see that you’re scared of him. You could see him making confusing decisions in his mind. You can’t do anything but wait and pray that he doesn’t show you his bad side. You avoid explanations; you avoid everything. Any sound. You don’t have to prove that you exist in that room. He doesn’t calm down, but he leaves; he was so angry with you. He doesn’t come back for a few weeks. When he comes back, he expects you to still be sorry and ask for forgiveness. You do. You don’t know if it’s out of fear or love, but you do.

[gribok-art]

Hear me out...

Muriel (like Aziraphale and Crowley) starts to learn about humans and Earth, as she has to stay there in the bookshop.

She already seems to be curious in nature and questionning things. We can see her easily getting and going along with Crowley but still questionning her actions and what she's doing. She's still innocent and she's good, calling "the traitor" Mr. Crowley, and she learns. How to be a police officer, how to act human, what's a teacup. She looks at all the books, tries reading one. She seems to be so happy learning all those new things.

So, I think she'll have a good time staying down on Earth. Perhaps Crowley acting like a guide/dad/big brother and explaining some human and Earthly things to her, the nuances, the shades of grey. I bet she'd have lots of questions and not even treat Crowley as a demon.

Anyway, back to my point. She goes out to explore the world. In my head as a human, she looks like a young adult, idk, in her twenties. And she meets a human. A young lady, wears all black, swears, her aesthetic is basically goth and skulls and spikes and metal. Complete opposite.

She finds Muriel weird, and she's acting good to her unlike other people, so it spikes her interest.

Muriel finds her interesting, like a human to study. She seems all "evil" on the outside but when you get to know her she's good at heart and is hurting. She could be from a religious family, but doesn't believe anymore in God, saying their actions are not fair etc.

And so starts a relationship, idk what kind, a friendship, an acearo romance, full on romance.

How much potential it has !

Crowley seeing something weird's going on, freaking out that she's hanging out with a human, that she must not reveal she's an angel, having to try and explain ✨feelings✨ to her, processing his own in the process, going to Nina and Maggie for help, trying to stop it or hide it, finding parallels with him and Aziraphale.

Muriel maturing, understanding those shades of grey, doubting, having an existential crisis, risking falling, feeling new things.

Like, if my memory is correct all the relationships we've had were that kind of duo.

Anathema, into witchcraft, it's bad, and the innocent nerd Newton.

Tracy, a medium, flirty, not so innocent, intelligent, and Shadwell, the grumpy old man who believes he's making miracles and making up names like "Milk Bottle". A stretch but still kinda "good and bad" duo.

Maggie, kind, soft, said she's always been scared of things, and Nina, literally acting like Crowley (even calling Nina "Angel").

And of course our main one, Aziraphale and Crowley.

I have ideeeas but I have other stuff to draaaaww first

[layover-linux-official]

It's been awhile since the last time I really looked into it, but a few months ago I was trying to find a really light container runtime as a library (to use for a build sandbox system), something small I could ship baked into Layover. I have a new appreciation for what containers do, why they're fast, and why they're not trivial to secure when you're building them from the ground up.

See, the kernel has no feature called "containers", even though you've heard that only Linux can do them. What's actually going on, is that containers are really more of a usage pattern of a few other Linux-specific features. It's like someone noticed that the kernel has syscalls for flour and eggs and vanilla extract and realized "oh yeah, you could make a cake out of this!"

So you use Linux namespaces and cgroups to do a bunch of things:

Give the process isolated networking

Give it a different hostname (this I particularly remember is namespaces)

Give the process a cloned view of the filesystem

Make the tweaks you need in the clone. Usually you create a new temp directory and mount a bunch of stuff read-only or as layer filesystems, which means the layers need to be unpacked on disk somewhere.

chroot into the temp directory

Maybe limit system calls

And a container engine will also do its own bookkeeping to track running containers. But basically if you happen to use these features in these ways, we call that a container, you're using the container pattern.

In practice, this has been useful enough that we now have standard interchangeable formats like OCI that codify how to configure a container and the files it needs. Of particular note here is that most of these formats think of files in terms of layers, because that was a useful feature introduced by Docker and now there's quality of life and compatibility reasons to think in layers for every major container engine, but they're technically optional. There's no kernel API for containers that dictates using layers, and a lightweight runtime like I was looking for probably WOULDN'T have that feature!

And that brings up an interesting point. If you were building a container runtime from scratch, the easiest place to start would be running a clone of the current host system, which basically amounts to just running exec, and incrementally adding isolation and filesystem cloning+mangling features, until you've got enough isolation to count as a container. Then, depending on your priorities, you might go for optional features that give you ecosystem compatibility. But the reason it's challenging to secure is that you're starting from a bare exec and then adding isolation, trying to catch all the leaks. The major engines have enough attention and funding for some impressive hardening, but it's a fundamentally difficult problem to start from "just another process running on the same kernel" and subtract off all the escape hatches. VM software tends to be easier to secure (though not necessarily easier to write in total) because it starts from a clean isolated slate, and you "just" have to not accidentally break that safety later as you add features like GPU passthrough.

This isn't the deepest dive into how Docker works, and it's already pretty long, because I just woke up and I'm not awake enough to edit. But I think it's a decent navigational introduction for anyone already familiar with Docker and unfamiliar with container implementation, which is probably a lot of people these days.

tanked a job interview because i couldn't really explain what goes on with @docker-official lmao

there's only so far you can get with bullshitting

[mozzaremi]

[creatively-cosmic]

fuck with me

fuck with meeee

im trying to do different sprite styles and sizing down full drawings to make a base is so fucking dumb looking. christ. also ace not looking like they havent slept in days feels illegal.

on another topic god seeing other pokepasta blogs interact with each other lately has been so fun. i really wanna do that sometime soon... it certainly wouldnt be canon but i havent gotten to see stuff like that circling around since my time in the daily pokemon community! though maybe its just cus of the blogs that i follow that im seeing it now hajnsljkns

[caelanglang]

Sometimes it ends too soon

And I don't want to sleep ~

song: The Mortal Boy King by The Paper Kites

I actually struggled a lot with the details and painting this… I think this has been on my wips for over a month. Here’s a Timelapse recording of the process :3 you can see how indecisive I am with the elements and colors lol I hope I can share more process like this with y’all because y’all inspire me to grow as a creator !! Thank you for watching :))

[xiii-e]

[ECHO.EXE RUNNING]

◂▸ ... hey Sally. You're right yeah, I know the basic gist I think. You take care of yourself kiddo, I can handle this.

◂▸ Alright. I'm going to go over this with as little personal input as I can manage, please just- assume at any given point that I think what happened was fucked and miserable and never should have come to pass. It's an HA black op. If I make an aside every time I experience abject horror on the subject, I wouldn't get through the report. I'm just... going to talk about this stuff, the way I found it on file.

◂▸ No I am not supposed to have access to these files. I am also not supposed to be talking to any of you so just- don't worry about it.

◂▸ So. A couple decades ago, the HA Purview incorperates a new world it will come to call Port Mariut. It goes... pretty normal, for an incorperation. Despotic leader gets ousted by military force, there's a honeymoon period where people are cheering, then reality sets in that "naturalisation" is a nice word for conformity. The usual process. And, the usual process leaves the usual folks by the wayside. There's an influx of orphans who are now wards of the state, because their families went missing on either side of the "liberation" war.

◂▸ There's a few things that usually happen to war orphans, running the spectrum between humanitarian and fucked. This one was... bad. Military commander put into a position of power over the planet is one Captain James Maverick. He has a particular interest in the old Enkidu projects, has been looking for an excuse to revive them. He sees... an oppertunity, in the orphans of his new holdings.

◂▸ Justification on paper is that, as wards of the state, these orphans are subject to military service same as any prospective citizen of the Armory. Service guarentees citizenship, and all that. So, the Sekhmet project gets initialised. Couldn't tell you who rubberstamped it, that stuff was way heavier in encryption. Possible it didn't get rubberstamped at all, with the kind of guy Maverick seemed to be from the back reports.

◂▸ So, they press some McCarthy guy who's local to the planet into being their chem specialist for the op, they pick out the most promising candidates from the children they had to work with, and they start working to revive the Enkidu program. It's- I don't think details on what they did to these kids are necessary here. Lot of them are obscured anyway. Suffice to say, it involved a lot of real strenuous training, bio-mods of dubious ethical standards, and chems from a young age.

◂▸ There was a high flunk rate when the program kicked off about a decade into it. Lots of... failures. Kids whose bodies or minds didn't stand up to the machinary they were being thrown into. Time the project stabalised there was only one of the original subjects left. According to all records I could find, it drove the Captain nuts trying to figure out why that specific pilot made it through, while other more promising candidates flunked. So he got stupid.

◂▸ Ordered an op with bad odds, as a testing ground. Made a real stupid call regarding stims. Predictably, things went badly and... well, that pilot went awol. Far as the top brass were concerned, it was time to write the whole thing off. Union started poking around in the whole business not long after this op went bad to boot so... it got scrubbed. They love doing that, with embarrasments.

◂▸ ... that's about it for the story. Best I know, the Captain and most of the researchers involved got shipped out to a state prison. Don't know if they're still being put to work or not, nothing of the date from out there gets onto the main databases. But, well- they're pretty behind bars already, Veta. Don't know if there are many skulls left to crack on this one.

◂▸ Xie's still... they're not back yet. Sounds like the eggheads wanted to take a detour through a spaceport or something. I'll tell them when they get back, if you don't mind Sally. If... if they'll let me. Sometimes they don't want to know about the kind of stuff I poke around in during my own time, they get worried about getting us both into trouble. I think they might give a little on this one though. They care about you, a lot. I think if I mention you said you wanted to share, they might cave.

◂▸ Alright. Hope you're doing okay kiddo

[ HELIOS-8 ]

//

Maybe I’m just stupid, but…

Why? Why would you put yourself in an Enkidu, of all frames? You talk about how it’s a choice, but I can’t understand why anyone would make that choice. Can you explain? I’m genuinely curious.

//Ashlyn

well thats the thing. i didnt. i gott forced.

when i finaly gott free i stayed in SLAG KITTY cause shes all ive ever nown. shes part of me. i NEED her. i cant change that part of me.

if u wanna know y some1 with a CHOICE would wanna pilot 1, ask sharko or slaggy. some peopl r born 4 it...

[deadbeandrop]

i always feel like there's such an underappreciated aspect of lumpus being the one to have feelings for slinkman (over the years) which is that there's something so Hilarious about him wanting to dump his head in a vat of acid because he's thinking stupid mushy shit, or Worse, about this Thing again

who also does not pick up on this at all and just thinks he's being weird again

[cerbreus]

if 2026 rolls around and i've not figured out a set course for dealing with my career woes (taking community college classes, making plans to continue education, switching jobs, literally ANYTHING...) please beat 🔨me 🔨with 🔨hammers........🔨🔨🔨

[milfbrainrot]

.

I feel like in the past the mix of this site being used for both activism and fandom helped contribute to a lot of unhinged politicized fandom discourse where yeah ofc there's a political tie to media but ppl used it as... a form of activism where it was given disproportionate importance compared to other activism discussions? Whereas now we're swinging to the opposite site of How Dare You Care About Meaningless TV Shows When Politics.

Like... we can have a mix of realizing there's more important stuff to focus on than shipping discourse in the world at large without also minimizing the insane doxxing and death threats behavior going on in fandom that people in fandom have to take into consideration to be able to do their hobby, esp given how those attitudes stem from irl political climates at times in ways that are telling to study. Hobbies are kinda how we prevent activism burnout also. Crazey how that works.

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[i-havenothingelsetopost]

genuine question, do you like maths?? i have a vague feeling i saw your post of tags or something that said something about it but i cannot figure out if it was in fact you or if it was even positive ahahah

Yeah that was me! I don't go looking for math problems, but when I happen to do them, I tend to enjoy it. Wasn't always this way — elementary school math was about speed and memorization and I hated that — but I had a really good teacher in upper secondary school, and it became about creative problem solving. It feels the same as writing a poem in meter or managing to untangle a really bad knot in a ball of yarn.

[goldkirk]

If anyone remembers all the dental work I needed done uhhhhhhh three years ago and never went back and ran away forever…I’m finally going back to a dentist on Thursday to restart the process and face my deep and utter abiding terror. And I also scheduled my COVID and flu vaccines for a couple hours later. And my psych appointment to restart meds.

I figured get it all done in one day, have my miserable immune reaction on Friday that I seem to always get with Moderna COVID shots, and then flee directly into the weekend and never be a person again except when I’m on and off crying. It’s going to be so kind to future me to get these things done and I can do it no matter how much I feel like I am constantly about to Actually Physically Die.