#my boss who has terrible boundaries and loves to overwork us even told me to stop working

[kaurwreck]

hi! i am dropping by because you're having a rough time and my cancer stellium has been begging me to express my sympathy. there's little i can do outside of my established love language (astrology headcanons), so i am offering you two facts about soukoku's synastry (because i'm in love with your post on the dungeon scene): 1) jupiter/venus conjunction makes them feel like they are bigger than everything else in the world, in a constructive, not a destructive way; it just feels so good. it's often called a soulmate aspect. they can't stop being playful because there's nothing as fun as getting the other's reaction to your words. with this aspect, jupiter sometimes expands venus person's wallet, so chuuya almost certainly spoils dazai. it might look like dazai is bleeding him dry, but it's very consensual. 2) chuuya's pluto adores dazai's chart, it's both bad and good news for dazai, because it brings so much depth to their relationship it never gets boring, there's always mental stimulation, but it's always making him question everything he knows about life, it feels pretty exhausting. chuuya eliminates dazai's core beliefs like it's nothing, casually, over lunch. you don't feel human? you fool, i am going to love you in the most human way possible. anyways, i am wishing you 8 hours of good sleep, and i am hissing at those who send you inconsiderate asks. 🤍 (feel free to not respond, it's an offering of a loving hand, commitment-free)

This absolutely made my day, by the way, and cradled me as I worked through the weekend.

They ARE bigger than the world, and you continue to validate everything I know about them with better language than I have to offer. (From Chuuya spoiling Dazai to Dazai's ongoing ego death as Chuuya impishly shatters the truths with which Dazai tried to bury himself.)

(Also, this ask might have been a spell because I actually managed to sleep for nearly 8 hours when I received it, which was more than I'd slept the entire four days prior.)

[rodechi]

Living Anxiety

It is 4am and I am unable to sleep, and so I find myself writing the rough draft of this in the hopes that writing it down will tire me out. To all of you who have noticed me withdrawing more and more lately, I am pulling back the curtain a bit to share a bit of what I have been wrestling with privately.

To give some insight into my home life: it is a house, but not my home. I have lived here in this small podunk town in Tennessee all my life. Opportunities were always few and far between unless you work a dead-end job for pennies on the dollar (TN has no state minimum wage, so a lot of jobs will start you at the federal $7.25/hr -- or less if you work a job that gets tips!) or really enjoy dealing in antique furniture. It's also a terrible place to live as someone queer. My nephew got run off the road just last year because an older man saw him with makeup on, veering toward him and forcing him off the road, calling him slurs in the process. Hell, I STILL have neighbors who are die-hard Trump supporters. Which brings me to my mother. Mercifully, she's very anti-Trump, but in many ways still very conservative. She worked as a nurse nearly 40 years and is set in beliefs from that long ago as well. To her, gender is immutable -- although I have been on HRT for over 2 years now, she doesn't make even the barest effort to acknowledge it. To her, I will always be Daniel, not Wren. Always her little boy. Always "him". I'm not even respected enough to have my own bank account; she has access to view my statements at any time and will frequently question me about purchases I make, money I send to friends and partners, anything. "I want to make sure it's you spending your money, not anyone else." No trust, no boundaries. Hell, she told me once "My boundaries mean that I can ignore yours." In addition, she's developed a victim complex, always blaming me for perceived slights against her that she has imagined. She uses that as fuel to make "jokes" about how she wants to tie me up so I'd miss a flight away or how she'll get me arrested for something just so I wouldn't be able to leave.

With all of that in mind, you can surely see why I would be eager to move away. However, there are a few extenuating factors that make it difficult for me, especially lately. Notably, my lack of income, lack of living history (since I've lived here my whole life), and just sheer logistics.

First off, at the moment, I have no income. I had a job, from April 2018 until January 2022. I worked as a veterinary assistant at a local clinic, since I wanted a job that served a purpose and I love animals. I initially wanted to go to college for it (after failing at another college under a different major), but quickly learned that while I was okay with doing it as a job, I didn't want it to be my career. I was overworked, underpaid, taken advantage of, and regularly given tasks outside my job description and above my paygrade. I was part-time, despite being scheduled for 30 hour workweeks (and frequently having to stay an average of 4 to 6 hours late over the week). As such, no benefits! Woooo! I was also given the job of about 3 to 4 other people, including being the person expected to teach the newer hires, perform tech support, and more roles beyond that. It was a soul-crushing line of work that chewed me up and spit me out. I even had to write up one of my bosses (and got her forced into retirement) because she would punch and kick some dogs, and one of the doctors that replaced her… I still relive a moment where I had to assist him with a euthanasia on a puppy that he botched and did improperly (and illegally!) So while I only worked there just shy of 4 years, it left me with the worst burnout, depression, anxiety, and compassion fatigue I have ever experienced in my life. When I found myself getting impatient and mad at the animals regularly, I knew that was my sign to quit while I could. I should have gotten another job since then, but I was content to live off my savings while I recovered my mental health.

In addition to these issues, I also have been living with a phobia of driving a car. Not just a fear, mind you. An honest-to-God "diagnosed by a psychiatrist" phobia. Not just me being worried I'll get into an accident or anything… Even thinking about being behind the steering wheel of a car is enough to send me into panic attacks. Mom forced me to take Driver's Education in high school, and I forced myself to drive in the hope that I could condition myself to get past it. Instead I had a hellish semester, with the teacher literally telling me "The only reason I'm not failing you is that you didn't crash the car." and criticizing me because "You will do something right 10 times and then screw it up so bad the next it's like you've never done it." It's definitely given me a complex on top of the existing phobia. And so, living in this town where a car is basically mandatory, my options for getting out are very limited.

And so, when one of my partners invited me to move to the West Coast to be with them, I was eager to get out. So we have been spending the past few weeks looking at apartments online, trying to find a place that would take us, even with me being dead weight as I am now with no job, no living history, and mediocre credit. It's been incredibly stressful, and we are still searching. But god if it ain't soulcrushing. Most places require us to have a cosigner, and most places in the area require them to have the frankly-absurd requirement of the cosigner making 4 times the rent. My parents refuse, not wanting to be responsible for "someone you don't know." At this point our options are getting slimmer and slimmer, with the deadline baring down on us.

And so here I am, in a house where I am regularly emotionally abused, in a state that hates me for being pansexual and transgender, trying to move to a state where no apartment will take me because I'm expected to have an income from a job that I can't get until I'm over there. It hurts and it stresses me the fuck out.

I could write so much more, but I'm exhausted and upset. I'm going to nap.