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johnny-and-dora · 5 years ago

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i’ll make the world safe and sound for you

jake has some important things to tell mac. (post 7x13)

read on ao3 -

Jake’s spent a lot of nights at the hospital over the years.

Eight years old, nursing a broken arm after Gina dared him to jump off the fire escape (she was the first to sign his cast). Drowsy on pain meds in Florida, recovering from a gunshot wound and a cruel six-month separation from his girlfriend. Most overnight visits have been an occupational hazard, a consequence of throwing himself headfirst into action without a second thought.

Jake doesn’t think he’d recognise that person now, the one who put being the hero and solving the case before anything else. He’s better off for it, knowing now that there is something so much better than flaming out in a blaze of spectacular glory.

Knowing the family he has found in the Nine-Nine. Knowing the life he’s built with Amy. And most recently, knowing the life he’ll be sharing with his newborn son. A whole other kind of spectacular.

This may be far from the first time he’s spent a night at the hospital, but never has he had a night like this one. Never has Jake felt this content, this overwhelmingly whole in his life. Never has his world shifted like this, changed forever at the piercing sound of his son’s first cries. Changed forever yet again the first time he held Mac in his arms.

Deep down he knows he should be resting, knows the adrenaline will wear off soon and that he’ll be pretty much useless for all of tomorrow. He knows that Amy would chide him if she wasn’t fast asleep beside him, something he’s very grateful for – she deserves all the rest she can get.

(She deserves a medal of valour, at least, for giving birth to the world’s most important baby in the precinct with no pain relief. He’ll see if Holt can pull a few strings.)

But Jake can’t bring himself to sleep just yet, knowing that his son is finally here and right beside him. He’s completely mesmerised by this kid, already addicted to marvelling at his chubby little cheeks and adorable round button nose.

Mac clearly can’t bring himself to sleep either, wiggling his little legs inside the blanket he’s swaddled in, and Jake’s heart trips, sparking a huge ridiculous grin. His tiny adorable little face scrunches a little in a way Jake instinctively knows means trouble, so he quickly shifts into Dad Mode.

“Hey there, buddy. It’s okay.” Slowly, he lifts Mac out of the bassinet and holds him close to his chest, bouncing a little awkwardly, but it seems to do the trick as his whimpers subside into the occasional peaceful snuffle. Jake breathes a sigh of relief, content that he’s officially eight hours into fatherhood and he hasn’t managed to screw anything major up yet. Mac seems more comfortable in his arms and it makes his heart swell with a pride he’s barely known before.

“Today’s been kind of a crazy day, huh? Think you’re gonna have to get used to those. Your mom and I tend to have a lot of them.” He glances at Amy, who is thankfully still completely conked out next to him, and the warmth in his chest envelops and encircles everything else. This family of his is magic.

“It’s okay though because we’re always going to come home to you. We love you so much.” His voice cracks a little as he cradles him gently, gently, because he’s holding his entire world, heart and in his hands, and that’s a lot to deal with at two in the morning.

“Y’know, I don’t think we’ve actually been properly introduced,” Jake says, exhaling a breathless little laugh at his own joke as he shakes Mac’s hand. “Hi, Mac. I’m your dad.”

He’s a dad now, and he’s going to be one for the rest of his life. He marvels at that as he gazes at his son, trying to memorise every adorable detail of his face. “Your mom let me choose your name – I hope you think it’s cool, because you were named after the coolest action hero of all time. I can’t wait to watch Die Hard with you, even though you’re gonna be way too little for it for a long while.”

It’s crazy how much time Jake’s already spent thinking about what Mac might be like when he’s older. His son has such a full exciting life ahead of him, and he’s just excited to be able to share all of his favourite things with him, like New York pizza and Star Wars and the best cop movie of all time.

“It’s okay, we’re gonna do lots of things in the meantime. Like play video games and build Legos and watch the Turtles and just hang out like we’re doing right now. And I’m always going to be there for you. Always. You’ll probably have to go to your mom for important life things and help with homework and stuff, because she’s super smart and I’m kind of a mess, but I’ll try my best.”

Mac gurgles a little at that, and it only just occurs to Jake that this conversation is more for him than it is for his son.

“You have absolutely no idea what I’m saying because you are a baby, and I respect that. But you are so loved, Mac. And I’m gonna tell you that and show you that every single day.”

He’s startled out of the moment by the sound of a phone camera shutter as Amy looks tearfully at them both. “Sorry, sorry. You guys are just too cute.”

“Make sure you get our good side.” Jake mumbles, pride washing over him as she laughs. He’ll never stop wanting to make Amy laugh. He absentmindedly hopes he’ll be able to make his son laugh, too.

Amy blearily snaps a few more photos and checks the time before shifting closer to them both, and he’s breathless again – she really is glowing in all her post-childbirth glory, though she’s always at least a bit glowy to him anyway.

It’s totally surreal, feeling his wife nestle into his shoulder as they both happily look at their son. It’s something he’s imagined for so long, yet infinitely more perfect now that it’s actually reality.

Jake yawns, and Amy briefly tears her eyes away from Mac to glance at him. “Have you been up all night? You should really try and sleep, Jake.”

“You need it more. And besides, I kinda can’t take my eyes off him. He’s perfect, Ames.”

“I know. He really is.” Her voice warbles with emotion and Jake knows what they’re both thinking – he was worth the wait, a million times over.

He carefully passes Mac over to Amy. After a revolving carousel of visitors earlier, it’s been a while since it was just the three of them, and an overwhelming sense of peace just washes over him watching his wife coo over their son.

His fears and doubts about fatherhood have not completely vanished – he’s still scared of making mistakes, of the responsibility he now has to the tiny amazing wonderful human currently cradled in his wife’s arms.

But all of the fear is muted now, pastel and pale in the early hours of the morning. It’s muted by the rise and fall of his son’s tiny chest. By the love alight in Amy’s eyes. By the way Holt had rested a hand on his shoulder and told him how proud he was. By his mom’s face as she’d held her grandson for the first time.

Mac’s penchant for a dramatic entrance doesn’t surprise him. What does is how much he already feels like a father, like he was made to protect this kid and will do absolutely anything to keep him and Amy safe. It’s not a feeling he’d be able to put into words after a restful eight hours of sleep, let alone now when he’s borderline delirious with joy.

So instead he presses a light kiss to the soft cotton hat on his forehead, delighting in the way Mac scrunches his nose exactly like Amy does. He’s never gonna get enough of this kid. And he’s certain, now more than ever, that this is the kind of precious love that only grows and grows.

#b99 #b99 fic #brooklyn 99 #jake x amy #peraltiago #mac peralta #listen i know this is like a week and a half late but they have a son and i will never EVER be over it #and this has been written already like 500 times but i will never get enough of jake talking to his newborn son so. here you go #please enjoy #my writing #shut up sian

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blazingstar29 · 4 years ago

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I had an idea

Tony has an idea whilst high off of pain killers at University. He never realised it would be a reality.

Fluffy Drabble about Rhodey and Tony

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1988

AUGUST 12th

12:22 AM

MIT DORMS

“Tony, I swear to god. Go to fucking sleep.”

“Don’t wanna, honey bear.”

Rhodey sighed, he had taken home a delirious, wisdom teeth-less-Tony a couple hours ago from the hospital. Turns out the teen has a very slow metabolism, and was still working through the anaesthetic and post op pain killers.

Currently he was sitting on the floor surrounded by construction paper that had endless equations.

“It’s twelve-thirty Tony, you’ve had a procedure and you need rest,” the boy pleaded his friend. Tony simply shook his head and wiped a sneaky bit of drool from the side of his mouth.

“Nah, working. Something, something real big,” he looked up to Rhodey with big doe eyes. His eyes shifted down again and quietly mumbles, “might even make dad proud.”

Rhodey sighed, that, that was heard to hear from young teen he shared a room with. The boy genius had vastly different upbringing than the older boy and it showed in his vulnerable moments of pain or drowsiness.

He decided to change tactics to try and entice him to sleep, “alright, tell me what this is about then. What’s got you so worked up?”

Tony instantly starts, “okay, so what if we had a way of mass producing clean energy? So like a big magnet, producing an electromagnetic field with nuclear fusion?”

Rhodey smiled, no offence to Tony, but something about pain meds made the kid sound insane. But, Tony was convinced, that if he could workout how to keep it running, he would crack the code and be able to make the final set of equations. Amongst other obstacles that is.

In the end, the only thing that got Tony to move, was his need to dispense his lunch. From which he was carried back to his bed, Rhodey careful not to step in any of the papers. Useful or not, when Tony came to his senses he would file them away carefully. The teen was probably suffering from some sort of untreated OCD.

Tony became very distressed when his routine changed or his things moved with out his knowledge. Rhodey always felt like he should talk to someone about it. When Tony felt like he was loosing control he would often go down to the dorm kitchen and categorise all the mugs and crockery. It’s an unexplainable urge he feels, and not one that is new .

But one night when he felt like he had nothing, he went down to the kitchen to find there was twenty seniors doing shots.

To say Tony lost his shit was an understatement. His thing, the thing that kept him grounded was unattainable. Out of reach and Tony was desperately clawing for a substitute. Rhodey recalls the distressing night as he lays Tony down. He came back to the room after his shift and found his friend surrounded by every single sock in the room organised beyond belief. Before he could come to his senses the teenager was hunting die every pen he could find.

It took a few moments before Rhodey could connect his brain to his mouth, he struggled to focus Tony’s attention which ended in a panic attack.It… wasn’t pretty. At one point a Sophomore came up to their door and yelled for them to shut up. Rhodey, all 5’6 of him, told the guy that if he didn’t lay off he’d kick his ass six ways from Sunday.

Rhodey stood back from rearranging the sheets. Climbing into bed he switched a dim lamp on and tried to salvage a decent nights sleep.

2007

MAY 19TH

2:19 PM

“So what does Obadiah think?”

“Publicity stunt, Honey Bear. That’s all he needs to think.” The two friends were observing the newly implemented Arc Reactor that was now powering Stark factories. “But I think this has potential far greater than keeping the hippies happy, I just gotta figure out what.”

Rhodey put an arm around the younger man’s shoulders, “what ever it is. It will be great.” He encouraged with a smile.

Whilst Tony may not remember, Rhodey keeps the memory like he experienced it yesterday. Putting his friend to bed after he rambled about something with an electromagnetic field, something that produced green energy. An idea both of them had scrapped, obviously, Tony did not. And now, that idea was a reality.

Tony Stark.

Merchant of Death.

A man who never gave up.

#marvel #tony stark #howard stark #james rhodes #fluff #bros #mit #Iron Man #arc reactor #fan fiction #ao3 #cross posted

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ninavarelas · 5 years ago

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little thing

content warnings: ‪discussion of depression / mental illness, medication, implied suicidal ideation‬

hi, so i was asked to write a guest post about what it’s like writing while mentally ill. the final version is edited to be shorter & lighter in tone, but i wanted to post the original somewhere. here it is, thanks for reading if you do!

It’s December 2018 and I am sitting on the kitchen floor, staring at my laptop, trawling for words and for the first time in my life coming up entirely empty. Before this, no matter how sick I was, I could always get out at least a few awkward sentences. The words always existed. Even if reaching for them was exhausting, even if they sucked and had to be deleted later, they existed; I could find them. But a few months ago, the meds I’ve been taking every day for six years stopped working, and my pdoc tried doubling the dose, and for whatever reason it straight up wiped my brain. Like ten-million-tons-of-salt-into-a-freshwater-lake wiped it. All signs of life shriveled and silent.

I have a deadline, I keep thinking. I have a deadline. Once I start thinking it, I can’t stop. It goes on loop. I sit there trying to remember what I’m supposed to be writing, what part of the story I’m at, and I keep rereading the most recent paragraphs and forgetting them immediately. Some other version of me is two hundred pages into this book, and maybe that me remembers what the book is about, but I don’t. I type out the main character’s name and try to fill in the rest of the sentence and my brain says, I have a deadline I have a deadline I have a deadline and I spend the next four hours like that. Then the next three months.

I do turn things in—late, and I don’t remember writing any of it after the fact, but it happens. I have brief periods of lucidity. It helps that I’ve been writing for so long it’s like muscle memory. But for the most part I spend winter of 2018 like this: in the daylight hours I do not exist, I am a shell; I have no sense of self, let alone the ability to write about someone else; I do not make new memories; I move through a thick fog. At night, black water pours into my head and I come alive just enough to feel terrified. My skin is too tight and the air rubs me raw. I’m not sleeping. Obviously, this doesn’t help the fog situation.

I have a deadline. One and then another. I keep forgetting when they are. I keep losing time, forgetting which month we’re even in. The world doesn’t feel real. It’s incredibly unimaginative of me to bring up The Bell Jar right now, but that’s what I keep returning to—the image of myself trapped beneath a dome of thick glass. I can see the world happening around me, but it’s blurry and faded and I can’t touch it, can’t interact with it; I am too removed. It turns and people say things to me and I say things back and none of it is real.

Then I open my laptop and try to step back into this book I’m supposed to be writing, this fantasy world, and my brain is empty, the words are gone, and the worst part is I have wanted this for so long. I’ve been writing since I learned how. I have been writing almost every day for twenty years. This is the only thing I want to do, the only thing I have ever done. And I can’t do it.

My pdoc switches my meds. The next months are hazy. It takes a few tries to find a combination that works. But we do find it, and the words come back. My days and nights even out again. Slowly, I begin to feel less like a ghost and more like a person. With weight and presence. I run my hands over the walls of my bedroom, the bedspread, the sharp corners of my desk, and it almost always feels real.

By May 2019, I am writing consistently again. I meet deadlines. I still don’t remember most of what I write—by the time I reach the middle of the book, I’ve forgotten the beginning—but I don’t think that’s going away. It’s cool. That’s what outlines are for.

I want to say something profound here. I want to give out some shining beacon of hope. But the truth is: I’m doing well right now, I’m taking my meds and eating green things and drinking lots of water and all the other things you’re meant to do, hashtag self care, but I don’t think this will last forever. I can see sickness on the horizon. I can smell it like the ozone-smell before a thunderstorm. But the truth is: I know it is possible to feel better. To feel okay. That’s my goal. I don’t want to walk around deliriously happy all the time; I don’t think anyone is like that. I just want to feel okay most days. I know it’s possible; I know what it feels like. I know someday I’m going to lose myself again, but I also know I can get back to that okay-place. Different meds, therapy if I can afford it, a lightbox, my friends, my dog. Small things. Patience, unfortunately. That’s my mantra when the world slips sideways and goes foggy: This isn’t forever. This can change. I can feel better. I’ve felt okay before and I can feel okay again. I just have to get there.

So I hold on, so I change meds, so spring comes around, so the days grow longer and lighter and warmer, and I surface, and I look back at the blankness of winter and think, Well, phew. Made it.

And somewhere in all of this I write three books. And it’s hard. But not impossible, and for now that’s all the odds I need.

#personal #depression #mental illness cw #uhhh #medication

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zwritestuff · 6 years ago

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Delirious | Aristique [1/2]

Ariel caught the flu out of nowhere apparently, and had to skip classes. Plastique's heart skips a beat every time she opens her feverish mouth.

a/n: I know I said it was a stressfull week because of exams, but somehow the universe granted me So Much Free Time. While I was working on Fools, this happened. Longer version of a litle drabble I posted long ago when I was sick. A fluffly sick fic, if you may. Anyways, hope ya like it. Read it on ao3.

“Where’s Ariel?” Plastique questioned, taking a bite from her toast when she saw Scarlet arrive to the cafeteria without her roommate.

Scarlet sat in front of Vanessa, looking more tired than usual. “She’s sick. I think she got a cold or something,” she informed, taking a long sip of her coffee. “She was feverish last night, and I had to take it to the nursery at 4 fucking AM. She’s asleep now, thanks to the pills Ms. Jessica gave her.”

Plastique wrinkled her nose. Ariel was so fragile she fell sick with the slightest climate change — what Plastique found weird, though, was the fact that they had a constant warm time in the last days. How did Ariel catch a cold then?

Finishing her breakfast, Plastique resolved to check on Ariel later on their first recess, hoping she’d be awake by then.

---

“Ariel? Are you there?” Plastique wondered, knocking on Ariel and Scarlet’s dorm door.

In the end, Plastique didn’t wait until recess and excused herself from her french class by saying she was having some horrible cramps. The teacher, a very conservative man that wanted nothing to do with women’s periods, immediately dismissed her and sent her to the nursery.

So there she was. In front of Ariel’s door, waiting for any sign of life.

After the fourth time she knocked, she heard steps behind the door and a whimper. When Ariel opened, Plastique wasted no time in entering.

“What do ya want?” Ariel asked in a tired tone. Plastique gave her a better look and wrinkled her nose. Ariel had taken the bedsheet with her and was wrapped around it, her nose was as red as a cherry, her hair was a mess and she was so incredibly pale.

Plastique put a hand over her shoulder and guided her to Scarlet’s bed — her own bed was too messy to be slept on. “I came to take care of you, obviously.” she took the bedsheet off Ariel’s body, making her spin a little. Plastique was worried for a minute she’d vomit over her, she looked that bad.

Ariel groaned, “But I’m not that bad!”

Plastique scoffed. “Really? You have a tissue on your hair and you made a mess out of your bed, I think you could use my help.”

Ariel didn’t have any strength to fight, so she just allowed Plastique to tuck her into bed. Plastique looked around and sighed at the mess Ariel and Scarlet’s dorm was — she wasn’t going to clean it, no way in hell, but she needed Ariel’s medicines.

“Are you taking anything for that cold? I think Scarlet mentioned something about some pills,” Plastique asked, wandering around the dorm.

“Don’t have more, took them all already,” Ariel replied, already dozing off.

Plastique cocked a brow, how sick was Ariel to have already taken all her pills? She approached to her and placed her hand on her forehead. There was no fever. Plastique sighed. “I guess I’ll go ask Ms. Jessica if she has anything I can give you, I’ll be right back.”

“Thank you,” Ariel slurred, rolling in bed. “You’re so nice, Patricia.” In normal circumstances, Plastique would’ve lectured her about how she didn’t like being called Patricia despite being her actual name, but she let it go because it didn’t matter this time around. What mattered was taking care of Ariel and getting her damn medication.

Plastique leant to give her a kiss on her forehead before exiting the room. “Any time, honey.” She left the door barely open, otherwise she’d be stuck outside without the key, and she didn’t have time to find it in the mess that was Scarlet and Ariel’s room.

Paying a visit to Miss Jessica always was an adventure — she was a charming latina, who always treated sick students as her own children. There was Miss Sonique too, who was equally kind, but she only had the weekends shift.

Miss Jessica made her sat down in her desk, offered her a cookie, and made her detail every symptom Ariel had presented ever since she saw her in the middle of the night.

“... And Scarlet says she had fever last night, but I checked her now and it’s gone,” she explained, meanwhile, Miss Jessica was scribbling things in her little notebook.

She tapped her nails on the wooden surface, suddenly getting up. “Hmm, to me sounds like she got a flu. But don’t worry! I’ll give her some pills for the fever — is her throat itchy though? Because those are way different pills,” Miss Jessica inquired.

Plastique shook her head. “Not that I know.”

“I’ll give you some just in case,” she said, before heading to the storage.

So that’s how she ended sneaking back to the dorms, trying to not be seen by any hall monitor, with her hands full of blister packs. The nursery was in the complete opposite side of the campus, near the tennis field and the garden. All the way there were also the sewing workshops for the design students, and although she was in a hurry, Plastique couldn’t help but to slow down her pace a little and peek through the windows, trying to see if Scarlet was around.

She couldn’t find her, so she fastened up her speed and soon found herself running back to the dorms. The blisters made an awful sound and Plastique cursed under her breath each time she thought she saw a hall monitor in the distance. It was all worth it when she made it back to Ariel’s dorm.

As expected, Ariel was still asleep, with her nose buried in the pillow. Plastique smiled at the vision — she hardly ever saw Ariel as messy as now, even when she was sick she’d put on heavy makeup, her designer clothes and walk around expressing every two seconds how much her head hurt, or something along those lines.

“Seems like the fever got the best of you, huh?” Plastique mumbled, sitting by the edge of the bed as to not disturb her. She then remembered the blisters she’d been holding the entire time. “Ariel! Ariel, wake up, you gotta take your meds.” Plastique gently tapped on her shoulder, and giggled when Ariel moaned in frustration.

“Five minutes more, mom,” she whined, not moving a single inch.

“Bitch, it’ll be just a minute, sit down and I’ll bring you water,” Plastique ordered, leaving the blisters on the nightstand.

She heard Ariel mumble something against the pillow before doing as she said. Plastique looked for a bottle of water in the mini fridge one of Scarlet’s daddies had gifted her last summer. She was closing the door when she heard Ariel’s sleepy voice.

“Y’know Patricia, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she confessed, rubbing her eyes. “I love you, bitch.” Plastique laughed softly and walked back to bed, handing her the bottle.

“I love you too, you funky little fragile gal,” she joked, reaching for the blisters. “Take this for the fever, and this one’s in case your throat is sore or something.” She shrugged, taking the pills out of the blisters and handing them to her along with the water.

Ariel took them without saying a single word and went back to laying on the bed, she stared at Plastique for a moment before flashing her a smile. “Have I ever told you that sometimes I don’t get how can someone look at you and, just… Not love you?”

Plastique’s cheeks got a slight rosy tone, she giggled and tried to tuck her in bed. “Well, aren’t you cute when you’re sick?” Ariel rolled in bed before going back to bury her nose in the pillow. “Now get some rest, Miss Jessica told me those pills would knock you out for some hours.”

Ariel hummed against the pillow, and Plastique was getting up to lay on Ariel’s actual bed, when she spoke again.

“Don’t go, please, stay,” she begged, “Sleep with me.”

Plastique’s heart skipped a beat for some reason — she’d slept with Ariel before, but it was always in the context of Scarlet having one of her daddies over or being too wasted to go back to their own dorms. She tried to shrug it off and make herself comfortable, placing an arm over Ariel’s waist.

She watched Ariel sleep for what seemed ages before she felt sleepy too, closed her eyes and decided that a nap wouldn’t hurt.

#rpdr fanfiction #my fanfiction #ariel versace #plastique tiara #aristique #fools au #sick fic

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blessuswithblogs · 7 years ago

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My Experiences with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Today's piece has very little to do with video games, but instead, me. This is more of an exercise in catharsis and thought ordering than something really meant for other people to read and go "o yea thats neat," but you're welcome to do so anyway. I'm also putting up some content warnings for Mental Health Junk like eating disorders and severe anxiety, as well as allusions to stomach flu symptoms (this one probably bothers me more than anybody reading). If you wish to proceed with all that in mind, by all means.

Let's start at the beginning. I've suffered from minor post-traumatic symptoms for over 20 years after the conclusions of traumatic events, usually severe illness. In the past, these symptoms have been self-limiting and usually resolved after a couple of months. Even after I was terribly ill with pneumonia, had an allergic reaction to pneumonia medication, and spent several afternoons with a nebulizer in my mouth, it only took half a year or so to mentally recover from the incident, and all I really suffered from was mild worry when I started coughing. All this changed, however, in September of 2008. A number of unfortunate circumstances occurred in quick succession and I ended up dreadfully sick with gastroenteritis alone with my dad, who also caught it. It was an uncharacteristically virulent and severe strain of whatever norovirus was going around at the time. My working hypothesis is that my brother caught it at Disneyland after using the bathroom without washing his hands like a frickin idiot, because he caught it first and then spread it to the rest of us. My mom seemed unaffected, or was extremely adept at suppressing symptoms, so she hauled my brother's sick ass back up to his dorm in Santa Barbara. Originally, this was going to be a family outing, but I argued that I really didn't need to be there for other reasons entirely, which, as it turned out, ended up dodging a bullet. We both got sick after they left, and it was a miserable night by all accounts.

It marked a couple of milestones for me. Sheltered child that I was (let's be honest, sheltered child that I am), I had never been in a position where I was seriously debilitated and my mom wasn't there to be mom at me. It was also the first time I sort of had to take care of somebody else being ill, because as sick as I was, my dad was even sicker. He's also an unreasonable old fuck who demanded that I didn't let mom know that we were both the next victims of the plague, but I disregarded that order because I was freaking out and in that pre-sick period where you feel pretty nauseated but you're not really sure if that's because you ate too fast or something or you're actually sick. She came back the next day with some pedialite or however you spell it. I was actually kind of delirious at that point, utterly sleep deprived and running a nasty fever. I still vividly recall a strange sort of fever daydream I had in the shower about The Big O being featured in the upcoming Super Robot Wars Z, which is really strange to me to this day but there it is. Showtime, I guess. Prior to this bout of sickness, I had been struggling with tummy troubles the whole year due to the stress of acclimating to living in a new state and a few unfortunate cases of much more mild gastroenteritis. By the time of this incident, I was already pretty worn down, and it turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. After making a physical recovery and doing okay for a few days, I started exhibiting severe anxiety symptoms. At the time, I didn't know it, but I was actually a fairly textbook case of post-traumatic stress disorder, and it basically stopped me from being a functioning human for a good year or so.

Let's talk a little about PTSD. The classical understanding of this disorder is that of combat fatigue, something that only soldiers in hellish warzones suffer from after seeing their squaddies get blown up by the Vietcong or whatever. A largely more enlightened view than the previous perception of the disorder as "shell shock" or, even worse, "malingering," but one still inadequate for a modern clinical context. PTSD can be brought about by any sufficiently traumatic event meeting with a sufficiently susceptible person, as per the diathesis model of medicine. If that's what they're still calling it. It's actually been pretty long since I've taken any psych courses, the last two years of college was mostly just filling in credits with random bullshit. At any rate, while soldiers are a large demographic of PTSD sufferers, people can contract it from just about anything -- car accidents, sexual assault (this is a big one, almost assuredly more prevalent than in active combat personnel), and, of course, severe illness. It took me a long time to actually be honest enough with myself and my various therapists to reach the diagnosis. I had suspicions, because even then I was studying psychology, albeit in highschool elective curriculum, and I was at that point familiar with most high profile mental illnesses like PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, and what have you. I also knew, however, that young students diagnosing themselves with diseases they had recently read about in a textbook was also a definite phenomenon. Thus, I was reluctant to bring up the possibility and actively downplayed symptoms, both because I had no faith in myself to make an even marginally accurate diagnosis and because I felt ashamed of the possibility. People get PTSD from actual trauma, not a weekend bout of stomach flu, or so I thought. To be honest, I still feel pretty ashamed of it, but I'm old enough now to know that lying to myself and others will get me precisely nowhere.

Fortunately for me, I think that my therapists and psychiatrists at the time were altogether too clever and perceptive to be fooled by a fairly half-hearted show of resistance. We didn't really give what I was feeling a name until quite a ways into it all, but from the outset, my treatment was focused on alleviating these symptoms. And, wouldn't you know it, the SSRI anti-depressants I had been on-again-off-again taking since I was 14 were also the medication of choice for treating post-traumatic stress. It took a long time, but I eventually managed to get myself together enough to start community college, then transfer to a UC school and graduate. Not without difficulty, mind you, but it's still fairly miraculous to me that it happened at all. I had occasional flare-ups, usually linked to a trigger of somebody else throwing up in my general vicinity. My brother seemed to make a habit of coming home from college only to immediately get sick, which was always harrowing. To this day, I don't know how one person can contract so many instances of gastroenteritis. I always seemed to avoid catching his bugs, probably due to my redoubled hygiene practices and general hypervigilance, though there was a period in the summer of 2012 where I got sick with -something- that made my stomach miserable. Not enough to puke, but enough to make me really worry. That was the summer right before I went to go live on my own in campus housing, so, I ended up coming home on weekends to keep myself together.

Recently, as you may or may not know, I've had a major resurgence of symptoms after a very mild case of stomach flu. I honestly wasn't sick for very long, or very violently, but it was enough to bring bad memories flooding back and reopen a terribly inconvenient can of worms. At the time, I was not on any medication due to just generally being at a fairly high level of functioning but a fairly low level of Have Money. I still feel that the decision was mostly sound, but I severely underestimated my potential reaction to a triggering event. Which I suppose in and of itself was a good indicator of my mental health prior to the incident. With the old wounds reopened and no psychoactive agents to help with the pain, I got. Bad. I'm doing better now, thanks to meds and the passage of time, but I'm still not at full capacity, and summer was utterly dire. One of the halmark symptoms of PTSD is going to great lengths to avoid situations and stimuli similar to the trauma that originated the illness. Unfortunately for me, it is very difficult to avoid "feeling nauseous" or "eating food," though God knows I gave it my all. With my comorbid emetophobia back in full swing, I drastically altered my diet and eating habits. I heavily favored foods that I could cook or supervise the cooking of and foreswore fast food and takeout of any kind. Going to a restaurant to eat was out of the question - my first time back to one was this sunday, and it was an altogether miserable experience for a lot of reasons. My handwashing has increased in frequency to the point where I occasionally need to stop myself from doing it unless absolutely necessary so my skin doesn't crack open. Above all, I have been eating a lot lot lot less. Hearing compliments about weight loss is nice, but given the circumstances, it's hard to enjoy them. I spent most of the summer forcing myself to eat and drink when I really, sincerely did not want to. I found comfort in hunger. Hunger was a signifier that all was well, that my body was operating within acceptable parameters, that being hungry and vomiting were not states that could coexist - at least, that was the thought process. The stomach is more complicated than that, of course, but defense mechanisms rarely make a lot of sense.

The anxiety, fear, and tired listlessness of post-traumatic stress disorder are all well documented. I had those in spades. I think my mom caught me doing the whole thousand yard stare a couple of times, though I doubt she realized the significance of me spacing out. A particularly nasty foible to my particular situation is that one of my body's most cherished stress responses is to get sick to my stomach. Feedback loops are quite common in mental illness, and if I am not Queen of Feedback Loops, I am at very least a Minor Duchess. I know the cycle all too well. Stomach pain into anxiety. Anxiety into worsened stomach pain. It doesn't take long on my bad days to literally think myself sick. My symptoms have trended towards the more mild side of the spectrum, at least after medication was reintroduced, but I make up for it by having a trigger that creates itself. A lot of the time, the only way I have to deal with bad episodes is to try and throw myself utterly into something else and forget about physical being for a while. Long hours in FFXIV and Civ6 can attest to this. When that doesn't work, I often have to lie down and bury my head into a pillow until I calm down enough to start feeling better. It is, in a word, disruptive.

One aspect of the disorder that is not often discussed is the heightened fight-or-flight response and startle reflex. It is especially ridiculous in my case because you cannot run from your digestive system. It tends to follow you around. Be that as it may, being constantly on alert for any and all signals of potential gastrointestinal distress is utterly exhausting. You listen to your surroundings. To other people. To yourself, for any normal stomach noises that you're convinced are the sign of the apocalypse. White noise becomes torture as you try to pick up any salient sounds distinct from the hum of the fan, and a great deal of innocuous noises start to sound a lot like worried words and puking. Coughing is the worst because it shares a pretty similar aural profile to vomiting. Naturally, my dad has been suffering from acid reflux induced coughing jags at all hours, so I'm never at a loss for something to listen to in alarm. And alarmed I am! A constant state of hypervigilance necessitates a constant state of being easily startled. People coming up behind you when you're occupied with something else, for instance, becomes a terrifying experience because they just seem to materialize out of thin air. My new room has my back to the door and my headphones are noise-cancelling, so I am snuck upon on a regular basis, though at least with no ill intent. Probably. The garage door just below me seems almost vindictive in its loud rumbling, but I shouldn't add inappropriate anthropomorphization to large sheets of metal to my list of neuroses.

All of this comes down to a single thing: it's hard to feel like yourself when all of this is going on. Sometimes in a moment of lucidity you realize that this bizarre stranger who washes her hands way too much and refuses to eat anything has been ruining your life. Severe, prolonged stress creates a deep and abiding sense of unreality. You lose faith in yourself. You stop trusting yourself. The things you do don't seem to come out quite right. Interacting with other people feels like trying to talk to somebody on the other side of soundproof glass that's kind of smudgy and gross. Sometimes you yell too loud so that they can hear you, other times you mumble halfheartedly because you don't expect it to work anyway. And on rare occasions, you sort of lose touch with reality and try to beat down the pane and make a terrible fool out of yourself because to everyone else it looks like you're slamming your fists into a wall for no reason as you scream and cry. Even then, it's sort of worth it, just so you can say you've felt something other than creeping dread for a little bit.

I suppose, in a way, that this piece is part explanation, part apology, part anecdote. I haven't done as much stuff lately. I've been more reclusive, quicker to upset, a good bit spacier than usual. I've mentioned a few times that I've been suffering from a PTSD resurgence, but those are just words. There's no context behind them. It bothered me. I wanted to put down, in more concrete terms, how I've been feeling and coping and why that's cut into me being me. I don't know what this will accomplish, but maybe somebody out there will find it resonant, or even helpful. It feels necessary to get it out in the open and be honest about why I don't make many videos or streams anymore, or why I'm harder to get in touch with, less willing to do stuff with other people. I'm making progress. Hoping that I can get to the point where I could maybe hold down a job. Gotta dream big, right? Either way, thanks for taking the time to read this. It doesn't make anything that's happened better, but maybe it will help with things in the future. I'm rambling. I've never been good at conclusions, even when they're obvious and big and juicy. When it's just my thoughts, sort of stream of consciousness, I don't really know how to wrap things up because I could keep writing for a while, if we're being honest. Look in closing, 2017 fucking sucked okay.

#mental health #ptsd recovery #2017

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lindsabts · 7 years ago

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Nurse Ramble

I was feeling or thinking, call it what you may. I figured I would type. Its not like I have some grand point to make, in fact, this is probably going to be in every way disjointed rambling.

I saw a photograph today with text on it, a meme of a statue with a delirious grin that said “when the customer tells a bad joke but you got bills to pay.” Its funny, I get the joke, I think its so true. On the flip side, from a nurses perspective I feel like every time I laugh at some dumb joke I bring joy into the room and I LOVE making my patient feel good. I learned, even, to really like stupid jokes. Gives you a ten-second break. Comedic relief.

I had a lady this week who I fought for all day, multiple calls to the doctor thru the day, numerous interventions on her BP, BG, nephrostomy tubes, skin breakdown, mental status you name it. When she finally came to in the afternoon and she was alert and (mostly) oriented, she didn’t like me at all. But she didn’t see what I had done for her. I am less satisfied because of that. Should I be? No. I probably intervened at a time, where if I had just observed she might have declined. I maybe saved her life. I don’t know. I still want my patients to like me.

Her niece hated me too. At the end of the day the niece showed up, “I could just scream at the day shift!” I am the day shift. I explained everything to her. She still wasn’t happy. Can’t change someone who is set on being upset before they even walk in the door.

Back to the positive. One patient who I grew close to got discharged and she thought I was an angel. I did literally nothing special for her. At all. There were very few changes in her condition that ever required intervention, but she loved me. Isn’t that the way it goes? You do your best, and those that require the most work oftentimes have no appreciation for you. I still smile for them and I still try my hardest. I don’t give a shit about HCAHPS, I genuinely want my patients and families to be happy. Even if the patient dies, I want them/ the family to know we did our best, and I want them to appreciate that.

Oncology is very alike other specialties and very different too. Med-surg is somehow a whole other world but with the same physical skill set. Its the emotional and psychological skills that differ. I’m not a person who is in touch with emotions very much. Maybe I’m a realist? Maybe I’m an idealist? I can’t pin it down even though its inside of me. I LOVE oncology, but I am in awe when I see another nurse with more emotional intelligence than me. I just can’t be convinced that it can be learned. Its more of an inherent way of being. I feel like typing this out is somehow the most emotionally intelligent I get.

When my patients cry, I just hug or hold hands. I can’t find words, but I think maybe just the gesture could be enough comfort. Sometimes there isn’t words anyone could say anyway when it comes to the big C.

Cancer. Why are people so afraid? That’s not a serious question, I understand why they are afraid. I don’t get it when they beat around the word though. Its only 6 little letters. God, though, does it pack a punch. One patient didn’t know “leukemia” means cancer. No one had ever explained it to her. She went an entire week thinking she had some benign blood disorder or something. My stomach dropped, and here comes the lack of emotional intelligence. “Yes leukemia is cancer. I can get you some printed information if you would like.” I could kill myself for being so insensitive.

I started travel nursing, and went all the way across the country. Sometimes I work days, sometimes nights. I really don’t care either way. Turns out, I really like having residents around! Convenience maybe. There’s nothing worse than having to call a sleeping doctor. I love day/night rotations where someone is always awake and they’re not irritated that you called at 4 am because they were up working anyways. Last hospital, the doctor got friggin mad at me because he didn’t know his patient had an NG tube for feeding. THE DOCTOR DIDN’T KNOW. THATS HIS JOB. Turns out GI had ordered it, and I guess the teams don’t COMMUNICATE? That’s fucked up, I think. He was mad and told me I should have called GI. It was 7 am. I told the day shift nurse to call GI. It’s a 24 hour job, nursing.

Some teams of nurses are really great about that, taking on what the last shift couldn’t get done. Some teams have this idea that you have to “get everything done” as if the patient quits being a patient at 7 PM and everything starts over at 7:30 when report is over. That’s bullshit btw. Sick human beings don’t stop being sick human beings just because nurses have to go home. I believe the best in people until they show me otherwise, and I give the last shift the benefit of the doubt. I know they did everything they could until the clock ran out and then it’s time to go home. I take over from there.

Some nurses are really bullies. You can read through some posts from earlier this year to see my bullying story. “You” being whoever is reading this. If anyone read this. Doubt it. Its too long lol.

This typing has helped. Maybe I’ll write a book about nursing in a few years, if I ever figure out how to keep my thoughts from being so scrambled.

#positive #bethegood #dontreadthis #pointlessrambling #nurselife #travelnurse #nursing #oncology

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aquarianlights · 7 years ago

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OKAY FINALLY....HERE IS WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON. I’M SORRY THIS IS SO LONG AND SO LATE. FUCK.

((C/Ped this from a FB post, so there may be a few...not understandable things here, but for the most part, you'll get what I'm saying. Tried to edit it to fit a generalized linguistic standard, so to speak. Idk. I tried. Here you go.))

OKAY Now that I'm finally not entirely exhausted and am not ready to jump off a bridge (yet), I am gonna fucking type this up coz everyone is asking me what's going on and I can't keep up with y'all. Damn. Okay, so. . .

The past two weeks have been fucking...awful. Literally the worst two weeks of my life I had ever had. It began with me doing something VERY illegal and my mom figuring it out when I didn't think it would happen the way it did. In fact, for someone who has a catastrophic thinking problem, I'm surprised this scenario did not enter my mind at any moment.

It was the moment I said "Wow. I really am a drug addict." I mean, I've known I was an addict for literally years but after what I did, I just couldn't even...I mean, this is something I could have gone to prison for life or double life for. So it kinda just...woke me up and I was like "fuck" but I kept going anyways and then I ran out of pills and everything else and didn't know what to do. . . which is precisely the moment my mom had found out what I had done.

Bad timing.

So she blocks me in the basement with her car so that I can't use my car. And it's been YEARS of me saying to my father "Can I PLEASE buy my car from you so I have legal ownership?" Every day. . .same response. . . "Yeah, of course! Just let me get around to it." Like...this goes on for like...since maybe 2013? 4ish years later...my mom starts holding it over my head. "The car isn't even legally yours so if you take it anywhere, I will just call the police and tell them you stole it." Well I couldn't anyways because she blocked me in with her car. The only way I could have driven it was directly off the mountain cliff and over the edge, which I was considering, but felt too scared that I might hurt an animal in the process since it's all forest and trees and such where I am and our neighbours down the road have free-roam dogs. So despite the fact I would have LOVED to have just gunned the accelerator off the edge of that cliff, I didn't.

Then they barricade me in my room and won't let me out. This isn't unusual. Normally they turn off the power to the basement and leave me down there. But this time they actually barricaded me in the ROOM and not just the basement. I had no water and no access to water. Or anything else. And then my mom would come pounding on my door and screaming and at one point she had my dad hold me down while she took every single one of my medications, including the most important one, my mood stabilizer, and ripped them out of my hands. So after that, I was just screaming at the top of my lungs and pulling my hair out and banging my head against the wall remembering "Only the head has pain receptors. The brain doesn't." Thinking maybe if I could just bash my skull in to the point of brains, then I wouldn't feel anything and could physically rip my brain out by pieces since I wouldn't be able to feel anything. But then my parents came downstairs obviously coz of the noise of me banging my head against the wall as hard as I could and I ran and pushed the couch in my room against the door and pushed the table against that and pushed the bed against that. Which ...minus a small triangular bureau thing by my bed, that's all the furniture in my room.

So...I couldn't get out or in for days. This was during a period of which my dad had just gotten out of the geriatric ward and my mom was dealing with his new weird habits and medication reactions. So obvs, I mean, I'M the one who barricaded myself in. Why should they deal with me? I get that.

I just...pulled the barricade out from my side and pushed on the other side for what felt like hours until it gave out. I grabbed my bag, put my laptop and notepad for school in it, chargers, phone, and left.

Now. . .if you've ever been up my mountain, you'll know it's a 10 minute DRIVE up there. Nah, fam, I walked all that. And then walked more...and more...and more...and there was no signal...anywhere...Idk how long I walked. But I was wearing odd clothing because nothing was clean obviously. I was wearing a sweater with nothing underneath and shorts and plaid shoes and I had lost my glasses so I didn't even have those. And I ended up somewhere on this road...Idk how far I went but I kept checking for service to text any friend to see if they would let me couch hop for one or two nights. But no. No signal. So I started walking back.

It was too hot. I laid down on the very edge of the pavement of this tiny, windy, backroad and I remember looking up at the trees and seeing the sun shine through the leaves and just...being in awe of the beauty. I went to take a picture of it with my phone but then I blacked out.

Somewhere during this time, a car almost hit me and left skid marks on the road which the police pointed out later. Idk if I was awake for that or not. But then I woke up to this really sweet mom and she had her van stopped beside me and she was holding me and shaking me and her little ...gradeschooler(??) age kid was like screaming at her like "IS HE ALIVE!?" or something. I'm not entirely sure what. Somewhere during that time, local 911 dispatch was called from my phone. Maybe I did it. Maybe she did. Idk. But local 911 dispatch works even when you don't have service, so. . .thank god for that? I guess. Maybe not. It probably would have been better if I had just been hit by a car and died, honestly.

Legit 3 ambulances and 1 cop car showed up. I was withdrawing really, really badly and I hadn't had any water in literal days and I obviously hadn't eaten in even longer than that. I was super dehydrated and malnourished and overexhausted, yet my stats were okay. Like, everything like my BP and temp and pulse checked out. My BP is chronically low and lowered even more by the BP med I take for migraines so it's obvious that it was a "little high, but normal". And my temp was not too high. And my pulse wasn't thready, which I had already checked myself to make sure I could just go to sleep on the road and wake up later after resting. The EMT's said I could go with them or not. And the cop said "You're 25. If you wanna walk away from me right now and keep walking down that road and go to sleep on the side of the road, I can't stop you. But by the skid marks on the road here (like I mentioned), I'm pretty sure you're going to get hit by a car. So..." I mean, well, if that's not my damn white privilege at its finest... But, anyways, I said "Yeah, y'know what, I'm just gonna keep walking." Then the cop pulls me aside and is like "No. I really don't think you should." And one of the EMTs knew my mom from when she worked at the same hospital he worked at and had been up to our house plenty of times. So he drove up to her house and brought her back because, yknow...no service. And I told the police and EMTs to just...lemme go from there. I didn't want police involved. Coz, as the officer said, "You're 25. You make your own decisions at this point in life." So I did.

I adamantly told my mother I wasn't going back with her and she was about to scream at me but then I threw up blood. Just...pure blood. And idk how I got to Asheville Memorial Trauma Center, but I did. They had a helipad. It was like being in a Grey's Anatomy episode coz they're a level 1 trauma center. Omg. So cool. They had all this fancy equipment like that green vein scan thingy where you run it over the AC or the hand and it just shows you where the veins are so you don't have to feel for them. It was fascinating.

I got stuck maybe 8 times, though. For blood draws and such. Coz my veins are small and they roll and I'm a very hard stick.

I don't remember much from the time I was there but we didn't leave until like...idk, idr, maybe 4am? We got home around 6am. Dad had locked us out of the house. The key was in view on the inside from the window and I was delirious and laughing while my mom was fuming angry and screaming for my dad to wake up and pounding on the door.

Something happened between this that I don't remember. Lots of black-out periods, obvs.

I slept. I withdrew. Hard. Lots of pain. This is day 5 of totally nothing and there's STILL lots of pain. Then the same thing happened. My mom barricaded my car in and took my meds from me and locked me in the basement. So I said...fuck it....and lied and said I had friends to stay with, even though I hadn't even contacted anyone at this point yet. Coz I figured that would make her let me leave if she knew a friend was involved. And she still wouldn't let me out unless I gave a full name, address, and telephone number. She kept saying this was all for "my safety". I couldn't handle it. I can't handle being in that house anyways. Anyone with depression will know that environment affects your moods VERY highly. So I was not only withdrawing from opiates, benzos, ambien, a BP med for migraines, but also cold turkey from my mood stabilizer. Like, I'm surprised I didn't die. I wish I would have. I have never been in so much pure physical and mental agony in my life.

I don't remember much of the next few days. And I don't remember how we came to an agreement, but my mom gave me my meds back and let me out and let me take my car. I was crying and screaming so hard because she told me if I didn't come home and stay home, she was going to take my dog to a kill shelter. And there was nothing I could do.

I went down somewhere in town on a backroad where no one would find me in the pure dark and called my old therapist. He recommended several good 7-day detox programs for me that also handle psych issues. Because rehabs won't take me due to my psych issues because they don't have the capability to handle psych medications.

I had somehow convinced my mom to let me sleep in my car that night. She had been screaming about how "Human beings DO NOT live in cars, Killian!" And such nonsense that typical cis white baby boomers babble about. I don't remember much of that night. But I ended up in a hotel somehow. Where I have been for the past few days. I went to volunteer, got that job, was about to go scrub shopping with my mom when the withdrawals just got too intense and I thought "My doctor is a former addict. Like. Everyone knows this. He SHOULD help me. Right?" Wrong.

We went to my doctor and he was literally screaming at me and pointing his pen in my face saying he wasn't going to be manipulated by a bipolar drug addict anymore. And I have NEVER been diagnosed bipolar. Ever. That has never come up even once except with him. I am most definitely NOT bipolar. And when I said that, he's like screaming at me that I'm definitely bipolar and that he's cutting me off of everything except my mood stabilizer and that I need to get in with a psychiatrist if I want my benzos back, which are what I need, and a neurologist if I want my BP meds back, and where the hell I'm going to find Ambien to sleep? Fuck.

AND THEN He starts yelling about how he's never had a case of costochondritis in his 30-something years of being a doctor and that I am lying about it. But my mom was in the room and she's like quietly shaking her head. Because I have been diagnosed three times now with costo. It's supposed to be short term. But mine is long term and that's where it gets confusing because costo has never really lasted this long in many people in the entire world so far. And he just screams at me that it's all psychological and that I have too many problems and that I'm never going to make it through school, so why am I even trying, and then says that I am probably going to be living in a state mental institution by the age of 30 or less.

I just walked out at this point. Thank god I had my car. I drove off. Drove. For a while. Got lost. Stopped at a rest stop and texted my platonic soul mate. I was ready to drive to New Orleans right then without anything at all. But I calmed down a bit after popping one of the few ativan or valium (Idr) I have left and came up with a better plan because even my therapist said "You're being dismissive of my help. I don't think you want my help. This is not going to end well." But no. I don't even care anymore. I'm going to get through this.

Got set up in a very cheap hotel near my volunteer shelter for 3 days to sort things out and come up with a plan. So I have been wracking my brain and doing SO much research and talking to so many friends about potential living arrangements. But nothing came up. I need to be in a city or heavily populated suburb because I cannot HANDLE being isolated and I cannot handle living by myself either.

So best friend and I eventually came up with a plan. Thank god her roommates are such wonderful people. I love them both so much.

The Tech school I can AFFORD to get into is in Asheville. And I want more hands on experience than the online world is giving me. I want to be able to dissect things and do actual venipuncture restraint positions on dogs bigger than me and I want to do all these things PHYSICALLY. I want HANDS-ON experience and I just...can't get a shadowing position in such a small town.

Problem being, if I leave NC for over a month, I lose my disability, SSI, EBT, and Medicaid. I could do without disability, SSI, and EBT...but I cannot afford my medications without Medicaid. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do while going to school because I only get about 650ish a month from my disability and about 50 from my SSI and 74 on my EBT which my parents use because I really don't eat coz of my anorexia and depression and anxiety combo. But my Medicaid pushes meds that are normally around 200-300 dollars out of pocket, even with discounts like GoodRx, pushes them all the way down to 3 dollars a piece. And my mood stabilizer is especially pricey. So Idk what I'm gonna do when I move in with someone in Asheville coz I will want to be focusing on school and shadowing/interning and volunteering and not have to worry about working, but then. . .I want to work, too. But only at a vet's office or somewhere that deals with medical things. I'm literally 1 class away from getting my vet transfer degree. But do you know why I started over from scratch? Because I can't handle the speech class which is the last and only class I need AND because this degree, albeit a fully accredited AA, is nothing more than a "Here. You have taken all the gen ed classes and a million extracurriculars and now you can use this degree to get into a vet tech school!" Which, I mean, is great, because I REALLY want to get into North Carolina Univeristy in Raleigh. . .that would be my ideal school for vet tech training in this state (not my ideal state, obvs...I hate the south and I want to live in Massachusetts, but it's too expensive). But. . .the in-state tuition is above 10k. I highly doubt any sort of financial aid would cover all of that, even with Pell Grants.

Yes, I realize that becoming a tech and then going for the full vet surgeon licensing is gonna put me in debt until long after I die and that I'm going to be paying back literal millions of dollars worth of loans for the rest of my life and beyond. But why go to a school like that for 10k when they have the same hands-on program at a fully accredited community college? I never even realized how much of a difference the community college price versus university price was. . .because I've had Florida Pre-Paid this whole time and haven't had to pay anything big yet and right now my loan paybacks are at about 1k-2k at the most. I just...would uh...to add a 10k on top of that... (for one semester)...and then another 10k (for one more semester)...then two more 10k's for the last two semesters....I don't know if I could do all that. And then I have to PAY to take three different tests and if I fail even one, all that training was for nothing. And of course, applications and records and SAT score retrieval all cost money, too. AND THIS IS JUST FOR TECH SCHOOL. NOT EVEN FULL VET LICENSING AND SURGICAL LICENSING. So despite NC State and Raleigh being my dream in this state. . .it's just not. . .I don't think it's a wise decision. So I'm aiming for Asheville.

Now. . .all my disability money and SSI will be going to rent and utilities and I'm totally willing to share my EBT with whatever roommate I end up with, but I will lose ALL of that if I start any kind of job. Even a min wage retail job. And I'm fine with that. I will work till it kills me to make rent and utilities and such. But it's the FUCKING MEDICAID. If I start working, I lose my Medicaid, too. ...and I can't afford my meds without it. So...I'm not sure what to do here. I don't have credit yet but if I were to GET a credit card and gain credit, it would immediately be awful because of all my medical debt and there's no coming back from that coz I just can't do it in this economy. Which is exactly why I have put off getting any sort of credit. For...my entire adult life.

But right now...my plan is...go to New Orleans with my three good friends. Stay there for 2 weeks-month tops, which they said is totally fine and I'm completely welcome. Not like we haven't done this before in opposite situations anyways. Lmao. We help each other as much as we can. Next step? Gain roommate in Asheville through several roommate matching sites I found. Move there. THEN work on getting into the college I want and transferring my online credits and all the credits from the two other colleges I'm in and transferring my SAT scores whilst attempting to find an internship or shadowing position. And after that? I'm really not sure. I don't have a plan from there. But my mom agreed to keep my double coat dog brushed, cleaned, updated on his shots, fed properly like I feed him (NO HUMAN FOOD DAMNIT), bathed, nails clipped, butt shaved, and get the anesthesia dentistry done he needs for the next 2 years while I get my life in order. It's going to literally kill me to be away from him like that. But she said if I am not "stable to her liking" in 2 years, she will put him in a kill shelter. So not only do I WANT to do this, I HAVE to do this. Because if that happened. . .that would be the absolute last straw at any chance I would have of recovery. That dog is my life. Hell, I have his name tattooed on my wrist. I spend every waking second with him and even these couple weeks of in and out of consciousness was hell without him. I was worried about him every goddamn second and I could hear him borking and howling upstairs while I was barricaded downstairs and it would just kill me. It was like I could physically feel my heart being stabbed.

Annnd....Idk how I'm going to find a roommate that will take in an asexual, polyamorous, panromantic, nerdy recluse like me with questionable future financial stability and no credit. But even if I have to live in my car to get through school, find a place, and get my dog with me, I'll do it. I'm HOPING I will find a roommate that likes me AND a vicious little (read: very large) neurotic pomeranian in tech school. Someone who ALSO has a dog or AT LEAST a cat so that my dog will not be lonely while I am gone all day. I don't want to have to take him in with me alone and then be gone literally all day and only see him for 2 seconds before falling asleep and getting the only interaction with him possible at feeding time and to briefly take him out to go potty. I don't want that for him. He needs more. He deserves more. At least, leaving him with my mom and dad, he will be safe and taken care of and will have his "sister" and the cats to play with and he can bork to his hearts content. And my dad is retired and my mom only works 4 days a week, so he will be walked every day and taken out appropriately and I made them sign a document stating they would do this for 2 years.

So...tomorrow...I am scouring Asheville, every surrounding town within a 15 mile radius, and one within a 20 mile radius, to see what everything looks like in person and make sure the areas are diversified and active and are NOT a small town or even close to a regular sized town, but much bigger and much more diversified than a goddamn southern town with a bunch of white deer hunting orange overlord voters and then I'm gonna make it back in time for the Discovery premiere (Trekkie thing) coz it will be legendary. Like...Kirk's premiere, kinda legendary. And then I'm gonna pack after that, cuddle with my dog all night, and...leave for New Orleans whenever I wake up if I manage to sleep. Or leave when I finally decide "Fuck it, I can't stay in bed any longer." And I'll say goodbye to my dog.....and...cry..a lot...and hug him and kiss him and take tons of pictures and oh god now I'm crying.

That's all just the basics, though. There has been a lot of other less major stuff going on that's getting to me but. . .I will be so goddamn happy to see my three friends that are taking me in that I think I'm gonna cry good tears when I get there.

It’s really hard to think straight when you’re withdrawing AND the most impulsive person in the world.

Just gotta say...I thought dealing with generalized anxiety without meds was hard. Nah...dealing with panic disorder without meds is impossible. I can't fucking do anything without having a mostly physical style panic attack every 2 goddamn seconds. Feels worse than withdrawals, honestly. I have a couple benzos left...but literally only like 2 ativan and maybe 5 valium? So...trying to save those for like...really hard moments like the first day of an internship or something. So I have a plan about that, too, and Idk if it’s going to work, but I am DONE writing right now.

THANK YOU GOODNIGHT.

#if you have questions just message me #i'm sorry this is so long and so late #ugh it took me like an hour to type up finally #and if i wasn't clear on something just ask #or if i made a discrepancy then please just message me and tell me coz i am half asleep rn #and also none of my memories are ever in chronological order soooo.....#sorry not sorry lol #anyways #i'm okay for now #i mean #technically #i'm NOT okay #but i WILL BE okay #i also have a handful of messages to still get to #i'm so sorry you guys #got my queue up to almost 100 again #but i'mma be awol for a while now #love you all #personal

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