Plague

its cold in my house!!! gross

had fun with talcott visiting last weekend - we went to an orchard and out to sushi. it's nice to socialize, since i really don't get chances to go anywhere these days.

fatigue's been rough. it gets made worse when i can't naturally wake up from sleep, and i very rarely get to naturally wake up from sleep. today i got woken up by neighbors using a chainsaw outside my open window.

this is pretty near about the anniversary of me finishing chemo and radiation, in 2019. is that seven years or six? i can't do math, but it's also given me a kind of low feeling. not that i survived, but that it was at such a cost. i feel so much weaker and more easily tired out now, and any time i bring it up to someone in healthcare they kind of just shrug. like, you rolled the dice on living with whatever outcome chemo & rad would give you... don't expect it to get any better. it was this or dying in a very painful way.

and then you compound that with how family really just noped out when treatment was done and how some people i thought were friends turned their backs on me (i genuinely think they wanted me to die, sometimes) it gets me low. like i am going to live the rest of my life being punished for defying expectations and surviving stage 3 breast cancer, instead of dying. i guess i'm used to being punished for defying the expectations others have for me that would be worse for me. but it still feels bad.

i'm running kind of behind on artwork because of it. also because so much of my daily time is spent trying to mitigate cat drama to stop audrey from pissing on things over and over. apparently im the only one capable of giving her more than 30 seconds of positive attention, and she needs a lot of it because she's very lonely. and i just do not have the ability to give her the attention she needs on my own and still take care of all the household chores, bills, appointments and constantly run laundry. i'm just extremely tired, and i feel like i can't trust a single other person to pick up slack without being expressly told several hours before slack needs to be picked up that they are expected to do so. it's exhausting. i hate delegating. i hate 'leadership' jobs, but evidently it's that or just collapse under the weight of doing it alone. cool

i've been trying a new livestream schedule where week to week i roll the stream forward a day (so i guess, an 8 day schedule) but it's become really obvious that people can only really make weekends. for the one or two folks who may have a day off in the middle of the week, i am sorry. but if i can't get enough stream income, i can't pay those aforementioned bills. i'm significantly behind this month because the last 3 streams were minimal in commissions. so i'm thinking about just doing a rotating weekend schedule. one week a friday, next sat, next sun, then friday again. this seems more likely to work out. i'll start this schedule in november i think.

this weekened is going to be rough since i'm getting my vaxes friday. not looking forward to the three day sickness.

finished playing through phoenix wright 2, which i haven't touched in almost 20 years so the story points were all vague and forgotten. i'm currently debating if i want to jump in to start pw3 right away next, or pick up a book. might lean to book when i'm feeling sick, the paper texture and sound is very soothing to me.

i think what sucks the most about my cancer trauma is its made it extremely hard (combined with the stalker trauma) to open up to and trust anyone, to be genuine friends with anyone. i'm just so damn tired. i can't handle someone who isnt treating their compulsive lying issue or who regularly forgets about me. and so i connect less and less and reach out less and less and feel more isolated. i am actively trying to fight against this, but it feels so crushing sometimes. because of the stalker trauma, even when i do something that people like or that resonates with people i'm beset with anxiety and the desire to withdraw and hide because i can't handle the thought of being Constantly Observed. if there was such a thing as justice in this world, the stalkers wouldve matured enough to offer apology (instead they blamed eachother and ate their own little cult of personality...) or those who left when i started cancer treatment wouldve returned when i was done, glad to see me alive. or those who jumped on to rubberneck my treatment wouldve also stuck around and been glad i lived, instead of weirdly hostile to me once i finished. i remember looking out the window of the boston harvard vanguard chemo unit at fenway park and always telling myself Sports Friend was going to come visit and say hi or wave to me, because they kept saying they would. but they never did, and when i didnt die, they got weirdly judgemental and hostile towards me for continueing to try to engage with them. this after they had said they wanted me to reach out to them while i was going thru cancer? idk, man. i think i was being used (they were a big to-do in boston furry for a hot minute) and -like i mentioned above - i got punished for usurping their expectations of me. i think i was supposed to (in their mind) really languish, really just fall apart and need a wheelchair to move or something, and then to die so i could become a symbol for them to use. and these are not good thoughts. these are not healthy feelings.

but nor are they incorrect.

what is best is to move on and move forward, to try to make new and better friends, and to hold tight to those who stuck by me. but this is all so, so much harder to do when this garbage sack country is pulling out all the stops to make life that much harder for anyone who isnt a good little nazi footsoldier.

ok, audrey is calling me. and i am trying to teach her to use her words to express her emotions, not her piss. so i need to go.

later