mental health

May 5, 2026

A Plan and a Promise

It is genuinely concerning how I let no-named “influencers” influence the choices in my life. The other day I saw a prominent TikToker called “knitting cult lady” (who herself has escaped a cult and written a book about it) talk about how someone can process trauma by writing it out. She expanded by quoting scientific studies, of which she doesn’t give proof of, to back up a claim that if one were to just put their trauma in a matter-of-fact manner, with no emphasis on processing the emotions, that our brains will do it for us without investing the work. Of course I took her words as gold and scientifically sound, even though she could just be talking out of her ass.

Regardless of the truth, it did feed my own desire to write again. It occurred to me a few days ago that I have had zero interest or want to put my thoughts into words. I pondered for a moment wondering if it was just me “moving on” of that want or desire, or if it was due to the fact that my anti-depressants aren’t working. Part of me is leaning into the second theory (I cannot stop consuming sugary food, which is a big tell).

I know that I have not processed my family’s passings. I like to pretend that I have, but whenever I think I’m doing well it gets turned on it’s head. The tears come and I seek out some “substance” to dull the unspoken/unrecognized agony.

With that, I have decided to embark on a year long journey, similar to the one I did with “The Soundtrack of My Life.” Except this time, there will be no music and it will all be documenting my life with my late husband. (God it feels weird saying that.) Each week I will type out a new entry in our story. With the point to keep it brief. There is no sense getting caught up in the prose or narrative thread.

That is what happened the last time I tried to do something similar.

I previously tried writing last November, but I got so caught up in details and got bored of my own voice that I stopped the effort. Maybe I just wasn’t ready.

Since the second year anniversary has come and gone, it should be enough time for me to write it all out, keep it strictly to the details and not wax poetic.

The “Soundtrack” project actually helped me process some lingering trauma I never even realized was there, until I wrote it out. Which is why when this woman came across my video feed it was like I was talking to myself through a separate entity. It brought the focus back to the project and what it would mean. And after all of that nonsense, I just enjoy writing. It is clear to me that I have gotten rusty, because even now I am struggling to get that motor running. I need to get it going again. With it I can use it as an escape from this hellscape, however momentary it might be.

February 23, 2026

Crazy Chronicles – Episode 1

I want to document all of this weird psychosis I’m going through because 1) if I turn out to be correct it’ll be a crazy story and 2) because I feel like not enough people talk about what mental health is like as you’re experiencing it.

To put it plainly, I do not feel well. Mentally. Even physically. Two of the weekends in February I have had events where I feel like I am having a heart attack. That is normal when you eat like garbage and don’t exercise. Plus I just hit 40 and my family doesn’t really have a great track record when it comes to hearts. I believe my grandfather had his first one in his 30’s but I might be wrong and it was in his 40’s. Regardless it was the second one that took him.

What makes this feeling exceptionally worse is that I feel like I have had “premonitions” of my death. I am lying in my own bed, the ambulance crew comes in and starts working on me, but I end up passing away before they even get me onto the gurney. My boyfriend is telling the EMTs about our prior experience of having called for an emergency crew and how I am “fine.” Then there is darkness and all I hear is my BF’s voice calling my name and saying “Stop faking. Josh, wake up.”

This last detail, the haunting words, is an echo of when I went to the emergency room a couple weekends ago thinking the same exact thing. The only issue was, I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart rate was off the charts but I am mostly certain that was caused by my paranoia and panic of my own demise. The demise I “foresaw” when we were driving down to Palm Springs a month ago.

It should be noted that with each of the above events I was thoroughly, utterly, off my tits stoned. I had had far too many edibles. And in this stupor I believe I “had flashes of the future.” Ones which I started to feel again in these noted moments above. Aka De ja vu. It’s been happening quite frequently lately. This is where I started to feel insane, because it is like the de ja vu becomes more frequent as I get closer to the moment it actually happens.

For instance I feel like I have done this before. I am having de ja vu even now, as I write this.

Maybe it is this weekend when I have my real heart attack and die.

It’s thoughts like that that have kept me on edge since Friday and I cannot shake it. I keep feeling as if I am marching toward my inevitable demise. It is stressing me out and making all of this way worse.

So, to be proactive I have reached out to my therapist to get a sooner appointment than March 9th. I need some advice because this overwhelming, all consuming, feeling/thought that I am about to die is really, really not fun.

I also made an appointment with my primary to get my heart checked out. The last few days my blood pressure has been elevated. So I am documenting it, while also trying to think soothing/calming thoughts.

The one thing about all of this that upsets me more than my own death, is how I am stressing my boyfriend out. I’m getting flashbacks from when I was 4 and my dad was having his mental breakdown. I vividly remember him standing in the living room, my mom sitting next to me on the couch, trying to talk him in to going to a hospital. He had just spent the last few hours swinging a broom around in the backyard killing “demons.” At one point, he had to put on yellow kitchen gloves because he was getting blisters.

I love my father, with all of his flaws, but I refuse to let this be a memory, of me, for the ones I love.

As I was writing this, my therapist called and we had a quick chat before rescheduling. He told me that people don’t have mental breakdowns now like they did in the 80’s. That was because people were over-stimulated and didn’t know that was the issue so they would check themselves into a hospital to find respite. Fun little fact. He also said that sometimes grief will manifest as panic/anxiety attacks. That one really hit home. A lot of the time when these events occur is in moments where my husband either should be there or he would be upset if he knew what was happening. My therapist explained that it is the lack of this person that makes you start to panic or feel anxious because they’ve always been there.

February 10, 2026

Does This Clown Taste a Little Funny To You?

Last night was a weird one for me. I spent most of my evening laying in bed “doom scrolling” details in the Epstein files. It got to a point that I started to physically feel fearful and repulsed, as if I had just watched some grotesque gore flick with a terrifying villain. Did that discourage me from continuing further? Oh no. I am a glutton for punishment and chaos.

At some point in my information consumption I had my interest piqued enough on the topic of Kuru that I started researching it.

Kuru is a disease that is caused by damaged proteins that have accumulated in the brain. It causes neurological issues such as: tremors, speech issues, dementia, muscle loss, and balance issues. All of these things I have witnessed in my mother, father, and husband until their untimely demise. Could this be the answer to why in the last 5 years I lost them all with very similar issues?

My mind spiraled out of control. In the abstract I can understand that this is just my brain trying to rationalize the abrupt disrupt and loss of my family. I get that. But… what if it’s my answer?

Well, the only problem with them having kuru is that it requires the consumption of human flesh, primarily the brain, that is tainted with… kuru. According to one of my MANY google searches, the last reported case was in 2004. This is a very rare and uncommon disease. In the history of the illness, it was primarily witnessed in a tribe that had a ritual of consuming their dead family members after their passing.

To my knowledge… My parents and husband were not cannibals. However, people do have their secrets. I didn’t know my husband was cheating on me, as I was actively cheating on him, until I caught him.

What this thought does do is lend credence to this fear that I have had over these last 5 years: that somehow/someway we were exposed to something that caused all of this.

When I would voice this to my husband, before he passed, he would immediately fire back, “Then why aren’t you showing signs?”

This is where I confess to the world that I am a chicken nugget and french fries man. I am the pickiest eater and won’t really venture out of my culinary comfort zone unless I am peer pressured into doing so. (Side note: I had a friend who had a serious peanut allergy tell me to try stuff at a buffet with a remark “it’s not going to kill you.” Shortly afterward we had to rush to the store to get Benadryl because the bitch didn’t bring her eppy pen.)

What if my family was given, without their knowledge or consent, human flesh to eat?

I have this really random memory of our trip to Lake Tahoe, where the wait staff watched us eat our meal, in an entirely empty restaurant. The reason it stuck out in my memory is because of how bizarre it was that they watched us… and how we were the only ones in the restaurant at dinner time.

All of these fears and assumptions are made worse by the very fact that we have only received half of the millions of files the DOJ possesses. And these are the files they were willing to submit. What’s in the other fucking half?

Now, do I really think that is the answer? No.

Is it just me trying to find meaning in their sudden deaths? Yes.

However… We cannot rule out this as a cause.

The only real certifiable answer I do have, that this is not the case, is that when my husband and I went to the Mayo Clinic for a second opinion to his ALS diagnosis, they tested him for everything while we were there. I imagine… that might have also included tests that would reveal signs of kuru. Like I said, it’s caused by deformed proteins. It’s not bacterial or viral.

(As I am writing this, I just had a random memory of a doctor asking him if he ate human flesh at one of his appointments where we all just laughed it off.)

In the big scheme of things, why does this even matter? They’ve already been taken from me. There is nothing that can be changed and having an “answer” does nothing but further fuel my confusion. Where would this have happened?! Why?

I need to just accept that life sometimes shops at Costco and we were just working through our bulk box of death.

January 27, 2026

Silence is Complicity

Every day I reach new levels of rage within me I never thought were possible. Watching the countless angles of Alex Pretti and Renee Goode’s murders, are what I refer to as my “9/11 moment.” If you’re confused by that statement, I am referring to the wave of enlistments that followed that day. So many of my own friends joined to fight against “terrorism” after watching people suffer unnecessary and undeserved violence at the hands of extremists. If there was an opposition to the modern day gestapo I would join in a heartbeat. I will not allow innocent Americans to be murdered because some asshole white supremacists think that brown people don’t belong in “their country.”

Then our “government” gets on television and outright LIES to us about who was murdered. I cannot abide liars and grifters and every single person in this government is precisely that. They are there to fulfill their own selfish desires. Especially the wannabe dictator. He is causing all of this chaos because he refuses to let the truth of his heinous crimes come to light from the proof within the Epstein Files.

If you’re one of the ignorant few who think he is innocent, then why the fuck would an innocent man not release the information to prove that very claim? Instead he has refused a COURT ORDER to release them. He is outright ignoring the very government he swore to protect. To uphold. And then the MAGAt pieces of shit get out there and demand law and order, I guess that only applies to people who don’t look and sound just like them.

Then on top of all of that, I have family members supporting this fucking pedophile. I don’t understand how I could come from a christian family that can abide this. This is against everything I was ever fucking taught. But racism and elitism runs deep.

For so long I ignored how they treated my own father who they felt was “beneath them.” He came from poverty. From a horrific childhood that could have been avoided if he had been adopted by a family who would have loved him. However my selfish, self-centered “grandmother” wouldn’t give up one of her meal tickets.

And that doesn’t speak to the brokenness of our system, but rather the broken person. And to outright call for the end of government aid because of “one bad person” is equivalent to me calling for the destruction of all Republicans because of the man who regularly shits himself on live television.

If you know someone who does not, AT THE VERY FUCKING LEAST, speak out against the execution, the MURDERS of Alex Pretti and Renee Goode they are complicit in the destruction of our democracy. We are watching our leaders allow these masked nazi’s into our communities to terrorize them. To destroy them. That is not America. At least not the one I was SOLD my entire life that was a melting pot, a place where we welcome all no matter their past. If that never even existed, I will be damned if I do not make it a reality. I want the America I was “sold.” We DESERVE that country.