mental health

May 29, 2025

Emotional Self-Flagulation

This started out as a bluesky post and then I realized that the well in which I was drawing inspiration was overflowing. So, here I am to put it out on the internet for any person to read.

I miss my husband. I think I miss him more than I have this past year. I was told that it would get easier after the “firsts” but apparently not. This change coincidentally was ushered in by the wise words of my Papa Bill during out monthly ALS support meeting. He shared that, for him, it was worse in the second year. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. (I never do.) Until yesterday I had to pull over because I just started crying.

I happened to be playing Pokemon go at the same time and where I had stopped a Charmander simultaneously spawned in the game. My husband’s nickname, to his blood relatives, was Char. The name took me by surprise when I first heard it, because I immediately equated it to the anime. Another cute coincidence was that it’s CP was 776, which is super close to 777 which followed him around. I know none of this means anything. It was something that comforted me in the moment.

The other night I had a moment of realization that tipped my opinion of the BF and the brother. It dawned on me that these people are strangers. I don’t know them as well as I did my husband. Charlie was someone I trusted implicitly. These two men don’t carry the same weight. With that thought I suddenly felt very, very alone. And it has stayed with me since then.

In the abstract I know that I am being unfair to them. They have not shown me any reason to distrust them. Not once. My assumption is that I am carrying past trauma into this new future.

When I was a kid, for whatever reason I was a horrible judge of character. I trusted way more than I should have, and shared even more of myself than was wise in a desperate attempt to gain their trust. That was stupid on my part. Inevitably these kids would turn and use my truths against me to humiliate or isolate me from my peers. Awesome!

Since then I learned to own my truth and fuck everyone else. My level of shame is not very deep as a safety net for myself. I refuse to let anyone use my life as a weapon against me. I’d rather tell you I had cheated than have someone share it as if it was some dirty secret.

What does this have to do with my brother and BF? Well, I don’t know them. Not to the level I had with my husband. Which, in itself, isn’t fair since I knew him for 20 years. I never felt afraid with him because I knew he wasn’t going to leave or “betray” me. These men are “strangers” to me. I don’t know what they’re thinking, I don’t know their intentions. Are they here because they want to be or because I’m “useful”? (Which is another exposed nerve from my youth.)

All of this has weighed on my mind and I feel so alone and sad. Which is ridiculous because there is no reason to feel this way. It is all self-inflicted.

March 27, 2025

Universes Collide

One of the things my husband (Charlie) was right about is that I never really think things through. I have a hard time placing myself into hypothetical scenarios unless I have been there before. That is, unless they’re the “camp” kind, if you get my drift. Even then I’m always way off base in one direction or the other.

The last year it has been unspoken knowledge that “after a year of Charlie being gone” the BF (Josh) would move into the house. All during this time I was completely unphased. My primary focus has been “once this is done I can relax” or “I can stop living ‘split’ lives.” So far, it has remained the same, however with today being THE DAY I am beginning to panic.

The only other person I have ever lived with, besides my husband, was my brother (Tony.) (And parents of course, but I ‘moved in with them’ so they had to make the adjustments.) I keep trying to think about why Tony moving in with Charlie and I never stuck out to me. It could be that when he “moved in” was shortly after my husband was diagnosed. At the time I was more distracted by the fact that he was dying to put focus on other little things that bothered me. On top of that, we were moving from one house to another because the one we had previously occupied would have in NO WAY accommodated his impending wheel chair. So as Tony moved in we were also moving in to an entirely new place.

All-in-all Tony came in with no issues. Well… that’s not completely true. I was bothered by his furniture pieces decorating our new house. I didn’t like them, at the time, because I’m a snob. I blame my husband. He was too. (We really were made for each other.)

The BF moving in is an entirely new experience for me. In the past it was me moving in with my husband from my parents’ house. I never had someone entering my space before. There was no “established” living conditions to throw into disarray with a new entity.

In my “panic” I have discovered some really odd quirks I previously had not invested my focus. For instance, my really overbearing “smell” issues.

I have a thing about odd smells. I will hunt them down like a blood hound (which my husband accused me of multiple times because how I would literally sniff them out) until they are found and eradicated. So having an entirely new human moving in with their own natural scents is really fueling my panic. Not only does he have his own natural aroma, his clothes have one, and then his cats. I love his babies as if they were mine (I mean… they are) but I will not abide my house smelling like a cat. I will do whatever it takes to make sure it does not stink. For whatever reason, I have deemed the stereotypical “cat smell” to be “low class” and “repulsive.”

On top of that… yesterday when I was helping box his stuff up, I used his clothes to act as cushions for the breakable possessions. That’s when I got a whiff of them. That night I asked him, insulting him in the process, if he would mind if we wash all of his clothes when he gets here. I also said I would help with the effort because I understood it was a bizarre and an overwhelming task. (Like I said… I have a thing about scents.)

Underneath all that, since I’m sure this is “masking” my insecurity of the whole episode, I am upset about the shift in dynamics. It was exacerbated by my brother when I got home and he was crying. He had spent the whole day moving his stuff out of the master into his room. Like me, he doesn’t like change and I feel guilty by causing him this discomfort. (Jesus, I am easily manipulated. I hate it.) It is a lot.

I keep thinking of things to do for my brother to make it easier for him or lessen the stress of all of this. Completely ignoring the fact that this is also a huge change for my BF too. He is literally condensing his entire life into mine. That takes an enormous amount of trust in me and our relationship to do. And I am scared that I will fuck it up with my eccentricities.

This morning, before I went to work, I warned Josh that I am going to be weird about the “smells” thing and to not take it personally. I am just weird. There is no other way to explain it. It’s me. I’m the drama. I know that for me to find a balance I have to be the captain of this “crazy ship.” The responsibility to seek solutions and put no further stress on everyone else rests entirely on me.

March 12, 2025

These Things Four to Save My “Soul”

Last night… I did something unexpected and hopeful. I made a list of goals for myself. They’re temporary but they are 4 things that I wanted to do to give my life purpose. Which, as of late, has had none. When I look around at the world, burning around me, I find it increasingly difficult to make long-term plans. Whose to say that I will even bring them to fruition. I say that without a trace of irony and nothing but fearful sincerity.

My hope is that this list will give me something to focus on, other than the chaos. Which I have discovered is all-consuming. I had an intent to not look at social media while I was at work, however after having scrolled for a good 30 mins it occurred to me that I had already failed. This realization came entirely too late because I was already locked in the clutches of “panic.”

Yesterday I likened my obsessive scrolling to being trapped on a highway congested from a brutal, fatal car crash. You can’t look away as you slowly creep by, but you just have to know.

A secondary wish for this list is that it will cease the descent into cruelty. I find myself becoming increasingly apathetic to the pain of other people. In fact, I relish it. That makes me no better than those causing the harm. I don’t want to be that person. It is absolutely not who I am. However it’s difficult to not feel that way. They hurt me by putting him there, so I want them to hurt too. Most of what is happening is harming the people who allowed this to happen at all. They used their vote to spit in the face of “pussy liberal cucks” as some protest vote. Or as my mother loved to say, “cut off their nose to spite their face.”

I hesitate to admit it but I find, what most of the internet is referring to FAFO (fuck around and find out), joyous. Elated even. It brings me immense joy that I should not feel towards my fellow countrymen. Ultimately I am responding similarly to how they took the opportunity to vote this asshole into office, to spite their “enemies.”

What these people fail to realize is that we’re all in this boat together. So drilling holes in it to hurt the ones you don’t like will absolutely end up hurting you. Yet, I have heard that the reason they drilled the holes in the first place is because they felt betrayed to begin with. Which basically circles back to the one irrefutable truth: we have failed to listen and understand. We have failed at having basic human empathy.

Or maybe I am just too much of a “Pollyanna.”

To avoid the destruction of my soul, I will focus on these things:

  1. Finish my professional education.
  2. Learn to speak Spanish.
  3. Become more competitive in Lorcana TCG.
  4. Lose weight.

These are genuinely silly ambitions. Yet I see them as ways to soothe the roiling magma within me. With any luck, these will lead me to a place for myself in whatever unpredictable future lies ahead of all of us.

March 4, 2025

Why Hope?

Yesterday was a mental health lesson where I learned to lie when I’m asked “have you thought about killing yourself, yes or no?” It’s such a broad question. Of course, who hasn’t had those kinds of thoughts? To not narrow it by putting a time frame or allowing for context… I guess I’m just the guy who thinks about dying a lot. Which is probably not a good thing.

The nurse I was “rushed” to ended up calling me four separate times. Evidently I was a “red alert” for the folks at Kaiser. I was immediately given an appointment with the psychiatrist and my therapist, who has been off on “medical leave” since September. The same medical leave that just so happened to coincide with the strike. Funny how that worked for him…

Genuinely I feel that their overreaction was unnecessary. While I have suicidal thoughts I am someone who is more bound by “duty” than anything. Yes, I may feel that I’d be better off dead, however the fact that so many rely on me is what keeps me pushing forward. Plus, I have yet to put my will together. I don’t want my possessions to go to my half-niece who knows nothing of me and would just end up throwing everything away without doing the research of what she could sell for some level of profit.

The one thing I don’t quite understand is, why are we pretending that Kaiser even cares if I live or die?

This past weekend the BF and I went to visit a mutual friend of ours up at his home in Carmel. It was a fun little trip that was relatively relaxing despite it being such a short visit. The trip did open up my mind to the realization that I am thoroughly depressed. Not in the active “I’m sad” but deep in my soul. This was unapparent until the point our friend point blank asked me “What do you want to do for your milestone birthday?”

I had zero answer. My initial response was “nothing.” There was nowhere I wanted to go or anything I felt inclined to do. I rather it just pass by without any recognition. Which this is a complete 180 from what I used to do, which was make it a birthday month. My husband even joked, calling it exactly that.

Now I would rather just not have it exist at all. Maybe it’s age but also, I don’t see the point in celebrating.

It occurred to me that I have no hopeful wishes to travel anywhere because I feel that the world is fucked. So why break my heart further by holding onto the fantasy that I could travel to Disneyland Paris? Not saying that is anything I want to do, it was just the most likely of hopes for me to have. Instead of hope, I have survival on my mind. Planning and preparing for the inevitable outlaw of gay people…

Sorry… this is getting entirely too depressing. This is where I will leave you.