December 5, 2024
Today marks one year of The Daydream Dimension! I'm stunned by it all, and can hardly believe that it's been a year. Life has changed so much since I started this little hub and this website has changed a lot with it. I've redesigned the homepage and entry page to feature a bit of a darker theme, more of a calm winter vibe. I love this time of year and how it brings people together. Most importantly, the snow brings so much happiness to my face. I'm wishing the reader a wonderful day! Thank you so much for following me if you've joined me on this journey. The journey? I have no idea where it's taking me, but I hope it's to a wonderful destination.
November 24, 2024
Has it really been almost an entire season since I've last updated this journal? Man. I can't believe it myself. This year has been full of some of the most intense surprises. Not too long after I wrote my last journal, my boyfriend and I broke up. It absolutely rocked my entire world, as he was someone who really was the center of it. He broke my heart into pieces, and made sure that I knew that he didn't like me as much along the way. He even flat out said that he "didn't miss people" at one point when I told him I missed him, both virtually and to my face. Talk about being fucking cruel. I've been rebuilding my way back ever since, and it's not an overexaggeration to say that my life changed due to this. I'm still finding myself again after being broken down.
Expect some major cosmetic changes to this website soon! I have a lot of redesigning I'd like to do, as well as some things to add. A planned page to this website had to be canceled due to the breakup. It's that serious. I want to add more hidden pages (keep your eyes peeled), and add more ideas to it - as well as update some pages that already exist on here. Much love, I hope everyone reading this is okay. In the end, walking on hot coals for my ex was not worth it in the slightest. If anyone reading this is infatuated with someone who makes you feel like you have to walk on hot coals for the relationship to work, get out now while you can. You will become a shell of your former self, and all you'll be able to do is cry until you find the strength to leave. Someone who is willing to keep you in agony whether they realize it or not isn't worth it.
August 10, 2024
Love. It is so beautifully intense. It's what drives me. Communal love, romantic love (especially romantic love), love is what keeps me breathing. It is such an intense force, the force to want to understand and compliment another person is what motivates me more than anything in my life. My romantic life is rife with difficulties, and I love my current partner a lot but this is not the exception. We're currently mostly long distance, and the distance between us crushes me. I love him very dearly, all I really want is for things to settle down again so we can become close and reignite our passion like I know only us can. I'm willing to put in the effort, I'm willing to walk on hot coals for him. I'm just hoping all of this is worth it, and I know that if the effort is made it will be.
August 4, 2024
Was the last time that I wrote in this journal seriously in May? Holy shit, time flies when things are disintegrating. I can't believe it's been this long since I've updated everyone. Life has been extremely intense in the background. My partner has moved forty minutes away from me, one of my best friends has decided to go back on the road, and I feel disconnected from most people in ways that have utterly torn me apart from the inside out. I'm very grateful for and to my internet friends and for my partner and other real life friends because I would be completely distraught without them. It's been a very exhausting journey, and I want things to go back to "normal" as they were before February. One thing is for certain, however - there is no sense of "normal". There is no before. There's only right now.
I'm distraught by the fact that almost everyone I love is so far away from me, but I know that they're doing what is best for them in their lives. I'm considering a return to college in the Fall for music and theatre, or this may happen in the Spring semester of 2025 to give myself time to prepare. I am thinking about what I want to do with my future after a now almost six year break from everything. I can't believe I'm staring at over half a decade since the spiritual trauma that has entirely reshaped my life and my path moving forward. It's put me right where I need to be with the people I needed to meet, and for that I'm grateful, but I wish that it didn't have to happen through completely destroying my life.
Trying to hold on for better days, and when good things happen, I cherish every single one of those things. I've begun to make note of the good things that have taken place.
May 13， ２０２4
I'm back to writing on here! This feels weird to do on a Chromebook, but at least it is something and I'm grateful to be able to. My mental health has seen a serious decline since late April / early May, to the point where I have brain fog near daily. It really affects my short term memory, although some days are better than others and I can identify some triggers. There are some benefits to it - because my brain tends to be so foggy, I appreciate being in the moment more, which leads to less anxiety. That much I can appreciate. What I don't appreciate is the amount of trauma that's gone on that has led to this brain fog. That part appears to be over for now, but the damage is done. Because it is my first time dealing with this kind of situation, a situation that is heavy even given some of the other things I've gone through, I'm trying to figure out what a new normal looks like. This is in and of itself traumatic for everyone involved, and I have to say that my levels of exhaustion are through the roof. This could also be a post COVID thing, and I hope it is not that because the treatments are not very hopeful right now. I do think having had COVID recently is playing a role in how my body is handling the traumatic stress.
It's definitely hard to keep track of the days...I can spend most of the day literally asleep and think nothing of it. I have to be dragged out of sleep, otherwise I will sleep the entire day away. I feel so utterly disconnected from reality that it's hard to focus on anything as well. There's a fair bit of dissociation / depersonalization in there mixed with the brain fog. If it continues, I'm definitely going to go to my doctor about it to see what I can do, or if I can get on some sort of medicaiton that will help me through the trauma. I've had bad experiences with psych meds before, so I'm very wary.
I feel nothing like myself. I'm trying to figure out how to best manage the emotions so I don't turn into a total zombie, I definitely want to put myself back out there. I feel more in the moment when I'm interacting with someone socially, or if I'm waking up from a long sleep, but otherwise I'm foggy. I hope that it fades with time and with less stressors! I'm trying my best to conserve my social batteries for now.
May 3， ２０２4
Man, life changes in a minute, doesn't it? I can't say anything in depth publicly because it has the potential to compromise a legal investigation, in case you're wondering how my life is going. In a matter of days, so much has been destroyed. I haven't done anything illegal, for the record. This being said, someone very close to me is involved in a very treacherous legal situation that involves someone heinous that I can only pray sees justice. Whatever this horrific person has earned, I hope the justice system will give to them. I learned tonight a detail that meant that I, as well as everyone in our friend group, were put in potential danger by just having met this person. My first encounter with them was aggression. Should I need to testify in court against this person as a witness to her aggression, I will give details to them.
I'm processing all of this as a traumatic event. I feel unbelievably numb. The past month has been a shit show, and I'm hoping that things go back to some semblance of normal soon. The sheer craziness of life is the reason why I've not been writing as much lately. A lot of my more in depth journaling is also on Dreamwidth too, so if I'm not posting here I'm probably posting there. The link to that is in the "links" tab on the homepage.
April 23， ２０２4
Things are kind of inbetween at the moment. I'm thankful for my friends and family, because without them I'd be flailing around and probably in one of the deepest pits I've been in for quite some time. On the other hand, I'm still heartbroken about what happened between my ex friend and I over a year ago and I'm realizing the extent of that heartbreak now.
My therapist is in for quite a session tomorrow! I think that it'll be a necessary emotional purge so to speak, an expression of intensity that I think needs to be released in order for me to begin to heal. There's a lot of trauma that I've been holding in for quite some time that I'm now beginning to express through artistic mediums and through private writing. I may not have been in the right all of the time in my friendship with this person, but at the same time I don't think I deserved a modicum of what happened. I think my ex friend would agree. I don't think that this person is a bad person either, I wish them well honestly.
I feel bad because I feel like when I talk about the trauma this person put me through, I feel like I am badmouthing them unnecessarily. At the same time, if someone doesn't want me to talk about things that have happened, they should not have done these things to me, and I'm sure from where they're standing it is vice versa. I wish I was more supportive at times, I was definitely blinded by my continually aforementioned behavioral addiction that made it extremely hard to see clearly with zero end in sight back then. I'm over 135 days sober now, and I think the best thing that could have happened to me was stepping away from [redacted] in my Google searches and in my media consumption.
[redacted] is the one person that I feel things in extremes for. It's taken me a long time to find a grey area for most of the people in my life, but I think that I've reached it. For [redacted], there are none of those grey areas. The extremes are part of what made the addiction so insidious - it's absolutely fucking terrifying to be controlled in a lot of ways by the idea (I want to emphasize not the actual person, but the idea of said person) is horrific. Love, love is beautiful but to watch everything you know and everything you love become ruined by what you believe to be love is an experience so painful in its absorption of the soul that the only choice is to run, not walk, away.
In recognizing that, I firmly believe my ex friend deserved better. They deserved a friend who was successful in letting go, and successful in being having a sobriety and having a willpower that they could look up to, be proud of, and hopefully positively inspired by. I look at the times where I was a less than good friend and shake my head toward the floor.
I'm thankful for learning lessons and trying my best to be a better listener than I was, and also trying my best to become a better responder. I take breaks from conversations frequently because sometimes, it is a bit heavy on me but I know that my friends understand. I want to be better at holding space for people, I struggle to do so and tend to be "the fixer" in a lot of scenarios because I wasn't taught anything else. People always came to me with their struggles, and not wanting to see them in pain I learned to help "fix" the issue. This is something I want to work on as well.
Life is not easy at all, but I'm trying to tell myself that it is beautiful. Because a lot of it is. I'm extremely used to nihilism and sometimes even typing things like that feels false, especially when I'm depressed. But at the same time, I'm deeply thankful for the people I have. Losing so many people and fucking up so much in my life has made me more appreciative of the people that I do have in it.
April 17， ２０２4
Things are so depressing right now that it's almost comical! It would be comical if it weren't so fucking miserable. I'm slowly feeling more and more isolated...I'm a hard person to reach as is, but with all of the rough shit going on around me it's gotten even worse. I miss being a person that was free with my heart and interests and self, but time and time again it's been proven that I just cannot do that. Even with people I really enjoy talking to and enjoy hearing perspectives from, I'm ridiculously guarded. You can talk to me for years and find out new things about me, you can talk to me for years and not know my depths. I'm fighting to be more available, but I don't know if it's worth it. I feel unappreciated if I even try to be vulnerable with some folks. I'm scared that I'm far too much, that I'm way too emotional, that everything I feel is too heavy.
When I was younger, I was taught to be resilient and to "pull myself up from my bootstraps" so to speak. Yeah, fuck everything about that mentality. The bootstrap mentality is such a failure as an ideology that it's created generations of emotionally inept people that refuse and reject kindness or love show.
I feel so empty that it's not even funny half the time. I don't like feeling this way, but yet again who would?! I'm still reeling from shit that happened five years ago, and empty over things that happened over a year ago at this point. One day, I'll fully let go of it.
Maybe that's a lie, maybe I won't let go of it. But hopefully one day I won't feel so empty over things I can't change.
April 16， ２０２4
Slowly becoming myself again as I recover from illness! I recently had COVID, and it was horrible. I don't want to experience anything like that again.
Thinking today about beauty once again and how it makes other people treat you. If only the soul was physically visible! I've never considered myself the most attractive woman or anything of that nature, in fact I'm often quite self deprecating. There are moments where I feel more beautiful than others, and I do tend to post those on my social medias quite a bit. I've been trying to expand my social media presence to be more than just selfies - to show more of the authentic me, the woman who admires vintage women and admires a time from far before this one. It's really hard because social media constantly wants you to maintain a false image of yourself, something that's larger than life. I've tried so many times over the years to meet that standard thinking that it would make me love myself somehow, but ultimately it always created more hurt.
I'm addicted to the internet and I'm very honest about that. The internet has created so many photoshopped beauty standards that it's ridiculous. Physical beauty shouldn't be the pinnacle of life, but it's very much viewed as it. It's exhausting. I want to feel beautiful for my own sense of self confidence, but I don't want to live adhering to anyone's standards anymore. It's exhausting.
More often than not, the standards move the goal posts. The way people treat you if you're not conventionally attractive is horrible. Not even by standards of dating, but just as a human being baffles me. People don't view people that don't meet standard conventions as human, and it's horrible. I wish I lived in a world where the value of a person was determined by how well they treat other people. I don't think blanket "love and kindness" works either, because like everyone else, I'm a complex person with very many ranging emotions and someone who has been - to put it politely - less than perfect during my lifetime. But I do wish to live in a world where everyone strived to be nicer to one another.
April 4， ２０２4
I hate that the most important thing in life to most people is seemingly to be physically beautiful. It doesn't matter to other people what you have to say or how kind of a person you are, if you have a good heart or if you try to be the best you can...just that you're beautiful. And beautiful is such a vague, subjective word and it has been boiled down to its most evaporable traits to a point where it really means nothing at all, but if you're not conventionally attractive, good luck getting people to listen to you half the time. Good luck getting people to hear what you have to say, even if the person who is conventionally attractive is saying fuck all of importance. I don't hate people that are conventionally attractive, I'm not an incel, I just hate that beauty is valued more than any sort of kindness. While I think it's important to take care of yourself and your looks, the fact that being conventionally attractive is valued above the kindness you bring to others and how you treat people is absurd to me. If you don't believe me, try gaining forty pounds and seeing how people treat you afterward. Exactly.
These days, looks are valued just as much as physical capital in the world and will get you more opportunities in life than if you look average or below average by conventional standards. It's absurd. It's beyond superficial. It really creates frustration in a world that already makes it difficult to be yourself and makes it harder to live.
March 28， ２０２4
I deeply desire the winter. It's unusually cold for this time of year right now, the fog rose this morning, and I felt completely comforted by it all. We're forecast to get some snow early next week, unusual for Early April as well, and I'm greatly looking forward to it. It's a break from the monotony of the rain. I love the rain too, don't get me wrong, but snow is wehre it's at. Something about these frigid days makes me feel relaxed, especially if I'm at home with my cats or talking to people I care about (which I've been doing a lot of today!). I enjoy social situations where I feel safe and secure to be myself, I don't really get a lot of that in the real world so when it does come it is a blessing.
March 26， ２０２4
"We, so tired of all the darkness in our lives,
With no more angry words to say can come alive...
Get into a car and drive...
To the other side."
I'm tired of being so damn sad all of the time. I struggle with a lot more than I really let on to the people in my life, even the people closest to me don't know how deeply I struggle with the sorrow I experience. I want more from life than than the sorrows I've experienced, I'm doing my best to keep my head above water. I'm hoping for better times soon. I'm in the midst of a time of year that is a trauma anniversary related period, and it's exhausting. It's become a lot harder to stay sober from my behavioral addiction, but I'm still doing it - on Day 110 today! I'm trying not to compulsively engage in it, it's hard when there's so much distance between me and a lot of the people I've had in my real life within the past year. I miss Boston, even though I was just there two weeks ago. Hard to believe that it's been two weeks since that trip! It was one of the absolute best times in my life, and I can't believe that it happened. My soul misses going outside and experiencing life, and I want people in my life to experience the fun parts of life with! It's hard when some of the people I care about most either cannot engage in that or simply don't want to. I need more fun adventures in my life!
This is my karma for not engaging in fun adventures within the past couple of years when I had the opportunity to. Now that I feel ready to have that sort of fun, I've driven away all of the people that weren't homebodies and just wanted to engage with me. Man, did I fuck up.
I'm also just sad in general. I hate being in this room, this claustrophic cage of brightness, that is simultaneously a sanctuary and a place where I relive the worst things to ever happen to me.
I want to lay in bed while it snows in a log cabin. I want to hangout with those I love, laugh, and eat my favorite foods while going around downtown and looking at little knick knacks! I feel like I ask too much from those I love by simply wanting more out of the life that I have. I guess I need to learn to scale back a little bit. But at the same time, I just don't want to. This life is meant to be lived, not meant to be felt disintegrating in a room that grows lonelier by the moment.
"We...
Are young but getting old before our time....
We'll leave the T.V. and the radio behind...
Don't you wonder what we'll find
Steppin' out tonight?"
March 20， ２０２4
I long for the Atlantic Ocean today.
I remember being in Boston and visiting it for the first time, sun reaching the pier and standing on the dock. I felt like I could reach the sun with my bare hands. For the first time, I felt like there was something in me to not only feel content with, but something in me that felt understood. I've daydreamed about living in a lake house or on the water somewhere since I was a kid. If not that, then I would move into a log cabin somewhere deep within the mountains. I live in an area surrounded by mountains and trails, and yet I don't explore it all nearly as much as I wish I did. It's been a goal of mine to explore more nature for years.
I miss the way that the sun on the water made the ocean look like stars and diamonds, and somewhere in there I felt a deep grief for what we're doing to our Earth. I touched the saltwater briefly with my hands, reaching out to make contact with the sea. Somewhere in there, I felt alive.
I love being near the water almost as much as I love being near snow, which is quite a feat given that winter is my favorite season.
Spring has come, and with it will come the rebirth of trees and life, the reemergence of liveliness wherever one goes and a feeling of renewal that can't quite be explained. I could sit near the Ocean forever in this season and never be fully satisfied.
Yet, I'll still be here, longing for snowy days.
March 17， ２０２4
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Celebrating the day by staying indoors and listening to the rain. I consider myself very distant from most people nowadays, save for my internet friends and the two people (one of whom is my partner) that I see on a semi-regular basis. I miss having a consistent friend group, and sometimes I catch myself missing my ex best friend (before he turned into what he turned into). For better or worse, I will never have a friendship like that again. The reason why I'm so distant from other people is honestly because of what happened with me and him. I don't want to put my all into a friendship like that again and then wind up completely emotionally destroyed by the end of it, it honestly was and is traumatic and I'm still learning how to deal with it.
I reached the big 100 days sober yesterday! Within that 100 days has been an almost complete rebirth of who I am as a person and a redirection of my path. I looked into whether or not parts of my old path would serve me if the plans I have for the future came to fruition and it just gave me major anxiety. I realized that I'm better off following the new path and seeing where it takes me, and for that, I'm grateful. Excited for the next 100 days, and hopefully by the time I update this journal in December it will be one year.
I miss a lot of things about the past, however. I mainly miss having my real life best friend around and playing video games with her...everything is deeply ephemeral and I although I understand it, I feel like I haven't fully accepted it.
Another thing I'm really tired of are men who label themselves as incels. I understand struggling to find connection, believe me, as an autistic woman I've struggled with that all of my life. However, once you label yourself an incel and buy into that red pill bullshit, I'm immediately disgusted by you and will cut all ties with you. Misogyny isn't what it means to be a man, and espousing damaging ideologies isn't what it means to be a man either.
To me, men who label themselves incels are completely different from men who struggle with connections and relationships alone because it tells me that you buy into a violent ideology that states that women are inherently lesser as human beings. I cannot empathize with them. I firmly believe incels and the like are part of the reason that the world we live in is even more fucked up than it is right now (not that it wasn't fucked up before).
Man. I wish there were a way to stop the incel pipeline. An algorithim has convinced a lot of young men that the world owes them a partner instead of encouraging them to better themselves deep down and to find happiness within themselves. Not that romantic relationships are not rewarding, they most certainly are, and loneliness can be horrible. However, I've noticed that the vast majority of incels are people with terrible personalities that are incredibly entitled with no desire to fix themselves so that they could be a better romantic option to women. The other side of the coin is that a lot of incels are ridiculously picky. It's fine to have qualities that you want in a partner, but demanding them or else thinking a woman is worthless is another. Respecting only the women that you're attracted to is not respecting women, you fucking ignoramous.
I can go on and on about it. I guess I'm on a jag about how much I hate the new world we live in. I only want to be surrounded by people who are working on either improving themselves or helping improve the world that we live to some degree.
March 4， ２０２4
This is a strange time in my life. I feel extremely disconnected from most people, like I'm hovering above myself at all times. Depression has set in, and I think it's due to a number of factors but the fact that it's been raining for about 3 days straight doesn't help. I miss the sun.
I wish that we had an actual winter this year...I can recall about 3 times where it actually snowed, and that bothers me. The climate despair that I feel crowds a lot of my thoughts, I don't think most people understand how bad it is. Maybe some do, but I feel like I'm going crazy. The decline of the world is really a slow march, isn't it? I just want to do something meaningful that will make the time we have on Earth better for me and those around me. I don't want to be someone who saves the world or anything like that, because that's impossible for just one person, but to contribute positively to the lives of those I love would make my heart fulfilled.
It must be the dental infection I'm fighting, but I feel absolutely drained. Craving a cigarette and tea, although I know that I quit smoking nearly four years ago. Craving something comforting while it's so dark outside. There are some parts of the rain that I enjoy, but I really have grown to love the sun as I've gotten older.
I really do enjoy nature, time outside is healing for everyone. I remember taking pictures of the sun and sunsets more often when I was younger, but in an effort to be away from my phone I tend to leave it at home whenever I leave the house to run errands. Maybe I should start taking more pictures of the sun again.
February 27， ２０２4
Enjoying the sunny weather today beside my guitar, although I can't help but be horrified at the exponential rate of global warming. We typically don't see 60 degrees until Spring comes, and the fact that it's here already worries me. I'm scared of how hot summer will be.
Playing guitar comes with its own quirks too...I want to learn so much more about the artform of it, but it's so overwhelming!
A bit of a short blurb for now. I'm thinking of ironically heading outside to enjoy the nature we have. It's a good day for it, despite the horror of it all.
February 26， ２０２4
Five.
It feels deeply significant, especially since tomorrow marks five years about since nothing was ever the same.
It feels like a major milestone - half a decade since I was unearthed from myself and have had to claw my way into a new world only by starting all over again. I am here by the skin of my teeth, and I've clawed my way back to the surface from hell more times than I can count. I'm damn proud of that.
It may sound crazy but I am dead serious when I say that I'm certain that the person I used to be quite literally died in 2019. There was no more.
Everything, and I mean everything, from before mid-2019 feels like a past life.
February 25， ２０２4
I want to be proof that addictive behaviors get better. I want to be proof that things improve. I want to experience something beyond the immense pain of what I've been facing for the better half of fifteen years, and to an extreme degree for almost five. I want to understand the answers to questions that I know deep in my heart and soul will never be answered. I want to help other people with what I've been through. I don't want to feel like I have a hole in my heart and soul where (redacted) should be. I just want to understand.
Perhaps there are many things in the universe that can't and will never be understood.
My therapist and I had a conversation about it - about finding closure to situations like this - and asked me a question that I know that I've had on my mind for years, yet has been painful to ask. I know I'm working on finding my own closure, and part of that is being okay with never having the universal answers. On days like today, it's hard.
Today is day 80 of not engaging in the addictive behavior involving (redacted), and I know that I'm strong and I should be proud of that. It's really fucking hard, harder than I've ever put into words across any of the platforms I have. I journal about it privately all the time.
But I know that I can get through it. As Alex G says, "Nobody's gonna push me off track.". Recovery is the path I've chosen, and that's what I'll continue on.
All I ask for is that the people in my real, non internet life try harder for me. I really try for them and I feel like it's not reciprocated at all.
February 24， ２０２4
Endlessly disgusted by how unable I am to help most people. You can't help people that don't want to be helped, yes, but at the same time I wish I could do more. I wish I could be more to the people that I care about. I feel like I am thrown to the wayside, that in my real life outside of the internet the people I place the most importance on trying to be a friend to don't reciprocate some of that friendliness back. I'm not owed anything, and I don't intend to come off as entitled, but at the same time it hurts to see. Most of my energy is used trying to maintain my emotional functions, trying to relax, and trying to maintain homeostasis. I've noticed that I tend to be rejected help wise by most of the people I try to reach out to, and I abstain from most social interactions because, aside from my online friends and the two people I know in real life that treat me with respect and that I feel I can be myself around, social interactions tend to drain the fuck out of me. I am not a fan of the loneliness, but the loneliness is better than all of the drama people tend to serve me with.
February 12， ２０２4
I see a lot of humans, but no humanity. I wish I knew who came up with that as a phrase, it resonates with me deeply. I wish I knew why people are the way that they are. I understand them, but at the same time I don't understand why they're so cruel. At the same time, I recognize the cruelties in myself. I myself am deeply human, but I really don't feel like it some days. It's really hard to put into words...mostly, I'm just deeply crushed by injustice and bigotry and people who think that they can treat others poorly. I wish I could go more into it, but it's heavy on my heart, too heavy to put out there. Wishing that people didn't assume the worst of others, wishing that people had a genuine drive to help and love others that wasn't based on themselves.
February 7， ２０２4
Today is the dawn of the final day of me being 25. What a strange thing, to begin to leave my mid 20s. I didn't think I would live to see 18 or 22, let alone be on the precipice of turning 26! It's a harrowing thing, and I know right now that I feel like I'm every age that I have been, and to know that tomorrow I am going to be the sum of every age I'll ever be in that moment.
Aging feels scary in some regards, and I think up until this year I was afraid of it. This year, I realize more than ever that growing older is a privilege. I don't fully know everything I want out of life yet, but I'd be very happy with a domestic life with my partner and the people in the world that I consider close. I think that the rest of life is meant for some sort of great personal adventure.
I dream of embracing fun wherever and whenever I can. I'm both excited and nervous to turn 26...I never thought I'd get here or get this far, and I hope it goes well!
February 1， ２０２4
The fact that we never listened to Oppenheiemer about the dangers of the nuclear future is one of humanity's greatest tragedies. Not that I wish that the atomic bomb was invented anyway, because I'm absolutely mortified at the idea that this even was inveted in the first place. I don't think anything that could cause mass anihiliation is good for humanity.
However, we would have been wise to listen to him and his fears about the future. The grave human gravitation toward death is something I think about quite a lot...how hellbent we all seem to be on our own self destruction. I saw someone on Twitter talk about an Israeli politician discussing wanting to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza and thought to myself, "Are you fucking insane?"
No people, in the history of humanity, that exist now or will ever or have ever existed, deserve nuclear war or fallout as their fate. Not now, not ever.
I find history so fascinating, as we want to learn from it and yet have learned so little. I dream of a better future for us all, one unplagued by the desires of mass death.
In my personal life, not much has changed. I still wish I knew what happened to my friend. Yesterday was exhausting, I had a headache from all of the intense stress. Today's thankfully a little bit easier...I'm just thankful it isn't January anymore. That month dragged on even worse than all of the other Januaries I've experienced.
There are a bunch of words that just feel cold to describe how lively and beautiful my friend was... "found dead"... "hotel room" ... "circumstances unclear" ... nothing in this world is ever going to convince me that my friend is truly dead and gone, that there isn't some part of them present in this strange world. None of this feels right. It doesn't describe how warm my friend was, how kind and loving they really were. It all feels like a strange footnote of history.
History feels broken apart across different dimensions, I know there's a dimension where the positivity and love they put out into the universe still exists. I know I may sound crazy, but I don't care. There is another dimension of this "reality" (if reality really is all there is, and honestly I'm convinced it isn't). There has to be.
I hope that one day, I'll see them again.
January 31， ２０２4
Heading into February with what seems and feels like a lifelong exhaustion. I know that it is not lifelong, I know that it's just the set of circumstances making me feel that way, but nonetheless it is heavy and existential. I reflect on my friends' life and how they literally died for the revolution that they believed in, and while I admire their dedication, I wish that they were here to experience the revolution they worked so hard to achieve. I so badly want to pick up the baton and continue their legacy...I won't be fully rested until I know exactly what happened to them. What's happened is extraordinarily vague and seems to be laced with more questions than answers. No one has the information yet, or perhaps no one is willing. Either way, it crushes me.
I feel nothing like myself. I feel empty and lifeless, but I want to bring life into the vessel that I currently call my body. I woke up today and immediately wanted to crash land back into bed.
The depression is extreme, the tiredness is hard to put into words, I am exhausted by everything and everyone and I just want to be left alone.
I'm trying my best not to give up hope. Hope, after all, is the only thing I have left. That, and the desire to help other people. I want to help other people get through pain like this, I want to able to see this through to understand why this all had to happen like this. But first, I have to get through it.
It is something like hell. But I will prevail.
January 30， ２０２4
I am beyond stunned at the cruelty of people. No, I know that I shouldn't be, that people are by and large terrible and that most (not all but most) people don't usually help or do anything kind for others unless it benefits them in some way, but I've found a new way to be stunned at the cruelty of humanity. There's a fucking Twitter campaign going on that has stated / determined that my friend passed away due to the effects of the COVID 19 vaccine. They were a leftist / socialist advocate for the vaccines, and no matter what one thinks about them, celebrating their death is wrong. We're talking literal hundreds of comments celebrating their death, saying they won't be missed. One asshole said that they're still alive. I got that comment deleted.
The depth of my trauma is combined with the weight of how lonely I feel in a world that I knew for a fact doesn't care much for other people, but is deepened by its comfirmation. There's details surrounding this too that I don't even want to delve into. My soul feels ripped in half, I feel nothing like myself and probably won't for a long time. I've been trying to play guitar to pass the time, but have also spent most of it staring off into space.
Hoping that I find my way through this pain soon.
January 27， ２０２4
My mother has always stated that I'm an angry person. I wish she understood why I was so angry. I'm angry at a world that practically seems created to traumatize the people of it. I'm angry at the fact that death seems to take the people that do their best to be good and loving to everyone. I'm angry at a world where it costs more and more to live every year, that experiences that make life better are usually out of reach for the common person. I know this sound ridiculously entitled and that you can't get what you want always, but I just wish that things were different in the world. That the world wasn't made up of graveyard and human waste. That the world wasn't built for harming others, that living in general was made more accessible to people on this planet.
Maybe we'd be kinder to one another if we had the ability to experience leisure for more than five seconds without it being charged in some way.
I'm very heartbroken and angry at the passing of my friend. She was actively trying to make the world a better place for all, to instill some sort of revolution in her own way. She passed while campaigning for a presidential candidate she believed in. None of this makes sense and I'm not sure it ever will. I'm not sure that it's meant to make sense. I'm angry that the world wasn't kinder to her. Said candidate hasn't even said anything about her loss, and mind you this is a fairly small, sort of regional candidate. I feel like something should have been said. I'm pissed that it wasn't.
I have a very deep hatred toward those with a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality, and how that negates pretty much every natural human emotion. We were made to feel things deeply, and sometimes people cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It's okay to ask for help.
The immensity of my rage toward capitalism is something I have a very hard time putting into words. I've recieved help from others that I'm very thankful to have recieved over the years, but deep down I've never felt like I deserved it. I always feel like people other than me deserve it more.
Deep beneath the kindness I try to give other people is a lot of heavy, heavy sadness at everything. A lot of painful anger, a lot of pain. So much fucking pain. I feel everything until I become numb. I'm so pissed that my friend won't live to see any of the meaningful revolution she fought so hard to bring about in the world.
She made a meaningful revolution by being a part of mine and so many others' lives. I hope that they knew that they made the world better just by being a part of it. The loss of someone so politically thoughtful, committed to change in the world and in themselves, and just absolutely loving to everyone that they came across is something that I still lack the words for. The fact that we'll never make good on the plans we've tried to set up over the years, the fact that everything ended the way that it did is so baffling to me.
I've been baffled since really last August at the strange state of the world. I miss all of my friends and people I've known that have died within the past 4 years.
At nearly 26 years old, I know more about death than I should, and it hurts. It hurts so fucking much. Everything does. I keep going in circles in this post, I lowkey feel like my heart is sinking.
I wish it wasn't freezing so I could spend some time outside. I wish that the mountains were open so I could just lay on top of the local one for a good couple of hours while I try to relax and get my life together mentally. To experience that for the first time in a while would be beautiful. Something about mountains are so soul healing.
January 26， ２０２4
Without going into immense personal details, I found out that yet another one of my friends passed away a couple of days ago. I've felt numb during this entire day, moving through it as "normal" - well, as normal as I can be. I certainly know that my emotional reactions to things have been either heightened to a disproportionate amount or completely blunted to an unnecessary degree. I've been dissociating as well, and what I really want right now is a friend to be here. That and some pizza. I say this without hyperbole or exaggeration: nearly everyone that I originally met in 2019 - 2020 is someone that has either passed away or someone that I no longer have contact with for the most part. I know of one person from that time period that I still talk to on occasion.
This is the second friend of mine to pass on a full moon, the first person having died during the Blue Moon of last August - almost exact. It just baffles me to no end. I hold my memories with my friend close. I love them, I told them I loved them, and I thought that we had more time. I wish that the plans we made came to fruition the way that we originally thought that they would.
Life seemed to have other plans. I have my own thoughts on death, what happens afterward, etc - the in depth parts of those things I keep to folks that I trust. I've been through a lot of spiritual beliefs and have examined multiple ideas over the past five years, including believing in absolutely nothing for a couple of those years, but I don't believe that the physical end of my friends' life was the end of their journey. At the same time, it's incredibly hard to grasp that they seemed to disappear into the ether overnight. No warning. There are so, so few words for the emptiness that I feel deep inside.
I barely slept last night. I hope that tonight, I can at least get some sleep.
"And if you see my friend,
I thought I would again...
A single thin straight line...
I thought we had more time." - Nine Inch Nails, This isn't the Place.
Lately, everything has been very emotionally intense. The absolute whiplash from Pluto in Aquarius has arrived, and so far it's been a rough adjustment. There's been things in my personal life too that I've been struggling with, and that's been one of the hardest parts of it all. My mental health has taken a sharp decline, which is not fun to note. However, I'm trying to stay on top of battling behavioral addiction. I hit 50 days on Friday, and thankfully it continues to fall more and more to the wayside as time goes on. If I can make it to 90 days, it'll be the longest I've ever gone with this particular addiction. It's been extremely challenging, but thankfully is getting less challenging as time has gone on. I've been making good on hanging out with more people, and it's been a rewarding experience! I had a wonderful time with some friends last night where we all gamed and made a fun trip to Walmart.
Supermarkets are a place where I feel comfortable. Not in a way where I'd ever work at one, because I trialed working at one in early 2020 and absolutely hated it. However, I enjoy shopping for cool little foods and treats and in stores where there are more departments, for clothes and electronics. I have fun looking at new gadgets, I enjoy seeing new technology and how it works. I'm fascinated by headphones (at least, the really good ones) and I enjoy headphones that bring out all of the beautiful new sounds that I have not heard before in a song. I want to, when I have the financial means, switch over to lossless streaming full time for this reason. I trialed Tidal and QOBuz over the holidays and I really enjoyed both for different reasons.
I've also been crushed because I've been missing my old best friend. Our friendship ended catastrophically nearly a year ago in February / March of 2023. I don't think I've had a close friendship like that since, and that says a lot because the friendships I have are all deep friendships. I don't enjoy superficial interactions with people, I'm a very intense person in general. The fact that I considered this friendship (and still do consider this friendship) the closest bond I've had with a person emotionally in my life says a lot. There was never any romance involved, and I don't want people reading this to get the wrong idea or to believe I had feelings for this person that went deeper than friendship. Frankly, friendships ending can be more ruinous than relationships ending. People wonder why I get hungup or hold grudges toward people I've never met in person, why I have attachments to folks that have hurt me. I wish it were as simple as just "getting over it", the only thing that can really do that is time. I value each of my friendships deeply, so losing any one of them is a deep loss. Rarely does it go into the traumatic, but boy, do people know how to do it.
I do wish well for this person, I wish them happiness and peace, despite everything that they've put me through. It's the last act of kindness that I can truly give, short of creating a time machine to an alternate reality where I wasn't so head deep into my addiction that I could be there emotionally for this person. Then again, I'm not sure I could have done anything more than I had already done.
I wouldn't actively reject this person if they reached out again, but yet again I don't think I'd ever want to talk to them or see them again. I sit and I think about how much I miss my dear old friend. I'm mad at them for what they've done and will be for quite some time. My feelings are all sorts of conflicted, because there's so much I want to send to them and update them on and tell them about, and yet they've done some things that in my heart, I can never fully forgive. I understand, but don't forgive.
If you've read through this heavy entry, I thank you. I don't really talk too much about these things to folks outside of my personal life, I just figure that people are tired of hearing me talk about what hurts me. My emotions weigh a ton. They're hard to explain, they're an amalgamation of so many different emotions at once.
On the plus side, I do have a lot of ideas for work I want to get done this year - both personal and in the outside world. I have a lot to do, but I hope that things will fall into place nicely!
January 18， ２０２4
Pluto in Aquarius is coming in the next couple of days, and with that brings the promise of technological revolution in some sense. It could also mean the destruction of the internet as we know it, and that worries me quite a bit.
The internet has been incredibly homogenous for the past decade, and has moved toward lack of customization. I absolutely abhor that, because it means lack of personality on websites. A lack of an ability to really be yourself in the one place where you should be able to experience total freedom. I miss MySpace and things of that nature for this reason. Most of my MySpace page has been deleted due to their server errors over the past few years, but there's still flickers of that past I had on other social medias. I also miss the original YouTube for this reason. Back when I started using the platform in 2007, there was a drive to truly broadcast yourself and how you feel. Today, that gets bogged down by a wicked amount of censorship, the battle for ad revenue and money, and as such really axes out a lot of creativity. I do enjoy a fair amount of YouTubers, but very few people on the platform are actually able to broadcast and be themselves. I'm attached to the old web in ways that are hard to put into words.
I hope that with Pluto in Aquarius, the new web that comes from it is less dystopian than it is right now. However, with Pluto in play, things have to destruct first in order for there to be anything that's rebuilt. There's rumors of the internet crashing at some point during this twenty year transit, and although I can see that coming to light, such a reality would be devastating.
On a personal level, in the past year I've felt a drive to connect with people offline if at all possible. However, I find it impossible and downright terrifying to reach out to other people. Very few people understand me on a personal level, and I fear that if I got close to them or even tried to befriend them in some way, they'd outright reject me. I've been rejected for a great deal of my life, and I appreciate anyone who takes the time out to get to know who I truly am. Figuring out who I am has come with major identity crisies over the past few years, and is not without its challenges. I know much more who I am these days, and I'm very confident in the person I've become. But connecting with others is a major challenge. I have a hard time with small talk, I have a hard time putting things into words sometimes.
On a bright note, today marks 6 weeks sober from my behavioral addiction, and I can finally say that parts of that past are loosening its grip on me. I hope that it loosens its grip on me for good. This is the fourth or fifth time I've tried to break this behavioral addiction, and it's not been without its difficulties. This has permeated my life in ways that I'm not comfortable disclosing publicly. Maybe one day when I'm further past it, my story can help other people get to a place where they feel confident that they can break their chains too. Until then, I stand strong, knowing that as I get past something that has had a deep grip on me, I am stronger every day.
January 16， ２０２4
I feel like I'm exploding with daydreams...listening to The Presets and feeling really damn good. I love music that feels like it's melting into my skull, and The Presets make music that feels exactly like that. My long awaited Chemical Brothers t shirt arrived in the mail today! When I recieved it, it was cold and comfortable. I love cold textures. The cold of winter, unless it's subzero or damn near it, feels good on my skin. It's the heat that bothers me, and I more often than not hate the summer. It feels like everything sticks to you, the bugs won't seem to fuck off, and the heat makes everyone irritable. It's snowing a lot outside, and it's my natural habitat. I can't imagine anything else.
Switched over to The Chemical Brothers now, and I'm feeling fantastic. I remember listening to them a little when I was a kid - I really liked Galvanize and Block Rockin' Beats, as well as Escape Velocity - but I got futher into them in 2021 and they've been one of my top artists throughout the past three years on a consistent basis. They're just too incredible not to enjoy!
Lately, I've just been wishing it was the 80s and 90s, sometimes moreso one decade than the other. Today, I've been wishing it was the 80s. What a time of beautiful music and culture. It seems like people were allowed to be their most creative selves without everyone looking and acting homogenously, even in the age of neon captialism. What a web of broken dreams we've made in the world...hoping to keep the neon alive here, however! Spent part of this day listening to synthpop and playing video games. It's a nice time to relax and ease the mind.
January 10， ２０２4
I'm relaxing at home with my cat right now, and that's what I have to offer for the most part. I've been working on finding a treatment group to help with my behavioral addiction - mostly in helping sustain sobriety, which is my goal. I made it to one month on the seventh! It was a wonderful day filled with watching a snow storm.
Some days, I feel the ugliness of my addiction staring me at the back of my head, like that song :Mr. Self Destruct" by Nine Inch Nails - the internal voice telling me "you let me do this to you." It's crushing, but I know that I can move on.
My site is currently tinged with this because it's so hard to talk about non substance addictions with folks. People would look at me like I have five different heads if they knew the whole situation, but thankfully my therapist has been unbelivably supportive and understanding. She's helping me in my journey to find a program, which will boost my mental wellbeing immensely.
I've been occupying my time with watching TV, hanging out with my cat, trying to be with friends. Friendship is the most important thing here, and has been crucial in helping me heal. It's still strange, this new territory, but I'm getting used to it. My fingers are calloused too now from learning guitar, which fills me with a lot of pride. I still don't understand barre chords however. They hurt the fuck out of my hands! However, I hope to understand them one day. I need to learn better strumming patterns.
Not much to share in depth, but that's not bad overall!
January 1， ２０２4
I hope that anyone reading this has had a wonderful holiday season! It's certainly been a turbulent time in my personal life. I've been focused on emotional regulation and spending time with people in my physical life, yet often feeling disconnected from everything. I feel very weird talking to people. I was at a party recently and the extreme sensory overload of several people talking made me want to rip my head off. And I enjoy everyone I was at the party with! There was nothing wrong with any of these people. My senses just get overwhelmed when there's several people discussing things at once, all inebriated, and I simply can't relate to most people there.
I have no idea how to function in most social settings. People, for the most part, feel alien to me. I feel like I can't speak to most people about any of what really goes on in my head. I know that this is incredibly vague, but if I took the time to explain it to folks I feel like most people would understand me less.
In terms of behavioral addiction recovery, the tracking of which is falling more into the background as hobbies have taken over, I'm headed toward a month! I will reach the one month point on the seventh. I wonder how I will feel...the idea of relapse seeps into my mind daily somehow. I take an active effort to stop it. It's what keeps me from falling down.
Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ 23， ２０２３
The thing about an urge is that if you starve it, it dies. That's what I've been trying to do today. I've been triggered since last night and I'm beyond tempted to relapse. I've been doing a lot of breathing, a lot of my affirmations, remembering everything I have to lose if I give into my addiction's urges.
Addiction is a motherfucker, isn't it? The rational self knows everything that it has to lose, yet the vast careening darkness of the mind wants to just be bathed in the amneotic fluid of the use. It warms, holds, and then kicks you out into the fucking world kicking and screaming. I hate these urges. I know that I'm going to be off to my partners' house tomorrow, where I will be busy for the next several days. I'm trying to be patient with myself, as I'm still in the very early stages of recovery. 16 days today.
Gonna try to relax and enjoy the holiday season.
Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ 21， ２０２３
Thinking about Nancy Spungen, a woman who I have been fascinated with for a long while, and how women like her have gotten the short end of the stick. It's truly easy to hate women in the land of rock, and really in general, to most people. If a woman is volatile or struggling with mental health, she's a problem. If a man does the same, he's a rockstar. I can name 5 male rockstars off the top of my head - entire fucking bands - that acted worse than Nancy ever did. And what did she get? Called nauseating and treated as a pariah of the punk scene. The very same thing has happened to Courtney Love throughout her career. While neither of these women have been perfect in the slightest, where's the criticism for men who do the same? Why do we praise one and not the other?
I think you know why.
People like to sleep sound in their hypocrisy, as long as they don't have to think critically about anything that they're putting out. It's anger inducing. It's horrible. But I think that sympathy has come for women like Nancy and Courtney, I think we're reaching a place where we finally understand and can understand women like them without excusing any abusive actions they may have done. It's easy to hate people that are volatile, it's a lot harder to understand them. That's the thing that breaks my heart. We don't have to excuse abuse or anything of the sort, but what we should do is empathize and - I don't know, maybe make mental health care more accessible?
But no. That would make way too much fucking sense. We'd rather blame the women of this world rather than the sick world that birthed the struggles of volatile women. Angels weep at the sight of their pain.
Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ 19， ２０２３
I'm in a lot of physical pain - dental pain, it's not something I'm totally unfamiliar with. I come from a family of bad teeth. At least the shards I have are fairly sharp.
Today's an Elliott Smith day - I've been listening to the song Christian Brothers, connecting a lot with some of the sorrow from this year. My friend passed on in August, his brother passed away not long after that in September due to health issues. I remember first hearing this song the night before I found out about his brother's passsing and staring at the supermoon coming up over the mountains. Something about that moment will always stick with me. It was the first supermoon that I saw after my friends', who died on the Pisces Blue Moon, passing. It's absolutely wrecked me a bit in recent weeks. I hope things like this get easier. Maybe if they don't get easier, I hope the pain gets easier to manage.
The tolerance of pain in life is an interesting thing. Ever notice how, if you focus on pain, it grows more intense until it collapses in on itself and dissipates? I find that fascinating. It's almost like it has a ceiling from which nothing could get any worse, at least in my experience, even if it destroys everything. The slow climb from the bottom is something I've been growing from for almost five years, but my god, am I trying. I know I'm trying. It's all I can do. It's visceral, the strength I gain from rolling this rock up this hill lets me know that I'm alive. I am alive, and I'm strong. It's this strength that will help me tolerate the pain until it collapses in on itself and I can rebuild the pieces.
On an unrelated note, having a website allows me so much freedom that most other websites don't these days. Social media and the internet in general is in a race to see which website will become the most homogenus, and it does nothing but piss me off. I miss the days of MySpace where you could customize your profile to be whatever you wanted it to be. Speaking of which, I do need to update my SpaceHey account...but I need more people on there. The interface tends to crash frequently, plus there's more things that I'd like on that website (such as music functionality that MySpace used to have), but it is the last beacon of customization there is out there. Well, that, Tumblr, and Neocities. Even Tumblr seems to be becoming homogenus, and it pisses me off.
I miss being able to broadcast your truest self online. Nowadays, you're expected to use social media that has decreasing functionality and decreasing customizability. You're telling me that Facebook can add useless bullshit for features every two weeks but you can't give us cool profile layouts or add more music to our profiles? God, I miss 2009.
Even though I was about 11 years old, I lived a lot of my childhood online and I have strong memories of using MySpace pretty consistently from 11-14 until I switched over to Twitter and Facebook full time.
I miss 2007 era YouTube too - you could really do a lot with the profile that you had, and now every third person is trying to be the shittiest version of the influencer that they watch. There's so many rules nowadays and everyone's in it for monetization. It destroys creativity. It's become draconian, and I fear that it'll become more draconian as time goes on. Sigh...creativity is the price we pay for convenience, I suppose.
Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ 18， ２０２３
It's pouring buckets outside, nearly 60 degrees in what should be the dead of winter. This world is disintegrating. Even last year, it was snowier than this. I miss when it would snow heavily like it would in my childhood, but the world is burning faster than anyone could have comprehended.
This is usually my favorite time of year, but I feel less festive than ever. Maybe it's a part of growing older (I hope not), maybe it's a part of global warming (more likely). I'm burdened with hatred toward humanity due to how we treat the Earth and each other, truthfully. Yet, I want to love people deeply. I definitely believe in human progress. However, how everything has turned backward over the past several years breaks my heart. I care deeply about social justice, it's at the core of my being, and seeing the bigotry that permeates just about every space this year breaks me. How can people treat one another the way they do? I want to help make the world better than it is right now, and the progression of humanity involves several small steps by everyone around us. I don't think that one person can totally change the world, but I think changing the world is a collaborative effort.
In terms of recovering from behavioral addiction, I am taking small steps here and there. At least, for now, I've stopped feeling like I'm literally on fire. My job now is to maintain and to focus on the positive - and that's something that requires a lot of effort. I'm optimistic toward others and for others, but toward myself I am a pessimist by nature. Trying to rewire that has been one of the more difficult experiences I've had in this process, but I have to be patient with myself and remind myself that baby steps will get me there.
I'm seeking spiritual peace. Not in the sense that I did before I came to any of the realizations I have in the past few years, but in the sense that I will find peace within myself and to figure out what all of these things mean. 2019-2021 me would pale at this thought, especially because she was working through some rough patches that led to a loss of faith in those years, but I think things are going to be okay in this regard as time goes on. I've definitely done a lot of introspection, and now I want to help other people.
Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ 16， ２０２３
Long time, no update, right? It can be overwhelming designing a new website but at least it is currently functional! I think I need to make several updates to the functionality of the site, especially making it more visually appealing and user friendly.
I've been struggling a lot to overcome behavioral addicton, in particular one that has completely ruined my life. I am and have been restarting from ground zero, and this website is a testament to that. I think it speaks to my strengths as a person that I'm able to recognize the pain in me and how that's harmed others, but to also try to prevent it from harming anyone again. However, every day that I've been in recovery so far has felt like pure psychological torture. So far, today is the only day that hasn't felt like I'm holding hands in hellfire with Satan himself...like is strange, isn't it? The one thing I loved the most is the one thing I've had to give up to survive. I'm definitely survivng, but I'm looking forward to thriving soon. Some new hobbies have emerged in the wake of all of this, coding being one of them. I'm hopeful that the addiction will soon be a part of my distant past, and it certainly doesn't define who I am as a person.
Speaking of "who I am as a person", I have to update / create an about portion of this website today. I'm off to do that. See you guys around!
Ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ ６， ２０２３
This is a strange new world, a strange new beginning. I think when I decided I wanted to begin a Neocities account, I'd envisioned two things: that it was going to look like space and that it was going to be vaporwave inspired. I'm proud to say that I think it has done both so far. I want to add more to this website as time goes on, especially curating it to look better. I'm pretty satisfied with the results so far. Today, I'm off to begin a hypnosis class that I'm extremely psyched for. It's going to be fascinating, and I hope it will be rewarding to my psyche as I journey to break free of an unconventional addiction. I say it's unconventional, but it's taken just as much from my life as any other addiction would and I think with time and practice - and with support - I can do this.