021923

So. update.

Remember how I've been saying, repeatedly, that it feels like a truck has been running me over for a few weeks now? Well, they fired that guy, and sent in a flippin' steamroller.
Thank God I have an RT mom. She came with us to our most recent PCP appointment and peppered the guy with bloodwork requests, things that she suspected but that no one had tested for-- in truth, I hadn't been tested for anything with my symptoms since before the hospital stay, with everyone just assuming "oh it's malnutrition" or "oh it's long COVID" or "oh it's your mental illness."
Bloodwork says nope, it's more than that.
INEXPLICABLY, our body has somehow picked up EPB.
HOW. Was this from choir? From church? When are we EVER in close quarters with people??
Either way it's not worth obsessing over. Our body is very sick and so we've been just coping for like... this entire month, really. The test was on the 9th; as of this entry that update is just a nonelaborated blurb so we'll have to polish it up soon. Get something in this archive for the current time period.

We've been running a fever today. We never take meds but we've been actually sipping Tylenol just to keep it down; according to mum we are infamous for running stubborn high fevers (and what we do remember of childhood illness was awful enough to not want to risk it anyway). Terrible sinus congestion since yesterday, along with "sour" body aches and clammy chills. Fatigue keeps getting worse and it's honestly hard to breathe; we feel constantly winded. Sometimes even talking leaves us gasping for air. Lungs are sore. Eyes burn. Joints keep popping, ears keep ringing, we've got on-and-off headaches and stomachaches. But the worst part is feeling like our nasal cavities are full of alcohol-soaked cotton, geez louise. It's either irritation or the dry air, but not only is it stuffed up it stings. So sleep last night was a special sort of hell. Amusingly, though, it finally gave a purpose to that extra "puffy" pillow we bought when we first moved in-- it's too big to sleep on at night, but when we need our head propped up to breathe, it does the job! Nevertheless, we're considering sleeping on the couch tonight if it gets bad again.

Silver lining: we've been marathoning Ghibli films, haha. Today we watched Only Yesterday and When Marnie Was There. To be honest I almost quit watching Only Yesterday TWICE due to being very disturbed by some content (and it's a "slice of life" film; our psyche is just busted). But you know me, I always have to give things the benefit of the doubt. So I sat through it and by the end I was genuinely happy with it. I love how naturally the characters were animated, especially the faces! Gosh it was so refreshing to see such spontaneity and candor portrayed so accurately. And the scenery was gorgeous. Still, everything to do with Taeko's childhood rattled us, I have to admit, as strange as that sounds. We cannot relate to ANY of it, just as we couldn't relate to The Cat Returns or Whisper Of The Heart or even Marnie. We just... never can understand. We never experienced such things. We never had neighbors or extended family or friends or even a school life. Don't get me wrong, we don't care-- we never did want those things, and still don't-- but... lately we feel so broken and wrong BECAUSE we didn't have an "average, normal, common life." Like we're inherently corrupt because we literally cannot empathize with the apparently typical human experience in that regard.
On a similar note, as for Marnie-- I literally cried, it took me completely by surprise but my heart was aching watching these two young girls. It woke up some very old, very bruised, very hidden part of our psyche, something just as tender and lonely as what we saw on screen.

...Listen, I still have no bloody idea what's going on with our Core situation, but I do know two things: first, we can never go back to who we were during OR before the CNC tragedy. Second, we can never go back to who we were AFTER it, as that "self" was a direct consequence of that tragedy. We're over SEVEN BLOODY YEARS OUT of having a real "Core" and God knows better than anyone how horrifying this is. Like literal horror. It's existentially awful. I pray about it constantly, almost hysterically.
...More than anything else, I/we want to be a good Christian. Whatever that means in the details, so be it, and God give us the grace please.
But... deep down there is a significant part of us who IS female, who IS young, and who likes girls. Just like in the movie.
It's... healing us, really. That disgusting misogynistic rant we had last month has been haunting us since, with sharp regret and self-loathing, yet we can't "erase it" because we need to admit that THAT is in our psyche, like it or not. It must be fixed, so it can't be ignored or denied. But, Marnie woke up a different part of our psyche, one in direct opposition to the Penitent one, and it's unreal how BOTH can exist in total isolatory honesty but hey, that's DID for you. The goal is to un-isolate them, to get the pure and honest love of that young girl in us to overpower and overwrite whoever the heck was spitting nails and weeping magma over how scared they were of that very gender.

...Religious turmoil is ongoing, especially in this respect.
We've cried in sheer panic to God over this. We've never "felt like a girl." We've never even been feminine. We HAVE spotty memories of being like 13 and hating the fact that we now had to "dress up" even more than we had to for pageants and plays as a tyke. We remember wearing that dress for elementary graduation and being mortified, literally wishing we could have worn a suit like the boys. But that's all old news.
The point is, we've internalized this obsessive fear that "God wants us to be a perfect girl, prim and proper, feminine and womanly, OR WE'LL GO TO HELL." It's starkly, garishly binary. Black and white, this or that. No greyscale, no variations. Either you're a MAN or you're a WOMAN because "that's how God made things" and if you're different, then you're damned.
We... we don't know what to do with this. Yeah, this body is female, and we cannot change that, but we're not a woman. We CAN'T be. It would be DISHONEST TO OUR SOUL. Does... does that mean we are going to hell? Are we that inherently twisted and irredeemable? Is that why God is letting us get so sick? Does he want to kill us for being queer?
This haunts us nonstop, minute to minute. We're so afraid that God is waiting to strike us dead solely because we're not cis or straight and WE'VE TRIED TO BE, God knows better than anyone how hard we have forced ourself into that mold over and over only to end up having psychotic breaks when it gets too far.
We still feel so, so bad that Oliver was at the receiving end of that, although that relationship was admittedly toxic on both fronts. Still, they didn't deserve to be the victim of our fugue idiocy. We shifted hard when we moved back in with the birth family-- literally threw our heart out on the curb, and sank ourself like a lead boot into the "perfect girl" pattern our immediate environment demanded. No wonder we "ghosted" them-- we had become a ghost, for all intents and purposes.
...Man, we really screwed up a lot of peoples lives, huh. Lord forgive us, we're such a bloody mess. What do we even do at this point?
We're almost 33. Jesus died at this age. Part of us still hopes we do, too, 13 years after we expected to kick the bucket the first time. Who knows. We're just... so tired of this life. So tired of not knowing how to be good, so tired of the gut-wrenching losses, so tired of trying to build everything up again from the bloody dust only to have God Himself crush it into splinters over and over again. What do You want? What are You trying to tell us? Is it really all garbage? How do we worship You properly, when honestly I don't feel we're seeing You correctly at all?

...Nothing else matters at this point. Just our faith. And we're so tired.
Half of it still feels like a ruse, a playact. It shouldn't. But there's ironically so much "performance" tied to our religion. There's an "image" you have to fit. Don't think we haven't seen the looks we get, walking into church with our spiked-up hair and pink sunglasses and indeterminate gender. We don't "belong there." Except we do. Except I'm scared that we only "belong" in order to be shoved into the mold and "fixed."


Other little notes on life lately, as chronology has been batted to pieces with this illness...
- Mom gave us raw honey and two lemons today, for our sore throat. She also gave us a genuine spontaneous hug in the parking lot. It meant a great deal. We really do love her.
- Jade is... not doing well. She is actively homicidal and I have heard her speak of me as an object, not a person, in stark contrast to anyone else. Her hatred is ghastly and we're all afraid of how far she'll go with it at this point.
- Fell asleep saying the rosary twice this week, haha. We're slowly trying to "reclaim" it still, from childhood trauma. I don't know if I ever told you guys, but... we have this aquamarine rosary, themed after "Mary Star of the Sea," that we keep under our pillow in a silver box. I got it specifically for Chaos 0 a few years ago, "in lieu of an engagement ring," haha. Seriously though. So we've been quietly praying on it at night when my unfortunate "resistant anger kickback" doesn't prevent it. Like literally some part of our brain is AFRAID of praying it, probably because it was used as explicit punishment when we were little. But, like I said, reclaiming. Using our images and music helps a lot.
- We swapped out our protein source again, from chicken to liquid egg whites, and... all of a sudden. EATING DOESN'T HURT. That literally astounded me. No nausea, no vomiting, no stomach aches, no reflux, no stabbing pains, no bloating, nothing! This is amazing, haha. What the heck. Our mum and nutritionist are worried about our "limited diet" and keep trying to push "adventurous" things on us but nope, no thank you, we are enjoying the fact that we can FINALLY EAT WITHOUT PAIN. Thank God, honestly. The only thing that does make us feel kinda funky yet is the oat bran in the evenings-- but that might be from the bit of milk we put in. Tomorrow we'll try it without, and if we still get problems, then we'll swap that out too. Gonna pick up some AllBran again tomorrow just in case, plus ACV &  bone broth & more lemons for this illness, Tylenol if we have cash, and maybe some olive oil. We really want to go to church too, but don't want to get other people sick. OLOMC has a decently spaced nave though, and most folks stand in the back. So we'll see.
- Local mental health support group on Thursday!! We have to write about that, what we remember.

All right it's after 11pm and honestly although I'd like to type more, I'm just a "stand-in" so I can't type about anything substantial. That's kind of how we've been running lately. Half sickness, half existential fear.
This body needs sleep though, and I can't talk about love or dreams or anything because I have no access to Core data. We feel "afraid" to tap into that, and it's been such a time of despair that we aren't even trying to "find their face" OR their name anymore. Still that lingering "when we die, none of this is going to matter, so why even bother" feeling. Painting everything a bleak colorless haze. It's gonna kill us if we aren't careful.

Lent is this Wednesday. No more DVDs, so we gotta watch the last two tomorrow (Princess Mononoke & Castle in the Sky, finally) and then for the fattest of Tuesdays we'll just have even more olive oil than usual, haha.

Geez it's scary how much fear is CONSTANTLY buzzing beneath the floorboards of our brain. It's like a furnace that never turns off. Someday something's gonna catch fire and then we'll all be in big trouble. What are we so afraid of anyway? Does it all really boil down to religion? Maybe we should talk to a priest.

Anyway. Like I said. If I stay on here the brain will shift into typing mode and we won't be able to go to bed, and this body needs rest to recover (our WBC count is still low). Plus I'm just babbling now; it's all I can do really. I apologize. Still, at least I wrote something!

Have a good night everyone. I hope this poor body has a better one than yesterday. God bless all of us. See you later.