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16/11/24 - me and my best friend (the computer slowly blinding me)

today was a bad day. i went to work and had to stand for most of my shift - it's really busy since we're nearing christmas now - and my feet really hurt. i can't really remember things now that i'm so tired this evening, and i keep having to repeat to myself what i'm doing. it's harder around other people, but i feel like it makes me look like an idiot.

my parents argued this morning because they were fitting a new dishwasher together, so i've been tense all day. they were okay when i got home, but later on they started shouting. my dog came to sit with me because she knows i'll hug her. i hope she knows i love her. i had spaghetti for dinner, alone in my room, and i ended up watching jacksepticeye videos from forever ago to sidetrack me. i felt thirteen again.

when my dad went upstairs, my mum told me he had put his hands around her throat. i didn't know what to do or what to say, and i couldn't move. worst of all, i'm worried i might forget.

she said she's had enough of this, that she wanted to go. so i said "go to grandma's, i can stay home tonight and look after him." but she said "no, go go. as in go forever".

...but nothing ever changes.

i'm so tired from work that i can barely walk up the fucking stairs. one of the symptoms of my illness is my body being stuck in a perpetual 'fight or flight' state, hence why i can't breathe properly and i get so tired. but i just froze when she told me. he's grabbed her before, and i made a huge scene with her last time and said i didn't want to stay in the same house as him that night. but tonight we've sort of just.. acted like nothing happened. fallen back into routine. i thought about cutting myself, but instead i'm writing this post. that's better.

i don't really like my dad. if i met him out in the big wide world, i'd probably think he was a bit of a creep. he has an undefined brain injury, so there's reasons for why he acts the way he does - despite the brain being so complex that the doctors basically say everything is a symptom. but that doesn't make it okay. he hasn't done anything physical in a while; he seems to ebb and flow with his mood swings, but tonight was bad. but i don't have the energy to sit them down and get them to talk about it, nor to help my mum and tell her to leave tonight. so i'm sat in my room, writing this down and telling strangers on the internet about this. i talk more to myself and my computer than anyone else.

on another note, i wish i could go into my stories. i'm very active on toyhouse at the moment, and i've revamped some of my old characters. but tonight made me feel thirteen again, and my fantasy then was to have batman or the scooby doo gang or some other cool characters come look after me. i feel the same tonight. i wish bruce wayne were my father, as embarrassing as that sounds. he's pretty cool. i'd like to be weak and small and provided for, rather on the cusp of feeling something bigger but always held back. what's that quote? "sometimes i wish it would get bad again just to prove it was real."

i think i'll go to sleep imagining someone's watching over me. i feel so ashamed and so lonely, mostly ashamed that i can barely hold today's events in my head without my brain giving up on me. i'll keep my thoughts between me and the screen tonight.

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14/10/24 - happy birthday to me

it's my birthday today, i'm 20. trying not to think about it too hard. my family from further north called to wish me a happy birthday, and my aunt said that she hopes i look after myself and that she was there if i ever wanted to talk. it was really lovely of her, and i haven't seen them all in years. with covid happening and then me getting ill it's been harder to travel - i don't really know how to navigate adulthood or being treated like an adult by my family, but i don't really want to think about it too hard right now. today is a good day and i don't have uni for a little while, so i'm in a good mood. a couple friends from uni texted me, i ate some cake and got some nice presents, and although it's really rainy and wet outside today is a good day <3

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30/09/24 - random thoughts (my bus was late)

my bus went past the hospital today. it always passes by it on the way home, but there was so much traffic that we were stuck there for a while. i could see into the windows to the beds, and it made me feel something. i'm not sure what. i had heart surgery at that hospital when i was little, maybe four years old. i have a long scar down my chest, blobby and uneven in places, ugly with a dent at the bottom where they pulled the drain out. i've seen people call them 'zipper scars' before because it looks like you got unzipped down your chest. i'm not sure if i like it. the scar doesn't make me feel ugly necessarily, but i don't know if it makes me feel pretty. i don't think about it much, so i suppose that's the best outcome.

i listened to 70's slavic music on the way home. i quite like it (these were my favourites). i struggle to remember that the music i listen to and the media i consume are real things, and that real people made them and that i don't exist in a void. i wish i were more culturally aware and had more understanding and knowledge on everything i like - but i suppose everyone does. i smiled at a lady at the bus stop today and we spoke about how we both were a little blind and struggled to see which bus was coming. part of me feels endeared by the connection between strangers, but part of me feels disheartened by the surface-level interaction between most of us in day to day life. i wish i knew everyone, loved everyone, has the confidence to speak my mind and love strangers unrelentingly. but i'm scared and intimidated and too unwell to do that. that's probably the whole point of it all though, i guess.

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23/09/24 - uni (on a rainy day)

went back to uni today. i was home alone before getting the bus, and i completely forgot which one i was getting and freaked out and had to call my mum. my memory really doesn't work at the moment and it's embarrassing and scary and i'm ashamed. i completely forgot which bus i was getting, when my class started, what i was meant to be taking. i'm writing this in a lecture, and i feel so ill. i hate not being cognitively available or physically well. i feel stupid, and it's humiliating.

everyone at uni is nice. i forget that my class are nice. i forget most their names, but they're all kind. i'm lucky enough to have a group i always sit with, and i'm sat beside them right now. i feel cringe for writing about this stuff beside them. i'm scared to open up and lack the confidence to admit what i need, i should probably leave before the lecture ends so i'm well tomorrow, but i'm too nervous to stand up in front of everyone. i feel like such a dumb bitch i swear to god. why am i romanticising my 'feeling shit' when literally no one else i know irl reads this. or online either, i suppose. sometimes i think about doing stupid things just to make things more interesting. but then i forget. maybe that's a blessing.

on a lighter note i bought lots of games over the weekend. project diva, katamari reroll, lots of resident evil games - sega had a sale on steam so a bunch were 75% off. i always buy games and never finish them. i should finish red dead redemption 2 soon. i love arthur morgan. i'm also back in my detroit:become human era, maybe i'll buy it if it's on sale at some point. i love connor. he's so me and i get so embarrassed about the idea of kinning but i really see him in myself. i've been working on a kin page for this site but i haven't finished it yet - hopefully i'll get it up soon.

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20/08/24 - family.

i saw my grandparents for the first time in a month or two. i've been too ill to see them, and i feel so guilty since they're getting older. my great aunt came to visit and it was so good to see her. she's almost 90, but i swear she doesn't age. i feel terrible for not seeing them as much as i should, but i'm really glad i saw my great aunt. i cried on the way home. my great aunt usually makes calendars with pictures of all of us in it, and she always has her camera on her - but today she said she thinks the calendars have come to an end. it feels.... bad. like i'm getting older. but she brought me chocolate like i'm still a kid, and still took lots of pictures of me and the dog. she doesn't change i guess.

i wish i had more eloquent words to describe how i'm feeling, but i also wish my feelings stuck with me longer. i'm so fucking forgetful - i'll forget what even happened today by tomorrow. i feel like i'm missing out even when i'm present. but i took my bag with me that i made, and my grandma and great aunt were really taken by it - and it felt amazing. my grandma liked the colours i used and my great aunt said it was the perfect size for carrying paints in. i hope i remember that.

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01/08/24 - makeup and music.

i did my makeup today. it felt nice. i never wear makeup, and i feel like it makes me less of a girl. i've never liked girly things - i was a tomboy as a kid and i wasn't really in touch with my femininity until recently. anyway, it felt nice doing my makeup and listening to music in my room - even though it's practice to go out in public and wear it for other people. yadda yadda "you are a woman with a man inside watching a woman" yadda yadda. i hate margaret atwood but she fucked with that quote. i don't really know how to look at my face objectively, let alone know what suits my face shape and features, and i feel like i'm kind of really behind in that regard. i feel like i'm lagging behind everyone else my age in general, but that's a topic for another diary entry.

my cds wouldn't burn. i scoured old dead reddit posts for help and nothing seems to be helping to make it work. i think the disks i bought aren't compatible with my cd player (maybe they weren't good enough quality). i have different ones arriving tomorrow, hopefully they'll work. also fuck windows media player legacy all my homies hate windows media player legacy (i'm lying i love her <3)

my mum officially quit her job after everything that's been going on. it feels weird - she won't be working any more, at least not in the same job sector. i feel for her. if she's retired though then she can help me when i go back to uni, which will really help. i'm both nervous and excited to go back to uni, but i'm glad it's still a while away. i went with her to pick up her things, and it felt pretty weird. it's all finished now, at least for her, and i think i'm jealous. i wish i could do nothing sometimes. but that's kind of all i do anyway, so i should probably stop complaining.

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28/07/24 - cds.

i bought a bunch of burnable cds today. i miss when buying something meant it was actually yours. fuck the streaming system monopoly. pirating isn't stealing if buying isn't owning.

i don't know what i plan to put on them yet, maybe my favourite tv shows or songs. i have a cute little dvd player i bought a few years ago, and it was nice to feel it humming under my hand as i plugged it into my laptop. the cursor indicating a cd had been inserted was pixelated and looked fucked up compared to my screen's resolution - i guess windows never bothered to update it.

i miss all the old video tapes from when i was little that are gone now. i miss all the lost media i'll never see again. i feel stupid for wanting to hold onto them but i feel all i do at the moment is scroll the internet archives for the sites i used to frequent. they feel like graves now. i recently discovered flashpoint which archives flash projects, from games to animations to everything else. lots of the games i used to play as a kid were on there, but the compression made me feel old. i feel stupid for wanting to hold onto things like this.

either way, i'll burn something nice onto my cds. maybe i'll decorate the cases and make them look nice. i like the idea of keeping my media as a physical entity, because i'm scared of it all slipping away. i'm so interested in the internet and the online world and everything about digital culture, but the media that shaped all of it is disappearing and embarrassingly enough it scares me a lot. maybe i'll print some nice stickers and decorate the cd cases, and maybe i'll post a picture or two here if i remember.