I didn't hit a low :)

First off, thank you for the DMs and the e-mails & taking the time to contact me on Discord/Facebook/whatnot. I did indeed have a quick manic phase but I did not follow it up with a low despite getting a nasty tummy bug that could've messed up my medication but I think because I'm on every supplement and its mother now due to my blood tests coming back basically looking like...

DEFICIENCY.
DEFICIENCY.
DEFICIENCY.
DEFICIENCY.

...I think that helped in keeping the meds in my system somewhat because while I did have an anxious and low-energy day and a half, I kind of bounced back in the span of 12-14 hours and now I feel... okay, mentally. There's no other word for it. 'Okay' covers it. Don't feel amazing, no. Not incredibly. But okay. It's all good.

Because of the physical recovery from the bug AND getting ready to go back to work (!!) in two weeks or so, I've just basically been doing the necessities, the maintenance and... a whole lot of Crusader Kings II. I'm currently dyeing my hair, just basically getting back into a beauty routine that'll ensure I can be bare-faced at work (not a requirement to be make-up free, I just really can't be arsed on most days, hah) because my skin's gone really weird after the cold weather and rains hit so I'm working on that, I'm working on becoming physically active again, and you know what I'm gonna do today? Book a dentist. Yeah, I know. Terrified, but I'm gonna do it. I need to. Because of the aforementioned deficiencies, I have two teeth that've just, well... crumbled. I need 'em either fixed or removed ASAP.

Sorry for disjointedness; as I said.. the meds do interfere with the rollercoaster in my head but I'm not 100% back to normal, there's still a tiny bit of inability to completely focus so I'm a little all over the place but it's still early-ish, got a whole day to let all the meds kick in without spewing them up... I'll be fine. :) Fresh air should help too.

Give me a few days and I'll be back to being random and babbly. Promise. :3

I have a bedroom!

Now, for someone who's used to, you know... normal standards of living, the announcement that I have a bedroom may come as a "??" but as some of you know, I've spent most of my nights sleeping on a two-seater couch for the past six months or so. Now, I finally have a room devoted to rest & relaxation and while it's not done yet (I'll be installing shelving for storage etc.), I wanted to share it with you in its current state because I've been squealing about it since about 10AM.

The bed's already passed the Feline Bureau of Investigation check & I feel like I might have a fight on my hands as to who the bed actually belongs to. I've had the bed for a while but it's now double-mattressed (thanks to my back issues, I was eligible for an upgrade! o/) and it's so comfy, you guys. Rosa's already dragged beanie onto it (that is, my hat that she for some reason reckons exists only to serve as her bed) so I'd say it's passed the inspection with flying colours. :P I have a lot of ideas how to clutter up the immediate vicinity of the bed (if you know Yours Truly, you'll know simple is never the way to go :P) including draping foliage (plastic, of course -- cats vs plants is a tricky issue) and I've got grand schemes of a whole lavender theme with a hint of morbid and I can't wait for the paychecks to start rolling back in in November because I feel a lot of my disposable income will go into decorative items. You'd be surprised how well you can get by even on disability payments when you're not getting bladdered every day...



You can probably tell that my bedroom isn't exactly gigantic, but... well, I live in social housing so the flat's not massive to begin with, and it's quite enough for me & the girls. Finally, we're getting some form of stability and normality & I'm so happy to finally be able to offer it to them and to myself. Maybe this genuinely is the beginning of a new chapter. And I begin it with an epic bedroom that's exactly how I like it. Squee~! I'm so happy. :)

These wobbles, though

This morning I woke up with an all too familiar feeling: delete everything. Get off social media. Empty my Facebook wall. Why am I even blogging? Gahhhhhhh! Everything sucks, I need to hide, everyone hates me, I'm not good enough, blah blah blah. Absolutely not the first time this has happened -- I have a very fragmented, unstable self-image that causes this to repeat regularly, ranging from what I want to look like to what I want to do or how I want to be viewed (as opposed to how I actually am) -- and it absolutely won't be the last, I'm sure. This phase is pretty much always followed by a major depressive phase that I genuinely hope quetiapine will intercept this time around.

Quite frankly I'm really surprised it took as long as it did for Yours Truly to be diagnosed as borderline because I do this so bloody often & have never made any effort whatsoever to hide it. I think everyone was so fixated on chasing the "typical PMDD rage", mood swings, dissociation due to anxiety, and bipolar diagnosis that they just wilingly ignored what was staring them right in the face: borderline, with what borderline comes with. I still have PMDD but it doesn't just explain away the stuff that's associated with borderline, and while I hate the brand, I also appreciate the team that finally chased it to make it official because the more I've learned about it, the more answers I now have and life is far less confusing.

There was talk of borderline before, but it was never cast as a major character flaw until I tried to off myself three times in the span of two months because my brain was just melting down left, right and centre and I started hallucinating & being delusional and it couldn't be explained away by depression or alleged bipolar or PMDD or anything else except dissociation which goes strongly hand in hand with, you know it: borderline.

On some days I have an almost narcissistic resource of self-adoration & occasionally I place myself a lot higher in importance than other people... not in the form of self-love, but more... raising myself to a goddess-like status. That then flips on its head and I see myself as this hunchbacked monster who no one could ever love, I pick apart my faults in appearance and personality and I just flat out loathe myself, and that in turn is replaced by this uncontrollable anger at everyone and/or myself, and it's just this constant dance of shifting attitudes and eternal splitting, and it's so draining & it's taken a lot for me today to not just delete my blog during a morph to whatever the next step is.

I'm going to step outside for a few hours today just to clear my head and try to manipulate my hormones a bit to (try to) get out of this mindset. I foresee an overhaul in taste & style over the next couple of weeks; it always happens and I'm not sure if any anti-psychotic medication can touch the fluctuating way I do/want to perceive myself & come across to people.

I did manage to groom my Instagram feed a bit before I caught myself being silly, so fingers crossed I'll leave the blog alone. It's sort of silly but during the worst outbursts (which, again, I hope quetiapine will meddle with) I tend to delete all my photos and videos, all my artwork, make new accounts in games to 'start over'. I've been fairly good at keeping photos for the past couple of years, primarily because those photos are important to other people as well (I could never delete the baby pictures of Callisto -- one of my cats who now lives with an ex because she prefers him -- for example because those photos are so important to him. It's not just my feelings that are on the firing line if these things disappear forever, so I do keep that in mind. I did destroy any and all memories of the two 'boyfriends' I've had since I split up with Mooki because there's absolutely no point hanging onto that type of memories & I quite frankly don't want to see their faces.

So you could say I'm finally learning to keep important stuff. Now if only I'd learn not to constantly put a knife on my blog's throat...

Living in Pastel Paradise (soon)

I've spent most of the past week-plus turning my council flat into a pastel hell paradise. The paints I ordered apparently went way over the company's heads (I assume very few rougher-side-of-town dwellers request broken pastels as their overall theme) & I didn't get what I asked for (for example, I asked for mauve for the kitchen and got baby pink, and the exact same shade for the front room so now I have a very pink front room) but in a way it's a blessing in disguise -- what I got was this unicorn pastel daydream selection and I must say I've been having immense amounts of fun turning my flat into a Barbie Dreamland. Since I'm doing this all by myself, it's obviously taking a bit of time because my energy levels could be better, but little by little the horrendous hospital-paint walls (and the acid trip bathroom) are turning into a 4-year-old girl's dream. I love it.

Instead of the subtle hue changes I asked for, they basically just got me two whites, two pinks and two lavender paints and that's it. I'm not complaining, I didn't even try to correct them because this works far better. I'm already super motivated to finish the job so I can start contrasting the baby pastels with gothic detailing -- steampunk guns, skulls, crosses, the like -- and all my gamer clutter, and for the first time in... well, ever... I feel so proud about a place I live in that I might actually invite people over. That's no small statement from me because I loathe having people in my personal space but what's the point in making my surroundings chaotically pretty if no one's coming around to see it?!

Hell, I might even start hosting little tea parties for my friends. Maybe throw a Finnish Christmas party (yes, Christmas, not "Holidays" because I celebrate Christmas, simple as), Independence Day feast (not this year though, this year I'm working on that particular date, yay! -- more on that in a future post, though, once we've dotted all the i's) or some such. We'll see. For now though, I'll go throw the finishing touches to the bedroom and then try to figure out a strategy on how to get a double bed there without taking it apart. I'll have to take it apart, won't I? Ugh...

Get up and function

I've spent the last twenty hours in bed. Not asleep, just in bed, staring at the ceiling. I thought I felt bad immediately after the loss of the kittens but the worst was yet to come... I just shut down yesterday morning. Got nothing done, didn't even write in my journal. I hit a brick wall, got overwhelmed by the slightly delayed feelings and just shut down for the lack of a better word. I'm currently in grief fasting and when I was stocking up on liquids, I won't lie: I went past the alcohol section more than once, just pacing back and forth. Thankfully now that I've been in treatment & had a few relapses, I'm fully aware of how temporary the relief is and how horrible I'd feel afterwards if I leaned on that crutch... and there's absolutely no such thing as "only tonight, only until I feel less sad, only ______". It's a struggle and it'll probably be a lifelong struggle to actually feel my feelings without numbing myself with booze.

I also didn't lean on my anti-anxiety pills because what I was and still am feeling isn't anxiety, it's grief, and there's a huge difference between the two. While I'm sure the anxiety's there, it's silenced by the sadness, and sadness I believe is a healthy emotion. I have to grieve despite or even because of it feeling overwhelming. As Karyn said, I'm sober now and re-learning the feels, but I won't re-learn them if I avoid them or drown them out.

I'm going to allow myself a few more hours of rest & then I'm picking up the paint brush: my landlord finally came through after a long wait and provided me with the paints I was promised a long, long while back. Better late than never, eh?

  • the kitchen will be a darker, crushed lavender.
  • the front/living room accent wall is going to be a dusky pink. Worth noting is that the kitchen & front room walls touch so the colours couldn't clash too badly.
  • the bathroom is going to be a crushed periwinkle.
  • the bedroom accent wall is going to be a warmer lavender.

Yes, you can probably notice the blog layout follows a similar colour chart. It's my thing now, I guess... crushed pastels . I seem to drift from a full-on morbid gothic preference to this girly, baby pastel phase with nothing in between so I suppose eventually my flat will look like a smograsbord of cutesy, dark, death, unicorns, faeries, zombies and wrong. Epic.

The renovation will keep my mind occupied for at least a couple of days. Once I feel like I can deal with the slightly darker themes again without playing trigger-hop, I'm also going back to the world of Witcher. There's so much of the first game alone that I'd completely forgotten about because -- let's face it -- when I played it way back when, I was pretty drunk. Same goes for 2 & 3 as well. There's been a few cutscenes I don't recall ever seeing, slight recollection of other bits and then complete blanks in parts I know I must have played through to actually progress in the game but Hell if I remember. And it's not just Witcher, I feel a similar confusion with Mass Effect & Skyrim as well and if I went back to World of Warcraft... I probably couldn't recall half the sh!t I did when I was pursuing the Loremaster achievement. How I functioned or got anything done in that constant state is beyond me. I'm frankly surprised I'm still alive.

Next week I have a meeting with my outreach worker & also a vet appointment to make sure everything's okay with Maiko... and to discuss resiring her, the potential timetable for that, look at potential sires etc. Yes, I'm still fully aware of the selfishness of that decision and yes, it does make me a massive hypocrite because in the past I've lashed out at people who let their cats fall pregnant but... it's not quite the same, is it?

It's out there as far as idiotic decisions go, I'm sure, but it'll also be a very planned, very wanted project unless it's discovered there is, in fact, something wrong with Maiko from either before the pregnancy, or post-partum. She's recovered fine, the after-bleeding's been absolutely minimal and she eats, goes to the toilet, is playful and sleeps so it's highly unlikely there's any after-effects since the birth itself went great... it's just that the kittens weren't meant to survive. Something was wrong with them, and it could just be one of those things like the vet says, or there might've been something wrong with the dad of the litter, or or or, if if if. It could've been anything and for round two, we'll be approaching it as a project. Hormones, highly calorific diet, constant ultras, absolutely no picking her up (which will be tough for me), et cetera et cetera. I'm not going to just casually assume that because everything seems fine, everything is fine.

Of course, if something even slightly awry turns up in her testing, we're abandoning this project and she will get spayed immediately. Otherwise she'll get spayed (along with the potential kittens) when her litter is weaned. Despite her not even being pregnant, there's already homes for up to six, like I said. I'll be keeping one or two depending on gender, personality etc. I have a pretty mellow duo and I don't really see a rebel-type terminator being happy in the bunch. Of course, with kittens, it's hard to say. Kittens are kittens; no matter what they turn out to be as adults, as babies they're absolute little demons but there's tells. There's certain 'expressions' if you will that hints if the cat is particularly mischievous, and just generally observing a kitten will give you a lot of information about their basic personality.

I'm also going to be focusing on giving Rosa more of a fuss. The poor thing got ignored pretty badly toward the end of Maiko's pregnancy. As you can tell, though, her fur's growing back rather nicely (she has alopecia but allowing her to be outside has lowered her stress-grooming so much that her bald patches have filled back in) but the fur's growing back with a different texture: it's a bit wavy, which gives her a far fluffier appearance. I love it. Thankfully her personality is pretty chill and forgiving so she hasn't really sought out attention in the past week leading up to the birth of the kittens and whether it's me humanising her or something similar (I do tend to do that), I reckon she willingly gave Maiko space and understood why the main focus was on her sissie for a while. She's really mellowed down recently although I'm pretty sure that's to do more with her age (she turned ten this summer) than anything else.

Anyhoop. It's pushing 10AM and there's a few days' worth of cups to wash, broth to brew and walls to paint so I'll hop off for a bit. Will be on Discord or Messenger if I'm needed. Hope everyone's having a decent Sunday (or whatever the day may be when you read this), and please: if you're angry at me about the aforementioned decision, I understand but... please don't scream at me. I am feeling mega fragile right now. We're upping my med dosage tomorrow to help me out a little bit (as quetiapine in higher dosages has a calming effect without actually destroying emotional capacity).

Maybe in couple of weeks' time I'll be able to fight with you on this or try to explain my point of view... but not now. Not yet. Not just yet. Please. Thank you.

Coping (I guess?)

First of all, I think I owe an apology to anyone who read my entry yesterday. I was in a very dark place (can't claim I'm still in a good place but I'm a little bit better today although I think that has more to do with herbal tea and not actually moving on yet), I was angry, I was lashing out. I admit that. But I suppose the point of keeping a blog like this is to have an outlet and sometimes a girl has to vent. Yesterday I vented. Today I'll try not to because today the grief is setting in and I'm just trying to cope with it.

While I accept peoples' opinions and criticism (not with ease, but I do tend to listen to what people have to say; I'm not saying I agree with all of it but I do listen) and I get that pet stuff is always a hair trigger for very strong opinions to emerge, there's a time and a place for everything and yesterday was neither of those. I mean, I lack a major empathy bone but even I wouldn't confront someone on the day something really horrible has happened whether I thought they were at fault or not. Would I do it after a while? You know what, I probably wouldn't because at the end of the day it just isn't my business but if I were to make it my business, I would still give the person a grace period to cope and come to terms with something bad before expressing a negative opinion of them to them. Not cool and completely uncalled for & it's definitely not going to make me change my mind if people try to bully me into something while I'm hurting. That's just mean and you guys know it.

Today's been not so much about moving on, but about laying down the foundation that is required for it. I've taken apart the birthing boxes I put together for Maiko and salvaged what towels I can and slammed them on a boiling hot disinfectant soak while getting rid of everything that was obviously not going to recover from things... a cat giving birth is hella messy business. I don't think it's beneficial to me or Maiko if the flat smells like blood (or if she insists on sleeping in a box that smells like, well... her dead children, to be very blunt about it), and I'm not 100% sure if that smell is actually lingering or if it's in my head. Nonetheless, cleaning up is therapeutic to me and seems to have calmed Maiko down. She is actually sleeping instead of constantly pacing and meowing so I feel I've made the right choice.

With the aid of caffeine I did the general laundry & tidied up a bit, just sort of forcing myself into motion. One could claim I'm trying too hard to push forward but sometimes it's necessary. My emotional triggers aren't something I like to mess with and right now I feel raw & hurt, and that scares me because I don't want even the slightest relapse. Yes, again, I'm being selfish in cleaning up the 'physical evidence' of what's happened and one could even say I'm trying to erase the fact that the kittens were ever there but trust me, the memory of it is so deeply imprinted in my mind that there's no way I'll forget about it. Ever. Maiko might, as that's just nature being nature, but I won't. Because I'm human & believe it or not, I feel human emotions. Granted, not like most people do but the emotions are still there and right now I'm hurting & I would just ask for people to understand and respect that, even if they don't agree with any of this.

Have I made any decisions yet? No. Will I soon? Yeah, over the next couple of weeks, I'm sure. I'm not a 100% in either direction yet & I need time to think and come to terms with whatever decision I end up making, whether it's the one people want me to make or not. I'm not going to give up my dream of having a kitten by Maiko in my clowder simply because people would rather I adopt a kitten from a shelter. If I give up that dream, I give it up because I'm ready to give it up.

Again, I repeat: yes it's a very selfish dream/thing to do, but so was getting pregnant while suffering from a serious mental illness, and I did that twice even if the second one wasn't planned. No one screamed at me when I miscarried either of them and preached about adopting instead, although a (now former, thanks to it) friend did state that I'd probably end up suffocating my children in their sleep or something 'equally psycho'. Do I think I'd make a great mother, on that note? I'd try my best. That's what any mother can do. But, again, was that comment necessary, especially in that situation? Hell no. Freedom of speech doesn't translate to 'hurt a person however much you like by spitting venom at them when they're already suffering'.

I'm not a perfect person. I'm, in fact, a very selfish person & I don't pretend to be anything else. Am I working on my flaws? Sure. But at the end of the day, I am who and what I am.

Yes, these past couple of entries have come from a place of hurt, maybe even confusion, and I'll probably eventually regret posting them, at least a little bit... but it's my blog, I'm putting my life out there & I just don't want to be one of those bloggers who pretends her life is sunshine & roses all the time. If anything, my life is difficult most of the time because of mental challenges alone. Raw emotions are allowed in blogs & I think it's harmful to keep up the charade of a perfect life, perfect family, perfect everything when we all know nobody survives life without getting knocked around. Nobody.

Do my sometimes idiotic choices make my life that much harder? Absolutely! I self-sabotage like an absolute bitch, 100%. Why do you think I'm in therapy, mate? :D

For now, I'm sure the blog won't be a delight to read because my existence right now is not exactly fun. This blog reflects my life at the time of writing entries. It is what it is and maybe one day I'll find the key to eternal happiness & spread the gospel of whatever that key may be, but today is not that day. Today I'm hurt, and I am writing out of that place of pain and confusion. Apologies if it's something you'd rather not read & shame on you if you use it as a weapon against me. Be nice. Please. Even if it's only for now. Thank you.

Faded

For the briefest of moments, my household had kittens. Maiko went into labour last night and delivered her firstborn, Phoenix, at 7:53AM. The second one, Poem, was stillborn. The third, Shiloh, survived for about half an hour but refused to suckle or accept formula and eventually just went to "sleep", and the last one, Lyric -- like Poem -- was stillborn. Phoenix showed promise but started fading at around noon and despite intervening, there was nothing I could do.

As far as I'm aware, this was Maiko's first litter. The birth went just fine, there were no delays, no complications, and she tried to nurse every kitten, took care of the placentas, cut the umbilical cords. She was a natural mama even to the kittens that only physically entered this world but were never 'there'. She did everything right, and I'd like to claim that I did everything right as well because I've done this bloody thing before with orphaned cats, but the vet's comment on it was that it's... just one of those things with cats. Entire litters fade. Entire litters are stillborn or miscarried for no apparent reason. It sounds so cruel. Just one of those things. But that's what it is.

There have been messages asking what my next step is and honestly, I don't know. There's been requests for Maiko's kittens and even a few messages since I lost this litter (and that's only about an hour or so ago that the last baby faded, so I'm not very impressed with people right now) asking if I intend to breed her again and my answer has been a (rude, I'm sure) No? I don't know? Don't ask me this now. I had everything prepared for kittens. I was ready to keep them all if need be, no problem, although I had homes lined up for up to six. I had amazing mental images of little kittens running around the Christmas tree, all that bullshit, and what do I have now? A kittenless dam crying and looking for her kittens and I feel so horrendous that it pretty much is on the same line as my own miscarriages, only I have to observe someone/something else going through it.

And I know I shouldn't humanise my cats and once the hormones settle she'll probably forget she ever had them but right now she is... lost. I'm lost. We're just stuck. Stuck comforting each other. Stuck without the squeaky bundles of pain in the ass, but I wanted those pains in the ass. Maiko wanted those pains in the ass. This is unfair and if you saw Maiko right now, you'd believe without a shadow of a doubt that she is mourning her loss. No question.

It's been a countdown to nothing. Shopping for nothing. Looking into extending my insurance, into arranging for the vet I wanted for them, special foods, special care, not even picking mama up for two months, everything for nothing. For the sheer pleasure of burying four newborn kittens. I'm not sure if I'm angry or if I'm sad or if I'm both. There was even a split second when I felt relief. Relief. For a split second I felt an emotion only a genuinely evil person would feel when they have four dead kittens in a box. And then it turned into this mesh of negative, violent emotions of regret, self-hatred, more anger, more grief, and just plain hatred toward not only my own split-second emotion that blipped out as quick as it blipped in, but also toward the people who I'll talk about in the next paragraph. Whoosh.

Of course there's the lot who just couldn't wait to blame me. Yes, I'm fully aware this is my own fault, do you really think I don't realise that? It's my doing she was pregnant, and I chose to keep the kittens (there's always an option to terminate but good luck getting me to ever sign up for that) so it's my fault she's going through this now. I. Am. Aware. I was selfish, yes. Did I go through with it because I liked the idea? Yes. Was I irresponsible? No. That I will not accept. From day one there were arrangements, systems in place, plans. At no point did I throw my hands in the air and brush it off as a minor thing that this was about to happen (and ultimately ended very horribly); I knew what I was getting into and yes, I put Maiko through a pregnancy and the heartbreak of loss. That's on me. But I won't be accused of being irresponsible, not now and not if I decide to breed her one more time before a permanent spaying. That's my choice, if that is the choice I end up making.

"But Noo, why would you breed her? That's so unnecessary!" Yes, it is. It is. 100%. But this is also Maiko, and there is a very selfish part of me that wants any additions to my lot to be her babies because she is hands down the best-behaved, loving, amazing, gorgeous and social cat I've ever encountered. Extremely selfish or not, I want a chance to have a cat or cats with those characteristics when I add to my clowder, if I add to my clowder.

Right now I don't know what the best solution is, I don't know what I want to do. Right now I don't even want to see a picture of a random kitten because it makes me burst into tears and I see Maiko in her current state and I feel horrendous guilt and my heart breaks for her, and for myself too. Would breeding her be ideal? No. Absolutely not. No. I know that. Would it be selfish? Absolutely. But I still don't know. Don't ask me now. Now I just want to grieve.


//Edited to add: in case you want actual -evidence- (dear Jesus, people, what?) that there was indeed a litter of kittens born this morning, I took photos. Why? I didn't exactly expect them all to -die-. Knock yourself out, right out of my reader list if you actually require evidence of a very traumatic experience. And yes, I'm very sad and very angry right now. Can you actually blame me?

No, scratch that. Some of you probably actually can.