ysobel: Charles Xavier, fingers at temple, doing his Inside The Mind thing (xmfc - charles)
This is kind of stupid, but

I'm watching a movie with James Macavoy

and getting super nostalgic about, like, early xmfc fandom and all the feels and stuff

and, like, I can't get back to that -- for one thing the follow up movies, half of which I haven't even seen, changed the landscape of the fandom; for another, there isn't the same enthusiasm that there was; for a third I can't fucking write any more -- and it just

I can't tell how much of my heartache right now is because of the Doomed Romance Of Charles And Erik (and how very pretty James looks when his character is Having Feelings) and how much is because I used to be so much better
ysobel: Artwork of a curled-up stick figure trying to stave off crushing darkness (depression)
Ugh.

Too much shit going down right now.

CW: pet death (not mine)

Read more... )

and on top of all the aide shit (for those not on my access list, short version = getting into a screaming fight sunday that included lies and gaslighting and emotional manipulation (incl textbook DARVO) on my aide's part, subsequently firing said aide and changing locks and dealing with emotional rollercoaster aftereffects) I'm just

a complete mess

(understatement)
ysobel: (Default)
depression very high right now. smothered in a blanket of lead and ice.

sorry i haven't kept up with reading / commenting -- i love you guys, i just am sucky friend right now.

...sorry.

otoh, I managed to actually write -- not much, just a snippet, because Arrival is burrowing into my brain -- spoilers for The Arrival ) -- which i'm pretty sure is the most writing i've done all year. woo?
ysobel: A bunny (bunny comics) in the dotted-line red-x-in-corner broken-image style (404 not found)
For some reason I am feeling really ... small and pathetic and useless right now. Very much a Thing and not a Person.

I don't even know what would help.
ysobel: A bunny (bunny comics) in the dotted-line red-x-in-corner broken-image style (404 not found)
finger/hand problems not going away

⇒ hurts to use mouse for longer than 30 secs at time (either hand)

⇒ can't play games that require mouse, unless there is no requirement for real-time response (so e.g. these are okay b/c untimed, also offer mouseless play; bejeweled blitz is bad b/c timed)

⇒ MMOs (wow, swtor, gw2)impossible

⇒ i just canceled wow sub (which i'd kept going because i'd go back Any Day Now). other two are on ftp status. none of the clients are up to date.

i want to cry.

i feel like i am disappearing piece by piece

soon there will be nothing left
ysobel: A bunny (bunny comics) in the dotted-line red-x-in-corner broken-image style (404 not found)
So I had been super proud of myself for maintaining my duo streak even with nano

(455 days)

(Which ran from the beginning of when I started duo, with four skips that were covers by the streak protection thing you can "buy" to cover a single day of inactivity)

Went to bed last night and totally crashed. Couldn't keep my eyes open at all -- and this was at like 9pm, when I usually get to sleep more like 11 -- so I listened to an audiobook until I stopped tracking it, and then slept.

Woke up just now (1am) and realized that I hadn't done duo. Went ack, and went in to do an easy lesson -- I am a boy, the man eats an apple -- because the usual thing would take too much braining (plus I can't see the left half of the keyboard because blanket, and touch typing is less possible on a touchscreen keyboard, so I'm typoing like hell) and I figured doing it now would make sure the streak protection kicked in.

Except I apparently hadn't done it the day before either.

So I am now on a one day streak.

On the one hand, I knew I couldn't keep it up forever. And 455 is something to be damn proud of. And I know I should be seeing the long success instead of the two days of failure: know I should be saying "well I just have to go longer the next time."

On the other, some of what was keeping me doing it daily was the streak itself, and I don't have that, and I don't think I can do it again. Fifteen months is a long time. And every time I see the streak length now, it'll just be a reminder of how I fucked up. Again. Because it feels like I always do.

(ETA and the mom voice in my head is saying that the thing I picked out as my reward for surviving November (and doing so well at nano, but I promised myself something for just getting through the month regardless of what happened with the writing) is now forfeit because of this. That something to reward good behavior does not go to people who mess up this badly. I am fighting that voice but it is … hard. Because my brain is apparently a minefield.)
ysobel: (Default)
CW: griefy babble, incoherence, iPad autocorrect errors

I have to preface this by saying that I am not crying yet, but once I start my eyesight will get horribly blurry and I can't promise to make any sort of sense. But I had to say something because I think I'd implode otherwise.

Trigger the first: writing the sort of autobiographical memory dump blog, which is one of my nano projects, has raised some (not unexpected) emotions, because reasons. Because I can remember how optimistically naive I was back during the early stages of knowing I had FOP. (I remember a conversation my mom was having with someone about how the end result of FOP was basically turning into a human statue with just finger movement left, and that horrified me until they said it was just in the worst cases and so I basically shrugged it off with "that isn't going to be me." I remember several situations of thinking that okay this whole FOP thing was inconvenient but I could handle it. I remember thinking, and voicing with complete honesty, the opinion that it could even be a good thing, because it limited the "you can do anything with your life" to cut out, say, marathon running or whatever, and at that point I had more possibilities than I knew what to do with.). And because it reminds me of things I used to do. Used to be able to do.

Trigger the second: in one of my other online fora, someone posted a giveaway offer for a cross-stitch kit that, twenty years ago, I would have snapped up in a flash.

I started cross-stitch sort of as a "because my big sister was doing it" thing, but I got seriously hooked, and it was one of my sanity savers during college. I tended to go for the more realistic ones, often with either nature themes (especially animals) or fantasy themes. And I was ... obsessed. I would go to Michaels every chance I got, looking through what they had, whether or not I was planning on buying anything. Aisles of cross-stitch kits, from the small and kitschy to the large and detailed. I tended to go for the kits rather than solo patterns because the materials were all there -- especially since this was pre-internet, so ordering the right color thread online was not possible.

I don't know how many I actually finished, but it wasn't about finishing. It was about doing. About creating art, and about the meditative rhythm of pulling embroidery thread through fabric.

And I can't do it any more.

I can't do any of it. I can't separate the plies of embroidery thread; I can't thread a needle; I can hold on to a frame, but not in such a way that my other hand can reach the canvas to put the needle in the right place; I can't pull my arm away to draw the thread through; I can't ... I just can't.

And it hurts like someone has reached into my chest and yanked out my heart.

I've lost a lot of things. Some I don't really miss because I have alternatives (I don't really care that I can't walk; my wheelchair takes me where I need to go). Some are frustrating (going to the bathroom myself, getting in and out of bed myself, being able to drive myself places, feeding myself) and infuriating but they don't hurt, they just irritate. Some are dull aches that I've filled with other alternatives (I miss playing the violin, but I can still listen to stuff, and I still have music with my singing; I miss knitting, but I can still do it awkwardly and I have crochet and loom knitting to fill the yarn-play gap).

Losing xstitch hurts, and it doesn't stop hurting, and there aren't alternatives.

I mean, technically, yes, I could use Tunisian simple stitch to make a fabric that I could do large-scale cross-stitch on, but that's not the sort of thing that I miss, because it would either be super simple (I went more for the more realistic looking stuff, not the "blocky arrangement that sort of looks like a bird if you squint) or so large that I wouldn't be able to manage it.

And it doesn't help with the things that I have as cross-stitch kits that I would give pretty much anything to be able to make.

I knew that xstitch got harder as you got older, because of eyesight changes. But that can be adapted for with bright light and magnification. Immobility can't.

I want my xstitch back. I want it so badly I can't even cry; it just bottles up in my throat. I want it so much that the words I've written here aren't enough to either convey the depth of my need or to relieve the pain.

I want it back, and I'm *never going to be able to do if ever again*,

And every time I think about if, every time I see the sort of xstitch I'd have been attracted to, every time I see one of the boxes of half-finished xstitch projects shoved in my closet that I really ought to get rid of but can't bear to, it's like getting stabbed all over again.
ysobel: (Default)
A summary of my life over the last few months: Stuff sucked, more than usual )

I've spoken about the above things, although I can't remember how much was posted here, how much to Facebook, how much in other places online, etc. The next bit, though, is new.

State of the ysa now )
ysobel: Pink bunny (bunny comics), head cut open, completely hollow (no brain today)
once upon a time, I knew how to write

how to story

...which isn't quite true because so much of the time it didn't feel like me writing a story, so much as the story writing through me

somewhere along the line I

(lost confidence?)
(put too much pressure on myself?)
(or on writing as the last Legit Thing I could be able to do?)

lost

the ability to Words

to Story

and sometimes I tell myself that all things are transitory

that this dry spell won't last forever

but

sometimes

especially lying in bed at night

sometimes I think that I'll never get it back

and that hurts way

too

much
ysobel: (self esteem)
This is not an easy entry to write.

I'm not sure that I have the courage to post it.

(If you see this, obviously I did. If you don't, well, you won't see this anyway.)

#

I sometimes grumble about how the System is set up to discourage me from having a job. It's not wrong: the benefits I get are need-based, but the gap between the maximum allowed income (very low) and the income I would need to make up for the missed benefits (rather higher) is significant.

It was kind of a relief, in a way, because I wasn't able to find a job -- a combination of being female, being disabled, being naive as fuck, being shy, being honest to the point of undervaluing myself and my achievements, being a wet-behind-the-ears graduate with no real work experience, and hitting an oversaturated job market. So having an excuse for being unemployed helped.

But the fact is that I don't have a job, in a society that defines us by jobs ("what do you want to be when you grow up?" for kids, "so what do you do for a living"/"where are you working?" for adults). In a society that sees people without a job as a Burden On Society.

I don't know when I internalized this.

Not about anyone else. Just me. I don't have any way to define myself. I don't do anything. I don't contribute. I am not a Useful Member Of Society.;

I am, but I've forgotten how to believe it.

#

I've also forgotten how to /want/. How to be passionate about something. How to have goals.

(where do you see yourself in five years?)

It used to be that I would have dreams. Ambitions. Things I was going to do.

(about where i am now)

And then I started Getting Realistic. Curbing the dreams that were sky-high; aiming for ones that I could plausibly attain. And without me noticing, the threshold got lower and lower, the reasons Why Not came more readily, and then I stopped even trying.

(nowhere)

#

I.

I want.

I want to learn more languages than is remotely possible. German and Spanish and Russian and Bulgarian and Hebrew and Danish and Polish and Finnish and Japanese and Latin and Greek and and and I can't even think of what else

(except I'm horrible at teaching myself a language and local universities don't have a lot of what I want and the ones I do want tend to be full of actual proper students and also occurring at 8am or 9am and anyway I don't know that I would be up to the physical tasks involved in taking a class)

and I want to be a translator for sff stories

(but that requires knowing other languages, which I don't, and also requires having translation talent, and also requires knowing people in the appropriate field, it's not like just anyone can walk in from the street and translate stuff all official-like)

and I want to be a Blogger

(except I can't think of a topic, or more precisely can't decide on a topic since there's disability stuff and knitting stuff and writing stuff and whatever else and I can't ever settle on one and anyway no one would care what I write there are enough bloggers anyway I wouldn't have anything unique to say)

and I want to get writing published

(except that I don't write, and even if I did there's the whole revision and polishing and critiquing and sending in for submission and, for novel length stuff, getting an agent and getting an editor and getting publicity and whateverthehell else, which is terrifying in its own right but very moot since /I don't write/ and can't write and haven't written in ages and don't think I can any more and can't come up with ideas)

#

and I'm scared. scared of trying. scared of failing; scared of not failing; scared of succeeding; scared of creating mediocrity. scared of disappointing other people, of disappointing myself. scared of being laughed at. scared of you-should-have-known-better.

scared of myself.

scared of hope.

#

I probably shouldn't post this. Especially because it's just more whiny self-pitying drivel. shutupshutupshutup.
ysobel: (Default)
When I was a kid, I was normal.

No, scratch that; I wasn't really. I loved books, I loved school, I loved math, I loved science, I loved languages, I loved fantasy. And I was far from the perfect kid; I was painfully shy and quiet, I was a complete and utter overachiever, I was resentful of my older sister for being allowed more freedom and more fun stuff, I was a brat at times, I had a messy room that I never managed to get fully organized ever ... but I was for the most part normal. Whatever 'normal' is.

And then came junior high, and high school. this got long. and kind of depressing. )

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ysobel: (Default)
masquerading as a man with a reason

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