I got rattled and stopped the last entry with no real closure.
Summation of last entry:
- We thought grandma (living with us) was getting dementia but it may just be that she’s been so neglected and kept walking on egg shells that she’s terrified of making any decision herself (think hyper timidity.) That and she’s essentially trapped here waiting on them to take her places and she’s so stir crazy that she’s batshit paranoid.
- They brought in a new kitten and act enslaved to it. Their answer to everything wrong that the cat is doing is to blame everything and everyone but the cat. They won’t even sleep in their own bed because that’s when the cat wants to play and they can’t tell him no. They’ve even installed a 400$ door in the house to help wall off the other older “problem cats” despite it being their precious baby attacking the bigger ones (aggressively, this is far beyond playing.)
- My step dad (SD) of like seventeen years or some shit has started making it abundantly clear that he’s an absolute shitbag. He has accused me of going therapist to therapist shopping for an autism diagnosis, being a malignant narcissist, mocked me when ADHD was added, started “subtly” attempting to misgender me in my presence like I’m supposed to feel emasculated by it or some shit, and, now that there are four people in the house willing to compare notes with each other, it’s coming to light that he’s saying different things to different people and filling everyone with resentment for one another. I also brought up disgusting shit he’s said and done outside of this household that’s unrelated to us directly.
Wrapping Up the Bad Stuff™
I was emphasizing how he seems to get this weird satisfaction from reveling in other people being in some kind of misery last time but I got too frazzled and may have lost the plot. Recently, as I am in EMDR therapy now for PTSD, I was talking openly about my encounter with a pedophile when I was in the 11yo ballpark. It was my raison of a great uncle. He came in our house while dad was on the porch, wandered over, poured coffee, and then gave me a bear hug and started trying to put his tongue in my mouth while holding me against him. I thought it was weird and he had put whiskey in his coffee or some shit so I let it go the first time, but it happened again and I immediately reported it to dad, who had always been a ‘kill the pedophile’ kind of preacher. What happened? He had a ‘talking to’ with him and then told mom and I to hide when he came around. And boy did he come around, even when dad wasn’t there. All that to say…
I explained that openly and said, with full authenticity, that the actual act has never bothered me much (aside from wishing I didn’t know what the fucker’s tongue tasted like) but that it was the handling of it, the dad part, that I will never forget or forgive. SD’s response? Tell me I’ll probably be surprised and insinuate I must have felt A, B, or C when I did not. Not even close. I’ve had about 23 years to ruminate on it and I was very clear of mind at the time it happened.
I guess if I don’t feel bothered by it, he can’t be all white knighty and comfort me about it, and that’s a problem.
He’s also, after shitting all over the diagnosis behind my back, taken to playing a song about being autistic/neurodiverse (Shinedown’s A Symptom of Being Human) in his frequent rotation. He showed it to me immediately after the family sit-down where he said my collapsing mental state made him feel better about my diagnosis. Do with that what you will.
On how my mom is taking everything, when I absolutely erupted about it and talked for like forty minutes straight, she essentially dissociated for the bulk of it while still listening. She talked more toward the end. My partner and I have been noticing her being much more short with him when he makes ignorant comments, however, and criticizing some of the odd things he does to swoop in and be “helpful.” Lol, like my partner literally checked the breaker when we were having electrical issues and he overheard us talking about it and rushed in to check it himself, only to, well, see the exact same thing my partner did and accomplish nothing.
Oh hey that reminds me… the electrical issue… A recent exhibit of the collective stupidity here:
Right after we installed the rolling dungeon door, the lights in the living room started flickering (or flickering worse if they were already.) Like just… very noticeably flickering with wild abandon. My instinct is electrical issues = serious but I have little experience with them. I would have turned the lights off that were flickering at the very least and checked them occasionally until an electrician could visit. My partner, however, when we went through the living room to go to bed, he stopped just inside the garage and started asking me/himself/the universe questions in a mounting panic, like ‘why are they leaving it on, they said that isn’t even a light they usually leave on!’ ‘what if we drilled through some cable in the wall when we installed the door and nicked it just enough and now it’s sitting there sparking and getting worse?’ ‘do we even have fire alarms anywhere?’
He tried to stop me from going back in to ask because ‘what if I’m overreacting’ but after everything that’s come to light, I don’t trust my folks to do a damn thing right if it involves adult responsibility.
Good call. I toyed with a few things to see if the lights would get worse or change at all, like rolling the door to see if the vibrations would shake the cables in the wall or whatever. It was mainly to display concern and get mom talking. Got her to turn the light off. Asked about fire alarms. Ha. Ha ha.
No. We didn’t have a single alarm. We did, but they got taken down. Why? …they were beeping. They needed batteries. Plain ass triple As. …which we had at that moment.
The gave I looked.
The previous owners had expanded this house across several lots so while it isn’t necessarily huge, it is spread out long and weird and, if up to code, it likely needs like three or four damn alarms, not none.
By the way, the electrician did come. He didn’t even need a tool to find the problem; one of the light switches in the living room was live sparking and he found it because the WALL WAS HOT to his BARE HAND. It was right by where everyone but my grandma sleeps. Now there’s two batteriless alarms on the counter … for some reason … lmao. I hate everything. They’ve been sitting there for two days now.
Meanwhile, I’ve not had my ADHD medication for a month because the psychiatrist told me to call them for a refill, but the website has it greyed out and says to contact my prescriber. I’m not calling them. She already put in the June prescription, I’m just going to wait it out. So I’ve been reeling from not having the medicine that works best for me while also attempting sobriety (haven’t faltered since I started like a month ago. The plan is to treat it like a special occasion if I am to have an edible, something I pick a day for and schedule, not have every night before bed.) This was apparently very much not the time to attempt sobriety.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how SD is such an insecure little man baby that he tried to convince my mom that she couldn’t possibly be bisexual because that meant she would cheat on him with a woman. …A) biphobia/bi erasure is something teenage me would have laughed off as totally a work of fiction. …B) why, is it because you’re attracted to women and you’re a cheater? lmfao we’ve been taking the piss out of this. I wish I’d been the one to hear it. It explains why mom said something along those lines to me, something like ‘wouldn’t a bisexual person not be able to be with one partner without cheating with the other?’ in a very unsure way, to which I replied with an arched eyebrow and wtf tone “…I’m pansexual” and motioned at my partner like ‘have I cheated?’
I also just broke my phone screen so bad that I’m going to have to order a new one, but I need another paycheck first to cover it. I can’t even explain how it happened. I sat it down, walked into the backyard, came back to find the screen busted like a rock got thrown at it, but I didn’t see anything unusual nearby. I also put my partial denture in the other day, gave it a gentle bite test, and the damn this just fucking snapped, which would be a 300-400$ money sink if I were to send it off. I’m not doing that. Dumbass workplace gets dumbass toothlessness. It’s Arkansas, fuck’em. I am just having an absolute terrible time right now on every front.
Now, starting the more positive updates.
Ganglion Cyst
That doesn’t sound good but it leads to something that made me laugh. I had a large lump in my wrist a few months ago and, while it was uncomfortable, I waited it out and it went down. Well, it came back with a vengeance–it’s tag teaming with my thoracic outlet syndrome now, which has my shoulder burning like I’m chewing on a cavity and I can only bend my main hand backwards half as much as I should be able to. Add any pressure and it explodes in pain. I’m wearing a brace at work now, but I’m still getting headaches from it crawling across my back and chest and neck. (The pain, not the lump. It’s not one of those scarabs from the Mummy.)
I’m also having issues with arm and hand numbness that isn’t in the thoracic outlet pattern, and when I had the lump checked out, he felt around my wrist and said he thought it was a ganglion cyst, but was concerned enough to schedule an x-ray and an ultrasound, so we will see.
I had a phone call yesterday with the imaging center to schedule the ultrasound. Everything went per normal, like firing off a very polite script for both of us, but right at the end, I say ‘thank you so much!’ and she goes to say ‘You’re welcome ma’am! Have a nice day!’
…only she caught herself halfway through ma’am, paused a second, then professionally finished. I gave a jolly ‘you too!’ and, before she got the call hung up, I hear her say under her breath ‘…fucking ma’am!?!’
L.M.A.O. I’ve never been called ma’am without being misgendered before.
(I have a clearly male passing voice, btw, zero chance of maliciousness here.)
Gall Week 2025
I won’t go into boring detail here, let me sum it up. This is, like, an absolute beacon of light in my life right now.
- Galls are growths on plants caused by insects. Inside each is a chamber with a larva (or many chambers with many larvae.) Many are just swollen green nodes on leaves, but some are outlandish, being big hot pink spiky balls or little mushroom shaped houses.
- Every year since around ‘19 or ‘20, we’ve held a global competition, Gall Week, biannually during spring and fall.
- I was invited to the first one due to previous work in the field and, up until last fall, I had managed to take part in every one. I even got out once when recovering from upper surgery to snag a few pictures just to say I took part, but last year, I was so mentally gone that I couldn’t.
There are no real prizes for winning, and really it’s science that wins the most, which is why I don’t mind competing against people. It’s fun and beneficial to something greater than myself.
This year, because I missed the last one… I went so hard.
Between May 3rd and 11th, I was out of the house on a trail almost every day and uploading the bastards when I was at home. I got so damn sick of cropping photos and staring at plants. On the last day, it was pouring cold rain. I had my partner leave me at work at the end of our shift so I could walk the bike trail home, the one that cuts through all of town. I bought a rain poncho and plastic phone bag from sporting goods and hit the trail. At one point, I had to barrel off into the woods, rain dumping buckets around me, and use the poncho as a privacy tent to use the damn bathroom… Kind of peacefully humbling honestly, I haven’t had to do that since I was a kid. Found some crazy unique shit on that walk, so like, worth it.
…all that to say… you’re reading this year’s spring winner. For the first time since I started galling, I “won” gall week! It’s blowing my mind!
Here’s proof, I’m Little_Metal_Weirdo, top of both leaderboards!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/gall-week-may-2025
Pros:
- I can say I won a global competition, although I’d have to explain galls and shit and I’d probably lose people.
- I learn something new every single gall week and this one was no exception.
- I’m gaining notoriety on the site. People are recognizing my name and pfp on observations of unrelated things (I got congratulated about gall week on a post of a duck by someone lmao)
- I’m making connections with Cecidologists (gall studiers) and I get asked to gather samples for universities and attend webinars with them and shit, it’s wild.
Cons:
- Some of those people that are recognizing me are tagging me in wild ass looking shit to help them identify it and sometimes I gotta be like ‘yo fam that’s wild but I got nothing.’ Only, said more clinically and autistic and shit.
- I feel really weird being proud of myself for accomplishing something.
I do very much look forward to the fall event, although I probably won’t go quite so hard next time.
Eurovision
........................it’s going to take a whole entry to properly geek out about this. Just know I’m proud of the winner I FUCKIN LOOOOOVE COUNTERTENORS OMG. He was in my top three favorites to win, along with Sweden and Armenia. Shoutout to Estonia, of course, for Espresso Macchiato being so entertaining and such an earworm, I just never expect the “funny entry” to win first, ever. Then again, I didn’t expect Armenia would, it was just a damn good song and performance. I expected Finland up there, if anything, bc I’m in the largest ESC fan group on facebook and she was POPULAR. Anyway, here’s to Austria 2026. I look forward to JJ’s next performance.
EMDR
My PTSD therapist has now assigned herself as my main therapist as well and fired my other lol, all with my encouragement. I am so bad off now that she said I wouldn’t have been able to even start EMDR, and I was doing well at it. She has taught me so damn much, though. She’s picked up on the part where I can’t stand what’s happening around me but feel insane or helpless and she’s giving me the terminology and reassurance I need to feel confident that I can do something about it and that my situation is not normal with these people. I’m starting to find myself after realizing how damn badly insecure and insane I’d been gaslit, abused, and manipulated into being. I just needed reassurance that it was as bad as it seemed instead of ‘ha ha don’t take it serious :) everything’s ok.’ [insert there is no war in ba sing se meme.]
Outro
I guess I don’t have too much great to talk about, but I’m sure good things are to come. We’re actively moving our stuff back out into the garage to get away from these fucking people. We just bought a doorknob to replace the one to the garage with the intention of being able to lock it for privacy.
Oh, I’ve put a stop to the constant ordering. Funny that telling mom I wasn’t doing that anymore and putting the apps on her phone has caused her to start inviting my grandma out of the house again. Almost like the orders are hell to deal with and y’all were just gonna let me handle it and lose my mind bc out of sight, out of mind and all that. Hah. I’ll still help her with some things but I’m not taking on their responsibility anymore if I can help it. It’s one of many minute ways we’re getting taken advantage of. Don’t want to handle it? Don’t kidnap an old person out of their home and fkin’ ignore them to death. Yes, idiots, it is that bad. Christ.
I hope this read a lot more hinged than unhinged this time.
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