Disability visibility and self ableism

So, this might not be of much interest to those who are just here to read, but it’s something of importance to me because it relates to who I am as a writer. Especially during these last 6 years of illness.

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and autism, but before that diagnosis was 6 years of torment, and before that a lifetime of PTSD. You’re only seeing this website because 6 years ago I became so sick and bedbound, I decided to start my own business and self publish. I have been ill this entire time — but my skills as a writer have fluctuated greatly, seeing these sharp declines and improvements. This, on learning about my autism, now makes sense.

It wasn’t brain damage and repair; instead these language fluctuations are associated with autistic burnout. Now, the allergies and dopamine drops I was experiencing aren’t necessarily autistic burnout, so much as because I’m autistic, stress on my body can lead to certain symptoms. So having a chronic illness such as being allergic to mold and unable to handle the scents of certain things can result in autistic burnout.

Why is this important? I have psychologically kicked my ass for years now, waiting for my ‘brain to come back’ so that I can allow myself to write. As a result, I internalized my ability to write as part of my self worth, internalizing this very normal part of my existence — the part where stress breaks me and my brain loses language skills for a period time — and saw it as a character flaw, a moral failing, failing at being a person, instead of part of who I am. This vicious, cruel, internal bullshit I spew at myself is ableism. Instead of accepting myself for who I am, I was being an asshole to myself — not making anything better, might I add — and just being miserable.

This is also connected to the perfectionist problem I have. Because I’m waiting to be ‘perfect’ before I allow myself to write. Aka, I am the biggest dick to myself for nonsensical reasons to protect myself from what I saw as inevitable failure. What failure? Who the fuck knows. I started a business sicker than I have been in my entire life; I have no clue why I thought I could fail when at this place. But I managed to get a little bit better, and I saw any return to ‘the worst’ as failure. Fun.

I am now aware of this, and working on it. Which is why I’m also writing again. And this will be a process, because I’m still angry with myself that my writing is not at a level or ease that I know it could be, and therefore my brain has decided it *should* be. But whatever, until I get a therapist, this is where I’m at on this topic. I need to write when my brain will let me write, even if it’s total shit, because if I don’t, I’m judging myself for this very normal autistic trait I have of losing language skills when I’m ill. I don’t get to do that to myself — I’m bad enough without being that level of hateful over something I have no actual control over. Autism is me. That’s it. Time to fucking love it instead of this knee jerk hate fest.

If I were a scientist–which I am not, but my brain would like to be one once it grows up >_> — I would love to point out all the correlations I have found with autistic burnout and low dopamine. These loss of language skills are also connected to low dopamine. Stress of any kind is connected to inflammation, and chronic stress lowers dopamine, leading to cognition, memory, motivation, emotional regulation and impulse control losses. My multiple chemical sensitivity could be just as easily explained as how my brain processes scent because of autism, leading to what feels like screaming in my head, and pain through my entire face over certain scents. The fact that I become more ‘neurotic’ — which is really hyper systematizing — when I am ill, is an autistic trait growing more extreme in correlation to inflammation. My agitated tics show up during sensory overload and illness — inflammation exacerbates autism, and potentially it is that drop in dopamine which is the trigger.

I have not found anything online on how to cure/treat autistic burnout outside of ‘give it time,’ but I suspect if they instead started helping to improve dopamine levels and support adrenals, autistic burnout would not disrupt the lives of so many autistics, disruptions that can last for years for some.

This shit needs to be studied, but I am not a scientist. I’m just someone trying to crawl back into my life after so many years of exhaustion and illness. I am also someone who is trying to come to terms with my disability instead of ignoring it, and only showing up on my ‘good’ days, which have been so damn few that I haven’t been showing up at all for months at a time. I need to deal with this and accept my situation. I designed and built a fucking clean room to overcome all these immune problems and multiple chemical sensitivity, and for some reason I thought I could just pretend none of it even happened; I’m living in a bubble pretending I’m not disabled, and no, that’s not dealing with anything.

I’m trying, babes. I am fallible and broken and I try every day with subpar results, but I’m still trying. I only like to be seen when I don’t have to struggle to do the most basic of things, but that just leads to complete isolation and this illusion of how life is for someone like me who is disabled. They talk about disability visibility, but honestly, if I keep hiding away, I become the reason I’m erased in this really fucked up, sociopathic world that only wants to show the most beautiful, idyllic, abled among us. I have never lived in that lie of a world — I have never wanted to — but for some reason I still managed to contribute to the illusion by not showing up when shit gets so damn difficult.

So here I am. Tired. All the time I am tired and I don’t like to talk about it. But I’m still here.

LEAVE A COMMENT

Unraveling the number cage

So you may notice a lot of numbers disappearing from the chapters/events/scenes to be replaced by short titles. Maybe it’s just me having too much time on my hands waiting for ADHD treatment… but I’ve been thinking about the things that trip me up as a writer since starting the subscription site.

It wasn’t something I actually planned to do, write while being observed. I was used to finishing a book then sharing it. I didn’t think it would be difficult — all I do is write at this point. But I realized in the middle of writing Hellcat, having done about, oh, three extremely different drafts of that book until I got to the end, changing it so many times on the site while readers watched it transform, that numbering things made me feel trapped. Like, I had to make a scene 5ab at one point—and don’t get me started about the mess of the PATB serial as I tear through the rough drafts building the completed form like a tornado—and it just felt dumb and annoying because suddenly nothing was the right number when I added scenes in the middle, and I’ve been using ??? for certain scene numbers just to claim this isn’t definitive, the number might not be this, don’t hold me to this! XD

It’s a mess. I write in drafts, and I change shit around, a lot, which is totally normal (things do not automatically appear in their final form on the page; it’s a process that requires the initial ideas to then spark the later ideas), yet I’m so stuck on patterns and systems—and to be clear, I’m not being glib about this being a disruptive thing. It seems quite brilliant to be able to find any pattern in a puzzle or sequence—once aced a PSAT of analogies not knowing a single word in front of me just based on pattern recognition. My brain zeroes in on this shit, and it all seems fine until you realize there is no pattern and your brain just assumes everyday things means something and that patterns must be found and created. My brain gets stuck on pointless labeling structure—it’s so fucking dumb.

It’s all in my head. I’m fucking neurotic. A part of me loved the idea of these really neat, simple number systems (the balance of the same pattern on a screen to scroll through is just so lovely to the eye), which is why I switched to them in the first place. And then here I am realizing I don’t feel like I’m ALLOWED to change things around because I’ll mess up the stupid system I made up in the first place! XD Oh, and if I do it for one story, everything I make has to have the same fucking system—there is no half-assing with this brain of mine. All or nothing.

Do not have my brain. Seriously, no one should have to deal with this madness. @[email protected] Although, this could be a part of autism—I have autism, recently found out when I got the ADHD dx. So definitely have this type of brain, just don’t let it rule you. Avoid the triggers that turn brilliance into tormenting dumb fuckery. Otherwise, it’s just this damn cage of nonsensical rules that pop up, something that writing in general has a lot of minefields. Grammar nazis are dangerous to a brain like mine, this insistence that something like the language we made up must be followed to precision (an elitist, ableist, classist claim, btw) when language is an evolving, ever changing medium that now includes n00b, c0mpu732 50c141 14n9u4935, and emojis ??? as normal forms of communication. Like, fuck my auto correct that used to help me and now just gaslights my spelling choices.

So, yeah, anyways, getting rid of numbers when it comes to scenes and such. The final, final books will have numbered chapters, but until that point—for my own damn sanity—I need to not use numbers. So of course now I’m just fucking around naming all my scenes that used to have numbers, still seeming mad as fuck about everything as I obsess on this part. The whole point of this is to be less neurotic about shit, I swear. It just doesn’t feel like it during this part of the process… >_>

But it’s important in its own way. It’s like coming at things sideways, dragging me into thinking about writing even as my brain struggles to focus. The fucking thing can focus on numbers, on patterns, on coding (fucking hate coding, just to be clear, even when obsessing over it) but it is still struggling to translate ideas of plots into scenes.

Soon. 2 weeks and I should have my first attempt at seeing which ADHD med is going to work for me. I’m already dreading the possibility that the first one won’t work—this has felt like the longest damn wait to get help for ADHD, and everything that slows it down is just unbearable. But whatever. I can’t function without treatment, so I don’t have a choice. Gotta wait it out.

Oh, but binge watching the The Great British Baking Show during this long ass wait. Some good is coming from this all. XD

LEAVE A COMMENT

The Perfectionist’s Web

Okay, so all the audiobook stuff of the moment is finally done. Yes, there are still the fanfics, but I’m leaving those to be recorded specifically for the weekends. I’m not good at dividing my time during a day, so I would rather ensure I focus on my writing on weekdays and then give the final recording stuff attention on the weekends.

I want to slice through these waiting stories and get shit done. All of them. Just knock them out, one by one, scene by scene. I’ve been doing a lot to deal with the perfectionist side of me that sprung up once my brain started coming back after the mold. It’s fear, vulnerability, identity all mixed up in if I’m choosing the ‘right’ words, the ‘right’ plot, etc, and it’s been freezing me in this rather painful web. I think I’ve broken through, but I imagine this will be a work in progress, overcoming the psychological damage that came with having my entire life swallowed up by illness for so long and just feeling unanchored and unable to find myself in it all.

I plan to show up every day to have new stuff written, even if it’s just a few paragraphs. You can’t face writer’s block if you don’t show up. I will record each scene only once it’s fully written… And yeah, think that’s it. I’ve been feeling well, trying an experiment with CBD oil that’s been helping my health a lot. My brain is feeling better, my memory almost where it should be. And believe me, I fucking need all the help I can get as I wait who knows how many months long to see if the fascist orange dickhead is voted out, and if the electoral college will honor those votes.

But fuck that shit– I refuse to waste my energy on it. Let’s get some awesome stories written already! ♥

LEAVE A COMMENT

Audiobooks and Perfectionism

I think I’ve finally reached the point where I can just post audio without it being perfect. Sometimes I have to trick my brain into shit–if you lived in my head, you’d understand. I need to call it a ‘draft’ and ensure I mark it accordingly, and if I do that, I will be able to record and put the rest of the audiobooks up–possibly every single one of them–this week.

A thing happened today, one of those wake up things in life. I found myself sleeping on the cleanroom floor as allergies once again took over the main living space so completely, my heart rate wouldn’t return to normal until I locked myself in the cleanroom. I don’t think I’m waiting for ‘perfect’ when I’m waiting for livable, but the reality is, most of the shit I’ve done when it comes to writing and art, for that matter, was while living in mold under extreme stress as my brain was overrun with neurotoxins and my dopamine system was breaking down. I have done nothing while life has been in any sense of the word perfect, and expecting that I’m somehow going to get more things done if only my existence could be momentarily comfortable just isn’t really realistic.

This body is broken–it overreacts to most every thing now. The dream of affording a house that isn’t full of mold is pretty low, unless I want to magically have a fuck ton of cash and move completely away from the state I grew up in to find some low humidity either freezing cold or boiling hot area to live where mold is less likely to grow. I built the cleanroom understanding that; sometimes you have to make your space because it’s just not going to be handed to you. The stars do not align– not in shitshow 2020.

This is still going to be a struggle for me–not the audiobooks, I can already feel I’m past that. I’ve given myself a bridge to cross with the idea of making drafts that will eventually be edited up nicely, but until then, it’s something–anything–to improve accessibility for all readers. No, perfectionism–the dream of being allowed to have my brain when I’m writing certain stories so they can be the best they can be. That’s going to be a lot harder to overcome. But it’s my job as a human being who needs to accept the limits my body and environment place on me to do the work and deal with it as it strikes.

So, yeah, expect a lot of audiobooks being posted this week and the next. Each chapter will be marked clearly visibly as either draft or not– if there’s music at the beginning, it’s a completed edited audio chapter, if not, then it’s a draft. Simple. I’ll be rerecording some of the original audiobooks too where I was just learning the system and fiddled with things that conceptually seemed really fucking cool, but I did not have the skill/knowledge to pull off–looking at you, I’ll Tell with your weird voice mods.

Hope you’re all doing well. Depending on if that solar flare hits tomorrow, this shit might all be moot anyways. 😉

LEAVE A COMMENT

Cool Things a Brew’n!

Hey peeps, thought I’d check in. I had this stretch where the cleanroom failed when I changed the airflow, and it took a while to figure it all out. But it’s all set now — I’ve got an office and I’m just going to have to give up on the whole bedroom thing for the moment. There’s just something ‘wrong’ in that room no matter what I do, no matter the mold treatments, etc, and I just don’t have the expertise (or energy) to make it work. Figured out CO2 levels though, and that’s been an interesting puzzle seeing as it’s much harder when dealing with a fully sealed room to keep CO2 at safe levels. Gotta love a learning curve. 😉

More interestingly, I’ve been taking some time to look at the poor abandoned stories and fanfics that haven’t been finished after all this time. I mean, for real, fuck. Where did the time go??? @[email protected] I feel like I kept waiting to feel well enough, assuming that I’d find this whim and just finish things up, but it never happened. It’s shit.

I’ve been organizing things, going through my notes, and my plan is to get back on track. I want to get the next episode of Demon Bonded out, not to mention update City Howls and finish it (but probably only once the next couple of PATB Serial books are done.) But also Awakening! And the Fanfics!!! They’re just sitting there, so many unfinished, and I realized I hadn’t even planned to turn them into audiobooks when I was claiming I wanted to create a more accessible site. It would be pretty cool to turn them into ebooks in general just so people could download the fanfics for free and read them whenever they want…

So yeah, plans are a brewing, and I’m in the stages of assessing it all and seeing what’s coming next once I get a feel for the scope of everything. I’m going to need a new external hard drive– audio apparently takes up a lot of fucking space compared to simple text files. ^^; Who knew? XD Hope you’re all doing well and staying safe during this long ass global pandemic. I’m pretty sure it’s never going to end for me in the US (too many sociopathic assholes normalizing ignorance) but hopefully anyone living in the rest of the globe is fairing better and seeing things start to lighten up now.

LEAVE A COMMENT

Hey peeps

It has been a super long time. I never actually wanted it to go this long between newsletters, but the topic of this newsletter is basically also the explanation of why it took this long: ADHD. And with this topic comes a lot of emotions that need to be processed, and a lot of research I had to take on where I needed to understand exactly what it all meant. I can’t even claim that I am past this process, only that today I feel in a good enough place to be able to talk about it and face these really complicated feelings of vulnerability that come with it.

I’ve never been one to hide what I’m going through, or even just hide facets of myself. That’s not really who I am on any level. But I think partially that comes from this place of being happy with who I am; I’m proud of the things I’ve accomplished and overcome and how I’ve grown to be a better person as a result. These are not feelings that I remotely associate with learning that the struggles of my brain for so many years has to do with ADHD.

I’ve read a lot of people who are in a very positive mindset about it, are likely much further into their journey of processing their ADHD, and they talk about it as a gift as they focus on all the things they can do as a result. I am not there. Not remotely. I am angry with my brain for not working the way I want it to, and I’m angry with myself for not being able to make it work the way I want it to. I have lost so much time that I could have been putting toward writing or making art or building my business or just anything — living my life! — all because dopamine and norepinephrine aren’t getting into the exact parts of the brain they need to get into, resulting in these life disruptive symptoms.
 

for starters, my brain wasn’t working in the cleanroom…

So, I came to learn about my ADHD in a somewhat roundabout way. It was a couple of elements that honestly were built on a lifetime of how the fuck did I miss this. When I first realized I had a huge problem was actually this year after I completed building the cleanroom and I was no longer being bombarded with allergens. I was seeing huge improvements in so much of my health, but something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t focus or remember, I couldn’t keep my mind still on a subject long enough to pin it down. And when it came to writing, I couldn’t load the information in my brain of the books I was working on long enough to then take that information and creatively move forward into the story. My working memory was failing spectacularly, and I had no idea why.

I thought it was brain damage from the last mold attack, but I couldn’t understand it because my brain seemed to be working better during the time of mold hitting it compared to when now I was free of all allergens. I thought maybe there was a leak in the cleanroom or something, where allergens were still getting in — something I missed. But no. So I decided to deal with it, the way I always do, and problem solve and find a solution. The first thing I needed to do was figure out how to do basic tasks in my life. It took me hours to start my day, hours, and not just because I was fatigued all the time but also because I couldn’t remember to do simple shit. Couldn’t remember to take my meds or my supplements. Couldn’t remember to eat, never mind make food. Couldn’t remember to wash my face, or brush my teeth, or water the plants, or to get dressed, or to clean up around the house.

I ended up getting a smartwatch and set up all these notifications to remind me to do basic things. It worked for a bit, and then it didn’t work at all because I started to ignore the notifications. This thing that I literally set up to remind me to do things, my brain was now actively ignoring, and I couldn’t figure out why. So then I used these dry erase notecards and created tasks which I set up around my room as a visual reminder, because visuals were working for me as long as they were in my space. I couldn’t remember to look at my phone, or pay attention to my watch, but if this big card was right in front of my face I could remember to look and focus on it. But that wasn’t working much until I realized I needed to start writing down the times I did my tasks, to help me make time real to me. Because it was just slipping by. My brain wasn’t recording the minutes, and life/hours/days were just slipping by with me not getting basic shit done.

While struggling with this and attempting to create a structure that I could turn into a habit to just do basic things during the day, I was also looking for supplements to help. Brain boosters mostly, omega oils, neuron growers as I feared that this was some level of brain damage, and supplements to help with focus. I didn’t really have a name for anything that I was dealing with at the moment, ADHD wasn’t even on my radar, but I stumbled across a supplement that was used by individuals with ADHD who were trying to naturally deal with their ADHD symptoms after the stigmatization of their medication. The one I tried was specifically for focus and attention, and wasn’t really a supplement but a prescription drug in other countries but available in the US as a supplement. It seemed a little sketchy, but I was desperate, so I tried it — and it worked.
 

a little pill called aniracetam

It was like a light turned on my brain again, and I could write. Not only could I write, I did write; that was when I wrote the first two scenes of Demon Bonded Apprentices. And I thought this is it, this is the solution. I’ll just take this drug for the rest of my life, and my brain will work, and I’ll be able to write again. It had a very short half-life, which required three doses a day, and it was expensive, but it was still my answer and I was ecstatic.

Except this drug didn’t just do what it was supposed to do, it also impacted my serotonin levels. For whatever reason, this is not an aspect of my neurochemistry that can be raised without severe agitation and depression. SSRIs are extremely dangerous to me, and this particular focus drug didn’t just raise dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, but also serotonin, making it unusable for me.

So the light in my brain turned off again. And my desperation and depression grew. I’d had the answer, but the side effects were too dangerous to pursue. And I couldn’t find anything else like it. I could learn enough about the drug to realize it was raising dopamine in the brain, but that was it. Then I came across a random YouTube video about executive function disorders connected to ADHD, and it all clicked into place.

executive dysfunction disorder courtesy of ADHD

In the video were explanations of what I was already doing to function in my life by creating the visual cues of the notecards around me to create a structure that I could rely on to remember to do things. As well as the focus on making time concrete through timers and writing it down to check in. The more I learned about what executive functions were, and what disorders in these functions look like, it was clear to me that this was exactly what I was struggling with. So I had found the names for the problems finally, and I had found the cure in regards to the need to get dopamine and norepinephrine into a certain part of my brain along with positive habits, and I also had a name for this condition, which was ADHD.
 

ADHD is highly heritable

The funny thing is, if it hadn’t been for me finding this video linking the very things I was doing to executive function disorders connected to ADHD, I wouldn’t have believed it. Because my twin brother has ADHD, and our behavior has never been the same. He was a hyperactive child, and I was not — well, I wasn’t hyperactive around other people. It’s apparently rather common for young women to repress hyperactivity as they follow social cues from the gender role they are placed in, while young men are not given those same social cues. And I also learned that ADHD doesn’t always present with hyperactivity. That ADHD can be overlooked in intelligent people because they’re very good at getting around the symptoms of their illness to a point. And it’s only once they reach the level where they can’t fake it anymore, that it all falls apart.

So how was I faking it? Well for one, I was writing term papers overnight and getting As on them. As long as I could get the work done, school wouldn’t notice HOW that was happening. And when I couldn’t get things done and school did notice, it always seemed to come back to the difficult childhood I’d had when in foster care. I wasn’t being held to the standards of my potential, which is why it was missed that my capabilities were limited in ways that matched the pattern of ADHD.

And honestly, being diagnosed at the same time as my brother when we were kids probably wouldn’t have done much. Our adoptive parents didn’t see his ADHD as something that should be medicated — our mom was afraid of the medication. And as my twin grew into adulthood, wondering why he couldn’t seem to feel or want things, he couldn’t motivate himself, he couldn’t focus on things outside of his hyperfocus of reading or video games, couldn’t seem to pull himself out of the depression that had followed him for so long, he never once connected it to his ADHD. And it’s only now, as I watched my emotions turn off, my motivation turn off, my spark for life and novelty and joy just disappear as dopamine failed to reach the correct part of my brain, that I can fully understand why everything was so much harder for him. Your brain is working against you, and everything is so much more effort than it should be, and eventually you just want to give in and stop trying.
 

the allergy link

There’s a bit of a dark irony in all this, as I came to understand why my symptoms were getting worse instead of better now that I was living in the cleanroom. The allergies were helping me focus. The overstimulation of my immune system as it was pushed into fight or flight mode every time I took a breath, was pushing my adrenals to flood chemicals which helped to transport dopamine into the brain. I grew up in a moldy basement from the years of 5 to 27, and when I left that house my immune system was set to critical as it had over targeted practically everything because of that long-term mold exposure. So even as my body was overreacting to everything and gaining huge amounts of inflammation and having these histamine responses that were draining dopamine from other parts of my body to give me Parkinson’s symptoms, the adrenals were using the stress response to get dopamine into the brain enough to get my executive functions to work.

This is why I didn’t become a writer until I was bed bound and sick from all these allergies. The only way I could overcome my ADHD enough to write books was by being in a body that was so overwhelmed and in a state of stress that it couldn’t move anymore. Before that point I could never stay/think still long enough to be a writer until in a body that was basically dying. It was the most horrifying realization, one that truly made me wonder if there would even be a future for me if ADHD treatment didn’t work.

I am currently in the middle of a 1 to 2 month long assessment by a psychologist who will decide if I have ADHD or not. At the same time I’m helping my brother get his health insurance finalized so that he too can start this process, get the assessment he needs, and finally get medication to treat what has completely interrupted his life. I am full of doubts and uncertainty, a lot of fear that at the end of this assessment this doctor will fail to see what is so clear to me after just the minimal amount of research — and I never stop at minimal when it comes to research. I’m scared that the medication won’t work, or that it’ll have a frustrating side effect like the other drug I tried that raised my serotonin levels. I’m scared of a lot of things because I see not just my life and future hanging on this diagnosis and getting access to appropriate treatment, but also a fair amount of my identity as a writer.

Writing was the first thing I’d ever been able to succeed at. I’ve been good at things before, but never consistent at them. Of course, now I see why — how ADHD has impacted so many facets of my life is almost impossible to count now that I can see it clearly. But that doesn’t mean these frustrations with myself, these feelings of failure to not do what I know I can do if only that damn switch will flip in my brain will suddenly evaporate just because I know about ADHD now. My nervous system still needs to believe it, and that is a much longer journey of processing.
 

estrogen is required to produce and transport dopamine to the brain

I’ve had one really amazing twist in all this, which was trying estrogen supplementation. Apparently as women age, their ADHD becomes more prominent as their estrogen levels lower. Hyperactivity can increase if there is an imbalance and testosterone is higher than estrogen, as well. I knew I was in perimenopause for some time now, at least for the last five years, but I didn’t think it was something that would be addressed until menopause itself. But after listening to a podcast directed at women with ADHD, I bought an OTC natural estrogen replacement cream from Amazon, and the changes have been amazing.

Not for my focus — I am possibly more distracted than before. But my working memory, my energy levels, my mood, and spark for life have all returned. I get up every morning feeling happy, and do all the things that I need to do, and I’m more aware of time and how it passes. And if things get a little complicated, I know how to just add in a visual cue to remind me of what to do that day, or set a timer or reminder for future events to keep me on track. And when my day is done I actually feel tired, and I can fall asleep for a change, and then actually sleep through the night. My back pain is mostly completely gone now. My quality of life has improved, even if certain aspects are still a struggle such as writing. That has been amazing, and I’m really grateful for this discovery.

I wish I didn’t live in this place of frustration with myself, and I know it’s going to be a while — maybe a lifetime to stop looking at this like some ridiculous failure. When I look back at the times I could write, I see the mad dash it was. The last book I wrote was in 10 days; for all the times I was telling myself that I could do this, I was missing the stress and anxiety that was fueling me as I ran for some arbitrary deadline just to be able to function. I’m hoping as I move forward that I will have a better relationship with myself about this. It’s funny, because I know I did this with PTSD; I learned to love myself after facing terrible trauma and the very natural survival instincts we have. I don’t know why it’s so hard to not feel betrayed by my brain, but that’s where I am right now. Even as I know that I have no control in this, I still blame myself for not having enough willpower to somehow overcome what is literally a structural disorder in the brain itself.
 

I hope you’re all dealing okay during this long pandemic, and if you’re in the US, the shitshow of watching a bunch of fascists try to take over the Capitol because half of them can’t understand that easily debunked conspiracy theories aren’t founded in reality. >_> Self care is extra important during stressful times, and I hope you’re all remembering to take care of yourself.

resources

If you find yourself interested in this and want to nerd out, here are some playlist — because reading is really difficult for me, even though I’m a writer, and videos/audio help:

Hey, babes!

So, some cool shit. You can read the first 2 scenes of Demon Bonded: Episode #12 up on the free part of the website. That page will be updated every time more of the story is, so feel free to check in whenever.

Wendy has a new book out, just released, that’s looking damn cool. It’s in KU for all you peeps who enjoy that program during these tough times. Check it.

Omega Chattel

At Zilly’s Chattel Farm, Alli is seen as an upstart Omega. But in reality, he is the victim of a brutal house-dad who wants to control him. Threatened with being institutionalized when he turns eighteen, Alli runs away.

Tarin is an Alpha who runs a small school from his own home for wayward Omegas. Three or four students at a time are all he can handle and his home is full. But when he meets Alli on the streets, he is compelled to bring him home.

Alli wants a better future for himself, better than selling himself on the streets, so he agrees to be a student, when what he really wants is Tarin himself. Tarin doesn’t sleep with his Omega students, and the one exception he made broke his heart.

But Alli is persistent. And not only does Tarin have a weakness for broken young men, there seems to be a spontaneous bond forming between them. The combination is turning hotter faster than they can keep up.

Non-shifter omegaverse, fated mates, age gap, virgin, knotting/bonding, high steam, HEA.

Back to Writing

I’m starting up writing again, and gonna be real, it’s a bit like wrestling my brain to focus… through barbed wire… while on fire. >_> While jumping back into Demon Bonded, which has been ignored far too fucking long, I came up with a super cute story focused on the apprentices. It’ll be a little mini side story… er, spin off? from the Demon Bonded world.

See, I had this really fun Liem story where he finally chooses a demon after being burned with his experience with Fido/Brave and that douchebag Tobias, but it was its own thing, you know? It felt more than a bonus story, more than just a little side thing, and it was going to be long enough to be multiple episodes—something I’ve never done with a bonus story. And, as we jump into the Aeternum, where Ky meets the apprentices of the time, I realized I really wanted to make a thief apprentice there to mad steal from the sorcerers of Blackstone Falls.

So, I thought, hey, why not just make it all its own thing where, well, Demon Bonded Apprentices are the focus. Liem can be his sadistic self as he tries to be a better person (while being a total asshole to the more dickish apprentices) and winning over a rather wild, violent relic who is very reluctant to trust anyone, and we could also have this super cute Cade sorcerer come in, playing dumb as he infiltrates the apprentice mentor program, while looking to get everything he can from the peeps running a demon slave trade out of the small town.

I don’t think it’ll be a super long story. Like, maybe five episodes tops… but it’s hard to say. You never know, sometimes characters do their own things and surprise you. Cade definitely has his eye on someone, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to steal him too by the time it’s all written. <3

Right now, I’m clinging to the creativity I’m feeling to help pull me through the damn misery of trying to organize my brain to write again. I was working on the interactive choose your own adventure, but realized it was only becoming this loop where I didn’t know how to move forward, so I decided I needed a more linear story to focus on for the moment. This mold thing is fucking hard—it’s like every time it hits, I have to remake my brain all over again to function the way I want. But fuck, it beats looking at the damn news and predicting a horrendous future, so yeah, gotta do the work. Gotta push through and just keep working at it until things flow again. I’m hoping I’ll be myself by the time I finish the Demon Bonded/Demon Bonded Apprentices episodes to jump right into the 3rd PATB episode.

Office!

Oh, shit, I finished setting up my office! It’s so weird to realize I haven’t done a newsletter in so long. @[email protected] Uh, I basically set up these dry erase note cards all over my office. One set is the completed outline of the next episode of PATB—yeah, I’m on that shit, just waiting for my brain to show up. (The energy needs some tweaking in the first part of the episode, just kinda dragging right now.) The other is focused on Demon Bonded, while I got an entire wall divided between fanfics, WIPs and audiobooks.

I realized this summer that not only did visuals help me comprehend what I had on my plate creatively, but it also made it more manageable. I’ve been doing a lot of things to find ways for anything but my brain to hold onto the info I’ve been juggling all this time in my head. With the way dopamine is lowered from allergy response, and the brain swelling and plain old neurological scrambling that comes along with mold exposure, having external constants where I can just reference my own notes about my books makes writing so much easier. Which I’m learning the hard way this week when writing Demon Bonded and realized I gotta stop and make an actual reference, otherwise this just isn’t going to happen. I already did this with PATB, which is why I was able to bang those two novels out—I had reference at my fingertips. But of course I forgot that was why until I failed to have that reference for Demon Bonded. @[email protected]

It feels like this annoying busy work keeping me from what I want to do, but at the same time, I know if I don’t create a reference, I’m not going to move forward. (fucking adulting for a scrambled brain.) I hate it—it is so boring taking notes of my own stories—but I seriously can’t remember enough to not do the work.

So, yeah, that’s me. My cleanroom bubble is working, and as long as I stay out of moldy buildings, I’m pretty much 100%. It’s just getting my brain to remember the neurological pathways to do the shit it’s good at. Started up bullet journaling again, too.

Honestly, I watched my dad go through dementia, and I had to follow after him, you know, just see the trail of consequences of having a brain that just doesn’t want to do what it needs to do when his kidneys started failing. I am doing everything I can to not default there. It’s not fun. It is always going to feel like work. And if it’s easier on my loved ones, then yeah, I will do the damn work every single time. It becomes a series of habits to keep your head straight after something like this. Ideally, those habits will become default. But if they don’t, they don’t, so it’s better now to build a life where those habits are normalized and set into focus to get the best chance you can at healing.

Peace

Hope you peeps are doing well. I could tell you a zillion horror stories of all my fears since the US Congress decided they didn’t have to protect and support the American people during covid 19 and they just took a fucking month long vaca while letting unemployment insurance drop when our numbers are at a world wide worst, but yeah, with my brain the way it is, I gotta focus on less upsetting things. (but if a revolution is happening anytime soon, count me in.)

Shit’s tough. I think I get by helping others the little that I can. There’s something about feeling part of a community during a time when you see every thing working to divide us that feels a positive rebellion of its own. A smile is a rebellion against the assholes of the world. I don’t know when it became ‘everyone for themselves’ in this country of mine, but it’s a pretty disgusting, sociopathic mentality that has no place in crisis—it has no place in the future of humanity. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not, so better to show up and be good to each other. At least, that’s my motto of the moment. 😉

Hope you’re all safe, all healthy, all happy.

Hey babes, I’m alive.

It’s been over two months since I checked in. >_> Sorry. Things are actually pretty good. It’s hard to put it in perspective because of how the country has been so crazy — I’m in the US with covid cases jumping up again as we ‘reopen,’ (why yes, we’re run by morons) and we’re in the middle of some long needed and 100% justified civil rights protests to support Black Lives Matter. It’s kinda hard to want to write anything about myself right now, because I feel like a grain of sand in the middle of these huge moments in history.

I’m a doer, a problem solver. When something breaks, I immediately think of a million ways to fix it, and then I experiment until I get the solution that works. So it’s hard to live in a country where fixing things isn’t a thing. We talk about innovation in the US, but all we innovate is how to part money from people’s wallets. It’s never about real change, and this place becomes ugly and decaying and stagnant as a result. There are so many in pain, living on vapors their entire lives who are never heard, never represented in this country. Sanders being brought down by status quo Joe Biden, the most conservative mouthpiece in the Democratic party — it breaks me every time to see how pathetic this country is for what we settle for while claiming we’re revolutionaries. (The revolution of sitting on our asses bitching about pointless shit. :/)

I’m really proud of the protests, of the changes being demanded, and I truly hope they don’t stop until real change comes. I have no love for the police, and even less respect or trust. No one’s life should be put above another, and no system should be in place to do exactly that.

But yeah, speaking of solving problems.

I made myself a cleanroom/bubble…

plastic wrapped shelves

bedless, furnitureless bedroom

the office, plastic wrapped and tubbed

I transformed my moldy bedroom and living room into an allergy free zone by building an internal structure out of PVC pipe and wrapping it all in plastic sheeting, basically a bubble inside the room. I ensured there was enough space all around so that the bubble didn’t touch the walls, creating a channel of air where the AC and heater could continue to temperature control all around the bubble. Also sectioned it off from the rest of the main house to ensure that any of that moldy air wouldn’t mix with the non cleanroom living space.

air scrubber for the win

I then used an air scrubber to pull air in through one intake into a sectioned off area in the bubble (basically zippered it off) where the air is then filtered and pushed out into the cleanroom through these really simple vents I made with the plastic sheeting. It creates the positive air flow required to make this work, (because air scrubbers naturally create a negative air flow that would readily pull all the moldy air from outside into the space if not careful.) There are two exhausts of the filtered air, one going into the office area, and the other into the bedroom area, that way, each room can be shut off from each other just in case the worst happens and one is compromised with mold/allergens. And if it is contaminated, I can just unhook the air scrubber and run it in the infected room to suck up the allergens.

(Note: Air scrubbers have been sold out for months because there’s false information going on out there that they can filter covid out of the air. They cannot. If you are seriously worried about covid, there is a cheep, effective solution in the purchase of an ozone machine. I’ve used them to break down allergens for years now, but they also kill coronavirus, including the covid-19 strain. Read the instructions; ozone is dangerous to health and lung function so don’t breathe the shit in. But yeah, ozone– cheep machines versus throwing big money down on shit that won’t even work. I don’t know why people keep getting info wrong, but damn, it keeps fucking up my ability to get basic stuff for allergy survival. @[email protected])

just waiting for inspiration to strike

Anyways, I now officially have an office, all focused on my writing and art. I can turn a wall into my outlines and no one will complain. XD Oh, I missed having my own room. Living on top of people (messy people, at that) can get tiring really quick.

I’m waiting on a latex mattress for the bedroom. They’re supposed to be really good with people who have allergies and multiple chemical sensitivity. I had to throw out my old mattress years back when it was destroyed by the black mold. But even this, just having the cleanrooms and spending most of my time in them, my health has bounced back. I can read again. Like sit down, and get lost in a book, and not have it feel like my brain can’t focus. I’m looking forward to seeing how that translates to editing, actually… I’m not ‘cured.’ Aka, a lungful of mold still knocks me on my ass, same with me having insomnia and itching all over if the cats so much as jump on a place I end up sleeping. But I recover much faster, and am able to hit *okay* instead of *less sick* when I do recover.

The landlord had sent in a mold remediation crew a couple months back, but my allergies were just too far gone by then. I think some bodies just build neurotoxins up and can’t clear them out after a mold exposure the way others can. I gained so much weight when the white mold took over, it really is like the body can’t let anything go. The dust, the cats— everything was setting me off. I was living in the car, and reacting to any air that got in. It was pretty shit, all in all. But this worked. And it’s not just the way my health is better that’s been so awesome about this, but how it’s lifted a psychological weight from me.

I know mold is everywhere. The wind blows and there’s mold; I might as well be allergic to air. I have never lived in a house or apartment free of mold, and I was seeing this narrow path of misery laid out in front of me of trying to run from mold and gaining only small moments between being knocked out. But now I know I can build a cleanroom anywhere and create a bubble of fresh air. It’s not horrendously expensive, and it’s portable. It’s like being given the keys to my own life, and I’m full of so much gratitude for having found this solution.

Interactive Novels

(aka, adult choose your own adventure books)

Having a space to literally breathe has changed everything, and I’m being deliberately slow in getting back into life as I try to adjust. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve got plenty to be distracted about. My PTSD is on high alert with all the news, so I’ve been tasking myself with finding ways to have fun —more importantly, remember what fun is. @[email protected] I’m currently outlining an adult choose your own adventure.

I realized as much as I want to do a visual novel, there are just too many elements that were overwhelming me and keeping me from even trying to move forward. Art, coding an entirely different medium— it’s a lot for my mold bruised brain. But a simple choose your own adventure? Way easier.

I doing the dragon gangbang story, using it as one of the paths to multiple different opportunities and storylines. And it’s been crazy fun just to plot out. Like, once I decided on areas in the underground, on specific dragon species in each area, certain required items needed such as a crowbar, an amulet, a flashlight, it was so easy to start coming up with all these different ideas. And I don’t want to talk too much about it, because I don’t want to give anything away! XD I’m doing a secret, bonus branch that you can unlock that will take the reader on a totally different route!!! Gah, it’s so fun just thinking about it.

Focusing on trying to fit as many taboo sexy scenes/scenarios in there as possible has been half the joy of this. It’s really the strategy of creating the story and trying to design something fun as fuck for the reader that’s been the most interesting part. Here’s a little idea of my outlining process. I’m using Scapple, which has been so perfect in conceptualizing and organizing it all. (the text should be too fuzzy to read, but it’s all early stuff, so if shouldn’t matter anyways.)

What else… Oh, I finished the Hellcat audiobook which members of the site can listen to. Also did the same for Fox Claims Vince, and finally made a cover for it. I’m still doing the audiobooks while working on the interactive story. It’s really important to me that I make the site more accessible. Now that I can read again, I realize just how much I lost during that time, and I want to make sure anyone else who might be struggling in such a way has a ready option.

Fox Claims Vince cover art

I do this thing where I stress myself out with these lofty goals every time I get healthy again, partially because I see me not feeling sick as these little windows that I have to sprint through or they’re wasted. But when you’re healthy, life is more a marathon, and I don’t really know how to balance my time or set appropriate goals that won’t burn me out. It’s something I’m going to have to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ambition and the challenge of my work and doing things like writing a novel a month, but this is also in the middle of a global pandemic and civil rights movement months before one of the most consequential elections of my lifetime to date. Will the US finally get a vote by mail system that’s accessible to all, or are we watching what’s left of democracy crumble into the ocean?

Figuring out how to survive this political shitshow

July is quickly approaching when the covid 19 unemployment benefits of, you know, basic living wage that has been like a lottery in my house will run out, and I’m looking at all the bills I deliberately didn’t pay the last months because I knew the moment covid hit, that this cliff would be inevitable, and it’s better to have enough $ now to eat than throw away on bills early on, no matter the debt accrued. Covid has not magically cured itself or disappeared with the hot weather. There is no 100% guarantee that a vaccine will be viable, and if it is, not for 6 months to a year. It’s a really stressful time, as I’m sure lots of people are experiencing right now, especially those without financial support.

If you’re not up to date, or even better, if you live in a country who cares about their citizens, Congress is basically leaving us to die in America. More than half of the people in Congress are millionaires who have no perspective to the wealth inequality they’re creating. Those with enough money to work from home have no idea what it’s like to have a job where you’re asked to go die so that other people can have groceries or gas or fast food. For every person who readily wears a mask, there is another who refuses to, will walk into businesses, get into people’s faces and will not be stopped from coughing or sneezing or contaminating others, including the workers who have to be there.

Our government should be paying us to stay home and uphold the public health to prevent an overburdening of hospitals, but instead they looted our taxes and handed it to the largest corporations in the country to bail them out, and they’re letting the citizens fail, ensuring that we will not be economically sound enough to do the job of staying home and upholding public health. Partly why some people want to go to work right now in America is because they don’t have any food, they don’t have any income, and they have no way to get it. They’re being kicked out of their houses and apartments because they can’t pay to stay there. They have kids who need to eat, and have nothing— losing school meant losing the school lunch program for families in need. Entire states are refusing to pay unemployment benefits because they don’t want to give the tax money collected from citizens back to their citizens. They want the people to go to work like a global pandemic isn’t happening at all, no matter who dies.

And as stark as that is, it’s leading to a larger, even worse problem, because the economic classes are being divided greater than ever before. Wealth has changed hands exponentially where the stock market and fortune 500 companies have seen their greatest gains in decades while citizens are kicked out of their homes and lost businesses and jobs. The mismanagement of covid relief from the government is leading to hundreds of thousands of small businesses shutting down completely because little to nothing was enacted to support their payrolls, to ensure workers would have jobs to go to after this is all done. And larger businesses gobbled up the money whenever a loophole was available. Even when the big businesses gave the money back, that went right into the government’s pocket, not to the small businesses that needed it. Fresh graduates have no jobs to go to, unless they want a pittance and to risk their lives and the lives of their families as an essential worker as they clutch their expensive degrees.

My country is looking at a cataclysm of wealth inequality that will be felt for the next decade, easy, with businesses who don’t uphold human rights like Amazon taking over our infrastructure (pretty sure we’re going to see the Post Office destroyed and Amazon put in place) and Bezos looking to be the first trillionaire ever. All while small businesses are wiped out and those running them won’t be able to get credit or cash to revive them because the banks are playing favorites and no one is stopping them. And we’re given a joke of a candidate against Trump, a man who wants to turn things back to 4 years ago to a time that led us to exactly why we ended up with Trump and the wealth divide we have. The government is infested with corporatists wearing either blue or red political signs and claiming they’re going to fix things while they keep bleeding the American people dry.

The reality is, we have a government who doesn’t care about the lives of their people. And it’s not a new problem. It’s why health care only goes to those who can afford it in the richest country in the world. Why you need a fucking job to be allowed to have healthcare—how insane as millions upon millions of Americans are removed from their employment and they lose their healthcare all in one go during covid. They did nothing to stop it from happening and they don’t care that in a global pandemic Americans can’t afford to go to a doctor. This is why drug patents are paid for by our government and then handed for free to pharmaceutical companies who then charge gigantic profits on every American who needs that drug. My diabetic brother is getting a first hand lesson of watching his insulin prices jump up during covid — when people have less money — all because the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to gouge us until we’re literally dead. It’s why minimum wage is not a living wage, and hasn’t been for years. It’s why black individuals can be shot and murdered by police again and again while they try to survive in an economic genocide that’s been going on since slaves were freed centuries ago. It’s why our prisons are for profit and not for rehabilitation.

Our government doesn’t care if we live. And when that’s the reality, the next best thing you can get is for your government to be terrified of the people. The protests are important, and even more so are the riots, and I am happy to support whoever is going out there risking attack by equipment and strategies made for war as unarmed protesters fight against the tyranny of their militarized, tax funded police force. The government shouldn’t be comfortable— no one should be comfortable right now until every single person is allowed to be as safe as the most wealthiest among us.

Change can happen, but only if we’re willing to be uncomfortable, and willing to let go of our collective apathy.

So yeah, shit is grim. I don’t have any glasses rose colored enough to make this not stink like the shit it is. And because my brain is far too aware of exactly all of this, I need to find coping strategies like focusing on how to have fun. And once this adult choose your own adventure book is made, maybe it will help others have a little fun too — because fuck, we all need some damn fun. Revolutions aren’t won in a day. This fucking battle for equality has been going on my entire lifetime and far longer before it. We gotta live, even as we continue to fight the good fight.

Oh, and if you have issues with an erotic author speaking about politics, you can suck my clit. I don’t care about your minuscule discomfort when people are out there literally being murdered for existing while black. If you haven’t figured out what I stand for yet, see my bluntness as a gift.

Hope you’re all safe. Hope you’re all healthy, and being smart, and not risking you or the lives of your community by being fucktards mid global pandemic. We’re all in this together (whether we like it or not.) We are only as strong as our willingness to raise up the weakest. This pandemic is because of our horrendous approach to environmentalism, an approach that will be repeated no matter which candidate in the US is elected because they both don’t give a fuck about the changes that need to happen. So hopefully we will find some real problem solvers to step up, because this apathy and looting of the country as it decays just isn’t working. Enough is enough.