Whelp… found out why I’m so tired ⭐

Hey peeps,

So, this is a tough one, but I’m trying to not have it be a tough one because attitude is pretty much everything these days. There’s mold in my place. White mold– less toxic by default than the black stuff that took over my bedroom and living room a couple years ago. It’s in the basement this time around– we discovered it when some random ceiling tiles fell down. There’s a mini bathroom down there, unfinished, and the ceiling tiles suddenly fell and knocked a shelf sideways. And I guess there’s been moisture building, and mold growing for a while, and with the tiles down it’s all exposed to the air…

Teh landlord is working with us to ensure it all gets cleaned up, but it’s going to take some time. and I… well, I already broke. Let’s be real. The exhaustion of late from the mold growing under the floor was suddenly joined with brain sparking once the spores flooded the air, and I’m just struggling to pull myself back together. Dystonia has started up again, my limbs unbearably heavy, head hard to hold up, brain fucked– it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.
 

A break

I’ve stopped working on the books for now. I can’t do it– I can’t watch my brain slip away all over again after I fought so hard to get here. I can’t force myself to walk a path my body and brain can’t survive like this. I spent over two years pouring the little energy and focus I could muster into writing these books, only to get my brain back and rewrite them each in a month– its not fucking worth the effort to write when my brain is broken. I only exhaust myself while somehow feeling like a constant failure.

So this time I’m resting– I am bored out of my mind, but I refuse to contribute to the destruction of myself by trying to get this broken brain to do what it can’t do. Mold is tough enough on me without me being an unrealistic psycho as well.

Uh… but I decided on a project for the moment so the boredom and bitterness can’t creep in and overtake me. I had another reader approach me about the fact that they can’t use text to audio technology on my site to hear the books, and it got me thinking how hard it has been for me to read since my brain got scrambled with mold. So, while I’m waiting to get the mold removal peeps in to survey and figure out what’s going to happen next, I’m starting to make some basic audio books of the completed stories on the site. That way subscribers can choose to read or hear the words, and for those who struggle with reading a screen or wall of text (I get it, it swims after a while) will have an option that works for them.

It’s hard to stay awake. It’s hard to have my mind when I am awake. The world is filtered though inflammaiton right now and doesn’t fully make sense — and the fact that the most competent candidate for president in the US dropped out because America can’t see a woman as electable is just as insane. So fuck it all — gotta let the insanity play out as it will. I will survive this. I already have, and I damn well know the books will be awesome once my brain is in working order to finish writing them, and yeah, this is a break. A pause in the journey, and while on this pause I can create something useful for people who need better accessibility to my site.
 

… sorry in advance

I don’t know if I can handle whatever people want to say in response to all this, gonna be real. I definitely can’t handle pity, barely disappointment, well wishes– seriously, I feel like acknowledging the potential shittiness of mold over taking my house in the middle of winter when I should be safe is just too freaking hard right now. 2 months — I had two months of a working brain, wrote two books and it was stolen away just like that… >_> You guys are awesome and it’s totally not your fault I’m a psychological mess over all this, and I apologize now because I doubt I will respond to emails. I’m tired, and this has broken me in a way I don’t want to think about right now.

This will be easier to heal from — I know how, now. I know I can. I know this isn’t the end I feared it was each time it hit. But there is this frustration with realizing how damn fragile I am, where the other people in the house go through their days like nothing has happened while I once again am trapped in a body that doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to think. And it’s just the way this body is. Mold will alwasy be out there and my body is always going to react like this, no promise of any stability or ability to plan.

And currently, I can’t get a face mask to save my life with everyone buying them up with the coronavirus fear — face mask only theoretically prevent you from spreading the disease if you have it, btw, you can still catch it while wearing a mask. Coronavirus can survive outside the human body for up to 9 days, and in colder temperatures, up to a month. (Aka, practice good hygiene and don’t lick anyone.) And maybe get the facts straight on how to clean it up while you’re at it. And if you find yourself with sudden conjunctivitis, it could be coronavirus and it is contagious by eye.

So even though masks won’t save someone from getting coronavirus, proper masks prevent the brain sparking inhalation of mold spores for someone like me, and I am shit out of luck. I’m grateful this hasn’t turned into multiple chemical sensitivity like last time — a good sign the spores this current mold is releasing aren’t as bad as the previous one. But people who need those multiple chemical sensitivity masks to be able to not feel like they’re going to die in unbearable pain 24-7, I’m sure they’re struggling more than ever now because of this ignorance of others about face masks. Ignorance + panic rarely helps anyone. :/

Hope you’re all safe out there, and your week is going better than mine. There’s never a bad time to remember all the people you love and spend a little extra time with them, yeah? Even with the world gone mad, it’s good to remember what matters.