So yesterday, I dreaded today because I knew there'd be emotional turmoil. Today added physical and mental stress to that with work, thanks to a series of unpleasant events.

But not everything is bad right now. Reading a post from my idol, Jocelyn(n) Samara, gave me hope for my future. Why? Because in it, she effectively said she was like me before she started the comic.

The post in question, rather a comic, called "Thanks", effectively said that she never expected much from starting the comment, and yet now has received an overwhelming amount of love and support, and that it was her fans that gave her the confidence to keep going.

She said she thought she had done nothing that would ever matter, and yet, thanks to the countless stories (including my own!), she is honored to have touched so many people.

That bit about thinking she'd done nothing really resonated with me. My inner good voice had said "Keep going, you've got to keep going" prior to me discovering that post, and THAT post is something I really needed to hear.

So while the post in question was meant as thanks to readers like me...instead I find myself owing thanks to HER for having helped me in my dark days.

Heh. You know how I said David was being quiet in my head? Yeah, well, he spoke up. Our conversation more or less went,
"After all of that, you still haven't given up hope?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I don't know, I just know it's important."

And that was enough. He didn't speak up again to neg on my lack of focus or anything. (Guess even he has his limits.) He might be a voice of negativity in my head, but even he is telling me in his own way what I need to hear: I don't know why, but it's important that I live.

I wish I knew why I must live, why I have some sort of purpose, but I don't. It's one of the factors in my despair, in fact. But I know it exists. I just need to find (or create) it.

'Course, now David's calling me a stupid piece of trash, because I'm too much of a coward to admit to the truth. Writing my thoughts out gets me closer, and it did help me a fair bit (I feel better after having written things down than before), but...I can feel the negativity flowing back in.

So while I've been able to give myself a small pep talk...I definitely need some help. It's not all bad, I know how to fight back if not consciously then subconsciously, but it's pretty grim in my brain right now.

So know how I have two inner voices? The more negative one, David, is surprisingly quiet right now, but the more angelic one that I don't know the name of is telling me, "Hold on. Hold on. You have to hold on. Just...hold on." Over and over again, he's repeating it to me. I don't know why I have to hold on. I don't know how I'll hold on. But somehow, I have to hold on...even though I'm at my limit.

I want to cry. But my blasted mental disability keeps me from doing so. I physically can't express my emotions as humans are supposed to. Happiness doesn't get me to smile. (Which is why my smile is the most precious commodity I have.) Embarrassment doesn't get me to blush. I'm...not neurotically typical. I feel the emotions, but while I can express my emotions on secondary levels, the fundamental level never comes. So sadness doesn't let me cry...even though right now, crying is what I want to do more than anything else.

Yet thanks to my messed-up mind, the wires not being right...I can't. And that is frustrating, agitating, struggling, more than anything else right now. You don't know how much being unable to let your emotions out screws you up unless you have it, too--it's not that I don't know how to, it's not that I don't recognize the proper signals, it's not that I'm keeping the emotions held back, it's that for some ungodly reason, I literally can't cry. In a way, that kinda...dehumanizes myself. Like I'm some sort of abomination, able to feel emotions but unable to express them.

I'm a mental wreck. If you could see the fidgeting I'm doing as I'm writing this message, you'd be able to tell something was seriously wrong, in spite of my lack of ability to physically show it, because I am that close to a mental breakdown. I'm in agony, suffering from this stress, producing a ton of emotional fatigue. Like...

...Right now, I'm considering coming out to my parents, in spite of frightening that would be thanks to the likely outcome. Treating it as a joke. Thinking I need help 'curing' this. Those are two of the more favorable outcomes. More likely is me being disowned, thrown out, and as a result, effectively killed.

I would disappear from the internet, likely permanent, possibly dieing after that in real life for real, because I get internet from them, so no them to support me = no me around. I'm reaching the point where I don't care about the risk...so long as there's the possibility that by coming out, all my pain would go away. It's hurting me THAT badly. Every day, getting worse and worse...and help seems oh so far away.

I know I'm not...but I still feel alone. I don't really have someone to have a heart to heart talk to about these deep, deep, fundamental feelings I'm having. How I'm thinking of the past and why it confirms my identity, and thinking of the future, and not wanting to go down any path in particular, but especially not the pathway that I'm "supposed" to be going down...stuff like that. I know it's selfish, but I need some sort of confirmation from people that they've heard my words, because...I need them.

...At least, the main anime. (Still need to watch the three movies, and then read the multiple TVTropes pages, to see about anything I may have missed.) 11 episodes in a single day. (Well, night. Sometime around 8 or 9 beginning, with brief breaks.) Do the math.

...No regrets. I had originally intended only one or two today, and to keep that pace for whenever I had free time and didn't feel like playing Chrono Trigger yet not feeling productive enough to do something. But I was suckered into watching the whole thing, via the old, "Oh, I have the time, let's do just ONE more..." trick. (Yep. That produced predictable results.)

I think I know why, too: even in the darker moments of the series (of which there's obviously plenty, naturally--that being basically the whole point), there's an underlying message of hope. (Which makes sense, because...well, duh. At least, 'duh' to anyone who knows how the main series ends.)

Will say now, now that I have watched it, that I'll need one or two disclaimers for Red Hood Rider plot twists that, no, I'm not stealing said twists from Madoka; they were part of the setting before I watched the anime and it's just a large coincidence that they just so happen to be similar. (Which kinda sucks. People wouldn't believe me even before I watched the anime, and now that I have, I don't have the same plausible deniability, merely my word that the plot of Red Hood Rider was set in stone long before I was made aware any of the setting details of Madoka.)

Ah, well.

Incidentally, though, the god(dess) of magical girls is actually pretty similar to my own personal beliefs in God, albeit slightly more tangible: a being defined by hope and benevolence, kind, caring, and while unable to directly intervene, is able to serve as a guide, with the little things. Seeing every possible universe, and trying to direct us towards the better ones. And also, more of a concept than a physical being, an entity that may take form after we die if heaven exists (which is nice to think does) who brings us there personally, but that is otherwise intangible.

Which is why a prayer to said god might be appropriate; if I was a magical girl for the setting, my soul gem would be dangerously close to black. (Seriously, the parallel between me right now and Sayaka is uncanny.) I fully believe in the better things in life, but it's getting increasingly hard to remember them.

I've reached a point of despair, where I feel dead inside--I've put on a mask. I say I'm good, I'm fine, even though that is one big massive lie. I smile. I dance to music and pretend to have fun, because the people around me enjoy seeing that. Heck, I do get some momentary pleasure out of it, yet even if I'm enjoying myself, dark thoughts plague me, clouding my mind and blocking that enjoyment out.

I feel tired. I feel weak. Worthless. A failure. I'm at my breaking point. The sinking feeling in my stomach is growing. And while I tell myself to endure...the despair and doubt pierce my heart by saying, "Why? When all it's doing is creating more pain?" So that's why I needed the show to tell me...

I'm not alone. There's hope. Others have told me it, too, yet I need constant reminders everywhere. I'm barely holding on right now. Without that help...I probably would have given up already. I need to live. Don't know how, but I need. to. live.

...Or was it LXV? I know the last one was a four, so this one's a five.

Anyway, watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Half-way through. About to watch seven. Need I say more?
Okay, I will. My siblings might not have given it a chance, but I will, and I'm addicted.

...But I do have a fair amount of geek and nerd culture ingrained into me.

My evening tonight started with the Faceoff Premiere, though my family made some rather...judging...comments that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Love the show, and think this season holds promise. (My family's not impressed with half the contestants, though.)

After that, Syfy in their wisdom (and I say that with absolute sincerity! For ONCE in Syfy's life!) decided to revive their trend of showing geeky shows after Faceoff. In this case, repeats, butstill, they're repeats that I hope they keep showing every week: Geeks Who Drink is a geek trivia show (I was surprised by how much I know, and got the Isaac Asimov one!), and Reactor is basically the Wil Wheaton Show without Wil Wheaton.

By which, I mean, it has the exact same style and formula that I remember, and it is HILARIOUS. I love. LOVE. that show. I know a ton of people who're larger geeks/nerds than I ever could be, and they help to keep me in the know somewhat, so that I actually GET the humor. And even if I didn't get the reference, well, they do a good job of making me laugh ANYWAY.

I really hope I get to keep watching those two shows after Faceoff. It truly is a pleasure.

...Now I've got work to do.

I feel like talking about a story idea of mine. It's not a particularly new concept of mine, but I did a new spin on it fairly recently. Basically, it goes something like this:

Chi. Xi. Chakra. Mana. Magic. Aura. Aether. Ether. Spirit. Soul power. Heart strength. Divine blessing. Force of life. By whatever name you call it, a mystical force of energy has existed since the dawn of time. Humanity has the power to tap into this force, yet most uses of it are instinctual or habitual rather than intentional.

Though some religions once taught how to tap into this ability, even their uses of it were limited by their rudimentary knowledge of the universe, and while their knowledge grew to be vast, they lacked the finesse for the fine control and mastery of the art, which science progressively began to replace.

...However, this force is not some mystical power that defies explanation. Though science had been slow to understand it, through time and experimentation, they have begun to unlock its secrets. Eventually, by combing through the records of the many ancient cultures that taught about it and combining it with modern understanding of how the world works, a scientist by the name of (*insert some impressive name here*) made a breakthrough.

The secret proved rather simple to learn, in fact, and once he had unlocked its true nature, the world began to boom with what he dubbed the Elixir Wave, AKA 'The Lix'. The Lix revolutionized the world, managing to solve almost every problem humanity had been suffering from...yet with it, came a curse:

It turned out that humanity was intentionally being blocked from tapping into the Lix. For the supernatural beings of myth and folklore exist within The Lix: ghosts, demons, gods, all with near-limitless power and mastery of it, granted immortality by the magic of the Elixir Wave. While plenty of benevolent entities exist within The Lix, angels, gods, and all, these malevolent entities consist of the majority of spirits residing inside, and thus, pose a threat to humanity:

Possession, insanity, corruption, haunting, they do all this and much more. Before the discovery of the Lix, they managed to occasionally break the barrier and wreck havoc on a minor scale, but always contained and quickly forgotten about, written off as nonsense. Yet now that the entire world has been exposed to the Lix, the gate is wide open, and they are now humanity's main menace.

While humanity has begun to expand outward to the stars and to the other dimensions the Lix unlocks, they must still face their own demons they have unleashed.

And this story is about their struggles to do so.



...More or less, anyway. I'm thinking it'd basically follow a magical task force, probably taking inspiration from various sources, like my occult friend. (For instance, the power of the Elixir Wave allows for people to expose their true selves, allowing people who're transgender to far more easily transition.) At least one member would be a native of the Lix on the good side; it'd be possible for there to be others on the team, even ones that're normally not so good, yet for whatever reason, are working for the heroes anyway. (Bound to them as a familiar, owe them a debt, are a bit of a troll and not really evil, you get the idea.)

The usage of the Elixir Wave would basically be science turned magic, magic turned science, in that it's strictly defined what can or can't be done. You can be very, very creative with your basically-infinite resources, but there are still rules in play with how the Elixir Wave interacts with the physical world. It'd also allow for some neat magitek: things that ALMOST are viable in our world, yet which aren't quite there yet. The main function of the Elixir Wave is basically that it's tied--loosely--to the concept of Dark Energy and Dark Matter, and that science now being able to harvest it, has a near-unlimited energy source that basically regenerates and recycles itself with no entropy.

I'd have to do a lot of homework to make it work, though, so probably not something I'd actually be likely to do. Alas.

...But, uhg. I'm just totally exhausted today. The nap I tried to take didn't really help me at all. Basically, it's 10:30 right now, and I started the nap at 8:30, to no avail. Prior to that, I spent seven hours on the computer, though I'm not discussing the details of that as a precaution. I'll say that my time there was spent as a consequence of my negligence over the last few days, and I still didn't get everything done; I've probably got at least two to four hours left of material to work through. It's not pleasant. But it needs to be done.

This obviously means I don't have as much to talk about as I did before. Whatever I had to say on Friday, I've forgotten. I know a TON of stuff happened, since that was the day of the parade, yet I don't really remember what it was I wanted to blog about there. When it comes to Saturday, I feel I had more to blog about than just the anime, but since I don't remember, I'll give what we watched. We ended up watching the first episode of Puella Magic Madoka Magica (or whatever the full title is), but my siblings couldn't trudge through it, in spite of knowing it gets better.

We considered leaping into Guilty Crown, Baccano was mentioned but thrown out, Parasyte similarly wasn't put out, the second season of Psycho Pass was mentioned yet not brought up as a strong candidate, Higurashi was mentioned but rejected, so instead of them, we ended up watching a different anime-off-of-a-visual-novel. (Well, prequel one, anyway.) In this case?

Fate/Zero. Which I had heard of (and the main series, FateStayNight), but knew very little about other than it involved magic and swords and whatnot. Each one of us thoroughly enjoyed it, so the experience was good one, and we might get to watch more episodes next week. (We can only watch it when my mom and dad are away for the weekend.) This did mean, of course, I couldn't watch movie night, but I got to finish watching Clue for the first time ever at least. And having seen it, I can say there was NOTHING in that movie that was bad, whatsoever. It was through and through a perfect flick, 100%. Plus, as a mafia player, I can say that I did have an appreciation for the whodunnit style.

It was just an, overall, just plain simple fun movie, which knew what it was doing. Precise elements, good implementation of the board game, it's just about the best possible way to preserve the feeling of the game it's based on, including the multiple endings bit. Each of which you can pick up foreshadowing for! Just...amazing, and an excellent way to have started that Saturday.

Not much to report about today, though.

Crud! I'm (predictably) an idiot, who forgot my brother was coming over today, and thus, that I wouldn't have the chance to type my blog today, and post yesterday's.

Sorry.

There should be time Sunday, though, for me to go into the details of today. (We discussed anime a lot and tried out a little. More to follow.)

So I realize that, recently, I've been cheating with my blog, by writing an entry the night before but not posting it until the next day, to have my blog continue to be daily in spite of the gap present.

Yet I feel like doing it one more day at least, because it's surprisingly practical. It carries the risk of not having entries to show, but generally gives me a lot. Basically, there's a lot to say about my day today, but I really want to go to bed right now (it's 4:30ish AM), don't feel like typing the full thing out, and don't feel like even posting this.

So I'll utilize the cheating strategy again. Sorry.