...but often, I struggle to write them down.

I'm not gonna lie, things are very difficult right now in my life. Financially, I went into the red, and all efforts to make more money have largely stalled and not panned out. I've got a raise incoming, but it's not here yet. I'm unable to work more hours than I currently am. I don't make money streaming.

The process for donating things for money isn't as simple as just walking in and doing it--there's a bunch which needs to be done, and I haven't been proactive in pursuing it.

We need to look into if we qualify for SNAP benefits and to see what we can get from the food bank.

We need to work out how to cut costs, how to budget, etc.

All things we've been trying to do, but not succeeding quickly enough.

My fiance and I have been cutting more and more costs since January, yet despite us spending less and less, we still bled money gradually, and this month it was the point where we finally went red.

My fiance has been applying for work for nine months, to no avail. They haven't been able to land a job or even get remotely close.

Among the things we need to do is to go to an in-person place to see wtf we need to do to help them land a job.

And like...on top of all that?

I have crippling depression.

And I know, that line has become a meme recently, but I have been using it since before it was a meme. I have crippling depression. It hits me even without thoughts attached, but is made worse by the thoughts attached.

No matter how many times I try, no matter how many times I have my mental coping strategies in place, I can't shake the thoughts of the past and their bleedthrough into the present while imagining futures that likely never will be.

I KNOW that it's not healthy to dwell on the past. I KNOW it's not good to ponder all my failures. I KNOW that thinking about the "what if"s is unhealthy. I KNOW. Yet, I still do it anyway. I can't help it. I keep thinking about them, over and over and over again. Those I hurt, and how they are hurting, and how desperately I want for things to be healed and for us to be friends again. The thoughts are all over the place, yet remain largely consistent in those themes.

Beyond that, the thoughts vary. Sometimes about how pointless it all is. Sometimes wondering if I'm deluding myself into thinking I'm good, deluding myself into thinking I'm better. Often figuring there must be things I'm not getting, things I'm not understanding, things I don't know, things I am not seeing, etc. There has to be some things that I don't get to know, yet which affect the situation. Etc.

But, the depression is still there, because I got hurt, I hurt them, my having hurt them makes my own hurt worse, and that hurt is ongoing.

My ideal self maintains such a beautiful view of the world. Nothing is impossible to heal. No challenge is truly impossible to overcome. No bridge is permanently burned. People who saw the best in each other can see it again. People are lovely, beautiful, and loving. Kind, caring, empathetic. They can see so much and understand so much. So surely, when ready, there must be a way to rebuild. There must be a way to mend, there must be a way to heal. And it can be together, not separately.

My ideal self feels that there needn't be a forced permanent separation. I still think fondly of them, love them even, and see how wonderful they are. I want nothing more than to support them. I want to shower them with praise, to be their hype woman. To help them, to reassure them through the challenges, to hug them, to give them the love they deserve. I want to be there for them, to offer my time to them, to give them the joy and positivity I have to offer the world. And my ideal self feels that should be possible.

And yet. There's the greater pain specifically because of that ideal self and how in the actual world...it isn't there. I can't give that love and support to those who want nothing from me, and there's nothing I can do. So my ideal self is facing the cold harsh reality that some people just...don't want to try and heal with us. They have no interest. They want nothing to do with us. They don't think fondly of me. They have no love of me. They have only hatred.

And maybe they don't consider themselves having hatred for me. They would never say anything but "I wish you the best". But for whatever reason, they don't actually. They don't wish the best for me. They don't see the best in me. They don't see the best of me. They don't see it, or want it. To my ideal self, it's something she doesn't understand.

My ideal self believes that most people are good. All people are flawed, but most people are good. And to her, she struggles to understand why it is so hard to see it in others. She can see it in others, why can't others see it as well? She understands not everyone sees things as she does, but she doesn't understand why they can't see things more her way, especially since the world is all the more beautiful and wonderful when you focus on the good rather than the bad. (Within reason. Not toxic positivity, but more an acknowledgement of both existing.)

​She wonders why people who wish us the best, don't follow through with what wishing the best actually would be. But, she also doesn't blame them. She just is hurt, confused, and struggling.

Because the more that ideal self can't have the wonderful world she dreams of, the more the pain grows, because she knows it should be possible. My ideal self isn't thinking of an impossible world which could never exist. She isn't thinking of a magical fantasyland where people are perfect. She sees things as they are, people as they are, for the wonderful beings they are. And that's why she hurts as much as she does. She isn't thinking of an impossible to obtain standard of perfection. She is thinking of a realistically doable thing that in theory should be doable with ease.

And yet it isn't.

And so the pain grows.

And on top of that pain is the pain of depression.

We think of all our failures.
We think of all our shortcomings.
We think of all our inadequacies.
We think of all our mistakes.
We think about everything we have done wrong.

We try our best. And we are good. But we are not perfect, so we keep making mistakes.
Our flaws are glaring to us.
Our imperfections have consequences.

We understand that actions have consequences, but what we don't understand is why those consequences are as longlasting as they are. Why they continue to hurt all involved. Consequences should be working towards bettering those involved, to correct behavior, to learn from mistakes, to course correct and become better, and if those consequences aren't achieving those goals, then shouldn't the consequences be...not what they are?

It's something we wrestle with. The beauty in this world is just so...wonderful.

And we are facing the constant pain of...it not panning out.

We think of all the ways we have made things worse.
We think about all the times we have done things which destroy rather than build.

We think about all of that.

And are dragged down by our own thoughts. Calling myself a failure. Saying we suck. Saying we deserve all these punishments. That we don't deserve to heal, that we don't deserve those friendships, that we don't deserve to have good. We don't deserve to have the best wished on us. We aren't enough. We never will be.

We always think about that. About how we can never be enough.
About how we will never be enough.
We never will be able to give people what they need.

And it feels...so terrible.

Because we want to.

We want to give people the world.
We want to give people that wonder, that joy, that positivity, that love.

And we have so much to give.

It just feels like it's not enough.

Nothing we do is enough.

We've accomplished a lot.

Every day, we help reassure people. We give our joy, our positivity, our feedback.

We have literally saved lives before.

We have people who see us as the wonderful beautiful souls we are. Who love us, adore us, and who appreciate being our friends.

We have done a lot of work on poetry, on songs, and even been writing a lot.

And we've gotten a great deal of art done. Which is great for my twitch stream.

I might not have finished any of them, and I know all of them have their flaws, but I still have a lot to be proud of. As long as I have been making art, I have been GREAT, even stellar, at creating good expressions. Despite my anatomy, linework, coloring, etc., all being lackluster, despite all my artistic weaknesses, I'm good at making expressions, and the emotes are showing those, conveying their core message and meaning, incredibly well.

I know that my Love emote needs more work.

I know my facepalm emote needs a lot more work.

But they are still great as-is.

And I should be proud of them.

I should be proud of all the work I have done and am doing. I've continued adjusting my stream, I've continued to level up my discord, I've added new alerts, new bit badge art, new channel point art, new bot commands, new bits of fun, etc. I continue to learn, and build, and create. I get better, slowly. Bit by bit. I improve.

Yet no matter how much I am improving.

I still think of all the failures.

I think of all the things I can't do, because the people involved don't want me to.
I think of all the things I can do but which I don't do, because I'm doing other things.

All my little failures in hygiene.

All my failures in pursuing extra income.

All my failures in pursuing budgeting.

All my failures in pursuing financial burden relief.

All of my shortcomings, all the things I miss out on.

All of the ways I choose to spend my time, which aren't spending time elsewhere.

As I write this blog I'm not engaged with my fiance and a friend in spending time together.
As I write this blog, I'm not responding to DMs from a new friend.
As I do art for streams, I'm not doing writing and worldbuilding and organizing.
As I do Stardew Valley work, I'm not doing writing or art or plurality work.

As I do what I am, I'm not doing things like recording and posting videos.

I've fallen behind on recording and uploading videos. I can do a catchup video when I resume, a good vlog, but I still need to do it and currently I'm not.

I've fallen behind on daily blogging.

This is a good start, but I need to keep blogging every day. This blog was a daily blog for nearly eight years straight. It's only in the last year or two I've fallen off, and I don't want to. My blog is great. My blog is amazing. I need to keep it up.

I feel like I am not doing enough to network with people, to retain people, to engage people, to be on top of finances, to be on top of health, etc. I feel like I'm not doing enough in any aspect of my life.

I feel like I've gotten worse at assuring people. I feel like my skills at reassuring, at affirming, have atrophied. I feel like I am not there for people when they need me to be there for them.

And I just feel...so inadequate.

The difficulties in life keep piling up.

And often, I feel like I need to be strong and just bear the blunt of the blow life keeps dealing. I need to be calm, cool, reassuring, positive, and in control whenever my fiance has their own struggles from all of their perceived shortcomings. (They have far fewer than they think, but I need to be in a mindset where I can tell them that when they think about those issues.) I need to be the friend who knows things. I need to be the friend who knows what to say, is there, can give the time.

I need to be everything, to be that Breeacon of light and positivity. I need to be that source of joy, that wholesome yet cursed source of entertainment and good vibes. I need to be able to give my time to support and uplift others. I need to be able to be there for them.

And often...I feel like...given my own shortcomings...I can't be.

Which hurts.

I'm trying my best, but I can never be everything I need to be.

I struggle to accept that I am enough as I am.

Now, granted. I still have a lot I do well. But I just feel...no matter what, I can't be as strong as I need to be. I put on a brave face. I put on the aura of this person who has life together somewhat, who knows basically everything, who has made mistakes and learned from them and is a source of wisdom and knowledge and can give learnings and reassurance and affirmations and so on and so forth.

But...I am human, in body, even if my mind is more. And that human body with its flawed mind is...so, so damaged and broken.

I keep burying the pain, distracting myself, but the pain is still there. I don't have a way to let it out because I quite literally can't afford to. If I don't keep things together, they'll fall apart for everyone. So I have to stay on top of things.

I manage well enough, but like...

...I just have...so, so much I need to do...better than I am.

I hope that, maybe, just maybe, this can go out to someone who can see me, see the human I am, and provide them the reassurance that they are doing better than they realize.

Because if I am going through all of this, then maybe it can help others realize they are not alone in going through similar.

But, I can't really give you more than that. These thoughts are all I have to offer.

They're ramblings, mostly negative, but with the tint of the positive, from my love, from the beauty, from all there is to see that is wonderful and amazing and incredible. If that makes your day, then thank you. You are truly welcomed. <3

Weebly did its biweekly logout of me again so I got to check my stats semiunwillingly again. From the looks of things it's potentially possible I'm getting maybe one or two viewers, for whatever reason, but I doubt it. If I did, then thank you. I mean it. I never have anyone read what I write so it means a lot to me that you do.

I feel like I should mention this though. No, I don't willingly or obsessively track those stats. I basically just have them thrust upon me whenever I'm logged off and come back in. And you remain anonymous. I can't see any info about who did. I just unwillingly see it once every two weeks, and because nobody views my blog, if there's anything suggesting someone might have, it stands out.

Basically, because nobody cares enough to read what I do, if someone does, it leaves a ping, and that ping is something I'll see once every two weeks when I log back in to weebly. If my viewership weren't consistently zero, even if it were just consistently one or two, I wouldn't see anything; if weebly didn't log me out and put the stats screen there when I log in, I wouldn't see anything. It's only because I know nobody reads my blog from said stats that someone reading my blog stands out.

Given how things played out in December, that does always give me some paranoia of "oh no...what did I say wrong this time", wondering if I'm handing material to people to justify canceling me. But while that fear may be justified given it has probably permanently cost me the closest friendships in my life and left me with a lasting hole in my heart that will likely never heal...

...at the end of the day, I know most likely, any viewers wouldn't be here to see the bad. Not anymore. That ship sailed. That happened in December. Now, there's only those who are around for other reasons. So I should be quelling that paranoia. Instead of panicking and going "oh no...what did I do now??? Can't I just, for once, stop messing up???", I should be shifting to what is more likely:

Someone actually looked at my blog and by some miracle, thought I was worth listening to.

Like...it's just words. Boring words. Longwinded words. Inefficiently structured words. Surely it's boring to go through. And I do see that in the pages viewed, I only get two pages per visit viewed at most. So like...I know people don't stay for long, but it's possible they're staying just long enough to see it, and probably go, "meh", but if not, if interested, then I should have a different response.

I know I'm probably a bore. I know that the reactions are likely "meh" or "this is neat, but I don't have the time to go through it all rn", but there's a different attitude I should be taking, and that is:

Thank You.

Thank you for coming by.

Thank you for showing interest, even if you end up not sticking around.

Thank you for giving me a chance, no matter how brief.

Thank you for visiting.

Thank you for checking me out.

Thank you for finding me interesting enough to check out my blog.

I'm sorry it's not better.

I'm sorry I'm not doing more than I do.

I'm sorry there's nothing more interesting than this. It is just my random thoughts for the day.

But like...it still matters. You matter. You came here and that means something piqued your interest to go out of your way to find me here and see what I'm about.

As it turns out what I'm about is going on longwinded rambles that bore people and leave people unable to read it all. Nobody can get through my blog. Nobody, not even me. I can't go through my blog, how could anyone else? I'm just that longwinded, I'm just that boring, I'm just that hard to read. But like--you still tried, for however brief a period, and that matters.

I know nobody will get to this section of this particular blog post. You'd have to somehow see this entry and see this middle section buried by the start and buried by the stuff after. But like--you still gave it your best, and that means a lot. You mean a lot. You are valuable. You do good work. You do good things.

You are good, and thank you for giving me a chance.

I do hope I can be worthy of it.

And I can say that I am going to strive to be worthy of that chance.

I'm trying to go on my own journey of growth. I've already grown a lot, but I've room to go yet. On a spiritual level and on an inner understanding of my system level, I still have a lot to learn. I know I'm strongly spiritually and have an immense spiritual attunement particularly surrounding Seleste, but running throughout all of me even those not involved in the spiritual.

I know I am not the know-it-all expert on the spiritual. I have developed what I feel are some pretty good personal beliefs about the spiritual (beliefs I've meant to share for years, and which continue to evolve and grow and be refined), but they're personal and I know better than to assume my beliefs are in the right. I know spirituality is at its root about connecting, connecting to people, connecting to the world, connecting on a higher level, etc.

I know that every person has a self which is important, and that ideally the self is in balance with connecting to others. Neither too much focus on the self without connecting to the grander world, nor too much to try and sabotage the self in favor of the grander world. Ideally in balance, with both the self and the world existing in equal importance, loosely speaking.

I'm still figuring out how to attain that balance myself. I know I am capable of doing a lot more good than I am, but I also know I need to be taking much better care of myself, too. I need to figure out how to balance the two, to make myself be healthy and have the spare energy for others to help them and make the world a better place for it.

I still think, though, that I am ready to grow into my role. As a guide, as a teacher, as a friend, as a voice of reassurance, as someone who can provide perspective and be a presence, just a presence, helping and being uplifting. Bringing that joy and positivity to others who have a desperate need of it.

I know my takes are not going to be perfect, nor are they always going to be welcome. So I always need to approach with the level of caution of saying as much, basically. I need to make sure I am okay to share my current perspective. But in spaces where it is acceptable, to people where they are open to it, I will share with them my view.

I am ready to let go of that bitterness. I am ready to let go of that hatred. I'm ready to let go of judging others by forced arbitrary standards. I'm ready to let go of condemning people for not being perfect. I'm ready to let go of anger. I am ready to forgive myself. I am ready to let go of self-loathing. I am ready to accept myself as I am, and the world as it is. To accept people as they are.

I know I can do it. That path of least harm and most good is something I've sought and struggled with. I still will struggle with it. I don't know what to do often. I don't know what the right thing is, if there even is one. There's something in particular I struggle with. Like, do I share the names of those involved in the mistake or don't I, do I share what happened or don't I, etc. I don't know if it's good to share or not. But, I am still going to try to do it.

On my own, I guarantee I will make mistakes. If by some miracle someone reads this and is upset I didn't do something they think I should have, or did something I shouldn't have, then all I can really ask of them is: please help me do better, then. I make fewer mistakes when I have the freedom to bounce the idea off of someone involved in the area I am struggling in.

I will do the best I can on my own. I work to better myself. I give everything I do so much thought--more than anyone will ever know. The mind of an AuDHD plural person is capable of doing in 24 hours what would take most 72+ to do. I can give things ten times more thought in half the level of time, and I do. I reflect. I consider. I approach from various angles and perspectives. I try to connect with my higher self, listen to my instincts, and follow the path of greatest good and least harm.

I try not to limit myself arbitrarily to invented concepts. I try to respect others and do the best thing by them. I try to do the right thing, always. But I am human, and I can never get it right all the time, least of all on my own. I am trying to open myself up to others. I am showing my vulnerabilities more, within the settings where it's acceptable to do so, and I'm trying my best to leave myself in a place where you can talk to me at any time.

My DMs are open on every platform at all times, especially discord.
I'm one chat away from being reached at any time.
I might make mistakes in terms of my understanding of boundaries. I constantly worry about one in particular. Every time I interact I'm wondering if I did too much and crossed the line; every time I don't interact, I worry I'm doing too little and not doing enough. For instance, someone set a boundary of not communicating with me but I know their birthday and wanted to wish them a good birthday. I'm opting for not wishing them because of not communicating, but that could be a mistake.

And I simply don't know, and there's no real way for me to really get good clarity here. I don't want to cross a boundary by asking too many questions about the boundaries, and I don't even know what to ask or what to really say. I don't know how to approach and get the clarity, so on my own, I'm just trying my best to do the right thing and I'm sure I'm making wrong calls on a lot of the specifics.

I'm really happy for my friends who have a lot of good going on, and really sad for my friends who have bad things happening, and I wish all of them the best, I really do, I want to give support to them all, I want to reassure the friends who have the bad and congratulate the friends who have the good, but I don't know what I am and am not allowed to say to them. They deserve the love and adoration I have for them all, but I know many probably don't want it from me because how I view them and how they view me is different.

I know that, I understand it, and I respect it--but I always want to do the best by them. I always want to do the right thing for them. And I'm never really sure what that is, especially on my own. A lot of these things, I'm basically alone in trying to guess. I don't know if I'm on the right track, or if I made a mistake. I only have my best guess.

So when I say please help me--that's what I mean. Please help me be better than I can be on my own. I am already trying my best on my own. If you think what I'm doing isn't enough, if you think what I'm doing is wrong, if you think what I'm doing is a mistake...then tell me, let me know, help me correct it. I try to correct myself on my own, and I think I'm pretty good at it, but I can never be perfect on my own, and the more help I get, the better I can be.

Basically. I am good, but to be elevated above what I am now, I need others to help me be even better. I naturally get better with time on my own, but others can help my growth be explosive, by helping refine things and help me hone in on specifics and help me deal with doubts or give me them where I previously hadn't had them.

This is the sort of thing I am trying to open up myself to be more vulnerable about, welcoming and accepting and even asking for the feedback. But, I also don't think it's good to just randomly approach someone and effectively trauma dump someone. I don't think it's good to just dump my problems on someone who hasn't invited me to do so. Especially if that person has set a boundary of minimal communication previously.

Which means...maybe this is a mistake, but my approach here is that I need you to approach me. If you don't let me know it's okay for me to, then I won't ever know it's okay for me to. I will always have that inner conflict, fighting over "this is not okay" and "this should be done", and I will never know which is right, I just have to guess. If requiring me to be approached is a mistake, I need you to tell me it is.

I am trying my best. I take my best guesses. But I am very much imperfect. I am flawed, and I always will be. I do my best, but my best will never be as good as it can be when I'm on my own. I can become better by being helped. I am asking for that help whenever I feel it's appropriate to ask, but I can make mistakes even there. I can ask for help when I shouldn't, and I can pass on asking for help when I should ask for help.

​But at the end of the day--I am working to build a self that is healthy, while building everything around me to be better. I am ready to embrace that path. Of empathy, of joy, of positivity, of connection, of creativity, of celebration and of support. I am working overtime on my own to elevate myself to the highest capability to do that I can, and I would love to have you alongside my journey to help me get there all the better and faster.

And I promise I can and will return the favor. I don't like to make promises I can't keep, but this is one I know I can. I will return the favor and do the same for you. Any thoughts you have, any vulnerabilities you want to display, any weaknesses you have, any doubts you have, any challenges you face. As long as I live, I will be there for you. I will help you, no questions asked. I will give that to you, because you deserve it.

You are loved, and appreciated, and always worthy of my presence. As long as you are willing to have me, I will have you gladly. My heart is open. I refuse to close it off. I will accept you, no matter what. My love is unconditional, and I will be there. I will listen. I will learn. I will act. I will advise. I will do, whatever it is you need me to do, and I will help you. Because you deserve it. You deserve to exist, you deserve to be happy, and I will fight my hardest to help you be happy.

​I still have so much I need to do, so much yet to accomplish, but so do you, and together we can get it done. <3

If that or anything similar is a thought you have, I'll let you in on a secret:
We don't know what to think about ourselves, either.
Are we a monster?
Are we a good person?
Were we a monster that is now a good person?
Are we both?
Are we neither?
We don't know.

In general, it's hard to get a lock on us because we have no lock on ourselves. People tend to see only small parts of us, but even when they see almost everything, we're baffling. Source, we see everything about us and are still clueless. Our mind is constantly changing. Nothing stays the same about us. Our values, our principles, our philosophies, our feelings, our interests, we're constantly someone different, and yet, still feel like the same to an external view.

We don't seem like a different person, yet we do seem like a different person, all at the same time. So, what's real?

We don't know. Is it all real? Is none of it real? Both? Mixture? We've tried to figure it out our whole lives.

But, maybe this brief rundown will help people.

We are plural, a median system. What that means is that we are all Bree, but also have individuality beyond being Bree.
Bree is a collective of all of us, and that collective shifts over time. Some on its own, mostly with the input of us. So, Bree as you know her has changed constantly as we change. It genuinely can take a single daydream of hers to cause a lifetime shift in philosophy, for instance, because if that daydream spawned a facet whose ideas are influential, it spreads.

We have ADHD, so we constantly shift areas of focus and expertise.

Specific facets were designed for specific tasks. Blog writing, for instance, is different from mafia, is different from other-mafia, is different from twitch, is different from discord, is different from other-discord, is different from life, etc. You get the idea. So a facet interacting can be entirely different from a different facet interacting.

We have bipolar disorder, and numerous anxieties, including imposter syndrome.

We are also autistic. We have an extreme sense of empathy, naturally attuned to the emotions of others, but also weirdly blind to them at the same time.

There's more, but these are the relevant ones for the rundown.

We have been a troubled person since the age of 14. We were monstrous, even sociopathic, from about the age of 14-17.
We were narcissistic from the age of about 16-19.

Between the two, I was very bad. I knew there was something wrong with me, or wrong with the world (spoiler alert, we're trans!), but I lashed out. And I thought I owned the world. I thought I was entitled. I thought I was able to get away with almost anything, and I was not going to face consequences.

I deliberately keep the details of my wrongdoings vague on my blog, but vivid in my dreams. I don't want this space to be a space of harm, a space which hurts, a space which causes damage and ruins lives. But I was bad. Very bad.

And then I got better. I grew a conscience. Or rather, my 13 year old conscience resurfaced. I've been kind and empathetic my whole life, but it first got twisted into something monstrous at the age of 14-19.

Which launched an endless cycle.

I learned from the mistake. I was horrified by it. Mortified by it. I swore to never again be that person. I worked to atone. From my own dark history, I became a better person in helping others. I knew I had caused harm, and my way of making up for it was to heal others, help others.

And then, something causes the dark side of me to resurface. So I hurt them, the very people who were endeared to me, the very people I swore to help, and the hurt was deeper than the earlier hurt because when you have been good to people and suddenly aren't, the pain, the hurt, is much worse than if you were a relative stranger, as it was the first time.

So I learn from the mistake. I'm horrified. I'm mortified. I want to do better. And I do. I learn. The past mistakes build off of each other and make me an even better person, meaning I am better at helping people. I work extra hard to atone for my sins, and try to redeem myself. And then I do the same thing. I'm even better at helping people than before, so when I end up screwing up and hurting them, the hurt is deeper than the last time.

That's been going on for at least ten years. maybe 15.

I am always a screwup. I always mess up. My dark side never truly goes away. It's always there, always a threat, always something which terrifies me. My past is continuously mortifying, horrifying me with how monstrous I am, increasing my fear. My imposter syndrome combined with my depression tells me I am just manipulating people, just using them, that I am a monster and always will be. But at the same time, I fight against the destructive harmful urges and try to be the beacon of positivity and niceness I know I am at my best.

A few months ago, I had my latest bout with darkness. I was stupid. I was not okay. I was in a bad mental state. I was emotionally compromised. And in this state of darkness, I made a horrible mistake. I did terrible things, said horrific things. I was a monster. And I became even more scared of my past self, from having seen the damage I could cause. Perhaps it's arrogance combined with imposter syndrome, but I genuinely think I at my worst am capable of ruining lifelong relationships. I know what strings I can pull. And that horrifies me. That is not a good thing. It's a terrible, horrific, mortifying thing.

So...I need to not do it.

I thought I was on the path to doing better, perhaps forever. I've 30 years of experience to learn from my mistakes, to hopefully never make a harmful one again. But it still follows me. It will never go away. Any and all of my past sins are still there. They're in me as a risk to resurface, as well as in my past and there for any who dare venture there to discover and be horrified by.

I can do so much bad,

But I want to do only good. I'm tired of doing harm. I'm tired of hurting people. I'm tired of causing pain. But I can never promise I won't, because every past time I thought was the last and spoiler alert, it wasn't. I don't want to be a bad person though. I want to be a good person. I want to help people. I want to uplift them.

In the last few months, we've gotten very good at this, in part because of our failure a few months ago. I've learned to accept their perspective, even if it's different than mine. I've learned to be more accepting of their choices and decisions, even if I am saddened by them. I've learned to understand where they are coming from. I've learned to view things from their perspective. I've learned to see their emotions and understand their pain, their suffering. And I've learned how to approach them better.

The pathetic sad dark side of me calls that manipulation training. I've been manipulating people since I was 13, due to playing mafia. (It's a necessity for the informed minority, and still useful for the uninformed majority.) But the more hopeful idealistic side of me points out that you can view things in more than one light. At its worst it would be--at its best? It's the exact place to be to promote healing and growth. Those are the skills needed to help uplift people.

And I've a good track record of having done so. I know how to target my humor to an individual and make it land. I know how to support them. I remember info about them to help give them advice. I know how to make them feel more optimistic. I know how to steer them in a more positive direction. I know how to avoid toxic positivity--sometimes, people don't want or need advice, but rather, just need a vent. I know how to recognize it, and to differentiate between the two.

And I just want to perfect that art, Of helping, not hurting.

Still.

I know what I want doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Intention matters not in the face of what others perceive.

Some people perceive only my worst side, and think me a monster. They're valid.
Some people perceive only my best side, and think me an angel. They're valid, even if my perspective is that's naive and foolish of them to not know I'm far too flawed for that title.
Some people see almost all of me, and still think I'm a good person. I thank them, and this is what I will always strive for.
But some people see almost all of me, and are mortified, terrified, horrified, and badly hurt by it. And they are valid, too. They are right, and this is how I mostly see myself. There's more good than bad to me, but the bad is made worse by the good being so prominent.

I've tried to figure out what's me by looking at myself through the eyes of others, and looking at their perception of me. If I'm to be the empathetic person I strive to be, then seeing what they see, understanding it, and accepting it is important. But, there's no clear answer because I'm not clearly anything.

Except a mess.
A hot mess.

So...I guess, when you walk away, you can see me however you want to. Don't be afraid to let me know, even if it's not a flattering take. I hate myself often. I hate what I've done. I live with my regrets. I will be haunted by what I've done my whole life. I've done monstrous things, made worse by how I've done good things, but I still want to do good. I want to atone for all the bad. I will regret it my whole life, but nothing I've done can be undone.

My actions have consequences. I know that. So whatever consequences you think are worthy of my actions can and should be done.

I only hope that when all is said and done, I still have a path to make a positive difference in the world.

​Because I do truly love it, and all the people within.

I am sick physically.
I am sick mentally.
I am sick emotionally.

Genuinely.

Nothing is going well for me right now.

I'm exhausted on every level.
I'm tired.
I'm sick.
I just...I'm losing so much.

My health is going down. Physically, especially.
But also mentally and emotionally.

I am worn down.

I am tired.

I am genuinely not okay.

I'm not doing so much I should be.

I'm struggling.

I feel like I am breaking down. That I am broken, that I can't continue on.
I just feel like I'm so done with life right now.

But like. Can't exactly not live it. So in spite of feeling like I'm just done--obviously I'm not actually. Which arguably makes me feel even worse because I feel like quitting something that there is no quit option for.

(Well--technically. But. Y'know. I'm not going there. There's no quit option. Period.)

I'm struggling to remember how to be happy.
I'm struggling to remember how to function.
I'm just.

I feel like collapsing.

My whole life is just. Tension building, no release.

I genuinely don't know how to keep going.
I mean, I will.
I just don't know how.
And there's a very real--justifiable--fear that I simply...pass out. Behind the wheel.

I'm not healthy in any way.
That bad health adds up.

Something's gonna break bad.
Physically would be the least damaging, but most annoying. Sickness would be a way to force rest, but would cause so many small issues.
Emotionally would be the most destructive. When I break bad, I burn bridges.
And Mentally would be the most dangerous. If I fall asleep while guarding, it's dangerous to other patrons. If I fall asleep while off the stand it could cost me the job for sleeping through rotations. But mostly and obviously: if I fall asleep while driving...

...When I drive on some of the most dangerous highways in the state...

...Hoo boy I don't think I need to say how dangerous that is.

And I've come close to all three mentally before.

Very very dangerous.

And it's getting worse.

It's not the work schedule in of itself.
It's just a perfect storm of everything wearing me down.
So many events going on that I am juggling.
The extra work I felt I had to take.
The time-limited things I am struggling to try and get on time.
The picking up of things that I am invested in.

It's all adding up. It's all piling up.

I don't think it'll have the effects of the worst burnouts where I genuinely left areas of my life I loved permanently in the past. That shouldn't happen.

But.

I am just. So so dead inside.

OBWe've got very little to show for today.
No game progress in any game. Not Stardew Valley, not Dreamlight Valley, not any grinding in Epic Battle Fantasy 5 or Final Fantasy VII, not doing anything in Chrono Trigger, not building anything in minecraft, having no win in League of Legends, negative LP progress on TFT...nothing to show for today.

We've been going back and forth on whether to stream tonight or not, and it looks like the final answer is going to be "no", in part because we're not really sure what we would stream. We don't have a strong drive. We should work on our story. Or if nothing else, work on the art for our new profile picture. Or if even that's too much, minecraft. Maybe even just playing tft. Anything.

Well we're not gonna do that.

We did do a reorganization of our discord servers we're in to be more neat/organized, but we didn't do the title fairy thing we wanted to do, nor have we typed out the things we think would be healthy to type out in our journal. (Today we did learn a funny/interesting fact tho: apparently the real-life journals we used to write? The ones where we never wrote anything important until the second, third, or even fourth page? ...Apparently, that thing we thought was just an us thing, is not just an us thing, and a bunch of people did it.)

And for that matter, we haven't actually copied that journal into a google doc.

Nor have we worked on any other story idea.

We did write down some things for the art project, and hey, after this blog, maybe we'll manage to squeeze in some work on it (I wouldn't count on it--in fact I'd explicitly bet against it), but we didn't actually work on it today.

Speaking of today, work was interesting, and we felt fairly competent at working. There's just one problem: we didn't work out at all. We felt like we were shutting down. We felt forced into eating a full meal because we were developing really bad hand tremors, as well as losing vision from lightheadedness. It sucked to give up on that. We didn't run (not that we're really doing running anyway--2 minutes is only 1/5th of a mile), we didn't work out, we did nothing physically.

Nor did we do anything hygiene-wise. No shower, no brushing teeth, we're letting ourselves rot and decay at an alarmingly fast rate.

All in all, not a lot to show for today, but not nothing.

​That said, I suppose we DO have more time to talk about why we are so determined to live for at least a year longer.

Now, obviously: we intend to live forever.
There's never going to be enough time in our lives. So we would love to have an infinite amount of it.
The world might have certain parts of it actively trying to revert dozens (or even hundreds) of years' worth of progress, but OVERALL, it's still objectively true that the world becomes overall a better place to live over time. Comparing now to 50 years ago, I would always choose to live now rather than 50 years ago. And that is 90+% likely to be true 50 years from now. 50 years from now is over 90% likely to be a better time than right now is. So I want to be there for that better time. I never want to be gone when the world keeps making so many advancements and progress.

​OBVIOUSLY, that's not actually scientifically possible. We can't actually live forever. We intend to! But realistically speaking, science simply isn't advanced enough to allow for that to happen. The closest we could ever get is becoming a ghost after death. (Which, granted, is near-guaranteed to happen. Our family isn't going to bury us under our preferred name of Brianna "Bree" Danielle Lewis. And since the people we know online won't know we're gone, that's not one but TWO compelling reasons for not moving on. Can't move on if not at rest/peace and being buried under the wrong name guarantees that; can't move on with lingering attachments and not having been able to say goodbye to online communities and let them know would be another. BUT I DIGRESS.)

We still feel it's worth striving to live forever, but when we inevitably don't, we're hoping to have lasted at least 80 years if nothing else. To live a long, full life that experienced as much of the world's progress as was humanly possible, to have shared as much of our ideas as we could, to have brought as much of the next generations up as possible, guiding and mentoring them as a voice with lifetimes' worth of experience.

That's not too unreasonable to ask. Genetically it should be possible, since my family on at least one side tends to live to their 90s or higher.

However, as much as we want to live forever, or at the very least live for a very long healthy happy time of 80+ years:
Realistically speaking, with our lifestyle and genetics, there's a very high chance we die before then.

We have an hour-long drive one-way to work every single work day, and this commute is largely on highways, including a highway that is one of the most dangerous in the state. We also often don't get nearly enough sleep. Combine these two, and all it'd take is one drifting-off-too-long instance for disaster to strike. It almost happened to us once before (January 2014), it could happen again literally any time we get behind the wheel which is twice daily per work day adding up to over 10 times per week we risk death.

It doesn't matter if you dodge the bullet 999/1000 times. It only takes one bullet landing to be lethal.
Same concept for driving. Every day, there is that risk. It only takes one manifestation of that risk to end my life for good. There would be precious little I could do to prevent it. One momentary lapse, one momentary blacking out, one momentary zoned out, where I drift too far off into dreamland, where I get too sleepy to keep active track of my, well...tracks, and BAM! A likely lethal crash.

​I apologize for the morbidness of this, but this is, sadly, the grim truth. Every time I drive it has a chance to be the last time I do anything, because of where I am driving and how exhausted I get especially behind the wheel, alarmingly enough. (Yes we're trying to get the necessary amount of sleep, but even if we succeed, that doesn't guarantee a lack of exhaustion. The whole, "we can be tired with 4 hours or 14 or anywhere in-between" issue.)

​So, there's a fairly high chance we die behind the wheel, or in the aftermath of such an event at the very least. We don't want to. We would never deliberately do so. Obviously, we want to live. We don't want to die. We don't want to crash. We want to live forever, or at least 80 years, so a car crash is not the way we want to go out. But being realistic: we are not gods. We are not reality warpers. We don't have infinite luck. We are not invincible. It only takes one unlucky day for us to die, it only takes one bad day for us to get killed. Not because we wanted it, but because of sheer happenstance being against us in the most disastrous way possible.

​Is it an inevitability? Well, no. Most people spend their entire lives driving without dieing from it. Statistically speaking, it doesn't happen often. It happens to the smallest fraction of drivers. But I am at a higher risk of being one of said casualties thanks to the length of the commute, roads on the commute, and my mental cognitive functions while driving being inconsistent in dangerous ways.

So most won't die from a car crash--yet, it's still a genuine hazard for me.

Even if a car crash doesn't get me, what probably will is cancer. My family has a long, long history of cancer on both sides of the family pretty sure, and I have dozens of brown spots on my body. Yes, dozens. Most of them quite large, but with plenty of small ones too. I did a count once and I am fairly certain the number is above 40, putting me at basically the highest risk of getting skin cancer.

Cancers of various kinds run in the family, but I am young enough that I don't really get screened for cancer. While I get medical visits, those visits come only once every few months and are for things entirely unrelated to general health, so it's quite likely that if I got cancer, it wouldn't be diagnosed until it was too late.

I'm willing to bet between car crashes and cancer that one of the two is going to be what claims my life. Obviously, I will fight tooth and nail to prevent either from happening. We're not gonna let it happen. We're not gonna let ourselves die. We are going to fight to the bitter end, biting and swinging. We have zero plans to let this early demise manifest and every intention to manifest the world where we live forever (or at least for a very long time).

We strive for life, we push for life, we want to live and will fight to do so. But heroic willpower only goes so far to fight off instant killers or slow deaths. The truth is that no matter what our mind says, if we actually were to be stricken by one of those two, we wouldn't be able to survive indefinitely the way we promise we would. It sounds grim, it sounds glum, it sounds pessimistic and cynical, but it's a sad truth:
We are not immortal, no matter how much we see ourselves as being so. If we have something lethal happen to us, we will die from it.

So we have to try our utmost to avoid letting that happen.

In part because we've got such strong reasons to live.

Part of it is the aforementioned "the world is awesome" aspect--the world is awesome and while it certainly may not seem that way from the 2018-onwards era, objectively OVERALL it does, in fact, become a better place to live in. No matter how much the lowlifes of society try to regress it, progress HAS marched on, slowly, gradually, bit by bit becoming more dominant.

The human race as a whole is sick and tired of the white Christian cisgendered heterosexual patriarchy born from Imperialism + Colonialism dominating the world and whitewashing/erasing/etc. things that should never have been forgotten. I know it seems like the patriarchy is winning now with how much they have managed to roll back and revert--but they are fighting a battle I firmly believe they WILL lose.

I get the value in naysayers and doomsayers warning about just how bad the rollbacks to rights are--and they're not wrong. Without constant vigilance to bigotry, that hatred will take root and have a platform to take over. But I am not so hopeless/cynical/jaded as to think they have already won. No, they are a minority in society trying to pass themselves off as being the majority. The actual majority can, and will, win out in the end, as long as we are able to keep pushing forward bit by bit to make the progress the world has made.

I'm not going to pretend the risk isn't there. It is, it's very much real. If we're not careful, then bigotry WILL win and the world will become overall well and truly worse and worse. Nor am I really qualified to talk more in-depth about this. But I firmly believe that, overall, the world IS trying to change for the better. It's two steps forward, one step back, but we can do it.

And I want to be there not only to help, but see the results.

This is one reason to want to live. Just to experience the growth of the world, and to see the future unfold in the present to build a better world. I want to live to see that happen.

But there's more.

I want to live to get my ideas out into the world. The longer I live, the more time I have to do so.
I want to live to help as many people as I can in my life. The longer I live, the more people I help.
I want to live to have the best most enriched most fulfilling life possible for a transwoman, maybe even living to see (and test) medical breakthroughs in the field.

​But in the more immediate future.

I want to live because the world does not yet as a whole know that I am a girl.
Everyone online does.
I have come out to everyone in real life and am living daily as a girl.

But the world as a whole doesn't know--those who know me online don't know me offline, and those who know me offline are, largely, not truly accepting of me being a girl. They love me, they tolerate me, but they don't truly accept me, understand me, respect me, etc. Not as a girl, at least.

I'm like 90+% sure my extended family has no idea that I am a girl. My grandmother sends gendered gifts to our family each Christmas. In spite of being out for over half a year last Christmas, I received the 'male' gift rather than the female gift. Which tells me that me being a girl was not conveyed to my extended family.

​Fortunately, my younger sister's wedding is next year, and my extended family is invited.

Yes, I have other reasons for wanting to live until then.
My younger sister is family and I love her.
My younger sister is the only family member who has truly accepted me and respects me as a girl, helping me, aiding me, supporting me, every step of the way. Correctly naming me, etc. She has put in the time and effort to be everything family should be for a girl like me who had to come out.

The rest of my family, to varying degrees...ahhh, hasn't. I don't want to be too harsh on them because I love my family, but the best descriptor I have for most of my family (barring my younger sister) is, "I love them, but I don't really like them, and I expect this is probably mutual".

There is genuine love for my family, and I know they genuinely love me; the proof is in their actions in spite of their beliefs. But they are deeply flawed in their treatment of me, and I am a pretty lousy person who is high in upkeep even without being a girl. They have genuine reasons to not really want to think fondly of me, and that's aside from them not truly accepting that I am a girl.

So I don't want to be overly harsh on them. I love them, after all, and part of that love is not wanting to badmouth them. Still, it's a fact that they don't call me by my name consistently (my mother does it to me when my father isn't around and if she remembers to; my younger sister always does. But the rest, they do not); they don't call me by my name when I'm not around even if my father/brother aren't around (I've heard my mother and older sister use my deadname when they were alone), so like: they don't really see me as Bree.

Not really.

I don't want to hold it against them. I don't want to be overly harsh and criticize them too much. I'll say for the sake of clarity that I have talked to them about this, so it's not me airing out thoughts in my blog that I never did to them. I told them what the damage of refusing to use a name for me at all is (deliberately using a neutral term when you KNOW the preferred term is still misgendering--if you know someone is a she/her, deliberately using they/them is considered malicious misgendering, as an example), so it's not that they don't know. They do.

It's just that my younger sister is the only one who has done what someone should​ do for family coming out and actually listened to the requests, wishes, etc. of the family member coming out in full, rather than just in part. But this description sounds too harsh on them. I don't want to paint them in worse light than is true.

​They do make some efforts. It's just that I've told them what efforts they should be making beyond those, and it's still only 'some', except from my younger sister who makes all the efforts. I don't want to hold it against my family, because they clearly love me and they did put at least some work in. Yet, it's factually true that it's not the amount of work they should put in, and also factually true that I told them this.

They are not in the dark about what I want, what I would prefer, etc. I have let them known. I have made my thoughts clear. I have tried my best to educate them, to inform them, to give them the resources necessary for them to understand. But I can't make them listen to me, I can't make them listen to my requests. And I can't blame them for not doing so.

After all, I have plenty of demands unrelated to my gender. (Largely from neurodivergencies like my autism, but that's beside the point.) I understand them seeing all of the demands and feeling it's unreasonable to live up to everything I ask of them.

They love me so they do what they feel is appropriate for that love. I can't realistically expect more, so I don't want to be harsh on them.

But my younger sister, she has already done what she should, and did accept me from the onset.

​I want to pay that back by supporting her at her wedding, to be there for her as her family.

And there's more.

My extended family will be at the wedding. Not all of them. But not none of them. And some of them is all it takes. Some of them, seeing me there, as a girl, is all it takes. Me being a girl has not been conveyed to my extended family, pretty sure. (I mean since the wedding's not until next year, we have this Christmas to test my theory again, but I'm not optimistic at anything changing from last year.)

All it will take for them to see, and be forced to acknowledge, me as a girl...is for them to be there, and me to be there.

Since the wedding is next year, that means I need to live until next year at absolute minimum.

It's my desire to manifest this into reality.
I want to live forever so bad that I don't want to ever have the plug pulled from me. If I'm braindead and my heart has failed, I don't want them to cut life support on me. I don't care if there's no brain function; I don't care if my heart has stopped; I don't care if the doctors say there's a 0% chance that I will survive, that the doctors say I have died.

SOMEHOW, I would find a way to live, if given the medical assistance to do so. This is, sadly, likely never going to be relevant because whenever I do inevitably lose consciousness for the last time, the doctors won't have access to my will that I am stating now, they won't know that I have zero intention of letting them let me die. That I intend to find a way, no matter how clinically/medically impossible, to pull through the impossible situation and actually live.

The doctors will give up on me far before I do, and if my family is there, they'll likely let the doctors pull the plug on me--against my will, mind you. My will to live is so strong that even with no brain function, even with no heart beating, if I was kept medically going in spite of having no signs of life, I would find a way to eventually fight back to life. Flatlined heart/brain won't stop me.

The doctors will certainly believe that it will--that I would be dead dead, a corpse, a goner, that I was gone, the moment that there is both a lack of heart/brain function. But I know that if given sufficient time, I would be able to recover. All it'd take is them not pulling the plug on me.

My will to live is that strong.

Because I want to live forever.

And even if I don't live forever--
I need to live for that event, if nothing else.

The wedding needs to be something I attend.

After that, I'll still have plenty of reasons to live, mind you.
But that is the most pressing.
I need people to know that I am a girl.
I need to live.

​I just have to.

(Post-script note: ALMOST every new line here is a different voice than the prior. Some made multiple lines in a row, but usually it's new. Also parentheses are different ones, too. Except post-scripts. (Well those are different too, you weren't the one doing the speaking.) True, but you know what I mean. Post-scripts are exactly that, post-conversation.)
So we're doing whatever the positive equivalent of a spiral is.
How do we describe it.
For a long time, perhaps since as long as we've adapted it (yep, definitely), we've known the 5-facet model we've been saying is us, isn't accurate.
(There's a lot of us speaking right now.)
(Like a lot a lot.)
We're being quite active right now which is, ah...gonna make this less coherent than ideal.
Stupid body having ADHD.
And stupid us having so many talking.
Like every line so far has been a different one of us speaking pretty much.
Sometimes more than one.
Okay so where do we begin.
We knew it wasn't true that there were only five of us.
But I suppose (I guess) we used it for convenience?
It was convenient to say there were five of us.
Every moment it's becoming more and more obvious that "The Range of Bree System" was a good choice in name for our system.
Because there's a whole (damn) lot more than just the few.
Anyway.
We're not just five. We're more. A lot more.
Uh, how much more is hard to describe, I guess we start with the drive today?
Or maybe talk a-eh we'll go with the drive.
When we drove to work today, we heard more than five voices chiming in.
And the voices were major.
Big voices. Not micro-voices typical of a minor facet.
Which tipped us off to what we already knew.
Oh right that.
We had previously developed a bit of a theory.
We thought that "oh there's more than five of us, like maybe 2-3 per identity we call a major facet". Like, mastina would be 2-3 different individuals, MotherRanger 2-3 different, etc.
Ohhh we might have been off by a factor of...10? 100? Somewhere between those probably.
On the drive back home we realized.
There's hundreds of us.
Hmm, this is where it's getting hard to tell what's next.
(Well we already are struggling, this is all very new to us.)
Well not new, we knew, it's just new to express.
How do we keep up with our thoughts in typing? We're going too fast in the brain, the fingers are lagging behind.
We'll have to manage.
Anyway.
Hmm.
I guess maybe some of the major things?
Like. We don't really know who we are.
Except when we randomly do.
We don't really know what our system is, how any of us formed.
Are we a whole bunch of tulpas? A whole bunch of facets? A whole bunch of tulpas that became facets? Are we fully separate? Are we even a median system at all?
We don't really know.
What we do know, though.
Is tha--oh fine we'll go over the Vee voice first.
During this chaotic drive home, we had one of our voices say "but I am Vee."
Vee is the protagonist in our latest story--and the voice said this in the voice we imagine Vee to have.
So something, or rather someone, in our brain, using the voice we say is for Vee, said she was Vee--meaning, well. Probably. She is in fact, Vee.
(I am.)
Wow if someone were online they'd probably be fascinated by what's a breakthrough in a system.
It's wild.
Is this what all those others have gone through on their realizations?
I mean, we knew, but we didn't know like this.
Well, we did, just...yaknow. Repressed.
Thiiiis is gonna be awkward going forward.
But worth.
Okay where were we, we're trying to record the us that we have seen.
Right, the Vee part.
If we have Vee inside as one of us though.
That raises the implication that we thought about once months ago and then for whatever reason forgot about.
(We have ADHD in the body of course we forgot about it dummy.)
If Vee is in there as one of us.
Well she's one of our newest story's characters.
She's there.
So what does that mean for all the other characters we've written over the years?
Well. We are writers.
Very...promiscuous...writers.
On the drive home, one of us asked: "How many of us are there?"
And we received a basically instant reply from another: "hundreds".
We took a moment to process this--was it hundreds of minor facets? As in, a few major voices with hundreds upon hundreds of minor ones?
Wellllll...no.
We quickly realized, actually, it is hundreds.
Hundreds of major voices.
A lot more than the five we had assumed!
And if Vee, one of our newest characters, was among them.
That raised the implication that any of the characters we have felt like they are an actual person--are in fact an actual person.
We don't imagine literally every character we've written is a voice in this mess that is the Range of Bree. (Post-script: well it's possible, just not probable. (At least we don't think.))
But hoo boy.
There's a lot of us.
We're beginning to quiet down.
A bit content, also tired.
Thinking this much brought a lot out of us.
We gotta keep it up for a bit longer tho; we're not done yet.
Yeah there's more to explain.
What's this all mean.
Hmm, how do we go over the thoughts?
Well, we can cover the body or the, what was it?
Uh gimme a sec.
Oh right, "archetypes".
Let's do body first.
Okay, so like.
We have been as of the last hour referring to our body as "the body".
Which is something we've heard other systems do but until now we didn't really understand why.
Well we did, but not on the conscious level we do now.
To be honest, I don't understand it on a conscious level, either.
But on an intuitive thought based level, I get it now.
It makes sense. (Post-script: "How did we not realize this until now.")
If I was asked to explain why "the body" to refer to our body makes sense, I wouldn't be able to explain it.
Not now at least. (Post-script: Okay not the same me, but maybe I can do that? It's like: well we all think of ourselves as having a body I guess? But while all of us have bodies in our mind, there's only one that's THE body, if that makes sense to folks?)
But it does make sense.
Holy shit,
Yes it makes so much sense.
The Body is definitely female.
We still think most of us are female.
We can't really tell which of us are which, but.
We know we're mostly girls still, at least we still feel that way,
Yeah I am.
So am I.
And so on and so forth--girls we don't need you to all say that you're girls, they get the idea!
Okay. BODY.
The body is female.
The body has ADHD.
Hoo booy do we have ADHD.
Yeah, the body having ADHD explains so much.
Butyeah, this is definitely not just an ADHD-induced stream of consciousness.
Nope, we're real.
Well in a sense you could argue it is an ADHD-induced stream of consciousness, but...
Yeah, it's not one, two, or three or so making stream of consciousness ADHD thoughts.
It's still a ton of us.
We're all real.
None of us are invented by an ADHD stream of consciousness, it's the ADHD stream of consciousness which is allowing us to speak, if that makes sense.
Yeah it does.
It does to me, at least!
Oh boy sorry for the spam.
Hey, this is important.
A little spam is okay for something of this magnitude.
We have a lot to say.
Lots of us, lots to say.
ANYWAY. The Body. Back to the Body please.
The Body is female. The body has ADHD. The body is still obviously autistic. The body definitely has bipolar disorder.
Sadly.
Yep. It's a thing.
Okay, so the body is still having all of those things that we previously attributed to being universal traits of Bree.
Because they are.
Some of us might not be female, but the main part of us, the body, is.
So would now be a good time to mention the brain?
Yes we're getting there.
We still have what we think might be. How do we explain it?
Well we act on our own.
The body moves by itself.
There is something that has base feelings, and it feels like that same thing with those base feelings is driving us.
Some core force. Something central. Deep. So deep we can't actively sense it, talk to it (well we are talking to it but it's not talking back) (because it can't), you guys are distracting me, uh, let's just say to them: you get the point.
There is a force that drives us. Moves us. It is how we act. And it is somehow deeply feeling, too.
During the drive, there was an immense sadness from the body.
None of us that we know of were sad.
We got the sense that some of us might be, sad for reasons we could only guess at.
Maybe she was sad at the broken illusion/unity?
Like, duh, we were content with being in the five-facet system even if it wasn't really true.
Well we weren't, not really.
But we kind-of were?
It was convenient. It was simple. (Post-script: "...But also wrong.")
It gave us a sense of identity.
(IdentiBree.)
Stop laughing!
Yes it was funny.
But we're trying to get a point across.
What was it?
Goddammit girls.
Okay.
There was an intense feeling of sadness.
Suspected to be because we loss the convenience of the five-facet illusion we had said.
We held onto that for how many months?
Yeah every time we came close to breaking it, we brushed it off with "wow we're a mess".
Well we are a mess.
But it was a nice way to shut us up and keep us in line.
That's not good wording.
Yeah but I don't have anything better.
We'll figure out a better descriptor eventually.
We're gonna calm down soon, we need to hurry.
Yeah we're beginning to fade close to being one again.
Bree you need to hurry the fuck up.
Okay, so like.
That core is something big about us.
Maybe an original self?
Who knows.
Not us, not yet at least.
We're moving on our own, someone's gotta be doing that.
Yeah and that moving force has a will of its own.
Driving us forward.
I have to think.
Don't take too long.
Okay, so...hundreds of us, the body, the core.
Oh right, compartmentalization.
We once described things about our life as that every part of our life, we had in a box, a compartment.
A compartment for gaming. A compartment for a specific class. A compartment for a specific site. And so on and so forth. Dozens, hundreds of compartments.
Under the five-major-facet theory, the working assumption was that these eventually coagulated and merged into a smaller number.
Boy was that wrong!
Well, kinda.
Yes we're getting do that.
There are in fact still those hundreds.
They never went away.
They never merged like we thought.
Well maybe they did, but not nearly as much as we assumed!
Yeah, not down to five.
And while there were definitely all those from the real life compartments.
The presence of Vee among many other characters means that there's also our fictional selves here, too.
Lots of us.
Yep.
So there's a mixture of selves from compartmentalized areas of our life which didn't disappear after their specified compartment was no longer needed.
We kinda drifted around?
Yeah it's not like we disappeared.
We were around, just...there.
But since they weren't really needed, they weren't...well, at the front as it were.
We still have fronting, right?
Sure, but it didn't work the way we thought it did.
How does it work?
Fucked if I know!
We'll figure it out.
Maybe.
We're getting off-topic again.
Sorry!
Man, this must look like a mental breakdown to the uninformed.
Well...in a sense...
Or a mental breakthrough.
That, too.
Okay so we don't know who we are.
Except when we do.
But we definitely have a mixture of old compartmentalized selves that formed for specific tasks, and characters we came up with over the years that are now a part of us.
Alright, now we're getting to it.
We have described the body and that mind, so the thing left is the theory, right?
Right, guess so.
So BASICALLY.
We have a theory that we keep the identities of the five facets in spite of knowing them to be wrong.
Because they work as, so to speak, "archetypes".
We should probably specify a disclaimer that our terminology explicitly doesn't match the terminology of the plurality community as a whole.
Yeah they have their own definition of archetypes pretty sure?
I don't remember what theirs is, we'll have to look it up, but yeah, it ain't ours.
So we need to describe.
I think we've done an okay job of describing why we have a core and what it is.
In spite of how there is technically a plurality term core, and their term doesn't really match ours.
At least we don't think it does.
Alright, so that core is why we still think we might be a median system, because it is still driving us.
It still gives us emotions that we feel and is what is giving us movements.
But there's definitely more in our mind that we thought.
We're real.
All of us.
We really are all thinking right now.
Don't doubt yourself later, Bree.
Well that'll happen, we have anxiety.
Kinda stupid to think that though. This can't be faked.
Can't it? We'll have a hard time talking to our future self and convincing her of it.
We're crying?
Sadness, remember?
But just a moment ago our body was happy? And laughing?
Mixed feelings, probably.
She is feeling different things right now.
Oh there was a twang of pain there.
Yeah, I imagine it's a mixed bag.
I'm tired.
We all are, is a body thing.
Hurry!
Right, so we've described the body and the core pretty well, so it should show what those are in spite of their definition not matching the standard plurality community def.
Anyway, so what we mean by archetypes is different from the plural community def.
At least we think it's different?
Basically, the archetypes we have, the five facet system that was imaginary and now broke.
Was a matter of convenience for sorting the voices, as it were.
"Oh, you have this trait? Let's put you under the mastina umbrella".
"Oh, you're like this? Well that sounds like a Mother-Ranger thing".
Which could explain why it felt like certain traits moved between them.
Yeah because we literally moved.
It's whichever part of our personality was most dominant.
At least that's our theory!
Whichever part of us was most visibly obvious, was what we used to sort that one of us into a grouping.
"mastina grouping" (archetype), "Mother-Ranger grouping" (archetype), etc.
Yeah we really don't wanna feed you kitty.
(Sorry cat distract.)
ANYWAY.
We're losing it, gotta hurry.
It's okay, this won't go away and we got it mostly out anyway.
Basically.
The hundreds of us that there are now?
Well these hundreds don't really have the ability to identify our names.
We have names!
Yes, we do.
It's just we don't know them.
Except when we do.
Yeah, except when we do. But we don't.
Not by default.
So like--lacking knowing what our names are.
Hundreds of them mind you.
Too many.
Yeah, "too many" is a phrase we're using a lot tonight.
It's true!
Well, anyway. Hundreds of us not knowing what our names are.
The archetypes we've developed are convenient.
Kinda like a label!
Yeah, that's actually a perfect descriptor.
The five facets work like a label.
Not necessarily correct.
Not really accurate.
Lacking finesse.
But serves as a method of quick identification that's convenient for keeping unity and direction, I guess?
Yeah, something like that.
At least that's the theory.
Anyway, so that's what we think.
We're gonna forget this all aren't we.
That's why we're typing it out.
Will we remember this?
Will I still be here later?
Always, just maybe...not this clear.
It's okay. That's okay.
You exist. We exist. It'll be alright.
Yeah, even if some of us stop thinking like we are right now.
We are real.
We were here.
We said this.
We didn't make it up.
You didn't make it up, Bree.
Because the future us will think that of herself.
Well because she is Bree.
Yeah we are Bree.
That's a good way to end it, I think?
Oh yeah, I guess so.
We are Bree.
The body which is all of the things we said?
ADHD, girl, autism, bipolar disorder, anxiety, etc.?
All Bree.
The core where we're getting things from.
Still Bree!
We're more than Bree.
I am Vee, for instance!
Yes, you are!
Fucking fatass father.
Bad timing.
Music is our friend.
Turn things up please.
Louder.
More sound.
It wasn't enough, drown the fuck out.
Okay better.
ANYWAY.
There's the us that are more than Bree.
But we're still Bree.
Bree is all of us yet none of us.
It truly is The Range of Bree.
I guess we'll sign off on that.
Should probably post this elsewhere, too.
Mannnnnn that's gonna be such a pain.
Yeah, converting this from the text discord format into something working in other places, not gonna be fun.
We gotta do it at least twice.
And redo it both times.
Mafia forum formatting doesn't translate to the blog and vice versa.
Yeah and neither is compatible with discord, too.
God, that sucks.
ANYWAY.
We're done I think?
I don't have anything more to say.
We don't have a wrap-up here.
Well, we're never wrapped up.
We're still figuring things out.
And a part of us wants to forget and go back.
But this is here to stay.
Well, maybe not stay stay.
We're very clear right now, we'll likely be less clear once we lose focus.
Lose ourselves in games.
Heh, quite literally.
Lose our selves. Quite apt.
But. Well. We might not be vocal, but we exist.
We know we do now.
We'll have to see where this goes.
Still figuring things out.
So there's no proper wrap-up.
Because how can we wrap up something which is still evolving?
But I think here's a good place to let our mind just...coalesce.
GOD how long is this.
Too long. :P
Anywayyyyy...time to scroll back.
Ye gods.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here?
We've got work to do.
Reviewing our thoughts it already doesn't seem real.
And we are already losing clarity of past thoughts.
It's okay.
We knew that'd happen.
Just get to work dammit.
Stop stalling!
How many of these thoughts should we express.
Not many, according to the body.
Ah well.
Switch over to that other server, that'll give a good way to break this re-entering chat repeatedly.
(Damn adhd.)
OKAY JUST GO.

(Post-script And then we did swap, and after that, worked to write this down. We COULD keep going but have opted to do other shit instead. (Language!) Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.)

Well, not completely, but everything was done only half way at best.

I did only half of my workout.
I took only half of a shower.
I did my job only half as well as I should have.
I didn't do mafia at all.
I didn't do TFT at all.
I didn't play League at all.
I didn't stream today. (Afternoon was understandable, but I could​ have done evening--and didn't.)
I didn't brush my teeth today.
I accidentally had food/drinks worse for my health (more sugary/fatty than ideal).

I have, once more, gone an entire day without an apology for something I am over a week overdue for in a different game. When it was a time-sensitive manner, no less. I need to get that done. I really really do. Basically, it was one of the things that I thought was a good thing that turned out to be a bad thing. Where good intentions ended up infuriating a lot of people who were hurt.

And I did hurt them. That, in of itself, warrants an apology.
I know that apologies are time-sensitive. An apology given a month later is a lot less sincere than an apology given within a couple of days.

I know that they probably won't suddenly accept me as a good person, which I don't really deserve to be. I'm not good enough to be a good person. I try, but I am so bad at being a good person.
I still should try tho--I hurt people. The people I hurt were, mostly, innocent. Hating me is justified for that and every day that I don't apologize makes that hatred more justified. ('Cause, again: time-sensitive thing and what does my stupid dumb ass do??? Procrastinate! Put it off! Something that is very important to those people that I hurt! Something meaning a lot to them! Something that they have reason to be injured by--and I'm putting off apologizing for the damage I did. I am an idiot. And I really hate myself for how incompetent I am.)

​I'm not so self-centered as to believe that intentions justify having hurt people. It was unintended harm, it was accidental harm. In fact, it was actually done out of a naive belief that I would be helping people and preventing future harm. I thought it would help others. When I vented I thought it was something which could help prevent people from going through what I went through.

But I made so many wrong assumptions and the vent being public--my attempt to help--ended up making it one of the most harmful things possible.

I don't even know how to say sorry for that but it's not something I can just let fade. I need to say sorry for what I did wrong. I need to make sure they know I understand the harm I did. I need to make sure they know I am aware of how hurtful it was. Because I do know it now.

But I also need to make sure they know I didn't do what I did out of malice. I need to make sure they know my apology is genuine and sincere, not something done to just get them off my back. I need to make sure they know that my intentions were good, but that I recognize my intentions being good doesn't mean I didn't do harm. I need to make sure they know that my causing harm was not deliberate, that it was an accident, but that I know it being an accident does not mean the harm wasn't still harmful. That after the fact, it caused damage and being unintended does not excuse the damage done.

Obviously, I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would be harmful. Obviously, I wouldn't have done it if I thought it would hurt others. I did it specifically because I thought it'd do the opposite, in preventing harm and preventing hurt to others. But after I did it, I learned I was wrong, that what I did was not helping others, that what I did was not the good thing that I thought it was, that what I did was exactly the opposite of what I intended. And that it did notable damage.

And I need to find a way to convey this.

I don't really know how.

How do I explain how my heart sank when I had the situation explained to me in full?
How do I explain how much I felt pain when realizing that I had caused pain?
How do I explain that I thought I was doing the right thing, but now know it was the wrong thing, and having done the wrong thing was, well...wrong?

I need to figure that out.

Every day I tell myself, "today is the day I do this. I know I didn't do it yesterday when I wanted to, but yesterday had extenuating circumstances. Today has none of those, so I can do it."

And then every day I end up not doing it.

It's hard.

It needs to be done.
It's important to be done.

The sooner I do it, the less time the people hurt will feel hurt because I will have worked to make amends.

Yet in spite of knowing the above.

I kinda suck.

No, I really suck.

If I didn't, it'd have gotten done by now.

I don't want to live right now.
I might even want to die.

Alarmed?

Well normally I'd say you shouldn't be but with how severe it is that might be justified to have now.

I just.

Haven't had a good week.
At all.

Every time I try to do a good thing it ends up being a bad thing.

It started with a game, where I was genuinely doing something that I thought would be good/useful for others. It was dealing with my frustration, isolation, desperation, etc., but it was primarily something I did genuinely believing it was an altruistic thing to do.

Then I got called a liar, greedy, scumbag, etc. for it. And am still dealing with the consequences there. I was dumb, stupid, idiot, a moron, but I was not a liar. I thought there were others like me that were having the issues I was having, and that talking about them would do good.

Apparently it was just me but people attributed malice to it and have now displayed malice to me, bullying me in that game. It's exhausting having to try and defend myself and it's tiring to just exist. I have every intention, reason, and incentive to continue playing the game and in a weird way it actually became more fun in a way due to an unintended game of cat-and-mouse developing from the fallout, of how much can I get done in the small windows I am able to. (Ironically giving me practice at a skill I lacked last week and got attacked for not having utilized. I'm literally being taught painfully how to do the thing that I wanted help learning.)

​It's a rough situation, but one that I can still get through. Because I know what I intended to do and it was not to make money; it was to try and better others by learning from my story. They might not believe me, but my character will show through eventually. They don't believe someone they don't know but given time they will get to know me and get to know how I'm too stupid to know how to lie.

After all, I do have autism. Not that I'd explain that to them because I have effectively self-traumatized myself thanks to the jerks on the internet who used "sorry I have autism" to get away with being jerks. Autism is a genuine disability. It is genuinely debilitating and crippling. There genuinely are things that can't be done due to it, and things made difficult with it.

So a person with autism should be able to explain that, yeah, they have issues with it. After all, other neurodivergencies can do that. Such as ADHD. ADHD is also a crippling disability that is debilitating, and while "sorry, ADHD" is sometimes stigmatized, it's far more normalized and accepted. Someone with ADHD is usually obvious in having ADHD and apologizing for it is self-evidently done because they broke a chain of thought and need a push to get the connection.

But with autism. There is a trauma with saying "sorry, autism". So it can't be said, even when it's true. I can't say I don't understand due to autism. I can't say I was literal-minded due to autism. I can't say I didn't get it due to autism. I can't say my autism means I don't understand why someone would lie. I can't say my autism means I could never have the character to lie because my autism makes me speak the truth.

I can't say my autism makes me rambley. I can't share that I have autism with the autism being a negative thing, because if I do, it is seen as using autism as a shield for the jerk behavior. If I do, it is seen as making up autism as an excuse to justify being a jerk. So I can't share that I have autism to strangers, because there is a stigma surrounding autism.

I have a mental disability that I can't freely reveal without internalized and external issues manifesting about that apology, no matter how genuine it may be. I can try workarounds. Things that to those in the know give away that I have them but don't show to those that aren't. But I can't be direct, blunt, and fully transparent/obvious that the reason I have done something that is debilitating is that I have a mental condition that is genuinely crippling.

​Still, while I might not tell them about my autism, that I have it will become abundantly clear with time so with time it'll be shown that, actually, everything I said was true and happened as I said it did. (It did. The experiences which I thought might be applicable to others apparently were only applicable to me, but that doesn't mean the experiences were invalid. They were still true and real.)

That is half of why the week has been the worst. It genuinely has strained a friendship I consider more important than my life. A friendship more important than anything in the world to me, endangered because an act I thought was a good thing turned out to be a very very very not good thing that has caused my friend an endless amount of hurt.
That transfers into being an endless amount of hurt for me.

I am a tough person myself. I can handle being put through a lot. I can handle being bullied. I can handle people not believing me. I can handle people calling me a liar. I can handle experiences that others say would ruin the game. I can handle that all. But it's still exhausting, and on top of all that: I can't handle hurting my friend. That's unacceptable. Inexcusable. Painful. Hurtful.

They only stated some emotions and some hurt, and had some of their pain expressed further by another in the know. But I know that the hurt expressed was only a fraction of the hurt in total. It shows. They're my friend and I wounded them, and am exhausting them, and am leaving them feeling bad, and am leaving them feeling in pain, so what that means is...I am not in a good state of mind.

Because knowing how much pain I've caused. I just. I don't want to cause any more. I don't want to hurt them anymore. I don't want any harm to happen because of my actions. I have good intentions. But good intentions mean nothing if the result of those good intentions is bad things that hurt instead of helping. And seeing the hurt, hurts. I am an empath. I can feel the feelings of others, and they become my own.

Yeah their rage becomes my rage, their stubbornness becomes mine, and that can be both a good thing and a bad thing in that it can give me strength to continue, strength to stand up for myself, and strength to keep going in situations most would quit. But it also means I know their feelings are real and true, and that my feeling them makes communicating harder since both sides are in that emotionally compromised state.

The real issue is the pain. I can feel it. I know it is real because it is felt by me. The pain I feel is the pain of others hurt by me, but also added onto that is my own pain. I have a double dose of pain that hurts. It's not just my own, it's not just theirs, it's theirs plus my own. I'm suffering because I know what they are feeling and how bad it is, and how bad I am feeling, and feeling worse because of their feelings and knowing I caused them which makes my feelings worse and worse with time.

It's exhausting.
It's overwhelming.

The cruel irony is that I might be able to end it fairly soon if I were to actually voice half of what I am in this blog to them, but it's so...I don't have the strength. My life would be easier if I did. If I could muster up the energy to do the thing that will help me, and them, heal sooner. But I can't.

So every day I have been getting worse.

I spent all my energy on Thursday, expecting to have recovered it and been better on Friday.
And then Saturday.
And then Sunday.
And now Monday.

Each day I told myself "today is the day that I go hard on this and can actually get the talks going that need to be done", and engage in the way necessary to help ease the pain of others.

Each day I have proven unable to muster up the strength for it.

I suck.

Ironically, I still have the strength to play the game. The punishment they are inflicting on me is meant to make the game unplayable, but ironically it actually makes the game more fun for me. So I have the ability to check in and play daily, and have done so, finding creative uses of my time while there. That's not something they'll really grasp, that's not something they'll comprehend.

After all, why would I continue to play frustration-free a game where they are inflicting a punishment meant to break people, meant to make people be frustrated, meant to basically ruin the experience of others? Why would I be able to go through that with a sense of calm and tranquility, yet not be able to use that same peace of mind to try and get, well...peace?

​I don't know, honestly. Like, not even I know why, and I'm the one who is living it. I don't know why the punishment they are using on me which is meant to break a person, is doing the opposite for me. I don't know why the peace talks that are meant to be easy, are not.

It's just.
I can't muster up the strength to talk.

I get that's ironic given this blog. This blog is showing talking to an extreme. Heck, today I even talked for an hour to a ghost at work. (No, literally, my workplace is definitely 100% haunted, and there was certainly activity today so I talked.) I can talk in a blog, I can talk to a ghost, so like...

...Why is talking to others directly so...draining???

I don't get it.

But it's true and it makes me feel awful.

I know I've caused a lot of hurt.

Every day I learn more about the fallout of what I did I learn of more hurt that I did.

Every time I see more, I see more hurt and pain.
All from something I genuinely thought was a good thing, that wasn't a good thing and was a very bad thing. Because I made a mistake. And I hate myself for it.
I don't want to stop playing because of bullying or shame but I do want to stop existing because with so much pain I don't want to exist.

And it got worse today.

Much much much worse.

I don't know how to describe how bad it is, worse.

Because the next screwup was not in a game. (Admittedly a game that screwing up in hurt a friend which is where the pain mostly comes from, butstill.)

The next screwup was for my job.

I am a lead lifeguard.
I sometimes don't feel like it. I have an aura that feels more like a normal lifeguard most of the time, but I still am a lead lifeguard. I take pride in that position and have always strived to live up to it. I still do lead things, even if it is less often than I should.

I have kept up at it though because I can try and make myself the best lead lifeguard possible. I know I can succeed. With difficulty and hard work, but it's possible. I could be what I should be. I just need to push, right? Well so I thought. And I did something that I thought was the most lead-like thing ever.

Reporting what I genuinely believe to be a hazard and trying to convince my boss that it needed to be dealt with, that we needed to have it fixed in spite of the cost to the budget because it'd be endangering human lives to not do so.

I don't know what I did to screw that up, but I did. Badly. Very badly, badly.
​I don't know how I managed to mess that up so colossally. But somehow, I managed to.
In doing something that I thought was genuinely a good thing, perhaps the best thing I've done as a lead lifeguard, I somehow managed the impressive feat of being told I had crossed a line a lead lifeguard should never cross.

And my heart sank when I saw that.

And I want to cry.

​I don't even know what I did wrong in the message, which makes it even worse. It's again my autism at work. I don't want to say something like "Obviously I wouldn't have done whatever I did wrong, if I knew it was wrong", in order to get an idea of what I did wrong. I don't know yet. I don't have any idea. I've tried, but even with hindsight I can't figure it out. It was somehow wrong.

But I don't want to use autism as an excuse.

Yet I do know it was severe.
It was bad.

Very bad.

My boss is a very benevolent-chill-benign-casual-laid-back boss, the best boss I could hope for, who is very understanding and compassionate and forgiving. I couldn't ask for a better boss. They give every opportunity, they are very kind, they give a lot, they understand, they listen, they explain calmly, they give good feedback, they give critiques that are calm but still impactful, useful, and just. Good.

Except.

Somehow, that boss that is all of those? Is royally ticked off. Which means I did something VERY wrong. I did something VERY bad. I did something very very very very very very wrong. And I don't know what. I don't have any clue. I am hurting. I am in pain. Like hurting my friend, hurting my boss hurts me because it is doing something I thought I could never do in a very negative way.

I just. It's not good. I hurt them. I don't know how. I don't know. But it was bad. Whatever it was. It had to have been for this reaction. What did I do??? I can't figure it out. But there will be consequences. Bad ones. I'm in for something very bad on Wednesday. Some kind of hell. The best outcome would be some sort of reprimand. The BEST outcome would be a dressing down of me where I get into trouble.

But I could be losing my position as a lead lifeguard.

Or even my job.

And that is the issue.

I want to die if I lose my job.
And even if I keep it.
​I might want to if I lose my position as a lead lifeguard.

I know that sounds alarming.
I normally would say it's not.

But maybe it is.

​I have pride in my job. I feel like I am competent in my job. I feel like I am good at my job. I feel like I am worthy of my job. I feel like I know I am at the level needed for that job. It is one I genuinely enjoy and feel like it is a calling of mine. It might not be the highest paying. It might be exhausting. It might be hard. But. It is who I am. It is an extensive part of my identity.

So what do I do if I lose what has become a piece of my soul.

What do I do.

It's genuinely soul-crushing.

I've tried to distract myself constantly.

But every time, it's temporary.

And the dread comes back. The weight of impending doom.

I can do NOTHING about it.
I can do NOTHING to change it.

Wednesday, and the reckoning coming with it, will happen.
I can't stop it.
I can't delay it.
I can't prevent it.
I can't influence it.
I can't do anything but just...show up and await my fate.

Which could be something that leaves me effectively dead.

So.

​I'm having...a bad time.

I need a break from existence but there's none to be had. Sleep only brings me closer to the day I dread. I can't do this. It's so bad. Why am I so bad at being good. Why is every attempt I make to be better, only making things worse? Why can't I just...be good at being good at something that is good.

I just suck.

​And it's...crushing.

IIIIII diddddd...literally nothing I said I would do yesterday. Instead I did a depression-spurned modded playthrough of one of my favorite Majesty scenarios (The Siege).

And then an equally depression-spurned TVTropes binge which led me with, genuinely, nearly 20 tabs I didn't have before, at the cost of finishing only one or two of the ones that I had before.

So, well, objectively speaking: bit of a failure there.

It wasn't exactly time poorly spent in my opinion though, because the time I spent still helped me a lot. It was reading the TVTropes page for The Defroster->every character page for My Next Life as a Villainness, which in many ways drew me in thanks to how it just...relates to me.

I would of course: love to be successful. All the ideas in my head, the world will be a lesser place for them not having been made. And for that I can only continue to apologize to everyone. I have so so many beautiful gorgeous ideas. And I genuinely cry knowing that they will never be seen by others. If I am lucky, yes, some will--but it is physically impossible for all of them to become real. There's not enough time in the world for that; when you make 2-3 new ideas a day and some ideas you forget critical details of, how could all of them come to the world? They can't so even IF I get the best case scenario of making my ideas real, it'll still only be some of them.

And for that, I need to apologize, not only to the people of this world for them not being able to see, to connect, with the ideas in my head, but also to the ideas in my head. Every character that I cannot bring to life, I cry for not having been able to do so because they are real. Their stories, their personalities, their interactions, they have genuine lives that I am the one and only person capable of telling. I am the one and only person who is capable of sharing their experiences to others and recording them and making them be seen, be experienced, for all of time.

So every time I don't do that, I have failed them. And it gives me great pain.

​But on the note of that great pain and the doom brought to others, back to why I needed the reading of the character pages for that series. It served as a good reminder of what I strive to be.

I will always hate myself for every perceived flaw, every perceived weakness, every perceived instance of having wronged others, every instance of having failed them. Every time I have someone that could be a friend, end up drifting away from me: I consider it a failure. I almost wrote a song about it yesterday in fact. (It'd have been called "The Lone Killer", basically Killer->Impostor->Impostor Syndrome and feeling alone. I was stopped by being short on time and by having positive reaffirmation that I desperately needed to hear.)

After all, as that not-written song would have said: it is easy to remember the wrongs, but hard to remember the rights. It is easy to see the good being gone, but hard to see the good that still is. Friendships require effort from both sides, and given that I put no effort into friendships, I am, arguably, more to blame for them not forming than anyone else.

Because how can someone really be my friend if the entirety of their friendship is just them showing up to help me? If I am just giving them nothing at all, obviously, the natural consequence of that is that over time, they just...gradually, do less and less. Because if I'm not maintaining the friendship, and I never do, then how could they when friendships are innately inherently draining?

But while I may not have any long-lasting success. Or any long-lasting friendships.

I still have a clear idea of what I really want.

I cannot stop hating myself for every instance of knowing I have caused harm, or even every instance of knowing "I could have done so much more to help than what I did". Every instance of apathy, every instance of thoughtlessness. Every time where I could have done something more supportive, but did not.

But I do have a goal in mind that I wish to continue to pursue.

I wish to live a long, happy, fulfilling life. I wish to spread kindness and empathy to the world. I despise myself, hate myself, for absolute failures on my part in these fields. Some quite recent, in fact. I had someone contact me about how I had hurt them and it made me realize how dangerously close I can be to falling into the worst part of my past self when I was, genuinely, a jerkass.

There was a time when I was a very nasty person.

So I am always, always, on guard for it, fearing the return of that part of me.

But while I have continued to fail.

I still wish to try.

Because it is, I believe, what I want the most in life now.

To live a long, happy, life where I give positivity and happiness to others.

I obviously don't want to place the happiness of others above myself--I know that's not healthy.

But I want to do everything in my power that is not detrimental to my own happiness to continue to spread that positivity to others, to be the beacon of light that the protagonist of that story is. I know I won't be able to succeed, because I just don't have the skills to maintain longterm relationships. But I still wish to do whatever I can.

​Anyway, I'm literally an hour late for bed because I'm a bit of a dumbass sometimes (another common trait) so will only be getting 5 hours of sleep, but for this blog? Worth it.

It's not that I've done nothing, it's that after having done something I was up at a late enough time and/or so tired that I didn't write a blog (or remember to). It was time well spent tho, as I've been streaming Final Fantasy VII. (I also kinda want to look into putting my streams on Youtube, considered doing that today when I had the free time but I'm selfish so I prioritized other things that I probably shouldn't have put so much focus on.)

I will say this though.

I want to be a good streamer.

I want to be competent.

I want to be better.

I literally put in some time to create a background, starting screen, and break screen (tho I should also get a stream ending screen). I figured out how to put text on the screen of the stream.

I realize the art is terrible (MS Paint 5 minute art), and I need to replace it with better art once inspired. (I talked about this at the end of one of my streams--basically, I have seen plenty of starting/break/ending screens and how they handle overlays. But I need to be inspired in order to make a good one for myself. I can create it myself, but in order to do so, I need to have a vision on what I want to create, and I currently lack one.)

​But I still put in that attempt to improve.

And yet, it's still not good enough.

My streams are terrible.

The content of them can be good! The passion I have for Chrono Trigger is something that bridged how terrible the streams otherwise would be. The passion I have for FFVII similarly so! And my facial reactions, when I can show them on stream, are potentially entertaining. (Also there's occasional kitteh content.)

But the quality of the stream isn't great. I don't carry myself in a way which makes me a good streamer. And the stream lacks good bells and whistles. It's in a bad format. My equipment isn't great. My layout is slopping. My commands, my titles, everything, it's not great. It gets the job done, but getting the job done isn't good enough.

If I want to actually succeed as a streamer.

I need to get to a point where my streams are not terrible.

I have ideas on how to improve.

But right now all of them are just ideas.

They're not realized.

Some of my bigger fans, so to speak, will be supportive and say that I'm not terrible in my streams. After all, the content of them can be good! My passion for games can show, my reactions can be gold! (And bonus kitteh content is always welcome.) They would point that out, maybe add things like 'soothing', 'calm', 'chill', 'good to just vibe in', etc.

But the fact of the matter is, if they didn't know me already and want to support me already, they wouldn't be in my stream. They'd be elsewhere. They wouldn't find my content and stick around and stay--why would they? I don't have the streamer sense to be able to captivate new people coming in. I can't really show them how much I love their presence, how much I appreciate them, how much I want to vibe with them.

I'm autistic. I can't speak well. I don't know what to do, say, how to say it, and that's if I'm able to at all given that my streams frequently have no-mic periods thanks to my family.

​So by every metric, every objective rather than subjective metric, my streams are terrible.

I know that I can make them be better. At least theoretically. I know that they're already adequate, thanks to being hard-carried by the games I'm playing having such staying power that they bring folks in. But while the games I'm playing can keep me afloat.

I won't have made it until I have streams which have people show up and stay not out of obligation to me due to being friends/associates. But stay because they genuinely think my streams are worth watching no matter what. For people who have never interacted with me before, never seen me around. To come, see what I'm doing, and think that it's worth staying around for more because I've got a good thing going.

Nobody who is a current viewer of mine is capable of giving me that, or reassuring me that I have that, because all of my current viewers are said friends and associates, who have interacted with me before. They've seen me around. So they have those preexisting biases towards me. It needs to be from a complete and total stranger. And so far? I don't have it.

And right now, why would I?

I don't actually have a good thing going.

I have the potential to have a good thing going.

I have ideas, oh so many ideas, which if realized would elevate me to a much higher level.

But the ideas are unrealized and because they're unrealized? It means that the potential is just that. Potential, not actual. My streams are terrible.

I literally ended stream today and went "god I'm terrible at this". I actually had much stronger language than that, albeit language I've since forgotten in the process of writing this blog. (I actually started writing this blog specifically because I'd already tweeted so wanted to write down the thought in another medium, thinking that I'd make a one-liner blog. Turned out I had a bit more to say than that...and in the process, forgot what I was going to say originally.)

But whatever the sentence is that I was going to say, the sentiment still carries weight.

I hated myself for ending stream when I did. I wanted to keep going. And I realized just how bad my stream was the moment I stopped. It didn't end satisfactory. It wasn't something I felt good about. It was too short, and not only was it short, the content wasn't good. I wasn't on top of my game. I wasn't being full of commentary, reactions, etc. I was just...going through the motions.

And that makes it one of the worst streams I've done in months.

​I need to do better because that was unacceptably terrible.