I mentioned last time I blogged how I don't like rehashing what happened last year ad nauseum, don't like repeating it, don't like focusing on it to a detrimental amount, etc. You get the idea. It can sometimes be hard to believe that I legitimately am working on moving on given how it seems most of my blogs as of late have been revisiting the subject. But, something did happen which made me want to talk about it some more.

Last time, I mentioned that one of the reasons I considered going public was essentially for the benefit of a good friend. I didn't want that good friend to become a victim--they're also good friends with the problematic streamer. They might have called me a good friend, but the entire time, they were also good friends with the person I believe to be problematic. And I didn't want them to get hurt by that streamer.

I considered warning them about that streamer, as well as the ex-friends.
I even wrote a draft of what it'd be. Something along the lines of,
"Not an unban request because I know you won't believe me right now, more of a warning to your future self.

"Please do not let (problematic streamer), (ex-friend), (ex-friend's partner), or anyone tied to them gaslight you about anything you personally experienced. Never let them rewrite events, or put doubt into your mind.

"Never accept fault or blame yourself for anything relating to them.

"Never villainize yourself. Never think you are the problem, never believe you are to blame.  Never let them convince you things you know happened one way, happened the way they tell you it did.

"Do not let them emotionally manipulate you, especially not with anything regarding harm caused. Don’t accept being told you know what you did wrong, or that you have caused unacceptable harm to the community or loved ones.

"Trust your instincts. Not your brain or your feelings of what you want to be true. You will always want to believe everyone involved is a good person except yourself, and will be naturally inclined to blame yourself.

"Ignore those negative thoughts and, focusing on just your INSTINCTS, recall events with as much clarity as you possibly can. Not taking the accounts of others in. Just your own memory, as pure as can be.

"You will doubt it. Over and over. But try your best to listen and be honest. 

"And just know, if you ever fear that nobody will believe you...WE WILL. You will always have at least two who will listen and be on your side and believe your perspective and what you say.

"I know current you probably won’t know WTF this is about. And I mean it; I truly hope you never need to understand why I would send this to you. But this is for any future you, to hopefully remember if it does come to pass and you do need help. Best of wishes regardless of what your future holds."

I considered sending it to them, even if not going public. All because I don't want them to get hurt. I don't want them to be a victim. I don't want them to end up like kels and I did. I don't want them to be traumatized. I don't want them to be villainized. I don't want them to end up broken, shattered, defenseless, hopeless, feeling used, taken advantage of, abused. I don't want them to have to suffer like that. And given what I know about the problematic person, there is a very real, reasonably high chance, they are at a high risk of having exactly that happen.

I wanted to, for lack of a better term, "save" them, save them from the abuse before the abuse would happen, as it were.

A big reason for wanting to go public was for the chance it would be saving them, protecting them from harm, before the harm actually happened. And I wanted to warn them for the same reason. They called me a good friend at one point, and the feeling is mutual. I care about them. I worried about them, and still would worry about them if not for my guides essentially going "let it go. Stop worrying. You can't do anything. It's their battle to fight, their lesson to learn", essentially.

Every time I asked what would happen if I went public, the answer from my guides was overwhelmingly positive, because we likely would be believed and supported after we challenged the narrative the masses were fed and believed blindly. We have proof, we have evidence, of our innocence, or at least of not being guilty in the way we are thought, of the intentions behind our actions, etc. You get the idea. And it would do a lot of good, and prevent any potential future harm, especially to my good friend who is at risk.

...But ultimately, for numerous reasons, I decided it would be better to move on, and I promise we will be moving on largely, probably after this blog for good. This will probably not be the very last blog I ever write on the subject, because as I unpack thoughts I feel it's healthy for me to express them. Still, this will be one of the last blogs, and likely the last blog in a long while, on the subject of the problematic streamer and what went down last year.

Because we are moving on.

I did also ask if I should deliver the warning to that friend, privately, the only way I could. The answer was consistently "maybe, but only if it's for the right reason; what are you hoping to accomplish by doing this?", essentially. And, yeah, what I want to do is to protect a good friend from trauma and harm they shouldn't need to suffer through. They've already survived so much, so I don't want them to have to suffer more through yet another toxic relationship.

...But a large part of me told me that it's their battle to fight. Their lesson to learn. Their path to heal from. Their journey to undergo. And that they don't want my help. And that my help wouldn't do much if any good. They'd have my advice if they ever recognized they need it, but they might not recognize they need it, and would likely never have much use for it. By the time they would know they need it, they wouldn't need it. I know that sounds silly, but no, really. By the time they would need the warning, they no longer would need the warning. By the time they would believe the warning, they would have already overcome the need for the warning because the inherent ability to recognize the situation would mean no need for a warning about the situation. Either they wouldn't believe the warning because of not recognizing it or they wouldn't need the warning because they do recognize it.

...So, accepting that helped me move on a lot from the idea of going public, or warning people in general.

I feel like it is their lesson to learn. Back when I was still at my peak levels of despair, in December, January, and February? The message from my guides was always crystal clear. "It's their lesson to learn, not yours." That I had already learned and grown from my mistakes. The people who cut me out were the ones who would need to learn at that point.

And...it remains true. The people who cut me out because of the misinformation campaign against us, the people who cut me out because they believed I am a threat to communities? They're going to learn the hard way they cut the wrong people out and the actual threat is still there, poisoning the well to this day.

And that's what inspired my blog about the subject today.

Because I got the best proof of this recently.

​In the community of a cross-pollinated streamer who is close friends with the problematic streamer, there's a 90-95% community overlap. That community and the community of the problematic streamer are a Venn Diagram that's nearly a circle. There's some only in one half, but 90+% are in both. So what happens in this streamer's community is representative of the community of the problematic streamer, too. Especially since the problematic streamer regularly talks to the streamer this community is about.

I'm no longer in the community myself...but as it turns out, people still want to talk to me about that community.

​Even if they don't know the circumstances behind why I'm no longer there.

I recently had a conversation with someone who has absolutely no idea the circumstances for why I'm not in that community anymore...and despite them having NO IDEA, they STILL came to ME to talk about issues they were seeing. Issues that validate what I've been talking about.

They managed to intuit out that some of the people in this alleged safe space chat weren't good people. They had NO IDEA. They had no idea what I went through. They had no clue. They were afraid to namedrop the streamer, afraid to speak badly about that streamer and their community, because they thought I still thought fondly of them. They were afraid of souring *MY* opinion of the community, not realizing if anything it'd be the other way around.

They, completely separately from me, detected problems I had known about. Without any context, without any knowledge, they correctly picked up on toxic poison being spread, of gaslighting being done. They somehow knew that certain people were gaslighting others, without any prior bias, without any prior context. They couldn't have known. They deliberately avoid knowing that kind of thing for their own mental health. Yet somehow, despite deliberately avoiding it, they managed to pick up on that poisoning of the well, that poisoning of the community.

They knew, and became disillusioned. Without any knowledge of what happened to me. I've had multiple friends from that community who have become disillusioned with it. They mention all of the problems they had, and they had these problems before what happened to me, made worse and confirmed by what happened to me. But it's not just close friends who knew what happened to me. It's not people who were biased.

This is someone who had no idea what happened to me, who loved the community, and was baffled, confused, by the change, wondering if they were the problem. If the community had stagnated while they outgrew it, essentially. They found what the issue was, without knowing it. They said "I think it's my own feels", they said "it's surely nothing and I'm overthinking"...

...Except they aren't. They're right. They weren't even trying to identify the problem, they specifically were just trying to vibe as they always did, yet instinctively, they felt it. The change in the community vibes, because of the poisoned well. A well which got poisoned because of the problematic streamer and the minions of the problematic streamer who are our ex-friends. And the mistrust, the paranoia, the lack of understanding, etc., all which entailed from following their lead.

It affected an entire community, and they are still feeling the effects, getting worse with time. The source of the poison is still there, after all. Innocent, perfectly harmless actions, are now being viewed with suspicion and doubt, paranoia and mistrust. Actions which used to be people trying to connect with each other, converse with each other, are now seen as something that raises red flags in the minds of those who have been poisoned.

Friendships which lasted years, undone by that poison. By that effort to divide, sow the seeds of mistrust, to paint harmless actions as sinister. Innocent things meant to bond and to form a community are now in that community being perceived as malicious acts that warrant being tense about. That paranoia, that suspicion, is there. People are feeling a need to defend themselves, in ways they didn't used to feel the need to defend themselves.

And that is the poison which is spreading. Keep in mind, this is a community well-versed in internet safety. All of us thought we were staying safe and did fairly good jobs at it previously. Yet thanks to the poison...what was previously safe and a good job is seen as not enough protection. Walls go up. Divides are formed. The connection isn't being formed as it used to. All due to the community well being poisoned, and the poison not being removed.

​Again. The source of this is from someone who had no idea I already knew from first-hand experience. This is from someone who didn't know I was a victim. This is from someone who had no idea what had happened to me. And this person still managed to identify the exact problem, without trying to!

So, that leaves me thinking...

...My guess of this all resolving in or before 2026?

...I'm beginning to think that was a hugely conservative estimate.

The poison spreading this quickly and rampantly? To where someone completely unrelated can intuitively tell​ about it without trying? It's going to lead to people realizing what the problem was. Eventually. They are going to learn what caused them to change for the worse. And it's going to happen sooner rather than later. They are going to learn what burned them, and they are going to do digging into the root cause.

I think the community will bounce back from it eventually--but the damage will have been done. Many who leave in this process likely won't return. Myself among them. As much as that community once meant to me...I don't think I can ever trust them again, not unless they have a serious reform. They lost their ability to trust in others. I wouldn't feel welcome unless that trust in others was returned.

And yes. I get the irony. My trust in them was lost by their lack of trust. But it's the best way I have to describe it. The poison of a lack of trust infected the community thanks to the problematic streamer and the agents of the problematic streamer, the ex-friends who chose the problematic streamer over their friends, over doing the right thing, and continued to spread the misinformation about kels and I and poisoned the minds of my friends.

These people twisted innocent actions, these people took the portrayal of people at their weakest, most vulnerable, worst states where they were emotionally compromised, and portrayed that as the norm. These people turned love into lovebombing, turned sharing information/facts into harm/abuse, turned efforts to mend into efforts to hurt. They spread that perspective, that doubt, that questioning of character, and infected the minds of everyone in the community.

And that paranoia, that doubt, didn't stay on just me, or just kels. It remains, with nearly everyone distrustful of nearly everyone, in ways they weren't before.

And that's poison.

I was never the problem.
kels was never the problem.

The problem remains, even after we have left, because the call was coming from inside the building.

​I wanted to believe the problematic streamer was a good person.

And despite everything, as fucked up as it is? I still want to believe the ex-friends are good people.
I've laid out, nearly as explicitly as I can without actually talking about the exchanges, all of the ways I know they're not. How they used emotional manipulation to try and get me to drop kels. How they outright gaslit me and tried to lie about events I remembered too well for their gaslighting to work. And so on and so forth. I have every reason to think they're horrible, with the only reasons I have to doubt it being...well, basically...

...a combination of remembering the good times when we were friends, hearing about them from people still friends with them, and my belief in most people being good but all people being flawed.

I want to believe they're good, despite all of what they did to me, and how their poison remains a plague that infected an entire community and sowed seeds of distrust that destroyed the vibes of connection previously present.

But really...I guess only time will tell.

Ultimately...it's not my battle to fight.
It's not my space anymore.
It was a found family, I truly treasured my time there...but I've moved on.
And that's again why this will likely be among my last blogs on the subject.

Receiving word about what has happened there from an unbiased source? Validated me. It's vindicating to know that the exact things which were things I said were problematic, are being seen as such by people completely unaware of my knowledge. They weren't biased by me. They found that on their own, because it's not just me.

It's healing. It's soothing. But it's not something I'm going to get entangled in. It's not something I'm going to continue focusing on. With the knowledge of the state of the community, I know that the explosion is going to happen sooner rather than later. People are going to want answers, people are going to ask, "What the hell happened to us? What happened here???", sooner rather than later. They are going to do digging, reevaluating, and revisit the past. I know it's going to happen, sooner rather than later, and knowing that is cathartic.

Knowing they will heal, they will learn, they will grow, after realizing the mistake they made in letting that distrust fester, in letting that lack of faith last so long. Knowing they let themselves be hurt by a nonexistent version of people, and that the threats they viewed were never threats. Knowing they will grow, they will figure out, what the real issue was and who caused it and how it happened.

That's all healing, to know it will happen sooner rather than later.

...But I have spoken my piece. So now I am at peace. It's not my place anymore, despite my fondness for it. It's not my fight. I already learned. I already grew. I already am healing. That healing would best be served by moving on, now that I have spoken as much as I can. There's a lot more I could say, to be sure...but I don't think it'd help to.

Fingers crossed from here on out we can all collectively move on.

I apologize for bothering you. And I am so sorry for having been this critical, this negative. I truly want to not be, and I truly hope to embody the very thing I think the community I was in had lost. I want to trust, as I wasn't trusted. I want to believe, as I wasn't believed. I want to see the good, as I wasn't seen for all the good. I want to be better than to ever possibly risk putting someone through the Hell I lived through.

I wouldn't wish my suffering on my worst enemy. Not the streamer I believe is problematic, not the ex-friends. I don't think they deserve that. I don't think they deserve to suffer. I don't think they deserve to be entirely cast out. To have the harm they caused be recognized, identified, and have communities correct for it? Yeah I think that's a necessity to happen at some point. But I never want to have anyone go through what we did.

I don't want to ever feel a need to be paranoid, distrustful, guarded, reserved. I don't want to ever put up walls. I don't want to ever spread poison. I don't want to ever speak badly of people I used to think fondly of. I don't want to think people are irredeemable, and should be condemned. I don't want to believe people are horrible enough where they deserve scorn. I don't want to highlight the negatives we all have. I don't want to focus on the bad.

So going forward...I hope that I can focus on all the positives. On all the learnings. On all the healing. On all which is good in this world. I truly wish you can have that strength, too. Thank you for tolerating my rants about my trauma. Thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for listening. And I hope that I can help you in some way shape or form going forward. <3

Part of it has been the challenges of life, in particular, a shifted work schedule. There's a reason once the July schedule hit, I suddenly became a lot less available; work was keeping me that way, and still is this month too.

I've been exhausted, with no time or energy.

And, part of it has just been that I have too much to say.

I haven't been blogging in part because I haven't had the time to unpack what I wanted to say.

I suppose I'll start with saying this.

I love the world. I love the people within. I love people. I love humans. I love the communities I am in, and I loved the communities I no longer am in. I love my friends, and I love the people who once called me friend. I love everyone, to varying degrees. And I think that's important to note.

I can't say it as eloquently as when I was telling it to someone else who needed the reassurance, but our society has had a tendency to over-correct for certain behaviors. For instance, the term lovebombing is wonderful to know. The moment we knew what the term lovebombing was, we could identify lovebombing as lovebombing, and cut out the toxic manipulative people using it as a manipulation tactic. A good thing, to be sure...

...But then, people over-corrected. And started calling perfectly normal, healthy behavior, lovebombing.

Gift-giving can be a form of lovebombing. It's a way to often get conditional displays of love, it's a way to draw people in, it's a way to get them to trust you, etc. But the important part here is the CAN BE. Can. Gift-giving is not inherently manipulative. Gift-giving is not inherently lovebombing. Gift-giving is a love language. Many people give gifts to express their love, regardless of what the type of love that is, and they are not manipulative or manipulators.

It's important to recognize the distinction between the two. Lovebombing is a manipulation tactic manipulators use to gain something. But gift-giving is also something can do to express their unconditional love, and that is one of the most beautiful forms of love there is.

Showering with affection can be a form of lovebombing. It's a way to often get conditional displays of love. It's a way to make people feel loved, appreciated, but then to exert control by making that love have requirements, or to have that love be for a purpose. But the important part here is the CAN BE. Showering with affection is not inherently manipulative. This one is actually more important to realize and recognize, because while gift-giving is understood as a form of love language fairly easily (we give gifts on birthdays and Christmas and to loved ones and to significant others all the time), as a society we tend to have been numbed to genuinely complimenting people with pleasantries beyond the standard.

But all the same, showering with affection IS a love language, a la Gomez Addams showering his wife with unending praise and affection. There tends to be a stigma about "showing with actions rather than words", and that the words of showering with praise aren't actions, but those words when backed by time, investment, and consistency ARE actions. They are a form of showing how much you love someone by finding and crafting the words that demonstrate it.

There was a time when we had an understanding of this in some form. Writing poetry was seen as a grand romantic gesture, of displaying true love. Similarly so for songs. But when you take it into a different medium of just speech, people tend to think that somehow, it's not the same level of having been made and crafted with words. What you say, what you take time to write, what words you decide to make into praise, all of those? They ARE a love language.

And many people, myself included, gift words, showering with praise, as our way of expressing love, regardless of what type of love that is. It's particularly the case for me because I'm not talented enough to create gifts for people and even if I were I don't have the time to invest because I can't make them quickly. It's not a skill I have, not naturally at least. I can't give monetary gifts either because I'm basically broke. My financial situation continues to be terrible, so I can't give gifts.

So...what can I give? Not crafted gifts, not bought gifts, what way of expressing love do I have left? ...Words. That's all I have. Words, to express myself, to give my love to all in my life, and to show how much I care about them. Spreading joy and positivity, with words of encouragement, of support, of laughter, of love. 

And while my imposter syndrome will tell me I am a manipulator...that the skills of manipulation are so ingrained in me that I can't not manipulate people...

...if I am actually honest with myself...

...I am not a manipulator by taking the time to craft my words. I'm just choosing the best way to express myself, to express my love, and am being considerate, kind, and caring.

And I think that's important to recognize.

Which...brings me to the next thing.

I have such love of people, and I truly wish to see the best in them all.

I have this belief. "Most humans are good, but all humans are imperfect." Most humans are good, but all humans are flawed. Most humans are good, but all humans make mistakes.

And I try to live my life understanding others with compassion, empathy, and truly trying to see their perspective. I don't believe in "sides" for most issues, because there's not sides to be taken; there's perspectives to understand and then process to form our own. There's no judgement, there's only processing information and deducing things from it.

And...like, I'm pretty good at understanding. I'm pretty good at seeing the other perspectives. I'm pretty good at filling in the gaps, seeing their viewpoints, etc. But not perfect. And the only way I can get better is by people sharing, so I can know. Communication is a skill which seems to have been by and large lost. There's breakdowns of conversations, rather than trying to work through the issues.

I know it seems unrealistic, but the stereotypical Disney Channel Original Movie (or similarly so for shows reaching a climax of episodes and especially seasons) have a cliche:
Character A lays out the flaws of Character B, but apologies for their own, understands them, and tries to make it up.
Character B apologies for their flaws, understands them, lays out Character A's flaws, but understands them, and wants to make it up.
This can go back and forth for a bit, but then...

...something magical happens:
...They reconcile through this. By acknowledging their faults and shortcomings, but sharing their perspective to not be walked all over, calling the other side out, but understanding them, the communication doesn't break down, and they hug, and then things are good again.

...It sounds unrealistic, doesn't it?

...But my question is; why?
Why can't we do exactly that?

Why isn't that exactly how we SHOULD do things?

Why should we need to cut ties with people, why should we need to end things, why should we need to distance ourselves?

Obviously, we can choose to, if reconciliation is truly impossible.

But why is there such a societal pressure where you NEED, you MUST, cut ties, rather than trying to heal?

Why CAN'T we resolve it like characters from a Disney Channel Original Movie?
Why can't we talk it out, with us establishing our perspective, but accepting the perspective of others? Why can't we admit we could be mistaken in some areas but stand firm in saying we aren't mistaken in others? If both sides do so and there aren't irreconcilable cases...

...Why can't we keep the people we love, as people we love?

I genuinely don't understand why the instinct is to cut out rather than to hold conversation.

I get cutting out people who were actively harmful and toxic. That needs no explanation. But why would you cut out a loved one for what amounts to something which wasn't that level of harmful and toxic? Why is EVERY hurt met with "distance, cut out"? Why is EVERY pain met with that level of withdrawal and giving up on keeping the person as a loved one? That's what I don't get. If the love is there...isn't it worth trying to keep?

​So on my end...I try to keep the line of communication open. To understand, to try and get it.

But there's some things I can't get, and they challenge my perspective on people being good.

There are people who I want to believe are good, yet flawed, but...sometimes, those people take actions that I can't figure out how they could be taken by a good person.

Which brings me to the main thing I wanted to say.
And it's sharing, without namedropping, a dilemma I've had.

I've considered going public about what happened last year, from March 21st 2023 through July 2023 with some spillover that has followed us to this day. As a form of self-advocacy, to explain in public our perspective when almost nobody was willing to hear us out. (The only people who did were close friends.) Yet...another reason I've considered going public is because if I am wrong about the people being good...then they have red flags that are alarming, dangerous, and could continuously cause harm if not addressed.

I want to be clear. I am intent on moving on. My fiance and I want to move on, rebuild our lives, and not dwell on the past. We want to be happy. We want to enjoy life, be content. We are much loved by our friends, and I in particular have a lot of love to give. I want to spread the love to those who will allow me to, pursue my creative endeavors, and basically live life.

I don't want to go public anymore. Despite how I got a reading which said it would go really well, despite how I believe me going public would enlighten people, shed some light on things, make people reconsider, and essentially launch an entire inquiry into how things happened the way they did and how the lies about us spread as they did. I know good would come from sharing...but I don't want to, because I instead want to share on moving on, on protecting my peace, on healing, on becoming better, stronger, more empathetic, more learned, and more incredible and wonderful a human than ever before.

Yet it does bear mentioning.
There are some red flags I want to at least air out.

Most of the red flags are things I can think of innocent justifications for.

There's one or two that I cannot.

So I will share at least this much, without namedropping names. Those who read this blog will likely know the names, although nobody reads my blog. But if anyone were to, they would likely know who I am talking about.

Last year, my fiance was a mod for a streamer.
That streamer has a sizeable community.
Some of those community members are friends, and last year, I was invited by a community member to be part of their private friend server. It's on that community member's server that my fiance and I bonded, becoming closer friends.

On March 21st, an artist for that private friend server (who made emotes for it) as well as a couple of others had some complaints about the streamer we had all met and become friends through. The server owner created a subthread for it, which ended up having eight people involved, or thereabouts. The server owner, their partner, the artist who was also a VIP, myself, my fiance, a friend, and a couple of other long-time community members.

​For five months, we had various criticisms of the streamer in question. And ultimately, the character of the streamer in question is important here.

Because there's two extremes.

On one extreme, the streamer in question is a good person, better than most, and we were forming an echo chamber focused on the flaws and amplifying them. We were fully in the wrong for basically everything we did, despite our criticisms having provably had some merit.

I...can't find myself believing this extreme, at least not in its entirety.

On the other extreme, we were whistleblowers. We were compiling a list of red flags that would have helped to expose just how problematic the streamer in question is. We were in denial about how problematic the streamer was, and in our good intentions when we were trying to help the streamer be better, we were looking from the wrong mindset. We all believed the streamer was a good person so we assumed the red flags were just small things that were issues, rather than the red flags they actually were.

We would, in having wanted to believe the streamer was a good yet flawed person, have had all the evidence but not known the importance of the evidence.

​What's scary about this extreme is that my only reasons for not believing it are my own philosophy and wanting to trust in the judgements of others.
I want to believe the streamer in question is a good person, just flawed, even despite my fiance saying they aren't a good person. (I want to be clear my fiance does not see the streamer as this extreme. My fiance thinks the streamer is a lousy person, but also doesn't think they are actually monstrous, which is the extreme I laid out above.)

​And...the streamer in question is very close to dozens upon dozens of people who have made these kinds of judgements before. All of them have cut out former toxic "friends" who were problematic, and have gotten very good at identifying warning signs. So, if all of them trust the streamer in question and think the streamer in question is good...then surely, they can't all be wrong, right?

So like...my own philosophy as well as wanting to trust in the collective ability of others tells me that the streamer in question would be closer to the former than the latter extreme.

...Yet...

...At the same time...

...These same collective people who judge the streamer in question as being good, are the same collective people who judged me and my fiance as being problematic enough to need to be removed from their spaces. If I want to believe myself not problematic, then I must by extent believe that collective judgement can be wrong. That it was wrong about me, and overly harsh on my fiance. If I am not problematic enough to warrant removal, then a collective judgement saying I am would be wrong, and therefore, if I believe myself to not be problematic (and on my better days I do believe myself to not be problematic), then I must believe,
"They got it wrong once...they could have gotten it wrong again."

​There is also the fact a highly spiritually attuned person had their instincts scream at them something was horribly, horribly "off" about the streamer in question. Every time they attended that streamer's streams, something felt WRONG to them. They had a strong reaction to the streamer, without knowing WHY. And because of how spiritually attuned that person is, because of how good their instincts are, they are someone whose instincts influence me.

​And that pushes me away from the former extreme and closer to the latter.

Then there are the red flags I can't ignore, I can't justify.

The streamer in question modded my fiance when my fiance was 22. They sent and offered my fiance gifts, on multiple occasions. They repeatedly called my fiance their friend, over and over again, until my fiance was browbeat into believing the streamer was their friend. Again, this was INITIATED BY THE STREAMER, not by my fiance. My fiance didn't say they were friends until after countless times of the streamer calling my fiance their friend.

​The friendship was initiated by the streamer, and propagated by the streamer. Not inherently a red flag, except...

...The streamer spread that my fiance had a parasocial relationship with them. When it was the other way around, the streamer had a parasocial relationship with my fiance. The streamer spread the idea that my fiance has issues thinking streamers are their friend, when the friendship was initated BY THE STREAMER.

And...I can't explain why the streamer would lie about my fiance that way. I KNOW the streamer called my fiance their friend, on numerous times. I remember being on stream and on discord and seeing them repeatedly call my fiance their friend. And if I as a casual viewer remember, then other viewers would, too. The proof that the streamer REPEATEDLY called my fiance their friend exists...yet they lied, and spread the idea that my fiance made it up, that my fiance was delusional for thinking themself friends with the streamer in question.

That kind of red flag, I can't justify. And we have proof of this too. We have proof of the streamer calling my fiance their friend, of offering and actually giving things to my fiance. So why did they lie about it, and how come everyone believed the lie? That's a big gigantic red flag that I cannot find any good person justification for. Why would the streamer spread a lie which caused my fiance to be effectively removed from every space they cared about overnight? I know they did, I just can't think of a valid reason to.

​Then there is something my fiance told me about a conversation.
One of the people to ban my fiance said that my fiance had blocked the streamer on discord, and ran to that person, essentially. But...the thing is...
...That couldn't have happened. The one platform the streamer is friends with my fiance is on discord. Even if my fiance no longer shared servers with the streamer in question (my fiance had left the discord when things were going down), being discord friends with the streamer in question would bypass that discord limitation and allow conversation. There's no way the streamer could have attempted to talk to my fiance and failed.

So, why did the streamer claim that my fiance had blocked them? It couldn't have been a mistake, or misunderstanding, because on discord by being friends you are given that ability to communicate and to this day the streamer is still friends with my fiance. At literally any time, they could send a message to my fiance, and vice-versa. Why did it get spread that my fiance had blocked the streamer? I can't justify that.

​Then there is the contents which initiated this. My fiance got illegally recorded in a private discord call with someone they considered a friend. (And, yes, it was illegal, because discord counts as a communication line and my fiance was in a two-party state at the time which requires consent. They never gave consent to be recorded, and therefore the recording was illegal. Pointing this out is pointing out a fact. The person taking the recording broke the law. My fiance was within their legal right to have access to the recording and to take legal action against having been recorded. That is also a fact. Pointing that out is just pointing out facts. What matters most for the character of my fiance is that at the end of the day? They didn't pursue legal action...again, because WE WANT TO MOVE ON.)

​My fiance never got access to that recording, but they very clearly remember what they said. They remember saying that if they were to publicly criticize the streamer on twitter, that they would be accused by people on twitter of being a racist. Which is true. Twitter is a cesspool, and valid criticism of terrible people is often said by toxic twitter residents to be bigotry.

Yet somehow, that got spread as my fiance having said the streamer is racist. Despite my fiance swearing they never said that. We don't have access to the recording so obviously we don't know what the recording said, but my fiance SWEARS they remember, crystal clearly, their EXACT wording. And I've heard them recite their exact wording multiple times. I could even write it here on the blog. They know what they said, or at least they genuinely believe they do, and what they swear they said doesn't match up with what the streamer claims they said.

I can KINDA justify this one. My fiance is human, and could be mistaken about what they said. What they said might have had a wording more ambiguous than they remember, and that more ambiguous wording could be interpreted as something along those lines, maybe. But that requires maybe after maybe, when my fiance is very very sure about what they said.

​And then there was something that involved the friend server owner and their partner talking to me.

During the 5 months this was all going on, my fiance repeatedly said they were on the verge of unmodding, and just leaving. They said this no less than 4 times being "this is my 13th reason" and being seconds away from having hit the unmod button. The friend server owner and their partner talked my fiance into not pulling the trigger on unmodding, on remaining a mod, on staying. Repeatedly. Every time my fiance was on the verge of quitting, the friend server owner and their partner would convince my fiance that we needed them to stay.

...Yet after the streamer in question talked to the server owner and their partner, between July 23rd and July 25th, the server owner and their partner in their messages to me tried to convince me that my fiance (friend at the time) was jealous of another mod being administrator in the streamer's discord and wanted that position back.

The VERY PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR MY FIANCE NOT HAVING UNMODDED, tried to tell ME, someone who was there for all of these times they told my fiance not to unmod, that my fiance wanted more power in the community. And to this day, I cannot explain how the very people who KNEW my fiance was on the verge of leaving the community (my fiance has left the community of streamers they were overly frustrated with before, and was repeatedly on the verge of doing so again), tried to claim to me the exact opposite, that my fiance was trying to entrench themself and gain extra power, when that's the exact opposite of FIVE MONTHS OF EXPERIENCE we had.

I'm not sure if the streamer in question gaslit the server owner and their partner that badly to where they believed it,
The server owner and their partner were trying to gaslight me,
Or if it was a mixture of both.

But regardless, there was gaslighting going on and it wasn't from me or my fiance. I KNOW my fiance was only talked out of outright leaving by the duo of the friend server owner and their partner. I KNOW they didn't want power back. So I know that is another lie. The only thing I don't know is who propagated it.

If the streamer gaslit the server owner and their partner that hard, then it would be their lying, manipulation, and it would be an extra red flag because it would mean they were so convincing at lying that the two people who MOST should know my fiance wasn't wanting what was alleged, somehow got convinced they wanted it.

If the friend server owner and their partner just tried to gaslight me, then that means they willingly and deliberately propagated a lie they knew was a lie, just to try and protect their own interests and try and maintain their positions.

I don't know which is worse, but either way, one of them was gaslighting regardless. One of them tried manipulation regardless. And both are terrible positions that I cannot for the life of me find a justification for.

And...it's because of that, that I am beginning to be more in line with my fiance's view. My fiance doesn't think of the streamer as being the monstrous extreme I laid out above, but thinks the streamer is a terrible person, and...

...As much as I want to believe in the people being good...

...I can't find a way to justify the lying, gaslighting, and manipulation which left my fiance suicidal enough where they wrote out a note and were literally going to kill themself, with me as the only thing to save them.

In tandem with us having spotted red flags, which while they can have innocent justifications can also be...well, RED FLAGS...

...And me trusting that spiritually attuned person...

...I just...can't find myself believing in the better nature of the streamer.

They'd be at best in the middle, and closer to the monster extreme I mentioned.

And...that is why I know going public would do a lot of good. We could prove most of this. We could self-advocate to defend ourselves from the lies spread about us. We could potentially expose a monster who those with better resources could further investigate into.

...And yet...at the same time...I don't want to. I want the best success to be moving on without having needed to, essentially. The people who didn't let me and my fiance self-advocate were not worth investing time in because if they weren't willing to hear us out and if the result of them not having heard us out was a monster getting away with horrible things...then they aren't people I want to invite back into my life even if they ended up believing me.

I want to build my life, and let those that cut me out of theirs deal with the consequences down the line, essentially.

I want to live my life, move on, heal, and keep the friends who wanted to hear us out.

So, at the end of the day...it doesn't matter much.

I've aired this out. My belief, my love, my perspective, some knowledge bombs, etc. i've kept a lot generic including not disclosing the red flags we uncovered. But I just want it put on the record. If the streamer is ever canceled for being a problematic POS...we knew. We knew back in 2023. We were in denial because we wanted to believe in their goodness, but we KNEW. And my fiance was driven to nearly kill themself for the crime of having known, and been a whistleblower. But, again, that's only if the monster extreme is closer to reality.

I'll just leave this out there for posterity; time truly will tell. Either we were wrong, or we were right. If we were wrong, moving on is for the best. If we were right, it will come out with time, and the questions about why nobody listened to us back then will be asked when it finally does come to light.

Meanwhile, I will continue to spread joy and positivity and become a Breeacon of light, healing, helping, loving.

​Thank you for listening.

I kinda feel like I'm probably taking on too many things since it feels like I'm always scrambling to get everything done in a day.

To be fair, I'm actually getting most of it done.

I'm playing mafia again.

I'm mostly on top of my games, like Torn and my addiction to Idling to rule the gods.

I'm upping my social media presence.

I'm attending and juggling multiple streams better. 

I'm keeping on top of work stuff.

​I have mostly been on top of daily discords, making sure I'm not falling behind.

Granted, there's stuff that I have fallen behind on. I neglected to write a poem to a family member I promised. I haven't dealt with important bills I very badly need to. I am falling further and further behind on my mirror blog.

And there's stuff I haven't done. I haven't worked on my discord today yet.
I haven't set up the twitch commands I wanted to or gotten the commands set up yet.
I haven't done writing yet.

I do need to stay busy. But I'm not on top of everything, despite my progress.

There's a finite amount of time in a day and I don't want to neglect anything.

I'm getting better about hygiene, but need to be better about meds--I'm taking them daily, but not at the time recommended and much later than I should.

​So like. Life stuff. I'm progressing. Got a lot on my mind, but gonna keep going.

Mentally, it was a 3/10, because it was hard not to be.

And physically, been dealing with the hangover from the Sapphic Valentines Day dance party last night, which got us home at like 3 am.

It was an amazing time. Minimal stress, one of the best times I've ever had in my life.

However, today has gotten better and better with time.

My fiance has been helping me a lot.
We had an amazing trip to the mall to treat ourselves to a shop's closing, and had good talks there.

I've been having a lot of fun in various twitch chats and had caught up in most discords. (I briefly caught up in all, but some are getting heavy usage today.)

And I've got some humor from tarot cards.

I've gotten readings FIVE TIMES in ONE WEEK telling me 'Balance'. I need to find it, which I'm very bad at, and I don't really know how to, but the final time, the fifth reading, had another aspect to it.

It was a clear unambiguous answer from my guides to something I had actually asked them to give me a clear unambiguous answer to--I am very very very sad about it, but the message was as clear as can be. "No. Don't hold out hope of rekindling what has been lost."

And, as much pain as it brings me, I am going to do my best to follow through with that.

I'm sure I will consistently get times where I briefly revisit it. I know me. I can't just cut the thoughts out permanently and indefinitely. They will return. But I will be able to remind myself of what my guides just said as clear as day.

No. Do not go down the path of thinking about the past. Do not think about what has been lost. Do not think about what could have been. Drop focus on it. It's not doing any good. I'm still healing. I'm not fully healed yet. But I need to not think about the friends who have cut me out--especially not entirely, but also not partially.

They have been on my mind a lot. And I wish them all the happiness. And I will always call them friends, and be there for them as a friend if they ever need my help. That will always remain true. But all other thoughts about them? Trying to explain things, wondering if I should open up, wondering if I should share, wondering if I should give well-wishes, wondering if I should congratulate, thinking if I should apologize, thinking if I should try to rekindle things in any way shape or form?

​DROP IT.

I need to stop those thoughts.
​
In effect, they should not exist in my mind--at all. Unless they are contacting me? Stop thinking about them. Stop trying to figure out the right thing to do for them. Stop spending time and energy trying to explain myself, to make things better, to make things right, etc.

It sounds so harsh. It is also heartbreaking and hope-crushing, given my love for them. But it's as clear as can be.

In order to accomplish what I want--to become a beacon of joy and positivity, to become a content creator, to write music, to write my novels, you get it. I can't think of them. To move on in life I need to move on from those who don't want me in their life.

It feels horrible to say. Like, I'm empathetic, how could I not care, how can I move on, how can I stop loving, how can I not try to do the right thing, how can I say they're not worth my time when for years they were what I was devoting my time to, etc. But there's nothing I can do. I shouldn't hold out hope. They have made their decisions, and I will never sway them. I will never change them. I will never convince them I'm worth having in their life again. I am gone, for good, and nothing I can do will ever move the needle there.

No amount of trying to right the wrong will right it. No amount of knowing it was wrong will help. No amount of helping others will redeem me in their eyes. Nothing I can do or say will ever make things better for them, so I shouldn't try. On my end, there's nothing I can do. It is their call, their choice, their decision. And because it is entirely on them, they effectively don't exist in my life unless they reach out. Anything more than that, at least right now, just won't do any good.

​It hurts to hear--but it's true.

So this will probably be my last blog on the subject.

It's about time I move on. I have a wonderful fiance. I have close friends who cherish me and want to spend time with me. I have people who want to be in my life. I have people who value me. I have people who I bring joy and positivity to. I have people who enjoy interacting with me. I have people who want me to attend things with them. And while I will always extend that offer to those who want it--if they don't, then I shouldn't spend my time/effort wanting them to, trying to get them to, etc. No means no. They don't want me. So I'm going to have to accept that, live with it, and should focus on those who do.

I hope I'm making sense. I hope it's not sounding mean. I know my blogs can be poorly worded. Concepts which are harmless, I can botch explaining. The message I got, while a roast, was positive. It was tough love. It was blunt. It was strict and it was forceful. But it was right and it was guiding everyone in the right direction. And my right direction is to still do what I always have, to always do what I always have. Bring that joy, bring that positivity, connect people, help people, create things, build the healing energy.

​That's my path forward. So it's time I pursue it and don't hold myself back.

​I hope maybe my blog can inspire others to do similarly. I give advice similar to this blog all the time to others, and now I need to follow it. If you advise others, it could be a sign to take your own advice, too. <3

Today was largely a wasted day. I don't even remember what we wasted our time on (I think it might've been reading TVTropes?), but we weren't really productive.

We did download the audio for potentially adding alerts to our stream (altho we need to get that whole thing set up and currently don't have it), and we actually did work on the writing of our novel (rather than writing down notes and worldbuilding/character building), but even that was just editing.

We also got our laptop functioning again, which opens us up to potentially doing streams on it. Speaking of streams, we're nearly caught up on our youtube video uploads of them. I believe we're at 80/85? So like--at a couple uploads per day or so and accounting for extra streams, and we should in theory be caught up within a week.

We ended the night by indulging in Civ 3, playing a single turn all the way out.

We had planned to stream, but a few things got in the way. First was not wanting to not be part of the vibes for one particular stream (and even now, we're enjoying the vibes of a different stream that they raided in to). We could have done a stream, but we made the choice that the vibes of that stream were worth more.

After our parents came home at 4, we could've started stream, but right now, we're thinking it's best not to. We have a medication to pick up, and while we go to the pharmacy, we're hoping to pick up a few extras. (Lotions, tea, headphones, maybe a mic?

So like.

We could've done a lot more than we did.

It's not a nothingness day because if someone were to look at what we listed above, they'd say it was great, it was incredible, I did a ton, etc. But it's still disappointing, yaknow? We did basically nothing and wasted a golden opportunity to be productive. Tomorrow will be a short day (due to work on Monday), made shorter by a need to visit the pharmacist to get my medication.

Today was a day we could've done nearly 20 hours' of work, and instead, we did like...two, maybe? About half an hour for the laptop, about half an hour for the audio, about an hour for the novel, and then paltry amounts of time per video. (They take basically no time to put the info in, the rest is the upload/processing which is why we get a rate of like 1 video per 3 hours or so.)

So like--having two hours out of twenty means we were only at 1/10th of the productivity we should've been at.

Disappointing. Not shattering. But still a let-down.

Ah well.

​Is what it is.

Didn't do much of anything, but I made progress on a few things.
Watched "It's A Wonderful Life", which was incredible.
Watched Home Alone and Home Alone2, which was hilarious and iconic.
Did some work on farn by trying to find a way to create names from a word (rather than vice-versa), which I might've succeeded at, and am building up a list of Demon titles and aliases they use to avoid giving out their true name.
Didn't get to properly investigate how to fix the computer crash tho, and fell behind on a lot.

Gotta do a lot, in a short amount of time. But, meanwhile, bed; if I want to get a proper shower and a proper night's rest I should've gone to sleep an hour ago. So I'll be cutting corners.

Didn't blog yesterday since by the time I remembered I was already in bed.
Can't blog today since I am late for bed but I want to be as little late as is possible.
I need to build my youtube buffer back up since I'm pretty sure I have none.
I need to watch the rest of the debunk stream going on right now.
Tomorrow I ideally need to shower.

I should note today was an accomplishment in lore once more (writing down something I forgot to write down, a few detail things, and then fleshing out an entire non-farn realm), did a little bit of minecraft, did a little bit of progress on my art profile picture, and it's a productive day but again: am late for bed so...crud.

I mean, physically, not so much. It did leave our foot blistered when normal workdays don't, but that's minor. In of itself, yesterday was fine otherwise. Altho the fatigue is definitely felt--today's drive home from work felt alarmingly dangerous, because tiredness built up from exhaustion.

Emotionally, well yes but we've recovered.

The main way it messed us up was scheduling-wise and all the fallout which follows.

We were meant to do a minimum of 7 things today.

Watching one video.
Watching two vods.
Brushing teeth.
Going to bed on time.
Taking a shower.
Keeping discord talks up to date.
And catching up on mafia games. (We usually take Saturdays off. Which is normally fine, because we have eight hours of free time on Sunday to devote to the game. Not yesterday! Yesterday we had a maximum possible of two. Two hours, IF we were doing NOTHING BUT mafia. Suffice to say, we did not get that done.)

We tried to do them all.

You know how many we got done?

Well if we brush our teeth, that'll be two.
Otherwise?

One.

One, of seven.

These are genuinely all things that I could've gotten done if I had my normal amount of free time.
If I didn't have a double shift yesterday, if we didn't work ten hours yesterday, if we worked a far more sane five, then we'd have had five hours to devote to knocking tasks out.

We wouldn't have needed to even watch the DRX vod, because we'd have caught it live. (Maybe the very beginning we'd miss, but the most of it we'd catch.) Instead, we came in on the ending of game 4, meaning we had 4 games to watch and then some. (In our credit, we did get to near the end of game 2, but we honestly should rewatch that game since we didn't even notice when DRX got the edge there. It started with an EDG advantage and we knew EDG won the first two, so we kinda figured "oh EDG just won this from that early play, match wrapped", except actually no, it was an EDG win but DRX had the lead and I didn't really notice when or how that happened, so like...we clearly weren't paying enough attention to game 2 meaning we need to rewatch it. But I digress. Point is, we didn't finish that.)
We would probably have had time to watch the Paranormal Detour second episode.

We'd have had more time to catch up on discord.

And we'd have had more time to play mafia, meaning a lot of the work we did today could have instead been done yesterday, when we actually promised it. (We still haven't done things we promised on Saturday we'd do. Can't elaborate, ongoing game rules, but since the info is public in said games I think I can safely say that much without violating site rules by keeping it vague and not explaining.)

Granted, still wouldn't have gotten everything we wanted to do, done.

We'd still be late for bed and still not have finished everything.

But we'd have finished more.

Because today we still didn't finish. We're nowhere close.

We took a shower, miraculous as that in of itself is. But that's genuinely it. Everything else we planned to do, we didn't do to the amount we had planned to do. Or even remotely close.

All off the back of a single double shift we really didn't want to work, but worked anyway because we felt we had no choice but to.

The sad part is, we knew this would happen; that's why we didn't want the shift in the first place. We KNEW it would mess us up in this exact way. It's just that, well. We got stuck with the shift anyway, and now the consequences: we are suffering, because everything is out of whack.

There's so many things piling onto the to-do list.

We're neglecting League and TFT, in spite of time-sensitive missions there.
We were planning to stream today (oh that makes a minimum of eight, not seven), we didn't do that--and to knock out the to-do list for today we'll have to give up streaming tomorrow, too.
We haven't worked on our art since Saturday (our day off).
We haven't written since our last stream.
We have barely scheduled youtube videos, staying afloat at uploading one per day and releasing one per day in spite of the idea being to schedule several in a day that release every day. (I need a buffer. I have none.)

And our health is not great.
Every workout is a struggle. We barely did the 59 knuckle pushups today (broken up into two sets because we're too weak and pathetic to do them all in one). We only did the 59 jackknives on a technicality, doing like six sets of 10 or so. (Actually, 5 sets, since two sets were 15.) Again, those are meant to be one continuous set. And they had half-hour gaps between them.

Realistically speaking, time constraints mean I can't do an entire workout in half an hour, so doing one set of 59 jackknives is unrealistic, but I introduced a concept of a "soft-reset" where I keep some progress but roll it partially back if I have a half-hour break. So, 20 becomes like 16, 16 becomes like 10, something generically in the area but which accommodates for how you're not supposed to get that much rest between sets.

Today each set of jackknives--10 to 15--was separated by a half-hour...and I couldn't use a soft-reset for any of them. We did pretty much on the dot 59, both officially AND unofficially. No soft resets involved. Which means the ab workout was sub-optimal.

We didn't do proper arm stretches.
We didn't do extra ab work to target the side-abs.
We didn't do extra arm workout to build the muscles up not activated by knuckle pushups.

​And we are so tired. So exhausted. And it's only going to get worse. We're late for bed three days in a row now. We work 31.5 hours officially (33 with lunch accounted for), over five days this week. We're dangerously tired as-is and our workouts are increasingly hard to do, likely thanks to lack of rest to properly build the strength back up.

It has all snowballed from what amounts to one thing we felt like we had no choice but to do. One extra shift, and our whole week is dangerous, miserable, tiring, and getting worse and worse and worse and worse.

Granted, it's not like everything is bad.

It's just that: genuinely?

We don't have time to appreciate the good. We don't have time to celebrate the good. We don't have time to enjoy the good.
​There is good happening, it's not literally all bad--but we just...well, we see it, but it's hard to, I guess, perceive it? Observe it? Feel it? We objectively recognize the good when we think about it and in the exact moment of the good...

...But we are so overwhelmed right now that genuinely any time outside of the good, we can't actually think of the good.

So while the week isn't all bad and has good within...

...The good kinda gets buried under the pile of exhaustion, fatigue, and business, from work and a continuously piling up list of things we are meant to do that we aren't doing.

Mostly "no thoughts head empty" but also, family is over for family night, massively distracting, and my head is just...

...I've had thoughts but I don't know any of them right now, not really.

I had a thought right now that I might get around to, but let's review today accomplishment-wise. We did a fair amount of progress on art. We did a youtube upload of a vod and scheduled some extra ones. (Not the amount we wanted to tho. We wanted to schedule a full week.)

So like, given that this is a short day for us, that's pretty good, to be honest. It's not as much as we want, we didn't get to watch the latest paranormal detour video outside the premiere (we watched the entirety of the premiere live, but because it was live, we missed a few details here and there that we need to watch the video to catch), we didn't finish the collar on our drawing, 

But we're happy with the day overall.

It's a good day. Not great. But good.

I did have a thought earlier tho, that I feel I should express.

"You will be alone, you will be by yourself, you will not have another, you will not obtain fame, you will not obtain fortune, none of those things are in your future--and you need to be okay with that."

Not exactly the wording used, but it was not a negative. The message was more like. A prevention of the negative. A need for acceptance. A need for acknowledging the bad in us, but also, that the dreams we have are just dreams, that realistically speaking, we won't obtain them and we need to be okay with not having obtained them.

​I got the vibe it wasn't a doomsaying of "don't try". That it wasn't saying to give up altogether. But more like, that I need to be okay when trying doesn't amount to much. There's nothing wrong with the failure. I will never obtain those things, and need to be okay with that, but not trying to obtain them would still be a mistake, if that makes sense?

I suppose my go-to way to describe it would be the ending of Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. (Note: we received an on-the-nose tarot/oracle as typing this which was genuinely the "embrace the flow of life" card, so like: it was genuinely 100% on the nose reaffirming we're right here. But, I digress.)
Basically at the end of that game, it more or less says, "there is no definition of morality, but the search for one is still worth pursuing", essentially. (Need to replay the game to remember it more specifically.)

In this context, it's the same basic idea.
No, I'm not going to get any of the things that I want.
But I need to be okay with that.
And then still try for them anyway.
Because the attempt to do so is something worth living for.

I'm not sure if I'm wording that well. I have the concept in my head and I know the concept in my head is right, but finding the words for it isn't easy. It's a message of acceptance and being okay, of being realistic but also idealistic. (Just got another tarot/oracle card reading confirming that I am on the right track, dealing with effectively: "do it anyway".)

Basically: I need to not expect to succeed. I need to not think I will. I need to know that I likely will fail, and be okay with it. To have peace with the failure, acceptance of it. The realism part of that. But that I should remain idealistic. Not get delusions of success, but rather, my idealism is more in keeping to try in spite of knowing there will be a high chance of failure.

If I don't try at all, success is a guaranteed 0%. But I need to be okay with knowing that my dreams of success aren't going to magically manifest. They need work and even with that work they almost definitely won't work out. It's a reading that is telling me that I need to keep going, but with an acceptance of myself.

​I am flawed. I am going to not succeed. I have issues. I won't manage to amount to much of anything. And this is okay. This is acceptable. I know what I am doing is right. I know that my mindset is headed in the right direction. I need to remember this, moving forward. What I wrote today. Because it's so easy to cave in.
​It's easy to get lost in the delusions of the future, which makes actually manifesting the future nearly impossible, as well as increasing disappointment when it doesn't. It's easy to get lost in despair of having not accomplished things and feeling like you never will. It's so easy to become lost and get overwhelmed by the pain.

I need to remember what I had revealed to me tonight. It's a lesson I've taught myself before, but I couldn't hold onto it. I need to have it stick this time. A shift in mindset and approach that sticks. I am okay with living the life of mediocrity and loneliness.

Well, no. Not really. I'm not okay with it, but I am okay with it, and need to be okay with it.

Emotionally, I am not okay with it. How could I not feel the pain of isolation and loneliness? How could I not feel crushed by my own failures to manifest my dreams? The emotional sting of knowing I am the only one to blame for my shortcomings is one that I can't freely discard. Emotions are emotions, feelings are not things that you can rationally discard.

In that sense, I am not okay with it.

But rationally, I am, and I need to keep that mindstate. To calm my emotions. To reassure my emotions that it's okay. I'm okay. And I am. I am okay with being on my own. I am okay with my ideas dieing with me. I am okay with never having the company of others in a more direct way. I am okay with never achieving my dreams of being a teacher, a mother, an influencer, a writer, a content creator. Those are things I am unlikely to ever obtain, and I need to be okay with this.

And, largely, I am. I just need to remember that I am, and that I'm okay. I'm no great beacon. I need to be okay with being who I am. Now, I do need to take caution. I should not fall into apathy. I should not be careless. I should not be reckless. If I am too okay with who I am, I'll end up progressively becoming a worse and worse person. Some checks/balances are needed in order to ensure that I don't become despicable without having noticed.

It's easy to lose sight of important things, so I can't forget who I am. Which is why I need to strive to be better. I need to keep doing what I do, in the aim for being better. To keep doing what I do, in the hopes of achieving what I want to. Keep doing what I do, in order to strive for the dream. But to be able to accept I won't reach the ideal.

Betterment is a process where I may never get any better. I may end up exactly the way I am now, and I need to accept that, and be okay with that. That 20 years from now I may be precisely where I am right now. Alone and without having succeeded. But I should still try anyway, because the trying helps stop me from being worse.

I need to accept who I am, and accept who I become, and accept I won't be who I want to be. But still try to be who I want to be.

I hope that makes sense. It's not a bad thing. I'd say it's actually a good thing.
​I just need to hold onto it.

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.