like shakespeare tragicomedy but more semi-white trash

warning: high drama. long emotional purge of a messy situation, with context and flavor. additional warning for discussions of substance use, religion, Issues With Parents, and mental illness-- although nothing gory.

okay, here goes:

i'm an embarrassment as people go.

i vape. for the nicotine. i smoke weed as often as i can afford to. i'm Too Disabled to work, but not according to my parents, who i don't talk to anymore for a very long list of reasons that starts with "it's really bad for my sanity".

every doctor i've met agrees, and i'm only not on disability right now because...i'm an immigrant who doesn't want to take that from ontario, and i didn't agree or comprehend until this year that no, really, i really am too physically disabled to work in, say, fast food, or a reception area.

it turns out that spending your entire life in pain without the tools to communicate or address it, surrounded by people who insist it's imaginary or that you're somehow making it worse via mentioning it and asking for help and time and slack, is not beneficial in the slightest to a developing mind.

so i write fanfiction. i read tarot as a hobby. i read a lot in lots of genres. i find out what happens if i put olive oil and honey and herbs/spices on wal-mart frozen Eco-Friendly Salmon Fillets. (good things, and i prefer it with sea salt and/or some acidic citrus to balance the honey.)

i do nothing important or interesting with my life. i'm kind of poor and trashy. i keep houseplants and watch lots of cartoons and aspire to one day conquer the dread dishes.

my dad, who i haven't spoken to in years, is probably having a manic episode. he's always manic at least two months of any given year; he's got slight differences in his mental health problems, but we've both got ptsd and lots of similar symptom manifestations.

i found out tonight that he's driving from kentucky to ontario to try and see me. to "say goodbye". it could be that he's dying-- he's been dying since i was very young, of things that usually kill people faster, and seems a bit vexed and perplexed that none of them have worked-- or that he, uh, believes the apocalypse is Happening This Year yet again.

i have lots of mixed feelings about him. he doesn't acknowledge my name or gender. he thinks nothing good of the person i married and love most in the world. he hates any variety of being Gay, and associates it wholesale with child abuse.

chances are if i went to the god damned tim hortons with him, he'd just try to cause a scene about how i need to Return To Jesus.

i also kind of have actual out-of-the-house plans for once, which means i can't just passive-aggressively spend the day in bed and refuse to answer the door. no, i have a friend here overnight after hanging out, who also has work monday.

she doesn't drive and can't bus to get weed due to...location reasons. she does bus to work and back. i've known her for a long time and have seen her stretch a tiny amount like a champ, better than when she was on ativan; she's lived through some things that nobody should ever have to live through, so anything she can't accidentally OD on from sheer desperation during the ever-fewer flareups is good.

she's also a lesbian who is Very Goth. and i'm taking her on a weed run tomorrow. because even nearly ten years later, she still has episodes of flashback nightmares, and Medicating With Weed makes them go away the best out of anything.

she's one of only five people who i've met personally who have ptsd and bipolar that kicked in early, hard, young, and...basically mutated off each other. all are survivors of extreme abuse during formative years by publicly charismatic/sympathetic abusers, with strong sexual components for at least one consecutive year prior to age sixteen.

all of us also have such strong religious contexts and associations with trauma that around some Bible Verses, different for each, we all reflexively and uncontrollably dissociate on the spot-- the "this-isn't-real-i'm-not-here" defense mechanism crunches down our ability to emotionally connect, and we autopilot while still screaming a bit in the back of our heads, in a little box with a blanket over it that gets open and carefully soothed once we're at home and in sweatpants.

(not soothing the bits that your brain temporarily barricades away is a mistake, i've found. it will fester. it will come back for The Return Of The Revenge Of The Compartmentalized Emotion; better to have a friend who can tell when you're having a rough time, who'll help you make tea and pat your shoulder kindly as you get an embarrassed burst of tears out of your system.)

but anyway. i'm now my dad's mental image of A Fornicating Drug Addict Who Does No Good And Is Full Of Demons. i've got vastly less demon-esque experiences on the head meds and away from kentucky than i did before, which does not say positive things about their congregation's Holy And Protective influence, but i mean, you can't trust my word because i'm Crazy.

i still pray sometimes, although i don't know to who. a few times i've felt particularly answered, because i got some things i'd only ever asked for in my head, too nervous to even write it down, but always very specifically the ones that happened were not doctrinally approved by my surroundings.

i avoided the things i hated myself too much to let myself want, but i have seen more human kindness and compassion since getting out than i ever did while i was there.

i don't think i'll be emotionally ready to ever go to any kind of religious congregation ever again, though.

i wish i could believe we'd be capable of a civil conversation, but he's pretty staunch and devout. he will never find something that he could be proud of in me right now.

so i'll run my friend's weed errands and hide out from my own damned father who came up from kentucky to say goodbye one last time, because...we can't look each other in the face anymore.

and god, i hope i don't run into him, i hope i don't, because my friend deserves better than dealing with loud scary Man Drama if it happens. she's...not as sturdy or robust as me emotionally, and i've seen her worst mental health weeks, and any kind of confrontation like that would mess her up.

i do miss him and i still care about his wellbeing. i hate this situation and every bad-blood feeling involved in it. i've been crying on and off for four hours now, because it hurts.

but god, the first time i was prescribed celexa, because my total sum mental and physical health issues had evolved in awful ways and the walk-in took $200 of borrowed money to tell me i'm crazy as if i didn't already know--

my dad looked at me and said "everyone i've ever seen go on something like that leaves the faith."

within three days of taking it, i felt a lot less trash fire and a lot more human. i consistently feel vastly less trash fire and more human in general, these days. i haven't attempted suicide in years. even with intent at its highest, i no longer had the heart to really want to: i could see the light at the end of a very cold, very lonely tunnel that had started when i was three years old.

"everyone who takes it leaves the faith" was meant as a warning: you give over some share and stake in divinity, goodness, and immortality via Medication. that said, if faith is proven by its works, then ssris in particular have been very faithful to me, and my husband is faithful, and our lesbian friend, and at least dozen other people i know who are not my parents' denomination of christian. how they treat other human beings matters most of all to me, and as a standard to live by for friendship, it's been less damaging and more fulfilling than anything i've experienced earlier in life.

i have friends now who are patient and compassionate with me. i'm genuinely welcomed in my communities, when i'm well enough to be out of the house. growing up, there was an entire network of people trying to village-raise me into the perfect conservative christian, mostly through various prohibitory lectures; now i can write dumb fluffy YA stories that my friends seem to like getting in bite-size chunks as i work on them.

(i like fluffy things. i see the importance of pain in art, and of showing the pointy bits, and even of literary teen angst. i just...like the fluffy bits with less of the floppity-sloppity or the pools of blood and such. everything i write is still very Gay Agenda, entirely because i'm petty and would be ridiculously gratified if my Niche LGBT+ adventure floof got good enough to catch on.)

SO yeah tl;dr! i am a contented-with-my-marriage adult. my Found Jesus dad who hates my husband has crossed the border apparently and is turning up at my house after more than three years of no interaction whatsoever, to Say Goodbye, and i can't because i have to take a lesbian for medical weed.

and it's just as well, because i can't think of anything we could say to each other that wouldn't immensely upset someone, possibly a poor innocent canadian bystander who just wants their cheap coffee.