The state of things

The money situation is scary to me, the washing machine not working is a massive problem, I need to go to university this semester to keep my mental health care but I don't have the money needed.  Various other stuff.

But in spite of it all I seemed to be coping pretty well until Sunday night.

Sunday night changed everything.  The context is ... kind of odd.

There was discussion of two country songs by the same artist in which a woman ends an abusive relationship.  In the earlier one she does so by setting her house on fire while she and her husband are still in it, but their eight year old daughter is not.  Murder/suicide.  Pretty heavy stuff.  In the later one there is no daughter and the woman simply runs away.

The question was asked... well many questions were asked.  But one of the questions, which I initially misread and thus completely missed the point of, was about if the presence of the child changed things.

Would it be acceptable to run away, as in the second song, leaving the daughter behind with abusive husband/father.

That's a very tangled question.  You have to think about the fact that while running away might be possible, taking the child with you might not because that is, by definition, kidnapping.  You have to think about how much harder it would be to not be found if you're caring for a child.  You have to think about how someone who did nothing illegal might not find safe harbor anywhere, but someone who was a kidnapper almost certainly wouldn't.  You have to think about how the abusers retribution might be worse if he can track the woman down if she took the child with her.

You have to think about death, starvation, homelessness, life on the run, and a lot of very, very unpleasant and depressing things.

And I did.  I thought about all that I just mentioned and more.  You can't honestly approach the question if you don't.  Even if you have some guiding moral imperative that answers the question for you (escaping abuse is never bad, so leaving the child behind to do it isn't bad // you have to think of the child first, so leaving the child in an abusive situation is automatically bad; to name just two) you have to at least think about the triggery details if you want to attempt a non-assholic answer.

This even though the stories themselves are fictional and it's essentially a question of judging themes in stories we tell rather than passing judgement on actual people in actual situations.

So I thought about all of that, in depth.

Then I got a response to what I ultimately said that seemed like I had ignored it all, and I couldn't even fully understand because it seemed to be talking about a different question that I'd never considered nor tried to answer and it seemed to be saying that I didn't say what I did say and because I didn't say it my answer was inadequate and seemed to imply that I ignored or minimized the danger to women in abusive relationships.

I very much do not want anyone here trying to look up that exchange.  It doesn't matter if the "seemed" things in the previous are actually true.  This post is about me.  How it seemed to me is what matters for this post.

I tried for two hours to write a response.  Two fucking hours.  I was confused, I was frustrated, I was angry, and finally I was nothing.

As nothing I finally wrote the post that would be posted, but as it rambled on the nothing became less like a hollow emotionless state inside and more like a void I was disappearing into.

There were moments of not-nothing.  The anger flared back up once or twice only to quickly die leaving nothing again.

But, after I was mostly done with the post things changed.  I started crying.  I had to explain that I wouldn't be able to return to the thread.  I felt really bad because elsewhere in the thread I'd taked to people who have yet to find treatments that worked and talked about being in a healthy state of mind now and how there's hope no matter how many failed treatments there were and yada yada yada, and then here I was falling completely apart.

Some hope I give people if I say, "It took forever but I have achieved healthy mental state so that means it can work if you keep trying," if I'm, just a little bit lower down the thread, having a nervous breakdown that feels very much like full blown major depressive episode (though, once it was over, it was pretty clear that it was too short to be considered one.)

After I posted it got worse.  I couldn't stop crying.  Sobs that sounded variously like a sick twisting of laughter or coughing that just went on and on, no stop to the water from from my eyes.

I went to my bed, turned out the light, and just kept sobbing and sobbing.

When it finally stopped I got up, took my sleep med, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed.  The sobs were never far from the surface though.

-

In the morning, yesterday morning, I was mostly better but in no shape to face the world.  I designated it a day of rest and recovery and ignored the fact that it was the first day of school.

The rest and recovery seemed to be going well.  Then my mom called.

My dog, who I almost never see anymore, had run off.  Animal control picked him up.  He was staying with the vet.

Wally isn't a farm animal, the fact that my sister treats him as one isn't good for him.  He's also scared of everything (he responds to fear with threat displays) and anti-social but in need of real, strong, human contact.

With my sister he doesn't get the human contact, but she's the only place we can send him.  With my mother he escapes, here he escapes and the fucking fleas.  Now he's escaped there.

What he needs is a paddock where he can run relatively free without the risk of meeting anyone, and a home where he will be hugged and have his belly rubbed and shown direct affection and made to feel loved.

He can't be allowed to meet strangers because he gets scared, tries to make them back down by barking his ass off, and since people who are afraid of dogs tend to freeze up when that happens, things just get worse.

He's neurotic, so are we.  Rescue dogs often have problems and he's as badly socialized as I am, but his teeth a big and scary.

The conversation came to fleas, since that meant I couldn't bring him here.  That led to flea control and the mold that such has caused (damn moisture trapping stuff.)  That somehow led to laundry.  And ... and everything.  All of it in interrogation-like detail that served to accomplish nothing except rub in all of the bad stuff I already know.

Recovery set back.

But then, later in the day, there was an up side.  I had two more copies of "The Princess Who Saved Herself" to mail out, got a ride to the post office.  And I got socks.

So today I'm going to try to make it to the school, see about enrolling, which will add to my debt, and generally go on like nothing ever happened.

I figure my current financial problems (i.e. not the long term ones) equal somewhere between $2000 and $3000 dollars (house expenses, dental, appliance repair, tuition.)  So I'd have to sell 173ish more copies of The Princess Who Saved Herself.  I've got six.  So make that 542 because you have to subtract the expense from buying new ones.

I'm being silly.  Not going to sell my way out of things and even if I were I think I've hit everyone who wants The Princess Who Saved Herself already and those six will just languish on ebay until the time limit runs out.  Though I am, as I mentioned, going to be putting some Skylanders stuff on there at some point.

But, like I said, going to school today to see about enrolling.  I'll be going later in the day though, so I've got some time here first.  I want to write something.  Fiction.

Since I have story followers and such in the Kim Possible fandom I was thinking about the next chapter of Being more than a Simulacrum, but I don't want Kim Possible to take over my writing which it pretty clearly has of late.  Obviously I need to get back to Edith and Ben, but I haven't been in a Twilight state of mind of late.  Same problem with Skewed Slightly to the Left, haven't been in a Left Behind state of mind.

On original works I'd definitely like to do more Princess Story, maybe more Band Story, but it's a question of the right frame of mind there too.

And I know I've asked this before, but what do you, my readers, want me to try to get back to.

[Added:]

And I almost forgot: I'm going to need to send my computer in for repairs.  There's nothing drastically wrong with it (it's not crashing or melting or anything) but the USB ports have been somewhat touch and go and there are other things that I can't quite remember but I'm sure it will decide to remind me about eventually.

But the big thing you, readers, is still to say what you'd like me to return to because maybe you'll say something I am in the right frame of mind for or maybe you'll provide the motivation necessary to unstall, or whatever.