Retrospective

The beginning of 2017 was by no means a time of great joy.  It was, however, a time of hope.  I used to be that the problem that always had me skating on the edge of financial collapse was--

You know what, fuck it.  We don't need to get into that, because I'm already on the verge of crying just thinking about back when things were better.

I had graduated, without tuition numbers added up properly, I was going to be ok financially going forward.  Then the thing with my sister's neighbors.  Everything started to fall apart.  Yet as 2016 drew to an end, I could believe that things were going to get better.  That the future was bright.

There's a reason for that.  From the start of the new year to February 15th I posted 43 times.  Not quite a post a day, but close.  Of course, some of that was talking about bad stuff in my life.  A lot of it wasn't.

There were six self-contained snippets in my story verse with super people (yes, there are superheroes, but there are people other than heroes too.)  Five installments on what was then an ongoing story set in the same universe.  (An index for that story, too.)  Four things talking about the setting and those in it that were not themselves stories.

There were three Kim Possible fragments.

There was a silly random story, a story idea in summary, and two times I related unpleasant real life things in story form.

Stepping away from stories, there was a post about my first impressions of that year's Arisia, a post about something I'm often curious about, and two essay-like things (how this is not like the end of the Roman Republic, and when magical world building makes sense vs. when it doesn't.)

On the meta front, there were two things about Stealing Commas stuff and two posts about my then-new Patreon account.

Also, outside of the usual categories, I had a post describing the artwork I envisioned on two cards of a tarot deck in my head.

That's a lot of stuff.  22 stories or story related things (not counting the index) alone.

In that month and a half, I did as much storytelling as I have in the past nineteen months. 

There's a reason for that.  My hormones had been figured out, my depression was managed as well as it ever had been, and --even with the terrible things happening to my sister-- things were generally looking up and looking positive.'

Then I broke my ankle in three places.

And, you know what?  I didn't think it was going to be that much of a problem.  I was taking notes for the posts I was gonna write about it and shit like that.

Then I had to go off my hormones because of blood clot risk.  And everything fell apart.

In less than a month and a half, it'll be three years since I broke my ankle.  My mental health still hasn't recovered.  I don't know if it ever will.

If I remember correctly, right before I broke my ankle I ordered jars so that I could buy ingredients in bulk, but then not have to deal with the huge fucking containers constantly.  By the time they arrived (again: if I remember correctly) my ankle was broken.  Unboxing happened today.  34ish months later.

I don't want to be here anymore.  I want the world to go away.  I want to go to sleep and never wake up.  Not die in my sleep, just call in Maleficent and have me sleep forever.

None of this is new, other than the jar thing, you've probably read all of the stuff after "Then I broke my ankle..." several times before.

I don't know what to do.

Nothing I've tried to do has worked, but that's not so much because things have failed, it's more that I haven't been able to fucking start anything.  So, in a sense, nothing I've tried to do has actually been tried.

I want to disappear.  I want to not be.

Existing is nothing but sadness, false hope, crushing disappointment, and bills I can't pay.

So, that's the past 34.5 months.  Likely forecast is for more of the same to continue indefinitely.