Spooky Ookyness

The spooky month has just started. I’ve already done the two major spooky events I am this year – Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, and Dark Harbor at the Queen Mary. One, I do every year, and the other, I may never go back and do again.

The Dark Harbor event was just poorly organized and very overcrowded. It took two attempts just to go to the event because the parking got moved to a public lot with a free shuttle, except they hadn’t said where the shuttle pick-up was. The event would have been over in a couple hours by the time we found it. They gave us free tickets after we said something about how any sign or notification of where the shuttle was would have been nice to have. And that went better. We got on the shuttle after searching for it since it moved and were able to enter the event. We only did two mazes, the lines were insanely long for the other four. The mazes were very long, with some nice detail. But there weren’t enough scare-actors per maze, and each maze had points that were definitely not handicap friendly. I did have a good time, especially since I remembered to bring my noise-canceling headphones. My friend got an amusing amount of BBQ pork on a very nice stick. And I accidentally got a free funnel cake.

Horror Nights, as an event, was excellent. I did several of the mazes – at least I did all the ones I cared about doing. I was most impressed with the Insidious and The Quiet Place mazes. The attention to detail, jump scares, props, and sets were excellent. I had been very doubtful about how a scare maze for A Quiet Place could work, but I was really pleasantly surprised. I do like that Universal seems to have given up on scare zones, outside of the gauntlet you have to go through entering and exiting the park. They make great use of the atmosphere of the park at night, with lights and fog to keep fear dancing down our spines.

My biggest complaint about Universal had nothing to do with Horror Nights, but rather a policy the theme park has enacted. I don’t hide that I have both physical and mental disabilities. I can’t walk long distances before both of my hips are fighting to dislocate themselves. Too much noise or too many people can overstimulate me. I do what I can to compensate for this. The park used to give me a pass that I would get a return time written down on, and then once the time was there, I’d go through the express lane. It lets me spend time resting and helps me avoid being in a noisy crowd of people in a cramped space. That is no longer an option for my physical disability. To avoid the physical pain walking does, I had to rent a wheelchair. It was the only option given to me. That was their idea of accessibility since they made all the mazes wheelchair-accessible. It’s not accessibility though. It feels more like a way for the park to drain more money out of its guests.

I don’t have a lot of plans for Spooky Month. A trip to Disneyland, at least once. A party with my friends. Several outings for food. A few game nights. The two games I either already love, or are a part of something I love, come out this month. Silent Hill 2 and Dragon Age Veilguard. Dragon Age even comes out on Halloween. I have a lot to look forward to.

Isn’t that something?

Travel Bug

I have an interview for Global Entry tonight, which I am both nervous and excited for. I’m anxious that somehow I will mess up and be deemed a risk and fail the interview. And I’m nervous because of why I’m excited. This is the first step that I’m taking to ease of world travel.

I want, desperately, to start traveling the world. I’m torn on where to go first. I know it’s either going to be Ireland or Japan. I just don’t know which place calls to me more. I have started saving to be able to go next year, both PTO and money.

It feels like my skin is crawling I’m so anxious about this.

Here’s hoping tonight goes well!

Out

Well. I am awful at just sitting down and writing. This is evident in the years of sporadic entries here. I want to be more consistent with my writing. It’s something that, despite appearances, is important to me. I am going to try to do better. I have the time now.

I was discharged from Discovery at the end of April and have since returned to work. I haven’t started streaming again. I don’t feel fully recovered. I am doing my best, but I’m drained getting through each day. I’m more hesitant in different areas of my life. My anxiety is easily provoked. My ability to focus is all over the place. I’m kind of a mess right now. But I recognize the messiness and I’m trying to do things to rectify it. I learned a lot of tools for regulating, standing up for myself, and self-care while I was in treatment. I’ve been putting them to use.

I’m working on getting my life in order. I’m going to get to a point where I have the energy and wherewithal to start streaming again. I just need to find a balance being me. And being out of treatment. And living my life.

Something about growth and goop

This has been a hard morning. I just woke up and everything felt off. I haven’t been home in a week, and thankfully I go back today.

I’m still a part of the partial hospitalization program. We’ve just started talking about titrating me down to the lower-level IOP treatment. The past couple of sessions with my in-treatment therapist have been about finding me an appropriate out-patient therapist and psychologist. And a large part of me is getting trapped in the “should”‘s. I should be happier about this. I should be excited. I’ve grown a lot and healed so much more than I went into this program to heal. But instead, I’m terrified.

I still deal with daily suicidal ideation, which is what drove me into treatment to begin with. It’s lessened. Instead of thinking about it several times every hour, I think about it once or twice an hour. I don’t have zero boundaries anymore. In fact, the boundaries I’ve been setting have caused disruptions in my closest relationships. I own my gender identity and pronouns (they/them) more confidently than I ever have.

I am not the same person I was in June last year, or a year ago, or two, or when I started writing on this blog. What terrifies me the most is I still don’t know who the person is in the mirror looking back at me. But I think I kind of like them. Sort of. Which is a huge step from the absolute self-loathing I had for the person before.

My therapist said I’m in a cocoon right now. Which makes me goop. Which makes sense.

I’m all goopy.

Self Love Poem

You are fragile 

      Shattered pieces of glass

So sharp it cuts on either side

      To yourself, and to others who may want to be close

You are scared, terrified to break anymore

      Clinging to your biting pieces with everything you’ve got

But what you fail to see is the pieces that make you wonderful

      The pieces that make you selfless and brave

That you do everything you can to help the ones you care for

      And usually do not comprise yourself in that attempt

You are incredibly brave and resilient

      Despite everyone you’ve lost, everything you’ve been through

You have endured past it

Each one of those pieces is an indicator of survival

      Each piece can be repaired, glued together with titanium

You are not the waste of effort and space you think that you are

      You are not an alien blob waiting for the next person to use them

You are light, a sunflower in full bloom, a human in the difficult world

      You deserve the love and care you put out to others

The past few months

At the end of May, I hit a very low point. I’ve been struggling, as I usually do, for a while. But it had gotten a lot worse. I hit a point of being about one bad thing away from a mental breakdown and was having ideation daydreams several times an hour. The tipping point came when a very sweet, young woman walked into the office where I work and handed me a resume for my position. That’s when something in me broke.

I very quickly emailed my doctor who recommended that I go to IOP treatment. This has been recommended to me several times before. This time I agreed. I let my supervisor know about how bad my mental health had gotten. The doctors wanted me to participate in a three-week intensive therapy program. Luckily my job understood and let me take the time off needed to get treatment for my mental health.

While this was going on, we’d discovered that I have sleep apnea, which was proving to make the amount of sleep I was getting ineffective. And every pill I was taking for my mental health, with one exception, had a side effect of putting me to sleep. Which was suspected to be why I just couldn’t stay awake for the life of me. I was falling asleep everywhere. At work, sitting in my non-moving car, at Disneyland. It had become a very serious problem.

IOP came, and it went. And it didn’t help. After a week of shuffling around, because things were clearly not good, I enrolled in ICMP. Which, started to help. Sort of. Listening to the people enrolled in the group and how they were processing was helping me start to get a handle on everything plummeting around and beating everything inside of my head. Until I hit the lowest week I’ve had, where I couldn’t get out of bed for more than 10 minutes at a time. I didn’t really talk to my friends. I didn’t leave the apartment. I didn’t attend therapy. I stayed in bed and figured the time was probably passing. But I stared listlessly at the room around me, at Riley – who kept pushing her small furry face against mine in concern or annoyance, or I just sobbed into the bare mattresses of my bed.

No one told me missing the sessions for two consecutive days would have me automatically discharged. Others had been coming and going with larger absences. When I tried to go back, I was really surprised that I had been discharged. Which, made things worse. And I had a moment of extreme weakness, and then my case manager enrolled me in something new.

I’m finally at the point where we’re doing what I was told initially we were going to do – partial hospitalization. Intensive treatments in both group and one-on-one sessions with a team of therapists and psychiatrists throughout seven hours every weekday. I’m somewhat hopeful, as much as I can be at least. If the past couple weeks are any indication, I am in for a very hard time but also to have actual hope to reaching okay.

I know I miss feeling things like I used to. I miss not wishing I would stop waking up, or that I’d stop existing. I miss not feeling like I have to pretend to have or know joy or any other emotion. Or just, feeling genuinely myself. I miss me. I barely know me, but that vague semblance I have is missing.

I’m getting ready to take a week break that has been planned since January, with massive amounts of homework for therapy and text check-ins. And I’m scared. I just found a safe place and now I’m leaving it. But its also a part of getting my life back on a track where I can go to work and live a life outside of treatment.

That should be the goal, right?

A Safe Calm Space

Prompt: If you could choose any place or scenario (real or imaginary) to place yourself in right now for your comfort and relaxation, where would it be? Describe it in as much detail as possible.

The safe place where I think I would be the most calm right now is the Rose Court Garden at the Disneyland Hotel. It’s the small rectangular mostly fenced-off section next to the Frontier Tower, only the fences are green hedges. There’s a large opening that leads you down a cement path toward a raised large octagonal gazebo, with three steps leading up into it. Behind the gazebo in a sort of half circle, there are several rose plants. There isn’t usually a lot of noise – but sometimes you can hear peels of laughter and the joy of kids playing at the pool nearby. The gazebo has greenery wrapped around some of the poles holding up its pointed roof.

It’s a place of hope, which is relaxing for me. It’s where, if I could, get married. So when I’m there I can’t help but feel a sense of serenity and hope and the possibility of a happy future. It’s a place where I can’t help but know that one day I’ll be loved and wanted.

The Meaning of My Name

There is a much larger post in the works, which in all honesty has been in the works since June, explaining a lot of what has been going on in my life for the past several months. I need to be taking steps towards giving myself more meaning in life. Beyond Riley. I need more reason in life. One of the things that I’ve gotten to help give me more things to do and discover was the Hero’s Journal side quest deck. I drew my first card today. Which was to research my name’s meaning.

My grandmother Laller told me growing up that my given name meant great. She’d had this little card she kept in a bible for many years, then whatever book I was reading when I lived with her, that said this, plus a small prayer. I have no idea what’s happened to that card – I don’t think I’ve seen it in about 10 years. But nuzzling into her side as a kid while we read that prayer is one of my strongest memories with her.

I know my mom has told me that my name was meant to be an honorific junction of my grandmother’s names – Margarita and Carol Anne. She didn’t want to follow tradition and give me an overly long name, since it was a nightmare learning how to write when the whole learning how to write thing happened. So to show any amount of respect, I became Megan.

According to the internet, my name is a Welsh name and a version of the name Margaret. It means Pearl,  a classic jewel that lends itself to an air of opulence, grace, and elegance. Supposedly. I remain one of the clumsiest people that I know. So an air of grace and elegance is not exactly a thing that surrounds me.

But there you go.

In case anyone is curious, my main handle, shpunkey, came about from a friend who passed away when I was 19. He used to joke about me being a “spunky monkey” in terms of attitude and behavior, and it had always made me laugh. The first time I used it was after his funeral, when I needed to come up with a name for something, and just missed him terribly. It’s clearly just remained my go-to ever since.

New year, same me

As I am sitting here writing this, I’m sick and doing my best to just get things done and taken care of. I’m in the middle of moving, so there are boxes and bags of garbage everywhere. I have my puppy, Riley, chewing on a bone gifted to her after one of the fancier dinners I’ve gone to recently. And for the first time in about five months, my room is mostly clean – minus the clutter from getting things organized in the move effort.

I’m also just, in this weird ambivalent state between emotions. I’m not happy, but I am also not depressed. I cry at the drop of the hat but have also smile with this foreign ease.

2022 was a lot. December was a lot. Thankfully it was nowhere near as difficult or traumatizing as last December was. But there was still trauma. There are still things I’m struggling with. But December had a lot of good in it. I cooked a great meal for my friends for a Friendsgivingmas dinner. I hosted Christmas for my family and made it as special as I possibly could. And I completed UCLA Extension’s Paralegal Program. I won’t know how I did until later this month, but I am fairly confident that I passed the program.

The only goal I am making this year is to read 25 books. That’s it. I miss reading stories. I also want to save money while I can, since my rent is about to decrease by several hundred dollars. There are other things I really want to do – lose weight, go to places, ect ect. But, I don’t think making that an annual goal is healthy. I know I want those things. I’ve always wanted some of them.

The biggest thing I want from 2023 is health. My health is why I’m moving. I received a bunch of new diagnoses in 2022, and I collapsed 4 times in the past 6 weeks. I need to get healthier. I have Riley. Riley needs me healthier.

There is more I want to say, but my brain is fizzing and I think that it might be time for more flu medication.

I’m still me. I’m still the same person I was a year ago, two years ago. A little different, but still me.

Ha

I blinked and basically a whole year passed.

Whelp.

Why is there a question above my writing box? It’s asking if I am a morning person or a night person. The answer is I am a when did I fall asleep and how much sleep did I get person.