Pixie's Chronicle: More Bad Luck

Why does it feel like it's been an eternity since I've made a blog post? I'm pretty sure I've left it longer than this before. But I guess it's probably because so much has happened. 2020 seems determined to finish with a bang for me and it's really revving things up. I'm trying to remain strong through it all, but it's difficult. I suppose I should give myself a pat on the back for not having a full on mental breakdown yet. I think my brain literally just thinks "what's the point?" right now. I really hate being a downer in my blog posts, but I suppose this helps get things off my chest and let's you guys know what's been going on, and why there's been pretty much nothing but radio silence on my end. 

I'm still pretty much on my Miraculous hiatus on FanFiction, but I have started uploading chapters onto AO3 again since the commenters tend to be a lot more respectful on that site - no offense to the people who have left me lovely reviews on FanFiction of course. Plus it gives me a chance to allow the AO3 versions to catch up with the FanFiction ones. I think I'm going to get Madness Within finished on AO3 before I publish the sequeal, Madness Unleashed, on both sites simultaneously. That way both sites can now get updates at the same time. And it gives me more time to polish the sequel.

My other Miraculous fanfictions are now unfortunately temporarily on hold. But rest assured that I will be finishing them. Though I'm not too sure about Chat Vert; I'm really stuck with that story at the moment. All of my inspiration and motivation for it has completely evaporated. It's now been over a year since I updated it, and I have no idea if people are even still interested in it. I guess I'll just have to see how things go. 

Real life certainly hasn't been helping my lack of motivation. The only stories I have been managing to work on are my Hellsing fics, and that's because they're so dark and I can be completely unrestrained. I can really pour my dark imagination into them and distract myself from things that way. While I could do the same with Madness Unleashed, the mental health themes of that series exhaust me. Writing each chapter sometimes feels like an intense therapy session, and I suppose it technically is. I'm drawing from my own personal experience with mental health struggles a lot of the time and using what I've learned when having therapy myself. 

Speaking of which, everyone keeps nagging me to go back to therapy, but that's pretty much pointless when I can't be face-to-face with them. Stupid COVID-19. Therapy over the phone just doesn't work for me. I know that I need to go, it's just finding the time and motivation. 

So why does everybody keep saying I need to get therapy again? Well... although I haven't had a mental breakdown, I have been going pretty bonkers lately. My memory has been absolutely shocking and I keep zoning out and dissociating every ten seconds. Literally just yesterday, my manager handed me her coat to take upstairs for her and all I could do was blankly stare at her. I hadn't registered that she'd asked me a question. I keep making stupid mistakes and have been struggling to process things. Everyone has been getting increasingly frustrated with me. I keep getting those weird hallucinations I sometimes get where I feel like my body is being stretched and I feel taller than I am and everything else feels like it's shrinking. It's like looking down with a fish-eye lense if that makes sense? That's the best comparison I can make. It's something I've had pretty much all my life. No clue what it is. Probably part of my dodgy brain. 

Things have been pretty bad for me lately overall. My dog passed away a few weeks ago after a long, hard battle with illness. We always thought it would be her liver that would finally give out, but it was actually her spleen that killed her in the end. One day a few weeks ago, something just clearly wasn't right with her. One of her eyes changed colour which was really weird and freaked us out. She seemed really tired, quiet, and she hadn't touched her food. So we got her an emergancy appointment with the vet and she had to stay in for observation. 

She pretty much perked up once she'd arrived and we felt stupid for wasting the vet's time. The vet was even about to discharge her when all of a sudden she just collapsed and was clearly in a lot of pain. They did some tests and realised that there had been a large tumour on her spleen that had ruptured. They called us straight away and revealed that we had two choices to make: either allow her to have an operation which would most likely kill her or only buy her a few extra weeks to live, or we put her to sleep. We had only minutes to make the decision because she was in so much pain. We didn't want her to suffer anymore, so we all agreed that the best decision was to put her to sleep. 

To make matters worse, we weren't allowed to be there when she died. I just remember screaming when I heard that news. I had always promised myself that I would be there when she died so that she wasn't alone and wouldn't be as scared. I couldn't bear the thought of her passing on surrounded by strangers and looking for us the entire time. But it was either that or selfishly tell the vets to wait until we got there (even if we had been allowed), and put her through even more suffering. It wasn't fair, so we hoped that we made the right decision to let her go as soon as possible. Apparently she was completely out cold the entire time, and the vets stayed with her and comforted her the entire time, so that made us feel a little bit better. 

Even though it technically wasn't allowed, they did allow us to come in and view her body to say a proper goodbye. That was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. Seeing her like that made me feel sick, but I was glad I got to say goodbye and see her one last time. I won't go into too much detail as it's pretty gruesome and I can feel myself fighting off tears as I type this. We sat with her for a while before making arrangements for her to be cremated. 

Returning to an empty house was heartbreaking. Seeing her toys scattered everywhere, seeing her fur stuck to various surfaces, and all the other stuff that reminded us of her presence was maddening. It made the house a hard place to be for a long time. My boyfriend was my rock during this period as I just couldn't bear to be around anyone else. When I'm sad or depressed, I just want to be left alone so I can process everything. Going into work was tough, especially since my manager didn't seem to understand my loss. 

Luckily everyone else has been really supportive and I couldn't be happier or more grateful to have such amazing friends. Things are still difficult for me, but I'm slowly getting there and taking one day at a time. I try to take comfort in the fact that I gave her a good life, especially since her first owners were abusive, and that she never went without love and care. She was the most wonderful companion anyone could ask for. She was there when I had my first battle with depression and helped me through it. She helped keep me grounded when I was feeling anxious, and we had so much fun together over the years. So rest in peace Bess. I'll always love you. And yes, the picture on the side is of the real me and Bess. She loved the beach so much.

To cope with my grief, I published a new poem on my FictionPress account, so if you want to, you can read it by clicking here. My poems aren't very good, but they help me cope with stuff sometimes.

In terms of my job, I'm still at risk of being laid-off which is fun. To make matters worse, customers keep asking about it and constantly reminding us, which is making us feel a bit bitter. We're like "yeah, way to rub it in our faces." We know they're just curious, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. The sign on the window tells you everything you need to know, quit pestering us about it! Ugh. 

These past few days have brought me even more bad luck as my grandma now seems to have had a mini stroke. The other day she just really didn't sound right. She was confused about where she was and her speech was very slow and slurred. She couldn't remember my mum, couldn't remember how to use a phone and her memory seemed to wipe itself after a few seconds. She has dementia, sure, but this felt like something different. So we immediately got in touch with my grandma's nurse, and she went around to check on her before calling an amublance, believing that it wasn't safe for her to be on her own. 

This forced my mum to get in touch with her brother and sister, and of course my aunt immediately went into psycho mode and demanded to know why an amublance had been called and seemed against my grandma being taken to hospital. We all know why. She's worried about my grandma going into care and what that will do to the inheritance. Evil cow. She demanded the nurse's number to have a Karen-esque argument with her, but my mum refused to give it to her.  My aunt then started kicking off (obviously drunk) and started bullying my mum again, so my mum was just like "right, bye" and blocked her. *sigh* I love my family...

She didn't care that her own mother was in hospital and instead was only interested in starting drama and making things extra difficult. She showed no concern at all. She was just pissed that an ambulance had been called in the first place and thought it was an overreaction. Then my uncle (also drunk) got into an hour long phone call with my mum in the middle of the night talking gibberish. We both literally sat there for an hour listening to him repeat himself over and over again. How my mum never threw her phone at the wall, I'll never know. I was super close to snatching it off her and hanging up on him. If they were going to be drunk morons then I believed we should have no part in it. But my mum humoured him for the sake of trying to keep some semblance of peace.

My grandma seems to be recovering. She's still in hospital and is back to her chirpy self, but her speech is still a bit slurred and slow. We're hoping that she can be released soon since we're worried about her catching COVID-19 or MRSA while in hospital. Plus the unfamiliar surroundings definitely won't help her dementia. But at least she's with professionals, and if it was a stroke, at least it wasn't a serious one. The rest of her body seem pretty undamaged. It's just her speech that's suffering. 

I've literally been so stressed with everything lately that I broke my stress ball. I can't sleep properly and I'm on a very short fuse. I keep having bad mood swings which definitely isn't good for the people around me. How my boyfriend has put up with me during all of this, I'll never know. I've tried to keep things as normal as possible though. I've been trying to keep myself occupied with planning and writing, and I've finally got back into playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons again. I'm so happy that it's now the snowy season! It looks so pretty! Not to mention Jowy got me a Jay amiibo card so now I can always have my favourite villager! I have no clue why he's my favourite, I just adore him so much!

Anyway, I think I've ranted long enough in this entry. I just wanted to bring you guys up to speed with what's going on and what my plans are. I'm hoping to slowly ease myself back into the Miraculous fandom, and I've already made a start. The next step is writing Miraculous content for my blog again since I have so many articles piled up. 

I hope that you guys have been okay and staying safe. Thank you so much for being so patient and understanding towards me. Your support is the best and I'm not sure what state I would be in now if it wasn't for all of your kind words!