The First Time I Went Nuts
I’m writing this on my new, pink, typewriter style keyboard using my iPad and an app called JetPack. This is the first time I’ve done this, so hopefully it formats okay! If it does, I can use JetPack to update my site on the fly, which might help me update a little more!
According to my website analytics (which I use the most dumbed down version of Google Analytics to occasionally look at and I still don’t really understand them), I still get a steady trickle of visitors every day, enough that I feel like a small group of people are checking for new posts regularly (or maybe bots scraping my site for data, who knows…fucking just clone me already and get it over with…😒).
JetPack has a widget on my phone that counts up every time someone visits (by what criteria, I’m honestly not sure) and I legit feel bad when it goes up enough times and I have nothing new to offer when I have so many unfinished drafts sitting in WordPress.
I start a lot of posts but never finish because I either run out of steam, I’m interrupted too many times just due to life, or I lose confidence that anyone will connect with what I’m saying and abandon the post. They’re probably great posts, but with going for so long without any kind of feedback except the odd troll that goes out of their way to be a dickhead, I truly have no idea.
But people keep coming back sooooo either I’m a really shitty writer/a trash human and they’re cringing at my life, or they like me, they really really like me? I’d prefer to believe the latter, and there’s enough of you reading that I really hope to update here more often in 2026.
Word For 2026: “WRITE”
Every year I’ve been with Harold – 5 years this summer – we’ve each chosen a word at the end December/beginning of January to set the tone for the coming year. I honestly can’t remember all of mine, I think I chose “BUILD” two years in a row, though.
My word for this year is “WRITE” because this is the year I’m actually sitting down and making a concentrated effort to write my book because I now have the perspective, time and the helper I need to get it done.
For the past month, every Monday-Thursday after dinner, (but sometimes starting right after work), I’ve been diligently working on creating a timeline of my life if a really long Google document.
I’ve been going through my old report cards from all the schools I went to growing up, childhood and life artifacts that I’ve been adding to an absolute treasure box in my closet and forgetting about for 25 years, and notebooks dated as far back as 1997 (before Madison was even born) to present day.
I’m undecided if I’m gonna look through my journals, which date from 2001-present day, because they’re long form writing and I’m not sure I’m mentally prepared for that only 5 years out from being divorced. I know a lot of those are about my marriage, which I’m in no hurry to dissect in detail at this point in time or maybe ever.
My notebooks are full of small notes and ideas, sometimes diagrams, and a lot of video game notes (like strategies, where to find resources, cheat codes, point-form game walkthroughs, etc), but they also contain a tonne of clues as to what I was doing pretty much constantly for the past 29 years. I could burn my journals and probably be fine with it because I’m sure I sound like an asshole in a lot of them, but my notebooks are precious to me because they’re a purer expression of my brain and probably in a language only I can decipher. (Not literally! They’re all in plain English!)
ANYWAY…!
My ADHD-addled brain has been able to stay on one task for an entire month as of last night, and dammit, I am super proud of myself!
I’ve fleshed out my timeline from birth to 2006 and wow, has my life been a damn rollercoaster! And I haven’t even gotten to the part where I almost died yet!
20 Years Post-Psychosis
Where I ended off in my notebook exploration and timeline last night (Thursday night) was just after I was hospitalized in the psych ward of the local hospital in March 2006 because I was literally psychotic. That was super fucked up!
My notebooks show a steady decline in sanity starting in December 2005, where I was planning out weird LiveJournal posts that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but me at the time, but I thought they were genius. They make almost 0 sense to me now, just as I’m sure they made 0 sense to anyone else who read those posts at the time (which many did and commented, either on the posts themselves or in my IRC channel, only encouraging my grandiose delusions).
I remember when it started. My brother was staying with us over Christmas because he wasn’t getting along with my dad and my house was the best option he had for getting distance at the time.
He and I watched a movie with Sandra Bullock in my living room, then we went out to the carport after the kids went to bed to talk and smoke weed. We disagreed on the point of the movie we just watched, just like, polar opposite perspectives, so we stopped talking and I think he started watching something else on my TV in the carport, while I checked my e-mail and LiveJournal for comments.
Something happened, like a switch was flipped in my brain when I turned my back to my brother and faced the computer. Suddenly I had the feeling that I was going to die that night. That if I went to sleep, I would never wake up. The feeling was so real, knowing I was going to die imminently, and I’d been praying to the Universe to let me die in my sleep since I was 5 years old, that I just kinda made peace with it almost as instantly as it came over me.
I figured the next step was to tell someone about it, so very calmly, I told my brother that I was going to die before the morning, but that it was okay, it was a blessing, and not to be too sad because I’d finally be happy.
He was like, “what the actual fuck is wrong with you?” and rightly so. I freaked him right out because I was so calm and certain, and that kind of thing seemed plausible to him, that a person could feel that they were going to die when they were about to.
He went and got my former husband and so I told him about this feeling I had as well, and I honestly can’t remember (yet) what his reaction was. Probably “that’s fucked up!”
Being late at night and having to work in the morning, I remember my former husband verifying with me over and over again that no, I was not suicidal, this was going to be natural causes beyond anyone’s control, that I would fall asleep and never wake up. He stayed up as late as he could, but ultimately said to my brother, who was to be sleeping on the futon in my carport that night, “good luck” and went to bed.
I stayed up all night writing people upbeat goodbye e-mails that probably made no sense to anyone and scared the crap out of them. I remember e-mailing my mother and my best friend, and I know I e-mailed some of the people I was friends with on LiveJournal.
My brother stayed up all night with me until finally it was the darkest part of winter’s morning and I exhausted myself writing nonsense. I finally had to say goodbye to this life, fall asleep, and wake up in the next one or a better place.
I tearfully said goodbye to my brother, peeked into my kids’ rooms to try searing their faces into my next existence, then before I got into bed, I kissed my then-husband on the cheek and fell asleep.
I woke up after about a few hours of sleep and didn’t remember right away that I was supposed to be dead. My former husband had gone to work already and I could hear the kids in the living room watching TV and playing.
I laid in bed for a beat, the cold, harsh, white, daylight of winter lighting up the room, and realized that I no longer had the feeling that I was going to die. In fact, I only vaguely remembered the night before and thought, “well that was weird!”
I checked on the kids on my way to the carport, then said good morning to my brother who had set up his desktop computer on my coffee table. My former-husband must have given him the wifi password because I could hear the “ding!” of MSN Messenger. I realized later that he’d been planning his escape.
My brother looked up at me and said “welcome to the land of the living, you fucking asshole,” then he got explosively angry at me for “pulling that shit” and told me he wasn’t going to stay with us after all. He said his friend was on his way to pick them up and take him “far the fuck away from you”.
He was itching for a confrontation now that he had an exit strategy, and being his big sister, I was all too eager to comply. Our fight boiled down to him calling me “crazy” and “mental”, then me calling him a violent racist. He punched a cupboard, proving half of my point, then quickly gathered up his stuff and said he was going to wait outside for his ride.
Now, let me remind you that this is in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and we live in Canada. The snow was coming down in huge flakes, on top of the 2-3’ of snow we already had. It was cold. I called him an idiot. He said, “yeah, well at least I’m not crazy!” and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
I watched out the carport window for about an hour while he stood at the very end of my driveway with a duffel bag and two garbage bags, waiting for his friend. When his friend pulled up in some kind of black, sporty vehicle, my brother didn’t so much as look back, and he left behind his computer, which my mom ended up picking up for him later.
I didn’t know that was the beginning of anything at the time, but that was likely the first time I experienced psychosis and it would forever change the trajectory of my life.
Here’s The Part Where I Typically Lose Steam And Abandon The Post…
Tomorrow afternoon we’re going to a friend’s house for a “Crafternoon” get together and I guess I’ll my iPad and draw on it. I don’t really do tactile art anymore. I decided a few years ago that the only painting I wanted to do right now is painting the rooms of my house!
Drawing my girls (or re-drawing, as the case may be) seems pointless and futile, like each one I do is just a drop in a very large bucket, with zero purpose because I can’t publish colouring books on Amazon anymore. Plainly, they’re lovely but I don’t know what to do with them anymore. What’s the point?
I guess I need images to put on products once my workroom is finished and I can start making them, but that dream just seems so far away and out of reach right now.
On Sunday, we’re supposed to go to Toronto to see Sprints, who are here from the UK and I may not be able to see them again at a venue this small or for this cheap: tickets were only $25 each! They have a very small fan base here! But I think the show is sold out.
We’re supposed to have sunny skies and warmer temps that day, so there’s really no reason not to go, but getting dressed up, driving 6 hours in one day and being out until late at night on a Sunday isn’t super appealing to me or Harold. Harold has no skin in the game, he’s never even heard of Sprints, so going or not going will be completely up to me. It’s just so much effort! And I know I’ll drop a metric fuck tonne of cash at the merch booth! Do I really need that?
Right now I really wanna eat dinner, curl up on my pink fluffy blanket on my daybed with Harold, play Animal Crossing, and finish watching “Confessions Of Octomom”. I think we have two episodes left and it’s honestly riveting to me! I cannot even imagine!
Harold’s out picking up burgers with fries & gravy while I finish this post, so dinner is imminent! Animal Crossing here I come!
