ill be honest i don't know why i'm writing this. the healthy thing to do would be to tell my friends that i'm going through something, but i've never been one for healthy coping mechanisms. when things get rough for me, i buckle down and say that i'll wait for them to get worse before i even tell anyone that i'm in trouble. my threshold for bad things happening to me is very high, however, so i rarely end up telling anyone anything. so, instead, i'm hiding it here. if you find it you find it. if you find it and you know where to find me you can talk to me and call me a moron or whatever for not wanting to tell people about this

i'm stalling. my dad had a stroke

i don't really know anything about strokes. i wrote a character who had a stroke once and i don't think i really understood what i was writing about. i wrote that after a few days, they were awake and only slightly coherent. it's been two and a half weeks and all that my dad can do is open his eyes and look at us with a complete lack of recognition. he can't speak. we don't know what's going to happen. when this all started, i thought that he'd be fine in a few weeks (well, fine enough for a stroke victim) and then if anyone happened to ask about how my dad was doing, i'd bring the stroke up offhandedly. i haven't told anyone. you would think that, after some traumatic event, you'd tell people that it happened to you right?? my other bad habit with these things is that im scared that telling people about my problems will make them worse. when he was taken to the hospital i thought he would die. i woke up the next morning to my mom crying into the phone as she was being told that he would need brain surgery, and i already started planning a eulogy for when i would have to preside over his funeral. i couldn't tell anyone about this. what if by telling people about my fears, they would be willed into existence? then time passed, he got a bit better, but never to a point where he was above "minimally responsive". the doctor says that if he's not looking better by the end of the week they'll need to put him into a rehab center, for other people who can't wake up. it feels so strange to be so hopeful over someone recovering only to have the rug yanked out from under you again and again, being beaten into submission by the fact that bad thingss happen to people who don't deserve it. none of us deserve to be put through this. i don't know why bad things keep happening to us and the fact that there's nothing i can do makes it worse. how are we supposed to do our finances or make money or pay for rent or do anything with him gone? will i have to drop out of college? what job can i get with such minimal credentials? i don't know how i'm going to enjoy college knowing that it's putting my family through the wringer. i don't know how i'm going to enjoy anything that he was a part of ever again. i sleep like shit and i never have an appetite and i have no motivation to do the things i want or the things i need. am i going to be like this forever?

xxx

in a way its's almost impressive how depressing this is. mom had to get rid of the sheets on her and dad's bed because they kept reminding her of him. she keeps his wedding ring on a chain around her neck (the followibg mental breakdown that came from me seeing that is what led to me writing this). every time we go to visit him, she tells him that she knows he can make it through it, how they've been through twenty years together and they still need to go through so much more. out of everyone hurting, i think she deserves this the least. right after she got over sucha horrible bout of depression earlier in the year she has to deal with all of this. every time that she comes in to say goodnight, i wonder for a split second if it's him instead. i still keep quiet when i'm up late at night and going past their room, in case i might wake him up, because i know he wakes up early for work, and when i hear the door open upstairs i always think it;s him, every time. i remember when i had a dream that he was smiling and well and healthy, standing fully upright as if nothing was wrong, as if everything was a bad dream. i was hugging him. i think i was crying. i rememeber thinking to myself that it's insane how fast he recovered, how amazing it is that he was able to overcome the stroke like nothing happened. whenever i have dreams that things that are missing return to me as i remember them, i never get them back again. why do bad things keep happening to us? what did we do to deserve any of this?

xxx

today my uncle came down from jersey to go see dad and help us with financial stuff. he was drafting an email for me about how i needed a loan because of how shit our financial situation is (mom's visiting dad every day and hasn't worked in a month and dad is... well, you know.). it was all shit like "my father suffered a severe stroke" and "we're not sure if he'll ever wake up". understandably putting all of this into writing really fucked me up and ive kind of been teetering on the edge of a breakdown all day ever since. i can't draw and i can't write and i can't talk to people without wanting to snap over every minor inconvienience and fucking throttle them through my screen. its miserable. its a miserable fucking existence. all i want to do is something that will make me happy or at least distract me, and i was distracting myself just fine for these past weeks, but i really feel like everything is falling apart on me. i keep hearing people talk about the dead visiting them in dreams and i can't stop thinking about the dream i had with him where he was completely fine, and i wonder if i should have known as soon as i woke up that things wouldn't be getting better. maybe that was the sign of the end times. i look like a mess and feel like a mess and i feel like nothing is making me happy anymore, and i wonder how much more of this i'm going to take. everything bad that happens to me or my family is something that we can;t control, something that happens to us because we;re too poor or mentally ill or inexperienced to be abkel to stop it and it always happens when things are going good, too good, uncomfortably good. we're being thrown from one tragedy to another and im worried that someone else in this house is going to break before i do. we've been getting ready to move out of state because we can't afford the house anymore. we're getting an apartment that doesn't even have three bedrooms. normally i would say that my mom wouldn't mind having me around the house if i can't find an affordable house after i've graduated, but all i can think about is money and how much more it'll cost to have another mouth to feed. but maybe with dad out of the house, she won't mind the company. i can't believe i've been dealing with this shit for a month. i've been running on autopilot for so long and all i want to do is rest but i need to feed myself and i need to do that every day but im never hungry. im never hungry for anything anymore, and everything i see makes me so, so sad.

xxx

everything is changing and its so horrible

dad hasn't been improving. mom said we're going to wait a while before making any huge medical decisions but he should have been awake weeks ago and he can barely keep his eyes open for half an hour, so everyone is wondering how much longer he has left. natalya is convinced that he's going to die in a few days. mom is hopeful that he'll get just a little bit better. i'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. i just want to know what's going to happen so i dont have to spend so much time waiting and waiting for answers, because i think the waiting is what's really killing me here. i think i just want to be prepared for it before it happens. i want to be optimistic but it's so hard and i can't muster it up anymore. i just hope he's not suffering. mom almost threw out an old messed-up photo of him and i felt so sick over it that i fished it out of the trash

i feel like im being thrust into adulthood. i know that once we move that there wont be enough room for me at the apartment for long periods of time so ill have to move out. i have no money saved and i cant hold jobs without wanting to have a mental breakdown. my mom always says that she doesn't know how i'll survive in the real world, and im only now realizing that she has a point. i dont know what im doing. im scared because sometimes when i think about what i want to do for a living doing animation feels less and less like something i want. i want to write, i think. ideally im at some cushy finance job and i write on the side. i dont know. and im worried that ill go broke and have to live on the street before i figure it out.

also we have to get rid of the cats which fucking sucks and isnt something i need right now. too much is changing and i just want to sleep until its all settled down. i want to press a fast-forward button and just be in my 20s with everything figured out. i think this is the first time i haven't cried while writing this, which is probably good. but it probably means im getting used to having to deal with all of this shit all the time. maybe im just too tired. my memory's been getting worse too, but i think people are just used to me forgetting things so they dont notice. i think its cause im not leaving the house anymore. i cant remember the last time i went on a walk. i ant remember much of anything anymore if im being honest

xxx

hi. it's been a while.

i was thinking about this page again. it's a scary place to leave off at, isn't it? i was so scared that things would never get better. but they have been.

dad started getting more and more conscious after my last update. the hospitals all treated him horribly, though, so while i was at school for my fall semester, he moved back home with my mom and sister. he was really mean. that's common in stroke victims, from what i've seen. as time went on, though, he got less volitile. he still gets frustrated and cries and has breakdowns, but they're less frequent.

i saw him for thanksgiving break and i was so scared. i'm still scared of him. and i'm not entirely sure why. i feel like an asshole for even saying it. i think i'm still scared that he's going to die. i think i'm scared that one day, while i'm watching him alone, something bad will happen and my mom and sister will be too far away to help me and it'll all be my fault. i djust don't want him to get hurt because of me and a lack of experience.

i still dream about him. he shows up in my dreams more than anyone i've ever known in my life, by a strong margin, and in every dream he's perfectly fine and i never question it. but i'm less sad when i wake up from those dreams now. he looks a lot better whenever i see him. his hair is coming back, he's gaining a bit more weight (he still looks weak, which i'm not used to), and i still see parts of the old him whenever i'm near him. it really, truly sucks that i'll never get the old him back. i had a horrible realization a few nights ago that, for so much of my life, i took my parents for granted. they did so many wonderful things for me, and they made my childhood really, honestly amazing. they did everything for me. and all i do is lock myself in my room. and it took my dad nearly dying on several occaisions for the fact that i was so dismissive of them to finally set in. but they're still here. even though my dad isn't all there and my mom is more stressed and angry than i've seen her in recent memory... they're still here. and i still lloove them so much. and i can really show my appreciation for them. i just wish i had realized how much time i was wasting sooner. better late than never, i suppose.

i'm going home in a few days for spring break. i have a lot to talk about with both of them. i hope they know i love them.