College should be free and a requirement. Take all of those parts of stress away. I had been accepted to a college that I liked and one of my friends was going with me. Out of state, which meant dorms and new people and getting out of this place. Away from family. 

I didn’t go. First, it was probably that I didn’t do anything in high school to warrant scholarships and knew nothing about grants. Also, my parents have no money, so nothing saved for college. Bad thing, not setting something aside. My smarts were so NOT getting me that far. 

Second reason I didn’t go was that my friend backed out. She wasn’t “mature” enough for college. Wanted to continue her career at Sonic. Such an illustrius career. 

Third - which is tied with second - is that my anxiety was really starting to ramp up after high school and I just backed out because I couldn’t do it. 

But if someone had made me. Forced me into it. Handled all the grown up shit that my parents should have helped me with and didn’t...I probably would have liked it. Thrived. Turned into my own person instead of this empty shell that cannot interact with other people.

But I mostly blame other people. My parents were no help because they expected me to be able to handle all the college prep myself. 90% of my friends decided to take more than one year off after high school instead of going to college. I fucked up, but so did everyone around me. I want to blame them and I do. I resent them. I resent all college kids because they’re doing what I wanted to. 

I think that if I can lose weight and get my anxiety under control...maybe I’d want to do the college thing. It wouldn’t be the same. No dorms or anything like that. No college experience and that was really the point of me going. I’m not an academic and any courses to do with writing or anything I like, I tend to hate those the most. I don’t like people telling me what to do with my creativity. I just don’t. 

It would be nice to be able to say I’ve got a bachelor’s in...something. I don’t even know. I don’t know.

Erm...no regret or resentment there. Nope. Nada. (Loads of regret and all-consuming resentment there. Loads.)

Anyway, I just passed the part where she’s in her Fiction Writing class and the teacher asks, “Why do we write fiction?”

Some of the responses were along the lines of:

To express ourselves. To be somewhere else. Because it’s all we know how to do(pretty much my boat, lol.) 

Cath finishes the chapter with the thought, To disappear. Which I think sums it up perfectly. 

I hate who I am in real life and I’m not writing characters because that’s the person I wish I was. I do it because when they’re in charge and I’m figuring out them and figuring out the world and rules and story...I’m not me anymore. I’m not Kris that lives at home with her parents because she’s too chicken to even get a job or try the real world. 

My life becomes about someone else. Something else. I think that’s why a lot of people have kids and that’s ridiculous because if you screw up a story, it can go in the drawer. That becomes child abuse when it’s a kid. And then they grow up fucked up so they can fuck up other people. 

When I write, my life isn’t about me anymore, which is the only thing I want. It’s not about my anxiety or the voices in my head. It’s me disappearing from my own life. When I’m rolling, nothing else matters. I don’t exist. I’m at peace for a few minutes, which is worth more than you could ever know. 

I want to extend that into reading. I read to discover more about myself and to escape reality and to cope with the intense anxiety that follows me everywhere I am around other people. 

Reading and writing has saved my life more than once. 

Like, my cousin got a tattoo - something I’ve never been able to do - and instead of being happy for him...I’m kind of hoping he fucks up and gets some infection that’s easily taken care of. Nothing to kill him...just something gross. 

And I’ve constantly got my fingers crossed for my oldest niece to screw up so I can feel all internally righteous and shit. 

I laughed when her ‘going to college in New York’ fell through and she ended up stuck at Uni here.

I laughed when one of my cousin’s marriage fell through because the guy finally admitted he was gay. Like, he seriously thought that marrying a woman would ‘fix’ him. Hopefully he’s happier. 

Another one of my ‘perfect’ cousins has a shitload of kids with a guy and they live in a shit house with a ton of his family. I enjoy that. 

Another got a girl knocked up. While she was still in high school(he was probably 25ish). And she already had a kid from a previous guy. Not to mention, this is after my cousin’s first marriage fell through and his ex wife left him for his lesbian older sister. 

My ‘perfect’ sister has had a life of fuckups and can’t find a good job because all the ones she gets end up sucking so hard. 

I have wished my mom dead more times than I can count. 

And the cherry on top of my sundae of evilness? I have a death pool running in my head where I bet on who of my mom’s generation is going to die next. It’s always flipping between my mom and her sister, but I have a feeling her other sister might surprise me. They’re the only three left. It’s been a rough few years in this fam.

So, am I evil or do I just have an evil sense of humor because life is so dark and everyone needs a laugh? Even if it’s just a quick Muahaha!

I’m nauseous. Actually, factually nauseous because even though I just came through a pretty bad anxiety flare and was finally feeling normal...my mom pops out the idea that we should have a great big family get together BEFORE we have the annual in November. Seriously?! 

And when I am there, I can’t act too much like I don’t want to be there because I’m twenty-eight fucking years old and I am unemployed living with my parents and I can’t fight back even when I really don’t want to do something. So I will let them drag me down there, hang out in the quietest places I can find, choke down some food I can’t even taste because I’m so anxious, and wait to go home.

What’s different about this from any of the other gatherings is that there’s the potential of five extra people, bringing the number up to...eleven? Not counting me. Cramped in my sister’s small house. With five people that I’m related to, but honestly don’t know and am soooo not comfortable with. 

It took years of Thanksgiving dinners with my sister’s family for me to become semi okay with it. Semi okay. Meaning I’m not okay with it. 

My anxiety isn’t always centered on thoughts that I can understand. A lot of it is the way my lungs getting tight as if my chest is in a vice and I can’t get a deep enough breath. Or the way I feel jittery all over like my very bones are vibrating inside me. 

And I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to get me to either cry or throw up. 

I hate this. I don’t wanna go. I don’t care about being with these people and my interacting is at a minimum. I hate eating in front of people whether I know them or not. I don’t know most of these people. I don’t particularly like more than maybe one or two of them and that’s when they’re not around the others. 

I hate this. I feel like I’m five years old. I revert to my shy self badly around family because I trust them less than I trust strangers. I can’t let them in. I can’t do it. I can’t.

They call us whiny little snowflakes when they freak out every time a bee gets in their bonnets...

Between my two oldest friends and their husbands...I’m counting around seven-ish kids. Obviously, I’m not in touch with either of them anymore. One lost a bunch of weight and became a bitch in high school and I haven’t stopped hating her...eleven years later. The other, I love to bits, but my anxiety and general misanthropy keeps me from spending any time with her. Also, I hate kids. I do. I will accept having to be around adults. I will tolerate being around teens. 

But if I can avoid being around kids, I can and will. I have been this way since I was little and there will be no changing that. My parents have accepted that they’re getting no grandkids from me(which is totally okay, my sister has two that are almost adults). Between the anxiety that makes it impossible for me to be around people, my asexualness that has plagued me since I first heard about it in High School, and my complete and utter loathing of tiny, needy humans, yeah...not happening. I’m fine with that. 

And while I can usually see most sides, I simply cannot understand why anyone would ever have kids on purpose. Of those two friends, one got pregnant accidentally(which I can barely accept happens because there are plenty of ways to have sex and not get pregnant) and the other...seriously made the choice at eighteen to get pregnant. I can’t understand that. I don’t know. Is it a hormonal thing? Is it because my sex drive(what I have of one) has never been turned toward other people? Is it because I find kids to be so life threatening that in my mind it is akin to walking through radiation because you like the idea of cancer and everyone else has it? 

So the hyperactivity definitely turned into a massive dose of anxiety that was literally only alleviated by lying on my stomach. It did get worse when my neighbor started moving his shit in for some kind of party he’s having over the weekend. I don’t think I need to tell you that I don’t like it. 

Can’t believe I forgot to put this on here. Slightly ashamed of it and possibly going to work at rewriting it some day when I have a little less on my schedule might be a little to blame. But whatever. 

Rated M for Mature for language and some light sexual situations/references. 

Summary: After his mother dies, Logan returns to the house where a ritual began two generations back. A ritual that is almost complete.

You get two choices of places to read this one! Also, I’ve finally settled on a penname that I really like. Writing alter ego: Kristina Saro. Also the name I’m now using on Twitter

AO3

October 5th rambles below the cut!

In other news, I flipped through(read that as “cyberstalked”) my old high school friends. It’s been ten years since we graduated and this Friday/Saturday, they’re getting together to do some stuff. I say ‘they’ because I would rather slowly peel the skin from my entire body than go. Also I have no money. That’s what being unemployed and living with mom and dad gets you. 

Read on for the rant that finally got here.

I can’t go to the store = I don’t want to go to the store.