#strudel lore

And since I live in the middle of suburbia with a million kids and summer break is starting, I figure I'd organize a community tie dye party.

Ohh man hell yeah! Thank you!!

- I once won an art competition where we had to reimagine a scene from a book about social shaming and it's consequences. I wrote a note alluding to suicide, crumpled it up, made it look weathered, and put a dried blood colored hand print over the text! It was pretty cool all in all. I was best in my category (literature)

- I used to play guitar! I was never good at it, but it was fun!

- when I was a kid, I wanted to be a blacksmith really bad! It was the first profession I ever practiced. I used to lash together sticks and stones to make axes and stuff to play in the woods

- I like dragons. I like...REALLY like dragons

- One of my most cherished games is called Rocket Slime and its for the DS

Alright so over my infinite hiatus, my MIL unfortunately passed away. This has posed...interesting...challenges to me and my husband.

Obviously, we're both still grieving. We lost her in October, and are still feeling the ripples. She gave me a home when my mother tried to kill me (not hyperbole). She had her demons, though. She died from liver failure that she had known about for months and months, but didnt do anything about. She kept this from us the entire time. And while she was alive, she wouldn't let us clean the house aside from wiping off counters. It was a fight to throw out spices that were 10 years past expiration. It was bad.

I do not blame her for this. Mental health problems are awful and she was an older woman raised to think "out of sight out of mind" and that killed her. And it left me and my husband with a hoarding situation to unpack (wall to wall, but not floor to ceiling thank god).

And...thats been interesting? We're slowly clearing the clutter, and we've found some interesting things. (Namely, several sewing machines and a shepards hook i can use to move around the house). But its also been kind of difficult because I can't move anything without thinking about how mad it would have made her. It's weird to unpack that AFTER someone dies.

Like on one hand, this is a woman who literally helped me rebuild my life. She gave me a home when I had none. She was the first adult to give me an out. MIL paid for my meds, my food, etc for a whole year while I figured out medicaid, and later disability.

But at the same time, shes watched me bloody myself during seizures caused because she wouldn't turn the heat down past 75 in summer. She routinely thought I was "gleefully" throwing away bills just to avoid paying them. Her last words to me were "You're overwhelming".

It's...weird, right? To unpack that all, knowing you'll never get closure. I thought id be used to it, you know. What with never getting closure over the awful things my mom and stepdad (and even my biofather) did to me.