Xavier used to always tell me before he died that you have to learn the rules to anything before you can break them. And this man was a certifiable genius across the board – brilliant cook, chaos programmer, astonishing writer, ruthless editor. I swear he did everything by his intuition, too, but only after learning the rules of a skill enough to break them.
Damn near everything I can do, I first learned to do from watching that contrarian bitch of a man do life. He was a wonderful, terrible, grumpy, hilarious, Renaissance master of multidisciplinary batshittery, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I had to fail my way forward first until I found a way to do things that worked for me.
And I will never stop learning about everything I can get my eternally bored hands on, learning rules, breaking them creatively, rinsing, repeating, and having a whole lot of fun while I do.
So please, experiment, fail your way forward, break new ground. This is how you learn and find ways to do things that work for you. But also learn from the masters. There’s nuance in everything. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
In 2021, I was talking with my friend Delta about all of the shit I was going through at the time while deep in survival mode and about being an Enneagram Eight largely geared toward self preservation, and I predicted that once I got out of survival mode and was safe, I would sort of… collapse. I would have no idea what the fuck to do with myself and kinda deflate and go more or less catatonic. That prediction has turned out to be more or less accurate most days.
As my life has stabilized, I find myself with less and less to solve and fewer fires to put out, with many of the remaining problems largely outside of my control and completely outside of my power to fix or help with. In short, most days, despite having the stability I worked so hard for, I feel more lost and adrift than ever. I have been sleeping a lot. I just don’t have much desire to do much, and I do the rare activity when the mood or inspiration strikes. My general state reminds me a lot of when I lost my dad, Xavier, back in 2016.
I wonder a lot if I’m subconsciously or somatically grieving all of the bullshit of the last three or four years or perhaps even longer because of how badly the wind has been knocked out of me. I barely even have energy to reply to a fraction of the dozens of messages on the various messaging apps I get daily, and I am trying to move away from feeling so bad about that because realistically I just can’t right now. That’s the plain and simple fact of the matter. I only really respond to people and reach out or have my phone nearby at all if I feel up to it, which is rare, and I have been trying to strike a balance between isolation and social time so that I don’t fall off the face of the Earth completely. I don’t want to fully withdraw or even withdraw at all, but my brain and body have been demanding that to some degree, and I’m going with that rather than fighting it so as to not make whatever this is longer and worse.
On the subject of recovery, I did a bit more research on what the underlying cause of my symptoms might be that have been making my body and mind feel so damn out of whack, and came up with a decent theory that my thyroid might have gotten ever so slightly cooked due to Hera’s batshit DIY MKULTRA scheme she put me through, and the HRT I’m on combined with the years of stress has been making it go, ah, ever so slightly haywire.
So I found some scholarly research that said that thyroid patients suffering from both hypothyroidism AND hyperthyroidism benefit from taking various forms of vitamin B and thiamine for their chronic fatigue especially. Luckily for me, a former friend of mine had send me a bunch of supplements she wasn’t gonna use late last year and among them was a B100 complex supplement. So I decided to test my theory and give this shit a try and see if it did anything for my fatigue and other symptoms.
Well, it appears to be doing a fair bit. I’m about five days into the test and my brain fog and pain is leagues better. It appears to be helping my lack of object permanence and executive function, as well, giving me some semblance of both. I have also noticed that I’m not super overstimulated by huge amounts of sound, nor does silence understimulate me as badly. I can sit in silence for far longer without my mind itching for music or internally screaming. It may also be helping with the flashbacks, as well, but that’s to be determined. I will need to continue the test for longer to see if it has any significant effect there. So perhaps my fried thyroid theory holds water. I will need to address this with my doctors next time I can spare a brain cell, haha.
I’m also far less angry and my headaches are gradually getting better as I work through my anxiety, as they appear to be triggered by anxiety and moments of emotional distress, which the B100 appears to be lessening as a baseline. Yay for House MD-ing myself at home! I just love being an AuDHDer with a special interest in weird ass branches of medicine who was practically raised by doctors, hahahaaaaa. (This is partly sarcastic, partly genuine. Specialized knowledge and deep somatic intuition saves lives, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, it’s just annoying that my body is so weird and there are so many things that the medical field as we know it doesn’t explore without months of waiting or you have the charisma of a fucking god).
Seeing as there are a lot of positive effects even through the semi-catatonia and the semi-catatonia predates the B100 test, I don’t think the B100 complex is the culprit here. If anything, the supplement appears to be helping. I’m just probably processing years of grief somatically that I’m not entirely consciously aware of.
So that leaves a large amount of time to fill as I heal that would ordinarily be spent in agonizing mental or physical pain, parsing my way through interpersonal trashfires, or recovering from the aforementioned problems. That huge amount of time to fill raises some incredibly simple, yet profound questions that I’m currently exploring the answers to: what the fuck do I do now? What actually makes me happy now that I’m living more out of love than out of spite and my brain and my body aren’t fucking screaming 24/7?
I know I love writing on here and writing in general. I am deeply proud of myself for having a space that is mine that I’ve maintained for months now even if I can’t post daily, and that does a lot for my quality of life. I like having spaces that are mine where I can express myself with the people that I love that would be very difficult to take from me or from them. I know research and engaging in my myriad special interests lights me the fuck up. Emerson raids the local Little Free Libraries like the adorable gremlin he is and often spoils me by bringing books back about topics that he either knows I’m fascinated with or that he thinks would catch my eye, and I do indeed feel very spoiled and lucky when he does that. That man is a catch and a half.
I’ve seen the concept of “dopamine menus” floating around on the Internet for some time, as well, and I’ve started merging that conceptwith a sort of free form to do list before I go to bed if I’m not completely beat to fuck by the time I pass out and can spare a brain cell to dump all the things that might possibly bring me joy the next day even if things go to shit on paper. I often struggle in the moment to think of anything that would bring me a shred of happiness in the moment if I’m sad or bored or anxious and looking for a pick me up, and having all of that on hand and prepped the night before helps a LOT in those moments.
I think all of those taken in tandem are a decent place to start. I’m trying to move away from the notion that I have to have a Grand Plan ™️ or a goal to accomplish at all times and I really think that teenage me had it right when they said that happiness was having good talks, good music, and good food with good people. That was really their goal in life, and I think they’d be proud of me for getting here. I do a LOT of all of the above.
So stay tuned for more magic, horseshoes and weedwhackers (you decide what y’all are in the comments). See you fuckers next time.
Hi! My name is Firrian. I appear to be the current acting captain of the Ashley system as the current most able fronter. I also appear to be stuck in front because the body is very tired. So I am not going to write about “Guernica” for the time being. We’re risking burnout if we continue with that one. Instead, I am going to talk about a little something-something Eight foresaw a few years back at the tail end of 2021 in honor of Pride Month. You’ve probably learned a fair bit about that old bastard by this point. He’s an Enneagram 8, vastly intelligent, as you may have gathered, and has Seen Some Shit in his time. But what you may not have known is that his intuition is off the charts. He’s also very, very queer.
This near-inhuman intuition is unique because Eight quite literally sees things. So while I mean he’s Seen Some Shit as in he’s been deeply traumatized, I also mean that he’s Seen Some Shit as in he has prophetic visions, as well. I’m not exactly sure when the visions started, as the system has had prophetic dreams since we were very young. We actually saw Milwaukee in our dreams despite never seeing a photo of the skyline or visiting here from the time we were perhaps three years old. Castor had a dream set outside a restaurant here twenty years before we’d ever set foot in this town. We’d actually have a recurring dream set here for the next two decades.
A Formidable Intuition
Eight fully split off from the rest of the system when we were 18 after our father died and it became clear that he could intuitively sense things that wouldn’t come to pass for some time. By 2021, he was in full, uncontested control of the system and in some ways, his visions were in control of him.
He half jokes that he didn’t have a conscious thought for that entire year – he didn’t have to. He simply knew what to do when. Besides, he was so tired that conscious thought likely wouldn’t have done him much good, anyway. He caught what we think was COVID at the end of that year and the fatigue got much, much worse. From the tail end of November until the middle of January, he slept. Too weak to get out of bed for more than a few minutes at a time, he could do little else but traverse the vast expanses of his delirium and dream.
Longing (And A Little Rizz)
He was beset with an odd feeling that he still can’t truly ascertain the origin of, but we have our theories now. We think it may have predicted Emerson’s arrival, as the feeling was soul-deep longing. He didn’t know who he was longing for, he simply felt like whoever he was longing for was longing for him, as well. This feeling frightened him. We are a system of deep agoraphobes, and his agoraphobia is perhaps the deepest.
He’s so terrified of people because his charisma is off the charts. Multiple people have borne witness to him “asking nicely” as he puts it, for things he should have no ability to even be able to obtain. He is a self-taught, powerful, and very well-practiced sorcerer, hence the name of this blog. However, that does not mean he enjoys it. He’s always hated his ability to charm or intimidate the fuck out of people at will. In fact, he hates it so goddamn much that he and Allēna co-wrote our classic song “A Weapon” about that very thing. Our ex-partner and now dear friend Beany even christened him The Eldritch Fuck for his gifts. While he hates said gifts, he adores her, so he cherishes the nickname.
Eight’s many, ah, talents. Intuition is one of them. So is almost dying.
Eldritch Fuckery
This Eldritch Fuck’s eldritch fuckery does not stop there. I wish I were kidding, but this absolute madman has also cheated death numerous times. We count the COVID incident as one such occurrence, but another time was when he simply walked off heat stroke ten days in a row in Philadelphia with no medical care. Emerson also bore witness to him surviving two major seizures within five minutes of each other in April, which he predicted in advance and arrived at the ER just in time for.
This phenomenon is called status epilepticus and he very much should have died. But no. He didn’t even black out. His brain was a little bit like scrambled eggs for a while, though. It got better, fortunately or unfortunately for the world, and we got some good meds to prevent further dying while we wait to see neurology in August. He has more than earned his terrifying reputation as an unkillable revenant..
Why are you telling me this, you might be asking?
Because of a queer as hell vision he had, of course! I’m gonna share it with you below.
A Very Queer Vision Straight From Eight’s Intuition Itself
“I am nothing special,” I repeated. The tall man stared at me blankly.
“You? Nothing special? You, who has beaten Death so many times he now fears you, you who went on to create spectacular things with your mind, you with the iron will to defy every obstacle placed in your path when you should have been broken beyond repair and recognition, now stand before me and have the utter audacity to tell me you are nothing special? I knew you were daring, but to dare to try and sell me this utter lie…. I want to take whoever did this to you and wrench them apart atom by atom.”
“I am not lying to you,” I snarled. “I do not lie.” The man grabbed my wrist and spun me around to face him.
“You should be dead. If you weren’t special, you’d be dead. You would not have lived to the age of two if you were any type of normal.” He spat the word normal out in disgust.
“Would that have been so bad?”
He dropped my wrist as if it had burned him. “Yes, you absolute fool,” he hissed. “Do you even know who you are?”
“I am me.”
The man’s eyes blazed for a moment and I felt his anger flare up so hot it almost hurt. “You disappoint me,” he spat. “You have no idea how your reputation precedes you, or how powerful you are. Your ability to soothe is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard tell of your strength, how you keep going despite being close to collapse. You have been through pain that would break a mundane being, and you come out of every experience that should have destroyed you more powerful and more beautiful each time. I would kill you myself for lying to me like this if I didn’t have full confidence you would survive the encounter and end me for trying.”
Eight’s very strange queer vision he got when he was bedridden with COVID
This vision is the only reason why we don’t think that longing predicted Emerson’s arrival. I have no idea who he saw, but apparently the bitch is tall and very queer himself. I don’t like this. I’m happy with Emerson and our other partners, so I hope the vision does not come to pass. However, we’ve had people seek Eight out for his power and steal him away from his polycule before, so we know from experience that this is plausible. His ex best friend used to joke that he was the painting in a bad action movie for that very reason.
Ah, well. It’s getting late. I hope you enjoyed this queer glimpse into Eight’s intuition for Pride Month. I totally didn’t spend several days trying to hunt this vision down for y’all.. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about… Stay tuned for more magic, hopefully with less of a delay between posts next time!
