Open Sorcery

Tag: NEISvoid

  • nocturnal activities continue..

    My fucking brain has apparently decided that sleep before 5 AM (except for brief naps in extreme cases) is banned. Most of the time it’s not due to anything I’m doing, it’s just…spinning. And it refuses to shut the fuck up. That and I can’t get comfortable until I’m so exhausted my body gives out and I fall asleep in whatever crazy position I happen to be in. Moonie has taken it upon herself to shove her wet face into my everything at 4 AM exactly, as well, regardless of whether or not I am trying to sleep, so she’s contributing to the problem. Why it’s always 4 AM I have no idea. I have no problem giving her attention AT ANY OTHER TIME OF DAY. Yet this cat chooses EXACTLY WHEN I’M TRYING TO SLEEP to seek attention from me and QUITE LITERALLY STICK HER FACE IN MINE. This calico child has zero concept of personal space or boundaries and I love her dearly but this is an increasingly aggravating issue. So here I am at 1:40 AM, a better time to try and be in my everything, bitching about the sleep issues that plague me and she’ll likely try to insert herself into my skin in about an hour and a half. What the fuck.

    Yeah. Anyway, wish me luck.

    -Allēna

  • The things I do for content..

    Today, that was getting sunsick. Emerson and I went to a bookshop downtown after our original plans fell through, and I got…kind of irradiated making a video while I was waiting for him to finish up inside.

    I have to be awake at 10 AM tomorrow for writer’s group and I did not nap today like a fool.

    Pray for me, if you’re into that. If you’re not, send me good energy, I guess.

    I need to shut my eyes now. I am so, so tired..

    -Allēna

  • Since I am a tired dumbass and it doesn’t seem to be my day with the braincell,

    here is a second post to tell y’all that you should subscribe to Open Sorcery if you enjoy what we have to say since I didn’t add it in the last post and I STILL can’t figure out how to edit the site so that it’ll let me edit posts directly from WordPress after I’ve posted them without completely breaking everything again.

    So, if you’ve been creeping for awhile and you enjoy this website, please subscribe. Huzzah!

    We’ve also been thoroughly WebFingered, so if the Fediverse is more your speed, follow us wherever the hell makes your little heart palpitate. 💛

    Ashley Halliwell
    Ashley Halliwell
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    Now, I’m going to hopefully stop procrastinating and haul my extremely fatigued body into the fucking wet box now that it’s almost 2 AM. It’s shower time.

    Goodnight, all.

    -Allēna

  • That EEG took me the hell out and I’m still tired..

    Ironically, I had to miss an epilepsy themed open mic because of it. Still no results that I can see. -Allēna

  • With my back being fucky, it’s given me a lot of time to think.

    There isn’t a lot I can do at present except stay in bed most of the time even if I would otherwise have the energy to move around and do things. When I do attempt to get out of bed and do things, my spine and hips start to scream again and that isn’t a good time for anyone. So I’ve been laying in bed and watching a lot of Scandal on Netflix again, since we got our subscription renewed a bit ago.

    While I watch TV and sling memes and work on things online and around the house where I am able, it’s gotten me thinking a lot about the nature of rest as well as what it means to be reasonably able to do something. See, I am technically able to do a lot. I have the skills, knowledge, and in many cases, technical mastery necessary to perform many tasks. Whether I’m able to actually do these things, especially all at once or in a short amount of time without hurting or exhausting myself, is a completely different story, especially now. I think that’s how ability, in a compassionate world, should be defined: whether or not a person can accomplish a given task, without threat of significant harm to themselves and/or others around them.

    It’s a similar case with rest for me. I don’t rest typically. My mind requires near constant stimulation, either by means of something like watching TV that makes me think, daydreaming, researching, writing, building this website, or by external means involving trusted people when I’m able to participate and they are also able and willing, like fun conversations, adventures, or performing poetry. If I get bored, that’s ALSO not a good time for anyone. I wouldn’t find relaxing on a beach somewhere any sort of rejuvenating at all, unfortunately. My brain has to be engaged in something I’m passionate about for me to feel like I’m resting, ironically.

    Given the complicated intersections between my mental needs and physical disabilities, I find a lot of my community and stimulation online. I have since at least 2017. Hell, many of the people I know and love in person now I initially met online, because as I’ve worked through my agoraphobia and even worse physical pain and fatigue than this, it was one of the only ways I could meet people and keep in touch with them at all.

    I suppose all of this is to say thank fuck for the Internet. It’s given gremlins like me a voice and a community and opportunities to have some semblance of a life that we wouldn’t have had before it came about. The Internet isn’t perfect and a lot of things are shit about the state of the world today, but I love my people. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this. Y’all make my life a little brighter every day.

    How do y’all rest? How do you find community? What do you think it means to be reasonably able to do something?

    You don’t have to be disabled and/or neurodivergent to answer, but I’m very curious to hear from disabled, neurodivergent, and other marginalized people especially. Let me know in the comments 💛

    -Allēna

  • I saw this post yesterday.

    I have some things to say about it.

    Fuck the hardliners, as long as you’re doing your best to be a decent human being, all progress is good progress and the best praxis is to start right now with exactly what you have. There is no single definition of what being a “good leftist” looks like, and even if there WERE, there would need to be accommodations made for disabled people, Mad people, poor people, cultural nuances, etc..

    Additionally, as an ex Mormon and a cripple punk, I wish leftists who talk like rebranded Christians would understand how nonsensical their takes sound. Nothing will get fixed without real progress and real work from real people, and that involves being patient when people fuck up, working together in community, and actively building a better world together, however we all can contribute, no matter how small. There will be no Revolution without progress made in the first place ffs.

    So if all you could do is survive and take care of yourself today, I think that’s good praxis. Self care is community care, and I’m glad as fuck you’re still here. If all you can do is share memes and news, that’s a form of activism in and of itself, and I think that’s good praxis. If you’re making art, writing things, being a performer or creative in any way, even if you’re only sharing it with your friends, partner(s), and/or family? Art is political. This, too, is good praxis. If you can do more? Badass. That’s also good praxis. Please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

    -Allēna

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  • I tried (another) experiment today.

    I took half a magnesium supplement again  and my body had a… typical reaction?

    I did this because I noticed that my heart was hurting last night for some strange reason, and in most people, magnesium evens out heart rate and calms them down. I’ve been worried about having another cardiac event since my last seizure in the wee hours of July 7 of this year when my heart rate shot through the roof after smoking weed to manage severe lower back pain, which triggered a chain reaction.

    Thirty minutes later, I was on the floor convulsing for some 25 minutes and I don’t remember most of July. I would not like to repeat that incident, thank you very much. So I’ve stopped the weed since then and attempted the magnesium again today (which I last took when I was smoking weed like a motherfucker, so that might have had something to do with my strange initial reaction to it). The initial reaction in question was a strong spike in blood pressure and heart rate that induced the migraines it was supposed to prevent. I hadn’t begun my vitamin B experiment or my ibuprofen experiment yet that I can recall, either, which may have contributed, as well. Hell yeah, science in my brainhole!

    Anyway, shortly after I took the magnesium supplement, I fell BACK to sleep for around another much needed 4 hours. I went to sleep at around 4 AM last night and woke up at 9 AM initially, took my meds, and after hanging out with my partner Zelda for a bit before they went to work, I fell back asleep and frankly don’t quite remember passing out. It was nice. So I think I might take the magnesium at night tomorrow since it appears to help with sleep when I’m not literally high on life, lol. My heart feels better and I do feel calmer.

    I have no clue what I’m going to do for the rest of the day. More sleep, since I’m effectively nocturnal at this point? Possibly.. that sounds nice.

    -Allēna

  • like an inkblot

    I attended St John’s College in Annapolis, MD for my freshman year of college. My dad died at the beginning of second semester. I was a young eighteen, already struggling deeply with depression. I didn’t think I would live to see my eighteenth year, and losing him fucking gutted me. I spent the remainder of the year an angry, lonely ghost. It broke me to such a degree that my headmate Eight took over as host for the first time in my system’s life, setting off a power struggle that would persist for many years to come.

    I would later write of that period in my life around a year later: 

    "my father
    they say
    i had a father once 
    i can’t forget his eyes
    green olives from the top down
    and this man i do not know
    may have created me 
    but i hope he won’t keep me 
    for his own
    i am not even my own
    and i keep telling the same
    old stories to new people

    i wish i could make myself new
    i wish i could bring him back
    i wish none of this shit would
    have ever happened
    i wish that the olives had never 
    gone 

    oh, stranger 
    take this cup from me
    will i die if i drink?
    blessed are the poor in spirit
    for they will inherit a life i
    do not want
    nonetheless
    not my will but yours"

    Now, the interesting thing about the way they do things at St John’s College is that there aren’t any final exams. Instead, all your instructors gather in a room at the end of the year and tell you what you did wrong and what you did well. They call this unique form of humiliation the “Don Rag”. It was fair to say that I was absolutely not a good student, especially considering the circumstances, and they did not go easy on me. That being said, my seminar instructors said something that’s stuck with me for the past decade. It was something to the effect of, “even if they can’t make it through a full class or can do nothing else, they show up.” Many of my instructors echoed the same thing, including my Greek instructor, who had told me earlier that year that I show up even when I look like I want to be blotted off the face of the earth.

    That’s something I take a lot of pride in. I do my utmost to show the fuck up, no matter what shape I’m in. I don’t give a flying fuck if I have to come up with 17,000 workarounds in the process, if I want something, I show the fuck up, I put in the work and I get it. And I love a challenge.

    Many people thought I would kill myself that year and in the years to come. My writing and my friends saved my life. I hated myself, and that was apparent in nearly everything I did. But I lived, despite not wanting to. My depression is much better now that I’ve gotten out of Texas, stopped pushing myself so damn hard, and I have better medical care. I’m tremendously thankful for that.

    So here’s to showing up, again and again.

    -Allēna

  • “a brief inquiry into the shape of time”

    “you can always say no” is the second oldest lie
    there is, up there with “you will always be mine”
    and if that seems wrong to you, consider the following -
    i left you because you were too close a mirror to all 
    the things i swore had claws and drank away to sleep at night
    and i will always elude you because you vowed to face me and never could
    -Allēna 8/1/2025
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  • “to be the lightning”

    when the lightning strikes me back
    and my cracked-cup mind can no longer hold
    all the subtle fire it’s meant to contain
    find me at the edge of a cold, dark place

    i wanted to be the lightning,
    not simply the bearer of it, 
    but sometimes both dream and nightmare
    outpace me and i cannot find my way home

    so if the world begins to slant 
    remind my parched mouth
    that i am both cupbearer and bitter wine
    reforge both sides of my twisted spine

    when the lightning 
    strikes 
    me 
    back

    -Allēna 7/31/2025
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