Getting a good hit of indica that’s a little stronger than vapes I had last time after I ran out of my indica is Hallelujah Praise The LORD and that kid with ADHD

HIVE TIMELINE TWO, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (Updated and reworked for Bloodline; spoilers ahead!)

It's a year since my original HIVE timeline (which you can read here and is obviously pre-Bloodline), and how things have changed. Well...kind of. I was expecting more of my timeline to crumple under the weight of eight years' worth of continuity errors but, unlike most of my pre-Bloodline fic, my 2020 timeline has stayed somewhat intact. However, in light of Nessa's excellent post that used the Bloodline prologue to figure out Raven's birthday with a scary amount of accuracy, I've decided that somewhat intact just isn't enough. Lo and behold...find the C ottomalpense new and improved H.I.V.E. timeline under the cut. This is just my interpretation of the canon timeline; because Walden contradicts himself constantly when it comes to age and continuity, most of these dates are educated guesses and any other interpretations are more than valid. Bloodline spoilers below.

PART ONE: RAVEN

In my original timeline, I used two anchor dates: Otto's 13th birthday being August 29th 1993, and Raven being 16 in the 'fifteen years earlier' Hong Kong flashback, making her 31 in Aftershock/Deadlock. Using the age difference between her and Otto, I counted backwards to give Raven a birth year of 1979. Otto's birthday still holds up, but Bloodline has since made it clear that Raven was 15 in Hong Kong. Therefore, several options presented themselves in order to salvage the rest of the timeline.

Option 1: Raven was indeed born in 1979, and Hong Kong takes place in 1994. This would make her 27 in H.I.V.E., given that she has a September birthday and H.I.V.E. takes place between September-December 2006. However, this means Raven that if Raven is 30 in Aftershock/Deadlock, there are only three years between the first seven books....something that canon vaguely supports given Shelby's "I've waited three years for you two to get together" comment to Laura and Otto in Deadlock, but feels very, very unrealistic given the number of time skips and the sheer volume of things that happen in the first seven books. My original timeline was created to get rid of the stasis in canon and give a better sense of the progression of time between books. Keeping Raven's birth year as 1979 undermines that.

Option 2: Raven was born in 1981, Hong Kong takes place in 1996, and she is 25 in H.I.V.E., meaning that there's exactly five years between H.I.V.E and Aftershock. This supports my earlier placement of Aftershock being the start of fifth year, but 25 feels kind of...young? It also hinges on Raven knowing her exact birth date before she finds out that Nero is her father, which I personally don't think Bloodline supports - Nero didn't know her birthday, and I think if Raven did know, she would've told him pre-Bloodline.

Option 3: Raven was born in 1980, Hong Kong takes place in 1995, and she is 26 in H.I.V.E., but, because she doesn't know her birth date, she celebrates her birthday on New Year's Eve. So while Raven would technically be 31 in Aftershock, she would still consider herself 30 until the end of the year, as would Nero. This gives a little bit more leeway with her age, reduces the number of changes in the overall timeline, and accounts for the overall unreliability of both Raven and Nero's narration in the flashback scenes - given that one of them had been traumatised so thoroughly that she had recurring psychotic episodes just months before that scene, and the other had his memory tampered with to the point where he misremembered the date of worst day of his life.

I personally opted for Option 3, making Raven's new birthday 3rd-6th September 1980. She is 33 in the Bloodline epilogue. Therefore Hong Kong still takes place in 1995.

PART TWO: OTTO

This is just a rehash of my last timeline, but for clarity's sake: Otto being an August 1993 birthday makes him one of the youngest in his year, meaning that everyone else (Lucy, Wing*, Nigel, Franz, Shelby, Laura, and Penny) were all 1992/3 babies. Bloodline takes place right at the end of his final year (meaning I correctly predicted that it would be set in 2012), making him 19. Something I forgot to mention in my original timeline is that Tom is described as being a few years older than Penny in H.I.V.E., but given that Tom isn't really alive for long enough to present me with an issue timeline wise, I'm just going to let that one slide. The Bloodline epilogue thus takes place in 2013.

As always, I am ignoring Rogue's claim that Otto is 13, because it doesn't make sense in any context (if Otto really is 13, it means he magically ages three years in Zero Hour and Aftershock according to Walden's own implication that Otto is 16 by Aftershock...which I'm also ignoring, but whatever). Laura still choosing between universities in September 2013 is weird, because either she is very, very late for the 2013 academic year, or very, very early for the 2014 one, but, again, I am ignoring it. Essentially, nothing meaningful has changed for any of the student ages between this timeline and the 2020 one.

PART THREE - NERO

This is where it gets interesting. This time last year, my Nero section was just speculation. I was, uh, very off, and did not account for how early Nero knocked Elena up. That was on me. My bad!

Nero is in his early 20s when Elena is murdered. If we take the year to be 1980, and early 20s to mean anything between 20-24, we can get an approximate birth year of 1956-1960. I'm going to average that to 22, making Nero's birth year 1958. He's a practically spritely 48 in H.I.V.E, and 55 in the Bloodline epilogue.

(Also, I am treating the 'thirty years' in the 'thirty years ago' flashback to be an estimate. Nero has memory issues and also thirty years has a much better ring to it than thirty-two.)

PART FOUR - DIABOLUS

We can't talk about Nero without mentioning Diabolus because I, for one, have been haunted by the knowledge that Nero taught Diabolus for years. However, assuming Nero immediately joins the H.I.V.E. teaching staff in 1980 following Elena's death, he is 22. If Diabolus is a first year student, we can give him a birth year of 1966/7. That said, I tend to think Diabolus is a little bit older than that, given how close he and Nero are in Hong Kong, so if we age him up to a third year in Nero's first year of teaching, that makes him 15/16 with a birth year of 1964/5. There's only 6/7 years between him and Nero, leaving plenty of time for them to become close friends by Hong Kong, during which Nero is 37 and Diabolus is approaching 30. That means Diabolus had Nigel at 27/28.

PART FIVE - THE OVERLORD INCIDENT AND XIU MEI

The Overlord Incident (henceforth the OI) is the bane of my existence. There's no mention of Raven in the original flashback in the Overlord Protocol, implying that she wasn't around yet, but it's referenced as still being a work in progress in Hong Kong. Again, this is a rehash of my previous timeline, but the Deadlock interpretation doesn't work; regardless of anything else, Wing was definitely born in 1992/3 in order to be in the same year as Otto, and either Wing or Raven would be too young for the OI to occur after Hong Kong (Raven was only 13 in 1993 in this interpretation of events, and this is one that puts her on the older side - there's an argument to be made for her being born in 1983, which would make her 10). Ergo, in this timeline, the OI precedes Hong Kong.

As mentioned, Wing had to have been born in 1993 at the latest, and the evidence suggests that he's most likely one of the older kids in their year, pointing to a 1992 birthday, meaning Xiu Mei got pregnant by January 1992 at the earliest. There must be time allowed for the following to occur between Wing and Otto's births and the OI: survivors of the OI to start going missing, Xiu Mei and Wu Zhang /Cypher to marry and move to Japan in order to escape persecution, and Overlord to get enough soft power over Number One to convince him to start trying to produce a clone of himself to be his successor. At earliest this can be 1991. I, however, think that it's more likely to be January 1990, given Overlord's comments about how much Number One initially resisted having his brain hijacked. This is the same as my previous timeline.

Unlike my previous timeline, however, I'm also going to attempt to estimate the year of Xiu Mei's death. While the Overlord Protocol does not explicitly state this, it can be inferred that Nero receives Xiu Mei's locket and letter after she is murdered by Overlord for investigating the Renaissance project. Nero receives the locket "many years" before Overlord Protocol (which takes place roughly in Spring/Summer of 2007), but Xiu Mei was also presumed "long dead" already when he received it as a result of the OI. This puts 17 years between Xiu Mei's faked death and Nero's reminiscence over the locket and letter in 2007 after the assassination attempt in Vienna. Xiu Mei can't have died before Wing was at least 5 years old, given the strong memories he has of her and the fact that he made a promise to her not to kill anyone, so I'm tentatively putting Xiu Mei's real death at 2001, when Wing would've been 9. This leaves just enough time for Cypher to establish himself as a thorn in Nero's side, and for his relationship with Wing the deteriorate to what we see in the Overlord Protocol.

PART SIX - OTHER

I've been meaning to do the maths on this for a while, but H.I.V.E.mind was officially brought online April 10th, 2006! (He'd been online for four months, three weeks, and two days by September 1st.) Nero really was paranoid after the OI.

Brexit doesn't occur in the H.I.V.E.verse, because Duncan Cavendish (David Cameron) resigns in 2010, AKA way, way, before the rise of UKIP and the 2016 referendum. The Iraq war, however, does - Tony Blair is heavily, heavily implied to be the prime minister in 2006.

Not really timeline related, but the fact that both Otto and Raven are Virgos is enough to make me shudder.

TL;DR - THE (FINAL???) TIMELINE

1950-59: The Furan siblings are born at some point. Two siblings are twins, presumably Elena and Anastasia or Anastasia and Pietor. At some point, they are owed a blood debt by the Sinistres.

1958: Nero is born.

Early 1960s: H.I.V.E. is founded, most likely by Nero's mother.

1964-5: Diabolus Darkdoom is born.

Late 1970s: Elena and Nero start their affair.

1980: Elena is murdered by Pietor. Raven is born. Nero has his memory of Raven's survival forcibly erased by Francesca Sinistre, clearing the blood debt between the Furan and Sinistre families.

1980s: Diabolus Darkdoom and Duncan Cavendish attend and graduate H.I.V.E. Diabolus and Nero become friends.

1989: Raven runs away from her orphanage.

1990: The Overlord Incident takes place, leaving three named survivors: Nero, Xiu Mei, and Wu Zhang. Overlord begins to assert control over Number One.

1991: Raven is found by the Furans and brought to the Glasshouse. Wu Zhang and Xiu Mei marry and immigrate to Japan after survivors of the Overlord Incident start going missing.

1992: Presumably the year Raven claws out Pietor's eye and gets shot in the woods, it is also the point at which Overlord/Number One most likely starts considering cloning himself. In the final quarter of the year, some students - most likely Wing, Shelby, and possibly Laura - are born.

1993: Otto and the rest of the students in his year are born.

1994: Likely the year Dimitri's escape attempt fails, and Raven is forced to murder Tolya. Also presumably when H.I.V.E.'s Icelandic location became dangerously compromised, and Nero starts seriously considering plans to move. At this point his mother is dead.

1995: Nero and Diabolus go to Hong Kong to meet with the Architect, and thwart Raven's assassination attempt. Raven eventually defects to G.L.O.V.E., and the first Glasshouse burns.

1996-2000: Construction on H.I.V.E. 2.0 is completed. Nero starts work on the emergency Zero Hour protocol.

2001: Xiu Mei is murdered by Overlord for asking too many questions about the Renaissance initiative. Wu Zhang becomes Cypher. Nero receives his half of the amulet, and Xiu Mei's letter.

2001-2005: Lucy's parents die of unknown causes. Diabolus Darkdoom falsifies his death to escape execution for getting too close to the Renaissance initiative, possibly after divorcing his wife first. Otto drops out of school and starts scamming local business to repair St Sebastian's. At some point Pike convinces Nero to try AI again. Number One's will is entirely consumed by Overlord.

2006: H.I.V.E.mind goes online. Pike's experiment to give Ms Leon the same reflexes as her cat goes horribly wrong, leaving them both trapped in the wrong body. Shelby becomes the Wraith and makes headlines for stealing millions of dollars' worth of jewellery. Laura is caught hacking the nearby American air base's early nuclear warning system. Otto hypnotises the current prime minister, allowing Duncan Cavendish to come into power. During a failed escape attempt from H.I.V.E., several hundred million pounds' worth of damage is caused to H.I.V.E. by Nigel's experimental crossbreed plant, Violet.

2007: Cypher fakes his death as Mao Fanchu in order to lure Wing to Tokyo, and the Contessa betrays Nero. Nero keeps Cypher alive, unbeknownst to Number One, and starts to have suspicions about Number One/Overlord for the first time. By the end of August, everyone is fourteen, and first year is over.

2008: H.O.P.E. is formed, and Nero is captured in either April or May whilst meeting with Gregori Leonov. Three months later, he is rescued by Otto, Raven, and the gang. The Contessa and Number One/Overlord die. Laura and Otto kiss, but nothing comes of it. Diabolus resurfaces from the dead to be elected head of G.L.O.V.E.'s ruling council. At some point in late August to early September, Otto, Wing, Shelby and Laura first encounter the animus fluid on a train to Paris whilst on a mission to recover a stolen thermoptic camouflage suit. As a result of the Contessa's death, Lucy Dexter is transferred to H.I.V.E. at the start of third year, at which point everyone is fifteen. Following the hijacking of Dreadnought, and an encounter with Pietor Furan, the animus fluid, and the Disciples, Otto is captured by American forces after saving Air Force One and the US president. He is then turned over to H.O.P.E.

2009: Assassinations of key members of G.L.O.V.E.'s ruling council take place at the hands of Otto, now under the influence of animus. Raven is given executive privilege to kill him if necessary. Otto confesses his love to Laura. Following a confrontation in the Amazon jungle, Cypher, Ghost, and Trent all die. H.O.P.E. is destroyed. Otto feigns memory loss of everything that occurred under animus. By the end of the year, everyone is sixteen.

2010: Laura's brother, Douglas, is born. Otto has continual and repeated nightmares and is the subject of rumours. Overlord takes control of the Advanced Weapons' Testing Facility in Colorado. The Zero Hour protocol is activated. Wing and Shelby get together. Chief Lewis and Lucy Dexter die. Pietor Furan is killed by Raven. Nero becomes head of G.L.O.V.E. Duncan Cavendish is forced to resign. The Architect is contacted by Anastasia Furan through a proxy, and construction of the new Glasshouse is completed. Following the appointment of Security Chief Dekker, Laura is blackmailed into betraying the location of the Hunt after Tom and Penny's recruitment to H.I.V.E. Joseph Wright and several former members of the ruling council are offered the help of Disciples'. All of the Alpha stream save Shelby, Otto, Franz, and Wing are taken captive. Otto is expelled, and joined Raven on the hunt for the location of the new Glasshouse. By the end of the year, everyone is seventeen.

2011: Raven and Otto take down several Disciples, most notably visiting Dubai, London, and Paris. In Venice, they are pursued by the CIA after tracking down the Architect with the help of Diabolus Darkdoom. Tom dies. The new Glasshouse is stormed and destroyed, again. Laura is given the choice as to whether she wants to stay at H.I.V.E. or not, and decides to stay. Anastasia Furan is taken hostage in Nero's basement storage facility. The Disciples' countdown for the new batch of hostages starts at 99 days. By the end of the school year, everyone is eighteen.

2012: The majority of Otto and the gang's final year goes smoothly. Franz starts working out and loses weight, becoming conventionally attractive. A few days shy of graduation, the clone known as Anna becomes loose. Otto reconvenes with the CIA and is allowed access to the last remaining batch of the animus fluid. Francesca Sinistre dies. It is revealed to Nero by Anastasia that he is Raven's father. Raven kills Anastasia. Otto stays behind to destroy H.I.V.E. and dies. His consciousness is transferred to a cloning vat by H.I.V.E.mind. Everyone is nineteen.

2013: Construction on the new H.I.V.E. facility is already underway. Raven finds out her birthday. Shelby and Wing set up an orphanage, implied to be in Africa, for war orphans in Otto's honour. Franz is an instructor at the temporary facility. Laura gets in to MIT and Oxford. In early September, Otto shows up on her doorstep.

hello hey hi and a splendid saturday to you, I come bearing a question for the wip4 gang and that question is: what is each of their most significant memories? additionally, are there any memories they would jump at the chance to get rid of? ok bye please have an excellent day \o/ (and before you yell at me I'm going to sleep now I swear)

I’m glad that when you even LOOK at me you think ‘oh sleep time’ I am Pavlov and you are my dog and this metaphor is stupid I will answer your question now

I’m gonna... assume this is uhh pre-story question because I know for a fact that at least three characters would change their answer to at least one question if it was post-story. My house, my rules. 

Keaton’s most significant memory is p r o b a b l y the time when he was in year 12 (17), and he was called to the head of sixth form office. He’d been at this school since year 7 (11), and had realised he was trans in year 8 (12/13), and had then been fighting for the right to use his bathroom ever since. This had previously resulted in punishment. In year 10 (15), he made progress, being allowed to use the disabled bathroom, but he wanted the men's bathroom dammit. 

Anyway, called to head of sixth form, assumed it was related to that issue. Pessimistic about the whole ordeal. 

Turned out there was another student in like year 9 who had come out as trans as well, and the school had gone ‘UHHHHHHHHH LET’S DO BETTER THIS TIME’ so Keaton, being the only other trans student in this rural Norfolk school, was assigned as her... mentor??? I guess? 

He was half like ‘fuck y’all’ and half like ‘I will not let this young woman go through the same shit you all put me through, I will guard her like a HAWK’. He was still not allowed to use his bathroom, but he makes her fight a little easier; she’s allowed to use her bathroom in year 10, after he left. They still meet up every now and then for coffee. 

Memory to be rid of: First day on a Professional Set, he walked backwards whilst taking a tea order and fell into a bin. Terrible first impression. He still got jobs afterwards, but sometimes people will be like ‘oh yeah I’ve heard of you you’re the bin guy’ and he wants to punch them. 

This is getting long already I’m gonna put the rest under a cut

I know you’re here for Mika so I’ll go to them, most significant memory: probably his first pride? He didn’t intend to go to pride, but he was in the city on the day of pride and just walked past all these rainbows and flags and people being so open and proud and themselves. He was maybe fifteen, and had been having those fun Gender Feels that you try and hide at age fifteen, because you’re only fifteen and most people tell you you’re not old enough to know anything about yourself, yknow? 

Someone gave him a flyer at one point, and when he got back to his Ultra Christian Household, he hid it and would read through it some nights. When he had it memorised, he started to explore more about queerness online. He’s the guy who can tell you all about LGBT history due to this research. This was only done in the city on the library computers, where his trail couldn’t be tracked. It gave him some sort of start for labels, some sort of safe space, some sort of New Approach to everything he’d been feeling. 

Memory to be rid of: last day in Ultra Christian School. He was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school and it wasn’t awful until he was about fourteen, at which point he started to grow his hair. They told him to cut it constantly. He was punished for it. He kept the hair. 

It got bad but it wasn’t until he was about seventeen that it really buckled; first real notable psychotic episode. He told people, they were convinced it was some sort of possession, convinced he’d sinned, convinced of all these horrible things about him and drove him out until he could ‘act normally’ again. He did not go back. 

In all honesty, the second he turned 18, he took his savings from various dead grandparents and a part-time job, bought a second-hand (maybe third-hand) camper-van and left home. 

He goes back for Christmas only. 

Mooooving on, Lynne! Who I do not talk about enough; she’s also part of the documentary squad, and actually the reason the whole squad exists. Producer and director, she’s very cool okcoolthanks

Most significant memory: That one time she was thirteen and her parents had officially declared their divorce. She was living with her dad and it was really, really weird and she was not enjoying it. Divorce is a big deal to some families, and this family was one of them, and she was really unsure about her entire future. 

Cue Mika, young and mostly obedient, kicking down the door (not literally) and kidnapping her (again, not literally) to come pick blackberries with him (very literally). They stayed out until the sun went down in early Autumn. She forgot about the divorce for a small amount of time. They ended the day eating fish and chips straight from the paper whilst sitting in a tree and talking about nothing important at all. 

They made jam out of the blackberries the next day. It was gross. Both of them refused to admit it was gross. 

Memory to be rid of: She went camping one time with friends from school. Lynne is Muslim and so did not go to Catholic school with Mika, they just lived near each other, and so school friends went ‘hey we’re going camping you should come’ she did come. 

It was a mess. They were fifteen and determined to drink, and English peer pressure to drink is weird, so she did take some drink but didn’t drink it. Someone threw up on her tent and blamed it on her. No-one bought any food or water, the only thing she was able to drink was lemonade bought for mixing and that had ants in it within two hours. 

She woke up first and left them all there, then walked home because she was meant to be lift-sharing. It took an hour and a half. She preferred that to being in the car. 

That group wasn’t her only group of friends, but it was her main group, so things were awkward for a while. 

Moving on from Documentary Squad, Percival! Percy Percival who I wish I could call Percy because it’s so much easier to write. 

Significant memory: winning an art contest when he was like. Eleven. Really living the high-life, ol’ Percival. It was a city-wide contest, with various age categories. He was part of the 11-18 clump, which put him at a disadvantage, but he still won. As a reward, his art was replicated on a mural in one of the shopping malls in town, and he got some fancy vouchers for a fancy art shop in the city. 

Winning the art contest made him go ‘oh wait I’m actually good at this thing I really like doing I should learn how to do that more’ and you could barely pry him away from his sketchbook from that point on. 

Those vouchers were stored away until he was 14 and doing art GCSE, at which point he bought a nice sketchbook and oil paints. He’s now very good at oil painting. I hate him for being good at oil painting. Oil painting SUCKS. 

Memory to be rid of: I’m torn between three and they’re all similar so I’ll go for all of them. 

#1 - losing an eye to Abby’s experiments. You read the lil short story I think (I know I checked just now) - she’s a very kind and loving sister who sometimes moves his body parts around. One time, he lost an eye and went blind for a few weeks. He had nightmares about it for months. It was very painful.

#2 - losing a finger. To Abby’s experiments. It was the middle finger on his left hand and it didn’t go back into place quickly enough - now it’s always numb and discoloured. Good news is he’s right-handed and not a musician so no worries about losing dexterity on that hand. 

#3 - losing two ribs. To Abby’s experiments.  There’s a very clear trend here. She wanted to try moving things she couldn’t see around. She moved two ribs away. She decided it was more dangerous to put them back. Now they just have two of Percival’s ribs lying around. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On that note, final person, this is very long. Abby! She’s fun. Most significant memory;

okay the word ‘significant’ has caught me off-guard several times cause like wow how do you figure out significant memories for people. I don’t have just one, yknow? But I think I know one for her. 

She’s the eldest out of her and Percival and, for a while, people wanted her to set an example for him, which she tried to do, but she wasn’t good at what people wanted her to be good at. She’s good with people. She’s good at very specific parts of biology. She’s good at psychology. She’s not good at school and tests. 

So, when Percival started to beat the standards she set for him, her parents almost... egged competition on. Played favourites, compared the two siblings. Nobody really noticed what she could do, they only cared about what she struggled with. And the parents were rarely around to help out with what she was struggled with. So she struggled on and tried to keep her head high.

Cue a family wedding, she was snooping around the snack table at the reception and overheard her parents talking about her. And how they were almost disappointed in her. How they were annoyed that she couldn’t be more like Percival, honestly, what did they do wrong? 

She got bitter. She pretends she doesn’t care but she’s bitter, and with no parents around to lash out at, she lashes out at Percival, who isn’t even aware. Good times. Not good times. Significant times. 

Memory to be rid of: Honestly? Probably hearing her parents talking about her at the family wedding. It stings. 

A n y w a y this was extremely long I like going into detail with short stories, if you read this far then thank you I appreciate it I will give you a feather from my feather collection. Probably a swan feather. I have a lot of swan feathers. 

Everyday Life in a RV

Another beautiful day in Florida!  I ABSOLUTELY understand now why snow birds make their way to Florida to spend the winter.  The weather here is second to none!  While we arrived in Florida a little early and caught the end of summer temperatures (in November) with slightly high temperatures and incredibly high humidity, the weather has since leveled out and is practically perfect every day.  

When Mark and I planned this venture, we vacillated as to whether or not we would tow a vehicle.  We knew we “wanted” a vehicle and having one would be more convenient.  However, we ended up settling on getting fold-able electric bikes (e-bikes) and to be inconvenienced by having to run our errands in the RV between stops or on our e-bikes.  That has turned out humorous on more than one occasion.  

As an example, we had issues with the drain in the RV shower and worked on that problem tirelessly.  Let me rephrase, Mark worked on that problem tirelessly.  My “work” involved paying for my very first “pay” shower at a park in Oklahoma where I had to choose between three showers.  One had a tarantula guarding the inside of the front door.  Nope.  The second had a wolf spider guarding the shower floor.  Nopity, nope, NOPE!   The third was just right.  More accurately stated, it didn’t involve any intimidating spiders or snakes so I took it.  I don’t remember how much it cost, but I would have paid serious money for a decent shower that didn’t involve creatures that could kill me.  

Getting back to the shower repair -- Mark got parts at three different hardware stores that didn’t end up fitting/working.  So, we eventually fixed the RV in the Home Depot parking lot so we could return parts as necessary.  It was hot as bejesus that day, but Mark didn’t complain.  He took advantage of the return policy and got our shower back up and in running condition before we left the parking lot.  While I don’t mind doing my part, I’d be happy as to not have to pay for another shower anytime soon.  But let the record reflect, I’m a giver.

Between RV stop locations, we usually plan a grocery store venture and/or a Costco run.  While our fridge isn’t Costco worthy by any stretch of the imagination, we do buy Costco dog food for Riley and Duke (and red wine need not be refrigerated).  This particular stop we are at for a full month and while I’m not out of red wine (yet), we did need a few necessities.  

On Sunday after church service, Mark and I ventured over to the local Winn-Dixie (grocery store) on our e-bikes, which is approximately three miles from our RV for some necessities.  We both take our backpacks to carry groceries, but on this particular venture we needed a few more things than would fit in both of our backpacks.  For example, we NEEDED the half ham that was on sale for only $10 (love those post-Thanksgiving sales)!!  Also, diet Coke was on sale, buy two 12-packs get one for free!  Our backpacks were full of salad, coffee creamer and other necessities, so I convinced Mark it wouldn’t be a problem to bungee cord anything else down to the back rack on our bikes.  He was a willing participant as long as he could get his diet Coke.  This is a picture of Mark with the half of a ham and one pack of diet Coke.  While this picture doesn’t represent the “Clampett look” I was sporting with the other two diet coke 12-packs AND groceries, it does give you an idea of how humorous such a simple thing as grocery shopping can be.   

Much of the rest of any given day is like everyone else’s, EXCEPT looking for stuff.  We have such a small amount of space and we kept very few things.  However, nothing is more frustrating than knowing you have something and in 31 feet of space, you can’t find it.  Many times I’ll be looking for something, like the dog’s nail clippers.  I know I have one ... but where in the 42 bazillion little containers, cabinets or under storage compartments it is, I have no clue.  I’ve lost these dumb dog nail clipper thingies TWICE now.  I don’t know what is up with that, but I’ve noticed that on a rig this size, that tends to happen.  You know it exists.  You know it’s in your possession...somewhere.  You’ve seen it in the last few months, weeks and sometimes days ... but when it’s necessary to find it, it’s no where to be found.  Grrrr.  I’m blaming this problem on the size of the RV and praying it’s not my old age kicking into high gear.  

Learning how to live in 31 feet of space has been interesting, fun and challenging.  I love our little space in life.  It’s portable and I can take it to any place I’d like.  I can enjoy the outdoors in any state, any weather, any place I desire.  That’s pretty cool.  It’s also easy to clean and doesn’t take too long to clean.  It’s such a little space, cleaning is done in a breeze.  With two dogs though, cleaning needs to be done more often than one would hope (definitely an argument for getting rid of the dogs, but we all know that is never going to happen).  

I also get to spend a lot of time with my husband.  I like him.  I love him.  I enjoy his company.  I find him hysterical even in the every day humdrum of life.  So I enjoy having him around.  We also have our subtle ways of getting our own alone time.  It may involve a walk, a jog, a bike ride alone or sometimes its as simple as putting in ear buds as a signal that “I don’t want to interact”.  We are both independent, so just taking on a project is usually a signal to the other that we are “good” on our own.  None the less, it’s been a great experience for us both and we still enjoy each others company.

The other thing I get asked about quite frequently is the bathroom situation.  Yes, there is only one bathroom.  Its not a Jack and Jill bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub and a separate closet with a toilet.  It is a dry toilet with a small sink and stand-up shower, all in one small space - meaning one person can stand between the sink, toilet and shower.  There is a spray wand next to the toilet to fill the bowl with water and a foot pedal that is used for flushing.  The sink is small, like a doll house small, but large enough for the task of washing hands and face, and brushing teeth.  The shower is plenty big.  I’m 5 foot almost 2 inches and I can stand up in it.  Just kidding - my 6 foot husband can stand up in it, so it’s definitely functional (now that the drain has been fixed).  There is a vent in the ceiling with a push button exhaust fan and the toilet is like a regular toilet, except for needing to fill it with water yourself.  That’s the bathroom situation.  Nothing glamorous and generally no secrets. 

My husband and I don’t keep the same hours.  Meaning, it’s not all that uncommon for him to get up between 3:30-5:00 a.m..  At the same time, I’ll look at the clock, do a quick calculation in my head and then a happy dance over the 4 hours I still get to sleep.  When my husband gets up, he’s really respectful of the fact that most normal people are still asleep, including his wife and two dogs.  So he quietly relocates to the living room/dining room area and does his thing until the sun comes up.  We have levelers on the RV, so his movement is negligible.  

As soon as I stir, or when Mark gets stir crazy, he’ll take the dogs for a walk.  There is nothing subtle about that process as much as Mark tries to keep it contained.  Our 70 lb. black Labrador retriever, Duke, moves about the cabin like a bull in a china shop.  Between his wagging tail slapping against the cabinets and his incessant yawning, even the neighbors are ready for him to WALK ALREADY!  Riley, our 23 lb. Japanese Spitz isn’t all that cooperative either.  She gets a psychotic episode and is afraid to walk across the vinyl floor.  Yes, she’ll step out on it, and step back on her little piece of carpet, then back out on the floor and back on the carpet.  From underneath the comforter all I hear is Mark loudly whispering “Riley, come!” and the tap-tap-tap of Riley’s toenails on the vinyl floor several times until she drums up enough courage to make a break for it and hurriedly jogs across the four feet of vinyl flooring between her little piece of carpet and the door.  As my friend Wendy says, she was perfect until I got her.  

Everyday life in an RV is pretty much like everyone else’s everyday life,  with a few slight nuances.  Mark and I could have made different choices so as to not have to bungee cord our groceries to the back of bikes, live in a home that we sleep in and drive, live in such a small space, and/or waited until the dogs were gone to start this venture.  But for us we talked about the choices we were making in advance and collectively agreed while some things would be inconvenient, we would give it a whirl and see what we thought.  If we found we hated it down the road, we’d make a change.  So far, we don’t hate anything about it.  Quite this opposite.  We are super glad we took this journey and in the way we did.  

As I mentioned previously, we are transitioning to a “newer” journey.  We found the boat that we would like to live on and have an accepted offer on that boat.  Because there are still many steps in the process (it’s sooooooo different from buying a house) and too many things could go wrong that it would be premature for me to talk about the specifics of the boat.  However, in my next blog I’ll talk about the boat purchasing process and hopefully we’ll be far enough along in the process that I can reveal a thing or two about what I hope to be our new home.  Stay tuned....

Until we meet again,

Sherri (and by contractual obligation, Mark)

Antipsychotics, Psychosis, and I

This is a tough subject to write about, it’s like I’m looking at an empty screen and filled with ideas but the ideas stay there instead of being typed onto the screen. But I will give it my best shot. Apologies if this seems like word vomit, or if I jump from subject to subject, but know this comes from the heart.

Now, on to my history of psychosis and antipsychotics:

I’ve been on one antispychotic or another (sometimes two at once) since the age of 16 (except for 2017 when I cold turkey’d all my meds, but that’s a story for later) when I had my first psychotic episode. Part of me wonders how well these episodes were handled, whether I would have been far better off and relapse free going to a Soteria type environment. But nonetheless, history is history and it’s not like Mississippi would be having radical schizophrenia treatments anyway. Mississippi throws their schizophrenics into the state hospital and either leaves them there to die or ejects them onto the streets with little to no social support, where they inevitably die as well. [1]

The only reason I have not succumbed to this fate is because I had a therapist with enough foresight to put me on SSI (disability) and I have a family that understands and supports me, and has good insurance that I can take advantage of until the age of 26. Thus I see a doctor who admits not to the state hospital, but to a local private one known for being quite good. I am privileged in that sense, despite my illness, and despite me being on disability.

However, back to the point, I’ve been on every atypical antipsychotic except some of the newer ones (Saphris, Invega, Rexulti, to name a few,)[2] and Seroquel (except for sleep). I’ve been on Haldol (haloperidol) as well. I am currently on Vraylar (Cariprazine) but I am worried that this medicine will follow the pattern that all the others have, and it is this pattern I will explore later.

My journey on the “med carousel” has been a wild one. Filled with moments where I felt miserable, filled with moments where I felt like I was cured and all was good in the world. But all those moments point towards the same conclusion, in the end: relapse. 

Before the medicines came, the psychosis did. I had my first psychotic episode at the age of 16, months after my parents divorced. I was feeling immense pressure at that time, as an AMAB person, I was the only “”man”” in the house, and responsibilities came with that. Instead of “stepping up to the plate” I instead withdrew, and sunk into a deep depression complemented by acute panic attacks. I was put on Celexa (Citalopram) by a local doctor who specialized in adolescent care. This lifted my depression, but did nothing for the crippling anxiety I felt at school.

Then suddenly, one night, I heard a voice speaking to me. It was a whispering voice, I could not discern the words, and then more voices accompanied them, until I sat in bed miserable, crying, unable to function. That was how my mom found me in the morning, crying with my hands over my ears, complaining of a “crowd of voices.” 

I was immediately rushed to a local hospital, where I was put on Risperdal (risperidone) and I stayed there for five days. I was so sedated during these five days that I could scarce stay awake, they went by in a blur. I dimly remember a visitation where I begged my mom to get me out of there, but she refused. It’s something I feel resentful about to this day.

After discharge I was well for a while, until symptoms returned, this time with accompanying delusions. Latuda was the next med of choice, one that worked well for a time, but then failed me and ended with me being back in hospital, but this time, the state hospital.

Whitfield, the mere name seems to scare residents of Mississippi. Whitfield is very much a stereotypical state hospital, poorly run, with no air conditioning in some buildings, poor computers, and an over-worked staff. I will not go into detail of my stay there, I will just say it was not enjoyable

After my stay there where I was tried on several medications (which, to be honest, I can not recall) my psychiatrist accused me of malingering. If his medicines weren’t working, well then the problem must be me! He severed our patient/doctor relationship and I continued on, discharged from the state hospital, fighting down psychosis and trying to be normal despite daily panic attacks, hallucinations, and believing the FBI was reading my thoughts.

Eventually, it all became too much, and I broke down in front of my family. This brought me to my next doctor, who I see to this day. He was much more kindly than the other doctor, with a happy tone in his voice and a genuine desire to listen to my troubles. He prescribed Geodon, and it seemed I had found my miracle drug.

But this drug failed me as well after a few months of blissful silence in my own head, I was hospitalized during an acute episode of hypomanic psychosis, which brought me to the label of schizoaffective bipolar. [3] During this hospitalization I was put on Haldol (haloperidol) and lithium, both did their job and I was out of the hospital after two weeks.

Fast-forward 6 months, I have a falling out with my therapist, I refuse to do the work in therapy (later I learn, I simply was not mature enough to do work in therapy) so she recommends I be kicked out of the house, and my mom obliges. [4]

With that, I stop all my medication. The Lithium? thrown in the trash. Haldol and Geodon? Same

At first it seems like I’m going to be okay, but of course, the psychosis is always there, always lurking, always looking to take an opportunity. The result was 6 months of unending psychosis where I scarce leaved my apartment (and most days, my bed).

This psychosis was only ended by a visit to a Partial Hospitalisation Program (PHP) where I learned skills to manage my psychosis, and was put back on the Geodon.

But of course, the Geodon again failed me,and after a Geodon + Haldol combo ended with crippling Akathisia my doctor was out of choices, and I went back to partial hospitalization to try Clozaril (clozapine).[5] But, the doctor said I had another choice, Vraylar. This Vraylar was new, expensive, but the doctor thought it would work. And so far it has.

Yet, the fear remains, what if it stops working and I have to try Clozaril? 

These thoughts haunt me, but I hope they won’t hold me back, and I hope that in the future I can find the right amount of coping skills and medication to truly one day feel happy. 

I know this is a bit of a word vomit, but this is for me, not for the reader, although I hope you got something out of this. In the future I will probably blog about antipsychotics, prognosis, and whether I want to be on them or not (as I’ve recently read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whittaker, who argues that antispychotics can be beneficial in the short term but are worse in the long-term). But for now, this is it. 

Endnotes:

[1] This is the subject of a lawsuit between the US Justice Department and the State of Mississippi, which is ongoing as of the writing of this piece.

[2] I am going to be using American brand names for the antipsychotics in this piece, but where I can recall the generic name I will use it alongside the brand name.

[3] I conceive of schizoaffective disorder not as is its own valid scientific entity, but merely an explanation for the co-existence of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder, something deemed impossible by the Kraepelinian dichotomy which the DSM-V still follows quite rigorously

[4] Me being transgender also had something to do with this action of kicking me out, but that is not a subject I felt like broaching today.

[5] Clozaril is a dangerous drug with a 1% side effect rate of decreased white blood cells, which can be fatal. As a result, the drug is a pain in the ass to take. You can only have one weeks worth of the drug at a time, and to get the next weeks dose you have to get your blood tested to show your ANC count is normal.

5/3/21

Remember that time Summer lied and said that I called David's whole family white trash when I didn't and instead of questioning it first you came straight home and bitched me out for literally two bottles being in the sink instead of just asking questions first and then I could tell that you still didn't beleive me because you still proceeded to drop passive agressive ass comments left and right for several months, ride my ass for stupid shit, scream at me and slam doors in my face, say fucked up nasty shit behind my back, and just in general 100% take his side for all the bullshit reasons he cheated on me and left me even though you've known him your whole life and deep down you know he's a psychotic abusive manipulative two faced piece of shit because that's how you are so that's how you raised him to be.

Remember when he said one of the biggest reasons he left me was because his work clothes weren't done even though he was the one who would come home at 4am and only had two uniforms so after staying up with a baby all night by myself I still had to wash his work clothes at 4am even though the reason he got home at 4am was because he was already cheating and you knew about it and didn't tell me, you also knew about it when you literally forced him to propose to me (who the fuck does that? Who forces their son to propose to somebody? An abusive covert fucking narcissist, that's who.)

Remember every time you've yelled at Axel for stupid shit like a child, how it's okay when YOU do it but if I slightly raise my voice when he's actually getting out of hand about something legitimately not okay then I'm suddenly a bad mother and a crazy abusive bitch that you've tried so hard to paint me as because that's who you actually are?

Remember how every time me and Axel are having a battle you somehow make it about you and start talking about how Eileen used to dig her claws in to you, almost like you're trying to accuse me of doing that even though you have literally no actual logical reason to do that or to project that shit on to me? Like you know, instead of just going to therapy or church for your mother like a normal person would.

Remember how the day after david left and accused me of being "too rough" or what he really wanted to say was "physically abusive" to Axel, you said you didn't beleive him but then I found a baby monitor sitting in my room that connected to yours because I know you secretly beleived the bullshit lies he was putting in your ears.

Remember how just literally every single time I'd have a mental breakdown because my son was out of control and I'm a single mom raising him on my own while also having to take your shit every day, and I can't do anything to make him behave because you're so fucking psychotic that when you have your shitty ass little episodes you even think that time out is some how abusive so it always feels like I'm walking on egg shells so what the fuck am I supposed to do except literally sit there and take my kid being wild as hell, over bearing, literally screaming at me and hitting me at times and I can't correct him but guess what? I get yelled at by you and a door slammed in my face for finally reaching my breaking point with that too, so I'm damned if I do and damned if I dont, because you're a fucking bully who's never happy with shit.

Remember how every time I found a boyfriend I had to lie and say they weren't actually my boyfriend because you would do and say shady shit on purpose and lie to them and other people just so you could run them off on purpose?

Remember that time you almost threw a chair at my face but you always lie to everyone and try to say that you slammed it on the ground but you know that's not true because if fred wasn't holding your arm back, it would have went directly at my face and we both know it.

Remember that time you gave me nannies xanax before I knew it was illegal to accept other peoples prescriptions and then you tried to lie to the cop and say that I was some junkie ass pill head who stole your mothers medicine when you're literally the one who gave it to me, and even the cop knew you were completely full of fucking shit.

Remember how for a while, for some weird ass reason, every time we were all talking together at my moms house it's like you literally couldn't wait to tell them whatever mistake you thought I made that week as a parent and you tried to play it off like you were just making conversation but i knew exactly what you were fucking doing.

Remember that morning Axel took his milk cup and purposely threw it on the ground because I didn't heat it up fast enough for him and he didn't want to wait the 5 seconds it would take for me to pick It up and put it in the microwave, and you had your back turned so it's not like you would have actually known because you didn't see it but you were trying to make excuses for his behavior that you didn't even witness with your own eyes and I had completely fucking had it with you doing that shit by that point so of course I shut you down, because that's why he pulled shit like that only when you're around in the first place, and you got so pissy that I didn't let you intervene that you sent me a shitty ass little horrendous article about how stay at home moms need to quit their whining, and the whole article is just written by some hag who had the audacity to mom shame stay at home moms who DARE to have emotions and not be 100% perfect and actually feel like they're struggling sometimes, and if we're being honest, I think the person who wrote the article is just as bad in person as you are, but I guess two clowns would make complete sense to each other. And then you acted like nothing was wrong the rest of the day, as if that wasn't one of the most psychologically abusive things you've ever pulled on me.

Remember when we had a stupid ass intervention at waffle house and I attempted to tell my mom how you literally at one point actually did not allow me to have a job and you tried to guilt trip the fuck out of me just for holding one for 9 months, as if it actually made me completely miss the 9 months with my son and you try to act like I literally never saw him or something just because it's more convenient for you to pretend that, and when I told her, you not only tried to gaslight me in to believing that you never said that, you also somehow convinced her that you never said I couldn't have a job, and you also then starting making it about you, like you do with everything, telling me that I'm just ungrateful about "everything you do for me." Failing to realize that money is useless if you're at war every day with a controlling volatile abusive narc, one would think that you would have learned that lesson with Charlie, but I guess empathy just isn't your thing. You also forget the part that it's not your dime we've lived off of, it's Fred's, which none of that would have ever had to happen if you just weren't so toxic and enabling and actually raised your son properly instead of making constant excuses for him NO MATTER what he does, but I get vilified for doing something that's not even 1/4th as offensive as all the shit he's pulled.

Remember that time I pissed you off and you slammed your bedroom door to go talk shit about me, usually exaggerating the fuck out of the story like you always do, if not straight up lying. And I can literally hear every word you're saying but whether you know or not you straight up just dont give a fuck? Oh wait, that's not an isolated incident, you literally do that all the fucking time.

Remember that time Axel fell out the shopping cart, an accident that couldn't have truly been prevented and you knew it was an accident but you threw it up in my face a few months down the road in an argument just to make me feel like shit and feel like you were winning the argument?

Remember that time I tried to come to you in confidence about how I didn't want axel riding with me and David to the camping trip because he would be carrying in his car, and you somehow turned that in to me being a bad mother even though I was genuinly putting my son first, and then you even went as far as saying "maybe you and David shouldn't be together" but I ended up finding out that that was only said to hit below the belt and intentionally said just to hurt me because when he cussed me out on Christmas eve and I actually stuck up for myself against him you jumped my ass and took his side, like I was the fucking problem, then you even went as far as saying I ruined Christmas even though it was actually David who ruined it, and then when I told you I wanted to break up with him you turned in to a big ass red faced bully and started blaming my friends, as if they're the reason that I don't want to be with your sorry ass son, you literally said to me verbatim "you better not break up with him" so then at that point you're literally forcing me to stay with somebody who is just as abusive as you are, if not more, but you'll lie to people like you always do and try to say that you "didn't say that" or that you "meant something else."

Remember that time Axel purposely took his soup and dumped it on the floor, at 3 years old, an age where he very well knows that it's wrong to do that, and I put him in time out for it and you slammed the bedroom door and started talking shit to fred trying to basically say I'm abusive just because I put him in time out for something he clearly deserved to be put in time out for. And how what's amazing to me is that's somehow abuse but literally hitting them with a paddle is perfectly fine? Or maybe you're just so controlling that you love hitting below the belt like a pants pissing tantrum throwing toddler as soon as you don't get your way about something.

Remember that morning David was shouting and cussing me out in front of our son and then slammed a door in my face hard as fuck, OVER FUCKING TOILET PAPER OF ALL THINGS also in front of our son, and you literally straight up watched it happen and allowed it? That said everything I needed to know about you both. The fact that you both have tried for years to paint me as something that YOU BOTH ACTUALLY ARE, AND TRY TO ACCUSE ME OF DOING THINGS THAT YOU BOTH ACTUALLY DO. THAT TAKES A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF BEING A PSYCHOTIC NO SOUL HAVING PEICE OF SHIT.

Remember how you let David take all $2,000 of the tax money from Axel and only gave me $100, for the 4 years that he was gone, as if David actually fucking deserved it when he only came to see Axel once a week, sometimes not even that. Remember how you literally bullied me in to not going after him for child support just to protect him even though we all struggled financially horribly at times, to the point where we didn't have hardly enough for diapers, whipes, clothes for Axel, proper nutritional food because my food stamps got cut for not going after child support, basic necessities needed around the house, all to protect David, and yet you still will truly beleive in your head that you've EVER put Axel before David. YOU HAVE NEVER PUT AXEL BEFORE DAVID. The fact that you put a grown ass man before an actual child time and time again is so fucking disgusting I will literally never be able to get over it. Why should your husband have to work until he dies to help clean up the mess that your sorry ass son created?

Remember how Axel for the first 4 years of his life had a piss poor extremely unhealthy diet because when I tried to train his taste buds early on you mom shamed me for "trying to make him eat things he didn't want" so then you'd give him fucking cookies or crackers, but then you tried to tell the cops "all she ever does is feeds him cookies and crackers" and you knew damn well that it was actually you who did that.

Remember every time I would tell Axel no more junk food and then you'd hand him another junky ass sugar filled snack right in front of my face just as soon as I said that?

Remember when you called me a "fat lazy ass bitch" verbatim, because I was tired as fuck from raising a newborn on my own who almost never slept, right after you son left us for one of the ugliest women I have ever seen in my entire life?

And I wouldn't put it past you to completely lie about every single thing I just listed.

Advocating for Myself as a Patient

A/N: This post will contain statements about medication and dosages as well as diagnoses and diagnostic criteria. This post is not meant to serve as medical advice. If you are having any issues with your medication, it is important to consult your medical professionals for advice. If you are experiencing an emergency, scroll to the bottom for emergency information.

Okay, it’s story time.

For a little background, I will mention the different tools I use for tracking my symptoms. The most recent tool I picked up was recording voice diaries on my phone; I record these and listen to them back, and it gives me a sense of how my mood changes through the day. Another tool I utilize is journaling in a private written journal, and to a lesser extent writing these Tumblr posts. I also record cravings, mood shifts, and physical symptoms in my Clue App, which is a free app I use for tracking my menstrual cycle.

My diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, but my original diagnosis was bipolar I with psychotic features. There is a lot of overlap between the disorders, but I feel like the schizoaffective diagnosis encourages a more liberal and centralized use of antipsychotics as a part of the treatment plan. I am willing to accept, though, that I may not be fully correct on this, because antipsychotics/neuroleptics may be utilized in bipolar I with psychotic features as well (this was confirmed by my psychiatrist). Here is a list of all the antipsychotics that I’ve been prescribed—that I can remember.

Seroquel

Risperidone

Invega

Abilify

Seroquel and risperidone both caused appetite changes, fine tremors, and extreme lethargy. When I expressed a desire to be removed from them, I was placed on the Invega injection. Invega was quite effective—for years actually— but it had the unfortunate side effect of causing an irregular menstrual cycle. This is because most antipsychotic medications simulate a hormone known as prolactin, and this is a hormone involved with pregnancy in women (and can cause breast development in men). Over time, my prolactin levels became elevated and it all came to a head when I bled for 40/50 days during a 2-month period. This was the opposite of the usual period scarcity that occurred with it before. I was removed from the Invega. I went to my PCP (Primary Care Physician) and was placed on birth control to re-regulate my cycle.

To replace the Invega, I was placed on an atypical antipsychotic known as Abilify. Abilify is associated with less severe elevation of prolactin levels. I was placed on an extremely small dose of 2mg, to be taken at night. I noticed favorable results for a few weeks, with my sleep cycle regulating. I would wake up early and feel rested.

However, this underlying anxiety started to creep in. I felt ill at ease at even familiar situations, such as at work and with regards to school. Even though I can no longer remember—and don’t have exact records of how much this coincided with the discontinuation of Invega and the introduction of Abilify—my Clue app says that I marked “stressed” for my mood every day except once since May 13th, 2019. I am incredibly grateful to have that evidence. This tells me that my symptoms began to be bad about a month ago.

It is important to note that during this time, I was also on two other medications: 900mg of lithium each night for mood-stablization and 37.5mg of Effexor (Venlafaxine) every afternoon for depression relief. I had been using the Effexor to improve my depression symptoms, and while I had noticed a slight uptake in anxiety around when I started it, it leveled off (or so I thought) as the time went on. This will be important later.

My anxiety first started as a kind of discomfort and general irritability and impatient feeling. I was seeing my main psychiatrist regularly, but I ended up seeing a different one when I went for a follow up. The new psychiatrist was pretty understanding, and she also warned me that if I started to experience anger or anything out of character that I should come back in and increase the Abilify. What psychiatrist B told me was in line with what psychiatrist A had said before, and I was skeptical, but I agreed to follow her instructions.

The reason I was skeptical was because even though the Abilify was helping me with sleep, I did feel more on edge since taking it. I agreed, though, because I was not sure if it was the addition of Abilify or just the withdrawal from Invega that was causing my symptoms. Having been on birth control for a month at that point and knowing that that could also affect mood, I was open to just trying what the doctors recommended.

I tried to be patient, but I noticed myself getting a lot worse, starting about 2-3 weeks ago. I felt more emotional and less stable. I began to feel like crawling out of my skin. I would have to consciously control my breathing. Looking back, I can see that I was beginning to have anxiety attacks, but I did not understand what they were.

I tried everything within my power to control my symptoms. I had previously starting exercising regularly, being more conscious about my diet, and getting more sunlight and fresh air. I walked literally miles every week, and sometimes I would walk just to try to control the anxiety. I went back to doctor A and he increased my Abilify. Now in addition to the 2mg I took at night, I was to take 2mg in the morning.

The first day(s) after the medicine was increased, I had horrendous migraines/tension headaches. I could feel literal knots in my neck, and I remember having to massage them out when I came home from work that day. I believe that it was around that time that I also began to have some gastrointestinal symptoms that would only continue to worsen as time went on. Some mornings I would wake up feeling like a gremlin was trying to knife its way out of my abdomen and I would have to rush to the bathroom. I felt nauseous all the time, and sometimes I could only have toast and tea in the morning or a smoothie because I couldn’t stomach anything else.

Meanwhile, the mood lability worsened. I literally went from laughing to crying within the space of thirty minutes. I would have mood diaries where I was rambling at top speed, and then others—within the same day— where I spoke painfully slow. I felt anxious, energetic, and optimistic all at once, while at the same time feeling tired, irritated, despondent, and feeling as though I wanted to jump out of my skin. I had racing thoughts and flight of ideas. I felt like I wanted to escape myself, while at the same time feeling derealized and outside my body. It was the most uncomfortable, disconcerting, and dysphoric sensation I had felt in a long time—if ever.

While this was happening, I knew something was very, very wrong. I kept telling my boyfriend that I didn’t feel right. I kept trying to explain that I was having intrusive suicidal thoughts, while at the same time wanting more desperately than anything to live. I told him that I wanted to go to inpatient because I felt like I wasn’t safe with myself. He was able to calm me down enough to stop me from checking myself into the hospital. He was convincing, alright, but a big part of why I didn’t go was because my clothes weren’t clean, and it was almost too late to go to the laundry mat. I was planning to pack a bag so that I could wear what I wanted at inpatient.  

Before you criticize his decision to stop me, please note two things;

A)     The hospitals in my area are all trash

B)     Even if I went as a voluntary patient, if they decided I was a danger to myself, they could keep me indefinitely, and that might’ve caused me to lose my job

I think my boyfriend had assessed the situation—including realizing that it was Sunday and I could go to my clinic as a walk-in on Monday— and just had more faith in me that I had in myself. I felt like I was completely losing control of my faculties, and he saw that I was speaking coherently. Let me tell you, it is an awful feeling to feel like you’re going crazy and everyone is just like, “You’re fine.”, because even if you know they are right, you still have this pervasive feeling that you cannot be trusted. Even though my health and safety are much more important than any job or anything, I think my boyfriend knew I was having an anxiety attack and didn’t want me to behave rashly.

We will call what happened the next day, “visit one”. At this point, I am sleeping less and less, which is the #1 indicator that I am going to have a manic episode. I am now starting to panic even more because I know that once I’m fully manic, I’ll be totally delusional, and it will be too late to dial it back. I am at the clinic within minutes of it opening, so I can speak to psychiatrist #3 quickly, even though I am coming in as a walk-in. She is warm and welcoming, and I liked her instantly. I am talking to her as fast as I can, trying to explain my symptoms—especially the anxiety—she is furiously taking notes and nodding, and she goes, “Don’t worry, I’m going to prescribe you something.”

She ended up prescribing me Hydroxyzine, which is an antihistamine (think Benadryl) at 10mg to be taken up 3 times daily. I took the medicine once I got home, and then I called in to work because I still felt incredibly sick to my stomach, and I wanted to be sure this medicine wouldn’t make me too drowsy to function (it pretty much did).

I continued taking the medicine for a few days. It did not fully help with the anxiety and mood instability; it just made me too sleepy to fully respond to them. The “edge” was still there. The sleeplessness was getting worse. The nausea was getting worse, despite psychiatrist #3 saying that the Hydroxyzine would help with that.

At this point, I was so desperate, I felt justified in going to my PCP on Thursday. This was “visit two.” I wanted to see if the birth control could have been causing some of my symptoms, and I felt like if I got more information, I could have something more concrete to give to my psychiatrist.

It is important to note that I now always take detailed notes to all my doctor appointments. I detail my symptoms and the questions I need to ask. Doctors do have a tendency to interrupt and not fully hear what I am saying, but the notes at least help us to stay on track and provide some foundation to the visit. It is much more helpful to be able to proactively tell them exactly what is going on, than it is to just wait for them to ask from a generic list of questions that may not cover everything I am experiencing. So yes, I am “that patient”, but my health anxiety is so intense that I want to cover not just what is wrong but also phantom other things that could even possibly be wrong just so that I get everything I can from the visit. I do not want to go away saying “I wish I had asked about X.” I would rather ask too many questions than not enough.

My doctor—who is awesome, by the way— consulted with her superior and then told me that they did not believe that it was the birth control. It was then that I remembered that I had already been on the birth control for over a month before these symptoms started, and symptoms would not approach out of nowhere. The birth control was doing its job of regulating my periods, and it was even possible that the hormones were helping—rather than hurting— my mood. My doctor then recommended a probiotic to deal with my gastrointestinal issues and told me to talk to my psychiatrist about the Abilify.

Fast forward today—Friday— and I am back at my psych clinic before it even opens. I have already decided that I want to see either psychiatrist #1, #2, or #3 and I do not want to see anybody new. Psychiatrist #2, who usually does Friday walk-ins is out on vacation and my heart sinks a little. So, I ask if, even if I have to wait longer, can I please see #1 or #3 and the front desk girl tells me that she will try her best, even though it isn’t their policy.

I once again only wait a few minutes before being called back, and who Is it but #3! She was like, “You’re back!” but she seems genuinely excited to see me. I update her on how the Hydroxyzine has been working and tell her that I’m still anxious. I explain the mood lability and wanting to jump out of my skin. I told her that my sleep patterns were worsening. She tells me that Abilify is a good drug and it is a small dose, but it isn’t for everyone. She had begun to recommend an anti-anxiety medication but hesitated.

Then my dramatic ass decides to read the “statement” I had prepared for her (or whoever would’ve seen me that day).

Here is that statement:

“Please help me. I know I come to you seeming very together, but my symptoms are overwhelming, and I need help. I plan to start attending groups here at ___________. I am doing everything I can. I do not want to take another antipsychotic. I believe I have been misdiagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, because my psychotic symptoms have always been accompanied by mood disturbances. I believe my previous diagnosis of bipolar I with psychotic features is the correct diagnosis. I also believe I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

That was when she went on to tell me that they still used antipsychotics for bipolar I with psychotic features, but that we could reduce the Abilify back to just 2mg nightly if that would make me feel better. She inquired a little about how I came to be diagnosed schizoaffective, but she did not address the possible GAD yet (I will definitely bring it up again if anxiety persists). Then she said she would discontinue the Effexor, because she made the connection between how antidepressants could cause mania. She said, “You’ll feel much better- trust me.”

As I had said, the Effexor would be important later. In all my calculations, I had never made that connection. I said, “Even though I was taking it all this time?” and she said, “Yes.” She also told me that I could discontinue it without tapering off because I was still at such a small dosage. She did not use the term “mixed mania” but when I mentioned the sleep disturbances was when she finally determined, “this is mania.”  

Finally—and this is the climax— she increased my lithium from 900mg to 1200mg. I would take one 600mg pill capsule in the morning and one at night (rather than taking both at night). It was still morning, so she told me I could begin taking the drug immediately.

Y’all, let me tell you, I feel a little drowsy/out of it, but just from that one pill I feel so much better. Yet it took literally 2 weeks of advocating for myself and 4 doctor visits to get to right now. I made it. I have always said that lithium is the only medication that I feel really works for me, and it also has the lowest side effects for me. The only thing that I can point to is excessive thirst, and that just means I carry water with me everywhere daily. That is a small price to pay for mental health.

I did end up calling in to work today—because of my stomach, but also because of being exhausted and trying to adjust to the lithium— and I’m just trying to take it easy. Honestly my stomach feels much better now that I am not a living ball of anxiety. It can be extremely frustrating to lose so much time and to jump through so many hoops, but I am fighting for my life here. My job might really need me today, but ultimately if I am hospitalized, they will find someone else for the position. I must learn to value myself, because to everyone else, I’m replaceable.

Here is the tl;dr:

·        Always advocate for yourself

If you don’t like what a doctor has to say to you, then find another one. Keep looking until you find the one that listens to you/hears what you are trying to say.

 ·        Trust your body

If you don’t feel right, trust that shit. Only you know you. I know some of us have hypochondria/health anxiety, but if you feel that something is wrong you should seek out an answer that will give you piece of mind.

 ·        Keep a list of questions to ask your doctor

It is so incredibly easy to get off track once you get to your doctor appointment or to allow them to dominate the conversation. Listen to their answers, but get a second opinion if it doesn’t feel right.

 ·        If you are in crisis, call emergency services

I really don’t recommend doing what I did and trying to just white knuckle it until the next morning. It worked for me because I’ve been managing my symptoms for years. That, or I just got lucky. Either way, if you have a desperate urge to harm yourself/someone else, or if your symptoms are otherwise overwhelming you should definitely either check yourself into treatment or call emergency services. Your clinic usually also has a support hotline you can call.

 Suicide prevention hotline:

1-800-273-8255

Suicide Prevention Hotline Chat

Crisis Text Line

The Bupropion Memoirs

I have vast experience using bupropion in many different formulations, routes of administration and with different combinations of drugs. Official bupropion is classified as a NDRI, a3b4, a4b2, and a1 nicotinergic antagonist. Its binding affinity of bupropion at the dopamine transporter are listed on a pubmed article as 526nM and 443nM, I'm not sure if they mean that on multiple studies the affinity was different, or are talking about bupropion and its main metabolite, hydroxybupropion. But for all intents and purposes, it is relatively weak binding to DA at around 500 nM. The inhibition of DA reuptake is most pronounced in the prefrontal cortex.

My first experiences with bupropion are getting prescribed it after multiple failed attempts at getting re prescribed amphetamine, and finally giving up after the most several doctors would do is script bupropion. Immediately I started researching possible recreational potential of the drug, only to be slightly dissapointed. This was around age 14. I remember the first time I snorted it, I achieved some sort of stimulant effect, slightly euphoric but nothing compared to MPH or AMP. It did cause music enhancement, but also a pretty strong restlessness which, ironically, made me crave chainsmoking cigarettes. So, ultimately, no big success on my first time. But over the course of around a week of being on bupropion, both snorting and taking orally, I began feeling amazing, so much energy and motivation. I began to to pushups compulsively, my father noticing my instant transformation from lazy fat fuck to manic exercising and was concerned. It went from a semieuphoric manic energy to a severe psychotic manic episode extremely fast. I remember being obsessed with taking apart computer peripherals to see what kind of recording equipment was inside, going deep into the heart of my computers files and checking for the tracking logs and secret government files. And I rushed from window to window to try to catch the cameramen before they hid from me. Overall, a by-the-book psychotic episode. This was my first, and only, ''true'' manic episode I've ever experienced. I've had bouts of snorting bupropion over the past few years, usually ending in dissapointment. After snorting (usually a xl pill) I felt the instant shards of glass sensation hit the back of my throat and spread to my head, feeling like my head was collapsing, having a bitter numb feeling in my mouth and uncomfortable stimulation. Most experiences were shitty but some were ok. I assume the reason why nearly all were terrible is due to my lack of taking tolerance breaks inbetween my drug abuse for a good 5 or 6 years, specifically dopaminergics. I NEVER gave my brain adequate time to reboot, restore or repair. This could also be why the last few months of my focalin runs (which I will get into in the future, as focalin was my main drug I used for years and bred many many interesting times) was filled with pure terror and adrenergic anxiety and no positive dopaminergic effects whatsoever. Same with my NDRA use towards the end.

Anyways, my abuse of all drugs stopped on 4/4/18, and didn't resume until atleast august of the same year. I spent months in multiple rehab centers, against my will, forced into the florida shuffle by the psych ward and my parents. Anyways, one good result of it is, the entire time, from 4/4 until now, 3/28, even when I was using drugs, I always had adequate restoration time and most of the time was spent in abstinence anyway, atleast from euphoriants. I did get off methadone in april and start back on subutex in november, which was ultimately a good decision. Other than that, I've been taking medicinal ativan, and recently, nardil, a MAOI antidepressant.

My use of bupropion started up again when I was in the psychward the last time, probably around... early december to mid january, my memory of that period is not that good. I ended up in a psychiatric facility after losing my shit from being in an abstinence based program for TOO LONG, I couldn't deal with the constant anxiety and pain and just flipped my fucking lid. Anyway, I was pretty damn miserable in that ward. One of the smallest, most cramped psychwards I've ever been to. But I did convice the doctor to put me back on wellbutrin. Out of pure boredom and hopeful curiosity, I snorted a 50mg tablet in my room. Instantly, something new. Straight up energy, motivation, with a lack of anxiogenesis. I wrote like a madman. Pharm and drug experiences, comics, journals, etc. I discovered my brain had healed to an extent over those few days of using bupropion.

After the ward I went to another abstinence facility, was homeless, multiple detoxes, back on subutex and ativan, homeless, 3 more detoxes, and then ending up here at this inpatient residential. All I have to say is, Bupropion has saved my life in recent times. Boredom, depression, lack of motivation, all crushed just by insufflating this would-be recreational stim. I could get into more detail but I feel like this is a decently structured report. What bupropion does, my initial experience with it, and future experiences, leading to a discovery of its potential. Well thats it suburban robots, this time lord is singing out

With logic and memory, dimensions and intentions, future loops and computer troops, I bid you a good try and goodbye until soon

So, not that literally anyone cares, but here's the deal with that person that was harassing me all week. Waay back in the good ol days of mid 2015 (sarcasm, fuck 2015)- I was experiencing a lot of really intense, frequent Rick shifts that were making me near catatonically depressed and dissociated. After seeing the season 2 finale, they just got worse. So I opted to unfollow all the r/n/m blogs I was following, stay out of the tags, stop looking canonmates, etc pretty much everything but actually taking Rick off my kinlist because I wasn't coping with it well and I needed to take a break. I even put on several pages of my blog that I did not want /anyone/ kin from ric/kandmorty contacting me because at the time it was basically a trigger. Then I start getting messages fromsomeome kin with M/orty, asking to talk to me, compare memories, etc. I told them I didn't want to talk to anyone, that it was triggering, etc. I accidentally posted one of their asks publically instead of privately, because mobile sux, and wound up getting a slew of TERRIFYING messages from them saying shit like "How could you do this to me?? I trusted you!! You exposed us!! How could you do this why would you do this to us?? I'm going to have to delete my tumblr because of you, how could you do this, we trusted you!" I panicked, deleted the ask, apologized profusely, and was generally successfully guilt tripped into allowing this person to continue messaging me and probing me for information about my Rick kintype. For maybe 6 months, they continued talking to me. I would ignore them for as long as I could, but eventually caved and replied to them out of boredom or fear, or they'd send me a slew of guilt trippy messages apologizing for bothering me, saying they were such an awful person, they always did this, everyone hates them etc etc etc. After 6 months, I was accepted to Job Corps and told them I was leaving for school and would have no internet access until I graduated. About four months into school l, my parents bought me a phone and were paying for my service. I logged back into tumblr to find about twenty "Hey"s and "Hi"s and "Oh my god I'm so sorry I know you hate me I just don't know what to do I'm so awful I'm sorry for bothering you"s in my messages from them. I told them I was in school and wouldn't have time to message them very often. I wanted them to just leave me alone, but I didn't want to be outright mean and they weren't taking the hint that I didn't want to talk to them. Or maybe they were and that's why they'd send me that guilt trippy bullshit every few weeks. And unfortunately I was an anxious wreck having just escaped multiple physically, memtally, emotionally, and sexually abusive relationships at this point. So I was easily manipulated and desperate for friendship. Which they knew. I'd mentioned it briefly and had vented about it multiple times on my kin blog. Anywho. I came back from school after about 6 months. Tumblr had dome some weird update and I couldn't log into my account anymore (except from my ipad where I was still logged in). I remade my account and directed everyone to my new kin blog (this one). I'd kinda forgotten about them at this point, but when I remade my blog they started messaging me again. I was pretty worn down and still pretty desperate for friends. I was recovering from the depressive Rick shifts and started talking to them more and more about our canons, and eventually decided we were canonmates. By the time we'd 'known' each other for about a year, they'd mentioned to me multiple times that they were living in an abusive situation and needed to get out. Three things about that last sentence. 1. *Known: Our entire relationship was one of us (mostly them) messaging the other every few days, or even every couple of weeks, to say "Hey"-"Hi"-"How are you"-"Fine, you?"-"I'm ok" and then maybe they'd complain (extremely vaguely) about something going on at home. 2. Everything they said about their abuse was extremely vague. The most detail I could ever get was that the house they were living in was not being maintained and there was never any food. Which they blamed on their parents despite being a 20 year old adult. 3. I'd spent hours trying to give them help getting out. I looked up resource centers in their area, homeless shelters, disability, food stamps, offered to write their resume for them, etc etc etc. I was practically offering to do everything for them to get them on their feet, and they shot down my advice every single time. Around 11 months into our friendship, they told me they couldn't take being there anymore and they were going to run away. They didn't know where they were going, didn't care, kept talking about being homeless and living on the streets to get away from where they were now. So I told them to come to Colorado (where I live) so I could at least offer help in person. November of 2016, they bought a bus ticket and came to Colorado. I picked them up and took them to my apartment (a three bedroom townhouse I shared with three roommates. They were all upstairs, I lived in a sectioned off half-room behind the living room). At the time, I was working 40 hours a week at a thrift store making about 9$/h. This job was not only tearing my already chronically ill body apart, but was also causing weekly psychotic episodes and mental breakdowns. I was 3000$ in debt with my roommates. My rent was 400$/month and I was making maybe 700$/month. Even so. I was using all of my spare money feeding them, buying them a tracphone and service, toiletries, clothes, etc etc Despite how much I was spending on them, they were still asking for more food, expensive food, cigarettes, alcohol, and weed. And if I didn't say yes, they'd spiral into depressive episodes, hiding either in my room, the living room, or the bathroom, and cry. And then ask again twenty minutes later. Over. And over again. Until I said yes. They talked 24/7. Literally. 24/7. From the SECOND I came home from work til I went to bed. And frequently came into my room multiple times throughout the night to ask for cigarettes and weed. Despite the fact that I had to wake up at 6am for work. It got to the point where, despite being in constant physical pain and despite the mental break downs, I was volunteering for overtime at work every single day to afford to keep them fed and to just fucking avoid their non stop talking and guilt tripping. And this was not non stop conversing. It was non stop THEM talking. I didn't exist. I could not get a word in. They didn't expect me to reply except for an occasional "Isn't that funny/weird?" or "Do you ever do that that??". I basically clocked out mentally any time I was home. I wasn't a person to them. I was just expected to listen quietly to their thousand and one stories. I already made posts back when this started about what happened while they lived with me, so I'm not gonna go into any more detail. I don't remember most of it anyways. It was such an incredibly stressful point in my life, I developed a new alter in my system. I was rarely fronting. It was so bad, the alter that /never/ fronts, had to take over to deal with what was happening. This person has been stalking me from the second they found my blog, and five months after I kicked them out and blocked them, they're still stalking me. I had to install an ip tracker on my blog. They were checking my blog damn near 20 times a day and sending me 10 or more messages every day. I barely posted half of what I got. I was even so desperate as to text their mom to beg for help. I wanted this to end before it started. I never wanted to know them. I want nothing to do with them. I don't want to be dealing with this. I am an asocial agoraphobic shut-in. I don't want any part of this. I don't care what happens to them. I don't care what happens to Rain or Darcy or the 'KuroNekoClan'. All I was is for this to be over. I want to be left alone. I want to finish repressing everything about them. I want them to completely disappear from my memory. I have never hated nor been so terrified of someone as I am in regards to this person. I'm gonna go back to radio silence on this blog for a few more days just to be sure they're not still checking it. Everyone can still PM and I'll still reply to asks, but I'm not gonna be posting on here til I feel safe.

Reika Athanasia Titov, the Warlock

Age: 18

Birthday: 3rd Week of Winter

Height: 5'7”

Weight: 150 lbs

Academic Ability: Above Average

Athletic Ability: Average

Favorite Foods: Coffee Jelly, Matcha Tea, and Shadows

Blood Type: O

Animal: Bat

Fun Fact: You thought your family would be happy with you for freeing them from the shadows beneath the shrine. Oh how wrong you were!

Arc Traits:

[Blue] Wounded Angel (The Thing Beneath the Shrine) 1

[Silver] Troubled (The Darkweaver) 1

[Blue] Gatecrasher (Walking the Dark Paths) 1

[Red] Creature of Delirium (Shadow-Eater)  0

Skills:

Domestic Skills 3

Dark Ways 2

(Superior) Dark Paths 2

(Magical) Titov Family Magic 1

[Obstacle 1] appear stable and calm while experiencing a psychotic episode

[Obstacle 1] attract someone or something to you that you need

[Obstacle 1] know what you can offer a person to assure their willing cooperation

[Obstacle 2] know what you can offer someone that would make them not merely willing to cooperate but unwilling to betray you under any reasonable duress

[Obstacle 2] infuse an object with emotional meaning – make even an ordinary work into great art that gives a sense of freedom or peace, or a simple knickknack into a gift that brings great joy

[Obstacle 3] create a new person from the earth, if there is no one that your magic may summon in answer to a specific need

Bondflictions:

Bond: I must consume people's shadows to maintain my physical form. 2

Bond: I am the Darkweaver, a being of darkness and fear. (Title) 2

Affliction: People tend not to like me.  0

Other Stuff

Bonus XP Action: Shiver of Wonder/Terror

Basic Quest: Void-Touched

There’s something going on. You think it means... you think it... it relates to the shadows inside of you.  You can earn a bonus XP towards this quest at any time (though only once per scene/15 minutes) by declaring that you can feel the touch of it, the thing, the it, the miracle, the strangeness, the dissociation, the unnameable, the it, the thing —you can phrase it another way; just give some indication that you’re triggering this quest condition— and then free-associating for a few moments about what your character is experiencing, feeling, thinking.

Miraculous Powers

[Green] Sickly: Being filled with shadows hurts. It's not a fun experience at all.

[Red] Shadow's Embrace: You are a being of the shadows, who always exists there.

[Blue] Lurk: You can appear to someone when they stand in the dark.

[Red] Eyes of the Beyond: You can see hidden information about people when they're in the dark.

[Red] The Life of a Dark Walker: Once per chapter, you can do some stylized, illogical things.

[Blue] Shadow Crafting: You can make some pretty amazing things out of shadows.

[Blue] Shadow Binding: You can bind yourself to various sources, primarily shadows. In desperate situations you can bind yourself to your own wounds. This hurts you, but it gives you strength.

[Blue] Regurgitate Shadow: You can regurgitate bound shadows when you've gotten all the power from them that you need, and release the bindings on your wounds, allowing yourself to heal and regain your strength.

[Blue] Blasphemy: You have consumed the shadows beneath the Titov shrine, taking them into your body and binding them to yourself. If you die, they will escape and corrupt everyone with their evil thoughts and intentions.

[Silver] Mythic Regalia: You can summon the regalia of a dark walker.

[Silver] Whisperings: You hear things while you lurk in the darkness. The shadows whisper.

[Blue] Walkers of the Dark Paths: You walk the Dark Paths. You can show other people the way.

[Blue] Understanding Twisted Places: You understand twisted spaces and shadows.

[Blue]Shapechanger: You are a shapechanger, whose body can shift and change to avoid injury. The darkness will repair your damaged body.

[Blue] A Dark Walker's Blessings: All Dark Walkers can run along the surface of water and along the sides of buildings, survive for weeks without sleep, and enter the dark pathways.

Later...

[Red] Shadow-Eater: You can pull the shadows out of people and things and consume them to fuel your body. They can be regurgitated from your body later when you've used them up, and put back where they come from. Each shadow you're holding inside your body manifests somewhere on your person as a silver key.

[Red] Shadow Puppets: You can communicate with and command your vessels.

[Red] Catharsis: Your miracles are strongly emotionally-affecting. They can change lives.

[Red] A Tangled Mass of Strings: You have vessels that you didn't even make, or that you made off-screen. Sometimes people just lose track of their shadows and fall under your power, usually through having their shadows stolen by other entities. With some effort, you can call to a large group of such people.

[Red] Metamorphosis: You can use the shadows inside of you to transform people and banish them to the Outside to wander for seven days and seven nights.

[Red] Operator: You may draw upon the power of stored shadows to do amazing things. At Arc 4+, you can use shadows for wishes.

[Red] Creeping Corruption: You can corrupt people slowly while performing some sort of action against them (typically extracting their shadows).

[Red] Fate Reevaluated: You can declare the fates and destinies of your vessels.

[Red] Long-Range Extraction: You can wish to make anyone your vessel, pulling out their shadows at even extreme range.

Story Stuff

Arc 1: The Melancholy Villain

This Arc is about Reika making herself the villain, and trying her best to see it as something amazing and cool. She goes through lots of failed schemes, lots of villainy that ends up more heroic, that she tries to justify through some vague stupid excuse that makes it seem like she's not just doing it to be nice.

But she starts to get sick of that whole thing. She starts to process the fact that it really isn't for her, even though she wants it to be.: But she starts to get sick of that whole thing. She starts to process the fact that it really isn't for her, even though she wants it to be.

Arc 2: The Dark Hero

So then Reika tries her best to be nice. She tries her best to be more like a hero, even though society is trying its best to make her be a villain. She just wants you to like her! That's all she really wants! But it's all hard.

During this Arc, she befriends a boy around her age named Mikhail Nemetov. His family is abusive, and Reika empathizes with him, and spends a big portion of the Arc trying to help him get out of his bad situation. They kind of have a bit of a romance, and Reika really connects with Mikhail. He becomes her only friend.

And then Mikhail reveals his true intentions. He isn’t a sweet, shy teenage boy. (Well, he is still a teenage boy, but...) He’s a powerful enemy of the world, an Excrucian Deceiver, who created a family for himself to create a situation to lure Reika in, to gain her trust, so that he could do his best to convert her to his cause, to recruit her into a war against the world.

Arc 3: The Corrupted Girl

Reika to traverse a literal labyrinth in this Arc. It's a representation of her tangled-up emotions, the way she's majorly torn between two ways of life – the life of a hero and the life of a villain, the Reika who is and the Reika who the world expects her to be. Mikhail is trying to corrupt her, and make her into a villain, which symbolizes in a way the world’s expectations of Reika.

She reaches the center of the labyrinth, defeats Mikhail, and then she decides to just be who she wants to be, even if that's not totally something consistent, and even if she can't figure out how to make it work. She decides to just live for herself instead of listening to what people tell her to be.

Arc 4: The Seeker

Reika embarks on a great quest, something very very upwards. I am leaning towards something that other heroes and villains are striving for as well. Something very mythic and Greek. She's decided that this is the sort of thing she does these days. She's decided that this is who she is. But what she's not letting on is that part of her motivation is that she wants people to see her as a hero for doing this. She wouldn't admit it, but somewhere in her subconscious, that's the reason why.

Reika reaches the target, completes the quest, is the one to complete it, before anyone else can, and because of it, she starts to become a bit more confident in herself, in her decision to be who she wants to be. She starts to get a bit more sure of herself, and returns home with her prize (which I'm conceptualizing as some sort of artifact or something).

Arc 5: The Warlock

Reika thought the hero-quest would make people like her, thought that they would start to see her as a hero because of it, but she was wrong. She'd been telling herself she was going to just do what she wanted to do, but she can't help but get all caught up in what people think of her. She gets really depressed, and during this time has some weird, dark adventures that are a metaphor for her mental state. She gets hurt a lot, and fails a lot, and several times nearly dies.

Then she actually dies, and is brought back by an outside force, then has to work to recapture her Blasphemy, shove it back inside of her and save everyone.

After that transcendence of death, Reika takes a new lease on life. In the afterlife she saw something that really changes how she viewed things, that really changes how things work for her. She finds something there that allows her to actually live for herself and be happy. I think it's likely rooted in the fact that she has a circle of friends already, but doesn't really realize it. She has people who care about her. She just hasn't noticed that they all actually care deeply about her. She's had these people for a while, but her own thought processes have been holding her back. So then she lives for herself, and take care of her friends, and is happy.

7 Surprising Facts About Garth Brooks

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7 Surprising Facts About Garth Brooks

In 1988, one year before Cops began asking the bad boys of America “What’cha gonna do when they come for you?,” noted victims’ advocate John Walsh was turning every American with access to Fox into a potential crime-solver on America’s Most Wanted.

The series, which highlighted real-life cases of fugitives and suspected criminals who had managed to evade capture (or recapture), became the first hit show for the then-fledgling Fox network and turned into a cultural phenomenon. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, here are 20 things you might not have known about America’s Most Wanted.

1. IT WAS INSPIRED BY A LONG-RUNNING BBC TRUE CRIME SERIES.

America’s Most Wanted partly owes its existence to an assistant to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, who suggested the idea of a true crime series along the lines of BBC’s Crimewatch, which featured reenactments of brutal crimes and hosts who implored the public to assist them with catching the criminals. The show began airing once a month on BBC One in 1984, and was cancelled in 2017.

2. JOHN WALSH WASN’T THE FIRST CHOICE TO HOST IT.

Though it’s hard to imagine America’s Most Wanted without its longtime host John Walsh—a hotel executive who became a noted victims’ advocate following the abduction and murder of his young son, Adam, in 1981—the show’s producers considered a lot of other names before landing on Walsh.

“Stephen Chao—Fox’s vice president of program development—and an L.A. producer named Michael Linder sat down with [Fox’s vice president of corporate and legal affairs] Tom Herwitz to discuss the possibilities,” Walsh wrote in his autobiography, Tears of Rage, about the network’s search for a host. “They considered the author Joseph Wambaugh, and a whole raft of actors—Treat Williams, Ed Marinaro, Brian Dennehy, Brian Keith, and Theresa Saldana, who had played herself in a TV movie about how she was nearly stabbed to death by some psychotic attacker. Then, during one of their marathon conference calls, Herwitz suggested me.”

It took a while for them to track Walsh down—“I was all over the place in those days, traveling something like half a million air miles a year,” he wrote—but after a handful of conversations, he agreed to shoot the pilot.

3. IT WAS FOX’S FIRST HIT SERIES.

Fox was still a new network—less than two years old—when America’s Most Wanted debuted, and it quickly became the network’s first big hit. Though it originally only aired in a handful of markets, by April the network was broadcasting America’s Most Wanted nationwide. In 1989, it became the first Fox series to be the most-watched program in its time slot. By 2010, each episode was being watched by about 5 million households.

4. THE ANNOUNCER’S VOICE WAS A VERY FAMILIAR ONE.

From 1996 until his death in 2008, legendary voice actor Don LaFontaine served as the show’s narrator. You probably know LaFontaine as the voice behind more than 5000 movie trailers, and the person most often associated with the “In a world…” trope. He was often referred to as “Thunder Throat” and “The Voice of God.” Wes Johnson took over the role following LaFontaine’s passing.

5. THOUGH INITIALLY SKEPTICAL, LAW ENFORCEMENT PROFESSIONALS QUICKLY EMBRACED THE SHOW.

In a 1988 interview with The New York Times, executive producer Michael Linder admitted that law enforcement professionals were initially skeptical of the show, though it didn’t take them long to embrace its purpose—and possibilities. “Now, they bombard us with tips and requests for help,” Linder said.

The FBI also played a big part in the series; the agency assigned a handful of agents to act as liaisons between William S. Sessions, the bureau’s then-director, and the show’s producers. On May 29, 1998, Sessions even appeared on an episode of the show to give a rundown of the latest additions to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list (one of whom was captured shortly thereafter, thanks to a viewer tip).

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau told The New York Times that he, too, was a fan of the series, saying that, “If the media, through publicity, can contribute to the apprehension of dangerous criminals, I’m all for it. Besides, it’s very expensive to track down criminals. A couple of detectives or FBI agents can spend months or years searching for someone. It seems to me that this is a wonderful way to save the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

6. THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION WAS NOT ON BOARD WITH THE CONCEPT.

Though many of the individuals featured on the show were fugitives, the American Civil Liberties Union had concerns that a suspect who appeared on the show would not be able to get a fair trial. “I suppose it’s like an electronic wanted poster,” Colleen O’Connor, the ACLU’s director of public education, told The New York Times in 1988. “The poster on the wall in the post office makes it seem like the fugitive is guilty, too … Can someone get a fair trial after he’s been portrayed as a killer on television?”

But Linder contested this point, telling the Times that civil liberties were always at the forefront of the producers’ mind. “If one killer was set free because of pretrial publicity from us, the show would be a failure,” he said. The show also made a very clear point of using language like “alleged” and “reportedly” when discussing suspects who had not been convicted—and Walsh ended each episode with a reminder that the suspects featured in the show were innocent until proven guilty.

7. WITHIN FOUR DAYS OF THE SHOW’S PREMIERE, THEY HAD CAUGHT THEIR FIRST SUSPECT.

On February 7, 1988, America’s Most Wanted debuted on just a handful of Fox stations across the country. On February 11, four days later, a viewer tip led to the arrest of David James Roberts, a convicted murderer and rapist who had made a brazen escape from prison in 1986 while being transported to a hospital.

After the episode aired, the show’s tip line received dozens of calls from people who knew Roberts as Bob Lord, an employee at a homeless shelter in Staten Island. Roberts, who was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, was the first fugitive profiled on the show, and the first person caught as a result of viewer tips.

8. THE SHOW HELPED THE FBI CATCH 17 OF THEIR “MOST WANTED” FUGITIVES.

America’s Most Wanted proved to be a huge help to the FBI during the quarter-century it was on the air. According to the FBI’s website, 17 “‘Ten Most Wanted Fugitives’ have been located as a direct result of tips provided by viewers of this program” (beginning with Roberts in that very first episode).

9. WALSH MAINTAINED HIS OWN “MOST WANTED” LIST.

Like the FBI, Walsh maintained his own “most wanted” list, which was known as the America’s Most Wanted “Dirty Dozen.” It changed regularly, but included fugitives who had been featured on the show and had yet to be captured.

10. THE HOTLINE NUMBER CHANGED SEVERAL TIMES. 

In order to expedite the crime-solving process, the last two digits of the show’s hotline changed each year for the first few years in order to match the year the episode aired (1-800-CRIME-88, 1-800-CRIME-89, etc.). On average, the show received approximately 3000 to 5000 calls per week. In 1994, the number changed one last time—to 1-800-CRIME-TV. The number was shut down in June 2014. (As for the operators you saw during each episode: most of them were actors.)

Amazingly, crank calls weren’t a big problem for the show, according to Linder, though they did receive a lot of hang-up calls. (He suspected people just wanted to try dialing the number to see if someone would answer.)

11. LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS INVOLVED WITH THE CASES FEATURED WERE ON HAND IN THE CALL CENTER.

So that any promising tips could be quickly vetted and followed up on once an episode aired, The New York Times reported that, “In the television studio, there are some 30 telephone operators to take the calls. Also on hand are police officers or federal agents directly involved in cases being aired that night. When one of the operators gets a good lead, an officer picks up the phone and asks the caller further questions.”

12. A GROUP OF PRISONERS ONCE TURNED IN A FELLOW INMATE.

On May 15, 1988, Mark Goodman was in the final stretch of a brief prison stint following a burglary conviction in Palm Beach County, Florida, but was wanted elsewhere in the country for escaping federal custody following an armed robbery conviction. He was watching the show with a group of his fellow inmates when his face flashed across the screen. Though The New York Times reported that he tried to change the channel, it was too late: Goodman’s fellow inmates informed the prison guards that there was an America’s Most Wanted fugitive in their midst. While being transferred to a more secure facility, Goodman managed to escape custody again. Fortunately, he was apprehended the next day.

13. FOX CANCELLED THE SERIES IN 1996. VIEWERS—AND THE AUTHORITIES—WEREN’T HAPPY.

In 1996, the powers-that-be at Fox—which now had a handful of hit series, including The Simpsons—decided to cancel America’s Most Wanted and push Married… With Children (which was in its final season) into the first half of its 9 p.m. time slot. The public let their outrage be known.

“We went off for four weeks,” Walsh told Larry King in 2003. “Everybody in law enforcement contacted Fox. Fifty-five members of Congress contacted Fox. Thirty-seven governors. I don’t think 37 governors could agree on how many stars and stripes are on the flag, but they all went after [the network]—and they said it [was] a business decision. But … 200,000 good American citizens wrote Fox and said, ‘This is wrong.’ We were the shortest canceled show in the history of television.”

14. THE SHOW ALMOST HELPED APPREHEND GIANNI VERSACE’S KILLER FOUR DAYS BEFORE HIS MURDER.

Fans of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story probably noticed a recent shout-out to America’s Most Wanted. In the episode, an employee at a sandwich shop in Miami recognizes Andrew Cunanan when he comes in to buy a sub and calls the police to report it. But Cunanan managed to make his way out of the eatery just before the police arrived. While the episode left no doubt that it was indeed Cunanan (as portrayed by Darren Criss) who was ordering a tuna fish sandwich, the reality of what happened is not as clear-cut.

After Cunanan made his way onto the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives list on June 12, 1997, the bureau asked the show for help. They ran a segment on the alleged serial killer, and Miami police did respond to a call from Kenny Benjamin, an employee of Miami Subs, who swore that Cunanan was in the shop. Police arrived almost immediately, but the man in question had already left. And Benjamin had ended up blocking the security camera’s view of the suspect while making the call, so whether or not it was indeed Cunanan was never confirmed. But we do know that the call was made four days before Versace’s murder.

15. AT THE REQUEST OF THE WHITE HOUSE, THE SHOW TOOK ON TERRORISTS FOLLOWING 9/11.

In October 2001, in the wake of 9/11, America’s Most Wanted aired a one-hour special that profiled the FBI’s 22 most wanted terrorists. The New York Post reported that the episode was put together in just 72 hours at the request of White House aide Scott Sforza.

“These are low-life coward terrorists that we’re going to profile and hopefully we can get some of these s–bags off the streets before they hurt anymore Americans,” Walsh said, adding that: “I’m going to send a big message to Bin Laden: You’re just a coward. Americans know it and we’re gonna hunt you down like the dog you are.”

16. MORE THAN ONE SUSPECT PROFILED ON THE SHOW WAS LATER ACQUITTED.

Not every suspect featured on America’s Most Wanted ended up being captured—or found guilty of their alleged crimes. One example: Suspected murderer Richard Emile Newman. Acting on tips that he was living in an apartment in Brooklyn following an episode of America’s Most Wanted that profiled his case, Newman was arrested in New York in 2004. He was extradited back to Canada in 2006 for trial, but in 2010 he was acquitted of those charges.

17. AT LEAST ONE SUSPECT TURNED HIMSELF IN.

On May 8, 1988, America’s Most Wanted featured the case of Stephen Randall Dye, who was wanted in connection with the shooting of a man in New Jersey in 1986 as well as the murder of a motorcyclist in Ohio in 1981. Nervous that he would be found out, Dye—who was living in California at the time—flagged down a police car in San Diego and gave himself up.

18. BARACK OBAMA MADE A SPECIAL APPEARANCE.

In 2010, to celebrate the show’s 1000th episode, Walsh was granted what he assumed would be a quick meet-and-greet with President Barack Obama to film a segment acknowledging the milestone. But when he arrived at the White House, he was taken to the Blue Room for an actual sit-down with the POTUS where they discussed Obama’s various anti-crime initiatives and the show’s impact. “It wasn’t a grip-and-grin or a photo op,” Walsh told the New York Post.

19. IT WAS THE LONGEST-RUNNING SERIES IN FOX’S HISTORY AT THE TIME IT WENT OFF THE AIR.

In June 2011, Fox television cancelled America’s Most Wanted for a second (and final) time. When the show went off the air, it had run for 25 seasons, making it the network’s then-longest running series. (The Simpsons has since surpassed it.) 

But that was not the end of America’s Most Wanted. As Walsh told the San Diego Tribune in the wake of the series’s cancellation, “I’m fighting hard to keep this franchise going. It’s a television show that gets ratings and saves lives, and we’ll find somewhere to keep going. We’re not done.”

Walsh was right: The series got picked up by Lifetime, though its run on the network was fairly short-lived; on March 28, 2013, it was cancelled for good.

20. MORE THAN 1000 FUGITIVES HAVE BEEN CAPTURED BECAUSE OF THE SERIES.

In May 2008, America’s Most Wanted was celebrating the show’s 1000th capture. To celebrate, the network got some of the Fox family to tape celebratory messages (including some awkward congrats from American Idol judges Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Paula Abdul). As of March 30, 2013, the total number of captured persons had risen to 1202.

Introduction Post

It’s been a while since I’ve been back to Tumblr.  Things got pretty good in my life and I didn’t need it as much.  For several years Tumblr was my crutch.  It was my way of fulfilling my human need for socialization and peer bonding.  That might sound sad and pathetic... :/  I’ve been mentally ill since 2008. Although I suspect that my issues go much further back and on into my childhood.  2008, when I was 19, may have just been when my brain just finally blew its breakers so to speak.  I was smoking a lot of pot back then.  Did some coricidins, and went into psychosis.  They originally diagnosed me with drug induced psychosis.  I of course didn’t believe I was sick, and I kept smoking pot, which prolonged my psychosis long enough for them to diagnose me with schizophrenia.  I lost all of my friends and even a lot of my family.  I no longer knew myself let alone anyone else.  I had to get to know my own mother again; learn who she was.  Some of my family I never got to know again, because they demonized me for being ill.

For a while I didn’t leave my house, and if I did, I didn’t leave the car.  A trip to the grocery store meant a half and hour or more waiting in the car because I was too frightened to go inside.  My mom would get annoyed with me.  Flash forward a year or so, I would leave the house, but every where I went was a panic attack waiting to happen.  I would start feeling unsafe, my heart would start pounding, everything and everyone around me started feeling too close, too loud, too bright, and too threatening.  I started feeling that the people around me where going to hurt me, imprison me, or kill me. My mom was constantly pissed at me for running out of restaurants to smoke a cigarette during a meal... and then just never coming back inside.

I slowly got better.  Very slowly.  I didn’t regain a social life or my own personality.  I lost my liberal ideologies because of the catholic delusions I experienced during psychosis.  I had no original or individual ideas. I was sorta an asshat. A nice asshat with as much manners as my anxiety could not interfere with, but an asshat.

I thought life was always going to be completely bland.  I thought I was going to grow old in my childhood bedroom at my mothers house.  I wasn’t going to marry or have children. I had a lot of potential at one time.  I was beautiful, talented, creative, smart and passionate.  The anti-psychotics had taken me from a teeny tiny 96lbs at 4′11″ to 238 lbs.  I had acne all over my face. It’s riddled with scars.  I never had acne before the medications. I stopped having periods.  I had two periods that started on their own and maybe 3-4 that were started with pills from my doctor in the span of 6 years. 5-6 periods in 6 years.  I felt broken.  I felt less like of a woman. I had no confidence left.  I spent all my time on Tumblr and watching my fandom shows. From age 19-25 I had very little contact with any one my age.  I felt like I was old before I ever got a chance to be young.

In 2012 or so I was diagnosed with schizoaffective.  Schizophrenia and bipolar.  There was also PTSD, Primary O OCD, shit tons of anxiety and depression, and some slight movement disorders from the drugs.

In July of 2014 I took myself off all of the drugs.  The CNP who was in charge of my case flipped out.  She called me non-compliant and a liar.  Even sent a nasty letter to my college financial aid.  She didn’t believe mental illness was an excuse for the symptoms of those mental illnesses.  I’ve ran into that a lot over the years.  Even from the people who claim to be the most supportive.  My mother thinks she is the champion of my mental health.  Maybe she is in her own ways.  But there are things she has never quite grasped.  She could never understand why I couldn’t clean the entire house if being unemployed gave me all the time in the world to do so. Being on Tumblr made her think I was childish.  She had even me convinced that because of trauma I was stuck at 16 years old and would always be a child.  She treated me like a lazy bratty teenager instead of recognizing my symptoms.  She had people in my family doing the same.  Calling me to lecture me.  Telling me I should be praying for the health of other people if I wanted to get better.  My aunt told me that she has to force herself out of bed some days to get to work. As to say, you aren’t the only one who has depression.  That I should be able to deal with it better and not complain.  Other people had it worse.  Well after 7 years in bed I finally forced myself out the front door, so to speak, so perhaps her argument almost had a leg to stand on.

After going off meds, I started to regain myself.  I got a lot of shit.  Everything I said happened to me during the day was still perceived with a lot of skepticism.  If I said someone said something to me at the store, no matter what it was, or how believable, I was still asked, “Are you sure that’s what happened.”

In 2015 I met a guy online and we started dating.  We were extremely happy.  He helped me find who I was again.  I started to remember myself.  Which so happens to be a somewhat bitchy siren cunt from a feminist dimension on the other side of a portal that popped out of a earthy hippie chick’s mirror.... Or well something like that.   Sometimes I’m a complete mother hen to my friends, I worry about them.  I do things for them.  I take care of everyone in my small circle.  I stress and I panic and I cook and I drive a mini van.  I get angry when someone threatens who and what I love and that anger comes out of me like a tidal wave.  I even found out that I act quick in an emergency.

In August of 2015 I started having convulsions and an abnormal gait.  A year and a half later I am doing somewhat better.  I have found that the shaking and inability to walk is a manifestation of my anxiety.  It only happens when my anxiety has been triggered, specifically during PTSD episodes.  A loud noise could send me to the floor screaming and shaking.  It made me feel scared at first.  The life I had just regained was ending all over again.  But it has subsided quite a lot.

My boyfriend was put in jail for a DUI on Nov 2 2015.  My mental health deteriorated without him. I felt lost in a void.  He got out Feb 25 2016 and I felt so far from him.  He didn’t seem real.  Where before he was the only thing breaking through my dissociation.  I could touch him then and he was as far away as all the rest of reality.  I still refused to start meds again.  The meds kept me sick.  I needed to be able to deal with this all on my own.  I still do.  The meds are not my answer.

My boyfriend was also having issues of his own.  He was taking half his klonopin pills as soon as he got the bottles.  He lost his job.  He was awful on the pills.  I finally told him it was the pills or me.  He flushed them and it hasnt been a problem since.  Although, I did worry he would resent me for it. 

He and I have had a lot of problems here recently.  We moved into out own apartment in September 2016.  He has been working 2nd shift and staying up all night, sleeping all day.  This has left me alone a lot.  I don’t feel like he listens to a lot that I say.  He’s constantly irritating me with sexist remarks.  He’s constantly turning my arguments into his.  I don’t let him.  I call him on his bullshit every time.  He will interrupt me talking about what’s important to me so he can talk about some random ass shit that had nothing to do with anything.  Which wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t talk for half an hour.  If I interrupt him to finish what I was saying for five seconds he uses that as an excuse to say that I’m the real problem.  I suppose that’s half the time.  The other half we get along really well.  Like really well.  Which is wonderful.

I still want to marry him.  I want to have his baby. I want to beat him with a frying pan and then snuggle with him while we watch Supernatural.  Did I mention we finally started trying to conceive now that I can have periods again.  First month we tried was this last month.  My cycle is 33 days. So I started testing like a crazy person 14dpo... everything has been negative.  I’m now a week late on my period and my tests are so negative they aren’t even getting evap lines anymore( I test all the time even though we weren’t officially trying til this last month).  My lady bits totally choked with 10 seconds left in the game.

So I’ve been pretty depressed these last few weeks.  I’m stressed out.  I’m a taxi driver for my boyfriends brother.  Taking him everywhere, taking the boyfriend to work, driving my sister everyonce and a while.  I’m in a play.  Which only takes up about 9 hours a week.  Yet, I have been so stressed out that I’ve not been able to take care of myself.  I don’t have the energy to cook much, eat healthy, do laundry, bathe.  I’m gaining weight from easy junk food and lack of moving.  I mostly sit on the couch or in the driver’s seat.  I don’t have much time with anyone outside of giving them rides or during the time they are waiting for rides.  I get maybe two hours or less with my boyfriend a day during the week.  On the weekend I’m lucky to get time alone with him between calls for my help to do things for everyone else.  My need to help, it seems, always becomes expected by people.  I offer assistance a few times and their lives become my responsabilty.  I love them all, but I need them to understand that I sometimes need a break and they can’t call me for everything, without making them feel like they can’t call me for anything.

TL;DR So that’s sorta where I’ve been and where I’m at now.  That was actually somewhat brief... O.o  Basically, I’ve felt completely unimportant and without justification for my existence here lately and I’m back to Tumblr as my crutch for a bit.  Somewhere I can feel like I have a mild place to call home; away from a life that seems to just be one giant mental illness prison following me around and stalking me for the better part of a decade. 

(EDIT: Since being off medications, my schizophrenic symptoms have subsided.  All that remains is the bipolar and multiple anxiety based disorders.  Although I do hear voices occasionally, I know that those voices are simply my own feelings that weren’t quite addressed by my conscious mind floating up from my subconscious.  For example I could feel a swelling of happiness in my chest for my boyfriend and hear a voice that says, “I love him.” )

If you got this far congratulations and thank you, here are some XOXOs for your trouble.

<3 Kat

23 Things You Didn't Know Your Dishwasher Could Do—and 2 'Hacks' You Should Never Try

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23 Things You Didn't Know Your Dishwasher Could Do—and 2 'Hacks' You Should Never Try

In 1988, one year before Cops began asking the bad boys of America “What’cha gonna do when they come for you?,” noted victims’ advocate John Walsh was turning every American with access to Fox into a potential crime-solver on America’s Most Wanted.

The series, which highlighted real-life cases of fugitives and suspected criminals who had managed to evade capture (or recapture), became the first hit show for the then-fledgling Fox network and turned into a cultural phenomenon. To celebrate its 30th anniversary, here are 20 things you might not have known about America’s Most Wanted.

1. IT WAS INSPIRED BY A LONG-RUNNING BBC TRUE CRIME SERIES.

America’s Most Wanted partly owes its existence to an assistant to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, who suggested the idea of a true crime series along the lines of BBC’s Crimewatch, which featured reenactments of brutal crimes and hosts who implored the public to assist them with catching the criminals. The show began airing once a month on BBC One in 1984, and was cancelled in 2017.

2. JOHN WALSH WASN’T THE FIRST CHOICE TO HOST IT.

Though it’s hard to imagine America’s Most Wanted without its longtime host John Walsh—a hotel executive who became a noted victims’ advocate following the abduction and murder of his young son, Adam, in 1981—the show’s producers considered a lot of other names before landing on Walsh.

“Stephen Chao—Fox’s vice president of program development—and an L.A. producer named Michael Linder sat down with [Fox’s vice president of corporate and legal affairs] Tom Herwitz to discuss the possibilities,” Walsh wrote in his autobiography, Tears of Rage, about the network’s search for a host. “They considered the author Joseph Wambaugh, and a whole raft of actors—Treat Williams, Ed Marinaro, Brian Dennehy, Brian Keith, and Theresa Saldana, who had played herself in a TV movie about how she was nearly stabbed to death by some psychotic attacker. Then, during one of their marathon conference calls, Herwitz suggested me.”

It took a while for them to track Walsh down—“I was all over the place in those days, traveling something like half a million air miles a year,” he wrote—but after a handful of conversations, he agreed to shoot the pilot.

3. IT WAS FOX’S FIRST HIT SERIES.

Fox was still a new network—less than two years old—when America’s Most Wanted debuted, and it quickly became the network’s first big hit. Though it originally only aired in a handful of markets, by April the network was broadcasting America’s Most Wanted nationwide. In 1989, it became the first Fox series to be the most-watched program in its time slot. By 2010, each episode was being watched by about 5 million households.

4. THE ANNOUNCER’S VOICE WAS A VERY FAMILIAR ONE.

From 1996 until his death in 2008, legendary voice actor Don LaFontaine served as the show’s narrator. You probably know LaFontaine as the voice behind more than 5000 movie trailers, and the person most often associated with the “In a world…” trope. He was often referred to as “Thunder Throat” and “The Voice of God.” Wes Johnson took over the role following LaFontaine’s passing.

5. THOUGH INITIALLY SKEPTICAL, LAW ENFORCEMENT PROFESSIONALS QUICKLY EMBRACED THE SHOW.

In a 1988 interview with The New York Times, executive producer Michael Linder admitted that law enforcement professionals were initially skeptical of the show, though it didn’t take them long to embrace its purpose—and possibilities. “Now, they bombard us with tips and requests for help,” Linder said.

The FBI also played a big part in the series; the agency assigned a handful of agents to act as liaisons between William S. Sessions, the bureau’s then-director, and the show’s producers. On May 29, 1998, Sessions even appeared on an episode of the show to give a rundown of the latest additions to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list (one of whom was captured shortly thereafter, thanks to a viewer tip).

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau told The New York Times that he, too, was a fan of the series, saying that, “If the media, through publicity, can contribute to the apprehension of dangerous criminals, I’m all for it. Besides, it’s very expensive to track down criminals. A couple of detectives or FBI agents can spend months or years searching for someone. It seems to me that this is a wonderful way to save the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

6. THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION WAS NOT ON BOARD WITH THE CONCEPT.

Though many of the individuals featured on the show were fugitives, the American Civil Liberties Union had concerns that a suspect who appeared on the show would not be able to get a fair trial. “I suppose it’s like an electronic wanted poster,” Colleen O’Connor, the ACLU’s director of public education, told The New York Times in 1988. “The poster on the wall in the post office makes it seem like the fugitive is guilty, too … Can someone get a fair trial after he’s been portrayed as a killer on television?”

But Linder contested this point, telling the Times that civil liberties were always at the forefront of the producers’ mind. “If one killer was set free because of pretrial publicity from us, the show would be a failure,” he said. The show also made a very clear point of using language like “alleged” and “reportedly” when discussing suspects who had not been convicted—and Walsh ended each episode with a reminder that the suspects featured in the show were innocent until proven guilty.

7. WITHIN FOUR DAYS OF THE SHOW’S PREMIERE, THEY HAD CAUGHT THEIR FIRST SUSPECT.

On February 7, 1988, America’s Most Wanted debuted on just a handful of Fox stations across the country. On February 11, four days later, a viewer tip led to the arrest of David James Roberts, a convicted murderer and rapist who had made a brazen escape from prison in 1986 while being transported to a hospital.

After the episode aired, the show’s tip line received dozens of calls from people who knew Roberts as Bob Lord, an employee at a homeless shelter in Staten Island. Roberts, who was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, was the first fugitive profiled on the show, and the first person caught as a result of viewer tips.

8. THE SHOW HELPED THE FBI CATCH 17 OF THEIR “MOST WANTED” FUGITIVES.

America’s Most Wanted proved to be a huge help to the FBI during the quarter-century it was on the air. According to the FBI’s website, 17 “‘Ten Most Wanted Fugitives’ have been located as a direct result of tips provided by viewers of this program” (beginning with Roberts in that very first episode).

9. WALSH MAINTAINED HIS OWN “MOST WANTED” LIST.

Like the FBI, Walsh maintained his own “most wanted” list, which was known as the America’s Most Wanted “Dirty Dozen.” It changed regularly, but included fugitives who had been featured on the show and had yet to be captured.

10. THE HOTLINE NUMBER CHANGED SEVERAL TIMES. 

In order to expedite the crime-solving process, the last two digits of the show’s hotline changed each year for the first few years in order to match the year the episode aired (1-800-CRIME-88, 1-800-CRIME-89, etc.). On average, the show received approximately 3000 to 5000 calls per week. In 1994, the number changed one last time—to 1-800-CRIME-TV. The number was shut down in June 2014. (As for the operators you saw during each episode: most of them were actors.)

Amazingly, crank calls weren’t a big problem for the show, according to Linder, though they did receive a lot of hang-up calls. (He suspected people just wanted to try dialing the number to see if someone would answer.)

11. LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS INVOLVED WITH THE CASES FEATURED WERE ON HAND IN THE CALL CENTER.

So that any promising tips could be quickly vetted and followed up on once an episode aired, The New York Times reported that, “In the television studio, there are some 30 telephone operators to take the calls. Also on hand are police officers or federal agents directly involved in cases being aired that night. When one of the operators gets a good lead, an officer picks up the phone and asks the caller further questions.”

12. A GROUP OF PRISONERS ONCE TURNED IN A FELLOW INMATE.

On May 15, 1988, Mark Goodman was in the final stretch of a brief prison stint following a burglary conviction in Palm Beach County, Florida, but was wanted elsewhere in the country for escaping federal custody following an armed robbery conviction. He was watching the show with a group of his fellow inmates when his face flashed across the screen. Though The New York Times reported that he tried to change the channel, it was too late: Goodman’s fellow inmates informed the prison guards that there was an America’s Most Wanted fugitive in their midst. While being transferred to a more secure facility, Goodman managed to escape custody again. Fortunately, he was apprehended the next day.

13. FOX CANCELLED THE SERIES IN 1996. VIEWERS—AND THE AUTHORITIES—WEREN’T HAPPY.

In 1996, the powers-that-be at Fox—which now had a handful of hit series, including The Simpsons—decided to cancel America’s Most Wanted and push Married… With Children (which was in its final season) into the first half of its 9 p.m. time slot. The public let their outrage be known.

“We went off for four weeks,” Walsh told Larry King in 2003. “Everybody in law enforcement contacted Fox. Fifty-five members of Congress contacted Fox. Thirty-seven governors. I don’t think 37 governors could agree on how many stars and stripes are on the flag, but they all went after [the network]—and they said it [was] a business decision. But … 200,000 good American citizens wrote Fox and said, ‘This is wrong.’ We were the shortest canceled show in the history of television.”

14. THE SHOW ALMOST HELPED APPREHEND GIANNI VERSACE’S KILLER FOUR DAYS BEFORE HIS MURDER.

Fans of FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story probably noticed a recent shout-out to America’s Most Wanted. In the episode, an employee at a sandwich shop in Miami recognizes Andrew Cunanan when he comes in to buy a sub and calls the police to report it. But Cunanan managed to make his way out of the eatery just before the police arrived. While the episode left no doubt that it was indeed Cunanan (as portrayed by Darren Criss) who was ordering a tuna fish sandwich, the reality of what happened is not as clear-cut.

After Cunanan made his way onto the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives list on June 12, 1997, the bureau asked the show for help. They ran a segment on the alleged serial killer, and Miami police did respond to a call from Kenny Benjamin, an employee of Miami Subs, who swore that Cunanan was in the shop. Police arrived almost immediately, but the man in question had already left. And Benjamin had ended up blocking the security camera’s view of the suspect while making the call, so whether or not it was indeed Cunanan was never confirmed. But we do know that the call was made four days before Versace’s murder.

15. AT THE REQUEST OF THE WHITE HOUSE, THE SHOW TOOK ON TERRORISTS FOLLOWING 9/11.

In October 2001, in the wake of 9/11, America’s Most Wanted aired a one-hour special that profiled the FBI’s 22 most wanted terrorists. The New York Post reported that the episode was put together in just 72 hours at the request of White House aide Scott Sforza.

“These are low-life coward terrorists that we’re going to profile and hopefully we can get some of these s–bags off the streets before they hurt anymore Americans,” Walsh said, adding that: “I’m going to send a big message to Bin Laden: You’re just a coward. Americans know it and we’re gonna hunt you down like the dog you are.”

16. MORE THAN ONE SUSPECT PROFILED ON THE SHOW WAS LATER ACQUITTED.

Not every suspect featured on America’s Most Wanted ended up being captured—or found guilty of their alleged crimes. One example: Suspected murderer Richard Emile Newman. Acting on tips that he was living in an apartment in Brooklyn following an episode of America’s Most Wanted that profiled his case, Newman was arrested in New York in 2004. He was extradited back to Canada in 2006 for trial, but in 2010 he was acquitted of those charges.

17. AT LEAST ONE SUSPECT TURNED HIMSELF IN.

On May 8, 1988, America’s Most Wanted featured the case of Stephen Randall Dye, who was wanted in connection with the shooting of a man in New Jersey in 1986 as well as the murder of a motorcyclist in Ohio in 1981. Nervous that he would be found out, Dye—who was living in California at the time—flagged down a police car in San Diego and gave himself up.

18. BARACK OBAMA MADE A SPECIAL APPEARANCE.

In 2010, to celebrate the show’s 1000th episode, Walsh was granted what he assumed would be a quick meet-and-greet with President Barack Obama to film a segment acknowledging the milestone. But when he arrived at the White House, he was taken to the Blue Room for an actual sit-down with the POTUS where they discussed Obama’s various anti-crime initiatives and the show’s impact. “It wasn’t a grip-and-grin or a photo op,” Walsh told the New York Post.

19. IT WAS THE LONGEST-RUNNING SERIES IN FOX’S HISTORY AT THE TIME IT WENT OFF THE AIR.

In June 2011, Fox television cancelled America’s Most Wanted for a second (and final) time. When the show went off the air, it had run for 25 seasons, making it the network’s then-longest running series. (The Simpsons has since surpassed it.) 

But that was not the end of America’s Most Wanted. As Walsh told the San Diego Tribune in the wake of the series’s cancellation, “I’m fighting hard to keep this franchise going. It’s a television show that gets ratings and saves lives, and we’ll find somewhere to keep going. We’re not done.”

Walsh was right: The series got picked up by Lifetime, though its run on the network was fairly short-lived; on March 28, 2013, it was cancelled for good.

20. MORE THAN 1000 FUGITIVES HAVE BEEN CAPTURED BECAUSE OF THE SERIES.

In May 2008, America’s Most Wanted was celebrating the show’s 1000th capture. To celebrate, the network got some of the Fox family to tape celebratory messages (including some awkward congrats from American Idol judges Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Paula Abdul). As of March 30, 2013, the total number of captured persons had risen to 1202.