cycles

10/4/2025

(tw: animal death, self-harm, eating disorders, weight loss mention, flippant suicide mention, lots of whining)

spinning spinning spinning i am so dizzy

summer sucked. that’s it. so much shit has happened that i feel exhausted thinking about it. it’s just one after the other with little time to recover before the next thing happens and i have to contend with it, i feel like i’m just cycling through stages of grief without truly processing anything, but i’ve also done none of the things i meant to so it’s almost like nothing happened at all. i feel so damn lazy and useless

okay. trying to structure this for my own peace of mind. first: my family lost all three of our pets. our dog had IVDD, a disk in her back slipped mid-april and paralyzed her from the waist down. it had happened before, but she was a good candidate for surgery then, so it was fixable. this time it was not. euthanasia happened a little less than two weeks after paralysis. she had a good last day, it was sunny so she sat in the front yard and we had all the neighbors come visit - she was very popular, being a corgi. when it was time for her to go, we did it at home. it was peaceful. she was my mom’s pet really, and i’m admittedly not the biggest fan of dogs (cute but sensory nightmares), so while the loss was sad, i could deal.

then we found out one of our cats had cancer shortly after. squamous cell carcinoma, removing the tumor would’ve taken off the bottom half of her jaw so that was a non-option. chemo gave her a couple more months, and honestly she seemed pretty good for a while - she was hunting chipmunks in the backyard, it was actually better than i’d seen her maybe ever. we said goodbye at home as well, and again, while it was sad, i had time to prepare, plus she was always more my brother’s cat (although i did name her), so i could cope.

then at three in the morning on september fourteenth, /my/ cat, my emotional support animal of nearly ten years, suddenly became paralyzed from the waist down. he was yowling in the middle of the night, trying to get to the litter box but only succeeding in flopping on the floor, worsening his distress. because of the hour, we had to wait until morning to seek help. we’d been told he had a faulty hip, so we hoped it was that. it was not. at urgent care, we found out he had a blood clot that cut off circulation to his back half, leaving him unable to move his hind legs. they gave us pain medication and advised us to take him to cardiology, which we had to wait until the next day for as they weren’t open on sundays. he was admitted to an animal hospital on monday and they started him on heart medication. when i woke up tuesday, my mom said things were looking good. six hours later, his kidneys were failing. euthanasia was the only option. we drove out to the hospital, he was barely lucid but purred weakly when i pet him before getting distressed at the unfamiliar location and trying to run. when he was gone, i cried so hard my respirator was soaked through with snot. i stayed hunched over his body for a good ten minutes or so, deluding myself into thinking he was still alive because he felt warm and i hadn’t seen it in his eyes when he went like i did with our other cat. i was wrong, naturally. denial at its finest.

over the course of about sixty hours, he went from seemingly healthy to dead. all pet loss is terrible, but i just feel so fucking slighted that my cat was the one who didn’t get any time at all. we have two new kittens now, one of whom is very attached to me, but she’s not him. she can’t be. he and i used to headbutt each other, he always jumped into my lap the second i sat down, he purred like a freight train when i kissed his little forehead. i just don’t have that relationship with her. i might someday, but i don’t right now and it fucking aches.

speaking of relationships and loss, event number two: i finally broke up with my partner in august. it was a long time coming, and i honestly wish i’d done it sooner, i think we both could’ve avoided a lot of hardship if i just admitted to myself that’s what i wanted. unfortunately, denial is a river and i am drowning in it. thank you obsessive-compulsive disorder, you have truly shaped my life (and not for the better)

i brought up my qualms to them in may, the whole sex and kids thing, and at first, i felt satisfied with the way the conversation had gone. they said they’d be fine with opening our relationship sexually and that their stance on kids wasn’t a hard no, so i had hope. that hope quickly disappeared as i got to ruminating. they hadn’t brought up the conversation since then, so i didn’t bring it up either, and we both avoided the subject until i personally reached a limit: physical proximity.

they flew out here as part of our yearly visit, and initially, i’d just planned to reintroduce the subjects i’d brought up in-person; due to technical limitations, it’s hard to have a serious conversation over call. when i tried to structure it with my therapist, though, she told me something that was plainly obvious yet i remained blind to: “it sounds like you want to break up.”

i did. i had for nearly a year, and i just wouldn’t acknowledge it to myself because it felt unthinkable. i’d dated them since i was twelve, for eight goddamn years - how could i just leave them? what else even was there? it wasn’t an option in my mind. yet the only alternative was denying myself the things i’ve come to desperately want, and for a while, i thought that was acceptable. i’m trying to accept that it’s okay to want things.

i regret the way i went about it. they arrived on sunday, i realized i wanted to break up on wednesday, and then i broached the subject on saturday. it was impulsive, poorly thought out, and also very shitty of me to do that while they were in a state where they knew no one and couldn’t go anywhere. the conversation involved us both crying a lot. i broke a 4.5 month clean streak cutting myself out of guilt and didn’t eat for most of the day. i thought i wouldn’t hear from them until morning. i was wrong.

we had a discussion about four hours later. against my initial assumptions, their reaction wasn’t to push me away - instead, they clung. i should’ve expected this given everything i know about them as a person, yet it honestly blindsided me. they asked to stay together until our next anniversary (roughly 7.5 months from that day) so that they could have time to process, one more round of birthdays and holidays and the like. i actually thought it was a good idea in the moment; i like being with them, after all. it’d just be a few more months of the same relationship it’d always been. that was doable.

it was not, in fact, doable. i regretted my decision within about twelve hours. we were due to fly back to california that even, where i’d stay with them for the next week as part of our vacation plans, and the whole day i kept wishing something would happen so i didn’t have to go. no such luck, unfortunately. my freak accident that sent them home while i stayed here never happened - the flights were actually ahead of schedule for once. felt like a kick in the ribs.

by all accounts, i had a good time. we had a lot of fun; we went to this neat little arcade they’re obsessed with, many different cafes, and saw one of our favorite bands together. objectively, it was a great trip where i did many enjoyable things.

it was also quite possibly the worst week of my life. i survived off of protein bars and matcha for the entire week, purged sometimes just for the thrill of it, and had a migraine on my last day there. we went out every single day, and i get it, i’m only there for so long, they want to show me things, but i don’t have that kind of energy. my ideal date is laying on top of someone in bed while watching a movie, not driving for an hour to go somewhere too hot and loud and crowded because all of socal is hot and loud and crowded. i tried to voice my concerns a few times, they shrugged me off. even when i told them i had a migraine, they didn’t really ask what they could do. maybe i’m being unreasonable for wishing they’d intuit my emotions, but i don’t know - if someone says they’re extremely nauseous and have a pounding headache that gets worse with light exposure, you wouldn’t try to keep going with your mall trip, right?

i felt trapped. i would hide in the bathroom just to have a moment to myself, constantly look up flights home that left earlier, text my mom bitching about everything; it was shameful but i couldn’t stop. i didn’t like when they touched me, it made my skin prickle, i could feel resentment taking hold and it only made me hate myself more because they didn’t deserve that - if i’d communicated to begin with, we wouldn’t have gotten to that point at all. but i didn’t, and there we were.

i made it home, somehow. then i weighed myself and discovered i was at a new low weight by a significant amount. some of it was dehydration, though even once a few pounds came back on, it was still lower than i’d ever been. for the first time in my life, losing weight didn’t feel good. it wasn’t scary, per se, it was more just like “great, now i’ve gotta deal with this too?” so fucking annoying.

spoke to my therapist after getting home and was immediately validated when she thought my ex’s idea was insane. i tortured myself with guilt for about a week before finally ending it... via text. no, i’m not proud of myself, but i got it done. i hate to say it, but i felt relieved as soon as i did it. i still have stress dreams about being trapped with them now. choosing not to think too hard about it.

my weight’s still trending lower than it has been, but whatever. in my defense, shit’s rough, because third: i am going through med changes yaaay. i started prozac back in april, it’s been good so far though i am still depressed due to general fuckery, plus i quit T in july because it isn’t suppressing my menstrual cycle and i hate having acne. honestly, i probably could’ve stopped T sooner, but i was afraid of being seen as a ‘detransitioner’ - i’m still a man, i just want my endocrine system to be a bit different. i have since realized that the only person invalidating me is myself, and i need to just get the hell over it. so what if i’m fake? i’m fucking cute, truscum losers can suck my t-dick

i actually felt better off T for the first couple months; my skin cleared up a bit, my period symptoms improved, and i didn’t see any major emotional changes. then i got a fucking migraine that lasted two weeks mid-september, which we’re currently attributing to hormone balance shifting from the absence of T. i just can’t catch a damn break. i am cycling through grief and change and then my hormonal cycle decides to fuck up too, even though that was actually my decision in the end. still blaming my endocrine system *shakes fist at pituitary gland*

i keep going back and forth on everything. sometimes i’m very hopeful and optimistic, others i just wish i’d killed myself three years ago so i wouldn’t be dealing with this shit. i’m tired all the time, so i stay in my room, which makes me depressed, so i’m even more tired, so i stay in my room more... you get the point. i feel so fucking stuck. i just have to wait and wait and wait but i’m so sick of waiting!!!!!!!!! where is my loving partner who tolerates my neuroticism and my adorable 2.5 babies that i’m definitely equipped to parent (lying) :(

my birthday is in a week-and-a-half. to celebrate, i bought myself a bunch of cute underwear because i’m kinda sick of the boxers i’ve worn for years now. just like... fuck it. i’m fake, i guess, so what? i wanna wear lacy panties and look cute as hell in them. maybe i can pretend i’m attractive for once. key-word ‘pretend’

i kinda wanna be more fem. it's weird, but i do. doesn't make me dysphoric anymore. never gonna pass, so why not? i wanna have curves and stuff, but if my thighs start touching again i'll freak. duckduckgo how do i get wider hips in 0.2 seconds without gaining weight (realistic to want and possible to achieve, of course)

~april