My book and it's progress - a review of the last 30 days

 So, as of right now, it's been almost 30 days since my last update here on the blog. There has been a lot of stuff that has happened. Mainly a lot of depression. But tonight, which at the time of writing this it is Friday October 11th, 2024, at 11:08pm PST I have submitted my book to the final editor. It should be back to me within 5 days. It is currently Saturday 12th 2024 at 7:08am in Nigeria. I'm working with a guy that I selected out of about 30 people on Fiverr to bring my book to life. From the get-go he has been very communicative, professional, and has amazing reviews. 

I am super excited and nervous to have pulled the trigger and made this huge investment in myself, and my dream. All of this foreshadows the previous 29 days where I have dealt with stress, depression, self-doubt, thoughts of self-harm and more. I had a huge emotional outburst to the point of doing the ugly cry in the middle of the grocery store the other day, which was hell of embarrassing, but I could not stand by and listen to the prelude to a conversation that not only triggered my own childhood trauma but was the bases of something that by law would have forced me into filing a Child Protection case.
The self-harm is something new that I have never delt with before. So that is kind of concerning. I've delt with suicidal thoughts, depression, and all types of mania, but never active thoughts of causing myself pain like cutting or some other type of pain that would dull the mental with the physical. Thankfully the analytical side of my brain kicked in and was like "what the actual fuck is this and where the hell did it come from?" I am one of those people who have internal monologues aka "verbal thinking" or "inner speech" where only 30-50% of people the world over think to themselves or have internal monologues, others do not have this ability. So, because of this there literally are "voices" inside my head. And each one has its own "sound". I know it's rather difficult to properly explain it if you don't have an internal monolog. But when the thought of self-harm came up, it was a "new voice" and the "others" were like "no bitch you are not invited." So, I did a shallow dive into self-harm reduction and other such topics on YouTube and got a shit ton of pop-ups for the 988 Suicide Hotline and things like that. But it has given me something new to study in the terms of mental health and the classes that I have taken over the years.

I have found a healthy way to "self-harm" however. That came in the form of doing Cold Plunges. It was a temporary pain that I could cause myself and have healthy benefits from. I have only gone twice, since writing this post. But I find myself looking forward to it more and more, and it's like a drug. Each time I've gone, I've submerged myself a little deeper and deeper with my final goal of just jumping headfirst into the freezing water and actually swimming like I would in a pool for the 15 to 20 minutes that is allotted to me by the medical nurse whom I've befriended and go with. I even was able to get a portable showering unit that is basically a rechargeable sump pump with a shower attachment. So now when we get out of the water, we can pour our collective hot water into a bucket and shower off more thoroughly, rather than just dumping a bucket of hot water on ourselves.

But the emotional rollercoaster that I have been on since July has really thrown me for a loop. Dealing with my biological mother's failing health and her intolerable drug addictions and toxicity and overall general negativity has been one kick to the balls after another. First getting a call that she was rushed to the hospital with a broken pelvic bone or a fracture to the femoral neck, and then her going through detox and withdrawals and hearing how she is going to "beat the shit out of any motherfucker who tries to put her into a goddamn home.." and being so violent that the doctor and several other members of the hospital contacted my sister and I via Zoom to discuss how she is being discharged against medical suggestion and that she was basically going home to fail aka "die." 

Only for her to call me not even 3 days later to complain about how much pain she is in, and to be actively doing drugs on the phone with me as I can hear the sounds of her being in a car with other people. She thinks that I am stupid and not aware of her drug use, and doesn't remember all the times that she has given me meth pipes trying to pass them off as marijuana pipes, when I use to hand blow them for the tweaker "friends" I had as a teen, as a source of income for myself, and watched all of my friends from the age of 13 to 25 use meth and know what it looks like, what it smells like, how to make it, and what the residue looks like.

Like I was about those streets, when she would take off to the casino with the alimony, child support and welfare checks and leave me at home for hours with no food or anyone else in the house. So needless to say, I was never home much as a teenager because well I didn't really have a "home" to be home for. How I never got mixed up with doing drugs outside of smoking marijuana, trying shrooms and doing something called Sherm in my twenties (which is marijuana or tobacco laced with formaldehyde (embalming fluid you know that stuff that they put into corpses before burying a person) or PCP, is beyond me. The closest thing to a drug addiction (other than Valium that was given to me at a very young age without any supervision) was when I was actively smoking Sherm (I felt myself slipping and stopped before it got much worse) and later when I was smoking marijuana daily and had to stop myself because I noticed that it was becoming a huge problem. 

So all of that to say that it has been a bunch of compounding issues that have come to a boil and has beaten me into the ground. Plus, my father's birthday hit me really hard this year. And thinking the thought of how he cleaned up for about 27yrs and found an amazing woman who I consider my mom, because she's done more for me in the 20-some-odd years that she's been in my life than my own biological egg carton ever had. And he passed away and she is still roaming the earth. Like why is that fair? He worked hard, always put me ahead of his addictions, and really tried, and she's calling me up doing lines, and just actively fucking up all the time. Then I get mad at myself for getting mad at her and allowing her stupidity to hurt me, and for me to get into my feelings because of it, and it just snowballs into a bigger and bigger mental health ball of anger, shame, and depression. 

I really do think that my next book is going to be about growing up at the child of addicts and how through some miracle not ending up a statistic, but still ending up with mental health issues, but trying to heal themselves, even though they come from toxic backgrounds. But for now Carpe Diem Scroto is one step closer to becoming a reality and that is something to celebrate.