T. B. A. S.

BLEH opened this up to talk about Summer or whatever but she wandered off to shower [and forgot a towel :v] and then the thought vanished lol

bb and i went to the coffee shop and it started raining and we almost had nowhere to sit because they were so busy. but we copped a seat and i drew some pokemon tarot stuff, the Seven of Swords is gonna look AMAZING and the Two of Swords is so perfect it makes me wanna cry. having some great ideas there this project just keeps hanging on and being enthralling. idk how much we'll be able to sell these since they're Nintendo IP?? but i don't really care at least at this point. just suddenly, in that same coffee shop, that one day the idea fell into my head and it's stayed there for like a month. and been slowly chipped away at, almost every day.

talks with Cores on and off today. Summer came up as she tends to do during, well, the summer lol. just briefly in a haze of blue stars and sparkle and glitter. and a sighing breeze. that was her essence. she said she was going to get in the bath and pretend she was a mermaid but instead she just got in the shower and then vanished. and instead it was me and Vernon. who noticed how hungry we were and reminded me wordlessly of the egg sandwiches that a girl we dated years ago taught us how to make. [because that was how little we knew how to cook. we were taught nothing lol] simple fried eggs in a pan that take 5 minutes. after which we made like every day for months and months and years. and we got out of the shower and Vernon kinda took the lead, which seems rare for him. and that's how, the day after having a small breakdown about food problems and kitchen anxiety, the immediate next day we jump into the kitchen and cook eggs and chat conversationally with our roomie who is right nearby and listening to us. no awkwardness. no fear. no feeling like we need to hide or be silent. how strange but how nice.

other things:
- art alias for now is Dragon In Coffee Shop, as of yesterday. think i like it. cute imagery. idk what i'll do with it, but.
- in the coffee shop a guy walked in wearing a black shirt with a word on it that i can't remember, and emblazoned with a broken arrow. snapped in half, crossed upon his chest, with the fletching on one side and arrowhead on the other. felt dozens of gasps at once behind and beside me. he immediately vanished or i'd have cornered him and asked where he'd got it. maybe. or else just taken a sneaky photo ;p
- let's play channel is still tossing and turning in my head. money is tight this check so no new equipment but...  i think eventually this will happen. i'm finally on my own now, so the dream of a LP channel from years ago might actually come to fruition now. especially in an apartment full of likeminded folk who would totally get this and maybe wanna pitch in too sometimes. :3

feelin really rested. don't wanna go to work but it's my thursday. this week has been really weirdly long idk. think soon i'm gonna go back to where i went with bb in the park, deep in the woods. old growth forest. loads of huge holy centuries-old trees and little streams full of life. amazing to find a place like that this deep in the city, more amazing to think it's just a few hundred years old and used to have been a plowed-up plantation property, and the most amazing thing of all is thinking that without the city there to guard what nature it has and let it grow wild, if this had been the country, it wouldn't even be that big and thriving. it'd be just like the area where i'm from. where the trees only get so big and the woods can only grow so much. irony.
i need to go back there, but this time alone, and sit with the System and feel them all around me. too many distractions a lot of the time makes it hard to sense them even when they're right there.

the other day was the father's birthday. when my birthday came he broke the silence of almost 4 years to text me happy birthday [and in doing so deadnamed me, of course], and i said thanks. and on his birthday, i returned the favor. not because i felt obligated or guilted into texting him back, but because i thought at the time when he texted me, even though it made me uncomfortable that he did so, that it would just be right. just do it back a couple weeks later when his birthday rolled around, and that's that. so i did and he said thanks and i deleted the thread and it was done. and i feel good about that. and i have no plans to talk to him again for the foreseeable future. which i also feel good about.

i used that word deadname -- just discovered that it exists today. that's a word like misgendering, where that's when you use someone's wrong pronoun - usually this term means it's done on purpose -- but deadnaming is when you use someone's old name or legal given name instead of what they prefer. with him it's not QUITE the same because i haven't explicitly expressed my wish to go by Oliver but i doubt he'll respect it when that does come up anyway. he and the mother have never even called me Kris, they both call me by the hated first name because when i first changed it i was too much of a weenie to insist that they call me Kris. even when they asked me i said no they didn't have to. which i regret now lol but i guess nowadays it doesn't matter too much. kris is just as wrong a name as the first name. only Oliver is correct.

another biofamily thing: the little brother's nickname [also given and not taken, he's been called it since birth and had no say in it lol] is Bo. which is kind of a southern name. but recently i've realized that this name is almost ALWAYS spelled "Beau" which is much handsomer and actually makes some kind of sense unlike "Bo".... my family lol.... if i were him i'd def start spelling it Beau.

so ya that's about it i guess. bb has gone to do a rehearsal and bird has been out hiking a lot so i'm mostly alone w my thoughts until work. which is alright i think. today is a lot better than yesterday was.

Ugh. Where do I begin. What a day. I'm pretty exhausted and haven't even left for work yet.

Well, we're pretty much back to square one. The apartment in Charlotte isn't happening, looks like. Turns out you have to make AN ABSURD amount of income in order to live there. I make enough to pay rent MYSELF every month and there will be two of us there, but it's not even a third of what they require me to make. What the fuck. I don't know. So that was my despair for the day.

Then I find out something even more daunting...

My childhood house is empty. The little doublewide on six acres of woods in the middle of nowhere. My father isn't sure what to do with it now.

Fuck.

So... I haven't spoken to my dad in about three and a half years. We're not on good terms. But that is... a really really nice opportunity. Fucking hell. I guess I'm gonna have to break the silence. Maybe take him out to eat, have a conversation.

I... don't want him to think that I'm just talking to him because I want a favor of sorts. I wasn't for a long time, but... I'm willing to start over. To try having a relationship with him again. I thought I was still mad about what happened in the past, but... I'm not anymore. I've changed a lot. Grown a lot. And a lot can change in three and a half years.

Mom tells me he misses me and would love to have me back in his life. I hope that's true. I hope it's not just that he'd like it only on his terms. Because I need him to see me as an equal. There's a LOT of shit in the past, a lot of things that I still hold weapons against. But... I'd like to lay them down if he'll do the same.

I just hope. Hiccup's giving me a look and he has been all afternoon, for a lot of reasons. On the ride home when I couldn't talk or think, I felt him next to me, holding my hand in headspace. He knew I couldn't communicate or hear him, and he didn't need me to. The fact that he was able to get through the automatic barrier and just calmly sit with me and hold my hand as I freak out... that says a lot. He's a real friend. Even if he does spit out the old line just like everyone else... "you only have one dad". Like... I can't fault you, man. I know where that's coming from. But... just. I hope you never see the reason why I haven't contacted him in years.

He's not a villain. He's not an enemy. I have to make sure I don't see it that way. He's not some monster to defeat. He's a person just like everyone else, and everyone has some good in them. I've seen a very scary and ugly side of him, but I also know that he married a woman who is a really great person and I know she wouldn't marry some evil asshole. I just have to show him my best side, too.


That fucking house though. That land. Those woods. My childhood. My spirituality was formed there. How many times have I dreamed of buying the house off my dad and living there. Pipe dreams. How many times did I steal away some afternoon and walk in the woods like I did as a child. It would need so much cleaning but. Yeah. It'd be worth it. I hope.



Fortune cookie today:
"The clever crow always paints its feather black."
I just... Fuck.