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My life so far--
It occurred to me when I was out getting groceries today, that my life has been wtf crazy the last two years with no signs of stopping. Technically it all started in 2010 but it was late 2010 so the two year thing still holds.
Late 2010, I got off work at the island and moved back downstate for the winter. I had plans of returning to work in '11 but we know how that turned out. My older sister, whom I've been very close to most of my life, lost her freaking mind. I can't word it more delicately than that. She is insane. Period. Yes, she's in therapy and getting help and it doesn't make her a bad person. It just made her a bad person to be around. The negativity and toxic environment it created caused me to move out abruptly in the middle of the night late December.
I have my own problems with chronic depression but I am no where near the level my sister was and still sort of is. She became delusional, self-destructive and pulling 13 year-old girl shit. I'm not going into all the crap she did. Bottom line, I was afraid to leave my room and that's no way to live. It was like living with a time bomb. It started to push me into my own depressive state because, well, not leaving my room except for work.
Anyway, good news is my sister is doing better. Not back to how she used to be before that break but better.
So, when I moved out I moved out to my grandma's old cottage on a lake. I had spent the last three months cleaning five years of neglect. My grandma couldn't live alone anymore and went to live with my aunt. '10 I asked if I could clean the place up and stay there. I was told sure, as long as I paid the electricity, heat and keep the place from falling over. The place is very old and never really meant to still be standing. I lived there almost a year. It was my first real 100% on my own place. I had previously always lived with someone else.
It was a lot of work and I had to work on adjusting to living alone. It was surprisingly easy that is, until Milo got sick. Milo was my cat I had had forever. He was 1, deaf and lost his fangs. He adjusted to lake just fine but cancer caught up with him a few months later. We had known about the cancer for years but it wasn't something that could be operated on. I took Milo's death hard.
A few months later my other cat, Lala, died of kidney failure. She was 18. At this point I was a mess. I was getting tired of losing pets. I ended up getting two young cats. Nemo, who I got in May a few weeks after Milo's death and Little M I got after Lala's. Little M got his name because he's creepily like Milo. Creepily.
Amid all this, me and Jordan had been working on getting married and tackling immigration. Lots of paper work. Speaking of paperwork -- Unemployment. It took me nearly five months for them to give me my backed unemployment. I was running on empty moneywise. I borrowed a couple thousand from my mom.
Then, of course, job hunting. That can be a depressing endeavor on its own. Because I had moved to the lake I decided not to return to the island to work. There was some family related drama behind this and my sister. I would have to stay with my sister if I went back. Hahah no.
So, job hunting sucked. A lot. I got only a small handful of interviews and no job to show for it. BUT I was finally getting back to work on comics because hell, I had the fucking time. I was getting my portfolio back together and planning to sent sample pages off when the bottom fell out again.
I was woken up by a phonecall early in the morning. It was my mom. My uncle had cancer. My aunt wouldn't be able to take care of Grandma anymore and it was bad. So I decide to go with my mom to see my aunt and uncle and grandma. I drop my cats off to be catsit and off we go.
On our way there we get fucking rear ended. It was terrible and previous entries detail that. Fucking what the hell. I was driving and this person did come out of no where. So we don't make it to my aunt's until the next day and we're just a bundle of nerves and keysmashyness. My mom is worse than me. But through all this I offered to take care of grandma. I didn't have a job to speak of and I hadn't even gotten to send any sample pages off yet.
Everyone was pretty much, wait what? Then the more they thought about it the more it made sense. The only other options were a home or sending her to CA. If I took her she could go back where people know her. We couldn't go back to the cottage though. Instead I ended up finding an apartment. I've never gone apartment hunting before but I snagged a good one. Seriously.
Now, my grandma is 98 and still has all her facilities she's just a fall risk. You can see why I didn't want her in a home. I know it'll be hard when she dies. Anyway. The transition was... fast. It was also difficult. For awhile I was the only one taking care of her until we got aides set up. If you've never been someone's primary caretaker without a break, you'll go a little insane when you finally GET a break. And I did.
Good kind of insane but still.
To top off this tale, Jordan's dad also has cancer. He's terminal. He has anywhere between a month to six months. Me and Jordan just got married and immigration doesn't want him leaving the country for a year. We filled out the paper work that will allow him to leave. We got it expedited and we can only hope we get a reply soon. Because we are not staying here when his dad starts to go. We are going to Canada and we are going to be there.
Then back to my uncle, his cancer has spread and he's also terminal. It's in his brain, bones and lungs. We don't have a time estimate yet but with how fast he went from a cough(Sept '11) to this. It doesn't look good. We should hear more on him today.
I've been living here with my grandma since about October. Once aides were brought in and Jordan and I got married... things became so much easier. We both have the time and space to work on art. Of course this is loaded with drawbacks. It's a lot like having an infant. Someday are really easy and leave use with spare time. Other days are full of scares and stress and oh god stop being stubborn and drink the damn prune juice grandma.
For the moment, room and board is covered in exchange for being here with her and looking after her. I don't really get paid. Well I kind of do. I get a 100 dollars a month of my very own! ...which is not really a paycheck. But I also have a set amount of money I can use for food and anything Grandma needs which is way more than 100 dollars.
now, I'm thinking I can finally get back to doing comic work again and maybe finally get my sample pages off. I'm also going to do more commissions I think. Just so I have a little extra money to myself.
So that's my life so far. I wanted to write it all out again because I have a hard time believing it.
And I even left some parts out.
Late 2010, I got off work at the island and moved back downstate for the winter. I had plans of returning to work in '11 but we know how that turned out. My older sister, whom I've been very close to most of my life, lost her freaking mind. I can't word it more delicately than that. She is insane. Period. Yes, she's in therapy and getting help and it doesn't make her a bad person. It just made her a bad person to be around. The negativity and toxic environment it created caused me to move out abruptly in the middle of the night late December.
I have my own problems with chronic depression but I am no where near the level my sister was and still sort of is. She became delusional, self-destructive and pulling 13 year-old girl shit. I'm not going into all the crap she did. Bottom line, I was afraid to leave my room and that's no way to live. It was like living with a time bomb. It started to push me into my own depressive state because, well, not leaving my room except for work.
Anyway, good news is my sister is doing better. Not back to how she used to be before that break but better.
So, when I moved out I moved out to my grandma's old cottage on a lake. I had spent the last three months cleaning five years of neglect. My grandma couldn't live alone anymore and went to live with my aunt. '10 I asked if I could clean the place up and stay there. I was told sure, as long as I paid the electricity, heat and keep the place from falling over. The place is very old and never really meant to still be standing. I lived there almost a year. It was my first real 100% on my own place. I had previously always lived with someone else.
It was a lot of work and I had to work on adjusting to living alone. It was surprisingly easy that is, until Milo got sick. Milo was my cat I had had forever. He was 1, deaf and lost his fangs. He adjusted to lake just fine but cancer caught up with him a few months later. We had known about the cancer for years but it wasn't something that could be operated on. I took Milo's death hard.
A few months later my other cat, Lala, died of kidney failure. She was 18. At this point I was a mess. I was getting tired of losing pets. I ended up getting two young cats. Nemo, who I got in May a few weeks after Milo's death and Little M I got after Lala's. Little M got his name because he's creepily like Milo. Creepily.
Amid all this, me and Jordan had been working on getting married and tackling immigration. Lots of paper work. Speaking of paperwork -- Unemployment. It took me nearly five months for them to give me my backed unemployment. I was running on empty moneywise. I borrowed a couple thousand from my mom.
Then, of course, job hunting. That can be a depressing endeavor on its own. Because I had moved to the lake I decided not to return to the island to work. There was some family related drama behind this and my sister. I would have to stay with my sister if I went back. Hahah no.
So, job hunting sucked. A lot. I got only a small handful of interviews and no job to show for it. BUT I was finally getting back to work on comics because hell, I had the fucking time. I was getting my portfolio back together and planning to sent sample pages off when the bottom fell out again.
I was woken up by a phonecall early in the morning. It was my mom. My uncle had cancer. My aunt wouldn't be able to take care of Grandma anymore and it was bad. So I decide to go with my mom to see my aunt and uncle and grandma. I drop my cats off to be catsit and off we go.
On our way there we get fucking rear ended. It was terrible and previous entries detail that. Fucking what the hell. I was driving and this person did come out of no where. So we don't make it to my aunt's until the next day and we're just a bundle of nerves and keysmashyness. My mom is worse than me. But through all this I offered to take care of grandma. I didn't have a job to speak of and I hadn't even gotten to send any sample pages off yet.
Everyone was pretty much, wait what? Then the more they thought about it the more it made sense. The only other options were a home or sending her to CA. If I took her she could go back where people know her. We couldn't go back to the cottage though. Instead I ended up finding an apartment. I've never gone apartment hunting before but I snagged a good one. Seriously.
Now, my grandma is 98 and still has all her facilities she's just a fall risk. You can see why I didn't want her in a home. I know it'll be hard when she dies. Anyway. The transition was... fast. It was also difficult. For awhile I was the only one taking care of her until we got aides set up. If you've never been someone's primary caretaker without a break, you'll go a little insane when you finally GET a break. And I did.
Good kind of insane but still.
To top off this tale, Jordan's dad also has cancer. He's terminal. He has anywhere between a month to six months. Me and Jordan just got married and immigration doesn't want him leaving the country for a year. We filled out the paper work that will allow him to leave. We got it expedited and we can only hope we get a reply soon. Because we are not staying here when his dad starts to go. We are going to Canada and we are going to be there.
Then back to my uncle, his cancer has spread and he's also terminal. It's in his brain, bones and lungs. We don't have a time estimate yet but with how fast he went from a cough(Sept '11) to this. It doesn't look good. We should hear more on him today.
I've been living here with my grandma since about October. Once aides were brought in and Jordan and I got married... things became so much easier. We both have the time and space to work on art. Of course this is loaded with drawbacks. It's a lot like having an infant. Someday are really easy and leave use with spare time. Other days are full of scares and stress and oh god stop being stubborn and drink the damn prune juice grandma.
For the moment, room and board is covered in exchange for being here with her and looking after her. I don't really get paid. Well I kind of do. I get a 100 dollars a month of my very own! ...which is not really a paycheck. But I also have a set amount of money I can use for food and anything Grandma needs which is way more than 100 dollars.
now, I'm thinking I can finally get back to doing comic work again and maybe finally get my sample pages off. I'm also going to do more commissions I think. Just so I have a little extra money to myself.
So that's my life so far. I wanted to write it all out again because I have a hard time believing it.
And I even left some parts out.