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Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

In a lab once we were working with fungi, genetically modifying them with something that "shuts off" DNA without changing it. Basically, giving the fungi a hard time.

A few of them seemed to lose their will to live. We looked at those genes and determined they were supposed to be helping with food consumption somehow. The digested sugars were only making it to certain steps.

One fungus found its way around that, though, so we cloned it and then destroyed parts of it to view its RNA and proteins (stuff the DNA made).

Then we grew several of them in an attempt to run the same experiment.

I remember walking in the lab one morning and noticing that the cloned fungi was growing strangely. They looked like they were sprouting branching hyphae -- their limbs -- toward each other, like they knew they weren't alone.

We'd had them go through mazes to find rewards before, so after the experiment -- and before they were all killed (legally required... they had been antibotic resistant by us inserting that gene) -- I put two on opposite ends of a maze. I didn't put any reward in the enclosure.

They found each other in the span of a day. But they were the same mating type (fungi have multiple genders) so they just kind of lingered.

It's weird but I still wonder about that. I never followed up on it. Life is very strange, even if you aren't human. Or an animal.

Poor potatoes.
 
In more sensical news:

I'm reminding myself that it's okay that I'm worried about B and if she's getting help. It's fine that I do care about her, but that means that I still need to remember that I'm letting her go for her own good. And, also, for mine. I've never been more stress free. I now have friends whose unhappiness doesn't threaten my wellbeing. And who actually care if I want to talk, without getting so involved that I'm afraid to say certain things or feel like I must make the story entertaining.
 
I wonder why I was so mad at my mom. She actually cares about me.

My dad, meanwhile, deserved all the anger I was feeling.

Weird.
 
I think I'm ready to start one of these. Only took two-ish years :) Not bad.

Hopefully getting this...
I heard that writing the good and the bad helps with the healing process...no matter how dark or hard the bad is. As long as it's written in a safe place where those closest to you can read it. Best of luck.
 
Convincing my mom to let us get help went really, really well. As in, she agreed and she was repeating all my opinions. Nice moment. She also helped me realize that I really don't have to be friends with my dad right now at all -- he doesn't even remember my name despite living with me for thirteen years, so. No big deal. She said I can try again sometime when I'm in a better place.

So, plans. I contacted the Hoarding people and they're interested in everything. Good times! Hopefully this works out. A few challenges: my little brother's wedding (coming in May) and my mom's uncertainty about if she even has a job after April 1.

I'm just going to go ahead and get the ball rolling and figure out the details later. I'll have my mom text the producer so she can get her questions and concerns answered.

Also, I REALLY need to study for my comprehensive exam -- the one that grants me official ownership of my BA in micro. Since I scheduled that test for April 2-5th. I already postponed it in January on the grounds that I was snowed in (I was) but also I froze up and wasn't able to study, so I couldn't have done well anyway. My plan had been to start studying on March 1, but it is now March 10th. My exam is in nearly twenty days...

So. Time to make plans.

(1) Get the letter of accommodations so I can take the test fairly according to the ADA. (TMI, PTSD, high stakes test... possibility of a crowd surprising me when I finish with popping champagne... MUST be addressed)

(2) STUDY
My plan will be to wake up by about 9:30AM. I can do the PT exercises, brush teeth, and walk the service dog, equaling about an hour. I can just have cereal or oatmeal in milk (stove tops are nice) for breakfast, maybe eggs with fried balagna.
But But 11am I should study. I will pull up a study guide that I made in 2013 and 2014 and 2015 respectively and read them out loud, and make notes and flash cards if needed. I will study the nitrogen cycle that always shows up on these exams despite never being discussed at large by the community.
Also, I'll grab the Essay promts and get started. Writing is something I like -- so, why not start by just reading the prompts?

That's that. We'll get the rest down soon.
 
I didn't study...?

I wrote friction, but I didn't study.

I really need to get my priorities straight. I literally won't officially own my degree I've worked for, very hard, if I don't study. So why can't I?

Probably because I don't have a designated space to study, so I NEED to get this figured out somehow.

Uuuuuugh. Tomorrow's plan: study, even if I end up in bed most of the day. It really won't be as bad or difficult as my brain apparently thinks. It will get harder the longer I wait. The last thing I want to do is force myself to cram, again.

I need to contact my therapist about this. In order to get the accommodations I need to take the test. April 2 comes up fast!

I bought a desk so maybe I should hang out with my twin brother and my mom to put it together. I'll move stuff, maybe? Couldn't be a terrible idea, probably.
 
I mean, on the bright side, though.... I'm writing two different books at the same time for practice, and both are going pretty well, so... that's nice. Shouldn't be my focus right now, but heeey.
 
Now, for the things that are bothering me:

That time I accidentally killed a Toad and didn't understand that I had... bothers me to no end.


And the fact that I capitalized Toad. My phone is doing it automatically. The reason? Hard to explain. It racks me with guilt, no matter how many times I remind myself that it wasn't my fault, no matter how many times psychologists tell me it's not rare to be pulled in like this, when I simplify the issue to emotional manipulation and abuse.

I was literally sure I didn't deserve a good life, that's how guilty I've been for ten years. I'm constantly doubting, though... if I was a liar, if I was insane, if I was purposefully evil.

I know logically that none of that is true. I need to keep repeating it to myself. I have my entire life to get over this thing with B -- and I know how to avoid dangerous people like B.

The problem is that I DID try to be more convincing. When I went all in, i went all in. I was a child so that isn't too surprising. I viewed it as my addiction, and my problem. Like my daydreams NEEDED to be real -- but that wasn't true, and that wasn't me. I was scared, and ironically these fantasies were my way of escaping and coping. With rape, with being abused by my father, and with the fact that if I "admitted" I was "lying" that B might kill herself, might kill me. I believed it. I was carrying a knife to her house to cut myself with, to punish myself for telling her "lies" that SHE forced me to say, but on some level I was enjoying it? And I know I needed to, had needed to before and this was no different.

I wish I hadn't sat next to her in 8th grade. f*cking middle school. I wish an adult had believed me that I needed help with a child who REALLY needed an adult, some kind of professional help. I didn't know that her "game" was going to become my reality.

That's how it started: I sat next to her a few times. She kept repeating that I was weird, gross, annoying, and ugly, and that she didn't love me as much as she loved J. She started dating J and now days I don't care, because it was middle school. I did care that she kept saying she had "become" gay and "wasn't gay anymore" when they broke up, but it was middle school. No one cares about middle school relationships, except B who never got over it.

She literally cheated on me for her ex from middle school. Said there had been nothing between us, despite all the times I was expected to finger her or whatever else, even when she didn't shower, against my will. I literally thought that was love, thanks to the ropes. Meanwhile, she'd remind me she thought I was disgusting. I don't even think she meant to hurt me, she just believed it and thought it should be said. Like when she constantly made my mom mad, making faces and insulting her cooking at *every* meal. My mom started hating her immediately.

One time I waved at J, in high school, and B got so depressed that she didn't want to talk to me, yet drilled me for DAYS on why I was talking to J. They had dated in middle school. Not in high school. I was afraid to even look at J after that.

Meanwhile B was slowly pulling me from all my friends, my family... all I had left was that stupid fantasy world, and it bothers me so much because all I wanted to do was help, and to be a good friend. And I genuinely believe she loved me -- right up to the time she lost control of me, and her dad told her she should have gone to college like me.

In eighth grade, I sat next to her during a study break. I remember that really well for some reason. I had trouble making friends at the time, but in hindsight I miss the friends I did have then. We probably would have grown incredibly close in high school, much closer then B and I did. I had dated one of them, and another one saw her mom die, and another one I had a crush on in first grade and obviously that meant nothing but we could have been friends.

Instead B got abandonment issues any time I talked to anyone. I thought I was being a good friend, by kindly not letting her get depressed by seeing me talk to them.

I genuinely think she didn't even know she was being hurtful. Never stopped to consider it, even when I said it. Even when I told her point blank that I missed my friends, which never ended well. Usually? Ended in me being called crazy, being accused of hating her secretly, all that.

A week or so after the study meet in 8th grade she told me she had demons in her head. They made her change forms when she was too angry. Into bats and panthers, then she's accidentally kill people.

I mean, sure, it honestly wasn't so bad. It was middle school. We were kids. I immediately saw it as a game -- the kind I promised I'd never get into again, because my Aunt Michelle had made me promise that I'd never "lie" again. By which she meant, write fiction. Tell stories. She wasn't a nice aunt.



(Same aunt got her kids put into foster care later so she could f*ck their sexual abuser. I may never see my cousin Emily again, because her birth mother refuses to let her family see her. Any of it.)



Plus, I'd had bad luck with it. Friends thinking it was weird and not playing along. So I was excited and ashamed at the same time. Perfect storm.

I had no demons in MY head making me kill, though. That wasn't really my thing. I didn't view myself as dangerous.

I should have known when she first used the demons in her head as an excuse to "become" gay. She and J matched with male in love gay demons. They took it EXTREMELY seriously. I should have ran.

I also should have ran when I got the first feeling that I should, when she first started dating J. She was constantly depressed, and being around them was straight up toxic. They were horrible to each other. Being around B during that time made me want to run, and I wish I'd trusted my gut. There's no use being a good friend to someone who would literally kill you.

I remember the first time I tried to tell her that the imaginary world wasn't real. That first, genuinely innocent surprised look, that lasted a second. Right before she got dangerous. Threatened me, threatened herself. I caved she said I was just kidding. I wish I would have just gone inside and asked my mom for help. As an adult, this would have been easy to solve. Even if she really meant to kill me or herself -- that's what hospitals are for.

I got diagnosed with psychosis in my freshman year of highschool, when I first went to the hospital myself in 2014. When I finally admitted my dad was insane, when I finally admitted that my neighbor had raped me, though I didn't admit that it had happened for a year.

The psychosis in my medical chart doesn't have a description, and it honestly isn't that surprising considering the circumstances. My journal I kept was insane to follow -- though B had asked for it. In fact? I knew she would, so it had little truth to it. It was a show, designed for B's benefit -- not mine.

Even my stay at the hospital largely involved my panic that B wouldn't be getting certain emails when the sun went down. Honestly? I was panicked at first, trying to find ways to steal a computer and write something to B as another person (usually a spiritual entity, not anything that could actually exist/type out an email). But once 7pm passed? Once 9pm rolled around? Calmest I had ever been. I realized that I was safe in here. In a hospital, my dad couldn't get me, B couldn't -- no one could. It gave me the power I needed to out my dad, to become safe again.

Except I talked to B after that. Big mistake.

I truly believe that the psychosis diagnosis wasn't fully accurate -- although I can't prove it and wouldn't try. I can't disagree that it was possible that under that much stress, maybe my mind WAS doing something to cope. It happens. It doesn't mean I'm crazy.

However, I distinctly remember trying to convince people what I knew B would be asking me about later. The demonic things that she cared so much about, the shadowy aliens. One of them was her husband. I think at the time, I was entranced by the fantasy world, wanting to go all in because my real life had gone completely insane. I knew, though, that it wasn't real. I think B knew that too? Hard to say. But there's no other reason to have threatened me with being a sinful liar, taking advantage of a lonely friendless girl, as she reminded me constantly. I thought I was evil, and doing it for me, but it was so much more complex than that.

I wish it hadn't happened, but I'm constantly relieved that it's over now. I never thought I'd ever be free. I assumed my entire life was doomed to following someone I hated, whose perfect vagina I had unwillingly been all over, constantly building my fantasy world while also using it to give her free therapy -- though I am not a therapist.

I knew her so well by the end of it. I loved her and hated her at the same time, because I wanted to get away, but I wanted her to -- for once -- understand that it wasn't my fault, that I never wanted it to be like this, that she had NEVER even MET the real me. Because she only wanted me for my storytelling. So she could have an invisible alien husband who was a king on some distant world, and she was secretly someone who, in her sleep, was fighting evil kings and shit.

I hate that this happened. I hate that I didn't know I could leave at any time. I thought it was impossible.

So, I'm glad I finally "admitted" it. I'm not a fungus talking over email. I have homework to do, jobs to do, meetings to lead. I was a f*cking manager, I didn't have time for her, honestly. She was dumping literally all her problems on me, she in return wanted to hear none of mine.

I mean, we all have battles. We all have to learn how to deal with what life has given us. I'm truly sorry she was hurting. I truly wish I had boundaries and knew I didn't deserve that, but I thought I did. And it feels like my fault, so I have to remember that it wasn't. I feel guilty, but it wasn't my fault this happened.

It was insane.

I still feel like a fungus. I feel it when I talk -- when my empathetic side picks up on what's going on in another life -- literally any species. I've saved multiple caterpillars and put down my time and sometimes other's time to save plants and earthworms. I don't think it's a bad thing, though. But it's because I'm an empathetic human, not because I'm an empathetic fungus.
 
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