Weekly Update #165

I'm warning you right now that there's about to be a lot of me venting about personal stuff. So, if you're not interested in that, feel free to not read it. If you are, let's get miserable! Woo!

So. I've mentioned this a bunch of times before, but my grandma moved in with us about... 2 years ago? Yeah, in May 2019. Anyways, she moved in with us because she has dementia and was no longer capable of living on her own. Her mind has been deteriorating more and more over the years, but I'll talk about that more after this next part.

About a month and a half ago or so, I mentioned being really depressed but I don't think I went into details about it or anything. But basically, just to quickly summarize what actually happened, it was a combination of my grandma rapidly deteriorating and (mostly this next part) the fact that I managed to somehow randomly find a girl who was basically my ideal partner who was way too good to be true, and we started dating, and I fell for her pretty damn hard. I basically gave up on ever finding anybody that great before I met her and then she just came out of nowhere. Of course, then she disappeared out of nowhere. Everything was good, there were no issues, our last conversations were all normal and we had plans to spend more time together, and then... she just completely vanished without a word. So, that kind of destroyed me and made me legitimately depressed again. It also reminded me why I avoided relationships for like five years after my ex.

Anyways, so, there was that. I'm over that at this point, but there are still some days where I just feel crushingly lonely and depressed and blah blah.

Moving on. Back to my grandma. She has been rapidly deteriorating for these past few months. Almost every day is a new issue with her getting worse and worse. This recent Thursday, she had an appointment with her doctor and was officially diagnosed with severe late-stage Alzheimer's, which explains a lot about why her condition is getting so much worse now.

She can no longer go to the bathroom on her own or shower on her own. She barely eats and drinks. She is constantly confused wondering where she is and when she's going home. Saying she has somewhere to be when she has nowhere to be. Acting like a mentally challenged (and I don't mean that as an insult) child who refuses to listen and just doesn't understand anything. If we try to put her to bed at night she'll get up five minutes later and start walking around trying to shove multiple pillows into a single pillow case and then wonder why they won't fit, and this will repeat over and over again, and that's just one example of it. There's also putting diapers on her head, forgetting how to properly wear clothes, putting dish soap in her cup of water and drinking it, etc.

She's apathetic now to the point where she only sometimes gets up to go to the bathroom. Even though we make sure she wears diapers, sometimes she'll just go multiple times until they're soaked through and she's getting pee everywhere. Especially at night where she'll get up to go to the bathroom, not put a new diaper on, and then lay in a puddle of piss on her bed until we get up in the morning.

Then there's the constant hiding things then saying she didn't do anything. There's her taking our family photo albums and, for some reason, cutting the heads off of people in the pictures to ruin pictures that are incredibly sentimental to my mum and then saying she didn't do it after literally being caught in the process of doing it.

She's pretty much driven my mum to the point of being suicidal and hating life. If my mum didn't have me and our dogs then I have no doubt she would have killed herself by now.

It's extremely hard for me to focus on my writing and I'm consistently disappointed with how little I'm writing compared to how much I want to write, but it's hard to focus on writing and keep up a creative mind when I'm being interrupted every ten to thirty minutes by my grandma being confused and just not cooperating with us. We used to be able to put her down in front of the TV and let her watch movies all day, but that doesn't work anymore. Now she gets up every few minutes thinking she has to get ready to go somewhere and that she can't just sit around watching TV.

And now she's also experiencing "sundowning." It's like the later it is in the day, the more energy she has, the more anxious and confused she gets, and the less she cooperates.

Basically, living with her is torture for everybody involved. I'm handling it better than my mum is at least, in the sense that I don't want to literally kill myself, but knowing how hard of a time my mum is having just makes me feel even worse and like there's nothing I can do. And there isn't anything I can do. I already help as much as she'll let me.

I know some people might strongly disagree with what I'm about to say, and I understand why, but all we want to do at this point is throw her into a nursing home and let her be their problem. She's no longer the grandma that helped raise me. She's a completely different person. There is nothing like her old self in there anymore, and I care more about making sure my mum is happy and healthy and not wanting to kill herself. My mom's health is more important to me.

But we can't do that. We don't have the money to and we don't qualify for state assistance because my other grandparents have a trust fund for my grandma... and they refuse to actually use that trust fund. That means we don't have the money to get her into a mental assisted living unit or anything, and the state won't help us because they see that trust fund for her and go, "Oh, well, you have money for her, so just use that. You don't need our money." Except we have no fucking access to that money because her siblings are holding onto it because they don't believe she's bad enough to need it yet.

If anything, at this point, I'm just... I'm more pissed off than depressed. I already consider my grandma dead and don't feel bad about her continued declined. I came to peace with the grandma I knew and loved being gone before I even realized it.

I'm just pissed off. I'm pissed off at my other useless grandparents for refusing to help. I'm pissed off at them for letting my mum suffer like this. I'm pissed off at Alzheimer's for destroying my mum's life by turning her into my grandma's 24/7 caretaker. I'm pissed off at myself for not being able to just focus on my writing even though I know I should be easier on myself given the circumstances. I felt bad for my grandma before, but I can't anymore. My mom is more important to me and her life is being ruined. I can't even see my grandma when I look at her anymore. All I see is the disease that took her from us. My mum isn't cut out for being a caretaker (which she always admits herself) and she's having mental breakdowns almost every single day, and that's with anxiety medication to try and prevent those.

In other words, everything sucks. My grandma is gone and is now just a husk belonging to Alzheimer's. My mum wants to kill herself from the stress of taking care of my grandma and nobody will help us. There's nothing I can do to help that I'm not already doing, and my mum tries to keep me as separate from it as possible because she doesn't want me to have to suffer as much as she is, but that just makes me feel even more horrible and my mental health has been absolutely fucked for months now.

Oh. And I got a UTI. So now my dick burns every time I take a piss. At least that's temporary, but it's why I didn't write EDO last night. Was hard to focus on writing when my dick was in that much discomfort.

But yeah. It's just one thing after another lately. I just feel powerless in helping my mum deal with my grandma, I feel like I'm letting everybody on here down by not writing more and not keeping a consistent schedule, I've been reminded of how much I prefer to be in a relationship and how much being alone sucks, I'm consistently failing at meeting my own goals for writing (I want to get back to writing 40 hours or more a week but I'm struggling every week to even write for 10+ hours), my grandma is making it harder by the day to concentrate on my writing because she needs constant care and watching, and just thgweswdghtrewsdhgtrewdshtreshtrshtres.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

But seriously, if you read all of that even though you didn't need to at all, thanks. And don't worry about me in case you are. I'll be fine. I still love writing and absolutely don't plan on stopping that no matter how rough things get for me. Mentally, I'm better than I was a month ago at least. It's just that I'm now getting even more distracted by my grandma, and she tends to distract in a way that is seriously harmful to my writing flow.

I know my mum will be fine, too. We won't have to deal with my grandma forever and my mum has been through a lot in her life, and I'm doing my best to support her how I can. Thankfully, her brother might be trying to help us out here soon, too. We'll see if anything comes of that.

My grandma is the only one who won't be fine since she's rapidly deteriorating, but there's nothing we can do to stop or slow that at this point.

What this has taught me and my mum is that we're both killing ourselves if we ever get start to slip away like she has. Neither one of us wants to lose who we are and ruin the lives of whoever has to take care of us. My mum won't let herself ever reach the point where I need to take care of her like we are with my grandma, and I won't ever let myself reach the point where I have to depend on others for basic day-to-day life. The moment I can no longer live independently (because of my brain literally rotting inside my skull and forgetting who I am) is the moment that I publish something online about all plans for my stories and other ideas I had, wish the world good luck, and yeet myself into the sun.

Well, maybe not the sun, but I'll figure something out.

Anyways, that's enough of the depressing stuff for now. I already feel a lot better typing all that out. Honestly, I should probably delete all of that since I feel like it makes me look like a horrible person, but I also feel like I'm just going to keep on being tempted to post it in a weekly update until I do since that's what always happens, so there I go. Plus I just want to be honest and feel... heard by at least somebody. I can't stress my mum out with how I feel because that's just going to make her feel even worse. I have to continue acting like I'm fine or else she'll feel guilty and be in an even worse spot.

Also wow, this premade margarita stuff we got from the store is kind of kicking in already even though I had a big meal before it. It's not even a real margarita since it was a premixed drink made with wine instead of tequila, but it tastes good enough and is starting to kick in which is all that matters.

Anyways! Thanks again for being there for me. Even if you only pledge a single dollar a month, you're a huge support to me and keeping me happy. I can only imagine how much more I would hate life if I had to throw away my passion to go and work a normal job. So, as long as I have your support, I'm incredibly grateful for you. Even if you ever have to unpledge or anything, that's alright! I just hope that you continue reading my stories. As long as there are others enjoying my series with me, I'm happy. Thank you!

And now for memes 'nd things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnHNP6lrVJk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjRs5aqJrSc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNB-9c2jz7g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91lJn8kWrI

Weekly Worksheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12ZGYdwgrsQodsp6c2q9zNDIKEZy3FSTP/view?usp=sharing

13,986 words, 17 hours.

The True Endgame

We've got one chapter to go to wrap up this volume and then we're moving onto the next! And the next will be shifting to player versus player conflict. After all, Fen has got a sub to build, a spy to use, and an entire faction of edgelords to put in their place.

Ero Dungeon Online

I love making Akorya into this huge fucking dork. Or maybe I should just call her a nerd instead. I don't know. Either way, I'm having fun fleshing out Akorya a bit more and giving Cani some attention, too. But now it's time for conflict!

Lazy Dragon Queen

I'm super excited to write the rest of this mini-arc because it's just fun to write and gives everybody a bit of time in the spotlight. Also, there may be a couple of appearances in this little contest that probably aren't being expected!

The Dungeon Hound

Zurie time.

Next time they go in the dungeon will probably last a while so that it can feel like they're actually making some good progress in there.

The Tentacles' Tavern

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I can't get away with writing bestiality, but it's okay if tentacles just so happen to look vaguely similar to specific types of penises.

4X

The only thing I can think of saying in the weekly update for this is what I said in a comment on the latest chapter, so just go read that if you're interested. I'll do my best to type up a good amount more of this next week. I want to write more of it over the weekend, but I think it's probably going to be the best for me if I force myself to take it easy and relax to give my brain a chance to just be lazy.

In Closing

Thanks for your support like always. I'm going to spend the rest of my weekend playing FFXIV and watching anime. I hope you look forward to next week's chapters, and I hope that you're all doing good in your own lives! Remember to take care of yourselves and to look out for those important to you.

Until next time!