It’s been over a month and a half since I last worked and trying to find things to do and keep myself entertained is … taxing on me. I can only watch so much Netflix, write so much (not necessarily on here but in personal journals and whatnot), I can only clean the kitchen from top to bottom once until the next dish gets dirtied and then the cycle starts again.

Let’s face it. I am terribly bored and terribly broke so I can’t really afford to do anything outside of the house. For those of you who are new here, Hi! I’m Dani, a 27 year old married gal who is recently jobless and was working in social services as a crisis worker. You’d assume by the title of my blog that I am an avid astrology fan, but really I just like things that rhyme and I actually am an Aquarius so I thought it might work for a website title. I am all about mental health advocacy; sharing the things that are hard and burden our hearts late at night… this blog, this platform, is a safe place for all to seek refuge. Whether you relate to me or not, and in some ways I don’t wish for many to relate to me because of my mental illness and I don’t wish mental illness on my worst enemy. However, if you got it or just like to read about how weird my life is, this is the blog for you!

This past year has been hell, I’ll be honest. The highlight of this past year was marrying my husband October 11, 2024. Everything else virtually has been sh*t. From Kyle and I thinking he had the cancer again, to him having a bowel obstruction with no actual blockage to having sciatica one day and sepsis the next, three days in ICU, and three days in the hospital for six days total. Our home two days after Kyle was discharged from the hospital, our septic tank burst and flooded three rooms in our home. I had to move us into a hotel since I was his primary caregiver and he couldn’t walk up the stairs in our home after his two surgeries to use the bathroom so I moved all of our belongings out of harms’ way in our home and took the most important things with us to the hotel for four weeks, and then I had to move us into an AirBnb since he couldn’t lift anything heavier than a block of cheese since he was recovering from these surgeries. Early June, we moved back into our gutted home and only had access to our kitchen and bedroom, and had to use his grandparents’ bathroom and shower upstairs in their apartment once Kyle had recovered enough to use the stairs. (My husband and I live in the usually fully functional basement of his grandparents’ home; the only thing we had to share before was a laundry room which was in their apartment, but I digress). Because I had to personally move all this crap, I developed three herniated discs in my cervical spine and had to take even more time off work for myself because I was in and out of the ER and in severe pain. I eventually saw a chiropractor 3x a week which made me be able to go back to work and two weeks later, I was terminated from my job for “not following code of conduct”. No explanation no warning.

Kyle started working again at the end of June and now he is the sole provider in our home. We were stupid with money and are barely scraping by. I also managed to get some money together to go back to school and so I was able to graduate with my AA degree about a week ago! I thought it would now be easier to get a job that paid about what I made before since I have a college degree but that couldn’t be further from the truth. But this week has been interesting because now that I have no more school work and I’m not studying all hours of the day and night, I am truly depressed because of how bored I am and how I feel as though I have no purpose. Because I have schizoaffective disorder, a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Kyle and I have decided at least for now, that we aren’t going to have kids. Like, if it happens, it happens, we’ll take that on like anything else in life, but it’s not like I had this strong feeling of needing to be a mother before, but if I weren’t working and I had a kid or two, I feel like my depression wouldn’t be so bad because I’d have a purpose; I’d be raising a fuc*ing human.

I know that fatherhood was something that Kyle really wanted, but we both have so many issues either with physical health or mental health, I wouldn’t want to pass that trauma and issues onto the future child. I don’t know if he has an interest in adopting or having foster children; he always tells me that it’s up to me if I wanna have kids and he would rather have me out of the deal than have children, but I question how true that is.

Kyle had a step daughter with his ex girlfriend who he basically raised since she was MIA. Very toxic relationship if you ask me, but it ain’t like I haven’t had my fair share of those! His ex got pregnant by him and she had to deliver a stillborn son that they had named, Adam. I am unsure as to why the child was stillborn, he doesn’t like to talk about it (obviously.) But in our situation, and Kyle’s health being so fragile, I don’t want to concede, have a child with my husband, and then have him die on me and raise a child out of spite for my dead husband. That doesn’t sound very healthy if you ask me.

I didn’t have a menstrual cycle for two months while Kyle went through sepsis and nearly died in my arms and I thought I was pregnant with child and I was sure I’d go to hell because if God forbid Kyle died, I wasn’t raising his child without my husband. Is that selfish? I don’t know. I just have issues with my lady hormones, so I have actually never been pregnant ever in my life, but every time I miss a period, it scares the hell out of me, that’s for sure.

Writing always makes me feel better considering I am able to get my thoughts out by punching the d*mn keys. But when I am in that depression, nothing sounds or feels good. What do I do? Sleep. I have little to no appetite. I can’t work out at the gym because I had to pause my gym membership because we’re too poor to afford it. I canceled most of our streaming services so I’ve watched anything good on Hulu / Disney+. Like I said, I can only clean so much. So this week, I’ve been grieving and trying to sell items if and when I can to make some cash to pay our bills. I apply to at least 5-10 jobs a day and no luck, I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m not above working at McDonalds but I know I couldn’t do that well at all because of my neck injury. I am like a jack of all trades, master at none and my resume shows that through no real longevity.

Construction contractors finally put the walls back together and ripped out the ugly blood red carpet from the 1980’s so there’s random pieces of furniture in my already crowded kitchen and there’s not enough room to maneuver the stove and the sink and I have zero counter-space. It’s a foodie chef’s (like me) kind of hell. My bedroom is cluttered and hot as fire due to all the crap that is in it. I am not even close to be a hoarder, I am more of a nonchalant minimalist if I am being honest and moving from 2000 square feet of house to about 600-700 square feet total would be hard for anyone. Most of my belongings are sitting in boxes by my car outside, underneath a tarp. Luckily it’s the tail end of summer and it hasn’t rained too much yet so I’m hoping my stuff isn’t ruined. But time will tell.

I am trying to entertain myself by designing ways to create my “new” living room, office, and bathroom. I’m giving the now empty office to Kyle to make into a gaming / video game streaming room. Our living room is quite large but it’s very narrow and awkwardly designed making it hard to do much with it and not block doors, or closets, and also be aesthetic. I spoke with my husband’s grandma, who low key is a hoarder and she finally conceded I can get rid of the tattered curtains and get new ones and I am thrilled because now the house after almost a full year of living room will be like my home. Before this septic tank bursting thing, the basement was meant as the family’s dumping grounds, whoever left stuff there would leave it for decades and would never come pick it up. So of course, now that I am home all the time, I separated the sentimental stuff from the rest and got rid of a lot. We still got to take some of it to the dump, but I guess that’s the benefit of paying on three vehicles; Kyle can use our third vehicle to go to and from work until he and I have the time to use his truck (his usual daily driver) to dump all the crap out. Not that we really *need* three vehicles, but with negative equity on all three cars, sh*t credit, and only one income, now’s not the time to refi and sell anything because we’d be paying even more in the long run which is stupid, stupid, stupid. But it is what it is.

It’s the little wins, here and there, that make the depression go away at least for a little while. I try to find things that bring me joy and gratitude every day but the depression can be so disheartening that nothing brings me joy or gratitude. I feel like it’s a win that I even get out of bed in the morning, or early afternoon. Today, the depression obsessed itself by making me sleep in til 12:30pm. And by then, Kyle’s work shift was nearly over and I had done nothing of what I wanted to such as take down the old and dingy curtains, get all the cobwebs off of the walls, corners, and the ceiling, get dust and crap out of the sliding glass door frame so it’ll open and close easier, clean the kitchen (for the umpteenth time) and whatever else I can clean and organize.

Now it is almost 4:30pm in the afternoon and I have completed NONE of that. Once Kyle got home, I made him and I some grilled cheese sandwiches on his gluten free bread since he now has celiac disease and cannot tolerate gluten and wheat products. Between his sepsis scare and epilepsy limitations and food allergies, there isn’t much I can make him eat, and he’s losing a lot of weight. He was like 190 when I met him and now he’s 175lbs at almost 6’4″. Blah I hate it mostly because of my own weight insecurities but he hates that none of his clothes fit because he’s lost so much weight. I am willing to buy and make him anything because otherwise, he just won’t eat. Today was somewhat of a cheat meal because with his epilepsy meds, he shouldn’t have dairy so no cheese. So I made a compromise cheat meal; grilled cheese, with some lunch meat on the side, these teriyaki snack bites I got from Costco for him, and two Mandarin oranges. He slept right after he ate and is now playing video games with his friend online on the xbox and I am writing and basically slept, ate, and wrote a tiny bit on this blog. But sometimes it’s the small wins that are needed to overcome the demons. So even though I had a “lazy” day, as far as the depression demons go, I am counting today as a win.

Much love,

Dani