<<illustration "glass-flowers.jpg">>\
Blah blah blah this is a display of flowers. Supposedly they're made of glass but they mostly just look real?
[[Rotten apples]]<<illustration "apple.jpg">>\
When infection occurs during or shortly after pollination, asymptomatic growth of the pathogen allows the fruit to mature normally. However, as the fruit ripens, small circular brown spots begin developing and quickly rotting on the flesh's surface; given plenty of moisture, conidial pustules develop on the infected areas. On mature infected fruits, brown rot spreads quickly throughout the fruit as a brown decay of the flesh. In areas/climates with high relative humidity, conidial tufts appear at the surface of the fruit; when RH is low, the fruit simply desiccates. Fruit rot caused by the brown rot pathogen Monilinia fructigena is a notorious ailment found in Malus domestica—the apple tree—with the fungus occasionally spreading from the infected fruit to the branches, causing cankering. With apple infections, a varying symptom can occur within the fruits, causing what is commonly known as “black apple”. This symptom entails the color of the rot changing from brown to a deep shade of black. The apple skin remains shiny and unbroken, and shrinkage of the actual tissue does not occur until later in development, where it often rots quickly in storage. Fruit rot is commonly found on apples, pears, and plums, but is less often found within peaches, nectarines, or apricots.
Within the short span of several days, the entire ripe fruit is rotten and rife with conidial tufts and/or vegetative growth of mycelium. When relative humidity surrounding the fruit is low, conidial tufts and mycelium do not develop. After dropping in a mummified form to the ground, the pathogen overwinters, eventually sending up apothecia to produce the wind-carried ascospores that arrive on new plant tissues. Fallen infected tissues that possess sufficient moisture to undergo the sporulation process often provide a source of secondary inoculation. Under the right conditions, mycelial growth takes place, forming a hardened sclerotia sphere-shape around the core or seed of the fruit. As this mycelial/stroma growth is taking place, the outside of the fruit rots away. The resulting germination utilizes a third type of spore called a “microconidia” that acts as a spermatia in sexual reproduction. Roberts and Dunegan postulated that the means of aerial distribution of conidia resulted in widespread transportation to new hosts, while rain performs well as a means of washing the conidia into more favorable conditions. Conidia are not the only primary way Monilinia fructigena has been observed to be propagated in nature. There are numerous insects, such as wasps, beetles, flies, and butterflies that have been recognized as vectors of Monilinia spp. Birds wounding the tree or its fruits have been identified as possible wound-causing agents that allow the fungus to enter the host.
[[Back->Glass Flowers]]<div id="museum">
<div id="illustration"><div></div></div>
<div id="content"><div id="passages"></div></div>
</div><a href="doc/aching for love at ocean grove.txt" target="_blank">aching for love at ocean grove.txt</a>
<<return [(back)]>> (to take the player back to the previous passage)<<illustration "museum/pdcoverfinal.png">>\
<span id="title">My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition</span>
a personal & public museum by Naomi Norbez
Click [[here|cw]] to read the content warnings for this work
[[Step inside of the museum|load]]<<illustration "museum/map0/5.png">>\
[[Read the paper on the wall titled: Introduction (Part 3/3)|intro3]]
[[Go north ⇧ and head to the first exhibit ⇧|introexit]]
[[Go south ⇩|4]]<<illustration "museum/map0/4.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|5]]
[[Go south ⇩|3]]<<illustration "museum/map0/3.png">>\
[[Read the paper on the wall titled: Introduction (Part 2/3)|intro2]]
[[Go north ⇧|4]]
[[Go south ⇩|2]]<<illustration "museum/map0/2.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|3]]
[[Go south ⇩|1]]<<illustration "museum/map0/1.png">>\
[[Read the paper on the wall titled: Introduction (Part 1/3)|intro1]]
[[Go north ⇧|2]]<<illustration "museum/map0/0.png">>\
<<if visited() is 1>>You are at the entrance to the museum, in the introductory area. Welcome!<<else>><<endif>>
[[Go east ⇨|1]]<<playlist "ex0music" loop play>><<illustration "museum/map1/8.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|9]]
[[Walk east ⇨|11]]
[[Walk west ⇦|6]]<<illustration "museum/map1/6.png">>\
[[Look at the object in a case titled: C Notebook (Front)|ipcbook]]
[[Walk north ⇧|7]]
[[Walk east ⇨|8]]<<illustration "museum/map1/9.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|10]]
[[Walk south ⇩|8]]
[[Walk east ⇨|12]]
[[Walk west ⇦|7]]<<illustration "museum/map1/10.png">>\
[[Look at the drawings on the wall: Lonely Art In A Hospital Bed|ipcac]]
[[Walk south ⇩|9]]
[[Walk east ⇨|13]]
[[Walk west ⇦|7.1]]<<illustration "museum/map1/11.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|12]]
[[Walk east ⇨|15]]
[[Walk west ⇦|8]]<<illustration "museum/map1/12.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|13]]
[[Walk south ⇩|11]]
[[Walk east ⇨|16]]
[[Walk west ⇦|9]]<<illustration "museum/map1/13.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: Sketchbook (Small)|ipsketch]]
[[Go south ⇩|12]]
[[Go west ⇦|10]]<<illustration "museum/map1/14.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: The Grateful Book|ipebook]]
[[Walk north ⇧|15]]
[[Walk east ⇨|18]]<<illustration "museum/map1/15.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|16]]
[[Walk south ⇩|14]]
[[Walk east ⇨|19]]
[[Walk west ⇦|11]]<<illustration "museum/map1/16.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case titled: Why Are They Purple? Beats Me!|ipcomp]]
[[Walk south ⇩|15]]
[[Walk east ⇨|20]]
[[Walk west ⇦|12]]<<illustration "museum/map1/17.png">>\
[[Read the framed art on the wall: A Sudden Twist Of The Knife|iprope]]
[[Walk south ⇩ and go on to the next exhibit ⇩|ipexit]]
[[Walk north ⇧|18]]<<illustration "museum/map1/18.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|19]]
[[Walk south ⇩|17]]
[[Walk west ⇦|14]]<<illustration "museum/map1/19.png">>\
[[Look at the large exhibit titled: The Dream That Changed Everything|ipdream]]
[[Walk north ⇧|20]]
[[Walk south ⇩|18]]
[[Walk west ⇦|15]]<<illustration "museum/map1/20.png">>\
[[Walk south ⇩|19]]
[[Walk west ⇦|16]]<<illustration "museum/map2/21.png">>\
[[Look at the object in a case titled: C Notebook (Back)|trcbook]]
[[Walk north ⇧|22]]
[[Walk east ⇨|25]]<<illustration "museum/map2/22.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|23]]
[[Walk south ⇩|21]]
[[Walk east ⇨|26]]<<illustration "museum/map2/23.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: The Traditional TR Bag|trbag]]
[[Walk north ⇧|24]]
[[Walk south ⇩|22]]
[[Walk east ⇨|27]]<<illustration "museum/map2/24.png">>\
<<if visited() is 1>>You walk in from the north ⇧, and find yourself in the second part of the museum: The TR Exhibit.<<else>><<endif>>
[[Read the introductory statement on the wall|trintro]]
[[Walk south ⇩|23]]
[[Walk east ⇨|28]]<<playlist "ex2music" loop play>><<illustration "museum/map2/25.png">>\
[[Look at the group of the paintings on the wall titled: Leo Tolstoy Was Right About Families|trfamily]]
[[Walk north ⇧|26]]
[[Walk east ⇨|29]]
[[Walk west ⇦|21]]<<illustration "museum/map2/26.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|27]]
[[Walk south ⇩|25]]
[[Walk east ⇨|30]]
[[Walk west ⇦|22]]<<illustration "museum/map2/27.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|28]]
[[Walk south ⇩|26]]
[[Walk east ⇨|31]]
[[Walk west ⇦|23]]<<illustration "museum/map2/28.png">>\
[[Look at the display titled: The First Of Many, Many Recovery Folders|trfolder]]
[[Walk south ⇩|27]]
[[Walk east ⇨|32]]
[[Walk west ⇦|24]]<<illustration "museum/map2/29.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|30]]
[[Walk east ⇨|34]]
[[Walk west ⇦|25]]<<illustration "museum/map2/31.png">>\
[[Look at the art on display titled: Sailor Souls Forever!|trsaso]]
[[Walk north ⇧|32]]
[[Walk south ⇩|30]]
[[Walk east ⇨|36]]
[[Walk west ⇦|27]]<<illustration "museum/map2/30.png">>\
[[Look at the plush toy in the case titled: Little Seki|trseki]]
[[Walk north ⇧|31]]
[[Walk south ⇩|29]]
[[Walk east ⇨|35]]
[[Walk west ⇦|26]]<<illustration "museum/map2/32.png">>\
[[Walk south ⇩|31]]
[[Walk east ⇨|37]]
[[Walk west ⇦|28]]<<illustration "museum/map2/33.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: More Than Just A Gemstone|trnecklace]]
[[Walk east ⇨ and go on to the next exhibit ⇨|trexit]]
[[Go north ⇧|34]]<<illustration "museum/map2/34.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: The Pouch|trpouch]]
[[Walk north ⇧|35]]
[[Walk south ⇩|33]]
[[Walk west ⇦|29]]<<illustration "museum/map2/35.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|36]]
[[Walk south ⇩|34]]
[[Walk west ⇦|30]]<<illustration "museum/map2/36.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|37]]
[[Walk south ⇩|35]]
[[Walk west ⇦|31]]<<illustration "museum/map2/37.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: Sketchbook (Large)|trsketch]]
[[Walk south ⇩|36]]
[[Walk west ⇦|32]]<<illustration "museum/map3/39.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: I Don't Take Cell Phones For Granted Anymore|fsphone]]
[[Walk north ⇧|40]]
[[Walk east ⇨|43]]<<illustration "museum/map3/40.png">>\
<<if visited() is 1>>You walk in from the north ⇧, and find yourself in the third part of the museum: The FS Period.<<else>><<endif>>
[[Read the introductory statement on the wall|fsintro]]
[[Walk north ⇧|41]]
[[Walk south ⇩|39]]
[[Walk east ⇨|44]]<<playlist "ex3music" loop play>><<illustration "museum/map3/41.png">>\
[[Look at a the framed paper on the wall titled: The Next 29th|fsmay29]]
[[Go north ⇧|42]]
[[Go south ⇩|40]]
[[Go east ⇨|45]]<<illustration "museum/map3/42.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: The Art Of Zen|fszen]]
[[Go south ⇩|41]]
[[Go east ⇨|46]]<<illustration "museum/map3/43.png">>\
[[Look at the display titled: 2nd Best Recovery Folder, In My Opinion|fsfolder]]
[[Walk north ⇧|44]]
[[Walk west ⇦|39]]<<illustration "museum/map3/44.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case: One Big Pronoun Badge/Nametag|fstag]]
[[Walk north ⇧|45]]
[[Walk south ⇩|43]]
[[Walk east ⇨|47]]
[[Walk west ⇦|40]]<<illustration "museum/map3/45.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|46]]
[[Walk south ⇩|44]]
[[Walk east ⇨|48]]
[[Walk west ⇦|41]]<<illustration "museum/map3/46.png">>\
[[Read the papers framed on the wall: Sometimes The Words Felt Beautiful In My Mouth, And Other Times, They Felt Bitter|fsdaily1]]
[[Walk south ⇩|45]]
[[Walk west ⇦|42]]<<illustration "museum/map3/47.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|48]]
[[Walk east ⇨|49]]
[[Walk west ⇦|44]]<<illustration "museum/map3/48.png">>\
[[Read the exhibit titled: One Hell Of A Board Game|fstwilight]]
[[Walk south ⇩|47]]
[[Walk east ⇨|50]]
[[Walk west ⇦|45]]<<illustration "museum/map3/49.png">>\
[[Read the framed art titled: The Ideal I Strive For|fsideal]]
[[Walk north ⇧|50]]
[[Walk east ⇨|52]]
[[Walk west ⇦|47]]<<illustration "museum/map3/50.png">>\
[[Walk south ⇩|49]]
[[Walk east ⇨|53]]
[[Walk west ⇦|48]]<<illustration "museum/map3/51.png">>\
[[Look at the item in the case titled: Covid Affecting The Brain & Body|fscovid]]
[[Go north ⇧|52]]<<illustration "museum/map3/52.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|53]]
[[Walk south ⇩|51]]
[[Walk west ⇦|49]]<<illustration "museum/map3/53.png">>\
[[Look at the object on the wall titled: A Second Friend Bubble Mailer For The Collection|fsmailer]]
[[Walk north ⇧|54]]
[[Walk south ⇩|52]]
[[Walk west ⇦|50]]<<illustration "museum/map3/54.png">>\
[[Look at the painting on the wall: I'll Fly Away|fspainting]]
[[Walk north ⇧ and go on to the next exhibit ⇧|fsexit]]
[[Go south ⇩|53]]<<illustration "museum/map4/55.png">>\
[[Look at the exhibit, which is titled: Self-Realization Through YA Literature Is Real, People!|rloseman1]]
[[Go north ⇧|56]]
[[Go east ⇨|60]]<<illustration "museum/map4/56.png">>\
[[Read the paper on the wall, which it titled: One Last Writing For One More 29th|rljuly29]]
[[Go north ⇧|57]]
[[Go south ⇩|55]]
[[Go east ⇨|61]]<<illustration "museum/map4/57.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|58]]
[[Go south ⇩|56]]
[[Go east ⇨|62]]<<illustration "museum/map4/58.png">>\
[[Look at the art on the wall, titled: Heart Town Hunters Rules, Ok?|rlhth]]
[[Go north ⇧|59]]
[[Go south ⇩|57]]
[[Go east ⇨|63]]<<illustration "museum/map4/59.png">>\
[[Look at the item in the glass case, which is titled: CDs Are Becoming Outdated But I Still Love Them, Damn It|rlcd]]
[[Go south ⇩|58]]
[[Go east ⇨|64]]<<illustration "museum/map4/60.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|61]]
[[Go east ⇨|65]]
[[Go west ⇦|55]]<<illustration "museum/map4/61.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|62]]
[[Go south ⇩|60]]
[[Go east ⇨|66]]
[[Go west ⇦|56]]<<illustration "museum/map4/62.png">>\
[[Look at the exhibit, which is titled: Brace Yourself|rlbraces]]
[[Go north ⇧|63]]
[[Go south ⇩|61]]
[[Go east ⇨|67]]
[[Go west ⇦|57]]<<illustration "museum/map4/63.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|64]]
[[Go south ⇩|62]]
[[Go east ⇨|68]]
[[Go west ⇦|58]]<<illustration "museum/map4/64.png">>\
[[Look at the item on the wall, which is titled: A Cute Frog With A Strong Message|fspatch]]
[[Go south ⇩|63]]
[[Go east ⇨|69]]
[[Go west ⇦|59]]<<illustration "museum/map4/65.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|66]]
[[Go east ⇨|70]]
[[Go west ⇦|60]]<<illustration "museum/map4/66.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|67]]
[[Go south ⇩|65]]
[[Go east ⇨|71]]
[[Go west ⇦|61]]<<illustration "museum/map4/67.png">>\
[[Look at the exhibit, which is titled: Brain Savior|rlbottle]]
[[Go north ⇧|68]]
[[Go south ⇩|66]]
[[Go east ⇨|72]]
[[Go west ⇦|62]]<<illustration "museum/map4/68.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|69]]
[[Go south ⇩|67]]
[[Go east ⇨|73]]
[[Go west ⇦|63]]<<illustration "museum/map4/69.png">>\
[[Look at the item in the case, which is titled: Knitted With Love And Queer Energy|rlscarf]]
[[Go south ⇩|68]]
[[Go east ⇨|74]]
[[Go west ⇦|64]]<<illustration "museum/map4/70.png">>\
<<if visited() is 1>>You walk in from the north ⇧, and find yourself in the fourth part of the museum: My Time At RL<<else>><<endif>>
[[Read the introductory statement on the wall|rlintro]]
[[Go north ⇧|71]]
[[Go east ⇨|75]]
[[Go west ⇦|65]]<<playlist "ex4music" loop play>><<illustration "museum/map4/71.png">>\
[[Look at the display, which is titled: Folders Again? Why, Yes!|rlfolders]]
[[Go north ⇧|72]]
[[Go south ⇩|70]]
[[Go east ⇨|76]]
[[Go west ⇦|66]]<<illustration "museum/map4/72.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|73]]
[[Go south ⇩|71]]
[[Go east ⇨|77]]
[[Go west ⇦|67]]<<illustration "museum/map4/73.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|74]]
[[Go south ⇩|72]]
[[Go west ⇦|68]]<<illustration "museum/map4/74.png">>\
[[Look at the photo on the wall, which is titled: The Power Of Friendship|rlsk8jjba]]
[[Go south ⇩|73]]
[[Go west ⇦|69]]<<illustration "museum/map4/75.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|76]]
[[Go east ⇨|78]]
[[Go west ⇦|70]]<<illustration "museum/map4/76.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|77]]
[[Go south ⇩|75]]
[[Go east ⇨|79]]
[[Go west ⇦|71]]<<illustration "museum/map4/77.png">>\
[[Go south ⇩|76]]
[[Go east ⇨|80]]
[[Go west ⇦|72]]<<illustration "museum/map4/78.png">>\
[[Look at the books on the display, which is titled: The Real Street Magic Is The Friends We Made Along The Way|rlstreet]]
[[Go north ⇧|79]]
[[Go east ⇨|81]]
[[Go west ⇦|75]]<<illustration "museum/map4/79.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|80]]
[[Go south ⇩|78]]
[[Go west ⇦|76]]<<illustration "museum/map4/80.png">>\
[[Look at the object in the case, titled: S'awesome Realizations|rlsauce]]
[[Walk east ⇨ and go on to the next exhibit ⇨|rlexit]]
[[Go south ⇩|79]]
[[Go west ⇦|77]]<<illustration "museum/map4/81.png">>\
[[Look at the exhibit, which is titled: Weapons Of Mental Warfare|rldice]]
[[Go west ⇦|78]]<<illustration "museum/map5/82.png">>\
[[Look at the poem on the wall|bhpoem]]
[[Walk north ⇧|83]]
[[Walk east ⇨|85]]<<illustration "museum/map5/83.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|84]]
[[Go south ⇩|82]]
[[Go east ⇨|86]]<<illustration "museum/map5/84.png">>\
<<if visited() is 1>>You walk in, and find yourself in the fifth part of the museum: BH: The Final Stop.<<else>><<endif>>
[[Read the introductory statement on the wall|bhintro]]
[[Go south ⇩|83]]
[[Go east ⇨|87]]<<playlist "ex5music" loop play>><<illustration "museum/map5/85.png">>\
[[Walk north ⇧|86]]
[[Walk east ⇨|88]]
[[Walk west ⇦|82]]<<illustration "museum/map5/86.png">>\
[[Look at the notebooks in a case titled: A Self-Imposed Challenge|bhcroc]]
[[Walk north ⇧|87]]
[[Walk south ⇩|85]]
[[Walk east ⇨|83]]<<illustration "museum/map5/87.png">>\
[[Look at the exhibit: Finally The Folders Come To An End|bhfolders]]
[[Walk south ⇩|86]]
[[Walk east ⇨|84]]<<illustration "museum/map5/88.png">>\
[[Look at the birthday card on the wall|bhbday]]
[[Walk east ⇨ and go to final part of the exhibition ⇨|bhexit]]
[[Go west ⇦|85]]<<illustration "museum/mape/88.1.png">>\
<<if visited() is 1>>You walk in from the east ⇨, and find yourself in the last part of the museum: Afterwards.<<else>><<endif>>
[[Go east ⇨|89]]<<playlist "exEndmusic" loop play>><<illustration "museum/mape/89.png">>\
[[Read the introductory statement to this exhibit|endintro]]
[[Go west ⇦|88.1]]
[[Go north ⇧|90]]<<illustration "museum/mape/90.png">>\
[[Look at the exhibit: The Pouch, Now Filled|endpouch]]
[[Go north ⇧|91]]
[[Go south ⇩|89]]<<illustration "museum/mape/91.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|92]]
[[Go south ⇩|90]]<<illustration "museum/mape/92.png">>\
[[Look at the book in the display case: One Last Gut Punch/Lifesaving Manuver From Alice Oseman|endoseman]]
[[Go north ⇧|93]]
[[Go south ⇩|91]]<<illustration "museum/mape/93.png">>\
[[Go north ⇧|94]]
[[Go south ⇩|92]]<<illustration "museum/mape/94.png">>\
[[Read the closing statement on the wall|outro]]
[[Go north ⇧, and approach the exit the museum ⇧|endexit]]At the start of 2022, something terrible happened to me. I didn’t notice it until it had already begun. I would ask my twin, Eliana the same questions over and over again, because I forgot I’d asked them already. The days would flow by like nothing; I would wake up to work, fight to get anything done, and then look out the window and see that the sun was setting. I would go to write and struggle to put words on paper, tasks that had until then come easily as anything else. I have been writing since I was five or six years old, but suddenly, it was as if I was a novice to the craft—and a struggling novice at that.
There was something wrong with my brain, I soon realized. I thought that perhaps it was a side effect of a new medication my doctor had given me. So I waited for it to tide it over, because usually these side effects went away after a week or so. When it didn’t go away, and my period began, I reasoned that it had possibly been the medication and my premenstrual dysphoric disorder (a disorder that messes with the mental state of people with uteruses, before and/or during their period) fucking around with each other, and it would go away after my period ended.
But it <i>didn’t</i> go away after my period. By then, it was near the end of January. And that was when I started to realize something was seriously wrong with me. My brain was not what it was, and it was becoming worse and worse. This was very bad. I had to do something to save myself before it was too late.
<<return (back)>> The rot in my brain soon began to affect me severely. The coping skills I had built up from years of mental health recovery eroded into nothing, and I became a version of myself that hadn’t existed since I was a child. I became suicidal and extremely depressed. I would hyperfixate on things for hours and hours, literally unable to stop myself from writing long paragraphs about nothing at all. I fought with myself every day to get even an ounce of work done for my freelance clients. I was easily distracted. It even affected how it could eat food: because of the high executive dysfunction that was now in my brain, I could only eat food that was simple in texture, simple to prepare, and easy to eat. I ate a lot of cups of Kraft Mac and cheese at that time. It was basically my lifeblood to survive.
It was made even more difficult because I was living with my abusive parents. I had no other choice at the time, and in the state I was in, I was worried that I wouldn't ever be able to move out. If you've never experienced what it's like to be scared every single day, waiting to be screamed at for doing something wrong or accidently missing this or what, I hope you never do.
Eventually, in April, my mother did something terrible to me (which I am not ready to discuss fully yet), and played a huge part in me finally deciding I wanted to kill myself. That was what sent me to the ER, then the psych ward (aka inpatient). From there, I was sent to a residential treatment facility, and that is when my journey truly begun.
I spent around 14 months in treatment, from April 28th, 2022, to June 30th, 2023. It turned out that I had pseudo dementia, a mental health condition that manifests dementia like symptoms in the brain. It is treated by treating the underlying mental health problems, and so, my time in residential greatly helped with that. Unfortunately, I also got Covid in residential due to one of the places I went to badly containing an outbreak, and the brain fog manifests a lot of similar symptoms to the pseudo-dementia. Thankfully, it’s not nearly as terrible as it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not difficult.
<<return (back)>> I knew during treatment that I wanted to make a game about it, and now, that game has come to fruition. This is a museum of items & objects from during my treatment period: things that gave me life, things that gave me pause, and things that happened to me during one of the hardest times of my life I’ve ever experienced.
I’ve been putting items into what I call “memory boxes” since I was a kid. Perhaps due to my mother’s tendency to take pictures and gather objects to remember happy times, I’ve done the same thing. There are two boxes in my childhood home filled up with a multitude of objects that highlight my time growing up: my school badges, items from my teachers, graduation certificates, and so much more.
I see this game as a digital version of those “memory boxes”, compiled and made to be shared with a large amount of people. In this game, I look through the objects that highlight my time suffering with & recovering from pseudo-dementia. I want to look back on my time recovering from the disease, and share that reflection with you. I have been doing so, I can give a window into my experience to mental health treatment that it’s not the scary place that the media makes it out to be. That’s why this game exists.
I hope you have a good time looking through <i>My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition</i>. Thank you for playing.
Sincerely,
Bez
P.S. A note about the music:
All of the artists & songs that play in the background are ones I found during my time in recovery, music that helped me along in my journey. Please consider visiting the artists' pages and supporting them:
https://ratwyfe.bandcamp.com/
https://newgroundsdeathrugby.bandcamp.com/
https://skullpuppies.bandcamp.com/
<<return (back)>>April 28th, 2023 was the final straw for me. In addition to my memory problems, I was having financial difficulties, and living in an abusive home environment that continued to break me. I had been suicidal every week for almost 2 months, sinking deeper into a dark pit within my mind, and on April 28th, I decided I was done. That night, I told Eliana and my friends that I planned to finish the story of how [REDACTED] had violated me 11 days before, and then overdose on a medication I had. Everything felt 100% hopeless, and I didn’t see how things were ever going to get better. So I planned to end it all.
Eliana took action to send me to the hospital so I could go to the psych ward there. If you don’t know, the psych ward of a hospital, which is also known as “inpatient care”, is basically the ER but for mental health—bringing people from the brink of self-destruction back to center with therapy & medicine. I was in a psych ward in 2020, so I knew how these things went by now.
The night of April 28th, I was sent to the actual ER first for an assessment of my condition, and from there, I was brought to the psych ward. I was checked in close to midnight and given a room. The next day, my treatment began.
That was the first step of what would end up being a very long journey of mental health recovery. . .
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On the 29th of April, the morning after I had arrived at inpatient, I wrote a long rant in one of my notebooks about how everything was pointless and that there was no hope. <a href="museum/writings/ipapril29th.txt" target="_blank">You can click here to read it in full.</a>
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When I was in the ER, they couldn’t give me access to a pen due to my suicidal ideations—they were scared I would hurt myself. But I was desperate for a writing utensil, and they were able to give me a little crayon pack: one that you would give to children, with the colors yellow, red, blue, and green. I was very grateful to receive it.
I was working on a story initialed “CAC” at the time, with 2 characters who were represented with the colors red & blue. One of them is a tiny person, around 4-5 inches tall; he’s the red one. During my time in the ER, while I was waiting to go to the hospital’s psych ward, and during my time in the psych ward, I would make drawings of Cibil comforting Apollo.
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This is another item I took with me to inpatient. It’s a bubble mailer that my friend C sent me in the mail. There used to be just a book & letter inside, but now, I was using it to store notes & cards that my friends had sent me (including the original letter, of course). It held encouraging words from the people who cared about me, and that’s why I brought it to inpatient.
You can also see the words, “DO NOT THROW OUT!” written on the top. This is because I was worried that, due to my forgetful & afflicted mind, I would mistake the bubble mailer for trash and put it in the garbage. I wrote a reminder to myself to prevent that from happening.
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When I went to inpatient, I grabbed a bubble Mailer that my friend C had mailed to me, which had letters from her as well as other friends, along with a small notebook she had given me. That is a notebook pictured, as you can probably tell. I’m very grateful that I had this notebook, and it was extremely important to me in the early months of my recovery. I used it as my diary, to chronicle the things that were going on, and as a way to write down things I had to do for myself so I didn’t forget. I wrote down friends’ phone numbers to call when I had consistent phone access again. So many things are in there. I am so happy that she gave me that notebook.
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<<if visited() is 1>>You have entered the first part of the museum: the Inpatient Showcase.<<else>><<endif>>
[[Read the introductory statement on the wall|ipintro]]
[[Look at a the framed paper on the wall titled: A Spiral On April 29th|ipap29]]
[[Walk south ⇩|7]]
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I brought my smaller sketchbook with me to inpatient so I could draw, and it ended up being filled with art by the time I finished with recovery. On the front are various stickers I had; I wanted the book to show off some cool stuff, have some personality, you know? I think it turned out pretty nice. Included in the image is a small ruler to show scale—you’ll see why I included that later.
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The composition books I got at the inpatient were specifically this shade of purple. That was just the color they chose to give out, I guess. I took 3 purple notebooks from that place, and found a few more along the way during my mental health journey, too.
In this particular notebook, I started writing a transmasc steampunk thriller while I was in inpatient. The tentative title is <i>Release The Gears</i>. I worked on it throughout my treatment path, and ended up putting it aside in the latter half of 2022, to focus on other projects. Hopefully it will be shown in some form in the future!
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From what I understand, patients stay in the psych ward until their lives are no longer at risk. In my case, that means that I was to stay there until I was no longer committed to ending my life. I didn’t see how that was going to happen, because I saw life as completely hopeless, and death as the only way out of a despair-filled existence. That is, until I had a dream on the night of April 30, 2022.
I had not dreamed in years. I had received a new medication regiment in 2020, during my first psych ward stay, and since then, I no longer dreamed at night. However, when I arrived at inpatient in 2022, I was soon diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and given a new medication for that. The night I took my first dose of that medicine, I had an extremely vivid dream, one where I died at the end.
I woke up extremely disturbed by this, and angrily stomped out of the room to look at the clock in the psych ward (there was only 1 single clock, you see). Once I saw it was only 1:30am, I was angry—I had been hoping it was around 5am, so I could stay up until a proper morning arrived, but since it was still very early, I would have to go back to sleep. And I was afraid of returning to sleep due to the disturbing death in my dream.
But that’s when it hit me: if I wanted to kill myself, why did dying in a dream disturb me so much?
I went to my bed and took out the notebook C gave me, writing down what had happened so far and questioning myself further on this. Eventually, I had to ask myself the question in the core of it all: did I want to die, and take a gamble on what lied beyond, or instead gamble with the hand I had in the land of the living, no matter how shitty it might be.
In the end, I decided I wanted to live. And so, I no longer wanted to end my life.
Of course, nothing is that simple. I still fought with suicidal thoughts and deep depression. But that was my first step out of the darkness that had shrouded me, and towards something resembling light.
<a href="museum/writings/ipdream.txt" target="_blank">You can read the full transcript of the journal entry of the dream by clicking here.</a>
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I originally bought this as a gift for my twin, Eliana, and had been keeping it in my room. The idea of the book is that on each page, there is a different sentence about what you’re grateful for in the person you’re gifting the book to, and you have to fill in the blanks in the sentence. I thought it would be a cute present, and even found a little card to go inside of the tiny object.
As I got more & more suicidal, I fretted that I wouldn’t live long enough to fill out the book for Eliana’s birthday and give it to them at that time. I became somewhat fixated on it, and debated on what to do about it over & over again, as I recall.
So when I went to inpatient, I decided to bring it with me, and make it my final gift to Eliana before I killed myself. I would fill it out, and leave it for them as my goodbye to them.
Of course, that all turned around when I decided I wanted to live. And I realized (thanks to, as strange as it sounds, a YouTuber’s critique of <i>Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2</i>) that leaving a final gift for Eliana and then killing myself would be kind of a dick move. Now that I wanted to stay, I filled out the book of various things I’m grateful for regarding my awesome twin, and wrote a very different card than I initially thought I would. <a href="museum/writings/ipcard.txt" target="_blank">With permission, I have transcribed the card, and you can read its contents here.</a>
This turned from a final gift before my death, to the first gift to someone regarding my new life.
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I drew this the day my father told me I wouldn’t be going home from the psych ward, and I had to go to a higher level of care. At the time, this felt like a death sentence—not because I objected to receiving mental health treatment, but because of the reality it represented.
Being sent home would have meant I could attend the upcoming neurology appointment with my test results, and finally have some solid answers about what was wrong with my brain. But being shipped off to some facility across state lines, while my memory & cognitive ability was getting worse, and I was unable to get out to get help? That could mean disaster. The framing also was that I was being shipped off to TR not because I needed to, but because I had spoken up about the abuse in my home, and now, I was being punished for it.
I cannot fully express how much this felt like my father sending me somewhere to die. He was damn fucking lucky that the problem with my memory happened to be linked to mental health—if it had not, and if it had been a physical problem that just got worse & worse while at the next facility? Then he would have been responsible for my deterioration and full decline.
That was what weighed heavily on me when I drew this. As depicted in the art, it felt like I was finally climbing a rope upwards, towards hope & light, only for it to snap, and for me to fall in the abyss, deep in the depths. I am very grateful that things didn’t turn out as bad as they could have been.
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After my life was no longer at risk, I was supposed to go home from inpatient. However, when I and the psychiatrist at the psych ward called my father about this, he refused to take me in, because I was “dangerous”. The things he listed out to prove this were all times that I had been standing up against his abusive behavior. I want to make sure that’s very clear: because I stood up against his abuse, I was deemed as a danger to him.
He asked the psychiatrist if there was a higher level of care I could go to. She suggested TR in Pennsylvania. The two of them continued to discuss this despite my protests. When she hung up the phone, she said to me, “It’s clear you can’t go back home. So, you can go to TR, or you can go to the homeless shelter. It’s up to you.”
Given those choices, I chose TR. But it wasn’t a choice I liked making. It felt like my father was sending me across state lines, to some strange medical facility, because he didn’t like my resistance to his abuse. Even worse, my memory was getting worse, and it would only continue to get worse while I was trapped in this place in Pennsylvania. At the rate I was going, my mind would be a husk of what it had been, and all before I knew it. Because of these factors, it felt like my father had sent me there to die.
I was lucky that TR actually turned out to be a nice place. Even luckier, they allowed me to use their computers to attend my telehealth appointment with my neurologist. That was when he told me that it was likely I had pseudo-dementia—which made sense, because my memory had felt better since I arrived at TR. The fact that I had experienced dementia-like symptoms at the ripe old age of 24 was a hard pill to swallow, but once I did so, I was able to focus on my mental health treatment, as that is the key to pseudo-dementia treatment as well.
My time at TR was pivotal to my recovery, and gave me a ton of hope. I chose to be with the women’s housing, because I am much more comfortable around AFAB people, and because of my presence, they changed their cheer to, “Go warriors!” instead of, “Go women!” to make me feel included. It was a super nice gesture, and one I greatly appreciated.
This area shows some pivotal items I had or received at TR. I hope it gives a glimpse into my time there.
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One big consistency across each facility was the paper folders. Sometimes with the facility’s logo, sometimes not, but usually given to hold the rulebook, description of services, and worksheets/packets a client would receive during therapy. There were a lot of the latter, trust me.
In this case, these folders are covered in stickers I was given at TR--there were A LOT of stickers given there, and it was a nice little thing that gave me joy. The "Other Shit" folder is for research and notes regarding <i>Release The Gears</i>, which I was still writing at the time.
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TR gives everyone who stays there a big bag so they can carry all of their things. I found this very helpful, because I soon had two very large folders of papers that needed to be brought from place to place. It would have been ideal for me to use my backpack, due to the nerve pain in my left wrist, but I wasn’t allowed to have that back until after I left.
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This is on the back of a little notebook that my friend C gave me. It has things I put on it while at TR: a few positive stickers from early in my recovery process, before I fully believed the words those stickers said. When I was about to leave inpatient for TR, I promised my friend P that I wouldn’t lose all of my hope, and I found a sticker with the word “hope” for my notebook, to remind me of that.
The bottom half is painting I did in the art room. The words on it hard to make out because they’re fading and the painting is scratched up from wear & tear, but here’s what it says:
“I don’t have religious faith anymore. Fuck no.
But <i>hope</i> in the general sense, in the future-could-be-ok sense, I have.
Even if that is as small as a mustard seed, at least ⇨ I have it. At least ⇨ it’s there. I have it.”
In case you’re not aware, the mustard seed part is a reference to a biblical passage: Matthew 17:21. Jesus has just driven a demon out of a young boy, and the disciples ask why they were unable to drive the demon out. Jesus tells them, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (NIV translation)
I didn’t have faith in God that’s as small as a mustard seed, because I didn’t (and don’t) believe in God anymore. But I had hope for my future that was as small as a mustard seed, and now, it has blossomed beautifully.
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While at TR, I developed a new story concept, based around the idea of fictional bands (like Gorillaz, for example). I drew these four characters who were brought together to be in a band called Sailor Souls, all of whom have their own inner demons that are finally able to be dealt with, thanks to the power of found family. This is a drawing I made of all of the members: (from left to right) Cedric Kingsley on keyboard (transgender man, he/him), Lionel Cross on drums (e/em, also acts as the percussionist & music producer), Sydney Ziegler (he/ze) on guitar, and Amy Cherish (she/they) on bass. Each character is also represented by a color, which is on the collars of their sailor shirts: Cedric is green; Lionel is red; Sydney is yellow; and Amy is blue.
I had already been drawing some comics here and there at TR, but these characters inspired me to kick that into high gear. I drew multiple comics about them overcoming awful things through the power of friendship, and even showed them to multiple other people while I was there. There’s a particular part that I really love in the comics, when Lionel (pronouns: e/em/eir) is getting tormented by dark thoughts in eir brain, but e breaks out of it and uses the words, “I am not alone,” to ground emself, to return to reality. I love that part.
I would like to clean up the comics and publish them one day. I love these characters so much, and their story needs to be shared, I think.
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This is a little plushie that Eliana, my twin, gave me when I went to inpatient, though I don’t think I got him back until after my stay there. It’s of one of their anime husbandos (a character she loves), a member of a fictional band called MooNs named Sekimura Mikado, a kind gentleman and genuinely nice guy. Eliana called the plush “Little Seki”.
I brought Little Seki everywhere with me during my time at every single facility, carrying him inside of my bag. When I got stressed in group or therapy, I brought out Little Seki to both think of Eliana and use his fluffy head as a stress toy. Having that plush helped me think of the person who loves me most in the world, and was an anchor for me, especially when things got really hard.
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A fellow artist at TR, A, gave me an extra sketchbook that she wasn’t using, one that was/is much bigger than the one I started with. As you can see in the picture, it’s quite a bit taller than the small metal ruler I put down for scale. I’m very grateful I met A, and this sketchbook has been sustaining me to this very day.
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At TR, I had access to an art room that had all kinds of supplies. One of the projects I devoted myself to was painting all 4 of my family members—or at least ⇨, my family members in the ways that I saw them—which included myself. Each of us is represented by a different color: I’m sea green; Eliana is orange; my mother is bronze; and my father is blue. I’ll briefly describe each painting to you.
In my painting (top left), I am a phoenix rising, with a shining center that is painted with the transgender & nonbinary flags. I’ve broken from the chains of my mother & father, and though they’ve both left deep wounds in my wings, I can still fly free.
In Eliana’s painting (top right), it says, “Do no harm, take no shit!” which is basically what my twin stands for. I painted a music note to represent their audio expertise, and the two faces on the notes show their courage to stand up for what’s right (left) and their willingness to help others get better at their craft (right). Their words echo around and affect many people, which is why there’s sound lines around the music note. And of course, the nonbinary flag is painted on there, too, because they are nonbinary.
In my mother’s painting (bottom left), there is a stethoscope to represent her medical profession. But her heart is dark & murky, with clawed hands coming out of it, which make wounds that make a river of blood. Despite her commitment to do no harm, she causes pain without remorse.
And in my father’s painting (bottom right), he too has been affected by the same darkness as my mother, and it pours out of him, a black fog that shrouds any happiness in the room. But these monstrous acts are disguised by a happy, smiling face, one that people tend to trust. They don’t see the darkness until it is too late, if they see it at all.
I gave Eliana’s painting to them and kept the rest for myself. I didn’t paint my parents for them; I painted those canvases for me. They have caused so much pain towards me throughout my life, and I wanted to illustrate that in some way.
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The month previous, on April 29th, I wrote a long, hopeless rant in my notebook. I decided to write a follow-up to that exactly a month later, on May 29th. It covers how I my mindset had done a total 180 from what it had been before, and how things were actually looking up. <a href="museum/writings/trmay29th.txt" target="_blank">Click here to read it.</a>
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Near the end of my time at TR, I stopped by the office of one of the folks in charge, so she could give me the necklace & wire frame that went with my graduation amethyst. As my hazy memory recalls, she asked for a pen, and I dug through my pocket, putting items on the table as I searched for one. I explained that I had started carrying objects that meant something to me in my pocket, and she offered me the pouch that is in the picture, to help me better carry them.
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When you graduate from TR, you receive an amethyst. My understanding is that only the women, or people living in the women’s quarters, receive the amethyst as a necklace.
There is a graduation ceremony. Everyone in your group sits in a circle, and the amethyst is passed around. Each person gives their well-wishes to the person who is graduating, and “presses into the stone” something they want the person to have. Things like “sobriety”, or “love”, or “peace”, stuff like that. Then the amethyst is passed to the group member next to them, that person does the same thing, and so on & so forth until everyone has pressed something into the stone. Later on, you are given the necklace: you get to choose the string color, and then, the stone is put in the wire frame attached to it.
In the picture is my amethyst necklace. I’ve tried to wear it daily since graduating from TR, but I do sometimes miss days. And at BH (more on that later), I couldn’t wear it at all, because a lot of my stuff was held by the staff, and that was among the things held.
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At TR, someone I met (S) gave me some extra journals she had. One of them was <i>The Art Of Zen</i>, which I tried to write in daily after I got discharged from TR. I managed to do so pretty consistently until around January of 2023, but I still try to go back to the journal when I can. Missing so many days makes it a bit of a challenge, though, because the journal is meant to be daily—its parts are named after the four seasons, with prompts based on those seasons as well.
I’m grateful for this journal, as it helped me look inward as a daily activity. That’s something I try to keep up to this day.
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I can’t remember what inspired me to write this—I assume it was a prompt from my <i>The Art Of Zen journal</i>. But I made this daily affirmation for me on May 29th, 2022, for me to read every morning. I use(d) it as a bookmark in my journal so I wouldn’t forget to read it. On the front, it says this:
“[[I am safe right now. I am protected. I am helped by those who care about me, and I can help & care for myself. Keep doing that today & everyday. Give yourself love, because you are important. You are protected. You are safe.|fsdaily2]]”<<illustration "museum/3imgs/fsdaily2.jpg">>\
It continues on the back, where there is a second affirmation:
“You will make it through the present darkness. You and those who care for you will find a way out. You can recover from even this. It is a new day, and soon, it will be a new season. You are worth saving, and you will be saved. You’ll never fight alone. Keep going.”
(The “You’ll never fight alone,” line is from one of my favorite videogames from my childhood, <i>Yggdra Union: We’ll Never Fight Alone</i>. Why? Because I’m a big nerd, of course!)
Reading those words every morning, on both the best days and the worst days, really helped to ground me. Like with my journal, I’ve fallen off of the habit for a while, but looking over it for this museum reminds me how much I need to return to it.
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From TR, I was sent to a lower-level facility in Maryland called FS. TR was basically like a mental health retreat, a bubble that was located away from society. FS was the start of a return to the “real world”, with patient/client housing in a city and transportation to & from the mental health building. The happy haze of TR was replaced with reality and its challenges—or, at least ⇨, a smaller version of it, for me to grapple with while I worked on myself.
One of those things was dealing with misgendering. There had been problems at TR, but overall, they were accepting of me & my identity. At FS, it was much more of a challenge, and the staff were slow to help me. Because of this, I eventually made a giant, five-inch-long nametag to wear every day, with my pronouns being the most prominent feature on it. Even then, I was misgendered by many people during my time there, even by folks who had known me for weeks.
It's also important to understand what level of care I was currently at. TR had been a residential program, basically the highest level of care available. I was at FS for their “PHP” (Partial Hospitalization Program, which is a fancy way of saying, “You need to attend more mental health groups and for longer times.”) and I was set to continue PHP, then go to an “IOP” (“Intensive Outpatient Program”, which is a fancy way of saying, “Ok, we’ll chill out; you don’t have to go to as many groups for as long of a time per day.”) after that.
As I was wrapping up PHP, it looked like I would have to attend IOP in Maryland by moving into a sober house, which FS’s social worker was helping me get into. I had been hoping I could go back to my home state of New Jersey for my IOP program, but I was starting to accept that Maryland would be a temporary home.
However, a few days before I was supposed to go there, FS’s social worker found a place in south ⇩ Jersey that would take me! Soon after that, I headed to my home state for the third step of my journey.
I was at FS for only a few weeks, but it was a pivotal place, my first stop in my trip back to reality after TR. It tested the coping mechanisms I had learned in TR’s “bubble”, and helped me take the first few steps back into “the real world”.
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When I got discharged from inpatient, I was given everything but one item: my cell phone. Whether the staff lost it, or my father (who dropped off my stuff) did something to it, I’ll never know. It didn’t matter much at TR, because we weren’t allowed to use our cellphones there anyway. But as I came closer to discharge, I knew it was going to be a big problem to be without my cell.
So, when I was having my intake interview with FS, I asked the person who was interviewing me, R, if there was a house phone of some sort, that I could use to make calls. I explained why I was asking, going into the issue of my missing phone. R told me that yes, there was a house phone—but also, he had an extra cell phone that he could send to me, once I arrived at FS! This wasn’t something he needed to do at all—this was something he was doing by himself, one stranger to another, and I am still overwhelmed by gratitude when I think of this.
I agreed eagerly to his offer, and so, not long after I got to FS, I got a package from R with the phone in it. It was still new. There was no SIM card, but I didn’t care about that. I could get on the internet—I could contact my friends, the people I cared about, in a consistent manner! Thanks to R’s generosity, my world opened up.
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The folder I got from FS! I put some of the stickers I got from TR on it, to (1) motivate me, and (2) make it clear which one was mine, because everyone gots the same folder. In the folder were intake forms introducing me to the mental health program and its attached housing program. Just like at TR, this folder quickly got filled with plenty more papers along. You get a lot of papers on mental health in these kinds of programs. I seriously cannot emphasize that enough.
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This is the pronoun badge/name tag I made during my time at FS. It’s laying on top of the composition notebook that I used for most of my recovery journey (eventually it got full, and I had to get a second one to continue making therapy notes and whatnot). As for the badge, I think it’s safe to say that the pronouns are very visible, and those who saw it had no excuse for calling me she/her. Or at least ⇨, I’d like to think so. I tell you, getting misgendered all of the time (even despite the giant sign pinned to my shirt) was an exhausting situation.
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Source of the image: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/twilight-imperium-fourth-edition/ (the official website)
One of the people I met at FS was a transgender person named K—finally, I wasn’t the only trans fellow! And she LOVED board games & card games. I also love them, so the two of us would play together often. One day, she offered to pick up the board game <i>Twilight Imperium</i>, one she had played before, if I would play it with her. I agreed, and not long after, I was introduced to one of the coolest games I’ve ever played in my life.
It’s a sci-fi space game about conquering other planets and controlling the galaxy. There are an array of different aliens to play as, technologies and items to find/create, things to influence, and more. There’s a lot of strategy involved, a lot of moving pieces, but once you get the handle of things, it’s easy to understand the flow of play.
A lot of my memories of FS are traced with playing <i>Twilight Imperium</i> in the basement with K. The game is so long that over the course of a few weeks, we were only able to complete 2 sessions. I would love to play it again sometime—perhaps at a board game store that has it (I can’t afford to buy it myself at the moment, unfortunately)? Thanks for introducing me to an awesome game, K!
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This was made during an art therapy exercise: we had to draw “how you feel now” on one side of the paper, and “how you would like to feel” on the other side.
On the left, I drew the “how I feel now”: anger at being misgendered and disrespected as a queer person (that’s the big, roaring creature on the left), with my true self/potential (the little blue-green fella on the right side of that section) shrunken because of that. I kept the color I had used for myself in the family paintings at TR in this: my true self is a sea green color, or as close as I could get to it with the crayons available.
This is the drawing of the person I aspire to be: an ethereal bird-dragon with sea green & robin blue on their scales, two of my favorite colors (here, blue represents calm, and green represents growth). They have many hands that they can use to reach out and help others, to touch peoples lives with, to give when they can in order to lift people up. And even with all the scars they have, they glow as a light in the darkness. That’s who I aspire to be. I can only hope that I have achieved that, even in some small way.
<a href="museum/writings/fsideal.txt" target="_blank">You can read the full description of the drawing here.</a>
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I had been waiting for a letter from my friend P for quite a while, and she finally mailed it when I was at FS. But as it was heading my way, my discharge date was getting tossed around. For a while, it looked like I would leave the facility before the letter got there! But thankfully, the day before I was supposed to be discharged, I checked the mailbox, and there was P’s letter!
She sent me a whole bubble mailer of nice things, including a very sweet & kind letter that really touched my heart. I kept the bubble mailer to go with my other one, adding to the handwritten encouragements that I had received from my friends. Thanks for writing to me, P!
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On one of my final days at FS, I got the opportunity to paint again, like I had done at TR. I can’t remember if there was a prompt we had to interpret for this art, but this is the final result.
I continued the representative colors I had used at TR in the family paintings: my father is blue; my mother is bronze; I am sea green; and Eliana is orange.
In the painting, I am escaping the clutches of my abusive parents, which are represented by the blue sea with strokes of shining bronze). I am soaring in the sky mainly thanks to the support of Eliana (that’s why the flames of the jet pack I’m painted with has mostly orange flames. The yellow ones might represent my friend P, but I can’t 100% recall). The purple & pink birds are supposed to be the many people who have helped me get to that point. Thanks to everyone I love, I am able to be free.
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(This isn’t the actual Covid test from the time, just a picture of an at-home Covid test to represent that object/period.)
FS had an outbreak of Covid that they failed to contain properly, and I ended up getting sick in early June of 2022.
I would describe how it affected me as “a sinus infection from hell”. It had all the symptoms of a sinus infection, with some other, worse symptoms plopped on top of it. At its worst, I was delirious and tired, with a splitting headache—and my case of Covid reached its worst when I was at a barbeque with my housemates and the staff. Because I wasn’t “officially” sick (I had tested negative on the rapid test) I still had to attend events with everyone, even though I felt like shit. I didn’t know it was Covid yet, but
I stumbled around the barbeque, my head throbbing & feeling hot, looking for the staff member who had driven us there. When I found him, I explained that I very likely had Covid and I needed to go to urgent care. At first he was resistant, but eventually he rounded everyone up to leave, and I was dropped off at the urgent care on their way back to the house. There, I got another rapid test, and a more accurate PCR test. A week later, the PCR test came back positive.
There’s more I could discuss here, but I don’t feel like possibly incurring the wrath of the company behind FS. For now, I’ll just say that they handled the Covid outbreak incredibly unprofessionally and went against the order of my doctor in my particular case.
It was even worse for me, too, because it directly affected my pseudo-dementia recovery. I had been on the up-and-up, improving greatly as my mental health care continued. But when I got Covid, my brain got knocked down to a level I had been at pre-recovery.
One of the major symptoms is something I call “time blindness”: the basics of it is that for every 3 hours that passed, I mentally experienced/felt that only 1 hour had passed. The 3:1 ratio is consistent, too: 30 minutes felt like 10 minutes, for example. A bunch of pseudo-dementia symptoms returned, but time-blindness is one of the most horrific ones to me. It feels like I am out of sync with reality.
And so, when I left FS a few weeks later, my brain had regressed greatly, and had only improved a little bit. This is, I know now, thanks to Covid brain fog really messing me up. Thankfully, I was given some solutions during my time at RL, but that will come later.
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I celebrated my 25th birthday while in treatment. A quarter-century is a pretty big milestone, and I like big, bombastic celebrations for such things. But I was in RL, and not able to organize such a thing, so for me, it was mostly just another day.
The best part of it, though, was that Eliana would finally open the gift I had given them: since they loved corgis, I had gotten them a corgi head. We did a video call that day, and I got to see Eliana for the first time since before I’d went to inpatient. It was really nice, and their reaction to my gift was everything I had wanted.
But Eliana wasn’t the only one who had gotten me a gift. My friend D also mailed me a red CD player for my 25th! One of the biggest things we have in common is our love of CDs, especially music CDs. On our last phone call, I had been talking about how I wanted to borrow music CDs from the local library, but didn’t have a CD player. So I was surprised & delighted to receive the device in the mail, along with a few mixes Danielle had made on CD!
Thanks, Eliana & D. You are the ones who made my 25th special.
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There was a man in RL’s housing staff who really didn’t like getting my pronouns right. When I corrected him, he would get temperamental and angry. On January 30th, while he was driving me to a doctor’s appointment (the staff would do such things for clients/patients [in the cars provided by RL, of course]), I decided I wanted to try talking to him about it. I assume misunderstanding before I assume malice, and hoped I could get him to understand why getting my pronouns right was important to me. But just in case he got angry again, I decided to audially record the incident.
It's a good thing I did, because the man became explosive. He yelled at me and accused me of “trying to rile him up”. In astonishment, I exclaimed, “Huh? What the fuck? I’m not doing that!” Because I swore in that sentence, he got louder, and threatened to get me kicked out of RL for swearing to staff. He called Y and angrily told her I was being hostile towards him. For the rest of the ride to the doctor’s office, he kept yelling and saying how he was going to “show me what happens when I mess with him".
When I was dropped off at the doctor’s, I stopped the recording. In the waiting room, I emailed Y a description of what really happened, along with a copy of the audio. I was really scared that the male staff member was going to do something terrible to get me kicked out.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen. However, despite breaking the NJ LAD (Law Against Discrimination) with his hostility towards me as a queer person, the male staff member wasn’t fired. I, on the other hand, was forced to sign a disciplinary contract for swearing at staff, and I was told if there was another “incident”, I would be kicked out.
When I told my IOP group what had happened, one of the friends I had made, C, got especially angry on my behalf. I had talked about other incidents of my queerness being disrespected at RL, but this was on a whole new level. And when I saw her next, she presented me with an adorable pronoun patch. “I know it doesn’t fix it, but at least ⇨ now, he has no excuse,” she said to me.
It showed me how much she truly cared about me getting respected, and the patch is still on the hoodie I always wear, right next to my, “Trans Rights Are Human Rights,” patch. Thank you, C. Even though something awful happened to me, your gift gave me light & hope when I really needed it.
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I was excited for 2022’s Christmas. I was going to see Eliana, and we were going to exchange presents, then spend the day together. That was enough to make my day special.
But as I was leaving RL a few days before Christmas, a staff member came up to me and informed me that she had something for me. It turned out to be a gift from one of my fellow group members, E: she had knitted me a scarf for the winter! And not just any scarf, either: this scarf had the colors of the nonbinary flag on it (a flag for LGBTQ+ people who feel their gender is not simply male or female). I had talked about my queerness in group before, and how it was difficult to be confident in myself when the staff kept misgendering me. So this gift was more than just cloth to me.
E was also a very special person. She was a nerd who liked anime (Japanese cartoons), and spoke openly about her interests. She gave me the confidence to do the same, and to be myself. I’m very thankful for our many conversations, our fanfic brainstorming, and the many nerdy images she saved on Instagram to show me during our group break. I’m very thankful I met her, and for the wonderful gifts she gave me (the scarf, and everything else too, in my heart).
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This is a picture from my room at RL. Since I was there for a long period of time, I decided to make the space my own, and hung up posters on the wall. The main focus of this will be on <i>Sk8 The Infinity</i> (you can recognize those posters by the “Sk8” logo on each one) and the <i>Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure</i> ones (which are the green & red posters on top). Both are anime, or cartoons from Japan.
<i>Sk8</i> had been recommended to me by my friend R, back when I was struggling with pseudo-dementia. Because my mind was so unfocused, I had to put on some kind of video to get anything done, including eating food, and I was looking for new content to watch. When I was at RL, I remembered the recommendation, and decided to give it a watch.
I loved it, to say the least ⇨! It became a happy light during that time, a wonderful show that I greatly enjoyed. I really liked the characters and soundtrack; I spend a lot of time hyperfixating on both. It’s one of my favorite animes now, and gave me a lot of joy during my time at RL. I’m grateful for that. Thanks R!
As for <i>Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure</i>, that was an anime my friend P wanted to watch with me. During my time at RL, she asked if the two of us could watch <i>JJBA</i> together, from season 1 to season 6. Thus, a Friday night ritual began, where we would call and chat, then watch a few episodes of <i>JJBA</i> together.
I love P and greatly enjoy our time conversing. And I’m grateful she introduced it to <i>JJBA</i>, because I’ve come to really like it! It took a very long time to finish the whole thing together—almost a year! And now, <i>I</i> get to pick the anime we watch. Mwa-ha-ha!
But for real, <i>JJBA</i> has become synonymous with having fun with P, and I’m glad we watched the entire series together.
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Near the end of my time at FS, my friend Parker became part of a actual-play TTRPG stream called Heart Town Hunters. What that means is that Parker & the game group played a tabletop roleplaying game live on Twitch for people to watch & enjoy. I decided I should give it a proper listen as I was going to RL, so I downloaded all of the episodes that had come out so far (3, if I recall right) and listened to them on the long drive from Maryland to New Jersey.
To say the least ⇨, I fucking loved it. I fell in love.
In Heart Town Hunters, 3 teenagers with supernatural powers (Kokoro, played by Parker; Nozomi, played by Emma; and Kei, played by Adam) fight to protect their town from evil demons, but something bigger is coming for them. The game’s GM is Mark, and he did a fantastic job managing the story & gameplay. Oh, and ManaPot Studios produced the whole thing.
The entire time during my recovery, I had been drawing during groups, to help me focus on what people were saying (I need to be doing something with my hands). When I got to RL, I started drawing Heart Town Hunters fanart, and showing it to the team via Parker. In my free time, I came up with HTH’s opening & ending song for a hypothetical anime. And eventually, I made two different animatics of some moments that stuck out to me.
It was a very cool series, and every Wednesday night, I looked forward to the streams. HTH blessed my life with a fun, interesting story about some kickass characters, run by some amazing people. I’m glad I got to experience it all in real time.
And who knows? There may still be more HTH art in store in the future. Only time will tell.
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On April 29th, I wrote a very hopeless rant in my notebook, which I followed up on exactly a month later, writing about how things were hopefully again. I missed the 29th of June, but came back to it the 29th of July, going over how things were continuing to get better.. <a href="museum/writings/rljuly29th.txt" target="_blank">You can click here to read it.</a>
After that, I stopped writing these follow-up notes on the 29th, but I’m glad I was able to capture some very distinct stages of my recovery process.
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In late June, my hands started being temperamental. That’s a nice way of saying that nerve pain would bother me when I was texting, drawing, or typing. At first it was only during thumb movement, but it eventually affected both wrists. So, I started wearing braces on my hands.
I had De Quervain's tenosynovitis in 2017-2018, and in the end, that was solved with a simple shot. So I figured this would be the same thing. However, I was told that nowadays, it was known that physical therapy was much better for such problems than a steroid shot. So I went to PT instead.
It was really tough at first. My wrists were in burning pain all the time—it turned out to be tendonitis. I couldn’t write or draw for very long without my hands hurting, and as someone who had been creating things with writing utensils & keyboards since I was around 6, this felt extremely unnatural. It was like I was cut off from a part of myself.
Thankfully, it didn’t last. After a few weeks, I was able to use my hands normally again, provided I stretched (which would be around 40-60 minutes total per day, when added up). But my condition fluctuated: sometimes my wrists would be looking up, but then, they’d be in burning pain even when I stretched daily. In the end, I was diagnosed with chronic tendonitis and discharged. I don’t say that to knock the physical therapists or anything; they were absolutely fantastic, and I am so grateful for them. They were great, and did everything they could to help with a condition that turned out to be chronic, giving me the skills I need to cope with it.
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Back at FS, I got Covid, and that directly affected my brain, regressing my mental state and bringing back some very bad pseudo-dementia symptoms. So when I got to RL, getting my head back to something resembling normal was a top priority for me. I was told to see a psychiatrist outside of RL for help with my meds, and I did. That’s when I met Dr. B.
First of all, it’s important to note that my pseudo-dementia hadn’t been officially diagnosed by this point. It was what my neurologist thought I had, but a neurologist can’t diagnose a psychiatric condition. That was something I tried to get done at FS, but failed. I was hoping Dr. B could finally diagnose me, or at least ⇨, give me some sort of answer, if it wasn’t pseudo-dementia after all.
After evaluating me and asking plenty of questions, Dr. B did indeed diagnose me with pseudo-dementia. There was a mix of feelings inside of me: happiness & relief that I had finally been officially diagnosed, but also sadness that I truly had this condition. But now that it was finalized, what next?
On my next visit with Dr. B, I brought up Covid making my mind regress, and asked him if he knew anything that could help me at this point. He suggested the supplement that is pictured: Acetyl-L-Carnitine with Alpha-Lipoic Acid (which is 700 miligrams total, if you’re interested in the numbers) and specifically the GNC brand. I had my doubts that a supplement could help me, but I agreed to try it, and took it as instructed over the course of a few weeks.
After 2 weeks of taking it, I could feel my brain progressing, and the worst of the pseudo-dementia symptoms retreated from me. To say I felt relief would be an understatement: I was absolutely elated! I still take the supplement, and I’m very thankful Dr. B introduced it to me.
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I swear to god—every time I read a book by Alice Oseman, I have an internal crisis. She is the author of the books pictured, all of which were meaningful to me during & after my recovery.
I read <i>Loveless</i> first, in July or August of 2022, after I could check out books from the library near RL. I was really excited about a YA novel about an asexual character—if you don’t know, asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others (completely or partially, as asexuality is a spectrum). I was just expecting a good story that would be affirming to my own asexuality. And it <i>was</i> that, but also, it made me deeply ponder what my aceness <i>means</i> to me, and whether I am on the aromantic spectrum. Aromanticism is a lack of romantic attraction, and it’s also a spectrum, like asexuality. <i>[[Loveless|rloseman2]]</i> also made me think about my thoughts on kissing, romance, and sex in a deeper way than I had before. <<illustration "museum/4imgs/rloseman2.jpg">>\
I read <i>I Was Born For This</i> much later, in January of 2023. It features a transgender man as one of the deuteragonists, and I wasn’t expecting much aside from a good queer story. But to my surprise and frustration, after I finished the book, I found myself in one of the biggest gender crises I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve had these crises before, times in my life where I struggle to put words & feelings to who I am internally, but this was the biggest one. For years, I’ve known that I’m a transgender man and <i>something</i> else, but I’ve never had the words for what that “something else” is, so I’ve just put it under the nonbinary/enby label. But after reading <i>I Was Born For This</i>, I wanted to know what that “something else” was more than ever before—and I finally realized, it wasn’t a <i>something</i>. It was <i>nothing</i>. That was when I realized I was a transgender man, <i>and</i> agender, or genderless. The specific word is libramasculine, if you were wondering. Thanks to <i>I Was Born For This</i>, I finally found the language to describe my inner self, at long last.
Thanks, Alice Oseman. If I ever meet you, I can’t wait to tell you how you’ve wrecked/saved my life.
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I was at RL the longest out of any of the treatment centers. I was at TR for around 3 weeks; same with FS. RL, on the other hand, I was at for around 10 months.
Part of this was because I was still at PHP level, and it would take a while to get down to IOP. A lot of that was because RL was/is a newer treatment facility, and they were still getting their act together; because of this, they did things differently than other places (which is my fancy way of saying that their clients stayed there longer). And part of it was because—I’ll admit it—I got complacent & comfortable. I was hesitant to move to my next level of treatment because that would be one step closer to “the real world”, and all of the complications that came with it.
RL was a mixed bag. On one hand, the therapists and groups were great, truly wonderful. I even had a nonbinary & transgender therapist for the first time in my life, and they were amazing. All of the staff were fantastic, and very respectful of my queerness as well. It was great!
On the other hand, though, was the housing that the facility had. And the housing manager, Y, who is one of the most toxic people I have ever met. I experienced a lot of verbal & emotional abuse from her during my time there, which severely impacted me, as you can imagine. Even worse, her boss <i>knew</i> how abusive Y was/is, but refused to remove her. And that’s not getting into Y’s second-in-command, R, who was doing unspeakable things to male clients (and gained a keen interest in me once he fully realized I was a transgender man).
In January, all of the therapists at RL were either fired or put in their two-weeks notice. RL’s head said it was because “not everyone can cope with change” or some-such excuse. The therapists that replaced them were not at the same level as the previous staff. That was when I knew that I needed to leave. I had been dealing with Y’s abuse because of the excellent therapy, but now that the latter had been taken away, I needed to get the heck out of there!
But I was hesitant. Like I said, I had gotten complacent. Moving on meant moving closer to being discharged from treatment—and was I really ready for that? It was my twin Eliana’s encouragement that helped me take the next step, along with realizing that I didn’t want to just stay in an abusive situation if I could help it, damn it!
So, I and the office manager went looking for my next treatment facility, and eventually found BH. After months of being at RL, I went to the final stop in my mental health journey.
Now, though the housing manager at RL was bad, there were still plenty of things I gained there. This is a showcase of that.
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Just like everywhere else, when I got into RL, one of the first things I was given was a folder for my stuff. So this is what that was! I also had a second one that I used for my tabletop/paper/lyric games, and other miscellaneous papers that I received.
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Source for image: https://www.change.org/p/anybody-bring-back-wendy-s-s-awesome-sauce
One day, February of 2023, I wanted to go to the Wendy’s for dinner. I just did. Their chicken nuggets are good, ok? So I asked the behavioral technician, who had picked me up from a doctor’s appointment, stop there on the way home; there was a Wendy’s right in town, which was perfect.
I went inside and ordered a chicken nugget meal, and asked for plenty of the “S’Awesome” sauce, this tangy, wannabe Big Mac style sauce that I think is pretty great. The lady behind the counter told me that S’Awesome had been discontinued last summer, which all of this time, I had not realized. After I got my chicken nuggets with BBQ sauce instead and got in the car, I began to reflect on how I’d missed that—and how I’d missed out on a lot of other things.
I think one of the humbling facts about being away for recovery is how the world moves on without you. You come back from being away from society, and the changes from before stick out the most. How New Jersey outlawed plastic bags while you were away, and Wendy's discontinued their S’Awesome Sauce.
How the people you love are posting about the kids they birthed when you weren’t looking, or got married to their special person. How your birthday is suddenly around the corner, and your hair is the longest it's been in years.
When you’re getting better, it feels like time is frozen, waiting for you to be your best self before it starts back up again. But of course, that’s bullshit. You may have been away, but time stops for no man, regardless of their circumstances. And it’s one thing to know them logically (“Of <i>course</i> time never stops!”) but it’s another thing to experience that surreal truth. (“Of course. Time <i>never</i> stops.”)
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<i>i'm sorry did you say street magic</i> by Caro Asercion is one of the many indie TTRPGs I picked up along the way, about building a city together, piece by piece. I bought a physical copy in late 2022, when picking up a few other lyric games from an online storefront. What makes this one special is that I brought it to RL on a special “game day”, and ran a session with them, operating as the gamemaster/rule-giver for the group. It was a really great time, and I got to see creative sides of the people I’d come to know, parts of them I hadn’t had the honor of seeing before. When we were done, I asked the group leader if we could play again sometime, and she said yes.
And so, when there was a free opportunity, I would bring out <i>i'm sorry did you say street magic</i> and expand the city we had built. I always let people who hadn’t played before go during the first round, and after that, everyone could have a turn. I even ran a final session of saying goodbye to one city, before starting a new one the next time we played. This was so things didn’t get too bloated, and thus, the game could remain approachable to new people in the group.
I ran 5 sessions of <i>i'm sorry did you say street magic</i> in RL, and 2 sessions in BH. It truly was a wonderful game, and brought us all together in a beautiful way. I’m grateful to Caro Asercion for making it.
Also in this picture is the blue binder that holds printouts of some of the other indie ttrpgs & lyric games I found. I’m glad I got to collect so many of the projects that were meaningful to me in that way.
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This collection of items started very small, and slowly grew from there. I picked up some dice from Amazon because it looked like I would be playing a D&D game with my friend Parker. And since I had the dice, I decided to put it to use.
I can’t remember what that led me to look at lyric games and independent TTRPG’s on itch.io, but somehow I went there. As I recall, in my vague, cloudy memory, there was a specific game hat I had saved that I wanted to look into, and that led me to other lyric games along the way.
I am so happy that happened. Lyric games, if you don’t know, are basically a mix between a tabletop/paper game, and a meditation exercise. That’s the best way I can describe them. And those games really helped me during my recovery process, giving me spaces to process my emotions, increase my awareness of myself, and ponder on who I wanted to be. They became therapeutic exercises for me along the way, and I played many, <i>many</i> lyric games during the second-half of 2022.
That’s why I picked up the tarot deck. Quite a few lyric games require tarot deck to play it, so I figured I might as well grab one for that purpose. And I did use tarot deck to play quite a few lyric games, but I also use it as a meditative item in and of itself. I don’t know how much I believe in terms of divinity, but it does help me reflect on my current problems when I need to draw a card for that reason, and reflect on my personal past, present, and future when I do the three-card reading. I have also got in quite a few readings from other people In different recovery centers, and those have also helped me along the way as well.
<a href="museum/writings/rlgames.txt" target="_blank">I will include a full list of the lyric games and independent TTRPG’s I found along the way here. I highly recommend you check them out.</a>
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BL was the last stop on my mental health journey. I don’t have as much to share on it item-wise, but I do have a lot to say here in this intro.
Massachusetts was a breath of fresh air in terms of how queer people like me were treated. If I was misgendered, it was quickly corrected and the person apologized. I didn’t have to argue that my identity deserved respect, like I had to do at FS & RL; at BH, respect towards my queerness was a given, not something I needed to earn.
In addition, the staff there were all very kind & professional (aside from the caseworkers—they were absolutely awful). The therapists were amazing, too. BH’s housing manager, M, was very stern, and though that was triggering to me at times because of what had happened with Y, I knew she wasn’t trying to be mean, and that she had my best interests at heart. And the other patients/clients at BH were also great people; I met some amazing folks there.
But the biggest problem for me was that after BH, my journey would come to an end. It was time to face the real world—which meant finding a place to live. I searched fervently for an apartment for weeks, but because I am only a freelancer who doesn’t have a part-time or full-time job, that was difficult. It got to the point that the BH staff told me that if I couldn’t find a place to live, then I would have to be sent to a homeless shelter upon discharge. I found that terrifying, but also somewhat amusing, in a messed-up way—after all, I had to choose between TR and a homeless shelter in the beginning of my journey, so in a way, everything had come full circle.
I kept up the housing search, and also called a few homeless shelter and resources for homeless people, in Massachusetts & New Jersey. But unlike on television, where homeless shelters always have room for anyone who needs it, real-life homeless shelters are often full. This was the case for the ones I called, and as my discharge date got closer & closer (and changed a few times along the way), it looked like I wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
But one of the staff members, W, who had been helping me with the housing search, gave me a phone number for a connection of his who could help. And when I talked about my situation with my transmasc support group, one of the members, N, offered to house me, and even drive me back to his place in NJ from Massachusetts. My friends also did what they could to help me, looking for resources and doing what they could to assist. I am constantly grateful of the kindness & support of the people who care about me, because if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am right now, that’s for sure.
Things with N got finalized pretty quickly, but W’s contact wasn’t calling me back. We’d had an initial conversation, and she said she was going to get in touch with people who could help; I hadn’t heard anything since. N was set to pick me up on Monday, July 2nd, but my discharge date was June 30th. I had thought I would find a place to stay over the weekend, but at the 30th loomed closer, I wasn’t having any luck.
It wasn’t until the morning of June 30th that W’s contact called me back and told me that she didn’t have any luck with her contacts. I explained the current state of things to her, and she said she would see what she could do. When I got to BH, they told me they would drop me off at a homeless shelter in Massachusetts for the weekend (I later learned that the shelter they were going to take me to is one of the worst in the country). So I mentally prepared myself for that. But then, W’s contact called, and said she’d found someone who was willing to house me for the weekend—as long as I didn’t mind dogs. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded being around a wolf pack if it meant having a place to stay!
So, things worked out at the last minute, all because of the kindness of strangers. What a ride, right?
I promise my stay at BH wasn’t as tumultuous as my final days/weeks there. It truly was a great place, and I am very thankful for everything I learned there. So, here are a few of the items that helped me along the way.
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/5imgs/bhpoem.jpg">>\
When I was looking back at the many papers I received at BH, I found this poem by yung pueblo, which reads:
“you can change your location
meet new people
and still have the same old problems.
to truly change your life,
you need to look inward,
get to know and love yourself,
and heal the trauma and dense conditioning
in your mind.
this is how you get to the root.
internal changes
have a significant external impact.”
It made me reflect on the journey I had taken so far, but mainly on the strides I was able to make at BH. There were things I hadn’t been able to fully tackle until while I was at that facility, realizations the therapists there helped me make. I’m very grateful for that.
Recovery and mental health are not easy. It’s never been easy. But I’m doing what I can. And I’m doing better than I ever have been. I’m trying to take that as a victory.
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/5imgs/bhfolders.jpg">>\
The BH folder! I had one main one for therapy worksheets, and mostly used the other two for my own personal documents. As you likely noticed, there are many folders in the recovery process, I tell ya that! They don’t mention that to you when you sign up, do they? ;)
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/5imgs/bhcroc.jpg">>\
During my first 2 weeks at BH, my phone was taken away, and I was not given the “walking privileges” to go out on the town (which for me basically means I couldn’t go to the library, which was one of the only places I wanted to go). I decided that I wanted to start and finish a book by the time I got my phone back, and so, I wrote down the story in the notebook I had been given when I first arrived at BH. I later was able to get a 2nd blank notebook to continue the story with.
I didn’t end up finishing the story by the time I got my phone back—however, I DID finish it the same week I got my phone back! So, I wrote a novelette/novella-length story in about 21 days! I’m very proud of that achievement.
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/5imgs/bhbday.jpg">>\
During my last week at BH, I turned 26 years old!
When a person has a birthday at the facility, (1) a birthday card is printed and passed around for everyone to sign, and (2) everyone gets cupcakes with lunch due to the special occasion.
This was one of the most stressful birthdays I have ever experienced, because I was under the impression that I was going to be discharged that day—whether I had a place to go or not. My discharge date was eventually pushed to that Friday, the 30th, so I was able to celebrate my birthday in relative peace. Thank goodness!
<<return (back)>><<illustration "">>\
<<playlist "ex5music" volume 0.75 fadeout>>
<<audio "footsteps" play>>
<<timed 10s>><<goto "88.1">><</timed>>
<<createplaylist "exEndmusic">><<track "1rwspring" volume 1>><<track "2ndrhideaway" volume 0.50>><</createplaylist>><<illustration "">>\
<<playlist "exEndmusic" volume 0.75 fadeout>>
<<audio "footsteps" play>>
<<timed 10s>><<goto "fin">><</timed>>I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that the recovery journey never fully ends. Sure, the long period of being in treatment centers may be over, but I still have to put in daily maintenance in order to keep my mind in tip-top shape. Recovery is not a destination you can reach; it’s a mountain you can choose to climb.
It's thanks to the love & care of so many people that I’m still climbing. As I wrap up this game and reflect on the items I chose, I see the many people represented by the various objects. One of the things they tell you a lot in mental health recovery is to remember your support network, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that mine is much bigger & more beautiful than I ever could have guessed.
I hope that is the case for you as well. In the dark times of our lives, it’s the kindness of others that can really help us. I hope you are receiving kindness, wherever you are today.
Thank you again for visiting. Remember that there is love in the world.
--Bez, 9/22/23
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/ending/endoseman3.jpg">>\
Even after my treatment, Alice Oseman continues to ruin/save my life. I read her graphic novel series <i>Heartstopper</I> in August of 2023. From all the talk of the Netflix show and the cute art on the cover, I was expecting a fluffy, nice gay love story. And just like <i>Loveless</i>, the book is that, for sure. But due to one of the main character’s anorexia, I was also forced to face the reality of my own eating disorder. I thought about my views on food & my body, pondered the behaviors that have been with me since I was around 12 years old, coming in & out of my life. And thanks to another friend, I realized I had to get help. So I signed up for an eating disorder support group for the first time ever.
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/ending/endpouchfull.jpg">>\
The pouch I got at TR has been put to good use. It’s been given plenty more items since that time, mostly of which are from my time in recovery, but also from after, too. I won’t be going through and explaining every single object pictured, but each of them are meaningful to me.
<<return (back)>>This game explores my personal experience with a serious health crisis that affected me physically & mentally. I discuss my terrible mental health at the time, including my intense suicidal ideation & depression; I alsoshow some of the things I wrote about my perceived hopelessness. Spoiler alert: I do get better and gain hope, though my recovery from my health crisis continues even after that.
There is also discussion of mistreatment from medical facility staff, misgendering and having one's queer identity disrespected, and (at the very end) brief talk on eating disorders.
If any of these things are upsetting to you, please play this game with caution, or do not play it at all. Stay safe, ok?
<<return (back)>><<illustration "museum/map1/7.png">>\
[[Look at the object on the wall titled: The Friend Bubble Mailer|ipmailer]]
[[Walk north ⇧|7.1]]
[[Walk south ⇩|6]]
[[Walk east ⇨|9]]So after all of that, where am I now?
Currently, I’m living with N, and waiting for various state & federal support applications to come through (I applied for disability last year, in late 2022, and I’m still fighting to get it approved—this shit takes a while, I tell ya!). I’m doing freelance work and trying to get a full-time job. I don’t have insurance anymore, so my mental health meds are more expensive than they used to be, even with services like GoodRX that reduce cost. But regardless, I get them, because I know I’m a wreck without them, and I want to keep the good things they have given me.
I still struggle with pseudo-dementia symptoms thanks to Covid gave me, though it’s much reduced from what it was in 2022. Even so, my brain is still addled. Words disappear from my mind as I am about to say them; I have to pause and process sentences before they come out of my mouth; I forget how to do something I have done for years—small moments like those are everyday occurrences. I’ve tried to accept that my mind is just like this, and all I can do is live with it, and help it where I can.
<<return (back)>><<cacheaudio "footsteps" "museum/footsteps.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1ndrknithat" "museum/ex0music/1ndrknithat.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1ndrno1" "museum/ex0music/1ndrno1.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1rwunder" "museum/ex1music/1rwunder.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2ndrsea" "museum/ex1music/2ndrsea.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "3ndrkeys" "museum/ex1music/3ndrkeys.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "4ndrcannon" "museum/ex1music/4ndrcannon.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1rwcryptid" "museum/ex2music/1rwcryptid.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2rwgoblins" "museum/ex2music/2rwgoblins.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2spglovebox" "museum/ex2music/2spglovebox.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "3ndrcarabiner" "museum/ex2music/3ndrcarabiner.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "4ndrmark" "museum/ex2music/4ndrmark.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "5ndrpunch" "museum/ex2music/5ndrpunch.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "0rwghost" "museum/ex3music/0rwghost.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1rwflowers" "museum/ex3music/1rwflowers.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2rwshadow" "museum/ex3music/2rwshadow.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "3ndrbeep" "museum/ex3music/3ndrbeep.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "4spdeath" "museum/ex3music/4spdeath.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "5spmeaningless" "museum/ex3music/5spmeaningless.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2spfuck" "museum/ex4music/2spfuck.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "3spsword" "museum/ex4music/3spsword.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "4ndrbarx" "museum/ex4music/4ndrbarx.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "4spnerd" "museum/ex4music/4spnerd.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "5spmood" "museum/ex4music/5spmood.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1rwvape" "museum/ex5music/1rwvape.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2rwlotus" "museum/ex5music/2rwlotus.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "3ndrcreditcard" "museum/ex5music/3ndrcreditcard.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "1rwspring" "museum/exEndmusic/1rwspring.mp3">>
<<cacheaudio "2ndrhideaway" "museum/exEndmusic/2ndrhideaway.mp3">>
<<illustration "">>\
<<playlist "ex0music" volume 0.75 fadeout>>
<<audio "footsteps" play>>
<<timed 10s>><<goto "7.1">><</timed>>
<<createplaylist "ex1music">><<track "1rwunder" volume 1>><<track "2ndrsea" volume 1>><<track "3ndrkeys" volume 0.35>><<track "4ndrcannon" volume 0.35>><</createplaylist>><<illustration "museum/pdcoverfinal.png">>\
Thank you for visiting <u>My Pseudo-Dementia Exhibition</u>! To exit the museum, simply close this browser window.
[[Before you leave the premises, would you please consider signing the online guestbook?|https://forms.gle/HNKtBJLj4GvGcsmt6]]
[[Please also take a moment to view the music credits!|music credits]]
A very thanks to Josh Gram for creating the stylesheet for this game! He's the best!
Credits for footsteps sound effect: AlexMurphy53. Sounds used under a CC Attribution 4.0 License; it was trimmed for usage in this game.HUGE thank you to Ratwyfe, Newgrounds Death Rugby, and Skull Puppies for giving me permission to use their songs in this exhibition! PLEASE visit their music pages, and give them your support!
https://ratwyfe.bandcamp.com/
https://newgroundsdeathrugby.bandcamp.com/
https://skullpuppies.bandcamp.com/
Songs in order of appearance:
Introduction Area:
No. 1 by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Knit Hat by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Exhibit 1:
Underwater World by Ratwyfe]
shred the open seas (sea shanty) by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Keys by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Ultra Violent Light Cannon by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Exhibit 2:
cryptid (mothman) by Ratwyfe
Let's Be Goblins by Ratwyfe
Glovebox by Skull Puppies
Carabiner by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Who The Fuck Is Mark? by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Pipeline Punch by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Exhibit 3:
ghost song (ooOoooOoo) by Ratwyfe
flowers (prod. planes) by Ratwyfe
shadow man by Ratwyfe
Beep Beep Beep by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Death to Skull Puppies by Skull Puppies
Meaningless Molecules by Skull Puppies
Exhibit 4:
Spellcasting: F-U-C-K by Skull Puppies
Breaktime Broadsword by Skull Puppies
Snarl Barx by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Nerd Hutch by Skull Puppies
Mood Wrench by Skull Puppies
Exhibit 5:
Blue Rasberry Vape Cloud by Ratwyfe
isle of the lotus eaters by Ratwyfe
current credit card account by Newgrounds Death Rugby
Exit Area:
spring solstice by Ratwyfe
Hideaway by Newgrounds Death Rugby
<<return (back)>><<illustration "">>\
<<playlist "ex1music" volume 0.75 fadeout>>
<<audio "footsteps" play>>
<<timed 10s>><<goto "24">><</timed>>
<<createplaylist "ex2music">><<track "1rwcryptid" volume 0.90 >><<track "2rwgoblins" volume 0.90>><<track "2spglovebox" volume 0.35>><<track "3ndrcarabiner" volume 0.35>><<track "4ndrmark" volume 0.35>><<track "5ndrpunch" volume 0.35>><</createplaylist>><<illustration "">>\
<<audio "footsteps" play>>
<<timed 10s>><<goto "0">><</timed>>
<<createplaylist "ex0music">><<track "1ndrknithat" volume 0.35>><<track "1ndrno1" volume 0.35>><</createplaylist>>