Providing a health update
I think people have been concerned about me since I started to have issues in 2014-2015ish and I thought I'd provide an explanation to the course of events, because 1) it's one hell of a wild ride and 2) I was in a really bad place and while I am struggling a lot right now, I am in a much better place than I've ever been in my whole life.
So back in 2015 I'm sure many may recall the worrying thread I made about wanting to act like a blind person. Quite simply, I realize now that I do actually have vision problems, but the thing is, they're not in my eyes, but rather in my head; I can see, but there are many problems I have that make it very difficult, especially with bright lights, crisp lines, ect.; which is why I elected to stop wearing my glasses despite being nearsighted. I also have problems with seeing motion, which means I can't drive anymore either.
My guess is that I got interested in blind people because while I don't remember how far these problems go back, I don't feel like I've ever been able to "see right", and it's caused me all sorts of little problems, but most interestingly made me very interested in audio, sound, music and accessibility - because sound is an escape from the problems I have visually.
I hung out with some very eccentric people during this time, one was clearly schizophrenic and couldn't make up his mind with what sort of strange thing he wanted to do with himself; one was a clearly horribly abused but also horribly delusional person who blinded herself, and another who was so afraid of going outside her comfort zone she felt like she was dying because she couldn't get the help she needed. While they weren't bad people, they were also unwilling to kind of try to see beyond what they wanted to see and I couldn't help but think that perhaps there was more to the picture that they could have used to help their lives. I kind of drifted ways with these people because I couldn't really understand why they were getting mad at me when I was trying to find small ways to make their lives better, but I think it's part of the delusions.
Eventually I admitted the whole thing was a fraud after realizing one of the main researchers had some very unethical and sloppy approach to his research and I called him out, saying that I woudn't get help if he wasn't going to do it the right way. In short I was shammed because I didn't know the whole picture and made myself look like an idiot. I don't really regret it since it was an extremely insightful experience in how I can fool myself but it also rewarded me by staying persistent and trying to understand the larger picture.
Unfortunately I also have other health issues. I'm not sure exactly what though, because they only started to become unbearable while working at my last job; it wasn't the office's fault but I would get migraines a lot, and it made me feel so uncomfortable all the time - they were usually light on headaches but high on nausea, and it was then when I realized that my other symptoms with the blind thing were also related to these migraines - so really when I was having these attacks I was having migraines. In may I was hospitalized for a really bad migraine twice, because I was heavily overworking myself; I had to go to Omaha for work and also St. Charles Illinois for a promotion of colors chromatics and my parents dragged me into their crap over the phone and that all just triggered the devil's migraine lol.
Eventually by september I was getting 2 migraines every day at work and I eventually got so sick I had to take 2 weeks off; the idiot doctors kept saying it was "low vitamin D" and gave me topamax which actually made me go crazy for a week after I took it, realized it was making me screwy and stopped taking it. I'm not joking the withdrawal actually made me psychotic, idiot doctors.
A few weeks later, I found out through my brother that my family has a long line of autoimmune problems and also neurological problems similar to the vision issues I was describing, which is how I realize I'm probably actually quite sick. However, the situation got a lot worse because I realized the next day that my mom was a horrible person. I don't want to get into many details about it publicly but I was talking about her with a friend, realized that she did horrible things to me and was showing no remorse, and I talked about it to my dad and he revealed to me some things that were absolutely wretched. I mean she is the worst person I know now, and she abused everyone in my family for literal decades. I confirmed what my dad said the next morning when I called my grandma, whom my mother disconnected me from for over 2 decades.
So then I realized my family was on fire, I was probably chronically ill and unable to work in most places with bright lights or office air conditioning and that I probably won't be able to even work with computers without audio aids in a few decades, IDK if that's true yet but my relatives with the same problems sure can't.
Things reached their apex around Christmas and New Years and, well, let's just say that my Christmas was pretty crappy lol.
The good is that I have very little debt, mostly medical. I'm very very lucky for this and hopefully my tax return this year can help with that. I also have good friends who are taking care of me right now because I'm completely reliant on other people. It also seems that the worst is over and that hopefully my dad will get away from this scum in the next few months. Unfortunately dad is kind of being a scrooge right now and won't help pay my meager debt which sucks but I think this is more a mental state than anything, and I think it will pass. I think he's a good person underneath, he just is very immature and has a bad idea of how friendships should work. I've been feeling a little better now that I'm not literally dealing with another crisis every week so I think I should be able to pick myself up after this. I've started working on Colors Chromatics again which is a great start and a good boost to my confidence.
One other thing that I'm very angry about though is that my mom was also a crazy conspiratard big pharma loon who neglected to get me proper medical attention for my illness in my teens - because I've had these problems for a long time and now that I'm almost 25 I'm not sure if I can even get a diagnosis in time on my dad's insurance, which imho can only really help with getting disability at this point. I have no idea if I actually even qualify or if it's worth my time to try to poke around and get a diagnosis; at this point I think a lifestyle change is what's needed, because I don't really want to rely on disability. My whole dream was to be able to make a great game that people actually want to play and provide that to the community, and I've had so much bullshit thrown in my way to try to get in the way of that, but I look back at what I did with CC and while it was a mess it was a really well made mess, and if I can rebuild it to be more organized I really think this could be a great game that really achieves my goal of being a great indie-blind hybrid game.
Thanks for your support through the years, it really means a lot. <3
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