Cindy wrote in Natter: "I keep thinking about meeting so many of you in person. I keep thinking about how real — how Velveteen Rabbit — we are to one another, even people like me, who only post here and then. Anyhow, I'm glad you're real.", and this echos my feelings perfectly and beautifully.

Shir. ♥

Plei, I hope you and yours are okay. I miss you.

I miss you, too (email me, bb!). Also, that's a lot. Also, OMG, even the most loving parents become THE WORST when they start to decline, and AHAHAHAHA. I don't even want to start, and I'm sorry you're having to deal with a mom who is older, in pain, and has taken too much out on you.

(We're now mostly recovered from the COVID bout. Which I'm using as an excuse to not call my family members right now. See also, I don't even want to start.)

Oof, Cindy, that is way more than rough; I'm so sorry, and... yeah, do your best to take care of you in all this, but I know that can be hard. And, hell, yes, come here to vent, to chill, to do whatever.

Day-um, Cindy, that’s a lot. And love does not excuse abuse. I’m glad you didn’t get COVID on top of everything else.

Dealing with my grandfather after his Alzheimer's got bad was the worst. He was a different person.

As Tim's dad's dementia progressed, he lost his filter for appropriate conversation, and would make sexual comments all the time. And it was really jarring not just because it was gross and inappropriate, but because it was such a 180 from his pre-dementia personality.

My dad turns 81 on Tuesday, and his personality is unchanged; unfortunately, he's just an asshole who it turns out I don't like very much.

My mom will be 77 this year and is still teaching yoga and hiking and camping (they stay in cabins now; that's the only concession to her age she's made). Over the summer she went to Italy for 2 weeks with a group from her church. I'm half convinced that she's Hob Gadling.

(I thought that would take two posts. I'm kind of amazed it didn't.)

I think even in the middle of your unloading you still managed to edit out most of the mean things she said to you.

My mom was an alcoholic and when she got drunk she'd say the most purposefully hurtful things to me. And then forget what she said when she sobered up.

It caused me to emotionally distance myself from her in high school, and it took a lot of work to be there for her and forgive her when she was dying of cancer (after college).

But I was able to because I knew she truly loved me and despite those periods of her lashing out, she had undergone so much trauma and violence in her childhood that she had really been very heroic in damming that back and not passing it on to me. Self medicating with alcohol let some leaks spring out though.

I had a conversation with my sister this last year where a lot of family history came out which really made me understand both of my parents in a different context. All these broken pieces of my childhood memory suddenly making a new picture. (My sister is 8 years older than me so she had witnessed things when I was a baby.)

My sister herself has been living with cancer for the last 2+ years so I think she felt it was time to unlock some family secrets.

2022 was a fucking whirlwind.

Jan/Feb, I wrapped up a massive work project that had been 4 years in progress, and the internet got really mad about it (this was when we shut down the Comixology website and old apps).

That same weekend in Feb we took the family to the Grand Canyon and almost got snowed in (we left a day early and spent one night in Sedona to avoid driving through a blizzard).

In June I went on a 2-week study abroad to Israel. I ate some incredible food, made amazing friends, walked more than 10 miles the day of Tel Aviv Pride (it was Shabbat, there were no buses, and Pride had been moved from a parade down the central avenue to the far east end of a park on the north end of the city), and had dinner with Nilly and Shir (THE BEST!!!)

In July I got promoted. More money, better title, more authority.

In August I went sailing with Jason Schneider for the last time. In October Jason died of pancreatic cancer. You folks will understand what I mean when I say Jason's death left an ita-sized hold in the world.

In November I turned 44. I went to Jason's funeral on my birthday.

In December I presented my final Food Studies research project and completed my Master's degree.

On Wednesday the entire Comixology team at Amazon was laid off. I am part of a skeleton crew who will stay on through the summer to tie up loose ends, but my role has been eliminated and if I don't find another job by then I will be unemployed starting October 1st.

I'm grateful to be in a slightly better place than my colleagues whose last day was Wednesday (yes we've all noted the cruelty of laying off the comics team on a Wednesday, yes we are calling it Red Wednesday), but it's been the worst fucking week coming at the end of some of the worst fucking months.

Cindy, one of my brother's dogs had vestibular disease. since we thought she was seizing, the second chance with her was wonderful.

I will see my mother for the next time on Sunday, 1.22.2023.

I will be sending all manner of ~ma and vibes tomorrow for this. It is so very hard. I have had a couple of close loved ones have psychic breaks when they were ill and they would say the worst painful things imaginable. Even knowing it is the drugs/disease/pain causing the vitriol, it hurts the same. Do what you need to and take sanity breaks.

2022 was a fucking whirlwind.

Indeed! Quite a roller coaster of life events. I hope 2023 is calmer.