April 17th-23
I spent the majority of my time looking for my dog Oliver who disappeared the day of the disaster. After I spent a week looking for him I spent the next week being depressed and crying at losing him. It took a while but I managed to pull myself together enough to get to our governance team so that I can get assigned a role in our community. Here’s hoping I get something I can do!
Well I’ve been assigned to the farm and medical group despite my issues with getting dirt under my fingernails. It’s for the greater good though! After all, we all need food and many of us have health issues that need to be treated… I’m still really sad that I can’t find my dog Oliver and I can feel my mental health declining. I won’t give up though! My dog would want the best life for me so I’ll make the best life I can make for myself!
I’ve spent this week learning how to identify what plants are useful and what plants are straight up dangerous. It’s been hard but rewarding work and has helped me focus my mind on something other than my lost dog. It’s almost meditative. Like my mind separates itself from my body through the act and allows me to feel the flow of space and time. Maybe through meditation I can learn some kind of skill that’d help me find Oliver? It’s a longshot but it’s the only one I have at finding him so I’ll take it!
That was both the best and worst idea I have ever had. I was able to separate my body and mind more fully but it came with a cost I had not foreseen… I now have to take the plant guide to bed as my legs don’t work right now, like I forgot how to walk. At the very least that’s it but it’s still really scary that that was the cost for the briefest moment of spiritual separation. This will require further testing but I must be very careful.
May 16th-June 1st
Our food and medicine harvesting has borne fruit. We were able to not only successfully avoid the dangerous plants but also find plants that could be synthesized into medicines for people. This is a great step forward in our self-sustaining society and I’m really looking forward to seeing us thrive despite this disaster. It is after all our new normal…
New strangenessess have been abounding since my last journal entry. Like we have these morning announcements and they’ve really helped us keep track of things and have some hope which is really good. However, sometimes I feel like I hear something else behind the voices… almost as if something is trying to break through and talk to us?
Sometimes I feel like I can hear Ollie barking. When this first began it felt like it was just my stress manifesting itself; faint and far off. This made sense to me, after all he was- is my ESA animal and I always said we keep each other sane. ‘I’m just extremely depressed it’ll pass’ I thought to myself. But as time went on it changed; clear and consistent. I tried looking around for him when I heard this but as I drew closer and closer to the source the sound disappeared all of a sudden…This well and truly scares me and I’m beginning to wonder to it’s meaning.
Apparently I’m not the only one hearing something strange over the radio. It’s a voice! It’s gotten a lot more clear over time too. I’ve been reassigned to assist with investigating the strange radio voice in the hopes we can glean some relevant information. Maybe I’ll even learn something about Ollie.
June 2nd – June 9th
Still no sign of Oliver yet. I was concerned before but now I’m downright beside myself. I’m gonna go looking for him again. I just can’t stand not being able to find him. He was sometimes really annoying but he was also the light of my life. That’s just how relationships go though right? It makes me think about how true that is and how I must keep that in mind when engaging with others even after all of this madness.
Hopefully I can recruit some people to help me look though I doubt it as Olympia is not looking great and we might be having to help them out. I truly hope its not as bad as it sounds as my best friends live there. Well, even if they didnt I wouldnt wish any ill will on people.
I find it hard to think about my trans journey throughout all this. It feels unimportant next to all of the strangeness of the world going on right now. It doesnt help that I’ve run out of meds for my hormone therapy. Despite all of that I want it to be important. Is that selfish of me?