p class="MsoNormal"Hello again everyone! I told you I'd be back with an update, and here I am./p
p class="MsoNormal"I am honored for all 10,000 of you that read this story. Truly. And for that, I've vowed to return. It always brings a smile to my face to see a review or a new subscriber. I've also felt intensely guilty. I've always tried to get back to this, but life immediately gets in my way./p
p class="MsoNormal"Things are different now because I finally HAVE time that I can dedicate to this. I've also decided that I'm going to hold myself accountable./p
p class="MsoNormal"Let's look back in time and hear why I started this fan fiction in the first place and what I've been up to./p
p class="MsoNormal"Tw: suicide, death, abuse, depression, crazy ass shit, illness, and the like. Skip to the end if you want to hear about how I'm going to be continuing this!/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"I started this story because back in 2013, a close friend of mine tragically passed away at 23, under mysterious circumstances. I was devasted. I was angry. How could the world take her from me? She literally was the kindest soul I've ever known. Right after that, I was laid off for what I thought was my dream job. I was a mess. At the time, Sailor Moon Crystal came out and I had been playing Final Fantasy XIII-2. I figured, hey, I've had this idea for Sailor Sun for a long time. I talked to my bff about it, and we agreed that it was a cool concept, albeit with rules./p
p class="MsoNormal"I taught at the local university for a bit. I did it to give back to the community, and it helped me get through my grief about Jesse's death. Then, I was offered a position on Wall Street. It was a cool job, I had also been offered with a job for IBM, so I moved from NC to NY. Well, that summer was the worst summer of my life./p
p class="MsoNormal"I was laid off before I even started. The manager that hired me was fired. I had also made the move to be closer to another bff and my cousin, whom was like a sister to me. Note the "was."/p
p class="MsoNormal"She had recently become engaged, and I was to be her maid of honor. She turned into a massive bitch because her fiancé came into almost a million dollars due to a massive accident. She acted like she was better than us. Anyway, it came up that if I was going to be her maid of honor, I had to adhere to a strict set of rules. Okay, fine. However, not fine. I was required to wear a dress and that is one boundary that I will never let someone cross. I'm a woman, and identify as female, but I wear men's clothes. Sometimes, I wear gender-neutral clothes and I even have worn women's business clothes. It's non-negotiable, though, for me to wear a dress. I said no and please understand why I won't do it. I'm not trying to be a bitch, but it's the one boundary that can't be crossed. It escalated to the point where we started fighting. All the time. She even told me that if I wasn't family, I'd be uninvited. I said ok, whatever. I was devasted at the deterioration of our relationship. She was like a sister. We're about 1.5 years apart in age, so you can see why./p
p class="MsoNormal"Add to that, my bff had been a massive jerk to me. He blew me off to visit other people (he's done this historically) and acted like a massive bitch. With the loss of Jesse, loss of job, loss of relationship with Steph, and now the loss of closeness with Nick, I was in a bad place. Someone I had a friend with benefits relationship gave me an ultimatum. Basically, I had to erase our history, or we can't be friends. I told her that I can't do that and that was that. My parents were also massive bitches to me. My mom and I have always had a tenuous relationship. She was very abusive (physical and mental) during my upbringing, and I foolishly thought I could improve our relationship by being nearby. Boy, what a massive fucking mistake on my end. She and my stepdad doubled down on the abuse and something inside of me snapped./p
p class="MsoNormal"For the first time in my life, I harmed myself. It was minor, and I realized how stupid I was for even doing it. After that, I was a husk of my former self. I simply existed. I didn't even know how to feel at that point, only that I could take things off my mind by writing. And so that's how this story came to be./p
p class="MsoNormal"I spent my time writing, and then while I was working some less than great jobs, I had time. But I needed to address my mental health. I've always felt like I'm less than my peers because of my mental and physical issues. I've always felt behind. So, imagine my elation when I was hired for this new, awesome job, with a massive paycheck./p
p class="MsoNormal"From there, time flew by. I constantly brainstormed with bff about the story, but every time I sat down to write something, something inevitably came up. And that's where we ended. I've made it a point that when things settled down, I'd come back. I owed it to you all and I wanted to have that sense of completion. Plus, over time, there's been massive plot development./p
p class="MsoNormal"That leads us to recent times. 2017 brought me living on my own and I had shitty roommates that owe me about $1000. That's ongoing. I was in a great relationship, I thought. We went to Blizzcon and that was the point I realized this was a toxic clusterfuck. Then, another close friend suddenly passed away. I was like well fuck, why the fuck does this keep happening. I didn't have a breakdown, but I still freaked out. I took a few trips to Europe by myself and bff. It helped. I also started looking for houses and decided to build my dream house. Building a house is a massive time commitment./p
p class="MsoNormal"For those of you that don't know, you have to pick out every aspect of the house because for the most part, it's custom made. You have a list of customizations and must do them. I spent many hours studying the sheet and deciding where I wanted to spend my money. Not all the customizations are free. Many are extra. I ended up spending enough money to strike a balance between what I wanted and what was practical. I'm a simple person. To give you an idea, I had to pick between have knobs or handles for all my cabinets, and what finish I wanted on top of what kinds of cabinets I wanted. Did I want white, mocha, black, or walnut? Did I want hardwood floors? What material and color? Did I want tile? What countertops did I want? Do I want my windowsills to be extended? It was crazy. Like I said, I'm simple. I made it through a 4-hour process in about 2 hours because of my preparation. Then you start the mortgage process and wait several months for it to be completed./p
p class="MsoNormal"In 2018, I had a massive accident. I was three days from closing on my house and had been in a frenzy. I was ready to lose money and walk away from the sale because of the terms my lender wanted. I was also distracted with a project I couldn't complete in time and was dreading a chew out from the boss. And in general, life was chaotic. That pretty much threw everything into chaos. You'd think I'd have time while I was recovering from surgery to fix 3 broken bones, but not when I just bought a house. I showed up to closing, where you sign about 200+ documents before you get the keys, in a wheelchair and cast. My realtor also had had his first kid. We were what you call "a hot mess." He ended up crashing me into the curb and felt terrible. I laughed. So, guess what? My goddamn house was fucking made of stairs. I couldn't even get into the front door. For about 3 months, I slept on a couch because my dad's house is ALSO made of fucking stairs. I mostly worked and dealt with new house stuff. Which is a lot of fucking work. My parents were massive fuckheads too. They whined the entire time for me to heal faster so they could go back to rehabbing their house in Maine. They ended up causing a fractured bone and ANOTHER 5 weeks on the couch and not living in my house. It worked out. My dad had a pre-heart attack. Had they been in Maine, he would've died. I remind him of this when he bitches about the lack of progress on his house./p
p class="MsoNormal"My life became consumed with rehab, house, and work. I had intense physical therapy due to the severity of my injuries and my therapist was a former gymnast. She had me balancing on my weak leg on numerous foam pieces while throwing a weighted ball to her and I also had to hop up and down. It was for the best because I'm about 98% better. I'll never be 100%, but that's okay./p
p class="MsoNormal"I think it is funny. I also told my realtor that I'll be wrapped in bubble wrap for my next house purchase, and he'll go on my behalf to do the closing./p
p class="MsoNormal"If you've made it this far, there's a little more. This part gets good./p
p class="MsoNormal"So, my boss was pissed at my recovery setbacks. He wanted me in the office. Keep in mind, I still couldn't put much weight on my leg and oh yeah, I can't drive my car yet. He ended up firing me because of this and well, I took his ass to court. I reported him to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Dept. of Labor, Dept. of Revenue, and the IRS. To this day, we are still fighting this out in the legal system./p
p class="MsoNormal"I never thought I'd become an advocate for equal rights for disabled people in the workplace. I'm not one to do anything like that. I was extraordinarily pissed./p
p class="MsoNormal"That really wrecked me, physically, mentally, and in other ways. Added to that, I had to find a new job and it was an anxious process because now I have a mortgage./p
p class="MsoNormal"I found another job, and I started. I was still taking care of all the legal stuff. Not much happened beyond being consumed with work. I've worked hard to make up for lost time and that results in lots of extra commitments. At the time I was doing Overwatch roleplaying in my free time./p
p class="MsoNormal"WELL, once again, I was terminated for my disability. You see, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy and the new manager was looking for a reason to get rid of me. Now, I'm dealing with that federal investigation. At this point, I have no tolerance. I wasn't going to do anything about it, but I found out that he blacklisted me from the company. Petty is my middle name./p
p class="MsoNormal"That leads us to 2021. I started a new position, and it was weird. We had clients in Australia, so I was working all kinds of hours while balancing all these investigations, my rehab, friends, house, and other shit. I also resolved to take care of my accumulated list of 70ish things I've been putting off. Now that I'm down to one major one and a few minor ones, I finally had the bandwidth to come back./p
p class="MsoNormal"Last week, after 1 month, they fired me because they couldn't deal with me. They didn't want to invest the time to get me up to speed and well, I'm pretty pissed about that. I've been interviewing all through my employment because I felt something off. I'm now in late stages with a few companies. Fingers crossed. Unfortunately, at this level, I must demonstrate my knowledge of my job duties. There's always a test. There's always multiple interviews. I'm up to 6 with this one company. I'm up to 3 with another and I have an assignment. Oh yeah, bff calls me up and is like "hey could you write me a business proposition? Oh yeah, it's due Friday."/p
p class="MsoNormal"That's where we are today. Literally. That's been my life up until this day./p
p class="MsoNormal"I've also resolved to finally finish my goddamn book. It's taken 15 years. Fuck. It's almost ready to submit to publishers./p
p class="MsoNormal"Since I've had a resurgence in energy, I told bff that this would be on my 70+ item list and yeah, we're doing this. We have a solid plot plan. It's different from where I started, so, I'll be doing this and the 1supst/sup one I wrote./p
p class="MsoNormal"To hold myself accountable, we're doing this differently. For one, I'm setting up an FB group to let you all know when I'm updating, and you can tell me to update. Secondly, all these versions will be archived on Google. You will always have access. I will still be updating here. Third, I'm starting a YouTube channel where I walk you through what the endgame is and how we came to our conclusions about these stories. Fourth, I'm also posting on Archive of our Own. Fifth, I'm also going to be publishing this on Tumblr./p
p class="MsoNormal"I know that at this point, you're probably not even going to see this. I hope that you do and stick around to the end. With those platforms, you'll have tons of ways to get in touch. I want us to have that interactive relationship where you can ask me questions and whatnot. I love feedback! I'll also let you beta read my novel and other fan fictions. You'll even be able to email me!/p
p class="MsoNormal"It'll be a balancing act, but if you're all prodding me, it'll happen./p
p class="MsoNormal"You will NEVER have to pay to access my content. You will ALWAYS have some sort of archive. If you do feel so inclined to donate to me, it's completely voluntarily. Please, do not feel obligated. I do this for fun. I think that about covers it. I'll have a new link with all those links./p
p class="MsoNormal"If you've made it through this 2550+ word treatise, many props on that./p
p class="MsoNormal"If you're thinking, how did I survive all of this? I survived this because I will not give my abusers the satisfaction. The best revenge is to live your life and be successful. I hope that you all have had an excellent life thus far. I hope these years have been kind. I hope you've achieved what you wanted. If not, it's okay. It's easy to lose track and get caught up in the now. But that's the thing, you'll be completely different in a year. It'll be different./p
p class="MsoNormal"It's not how you got in the hole. It's not that you're in the hole. It's how you pull yourself out of that hole. I can't promise things will work out. I can promise that you can make things better. I'm rooting for you if that's any consolation at all./p
p class="MsoNormal"I am honored for all 10,000 of you that read this story. Truly. And for that, I've vowed to return. It always brings a smile to my face to see a review or a new subscriber. I've also felt intensely guilty. I've always tried to get back to this, but life immediately gets in my way./p
p class="MsoNormal"Things are different now because I finally HAVE time that I can dedicate to this. I've also decided that I'm going to hold myself accountable./p
p class="MsoNormal"Let's look back in time and hear why I started this fan fiction in the first place and what I've been up to./p
p class="MsoNormal"Tw: suicide, death, abuse, depression, crazy ass shit, illness, and the like. Skip to the end if you want to hear about how I'm going to be continuing this!/p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal" /p
p class="MsoNormal"I started this story because back in 2013, a close friend of mine tragically passed away at 23, under mysterious circumstances. I was devasted. I was angry. How could the world take her from me? She literally was the kindest soul I've ever known. Right after that, I was laid off for what I thought was my dream job. I was a mess. At the time, Sailor Moon Crystal came out and I had been playing Final Fantasy XIII-2. I figured, hey, I've had this idea for Sailor Sun for a long time. I talked to my bff about it, and we agreed that it was a cool concept, albeit with rules./p
p class="MsoNormal"I taught at the local university for a bit. I did it to give back to the community, and it helped me get through my grief about Jesse's death. Then, I was offered a position on Wall Street. It was a cool job, I had also been offered with a job for IBM, so I moved from NC to NY. Well, that summer was the worst summer of my life./p
p class="MsoNormal"I was laid off before I even started. The manager that hired me was fired. I had also made the move to be closer to another bff and my cousin, whom was like a sister to me. Note the "was."/p
p class="MsoNormal"She had recently become engaged, and I was to be her maid of honor. She turned into a massive bitch because her fiancé came into almost a million dollars due to a massive accident. She acted like she was better than us. Anyway, it came up that if I was going to be her maid of honor, I had to adhere to a strict set of rules. Okay, fine. However, not fine. I was required to wear a dress and that is one boundary that I will never let someone cross. I'm a woman, and identify as female, but I wear men's clothes. Sometimes, I wear gender-neutral clothes and I even have worn women's business clothes. It's non-negotiable, though, for me to wear a dress. I said no and please understand why I won't do it. I'm not trying to be a bitch, but it's the one boundary that can't be crossed. It escalated to the point where we started fighting. All the time. She even told me that if I wasn't family, I'd be uninvited. I said ok, whatever. I was devasted at the deterioration of our relationship. She was like a sister. We're about 1.5 years apart in age, so you can see why./p
p class="MsoNormal"Add to that, my bff had been a massive jerk to me. He blew me off to visit other people (he's done this historically) and acted like a massive bitch. With the loss of Jesse, loss of job, loss of relationship with Steph, and now the loss of closeness with Nick, I was in a bad place. Someone I had a friend with benefits relationship gave me an ultimatum. Basically, I had to erase our history, or we can't be friends. I told her that I can't do that and that was that. My parents were also massive bitches to me. My mom and I have always had a tenuous relationship. She was very abusive (physical and mental) during my upbringing, and I foolishly thought I could improve our relationship by being nearby. Boy, what a massive fucking mistake on my end. She and my stepdad doubled down on the abuse and something inside of me snapped./p
p class="MsoNormal"For the first time in my life, I harmed myself. It was minor, and I realized how stupid I was for even doing it. After that, I was a husk of my former self. I simply existed. I didn't even know how to feel at that point, only that I could take things off my mind by writing. And so that's how this story came to be./p
p class="MsoNormal"I spent my time writing, and then while I was working some less than great jobs, I had time. But I needed to address my mental health. I've always felt like I'm less than my peers because of my mental and physical issues. I've always felt behind. So, imagine my elation when I was hired for this new, awesome job, with a massive paycheck./p
p class="MsoNormal"From there, time flew by. I constantly brainstormed with bff about the story, but every time I sat down to write something, something inevitably came up. And that's where we ended. I've made it a point that when things settled down, I'd come back. I owed it to you all and I wanted to have that sense of completion. Plus, over time, there's been massive plot development./p
p class="MsoNormal"That leads us to recent times. 2017 brought me living on my own and I had shitty roommates that owe me about $1000. That's ongoing. I was in a great relationship, I thought. We went to Blizzcon and that was the point I realized this was a toxic clusterfuck. Then, another close friend suddenly passed away. I was like well fuck, why the fuck does this keep happening. I didn't have a breakdown, but I still freaked out. I took a few trips to Europe by myself and bff. It helped. I also started looking for houses and decided to build my dream house. Building a house is a massive time commitment./p
p class="MsoNormal"For those of you that don't know, you have to pick out every aspect of the house because for the most part, it's custom made. You have a list of customizations and must do them. I spent many hours studying the sheet and deciding where I wanted to spend my money. Not all the customizations are free. Many are extra. I ended up spending enough money to strike a balance between what I wanted and what was practical. I'm a simple person. To give you an idea, I had to pick between have knobs or handles for all my cabinets, and what finish I wanted on top of what kinds of cabinets I wanted. Did I want white, mocha, black, or walnut? Did I want hardwood floors? What material and color? Did I want tile? What countertops did I want? Do I want my windowsills to be extended? It was crazy. Like I said, I'm simple. I made it through a 4-hour process in about 2 hours because of my preparation. Then you start the mortgage process and wait several months for it to be completed./p
p class="MsoNormal"In 2018, I had a massive accident. I was three days from closing on my house and had been in a frenzy. I was ready to lose money and walk away from the sale because of the terms my lender wanted. I was also distracted with a project I couldn't complete in time and was dreading a chew out from the boss. And in general, life was chaotic. That pretty much threw everything into chaos. You'd think I'd have time while I was recovering from surgery to fix 3 broken bones, but not when I just bought a house. I showed up to closing, where you sign about 200+ documents before you get the keys, in a wheelchair and cast. My realtor also had had his first kid. We were what you call "a hot mess." He ended up crashing me into the curb and felt terrible. I laughed. So, guess what? My goddamn house was fucking made of stairs. I couldn't even get into the front door. For about 3 months, I slept on a couch because my dad's house is ALSO made of fucking stairs. I mostly worked and dealt with new house stuff. Which is a lot of fucking work. My parents were massive fuckheads too. They whined the entire time for me to heal faster so they could go back to rehabbing their house in Maine. They ended up causing a fractured bone and ANOTHER 5 weeks on the couch and not living in my house. It worked out. My dad had a pre-heart attack. Had they been in Maine, he would've died. I remind him of this when he bitches about the lack of progress on his house./p
p class="MsoNormal"My life became consumed with rehab, house, and work. I had intense physical therapy due to the severity of my injuries and my therapist was a former gymnast. She had me balancing on my weak leg on numerous foam pieces while throwing a weighted ball to her and I also had to hop up and down. It was for the best because I'm about 98% better. I'll never be 100%, but that's okay./p
p class="MsoNormal"I think it is funny. I also told my realtor that I'll be wrapped in bubble wrap for my next house purchase, and he'll go on my behalf to do the closing./p
p class="MsoNormal"If you've made it this far, there's a little more. This part gets good./p
p class="MsoNormal"So, my boss was pissed at my recovery setbacks. He wanted me in the office. Keep in mind, I still couldn't put much weight on my leg and oh yeah, I can't drive my car yet. He ended up firing me because of this and well, I took his ass to court. I reported him to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Dept. of Labor, Dept. of Revenue, and the IRS. To this day, we are still fighting this out in the legal system./p
p class="MsoNormal"I never thought I'd become an advocate for equal rights for disabled people in the workplace. I'm not one to do anything like that. I was extraordinarily pissed./p
p class="MsoNormal"That really wrecked me, physically, mentally, and in other ways. Added to that, I had to find a new job and it was an anxious process because now I have a mortgage./p
p class="MsoNormal"I found another job, and I started. I was still taking care of all the legal stuff. Not much happened beyond being consumed with work. I've worked hard to make up for lost time and that results in lots of extra commitments. At the time I was doing Overwatch roleplaying in my free time./p
p class="MsoNormal"WELL, once again, I was terminated for my disability. You see, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy and the new manager was looking for a reason to get rid of me. Now, I'm dealing with that federal investigation. At this point, I have no tolerance. I wasn't going to do anything about it, but I found out that he blacklisted me from the company. Petty is my middle name./p
p class="MsoNormal"That leads us to 2021. I started a new position, and it was weird. We had clients in Australia, so I was working all kinds of hours while balancing all these investigations, my rehab, friends, house, and other shit. I also resolved to take care of my accumulated list of 70ish things I've been putting off. Now that I'm down to one major one and a few minor ones, I finally had the bandwidth to come back./p
p class="MsoNormal"Last week, after 1 month, they fired me because they couldn't deal with me. They didn't want to invest the time to get me up to speed and well, I'm pretty pissed about that. I've been interviewing all through my employment because I felt something off. I'm now in late stages with a few companies. Fingers crossed. Unfortunately, at this level, I must demonstrate my knowledge of my job duties. There's always a test. There's always multiple interviews. I'm up to 6 with this one company. I'm up to 3 with another and I have an assignment. Oh yeah, bff calls me up and is like "hey could you write me a business proposition? Oh yeah, it's due Friday."/p
p class="MsoNormal"That's where we are today. Literally. That's been my life up until this day./p
p class="MsoNormal"I've also resolved to finally finish my goddamn book. It's taken 15 years. Fuck. It's almost ready to submit to publishers./p
p class="MsoNormal"Since I've had a resurgence in energy, I told bff that this would be on my 70+ item list and yeah, we're doing this. We have a solid plot plan. It's different from where I started, so, I'll be doing this and the 1supst/sup one I wrote./p
p class="MsoNormal"To hold myself accountable, we're doing this differently. For one, I'm setting up an FB group to let you all know when I'm updating, and you can tell me to update. Secondly, all these versions will be archived on Google. You will always have access. I will still be updating here. Third, I'm starting a YouTube channel where I walk you through what the endgame is and how we came to our conclusions about these stories. Fourth, I'm also posting on Archive of our Own. Fifth, I'm also going to be publishing this on Tumblr./p
p class="MsoNormal"I know that at this point, you're probably not even going to see this. I hope that you do and stick around to the end. With those platforms, you'll have tons of ways to get in touch. I want us to have that interactive relationship where you can ask me questions and whatnot. I love feedback! I'll also let you beta read my novel and other fan fictions. You'll even be able to email me!/p
p class="MsoNormal"It'll be a balancing act, but if you're all prodding me, it'll happen./p
p class="MsoNormal"You will NEVER have to pay to access my content. You will ALWAYS have some sort of archive. If you do feel so inclined to donate to me, it's completely voluntarily. Please, do not feel obligated. I do this for fun. I think that about covers it. I'll have a new link with all those links./p
p class="MsoNormal"If you've made it through this 2550+ word treatise, many props on that./p
p class="MsoNormal"If you're thinking, how did I survive all of this? I survived this because I will not give my abusers the satisfaction. The best revenge is to live your life and be successful. I hope that you all have had an excellent life thus far. I hope these years have been kind. I hope you've achieved what you wanted. If not, it's okay. It's easy to lose track and get caught up in the now. But that's the thing, you'll be completely different in a year. It'll be different./p
p class="MsoNormal"It's not how you got in the hole. It's not that you're in the hole. It's how you pull yourself out of that hole. I can't promise things will work out. I can promise that you can make things better. I'm rooting for you if that's any consolation at all./p