This is gonna be a long one, so strap in.
TL;DR is that the anniversary of my mum's passing just happened, and as you can imagine the last 2 years have been *complicated* to say the least. But also, I'm doing a fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society right now. Look for the link at the end of the post. Okay, on to the longer explanation.
Three weeks ago (April 5) marked two years since losing my mum.
I picked up the cross-stitch pictured again for the first time in two years. I had initially started on it as a gift for her. But life got in the way and it was put to the side. When mum went into hospice I needed something to keep my hands and mind occupied through those countless, silent hours at her bedside. So I stitched.
On April 5th I brought this project to Godwin Park, and sat on the memorial bench dedicated to her. I stitched for about an hour in one of her favourite places. Watching the ducks, listening to the birds, feeling the sun on my face as I added the first bit of colour to this project. I've decided to pull out this stitch at least once a month as part of my active mourning journey. It has taken a long time, and quite a bit of work to get here, but I'm finally starting a true mourning process, and I'm feeling hopeful for the first time in years.
I walked the path in Godwin Park listening to a playlist of music that spoke to both of our souls. It's a lot of Enya, Leonard Cohen, Jesse Cook, among others. This particular Enya song came up as I was nearing the end of my walk.
“Where are you this moment?
Only in my dreams.
You’re missing, but you’re always
A heartbeat from me.
I’m lost now without you,
I don’t know where you are.
I keep watching, I keep hoping,
But time keeps us apart.”
The next song that played on shuffle was Wild Child by Enya. A song that has always felt like *me*. It was like mum was there with me, acknowledging the pain of missing her in my life, but affirming who I am, who I've always been.
Music has been the way I travel through life since I was a child, music and imagination. I almost lost both in the last years.
I truly haven't felt like "myself" since I got pregnant. Postpartum was worse. I thought it was just the adjustment of my entire life, the changes to all my coping mechanisms (which was part of it, but only a part). I was in a very dark place. By the time I really realized there was more going on, I was 18 months postpartum and my doctor told me I had "aged out" of all the PPD resources that were available. Thankfully a change in birth control methods brought me out of the deepest pit of it. Turns out my body is *really* sensitive to hormone changes, go figure.
So I went from head underwater, to frantically kicking to keep myself from drowning. It was enough that I felt like things were "alright." I didn't have the time, or brain space to even acknowledge that I still felt so out of control.
Then March of 2020 rolled around. I lost my job, but I gained an unofficial one. I was the information gatherer and disseminator for my family. I jumped into that with both feet. It gave a tiny sense of being able to keep control of an out of control situation in a way that both thrilled and terrified me. I put so much pressure onto myself to suggest the "right" decisions that would keep my family safe, but I was happy to do it. And the fast-paced, ever changing nature of information gathering kept me engaged.
Again, though, I lost many of my coping mechanisms. Going out for a dinner date was impossible; every space where I could be free and spontaneous was off limits, or full of anxiety.
This is when I discovered Twitch. The online communities that sprung up around music streaming on Twitch, particularly the mashup music world, saved my sanity. Things were always new and exciting there, legitimate friendships were formed in the chat, the experience of hearing a track together for the first time. These were many of the things I was missing from my life outside the house pre-pandemic.
The place I felt most at home, and most engaged was the PDSMIX channel. Ryan and I had found our place in the online world there, our home.
Naturally, one of the first things I wanted to do with my new virtual family, was share them with my mum. I brought her into PDS's disco program, but she soon became a regular there in her own right.
Everyone in the community loved my mum, and she returned that love in spades. Checking in with those who needed it, always bringing her happy, gentle presence into the chat.
Then she started to get sick again. The prognosis wasn't good, but we had hope until December 23rd, 2021 when she told me that she had less than 6 months left. She wouldn't see her 59th birthday.
I have the weirdest memory from that day. I was leaving the hospital after hearing that news so I turned on the radio, hoping my love of Christmas music would soothe the pain. I lost Whamageddon in an instant. I'll never forget that as long as I live. It was the most absurd thing in that moment and all I could do was laugh. I had had a really good streak going, I had almost made it! But cancer, just like Last Christmas, comes for us eventually.
There were moments of joy, moments of peace in those next months. But April 4th was the longest day of my life. We knew her death was imminent. I wasn't with her when she passed in the early hours of April 5th. It is something I suspect I will regret all my life. The hospice staff were fairly certain nothing would happen until the next day, so Ryan and I went home at around 2am. I told her that she didn't need to wait for me to return, and that I loved her. She listened to me and was gone a little over an hour later.
Something else I haven't really talked about is that while my mum was in hospice, I turned again to my virtual Twitch family. Just like in the early pandemic, I needed a social outlet that was safe, and just for me. But this time I started my own steaming channel. Friendship has always been hard for me, I often feel like I am forcing myself onto people hoping they'll be my friend. With Twitch, I know the people who are there are truly there for me. There's no obligation for them to be there, and I have found so much freedom in that.
I had actually been planning my third stream ever on April 4th. That obviously didn't happen. For a second time I credit my Twitch community with supporting me, and lifting me up through all the ups and downs since mum's death. I have to especially shout out my best online friend WikedRed, my main mod and constant companion through all this.
That being said, I definitely felt like I was falling apart. I hadn't really mourned my loss, but my brain couldn't even begin to process it. I knew something was very wrong, and I knew I couldn't go forward, or go on like I had been. I started talking to my doctor (a different one than when I had PPD). I got an informal diagnosis with ADHD, and then a formal one. Things started to make sense. Odd things from childhood, on through my teenage years, and into adulthood. I tried one medication that worked for a bit, but the side effects were untenable. So I switched to another.
This is where things got especially weird. For the first two weeks I felt like I could take on the world. I was more productive than I had been in my entire life and it felt amazing. But things took a turn. Almost as if a switch flipped, I stopped listening to music all together. And I stopped writing. I felt like I lost all access to my imagination, and a good portion of what makes me, ME.
Suddenly it felt like too much to stream, a place I had always found to be a refuge became a burden. Social interactions had become damn near impossible, even with people I felt safe with. I hated the way I was feeling.
During my mental health talks with my doctor, she asked me to take a survey on depression. Turns out I ticked almost every box for diagnosis. But the wild thing is that these symptoms have been present in my life for almost my entire life. It was all just normal to me. I wasn't "sad" or suicidal, so I had no idea I had been dealing with depression for so long.
I started a new medication for that.
At the same time I was exploring with my therapist why I felt so different from who I used to be. She's amazing, specializing in both grief and neurodivergence. She validated me when I said I think there's more going on with me than just ADHD and depression. We explored that further and guess what, I have the common comorbidity of ADHD and autism. There's most likely no getting a formal diagnosis on that one, getting diagnosed as an adult seems utterly insurmountable.
So part of unraveling the mystery that is me seems to be a lot of my ADHD traits mask my autistic traits and visa versa. Getting on a fairly effective ADHD medication suddenly thrust me into a new world of re-learning how my brain works. It was too much for me at this moment. So I weaned off my ADHD medication. It may be something I explore again later, but not for now. That being said, the antidepressants are working wonderfully. I feel like I can take deep breaths again, sometimes I just sit and marvel at how easy it is to breathe.
I'm now finally diving into the actual work of mourning my mum; the active process I've been avoiding since she first got sick years ago.
I need to apologize to my friends and family for the last years of missing birthdays, not responding to texts, just generally being checked out. I have to especially thank and apologize to those friends (IRL and online) who kept reaching out despite my silence. To all my friends, if you have the bandwidth to reach out, please do. I lost my best friend when I lost my mum, and I am starving for closeness. Always feel free to send me a reminder text if I've forgotten to reply. And please don't be weird if I respond to a message a day or a week later. I'll try not to be weird about it either (no promises though, turns out I've always been the weird one lol)
So with all that very much out of the way, having made a long story *very* long. I'm about to celebrate my second year streaming on Twitch, and along with that I've partnered with the Canadian Cancer Society to take on their 100 hours of gaming challenge. Where I play 100 hours of games during the month of April and raise money for vital cancer research. If you want to check out my streams and see what I've been up to, I stream Tuesdays and Fridays starting at 8pm pacific (gaming on Tuesday and Zillow After Dark on Fridays). My Twitch anniversary streams started yesterday and are continuing today (April 27th) we have all kinds of fun incentives for donating. We crushed my first goal of $500 yesterday so our next goal is $750! And if you want to skip all that but just make a donation to the Canadian Cancer Society and help me reach those goals here's the link.
Okay, wow. If you've stuck it out to the bitter end, thank you so much. It means everything to me to be able to share these parts of my life, and I'm really hopeful that I'm turning a corner to being a happier and healthier me. Love you friends.
