Smile At Hope In The Name Of Despair

 me going to my 'rents got pushed to tomorrow and not today. which is fine, i think i dislocated my kneecap and so my whole leg hurts

well ok it was a subluxation and eventually it popped back into place, although its still really loose in its socket and pops a lot now. cool! but either way owwwwwww so i'm resting today so i can do stuff tomorrow. at least the adrenaline rush from being back in the house of nightmares will probably dull the pain a lot!

the funny thing is i got my dad a bit intrigued about danganronpa. my dad is.... odd, like, i am an Extremely odd person and ergo my parents would have to be the same bizzare flavor of like, clearly having internal logic but nothing they say makes sense. my dad for instance grades media on a four-way axis: stupid/not stupid, and good/bad. what makes a media "stupid" varies. he thinks the plot is breaking bad is stupid so it ends up in a stupid/good ranking BUT he's a trekkie and that ends up in a not stupid/good ranking even though the setting is a lot more fantastical. you'd think then that danganronpa would get a "stupid" rating but he actually said the plot seemed interesting and he might try it out. so all im saying is if he plays danganronpa im going to go crazy insane. if he plays it and likes it im going to go crazy insaner

no i am not showing him this journal i have some decorum after all. there are some things he just doesn't get to know about me. we don't have the best relationship-- he sucks and i'm well aware that he sucks, but sometimes he's funny like the danganronpa thing. if i sweet talk him, he'll basically do whatever i want. which sounds weird and immoral until i tell you that he's the one that taught me to do that to him

i forgot 2 mention i think i have some old shoes that r like the Exact komaeda shoes. like down to the two zippers n everything. i saw one of them the last time i was up there; maybe i'll find the other one this time!! if i do ill post pix :)

all i'm saying is the aspd had to come from somewhere and i'm not calling my dad a sociopath but i am saying a guy that wanted to steal a lemon from one of the vatican's lemon trees has at least a slightly skewed interpretation on what is and isnt moral, plus it would be really funny if the sociopathy wasnt even inherited from the actively abusive parent. neglectful sure, didnt believe me about my mom sure, but not actively abusive.... usually. the 2015 incident is a different story altogether but this aint about that

if he actually plays and makes it to the second game however that will be so funny because im going to show up with surprise white hair and a shirt with a weird little design on it and then he'll see komaeda and go Oh

well i always had a habit of taking nicknames from and dressing like characters i really liked, so i guess some things never do change? and it would be Really funny if he knew what name i was going by now. nobody would ever believe him

hhhhhhhooooooly shit that took longer than i thought. a quick lil update before i pass out in fucking bed

i got the bag! its really cute in person. i also got some earrings to use as a talisman in the ritual

also, about the ritual; there will be multiple posts on it-- there will be one dictating any like, pre-ritual ritual shit like the uh... shorts blessing. there'll be a post dedicated to the drink that's gonna be at the centerpiece of it all, a post detailing the actual ritual itself, and a post that's me rambling while.... impaired on the truly vile substance i'm going to be concocting

it'll taste like blueberry and insanity. i can't wait

the funny thing is, obviously i'm not going to stop the ritual in the middle of it to make Posts, so the post where i'm incoherently rambling is going to be your first exposure to what exactly i did, ha ha

i also learned i sing better when i do a komaeda voice. i was always a fairly good singer, but now i'm really, really good. not sure what to make of this development... guess i'll... sing? i dunno its all so weirddddd

i have 4 out of 5 talismen for the ritual but the problem is talisman 5 is twenty of god's own dollars. maybe when i go back up i'll find a secret twenty in my pocket. or i can steal from my parents. they deserve it after everything theyve done to me

so ya short update anyway seeya

i went thrifting today! 

i was trying to find a few things for a blood ritual i'm doing (and yes there will be a post on that), and i was feeling pretty good about it because my luck for the past few days was absolutely HORRIBLE!! i also went somewhere else to find a hair mask for my newly-platinum hair, and maybe some new earrings if i could

now that my hair is white, i slapped on some black pants, my green jacket, some platform boots, and a shirt i made for a cosplay. i've been doing what is essentially voice training so with all that, i guess i went out as komaeda for the first time? my fiance went out with his kokichi clothes; he looked really cute. i had a lot of purple clothes that he can have now, lol. i wasn't really sure what i liked in fashion so i just gravitated to purple, since i knew i liked it. well, my stuff looks a whole lot cuter on him!

let's see how i did outside!

so first off-- i did find the hair mask! its like, a 40 dollar hair mask i found for 8 bucks. i haven't tried it yet, but i'll update when i do. also someone complimented my boots!

second off-- at the thrift, i was looking for some shorts and maybe a glass for the drink i'm going to make for the ritual. i didn't find the shorts, which means at some point i'm going to have to order the $20 ones i found online, which is gonna set the ritual date back a bit. but i found these lovely little glasses on a display themed after tropical islands. they're even blue! you'll see why that's important when i do the ritual.

but that's not all.

i found something in the back that had no price tag on it. i took it to the front, asking what the price was... and it was priced right in front of me for five dollars. i quickly bought it and scurried out before anyone realized what a terrible mistake that was

that item? was an audio-technica record player. for people not into vinyls, that thing is worth around a hundred-thirty bucks and the stock parts can be swapped out and upgraded for an even better experience. it needs speakers and stuff, but knowing my luck i'll probably also find those at the thrift. but what luck, to find something so pricey!! i always stared at the players in the record store, hoping that one day i'd have the money to drop on one... well, i guess i do now!

you know, i've always had notably good and notably bad luck, and i even conceptualized it in the form of a luck cycle, before i ever played danganronpa. i think i remember hearing about komaeda's luck cycle and thinking "oh, it's a more extreme version of my thing!"

i don't know if it's confirmation bias or what, but it seems a whole lot more noticeable now that i'm like this. i guess we'll see how my luck develops? 

a final note: i finally set up my toughbook to charge (for reference, you know those laptops in ultra despair girls? one of those) so it got me thinking about dumbphones again-- i'm really into vintage tech, lol. and ive been wanting a dumbphone for a while. so i decided to go and see if there's ANY kind of merch out there that features komaeda holding a phone

so... remember the bag i mentioned in this post? i found this standee... notice anything familiar about it?

i really need that fucking bag

this might sound anti-recovery, but i don't care

...so, as long as i can remember, i've had pretty low self esteem. comically so, even. everyone around me has tried to get me to stop, from my friends to my therapists.

but i kind of don't want to?

like. it's weird, and i'm really not sure if i can explain it all well

its like... if it stresses me out to try and Stop It, moreso than the actual low self-esteem, why should i? why can't i just get better at coexisting with it?

and the second longer point: people are allowed to have certain neuroses that oftentimes hurt themselves and others. and certain neuroses are more accepted by society (or certain parts of society) than others. like, for instance, i vape (weed, not nic) and i have friends who are vapers (nic and weed.) depending on who you ask, this is either perfectly fine or something that needs to stop Now because it's Bad. but the key is, some people will think it's perfectly fine. or at least, that my friends and i understand the risks and what it could do to us and what it is doing to us, but that we choose to do it for whatever reasons befit us

and like. look. i don't feel very much empathy. i am friends with other low empathy people and hyperempathetic people. and i say this now because theyve said it: having hyperempathy sucks and hurts the person with it and the people around them, due to them not being able to put their own feelings aside and help when need be. that's just how things are! no one really talks about "fixing hyperempathy," because empathy is largely seen as good. but inversely, low empathy people need to fix themselves, because low empathy is bad.

i've learned to live with my low empathy. i will never be an empathetic person and whether or not i'm a compassionate and caring one highly depends, but leans towards "no." cognitive empathy does exist, and i know how to do that, but my reservoirs will quickly dry up. again, i live with this instead of trying to will myself to be more empathetic. i'm just not the kind of person people can one-on-one vent to if they want comfort. and that's... fine? i can do other things. people can vent to me in the way of bitching and wanting a bitching partner and no real comfort-- in fact, some people prefer that. point being, i never tried to make myself be something i'm not. well, i did, but it didn't go so great. it just made my ocd worse. protip: ocd is not a good substitute for empathy or compassion

my friends tried spritzing me with a spray bottle whenever i said something mean about myself, at my request, so this is on my shoulders, but it didn't really solve anything. the ensuing argument just made me feel worse and more stressed than whatever it was that i said about myself. the PROBLEM is that my low self-esteem paralyzes me into inaction. not that it's there.

and in a weird roundabout way, i kind of like it now? it's identity affirming.

so like... if trying to get rid of it causes everyone especially myself more stress than the actual "problem," and other people are allowed to have vices and neuroses that aren't especially good for them.... why can't i?

i don't see this as anti-recovery. rather, i am recovering, on my own terms. i've generally been resistant to therapy because no therapist i've seen, even the good ones, really understood everything about me. and none of their methods really... worked? i tried. i did the homework i showed up to sessions i did whatever they asked (unless i forgot... which was a lot of times. i tried to write it down but then i forgot i'd written anything at all, or that i even had a checklist) but none of it really worked. no therapy session ever really helped. so i'm taking matters into my own hands and is that such a bad thing? 

is it?

i don't care. after all... any idea a piece of shit like me would have is bound to be terrible... right...?

for the past 3 nights ive been dreaming about that fuckhead white haired bastard and i either am him or am watching him as an omniscient third party

i dont remember any of them which is kinda par for the course. shit ass memory in dreams and in consciousness i Fucking see. but i remembered last night's?

there was some artist drawing a darkskinned komaeda but then someone decided to make it into discourse because "only darkskinned people should draw darkskinned characters;" i guess the implication was that we're just better at it? anyway in the middle of arguing back i woke up. there was no indication the artist was even white

funny enough, his skin tone was like... anthy's from rgu. which DID look very pretty, but my skin is a different color and i wonder like... if i'm having komaeda dreams then wouldnt it look like me? or some such thing like that. but it did get me thinking about the concept and i might do a sprite edit later if i remember

i'm planning to go get hair bleach today n stuff. i need more bleach, new developer, i'm gonna be helping my fiance('s alter) cut and dye his hair to have a kokichi cut. and by "i'm gonna help" i mean "my soulbond is gonna help" because he's super good at cutting hair and i.... brother just don't let me near you with a pair of scissors bro im gonna fuck it up big heavy. this isnt a komaeda self deprecation thing either i verifiably suck at this one thing. even my fiance who loves me very much agrees that im bad at it

we need the bigass sallys bleach bucket, some more developer, perma-black for him, semi-perm purple also for him (so he can try out different purples n see what he likes first,) toner for me but non chemical based bc i am Pushing It with all the chemicals im ngl... depending on the purple he gets i might be able to nick a bit to dilute for toner... im not sure if i wanna do light pink tips anywhere or if i just wanna go full white, i guess ill figure it out? 

oh and more non dye hair stuff for me and curlers for him bc he needs to train his hair!! shumai is gonna have his hands full and he's happy bc like.... all his friends have nice styles. he's bored

a part of me wants to wear the komaeda fit outside bc it would be so funny if the sallys cashier Knew. like one bitch comes in w a komaeda shirt another bitch comes in w the kokichi bandanna and they get bleach and purple dye.... like yeah we doing what u think we doing keep scrolling

i have another post to make ill make it in a sec el em ay o

i don't know how long i'll be on this new dreamwidth but i do want to use it to talk about a topic most people... might not consider, or find as important as i do:

i would like to change my birthday and i do not care what i need to do in order to accomplish this

it's something ive wanted for a while, honestly-- it's a part of me wanting to separate myself as much as possible from my past, and that includes my birthday. it really ended up being an exercise in how my mom was waiting for me to get old enough so that she doesnt have to bother anymore, and how she barely knows me. it's also smack in the middle of a VERY traumatic time for me. also i dont like my star sign. so i'm changing it.

but yknow, just colloquially isn't enough. it'll still be wrong on my ID. i want to change it legally.

whatever i do, i'll still keep the same birth year. i don't really give a shit about how old i am, it's just the date itself. now, there are two routes to changing your legal birth date that i've come across, one that's a surefire success but is difficult to impossible, and the other that's a lot more... realistic, but with no guarantee of success. i cannot try both, i HAVE to pick one

so the first and most well known route is, of course, there was some kind of clerical error on your birth certificate, and you want it amended. this tends to go through as clerical errors are a thing that happens, however they require proof. the most common and most accepted form is of hospital records on the day of the true birth, or hospital billing records. records baptisms and other religious ceremonies are also accepted. here's the problem, though...

i was born in, y'know, a hospital. so records exist of my birth, which is in july and not april like i'm claiming. (sidenote: it might not end up being april 28th, but i'm going to be using that as the new birthday for convinience's sake)

so if i wanted to go this route, i'd have to... well.... commit fraud. 

apparently muslim religious ceremony records are better accepted, since they're done a set time after the birth. which is good, because i actually come from a predominantly muslim culture. while i and my family are not muslim, it won't be out of the question to claim so.

but then it's like, for something so important theyd of course call whatever organization i claim to be a part of and verify, you know? and i'm not too sure i can walk into a mosque and go "yo, i'm trying to commit fraud, can you help me out here?" like i just dont really think that really aligns with their beliefs. but what do i know

of course i could fake the organization itself... but that opens up again WAY MORE rabbit holes and god forbid the govt realize this "organization" did not actually exist in april of 2000. or maybe ill catch a lucky break and muslims are like super chill about tricking the govt

the risk would be the govt coming across the actual hospital records from july. if i went this route, i could say i don't talk to my parents at ALL and they don't know where i am, so maybe the govt wont go tracking them down. but like, i dont really know how seriously they take this stuff. on one hand, its a change to a birth certificate. on the other hand its a fucking birthday and the difference is three months. so really i dont know? 

the OTHER route... is through petitioning a court

i saw a case where someone petitioned a missouri court, citing severe mental distress over his age and wished to change his legal age to be much years younger. this didn't go through, but the courts WERE sympathetic towards it, and the only reason it didnt go through was bc the courts ruled against it

i might have a better shot, however. for one, i'm not changing my age, just my birthdate. for two, i do have diagnosed ptsd and know a guy who knows a therapist that seems super chill who might be able to help me change my birthday. if i went THIS route, my argument would be that i was abused growing up and suffered ptsd from it, and seeing my "true" birthday in any context causes me great distress so i would like to change it, especially since its only by three months, because even seeing the date on my ID brings back horrible memories. to be fair, july IS like i said, in the middle of a big traumatic time for me. i also know someone who knows a bunch of lawyers who might be able to make some weird argument for it

i think it helps that i was born in new joisey, so it's generally a weird as hell state. so i might have a better chance

the thing is, if the court method fails, i can't do the first method, because how incredibly sus would it be if i tried to do something legally, failed, and then ~just so happened~ to find documents proving that i was right all along?

very.

very sus i think.

i have no moral reservations behind fraud, honestly. it's a three month difference on a birthdate that i'm doing just for funsies. i'm not doing anything malicious, you know? i just don't want to get caught and have my life ruined over something stupid like birthday fraud

i hope my friend who knows the chill therapist gets back to me soon. im gonna hit up my friend who knows the lawyers tonight, altho that's maryland lawyers and not new jersey lawyers. but it's a good place to start, i think

i should probably change my name first because if i go the court case route and it actually fucking goes through, it'll be newsworthy i think. and i want people to get absolutely mallet conked on the head by an article that starts "Nagito Komaeda, a New Jersey native,"

i just think that would be really funny