Jessichat - Blog Posts

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from your local ghost girl. I hope you’re all having a bright and beautiful day filled with joy and good things, I hope you are safe and cherished, I hope you have strength in your spirits and light in your hearts. I hope the year to come brings you blessings. I may not be here often anymore, but I think of you all always and love you very dearly. 🎄💗💗💗🎁

look at the cute ornament which came in the mail perfectly on time for the last night of Chanukah!!! my boy my boy

@swiftieblackbeard thank you so much my darling, I love him and this gave me a true spot of joy - I was just talking to my mom about the light he’s brought to me through everything this year, I do deeply continue to believe that artists and music, and the love/meaning/comfort we discover in them, finds us when we most need it, and there’s such grace in each time that’s happened. Elvis knew exactly when I needed him. and I love you dearly too.

also thank you to @joons, @thebohemianbelle, @arthurwilde, @ab4eva for your kind replies on my last post, I love you very much and I’m having a hard time responding to things properly right now, but I need you to know you are true friends and blessings in this world. it has always meant more than can be said, but especially does in these times. 💗💗💗

my mom is very ill - she had to go in for a CT scan this week (and next week she has to have another one, with contrast). she's been struggling with a combination of some severe symptoms, and she put off dealing with this because of what happened first with her arm in october, but she waited longer than she should have. they found that not only does she have kidney stones and a progression of her CKD, but she also has a mass on her liver and another mass, with atrophy, on her left kidney. they're not sure what they are. they could be cysts and they could be cancer. her kidneys have been bad for years, but it's escalated from bad to unbearable pain, so we knew something else had to be going on. she actually did go in for help in august (she was starting to feel really sick in may), but they couldn't even get her into a urologist until november, so that didn't help with the time of it all worsening.

her arm still isn't even healed. at least it's less painful though. if the results of these scans come back with a severe diagnosis, she doesn't want to treat it. we can't afford to regardless. I am trying not to process what that will mean for us yet.

we've also been dealing with the upstairs flooding our hall bathroom (which is where the shower is) regularly for the past three weeks, the HOA sent out a plumber not quite two weeks ago, but whatever he did didn't fix it because it happened again. we have to set up a hose connected to the pipe and a plastic tub to prevent water from going everywhere. everything is just ongoing hell atm.

I also don't think I can ever explain or articulate the sheer level of trauma the past two months have caused emotionally and mentally due to global impact, and for me specifically due to my circumstances, the internet.

I read a piece where the author said, "I’ll be honest. I feel like shattered glass. I don’t know how to collect the pieces of me that have broken in this time...I don’t know how much more I personally can withstand losing and I’m finding these to be the hardest days of my life... I want to go back, but I can’t go back. You can’t go back. You can’t have what once was. You have to accept reality, as unforgiving and as stark as it may be. If only we could all go back. Afraid not...What was warm turns bitterly cold. What was fruitful dries up. What was safe becomes treacherous. What was clear becomes murky. What was love becomes strange. What was true becomes uncertain. And it is in everything and everywhere and everyone, and it is too much to hold at once without losing the one thing none of us can afford to lose - our minds...I’m praying that we can stay sane and somehow find purpose, solace, compassion, dare I say love, in a world that is framing us as crazy while we’re hunted down every second of our lives."

you don't understand. there's a post describing the loss of community as "cataclysmic." it isn't hyperbolic, it's accurate. (there's another post which someone tagged: "#i know the internet has ruined the word gaslighting #but that’s exactly what it is #goyim have gaslit jews on such a massive scale i literally cannot trust my perception of reality #prev>>> #i am constantly anxious and terrified #it’s everywhere from everyone both irl and online #i feel like i’m sleep walking into a gas chamber #and idk what to do about it other than scream into the void #like i honestly cannot describe my level of terror #but also i keep doubting myself thinking i’m being alarmist or overreacting." to put it plainly, our fear is ceaseless, and then we're actively shamed and, yes, gaslit over it. read this one too.) there is not a Jewish person I have seen in existence who is unaffected by this. I've followed so many Jewish creators on IG just to give quiet support because they are barraged daily by the most vile things, and hardly anyone from the outside is checking in on them, asking if they need anything. it can't be our 0.2% against the world, despite how beautiful that solidarity has become. no one is asking if we're okay (we're not). even if we're fortunate enough that our lives are untouched directly. our world has changed.

I cannot come onto this website without feeling a sense of panic, I've lost count of how many mutuals I blocked on my former main, and there are more still I need to clear out that I haven't had the ability to deal with. a couple of weeks ago - and honestly, this was...the last straw and a real breaking point for me - this website saw fit to desecrate the shema. I already wrote about its presence in my life, and then I had to see this website frequented by people who would DARE to violate its meaning. we are not only being inundated with hatred and vitriol, we are not only being gaslit, we are not only being accused and shamed because of our ethnicity, culture, and religion, we are watching people lie and try to rewrite foundational, real history and truths and core tenets. you dirty and twist our terms, our meanings, our sacred things without hesitation. I'd BEG for everyone to fucking learn something, but I know learning would make absolutely zero difference because education doesn't matter ("it depends on the context," after all, even if you're calling for our deaths and destruction), understanding doesn't matter, this is driven by hatred, feeding off of it, finding any way to cause harm. the level of evil being perpetuated is beyond comprehension. this website will never be the safe or happy place it was for me again. perhaps that's my own fault, that I was naive enough to believe it was that to begin with. (edit: this is very apt and timely and unsettling.)

I don't think you can understand the feeling of losing faith in the very fabric of things you believed in societally and socially, the institutions, the organizations, the ideals, the politics, the spaces, the human beings. it goes from a macro level of principles to the micro of "friends" you personally interacted with. I have not known how to withstand this level of soul shattering heartache, of the trust being decimated this wholly. in the midst of this, to bear witness, I have read accounts of abhorrent atrocities that shouldn't even be fathomable in the mind, meanwhile keeping tabs on the violent incidents and rhetoric happening daily. I don't know how to disengage from it because awareness feels like a shield. I don't know how to tell you the way it's changed me as a person. I am not who I was mere months ago.

the only solace I find is that this has given me a stronger sense of identity and pride, a strength in responding to things that would doubtless have driven me to tears before, and a newfound centered self-respect.

this particular blog was created out of an anxiety response, a need to flee. and it's not been comforting like I needed it to be. so, back at the end of november, I decided to take my url - which I loved very, very dearly and wanted to keep safe - and save it elsewhere, for a time after I'd rested, when I wasn't as traumatized, as angry and grief-stricken, as panicked. it didn't seem fair to have it here, I wanted it guarded. I took my icon, my header, my pretty pink color scheme, and copied it all over. it was all fine. I logged out. and for some unknown reason, some glitch, some mean little twist of fate, tumblr terminated the account. absolutely no idea why, maybe there was a problem with the e-mail address I'd just set up for it? I contacted support, but of course this site is running on fumes, thus I have heard nothing. my url got evaporated along with it, and I can't reclaim it because it says it's "taken" even though it doesn't exist. I don't know. I don't know if this was a sign from the universe telling me not to bother. that it isn't worth it. there's no real fandom engagement I want to participate in anymore (I'll be honest, I currently can't stomach certain people/artists/things that once were favorites, for various reasons, in ways which may not be recoverable, and there were aspects of fandom already difficult to navigate, but there's an added horror now: I can't engage with anyone, can't reblog a post or follow someone, without feeling the need to comb through their blog to see if they're safe or not. if they'd cheer or ignore or deny harm done to me or not. it's a continual buzz of anxiety, no one is okay to interact with at face value). I was going to lean into pretty aesthetics, classic films and music, my vintage loves (as those never let me down) in a new place, for peace of mind, serenity, escape. alas. if I can't get my url restored, trying again probably won't happen.

so anyway. that's it. I am tired. spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, to the bone and heart, after my entire adult life spent in the throes of chronic fatigue and life-destroying illness, small stresses and strange catastrophes and sorrowful losses, times when I thought I'd die from it all, I never knew I could be quite this exhausted.

we're nearing the end of Chanukah. do you know what Chanukah actually celebrates? do you know about the battle, about the desecration and rededication of the temple? it's about survival and defiance. it's about light that should not exist still miraculously persisting to burn. it was always considered a "minor" holiday, only made more prominent by assimilation and its winter date. someone I've come to admire greatly said in a live, as he lit the candles, that we can't think of it as minor anymore, that is, in fact, essential. because the miracle that happened there, in Jerusalem, 2000 years ago, now is the miracle of the fact that we still exist and live and illuminate such depths of darkness with our ever-present light. viktor frankl wrote: what is to give light must endure burning. I've thought of that often lately. we will outlive them. maybe I won't, but we, as a people, will. "the miracle, of course, was not that the oil for the sacred light - in a little cruse - lasted as long as they say, but that the courage...lasted to this day: let that nourish my flickering spirit."

I don't know what the next step is. can all the words in all the books help me to face what lies ahead?

got our car back after $3600 worth of work, now all we can do is hope it’s fixed and continues to drive.

went with my mom to a follow-up emergency appointment about the awful wound that developed after the treatment on her arm, and they think the reason it reacted so badly and painfully is because she has cancer. apparently the cryotherapy tends to anger/activate those cells and bring them to the surface. they did a biopsy, we’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks and how to proceed with treatment from there. my dad’s been having a rough time with his lately, so praying anything with my mom won’t be too aggressive, but it’s impossible to know yet.

every day i have to see horrific things and people being unmasked ghouls with unleashed hatred on here and it is a terrible place. so. my heart is broken.

this, seemingly like all my other blogs (RIP 💀) was a bit of a failed experiment, i am taking a break for the foreseeable future. it could be short of long. tbh it seems extremely pointless to keep going or even try being here, and at the present moment, i cannot imagine feeling anything but despair if i am on here during the holiday season, and i simply would rather not do that. i need to have the energy to focus on my mom and help her in any way feasible, and my health has been taking extreme turns for the worse all year, i am more physically fragile than i have been in quite a while. the last three weeks have been the most unbearable i have ever spent online and living in this state is unsustainable. idk when/if i will feel like coming back more regularly, considering the atmosphere. my overall engagement and interaction will probably not be the same, it's just what it is. please remember that i tried. i tried so much harder than you realize. take care 💙

there’s so much i feel a bit relieved about leaving behind, because it was fraught, and so many people i want nothing to do with anymore, but i am very sad about all my EP related posts being stuck in the purgatory of my other blog forever once i leave it permanently

what’s really bizarre, being from a mixed religious family background, is i recognize that i have the privilege of “passing,” for lack of a better word, of hiding and easily assimilating and blending. it’s not even that it’s a mask, because it’s something true. i grew up that way, it’s like code switching. sometimes it feels like impostor syndrome, but usually it's just all the facets of my person.

the man who drove us home today started talking about church. i could easily have engaged with that because, of course, we used to go to church with my grandparents on one side, and to the synagogue on the other. i’m versed in all the holidays, since throughout my childhood, we celebrated both. but as he was talking, perfectly nicely, this pit formed in my stomach - what if i voiced my identity? would that change the tenor of the conversation? (it would have, unavoidably, one way or the other.) would that put me, us, at risk? am i forced now to pretend to not be who i am? so i said nothing, and let my mom talk about my grandpa, and his devoted love of (and masters in) theology, and silently wondered if the man behind the wheel, talking about his faith, which i respect, would want to harm me if he knew who i was. this is not something i used to actively worry about, which perhaps was naïveté despite past experiences, blissful belief that it wasn’t “that bad.” it was safe enough. and now it’s a dark presence in my mind, a rustling anxiety. former “friends” on my dash would celebrate my murder if i had been born in the wrong (according to them) place, if they could get away with dehumanizing me with impunity as i have witnessed them doing to others undeserving of that treatment, with buzzwords and epithets. or maybe just for existing. and this isn’t paranoia or overreaction because i saw it with my own eyes. i saw it happen over and over, with people i used to regularly communicate with in frivolous little fandom conversations, which seem pointless to anything now. it is like living in a different world than the one that existed three weeks ago, one where the normal trajectory was abruptly thrown off course. and there’s nothing to be done about it, to fix it, to mitigate any of the hatred or any of the death, to offer succor to anyone affected or hurt or lost in all of this. there’s just the sorrow and the nagging buzz of fear. and it’s unknowable when that will abate. and how many more people will be harmed in the meantime. and if anyone will ever feel entirely safe amongst strangers again.

i always identified myself as a spiritual, but not religious person. both sides of my family were deeply faithful and i experienced and held reverence for that, cherished a lot of it, especially in ritual and holidays, but emerged on a less devout level, and that’s fine. ethnically i am jewish and always have said so. halves hardly matter, that is my heritage, it’s in my bones, it’s in the links of the chain to the past. i used to always observe shabbat (shabbos, how we say it) and lapsed, i lapsed in a lot of things when i became chronically ill and wasn’t directly involved with any sort of community anymore. it was just me being me, that was okay too. we put up our inter-holiday winter decorations, and it’s all traditions of memory and family and love, even as for many years those celebrations have only been my mom and me. it’s all there, inextricable from who i am.

i never learned hebrew properly but picked up all the prayers (which sadly i remember less now). i had an aliyah rather than a bat mitzvah (which we couldn’t afford anyway). i had to sing in front of the congregation and still remember the melody, my dad’s voice on tape teaching it to me. i still remember my grandma visiting and giving me the gold bracelet i loved directly off of her own arm for me to wear and to keep. i still remember the elderly man who came up to me after the service in tears and told me my voice was given from g-d and that he was so moved because i sang in the “soft” hebrew, words ending in “s” instead of “t,” and that was what his mother had always used from the old country, and he hadn’t heard it in so long (we always said the prayers this way, honestly i am not sure why, i guess it just carried over as ashkenazim, the way yiddish phrases did. it holds true with my hebrew name too, that version of sarah. my hebrew name, which is so familiar to me and part of me that i use it as email addresses and screen names and urls, that i would always tell people what it means because, growing up, i thought it was the greatest ever. princess leia as recognized in the book of life. that name probably being why i am attached to “s” urls here). i talked about this once, a long time ago (two blogs ago), but i've been told i look jewish, and told i don't look jewish, both in tones of derision and tones meant as compliment, you never quite know how that's going to be expressed. i treasured and held close to and was formatively influenced by and grew through countless pieces of jewish american art, jewish pop culture, characters, creators. the reverence in my heart for sondheim (or, like, name ANY 20th century broadway composer. i wish this was still online in full because it was beautiful), for the source of my url, for [insert name of artist here] is not idle, it is soul deep. i am not as engaged with the community or the religion as countless others, not nearly as directly tied or impacted, but the philosophy was always this - if they’d kill you for it, then you have the right to rejoice in and claim it too.

still. there’s a mezuzah on my bedroom door and a hamsa on my wall. they have flowers and birds and lavender and pink.

still. i say the shema in hebrew every day. just in case there’s a reason for it to be heard. just in case there’s a light there. it is the most sacred prayer, so it felt like something to keep close. (do you know how it starts? its opening line?)

i don’t think i consciously realized how deep that spiritual tie went until it was imbued with this much grief. it ceases to matter that maybe by percentages it’s only half of what i am. tell me where it’s written what it is i’m meant to be. perhaps i am no more than a blade of grass, but i am.

once i accidentally stepped on angel’s tail and she yelped, and it was the worst sound i could have heard. once, near the end of her life, when she wasn’t wanting to eat, i dropped her bowl and screamed/cried in anguish and scared her. neither of these were intended, and yet still haunt me and feel unforgivable, even though she did not have the capacity to hold it against me and did forgive me immediately. i still don’t forgive myself for the circumstances of her last few days spent mostly alone in the hospital, because they refused to release her to us and let her be at home. rationally this is not my fault, but it feels like a failing that can never be remedied, like so many other things i have failed at, no matter how far out of my control.

all this to say. i just don’t understand how people, with cruel purpose and malice, intentionally inflict violence and harm and mayhem and irrevocable trauma on living beings of any kind (human or animal), i don’t understand how you can get so far into the darkness that you switch off the cutting sense of hurt and horror i felt just hearing that squeak from my precious dog’s tail getting pinched for a split second. i don’t understand how history and the present day are littered with utter disregard of, or derivement of pleasure in, inflicting damage and pain. i don’t understand how you can hear a cry and not feel like you’re going to bleed to death from it. i don’t understand how the grief isn’t so overwhelming that no one would ever do any of that to begin with. i don’t understand why the world has ever been the way that it is. i understand it less the longer i have to live in it.

there’s not a morning i begin without a thousand questions running through my mind, that i don’t try to find the reason and the logic in the world that G-d designed. the reason why a bird was given wings? if not to fly, and praise the sky with every song it sings. what’s right or wrong, where i belong within the scheme of things…if not to hunger for the meaning of it all, then tell me what a soul is for?

i can walk through the forest of the trees of knowledge and listen to the lesson of the leaves…there are certain things that once you have, no man can take away, no wave can wash away, no wind can blow away…

the more i live, the more i learn, the more i learn, the more i realize the less i know…

my mom reminded me today that i woke up on the 4th and came to her crying, and she asked me what was wrong, and i didn’t know, i couldn’t tell her anything except that i was unbearably sad and had this sickening feeling of dread that made me feel like the walls were closing in for no reason

if i harry post here even though i have lost my entire harries audience

i would like to introduce you all to my adorable and tiny boyfriend, viktor

i spent over an hour combing through my other blog’s drafts and found a bunch of stray pretty posts that i wanted to transfer here, so i opened them all in separate tabs and deleted them from my old drafts, and went to log in here to save them anew, and instead my browser kicked me out and it’s set to automatically clear history when you exit, so i lost them all forever. this is an extremely silly, ultimately inconsequential problem but. come on.

…friend shaped

i am so sorry you all have to deal with angsty posts here as i situate myself, but as an extremely sensitive people pleaser, i was mentally sort of always trying to do my best to reach out to others and even cater certain things for them, especially once my blog grew in size, which led to my more widespread interactions, influxes of messages, anons, etc - and so now, because of having to retreat from and even to a degree fear (or at best feel wary/uncomfortable) continuing some of those interactions, i feel a horrendous sense of…guilt? sorrow, yes, but i also feel awful. i cut off those anons who came to me with whatever, which isn’t their fault but was a protective choice to guard from potential outside harm, but i also left behind people i love and adore and considered precious in my life, not because that ended up not being true, but because the trust got shattered. and i know that some of them would be so hurt if they found out i moved spaces, and it weighs on me, because the last thing in the world i ever want is to do that, is to hurt friends that i love. it’s a horrible feeling. and my mom told me it’s not my fault and i have to have boundaries (i am very bad at boundaries) and trust my instincts and protect my peace however i can…but i still feel so bad and anxious at the potential of hurting someone, even though i myself was hurt. fun times in jessie’s brain 🙃

there are so many posts saved on my previous blog, and that queue is just going to keep running, and seeing them feels surreal, through the looking glass somehow, very much still myself sitting right here and now, but also the ghost of something, bereft and shadowing me

had to go to the store and did not get this but did i look at it? yes

so many of you going through sorrows and i wish i could help or take them away and i wish none of you ever had to be hurt or sad and i wish things in the world were gentler and easier and different

*does everything possible other than deleting herself from existence to feel safer and better*

*it doesn’t work because she is caught in a seemingly unending fight or flight response*

my mom’s suffering so much from her arm and there’s nothing i can do to make it better, and she started having a reaction to the antibiotics, so she had to cut back to only taking one each day, and i am very worried that she’s been taking them for a week and is still in this much pain. we have to take the car back in tomorrow and leave it there, so we’ll have to figure out how’s safest to get home. meanwhile i just can’t sleep and am getting really close to the edge of not being able to handle it

just took a “what jellycat are you?” quiz and

tumblr forcing new accounts to have the "for you" algorithm tab first rather than "following," so you constantly have to switch it, is the worst decision

also unfortunately you're guaranteed this blog is going to be the exact same nonsense interests as the old one because i'm probably just going to bring everything over lol i'm sorry 😭❤

edit: this is so cute?

🎶✨ it's me, hi! ✨🎶

i haven't decided yet if i'm entirely switching blogs, but i needed a place to be safe, and that was no longer my old one. if i'm following you, i trust and love you. you don't have to follow me back.

ps: url swap! well, i do adore and originally planned on using maddenedbythestars, but then changed my mind? we'll see, it's always in reserve just in case!

pps: please read this if you're joining me here. thank you <3