Screaming Into The Void Like No One Is Watching. They're Not Listening, That's For Sure.

11/2/2021

This is another autobiographical, journal-like entry, I'm just going to go with what I'm feeling. It's been a rough autumn.

*Takes a deep exhale* Lets start in chronological order, I guess.

Summer 2021 - I finished my novel!...*crickets*

Bette On It: Weird Adolescence isn't getting the reads I was hoping it would. Since my last journal-like entry, no one has read the novel as far as I know. I've mentioned to friends and family that it has been important to me. Nothing. No responses. Not a ton of hits. My posts on here get buried and the only ones that get hits are the ones I promote the hell out of.

I write a whole bunch of Tales of Bette short stories. I love creating and writing with this character. Nothing. I also post the same character content on Fictionpress, the only ones that get hits are the erotica. I need a font for sarcasm to properly convey my tone of this word: Shocking.

I have to remind myself time and time again: You write for yourself. Anyone else who reads it, it's just a bonus. Sometimes when you see hundreds of people read something and the coins roll in, it's hard to remember the original point.

Yeah, you wrote a novel, in completion. You didn't complete any of the other novels/manuscripts/musicals, at least not to your liking. No one asked for it. No one's paying you for it. It was only important to you. The only interest in it was your own. (This is a self-reminder for when I read this in the future)

August 21, 2021 - October 3, 2021 The Minnesota Renaissance Festival - The most wonderful time of the year! Aaaaaand here come the painful epiphanies.

I had been counting down the days to the Renaissance Festival since closing cannon in 2019. Then Covid happened. Major medical issues happened. No 2020 MNRF festival. It was for the best. 692 days later, I got to return to my happy place. I love being here. I'm a 15 year patron, and second year hard pass entertainment employee.

692 days. Been working from home since February 2020. Was hospitalized and bedridden for 10 weeks...What do you think that does to a person's social skills? Oh, did I piss off a couple people. I was blind to my own idiosyncrasies. I thought I was just being my silly fest character - nope, just pissing a couple really important people off. After a few hard conversations, lots of listening, apologies, and introspection, things were mended. Things don't get mended without scars and time. These incidents still haunt me.

October 3, 2021

I have wonderful, wonderful friends I have made throughout my years of attending the festival. But what I have discovered, is that if you are not offering something a person wants immediately and easily, you are not going to be a part of their day. When I was a patron, I loved making The Riddle Booth a part of my day; it's how they recruited me, they recognized me as someone who came to their booth, brought them riddles and engaged with them.

My long time renaissance festival friends stopped by and saw me almost every morning. It was wonderful. Hugs all around. Pictures taken. Yay!... It took until the final weekend to realize their visits consistently, solely matched up with a band who stopped by at the same time. It made me feel like it was less about me, and more about the band. I was a human check-box, and now that they've seen me, they can go on with their day, they don't have to hear me perform riddles, tip me, or anything else. I know many of them are going to see that band again and tip them money for their music. They know I perform open to close, I rarely get a chance to leave the booth, yet they don't come back. Granted, not all of them do this, there were a handful wonderful friends who spent quality time at the booth over the season, engaged with us, and even tipped. I told this to Nestor at the end of the night on closing night of the festival before he went home. I sobbed. I realized how invisible I was again, to them. But I wasn't invisible to my fellow Riddlers, our Irregulars, my close friends who made a point to see me outside of one song.

These people who don't stick around say, "Oh, I'm terrible at riddles." (Sarcasm font) Gee, I wonder where you could get better at it. Where your friend could tailor their performance to you like they do for everyone else. Still hurts.

Friday October 8, 2021 Ow, my ovary. This got me right in the ovary.

I'm less than a week out from the end of the renaissance festival. I am tired, but my heart is full of happy memories - what I call 'Festovers.' This is a point where I am exhausted, but glad to be done. I have had three days off in the last 53 days. I'm pooped.

I'm working from home, as I do, and I start getting a pain in my back. I take some pills, I stretch, the pain doesn't go away, it gets worse. It stays consistent over night. I call my mom who is a registered nurse and describe my symptoms. The pain has only intensified in the 30 hours or so it's been going on. She thinks I have kidney stones or a kidney infection - I need to go to an Urgency Room. I think this is some sort of side-effect of exhaustion. I've had laryngitis, appendicitis, bladder infections, colds, and panic attacks from exhaustion. Kidney stones or an infection is not outside the realm of impossibility for me.

So I go. Doctor thinks it could be either, based on my pain and symptoms, but doesn't have the equipment to give a proper diagnosis - I need to go to a hospital. He gives me a shot for pain and sends me on my way. I go to a hospital. I go, sit in the lobby playing Pokemon Go, and watch Shawshank Redemption on TV with a child head injury, teenage busted hand, and a young woman with a busted foot.

I get in, they scan me, they IV me, and the doc comes in. She tells me, "It's not kidney stones or a kidney infection. You have a nine centimetre cyst on your ovary, that's what's pushing on your kidney giving you back pain."

With no hesitation or irony, I yell, "Mother of dicks." I let the doctor know that when I stop making jokes, that's when she should be worried for me. It was about 5 minutes later I call my husband, everything mentally sets in, and I'm sobbing.

The next week or so is spent figuring out when to get this cyst out of me. Oh, and get this, the ovary it's attached to, it needs to go too. Did I mention that this whole thing grew in the six months since I got my hysterectomy? That the ovary was supposed to come out in five years? No? Well, Mother of dicks, this sucks bad.

Last week or two

Festovers have worn off. My readership has dropped. Renaissance festival friends are scattered to the winds. The friends I am trying to reach out to aren't reaching back. Halloween is over. I'm about to have my ninth surgery since June of 2020. I'm about to lose another part of my biological femininity. It's getting colder. It's getting darker.

The two weeks leading up to a procedure are the hardest. I am scared, irritable, sad, lonely. I keep telling myself I KNOW I'm going to be fine. Being wiser than physical fear and anxiety is...biologically impossible.

...

Bette On It: Weird Adolescence was important to me because while it wasn't autobiographical, lots of the feelings were, and some of the experiences were. Bette felt like an invisible monster. Bette Wheelan has never been more real to me.

This year, I have screamed into the void about my writing, the renaissance festival, bodily changes, and wanting to reconnect with old friends and making new ones. These things are important to me; these things have changed me.

...

My husband, 'Noah' Boudit holds my hand while I scream. But he doesn't need to scream, not the way I do. Come find me if you need to scream too. I could use the company.

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