cervidaze

(untitled)

a day is a year

my maternal grandmother passed away softly yesterday at 1:47 am. she gave us a lot of time to make peace with it.

but not unchanged

i made it out finally.

a slight crisis

january has left me particularly dormant. my seasonal depression has been hitting me later and later into the winter with every year, and i think my transition to the new year was especially rough this time.

december 2025 (site anniversary, updates)

breaking down (my website)

i was inspired by seeing aid's recent post where she breaks down the layout of her website and thought i should write one of my own—both to document my code and also to offer troubleshooting to those who may have the same extremely specific coding issues as me.

i know when fall is here

this month has been kind to me. my girlfriend and i went to san diego for a much needed respite from our usual obligations. everything was great up until the point where i caught COVID despite taking as many precautions as i could. it's the first time i caught it in three years, so i guess it wasn't for nothing. the COVID itself (likely the status variant) was not terribly agonizing, but past…

digital minimalism and death machines

my workplace won't let me die. i've experienced four waves of layoffs in the one year and ten months i've been here now, and i haven't been laid off a single time. my coworkers (or i guess former coworkers now) were so happy to leave and finally be able to focus on their creative side projects without distraction now. i wonder what that's like.

on hiatus, change, and grief again

i'm alive and i have made it to the end of july. i'm about eight weeks post-op from top surgery. my girlfriend and i recently celebrated four years together. my band is recording our first album. lots of things to wait for and lots of things to look forward to.

nothing ever happens

i haven't been extremely online lately—mostly because my cats get extremely upset when i keep myself in the office for too long. it's been about half a year since i've basically left all social media, and it's been quiet. i also ran out of online distractions to occupy myself with, which led to me finally jailbreaking both my kindle and my 3DS for fun. i just completed pokemon black 2 at the…

boycotts and degoogling

lately, i've been making an effort to remove myself from as many google products as possible. i made the browser switch from chrome to firefox about two years ago, but it wasn't until i saw a post by ykreborn that i decided to start migrating the rest of my dependencies.

mid-twenties

i had my friend sign my will and advance directive a few weeks ago. it wasn't for any particular reason. i just wanted to have them ready in case anything were to suddenly happen and make me unable to speak for myself.

hello again

it has been a while since i've updated about anything in regards to my life. it would be insane to try to list it all out here since a good six months have elapsed since my last post, but i guess i can still try.

her hair had just grown back

I can’t help but mention my mother in everything. I got gingko leaves tattooed on my hip because we had a tree in the front yard when I was younger, and she showed me how to press its leaves in her books. My first tattoo is a mythical deer from the animated Chinese film we watched together when I was a kid. It’s the most Buddhist thing I own. My mom has a mole where the Buddha's mark is supposed…

don't forget the l-theanine

Another sleepless night—I switched from melatonin to magnesium, but it can only do so much. It's 6 am.

the difference between rot and decay

Something I've been thinking about recently is how my dad has always been recording home videos of my sister and I. Even now, though the mediums have definitely changed.

100 milligrams, $10 copay

I turn 23 in less than a month. I wish I knew what else to say.

it's a 57 minute drive to the city of hope

When I visited my mom in the hospital after the surgeon removed her entire reproductive system, she was barely conscious and used whatever strength she had left to ask about my girlfriend's health. She then told me to leave because she was fine and I should be getting home. Yesterday, she called to tell me that I shouldn't visit her until I've recovered from my cold; she started to ask me for…

unrelated but it's the anniversary of my dog's death

The sun is setting at 5 pm now, but I didn’t notice until this week because I’ve been waking up at 3 pm these past few days. I optimistically thought that these would be the last few days I sleep and wake up at god-awful times—I officially began my 9 to 5 lifestyle yesterday—but it's almost 3 am and I am very awake.

stage four ovaria/complex ptsd

Our odds have slightly improved. It's not pancreatic cancer, which is almost always terminal. It's ovarian, which is less terminal. She has a tumor the size of a chicken’s egg resting in her abdomen, and that cancer has metastasized into her lungs. Apparently, that doesn’t kill someone as much as a tumor the size of an almond in the pancreas.

they found a three centimeter tumor in her pancreas

When I was 16 and didn't know what depressive episodes were, I bought a self-help book titled How to Be Happy (Or at Least Less Sad). I got home from school on the day the book was delivered and found it graffitied in my mom's handwriting with the words, “Just be happy.” I think there couldn't be a more accurate way to describe how my mother handles—or doesn't handle—immense suffering.

on hiatus, change, grief

This break is taking a bit longer than I’d like. Emails and emails of “Unfortunately, we’re moving on with someone else” and “We hope you continue to keep in touch” have forced me to sit with myself in the uncomfortable and humiliating silence of my one-bedroom apartment—one that we’ve been trying to get out of since May.

the smoke stays for a bit

I allow myself one herbal cigarette per month. I don't even smoke as a habit—I just wanted to see if I could do it. I think it takes more discipline to smoke only one cigarette a month than it takes to smoke none at all. I think the real habit that needs to be cut back is my scrutinizing adherence to self-imposed tests of will.

post grad sad

I was hoping that life would be a little calmer by now, but my hopes seem to be a bit crushed for the time being—my doctor inexplicably denied my Zoloft refill right before I only had a couple days’ worth left.

another start

OUR STILLNESS was a writing project I began when I was 16 years old in my sophomore year of high school, back when I had too many thoughts to write down and not enough of an audience to read them. I am 22 now, freshly graduated and about to take a hiatus from work and academic projects as I have just graduated from university. I’ve made the decision to continue writing for OUR STILLNESS but…