Yesterday, my father had called on me to assist him with some paperwork in regards to attaining a discount senior clipper card so he can switch to taking public transportation versus being on the road with a vehicle and avoid the dangers of driving. My father recently got into a car accident which tore up his forearm and due to blunt force trauma with an impact against the steering wheel, he's suffering a chest contusion and laceration on his forearm, so he's in a great deal amount of pain. He's 72 years old, has lung cancer, had glaucoma in which he had surgery on his eyes where he is now blind on the right eye, and a case of other health problems due to many years of smoking and consuming alcohol which is inevitable. My father being 95% Cambodian and 5% French but brought up more Cambodian than anything else with a French influence, plainly refuses to get proper medical care or treatment out of both sheer stubbornness and fear due to the way General Hospital has treated him as a care patient. It's a sad reality that public hospitals tend to abuse and mistreat seniors and this case was true for my father the day he was rushed to the emergency room at Zuckerberg 2 weeks ago when his car accident occurred.
For both my parents, I had been born to them as the gay transgender child, and unfortunately, I am the only child that happens to take better care of my parents and love them without measure or fault regardless of my current life status, how busy I can get now, or any restraint due to past childhood resentments. I have four brothers and two sisters. My older sister has completely detached and estranged herself from her own biological family which is disappointing considering the way she abused me and disrespected my parents growing up and always told me that I was the one that hated my own family but I always felt that she's just projecting her own selfish frustrations about her internalized issues unto me. Like her arrogant husband, they both tend to preach a lot about life, family, love, career, but the one thing that bothers me the most is how much they always talk about money. I recently stopped all contact with my older sister, her husband, their daughter, and my older sister's family in-laws. Who wants to be around pretentious people anyway even if they are your family members? My friends are sophisticated and are 10x's more classier and wealthier than both of them combined but they don't act like they are better than others. There is a sense of humbleness and mutual understanding and maturity in social behaviors and that I can admire and respect. I can't stand people who judge, criticize, and resent other people then shame, guilt, or bash them for what they have or don't have on a material basis of social status. It lacks sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and empathy for the conditions of others. My siblings don't really show much affection towards my parents because they feel that my parents never showed much affection to us growing up but what is wrong with this picture is that, regardless, of the conditions that we were all raised at youth, I had always believed that I shall love as if I haven't been loved before and showing love or expressing affection should not be awkward nor is it never too late. I don't believe that the value of having affection should be rewarded or punished in any way be restrained out of contempt of emotional immaturity or selfishness. It doesn't serve the soul to deny your loved ones of any affection. I'm a very affectionate person and I have always been sensitive and yearned for affection as a child. I am also the most patient, open, understanding, and forgiving, needless to say, I was also a very willful child. I had a brain process that allowed me to have expanded perception, emotional empathy, and emotional intelligence to understand why my family were the way they were like what shaped each of them just as what shaped me. My own troubles were always me trying to introduce myself to a conditioned situation that prevented me from expressing who I truly was and of course, frustrated at my own gender identity and gender expression. In no way do I ever blame my parents or my siblings for my own childhood and past life crisis. I have already did my homework, self-healing, self-love, self-acceptance, and self-forgiveness, Forgiveness of self and others is a powerful thing! It has always been about taking my power back and not giving my power away to others who undervalue or underestimate my character or worth. I told myself that I would be the child who will love and show affection to both of my parents to the very end. For my father, I know his time will not be too long but he is a strong man and he's a survivor! I don't make excuses or avoid weekly or monthly visitations with my parents because I do want to see them, spend time with them, and take care of them the best way I know how. I do have my own social life that I maintain and juggle fairly so I can also have time and make room to visit my parents. I want my father to remember the child who he once saw as an outcast, be the child who was there for him to the end of his days, who loved him through all the worse we went through as father to his then troubled daughter who has transitioned to his honorable son. Aside taking care of my parents, I also have an abandoned and neglected red ear slider turtle to care for which is very tasking as I didn't expect to rescue this poor creature. The turtle is young, a juvenile, and it is a she, a female red ear slider, whose name is Biscuit, bought from the pet shop (not by me), and given the name due to her shell feature, I suppose (again, not by me). Back in October of 2022, a house mate had wanted to get a turtle as a pet and she asked me to accompany her to the pet store. It was only about a month past that she had not wanted to care for the turtle and have asked if I would be able to and that she would give all owner rights to me to have her turtle and take care of it. I agreed on the basis that in Asiatic customs and culture, turtles bring good luck, and it is bad karma to mistreat them. On the month of September of 2022, I went and bought $1,500.00 dollars worth of turtle stuff. I bought Biscuit a proper 40 gallon turtle tank water habitat, along with a dry pool habitat where she can roam and dry up to avoid shell rot and get exercise while I would be busy at work, a ton of turtle accessories, turtle approved toys (they aren't a lot of toys for turtles so I had to be creative), turtle food and turtle treats, UVA/UVB lights, heat lamp, extra bulbs, turtle water filters, a water tank siphon to clean out her water tank weekly, and basically all the necessities that a turtle needs. Changing the tank with fresh water was such a challenge. Having a turtle is expensive and very high maintenance. I honestly did not know why my house mate decided to buy a turtle because in my experience when I was younger, I have had a baby turtle and they were quite a lot to handle. They are living creatures and they can't just sit in a tank, left alone like a display, or play with them at your amusement or leisure. You have to change their water, make sure they have plenty of room to roam and grow, give them play time and make their habitat dynamic so they can explore and stay active, feed them, bathe them, give them shell scratches and turtle treats, and make sure that they are safe, warm, healthy, and happy. My house mate deprived Biscuit of all these things after learning that it was quite expensive to keep one and that she indeed had bought a turtle out of loneliness and impulse. I try not to look at Biscuit as being punished for it and that by sheer luck, I became her new caretaker and owner. I gave what a parent would to a child for this turtle and through time with Biscuit, we developed a trust bond and an attachment. When handling her, I have never dropped her, not even once! I do cringe that others have dropped her due to poor handling practices and I get really concerned. Never drop a turtle! They feel everything as their shells have feeling nerves, both scutes and plastrons, so dropping them on high impact hurts them. Although, I know I could take care of her but it also hasn't been easy, because truth be told, having a turtle is no different than having a child. There are a few concerns that I have for Biscuit, it is in much the same ways that I have concerns and worries for my father's health conditions, who I know will pass away eventually, time will only tell. You see, Biscuit was not a healthy turtle to begin with when she was bought from the pet shop. She has some form of shell disorder and skin disease, possibly due to mishandling during her capture and poor diet at the pet shop or previous owner. I did my best to treat her with Turtle Fix, feed her Turtle Block, and get her to consume more vegetables but Biscuit hardly would eat but I have spent time with her enough in my room to know that when I do feed her, she eats quite a lot to a point where she does throw it back out, just like a baby who drinks too much milk (lol). In the case of her shell and skin condition, I don't know if she's getting better or not with my home treatment using Turtle Fix. I have also consulted with a veterinarian specializing in reptiles, past and present day, but an onsite visitation can be very costly plus it's very far from where I currently reside which is in Alameda County. Taking her to the veterinarian onsite is a last resort. I have noticed that Biscuit can get really scared and is also very depressed when I'm not around. I have also noticed that when she had shared her water tank's habitat space in my room, she was very active. She was super playful and chirped at me from time to time, stared at me from her basking log or water tank a lot, and she was very happy. We would even watch TV together, me on my bed, and her in her water tank up the basking log. She even has her own little hot and cold turtle personality, she's goofy and I tease her a lot but I praise her too when she's being good, and she really does listens to me when I talk to her and I have home videos to capture those cute moments that shows the bond of our relationship. I recently had to move her upstairs to the living quarters to give her bigger space and try to get support from my other house mates to assist caring for her if I need to be away for a longer period of time, because I have to juggle between taking care of my parents, spending time with my boyfriend and my close-friends, being at work, attending school, and also taking care of myself all at once. I have to also consider that I may go on long vacations and travel to pursue my career endeavors and I haven't worked out on how to travel with a turtle or who will help me care for her at my current residency. I love Biscuit. I don't want to give up on her and I want her to be alive and in my life for a very long time. Turtles live long lives and with Biscuit being a female red ear slider, they grow to be about 16 inches in shell length but she's only 4.5 inches in shell length now. I have already figured a bigger habitat space for her but that matters on approval. As I said before, it has not been easy. I'm at a up and down battle with my depression, it triggers and heightens when I feel overwhelmed or I'm at a mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausted state especially when I'm taking too much on. For example, there was a few days the past couple weeks through the holidays where I had to go to work, get off work to go take care of my parents, come home and take care of my turtle, and I don't get to take care of myself, because I didn't eat all day, then sometimes my house mates wants to hang out but I haven't gotten the time or the moment to take care of myself that one entire day to relax or unwind. On days like these, there are also times when other mundane irrelevant matters that shouldn't even become my sole responsibility piles onto it. So I would find myself shutting down and isolating myself until I overcome some of these dark waves and even some frustrations depending on the events of the day, but when I feel like this, it's just me needing a moment to myself like I need to be in my sacred space to recharge and process because everyone has been in my space back-to-back or that I'm just drained and over stimulated from a really hectic day. In the end, I had to be strong for myself even if I have to wear the, "everything is fine", mask to my house mates, my coworkers, my parents, other people, and the world. The only person that knows my deep dark struggles is my boyfriend, Adam, and my close-friends, because when I crumble deep inside, I go down really hard. I drink and drink and drink and drink to oblivion. I isolate myself for days on end. I don't eat. I'm sleeping constantly. I'm tired. Exhausted. I avoid people. Dark stuff overtakes me like the "Taking of Deborah Logan". Please note, that my anxiety and depression, is the main reason why I resigned from police work. It was this and also getting shot at on the right shoulder and right knee. I'm lucky to even be alive after serving in the police force for a brief 2 year span but I also considered being apart of the men and women in blue a success in life because the police academy really made me and proved that I was stronger than I thought. When it comes to battling depression, the only way for me to overcome my dark waves is thinking about the sunrise and the sunsets, it would be the things that I would miss the most on Earth, and oddly, how much I had wanted to be alive after getting shot at while being a police officer with SFPD. Of course, when I think about that last bit, it makes me laugh, and I stop taking my anxiety or depression too serious. I get anxiety and depression when I start to feel too much unwanted pressure, uncertainty, rejection, and doubt or if I'm placed under a prolong period of stress at a conditioned state. Afterall, I'm human. Having a human experience like anyone else. |
AuthorA Nichijou Blog is a blog that entails the everyday or day-to-day mundane and random life and moments of Kaneda Yoshida, otherwise known as Yoshi, he shares his career goals, work life, education, general skills, family life, close-friends, love life, social life, involvement with the LGBTQIA+ community, human rights activism, unique hobbies, general interests such as his love for cooking and wine, to sharing some of his favorite categories at random, opening up deep secrets about him as a person, sharing past-life moments, batting anxiety and depression, and his life as a bisexual transgender man. Archives
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