FamilyDrama

Another system rebuild. Another round of pretending this time it’ll work, that nothing vital will vanish into digital smoke. Maybe I’ll stick with Windows 11—just long enough to hate it all over again. Or maybe, finally, I’ll throw myself into Linux like a man falling from a burning building. Kodachi. Mint. Whonix. Take your pick, all flavours of escape.

The plan? Dual life. Linux on a pen drive for when I need stealth and sanity. Custom Windows on the main drive for when I need chaos and legacy apps. But before anything happens, it’s backups. Backups of backups. Then backup the backup of the backup.

I’ve lost too much already. Files. Art. Music. Decades of moments. Things that mattered. Gone because I trusted the wrong hard drive, or hit “yes” on a prompt I didn’t read at 4am because I couldn’t sleep from the pain—or the thoughts. Terabytes lost to time and stupidity.

I’ve been part of this madness since the early 80s. When computing still felt like rebellion. When you could feel the electricity in the keys. Back when 40GB was god-tier and 32MB of RAM could change your life. When you didn’t need permission from five corporations to run software.

Today, I did get out. Ended up at Fat Tony’s. Sex toys, incense, grinders, masks, and the surreal scent of liberation in the air. I could feel the laughter in my bones. Albertine grabbed a few curious bits and pieces. Good man behind the counter. Real. No masks. No script. Not like the world outside. Not like doctors.

Came back home. Wheelchair of death started vibrating like it had unfinished business with the earth’s core. Loud enough to wake the ghosts I wish I could forget.

The jam was a mistake. No sleep. Peeing every hour. Kidney screaming. Bladder playing drums. Night’s silence broken by the symphony of my body's decline.

I asked the doctor for sleeping tablets. He laughed. Said I might sleep through an accident. “What,” I asked, “like shit myself?” He didn’t laugh back. Just stared at me like a creature in a tank. Something dying slowly behind glass.

That same doctor once told me there was nothing more they could do. I rolled out of that office in my chair and into the hallway of despair. Slammed into the door just to feel something. I wasn’t a person to him—just another file closed. “Mr Goblin,” he said. As if I wasn’t already invisible.

You think it ends there?

I got a phone call years ago. I was stressed. The voice on the line? A GP. He tells me, flatly: “Oh yeah, you had a heart attack at some point.” Like it was the weather. Then the line goes dead.

I went ice cold. Started spasming. Couldn’t breathe. Ambulance was called. Paramedics came. One looked like death in a hi-vis vest. He barked at me about not labelling my door clearly enough. I nearly told him to check my pulse and guess the address that way.

ECG said yes, it happened. A “heart event.” Another ambulance came. The serious kind. They jabbed, they drugged, they stabilized the mess I was.

But in that moment, on the floor, shaking and half-naked, I thought: So this is how it ends. Alone, misunderstood, staring at the cracked ceiling while the world rushes by outside.

But no. I lived. Again. Like I always bloody do.

And still my mind drifts. My half-sister. It’s been 10 years. Maybe she thinks of me. My older sister? Try 30. A lifetime of silence.

Being adopted is a lifelong mind-fuck. You're the cuckoo in someone else’s nest. A mistake nobody admits. A problem to be hidden in a file folder somewhere.

My family judged me because I lived in a council house. Because I was disabled. Because I wasn’t their version of clean or proper.

But when they gave me a chance, I proved them wrong. Every time.

Still… no calls. No letters. No visits.

I wonder if my brothers are still alive. I wonder if they’d remember my voice.

But hope is a slow suicide. So I smile instead. Laugh when I can. Back up my data like I’m guarding a soul in binary. Sit in my chair and watch the world pretend to care.

I’m not done yet.

Not by a long shot.

Goblin still here

         “The views in this post are based on my personal  
          experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”  

looking to buy a second hand q100 wheelcair or similar in the south west area as mine has gone completely to the breakers yard in the sky ... many thanks sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

          “By ink and breath and sacred rage, I write.
                    By storm and silence, I survive.”

Let’s talk about the big, festering elephant in the room: Multiple Sclerosis. Or, as I prefer to call it, the silent puppeteer of mental mayhem. For anyone not familiar — congratulations, enjoy your blissful ignorance. For those of us who are intimately acquainted, we know it doesn’t just nibble at your nervous system like a shy woodland creature. No — MS kicks down the door, flips your brain inside out, and installs a disco ball of chaos where your personality used to be.

I used to be fairly calm. Normal, even. Then MS came along like an uninvited houseguest who never leaves — and suddenly I’m starring in my own Jekyll and Hyde horror flick. No polite build-up. Just creeping dread followed by a full-throttle freak-out. I’m talking foaming at the mouth, incoherent screaming, full-blown berserker mode. Try hiding that from your partner. Try pretending it’s just “a bad day.”

It’s like watching yourself unravel while screaming internally, “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!” And the more you try to stop it, the worse it gets. Panic mode? Engaged. Solutions? None. At some point, I ended up on the floor semi-conscious after headbutting a wall, hoping it would jolt my brain back to factory settings.

So now I live by one simple rule: avoid stress like it’s a plague-carrying rat. Because stress isn’t just bad for MS — it’s the bloody ignition key to the meltdown machine. Let’s not forget the heart attack. That little bonus prize from the MS gift basket. 60% heart function now, apparently. What a treat.

Oh, and my voice? Occasionally checks out completely. Just ups and leaves. One minute I’m fine, next minute I’m miming like a drunk Marcel Marceau. People don’t get it. They assume you’re just ignoring them, or being lazy. I once sent my mother a long, heartfelt email explaining it all. Her response? Silence. Well, no — before the silence she asked my partner if I “really” had MS. That was the final curtain on that relationship.

She died a year ago. I wasn’t invited to the funeral. Not told, not asked. Just gone. Eleven years of silence because everyone was “too busy with their lives,” and I was, frankly, the cuckoo in the nest. Never fit in with my birth mother’s life, nor my adopted mother’s. Just the family subplot no one talks about.

That said, meeting my half-siblings was a strange and wonderful thing. I’m sure they found it weird too. “Surprise, here’s your brother you never knew about, also adopted, and he comes with emotional baggage and inappropriate sarcasm.” Meeting my birth mother was like attending a surreal theatre performance. At the time, she was dating a bloke younger than me. Classy.

She lied about my father. Even got her sister involved. One day, she phoned me crying, saying my dad had died in a motorbike crash. I didn’t buy it. I could feel he was still alive — don’t ask me how. I just knew. I sat with Albertine and we asked the Universe for help (as you do when reality fails you), and lo and behold — we found him. In New Zealand, of all places. And guess what? I had a full sister, also adopted.

Turns out all the lies, secrets and cover-ups were just damage control for decisions made in the 1950s — that golden era of social shame, polished smiles, and secrets buried under six feet of denial.

looking to buy a second hand q100 wheelcair or similar in the devon cornwall area as mine has gone completely to the breakers yard in the sky ... many thanks sick@mylivinghell.co.uk

        “The views in this post are based on my personal  
          experience. I do not intend harm, only honesty.”