The Sunset Samurai

So, what happened this year to me? Trying to see how much I can remember since it's been a long decade this year.

Some serious talk about all sorts of grim subjects within so be cautious.

( i'm only one girl )

I'm pretty sure that covers all the big major things going on right now but if I think of anything else I'll talk about it. Surprisingly, despite it all and the politics going around, I somehow remain optimistic, but it's not despite it all, but in spite of it all. I'm the big buff tough aniki type everyone looks up to to kick ass and not be afraid to, and damn if I'm not going to go into 2019 thinking I can still win it all.

Because we can.

since people are coming in from the tumblr purge and the make new friends posts

this is probably something you should come in for since it looks like me being a legitimized samurai is what people are going to be coming for

This is my martial arts/self defense/swordsmanship resume

This is where I write about those topics and do things like make book rec lists and answer questions and debunk myths

Anytime you want to ask me anything on these subjects, please do! I'll field anything. No question is stupid, trust me.

Stray Kat Strut: How Senran Kagura Helped Me Come to Terms With My Lesbianism and its Messy Past
AKA "Long Live The Queen"

Done for LGBT Pride 2k17

SUMMARY: An 8k word essay on what Katsuragi means to me as a lesbian starving for representation


CONTENT WARNING: This is a very personal post and will contain some mild NSFW/TMI elements as well as mentions of suicide. It mentions a gender binary at times, even if the author personally believes it to be a spectrum or range. Some minor slurs are used. Proceed at your own discretion.


( Holy shit, I'm a lesbian )

Once upon a time, as the legends pass down, there was a girl who wanted nothing more in life than to grow up and be a knight, like the heroes she read and heard of in stories short and long since the day she was born. Before she could read herself or could attend school to learn, she knew that she would like to grow up to use a sword and save the day and the girl, too.

( Read on )

Fiddlers (n) - Local jargon/Boontling for Delerium Tremens

This post is a retrospective on my first year of alcoholism and addiction and recovery. This is/was not an easy post to write. I hope by sharing what has occurred to me in the past year that I may potentially save even one other person out there. If I can, then what I went through was absolutely worth it.

Graphic and gross depictions of various health and addiction issues are detailed here, so proceed with caution, but without them I cannot express the dangers of this disease accurately, and in that I would not be able to warn others sufficiently as to what will happen to you too if you should find yourself in this situation.

( It began July 1st 2015 )

This post does not come easy, but people deserve honesty, and they deserve cautionary tales.

People remember last July I was hospitalized a week with legit alcohol withdrawal/delerium tremens. I almost lost everything due to it, and did my best to live sober.

It doesn't work.

I wound up in the hospital again for drinking and having to go to a detox/rehab center for 72 hour observation. So long as I agree to attempt outpatient treatment (like AA meetings or similar) I don't have to do the full 30 day inpatient treatment. Which is good, because that place is a living nightmare. It's more of a drunk tank, not a medical facility. They made us wear scrubs, we had to be preapproved to shower, and they were prison showers, all we would do is watch pre-approved shitty movies, eat, clean up the place to earn another movie, eat, repeat the cleaning process, then movies til midnight and then you got to read only donated books, most of which are romance novels of religious AA lit. Either that or you could sleep on the shittiest bed in the coldest bedroom and simultaneously be so hot and so cold at once that why bother. The movies were all like dudebro action shit and Adam Sandler movies so all I did was cry a lot in my bed over guilt and pray.

They also don't believe in giving out meds unless you're sent in with a prescription, not aspirin, not stomach meds, not sinus spray, no matter how much you need it. I was on librium, a benzo, three times a day and an anti-nausea as needed. I couldn't eat most of the food since the menu was pre-made and beef or cream heavy.

I almost lost Koshka. I made it back just a day before she would have left. Almost 6 years down the drain. I owe my gods a lot.

Alcoholism is extremely hereditary and most of my family has fallen prey to it. Transmom is proof you can recover and stay recovered, but she learned the hard way, through a stroke, a 90 day jailtime detox and a 30 day inpatient treatment at the same lousy place I was at. She said that's where I'm headed next if I keep it up.

I'll find ways to stay sober. I have to. I have options, at least.

And mostly all I have to remember is it's not worth a shot to almost lose or lose everything.

Please don't drink, guys, or if you do, be very cautious. Don't go away like I almost did.

It's been two and a half months since I almost accidentally killed myself. I've been sober since; it's actually a lot easier to avoid alcohol than I thought it would be. Even walking by it at the store, especially in giant cheap plastic containers, makes me physically retch and reel and want to vomit. Now and again I miss beer with dinner but otherwise the pros of being sober far far far outweigh any potential jonesing to break it would cost me in the end.

Life is back to as close to normal as it could be. My moms have accepted me fully into their household once again and tell me stories of their own addictions and rehabs and it makes me feel somewhat okay again. We're renovating the house and I'm learning how to grow medicinal marijuana. I'm back at the dojo, reading more, and eating healthier. It's interesting.

However, I've become far, far more jaded and cynical as a result. I'm still mostly idealistic, but my ability to tolerate bullshit is at an all time low, and it's usually pretty low to begin with. I'm picking a lot more internet fights but while they're worthy causes usually I'm still being very aggressive and putting myself in the front. I find I care less and less about how others perceive me and my worth, what other peoples' problems are, and my tolerance for people in general is flipping on and off. I have a lot of residual guilt and it shows up in random bursts and manifests now and again as severe suicidal thoughts, so it's probably normal I'm taking it out on the world, and on myself mentally for putting everyone through that. Not healthy no, but normal.

It's going to have to be my new normal. Someday I may ease up on all this but there's also a chance what I did screwed myself up so much that this is a more permanent change is a bigger dose of apathy into my daily routine. All I can do is keep on keeping on and trying to stay constructive and distracted. I don't talk about it in public much outside of venting now and again like this, and I probably won't want to talk about it in public or in private for some time; please let me have this. I won't die or kill myself (it's my birthday next month I at least need to become old first before I die), I promise, but for a while don't be surprised if some days I just hole up with my girlfriend and sleep a lot as I try to reset myself. It could be a year or so for the more immediate symptoms to go away, but I could be stuck with some mental issues and guilt over it forever, if what my moms says is true. I just have to be better than it.

Getting used to me not caring about others and humanity in general as much as I used to is going to suck. It does suck now. I just want to fucking slap everyone and tell them their problems don't matter; not in a mean way but in a "don't waste your life like I almost did mine" way. Shut up, stop whining, you can make it. I'm still alive, for whatever godsforsaken reason that is, so I'm gonna make the most of it and you can too, and you didn't even have to be the one having a near death experience for it.

So what I'm saying is world, if I appear to be a bigger asshole than I've ever been, or am hiding from my usual internet hideout spots, I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me.

Okay, it's sometimes you, it can be a lot of you, but it's going to have to be me that deals with it.

Gods, I really fucking hate alcohol right now.

2014 perspective post

I don't have much to say, and that's a good thing

I'm about to graduate a course on becoming an instructor trainee for my dojo. This, when done, will seal me a career path for the rest of forever. I can be a monk or swordsman all I want to, and childhood dreams can come true.

I never would have dreamed of this.

But one of the assignments for this course was we all had to talk about, in front of the others, what the changes in ourselves we saw since starting at this dojo were.

And I answered that it made me kick my own ass and become healthy, organized, and reliable, and nobody else could have done it to me but me, I doubt even my sensei or his teachers could have done this or made me realize it without me there on the way to see my own results. As much as sensei and his lineage have told me they believed I can do this and have literally dreamed as they slept I took over their samurai arts and swordsmanship with complete confidence, they would not be able to trust me or think such without me whipping myself into shape.

2014 was the year I kicked my own ass, then. I know someday I'll look back on this and grin and knew it was the start of something all much bigger.

I have a very rare opportunity to be one of the biggest of all time. I am stronger and healthier both physically and mentally now than I have ever been in my entire life. Everyone else tells me now for years on end that if anyone could achieve this lofty ideal, it is me, and it's time I started believing in all their words 500% at the very least. I will be the competent and reliable figure I show myself as, no matter what.

I will not take any of it for granted. I will keep my word.

Happy 2015, self, you have a future now.

Grasp it and never let go.

Today I want to talk about my gender. It's not exactly something easy to talk about online now with how tumblr and other sites keep appropriating it into shit like Transkorean or Transautistic or what the hell ever imaginary problem they have now. But fuck that, I think it's something important to talk about now.

( read more )

post your address/name you want me to send it to here if you want a card. anon enabled. all comments screened. alternately, you can send me an email at maid.mistress(at)gmail.com or a tumblr ask i won't publish

if you want my address in return all you have to do is ask

expect it from an amanda in santa rosa ca but you can address anything sent to me as atma if you want

it doesn't matter how long i've known you or if you live internationally or how we met or such, everyone can get a card if they like