Horses are good company -- The Witcher

I realized today that a lot of my friends don't know about what I've gone through this year.

Last year in June I moved back to Minnesota to look after my dad. My mom was in the hospital for a month and then moved to a nursing home with sudden-onset dementia (B1 deficiency) secondary to cancer.

I intended to support them temporarily but decided to make it a more permanent move to support them and their many animals. I struggled and kept expecting other family members to step up, but they did not.

I was hospitalized in May 2025 after a seizure. (Two seizures in 3 years means a new diagnosis of epilepsy.) I am missing about a week or 2 of memories from directly after that experience, so I don't know for sure what happened. I was busy looking after my dad and the animals, and then coordinating a move for my parents into assisted living, which I mostly did myself, While recovering from a seizure, with a broken rib.

I don't know why-- again, I don't remember (likely from medication side effects), but no one from the family came to help me directly after the seizure. My dad (who has dementia) and I did it alone. I'm angry about it and need people to know.

I supported my family for a year and half and did not receive any funds, no salary, very little emotional or logistical help from my brother, his wife, or his 4 healthy teenage kids. There is a wider extended family and they didn't show up either. We got some occasional visits but it wasn't enough.

Since moving my parents into assisted living, I have continued to support them in many ways, including looking after their farm and animals, again with no funds.

This week I asked my brother to help me advocate with my dad, to get me some money. He said no. He believes we should sell the farm (where I am now living). He made no mention of any provisions for me.

I'm obviously very upset, but the anger is at least helping me communicate about what is happening. I am reaching out to friends and various family members and trying to raise the alarm to protect myself.

I am safe for the time being but it is not the best idea for me to be living alone. I had intended to find roommates to come live here with me, but there are some barriers, including me not being the property owner, and the house being a bit of a mess. My next step is to directly talk to my parents about this situation. They both have dementia but I think they are capable of understanding my position.

I am currently unsure what the best course of action is moving forward. But I at least want folks to know what is going on. It's been very helpful to talk on the phone with friends who are affirming to me that this is a fucked up way to be treated. It's been a bitter pill to swallow, realizing that my family is exploiting me.

Warm thoughts, mail, messages are all helpful.

Or, spirit of the staircase!

I participated today in a free screening for oral and throat cancers. It took 5 minutes and I was feeling uncharacteristically talkative to the people running it. For example I told the woman taking the forms: "You should have check boxes for male, female, and other." (I doubt she took me seriously.)

So after I finished having the screening (the doc looks in your mouth with a flashlight), I was talking a man who was passing out the flyers. He was a friendly middle-aged guy that was sort of easy to talk to. He told me the risk factors for these cancers are tobacco use, alcohol use, and HPV (human pappilloma viruses).

"Well," I said, "Hopefully that will go down because now there is a vaccine." (Gardasil.)

"Or, teens could just have regular sex!" he joked, and laughed. He was referring to the fact that oral sex, ie blow jobs, are a risk factor for HPV causing cancers of the mouth and throat.

"Well, that's not going to happen, they just need to get vaccinated!" I said at the time.

What I wished I had done is either gotten scarily calm, or scarily angry, and scared him into NEVER SAYING THAT AGAIN. It was totally inappropriate for a number of reasons.

1. "Regular sex" is a figment of the imagination that exists in a subset of straight people's minds, and is centered around penis-in-vagina hetero sex. It erases queer sex, oral sex, manual sex, kinky sex, etc etc etc.

2. His so-called "regular sex" still transmits HPV-- to women, who can then get cervical cancer.

3. There was more than a strong whiff of victim-blaming to what he said-- if people get cancer from HPV, it's their fault.

People are such assholes! This guy told me he used to be a study coordinator!

ETA I just occurred to me that this man could have been attempting to flirt with me by making a risque joke about blowjobs. Such a lesbian am I-- I was totally oblivious.