The last time, at Gor Camp…

I saw that Spitfire posted on her blog, and I had to reply.

I have one question that I know the answer to already: Did you bother to ask me where I was when all this went down?

The answer: No.

I had warned I was about to safeword. Instead of a Fast Forward in the roleplay, they were going to still RP it with me there! I warned first. Let me repeat this: I Warned That I Was Going To Safeword! The RP was going ahead with or without my consent.

I logged out of SL when it was going to go ahead. Spent maybe 30 seconds shaking, and realized that I had 15 minutes to get to my doctor’s appointment that was at least 20 minutes away, if not more, depending on the traffic.

I had been dragged into RP that is on my profile as a firm limit, that I didn’t want to do, that I couldn’t do, and was going to log out anyway because I had to get across town, and I get labelled a “runaway” and “bad RPer.”

At the doctor’s office, I got some bad news. Nothing major. Frustrating is more like it, but it’s still bad news. News I have to deal with. News that I don’t want to deal with.

Did you once ask me where I was? No.

Did you ask me if I was emotionally okay? No.

Am I?

No. Not just the news from my doctor, but the multilayer body memories I had and still am having have eroded my sleep.

I thought real life came first.

Once again, I was proven wrong. Real life is never first for me.

The irony is that I was obeying you when you told me to go see my doctor as soon as I could. I did.

This is yet more proof that I can never do anything right.

The above was my comment to Spitfire about what happened last Friday.  All of a sudden, I’m the one who made all these mistakes.

I didn’t want to be a kajira.  I was brought into the Gorean sim dressed as a freewoman to explore.  But as soon as I got to the guide/gorean mistress’ apartments, suddenly, I was a kajira.

I went along with it, because, why not.

The roleplay was interesting.  I thought I was a bullet rper, but I turned into this pararper and I was filling long blocks of text about stuff that wasn’t sexual.

I was told that stuff I didn’t like or couldn’t do because of Spitfire’s restrictions would be respected – so why decide I should a kajira when I couldn’t be sexual?  Why restrict me from being able to freely express what I needed to express?

For the week or so I was playing in Gor, not all of the play was consensual.  I’m not talking about the rp itself, I’m talking about being dragged to Gor when I was busy with other things, and made to go through this trial or that thing when I came into SL for other reasons – like inventory management, or to relax to music, or something else completely non-RP.

I felt like I was being dragged back into that vampire clan I was in at one point in time, where I couldn’t do anything BUT what they demanded I do for them, and if I did it too slow, or improper, or anything that they didn’t like, I would get reprimanded.

Except I wasn’t reprimanded.  Not really.  An ear flick, maybe.  But that was it.  When she’d log off, if her (in rp) protector didn’t have me with him, I would leave Gor and go back to what I was doing and relax.

I felt on edge there.  I felt uneasy.

At the same time, it was the rich RP I have needed for a long time.  Not the more erotic stuff done within YMO.  It was full of scents, smells, sights, ideas and so much more.  Some of the goreans really ought to stop RPing and write books, their RP is that good.

Now, I know that in the World of Gor, kajirae, male and female, get branded.

I was sitting, watching something quite telling.  It was a wonderful bit of story of a lost child finding her way home, and having to prove she was free.  I was enjoying it, hiding in the corner, and got into a private conversation with a man there about why I was hiding and more.

Suddenly, she was behind me, and, I knew my time was limited, she decided that I had to rp what she wanted to rp for me.  I got dragged over to the ferrier and she tells me I’m going to be branded.

Now, my character at the time, Jo, was happy to be on Gor.  Jo didn’t care if she ended up a scullery or even a sewer worker.  Jo was happy there.  Why? Because the work done to bring her over had done something to her body, and Jo was healthier than she had ever been.  Jo was part of medieval recreation group, so she had training in natural dyes, finding natural dyes in fact, and several textile arts.  Jo also had training in a lot more on Earth.

This was one thing that perplexed me about Gor – it’s as if Terrans forget the skills they had on Earth the moment they touch gorean soil.  Jo could light a fire for a camp, or even set up a camp with a couple of blankets, three poles, some rope, and branches.  Jo could knit, crochet, embroider, sew, paint, draw, origami, make dyes, illuminate scrolls, and even how to make pens from feathers.  To her, being on Gor was a dream.  Jo had longed to get away from the pollution and the noise and the rat race that was Earth, and to her, Gor was the dream come true.

Jo would have been found singing or humming a tune.  Jo would have been found dancing on her tippy toes if I had kept on rping her.  In the rp, I had stated that Jo couldn’t put weight on her heels.  I had a reason for that – Jo had nails embedded in them so she couldn’t stand on her heels or walk fast, and it was supposed to keep her from running away.  The surgical metal would stab her heels every time she tried to put them down.  They could be removed, but there was a lot of scar tissue, and even removed, that didn’t mean that Jo would have full use of her entire foot.

Jo was also a gymnast, and the reason they did that to her feet wasn’t just to punish her, but to keep her from running.  Except, as a gymnast, Jo did know how to run on her tippy toes.  This would have all come out, if the physician had done a deeper exam, and maybe he would have fixed her feet, or at least tried to.  Jo knew how to wrap her feet to offer some protection for her toes.

Jo was also “unopened” to men.  Not my choice, but was decided for me by Spitfire.  I was a whitescarf/whitesilk again.  That meant I would need a chastity belt.  I couldn’t find one I liked on the marketplace, so I was considering designing one.

Anyway… the rp at the ferrier started up, and suddenly, in my ims, I’m told that I’m to be branded.

I warn that I’m about to safeword.

She doesn’t listen.  She tells me it’s going to be a couple of paragraphs and it’s over with.  She shares what the ferrier said to her.

And I noped out of that RP.

And I shook.

And I remembered.

That time when the hot butter for the popcorn got spilled out of the pot all over my face and chest and even toes.  I don’t even know how I didn’t end up all scarred.  I can remember it hitting my face hard.

That time when my birthgiver’s cherry of her cigarette fell and burnt a hole in my knee and she didn’t care about it.  That had black edges to it.

That time when my grandfather thought that applying a burn to the side of my arm and wrist would stop it from burning.  Spoiler alert: it didn’t.  That blistered quite nicely.  I still don’t know why I didn’t end up with a scar.

That time when an uncle slammed his cigarette into the palm my hand.  And the very next day, did the exact same thing to his daughter, my cousin!  We had matching burns from him.

That time when an egg exploded when I was trying to cut it after cooking it and I ended up with second degree burns.

All the little times I was scalded when I was cooking at home, or working at a restaurant.

And the burn on my breast from the bread maker that got a staff infection and festered and I could have lost my breast, all while breastfeeding my daughters.  Yes, I extended breastfed them, and how the doctors at the ER thought it was not that big of a deal, even when puss was oozing from it.  This one did scar, but you have to wait till summer to see it.  It doesn’t show unless the skin around it is tanned.

The time where I lost a foot of hair on my left side to a “joker” with a candle.

The burn mark on my foot.

The giant sunburn I had on my back that kept me from being able to sleep on my back for three months.

The scalp burns from someone flicking ash into my hair, and from being at a volunteer position for too long without relief.

All the times I had been in places that had been on fire, or evacuated because the building next to us was on fire.

All those memories, and more, slammed me at once at the mention of “branding.”  Even when I warned I was going to safeword.  Even when I was all but screaming no.  Even when I logged out.

Branding is a redlined no on my profile, and has been for years.

Anyway, I shook, and pushed that entire flood back down, because I saw the time. I had 15 minutes to travel 20 minutes to get to my doctor’s office.  I ran out the door, and did not want to deal with anything anymore.

My plan was to explain to her that branding was a huge no. That it was on my profile.  That I did warn her, but by then, the damage was done.  She had gotten on voice with Spitfire and laid into all the wrong I did, and “freed” me from being her kajira.

This happened while I was at my doctor’s office, sobbing my eyes, because he was not listening to me about my legs.  See this?  This is my right leg.  That mark was caused by a biopsy for something on the front.  It had gotten infected and I went though a course of antibiotics back in October, and went through three more of them in the last two months, with the last course also including antivirals because something was attacking my skin.  It started as a bruise.  The biopsy punched a hole in my leg, and when that got infected, there was a line that stretched around to the back, and the bruise formed from it.

This has been scaring me.  I haven’t really been able to talk to anyone about it.  Is this from diabetes or from inactivity?  If it’s from inactivity, why isn’t it going away with how busy I am working for a delivery company?

Why does it feel like something’s trying to eat my leg?

Why won’t it heal?

Am I going to loose my leg?

Am I going to loose both legs?

I have to wear compressions stockings and rub steroids into my legs to try to heal it, but I haven’t had my prescription grade stockings approved, so I’m wearing ones that barely do anything.

And I’m having a bad reaction to my diabetes medicine.  Hemoraghic nosebleeds, and menstrual cycles, are not fun.  I did that as a teen. Doing it again as a woman who is about to enter menopause, no thank you.

Not that the medicine has been helping either.  Nor will the government give me the supplies I need to adequately care for myself.  300 test strips a year is all that they will pay for. 300!  I could use that up in a month, so I have to ration them, which means I’m not catching all my highs and lows.

I’ve spent my life trying to keep my sugar levels up because I was diagnosed as hypoglycemic officially at 15, and unnoficially in preschool.  Now, I have to keep them low, but I can’t go too low or I could die.  I can’t go too high either or I will die.  I’ve been described by several as a “brittle diabetic.” My theory is that I have LADA and that I’ll be on insulin in a year or less.

So I’m stuck not knowing what to do.  Paying for my strips is at least $100 a month, if not more.  A 2 month wait for strips from Amazon was not a good thing. 100 strips is only testing 3 times a day, when I need to test when I get up and when I go to bed, and if I feel “off” or have eaten a food that I’m suspicious of.  I can easily go through 10 strips a day, especially if I have an error in the reading.  I want a CGM, but because I’m not on insulin, I don’t need it!

I’m trying to be proactive in my health, but my doctor and the skin specialist, seem to not really care.  My doctor only cares that I’ve lost weight and how much, not the why of it.  He doesn’t seem to care that my diabetes medicine could be contraindicated with the ADPKD that is in my family and I’m pretty sure I have because my birthgiver has it, and her father had it, and her sister and neice have it, and probably others.  Or that at least one of my children may also have it.  One was recently diagnosed with UTI issues which lead me to suspect that I do have ADPKD and that the child in question has it too.

Nor was that everything that I got back from my doctor.  Not wanting to refer me to an endicrinologist or nephrologist, or get the genetic testing I need to prove I don’t have ADPKD is the worst part.

By the time I came home from the doctor’s office, the damage was done.  I was released from being her kajira. Jo left Gor, and my tag for sims that require the meter has been turned back to “No One,” but now with a caveat: “Interstellar Character.”

The one thing that stung is that I went to see my doctor because Spitfire ordered me to do so at my soonest convenience.  I did, and it hurt me RP wise, because I didn’t get asked where I was or what I was doing.  If she had, maybe she would have been able to better advocate for me.

The drive to the doctor’s office was a frantic one.  The time there was frustrating.  Being pinged by Spitfire when I needed to talk to my doctor without interruption was upsetting.

And now, Spitfire needs a break from me.

So, I’m going to spend another night, unable to sleep, and hope that I’ll be able to be hers again.

I don’t know if I can be anyone’s.  Not after all the abuse I’ve suffered and survived.

Is it too much to ask the universe for one person to love me unconditionally?