• I go by Astrid now. On purpose! Please don’t call me Alena. Alena was pre-strokes; Astrid is post-strokes. Astrid has access to most of Alena’s memories, including skill and feeling memories, but doesn’t practically have those skills and feelings, is not [even able to be] that person. I won’t be mad at you if you slip, but hearing it is painful and something I want to move on from, so if you care for me, and my comfort and identity matters to you, please work to shift to calling me Astrid. 💖 (Yes, all my publications and my website are still under the Alena name and will have to stay that way for the foreseeable future for practical purposes.)
• I live in Bangor, Maine for the time being, with my partners, Bruce and Joe. (Bruce is my husband of 5 years, some version of whom most of you probably know by now; Joe is my boyfriend of a year and a half, who joined the household and moved in last year.) We moved there to be close to my medically-adept mom out of necessity due to my health.
• For whatever reason, my body and brain don’t seem to work very well back on the East Coast, especially my lungs and connective tissue, and it’s like having a dog on my chest and being crushed in a laundry mangle all the time, and so far, the only relief has been coming back to Colorado temporarily. Since I have no income and am too disabled to work (even creatively/part time) reliably, trying to figure out my life and how to live somewhere that doesn’t feel like it’s unaliving me the whole time I’m there is overwhelming and scary, and pretty much everything depends almost solely on the kindness and support of others right now, especially my family. It makes me feel really burdensome and beholden to need help with basically everything and have so little hope of being able to take back over doing these things myself, and it’s hard not to just be fraught and frazzled all the time.
• Medical care in Maine has been impossibly terrible, and I haven’t been able to get the psych meds I was finally stable on after 15 years of trial and error (that irreparably damaged my personal life and my body) because the doctors here refuse to accept the word of my CO and GA doctors and want me to start from the very beginning of that nightmare all over again. It’s really disheartening, and if I weren’t on an escape in CO right now, I honestly don’t know what hope I would have, because going through that medication gamut almost unalived me multiple times the first runthrough, and that was back when I was healthier and more stable; after a fortune in finance and suffering and time spent and friendships lost and relationships damaged to find the med balance that let me live SOMEWHAT LIKE A PERSON, I’m utterly unwilling to start that process over because the Maine healthcare system doesn’t think the word of multiple past doctors and therapists is good enough. I’m tired. I don’t want to keep pushing this same Sisyphean boulder up the hill.
• Since escaping to CO this last week, my body is almost back to the health it was at before we moved away, like magic! While it fills me with joy and gratitude and hope, the idea of voluntarily going back to where I can’t breathe or move or think or do anything except rot and cry just fills me with deep terror, so please stop messaging me to ask and comfort me about it. 😅🖤
• I still really struggle to read these days. While I love words, and appreciate all the intention behind helpful messages, especially around my health and healthcare options, I usually can’t even read them, let alone respond to them. The best way to get me that info is to send it to my mom or Joe, who help me read and understand stuff. Please don’t send me things (other than memes or short poetry) to read for fun, no matter how much you think I’ll love them; reading hurts now and I can’t remember the content of sentences when I’m halfway through them and even trying to read my favorite books just makes me cry now because they’ll turn to gibberish as I’m reading for no apparent reason. Having to explain it every time is always a downer and ruins the party, but like. I’m a writer with brain damage who can’t read properly anymore and it sucks. 🤷🏻‍♀️
• My favorite things right now are hobbit hiking in the mountains when my body will allow, playing Stardew Valley, watching TV shows I’ve already seen several times, looking at/talking about art, leftism, and occasionally seeing friends (when my health allows.) Keeping up relationships is really hard for me right now, as I struggle to hold conversations, do video chats, or leave my apartment much at all these days, and mostly what I have to talk about (outside of this month-long break in CO, which I am so grateful for) is mostly just miserable, because where I’ve been living has been crushing out even my basic functionality to the point that all I do is sit home and sleep and cry and go to the doctor and cry more. I still really want and need human closeness and community, though, and am lonely a lot of the time. (My best way of communicating rn is honestly just sending pictures of our lives with short captions and relevant memes back and forth unprompted.) I am so, SO grateful to those of you who send me loving pebbles anyways—cards, gifts, messages of support with no pressure to reply. 🥰 Y’all make me feel like it’s worth it to keep rolling the boulder of myself up the hill, even if I’m exhausted. Thank you. 💖

(Photo is just one I took of the road at sunset on solstice up near Berthoud Pass)