Note: My cousin was biologically female, assigned at birth. My cousin also subverted gender normality mentally in every way humanly possible. The line between a non-binary identity crossed heavily with a male one. My cousin most often identified as male. Therefore, I will be using the pronouns he/him for the entirety of this blog post.

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“Okay smart-ass, how do you make a brick…?”

That was the question asked nearly a decade ago on a summer day. I was whittling the slow hours away out on my cousin’s front deck. I had a cigarette in hand and a cold glass of some flavored water collecting condensation in the sun. We were talking about everything and nothing. Stupid questions and even stupider answers flowing from our mouths. Everything we said was vitriolic, but also in good humor.

It was just our way, you know?

It was a typical day for us. I recall that day fondly. My cousin’s life was prolific in the normalcy of it all. A hand-full of problems, and no real way to fix any of them. He was incredibly smart, but, he was also a drug addict. He went to therapy often, going through shrinks like a household goes through toilet paper. He spent his many years taking prescription medication, using them, until they began using him. Just another vice among a great many.

He never quite got his fix…

Why does all that matter now? Well, my cousin’s dead. He died in 2019 of an overdose. Duster cans acting a means of getting high. The means of that addiction just didn’t justify the end. In spite of this, that was the outcome we had all come to expect. It was going to happen eventually, because addiction is a beast all of it’s own… and it had it’s claws into him too far.

Addiction is monstrous in how it eats the soul from the inside out. It’s almost like a plague, really…

Being an outsider looking in on that struggle, it’s hard to fathom. The highs come with lows, and when mental illness get mixed in, lines blur. You ask yourself questions trying to piece together the magnitude of it all. You try to understand-often failing to do so– and sometimes there are just no answers in sight. Sometimes, there won’t be.

That’s how it was for me. I had so many questions, but so few answers.

I’d ask myself, what part of it is the illness? What part is the drugs? Where is the soul beneath all of that? How do you cure the things that can’t seem to be?

Some people can claw their way to successful management of their addictions. It never leaves, once an addict, always an addict. Yet, some people can control that beast. Unfortunately, my cousin never could. Maybe in a way, it was just easier not to…

I can’t help but think of all the missed opportunities, failed chances, and everything he left behind. A muddled story to be sure, but one that played an irreplaceable part in my life.

It would be a disservice to even think otherwise.

We had always said we’d write a book together. We never did. We should have. With all time we wasted with our thumbs up our asses, we could have. It’s that last point that really gets me.

We could have done it.

Like so many things, we never got around to it. Instead, all I have left are the memories of the things we’d said we do… and we said so many things.

I look back at the missed opportunity. I wish we had made those chronicles of our lives. I wish we’d written that family history. It was just as imperfect as any other, but it was ours anyway. In a way, it was special because it was ours. Now, it’ll never be written. My cousin was eighteen years, my senior, but… well, history has way of repeating.

My cousin was some sort of looking-glass for me…. still is, I suppose… not with addiction… no, just in life…

Like my cousin, lines of gender blur for me. I am also biologically female. In my head, I am 100% not female. I don’t believe myself to think inherently like a woman. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the concept of inherently feminine traits or masculine traits, it doesn’t matter.

I’d never call myself non-binary, because to be that title would never fit. Then again, I can only help but feel that the spectrum of gender fails humanity in so many ways. I think we put too much significance in gender. The Performativity of it.

In many ways it’s all pomp and circumstance.

That being said, I take my identity a step farther than my cousin ever did. I wear binders, he didn’t. I pack, he didn’t. Even so, in my eyes he was no less a person, and no lesser a man.

Effeminate qualities do not chain down a soul.

Like him, I find myself at the mercy of the mirror every day. Taking quick showers because I don’t wish to see myself without clothing. I’m by no means obese, but biologically speaking, women tend to have more body fat than men in some very select areas I don’t want to be reminded of. To me, breasts are no more than blubber with a nipple on them. A pain in the ass, and just as unsightly as rolls of excess fat that cling no matter what you do.

I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never have the body I’d like. I’ve decided that a body is just a vessel that houses a soul. That the vessel itself need not reflect the soul in the slightest.

That despite our best wishes, for some of us it’s never going to. I feel that we must reach beyond those confines in different ways. For some semblance of comfort, I feel like there’s no other choice.

This idea is akin to many memes we see across the internet. Much like a house cat with the ferocity of a lion. Or a dog that stands with all the majesty of a wolf.

I turned 31 in September of 2020. It was a bit bitter for me because I thought I’d be someplace further in my life than what I am now. It’s strange, because my cousin used to say that about his own life more often than not.

The older I get, the more I find myself thinking about it during the quiet dawns and late sleepless nights.

I love to write, even if I’m not very good at it. Sometimes I tell myself that it’s just another passion that’ll never go anywhere. Jack of all trades, master of none.

We have a Twitch, YouTube, and this blog as far as content creation is concerned. We play games, I write on the blog, and life moves forward.

Now, will we get anywhere with this seemingly asinine idea? Well that’s anybody’s guess.

Then again, I don’t want to have another monumental regret, either. I don’t want to spend later years in my life asking “what if?” endlessly as I am often prone to do.

I’m not a perfect person, my shit stinks, just the same as everyone else. I look at my flaws and they cripple me sometimes. They overwhelm me. I don’t know where this blog will take me, if anywhere. I don’t know if Kreshenne and I can really make something of our platforms or not.

I don’t want insane fame. I don’t want countless fortune. I just want to pay the bills with things I love to do, and Kreshenne is the same way…

So, sections of this blog will just be my thoughts, my insights. However meaningless that proves to be for anyone else doesn’t matter. This post is a selfish thing, but humans are selfish creatures.

If I don’t put my thoughts down brick by brick, maybe I never will. They say it takes 8,176 bricks to make the average home. If that’s true, I wonder how many I’ve laid down in my life so far.

How many more it will take before I feel like I’ve accomplished something meaningful? I don’t know that answer. Maybe I never will.

This blog is a collection of my passions, my failings, and everything else I can think of. Imperfect in so many ways, because I’m flawed to a fault. In some ways, I don’t believe that’s a grave sin. Rather, I feel like that’s the way it should be…

So among all of the anime content, gaming content, and RWBY content that will doubtlessly flood all of “The Demented Ferrets” platforms as time goes on, I want to be selfish. I want this one thing for me. To place down these bricks, bit by bit.

I realize it’s not the standard fare that most would come to expect. I understand that completely. I’m probably just shouting into a void, and so few people will ever read these sorts of posts.

Either way, this is the first brick. One that I should have laid down along with my cousin when we had the chance to write a book together.

That’s gone, but this new opportunity is one that I won’t allow to pass me by.

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