Hello Steemit! Time to Really Introduce Myself!

I joined Steemit around a month or so ago, and while I did make an introduction post then, I wasn't really very happy with it but I didn't want to write out something long and complicated using my phone. My laptop is letting me use it again, so now I have the ability to easily write up a much better introduction for myself.

My first introduction post can be found here, if you're interested in reading it: https://steemit.com/introduction/@novaatebatman/looks-like-a-good-place-to-start

So pop some popcorn and get comfortable, this is gonna be long! And rambly. It may also contain far more about me than anyone might ever be interested in knowing. So prepare yourself, because I'm baring parts of my soul here. Not something I tend to do in such a public forum.

My name is Jada. I'm male, in my late twenties, and married to my highschool sweetheart. My husband and I have five cats. Yep, we're crazy cat guys.

Our middle cat is named Nova. That's the cat for which this account is named.

Our five cats are Cosmo, Nova, Tuxie, Comet, and Apollo.

Here's the post where I introduced the boys with photos: https://steemit.com/cats/@novaatebatman/meet-the-boys

Before this starts to get too in-depth, I'll go ahead and interrupt myself with the fact that I post up a Freebie Friday art post every single Friday. You should really check it out. Just wanted to throw that out there now instead of risking losing your attention before you get a chance to find that out.

This is today's Freebie Friday post. I post one every week. https://steemit.com/art/@novaatebatman/freebie-friday-want-free-art-fri-june-16th

Now, back to business.

Tuxie is around eighteen, we don't know his actual birthday except that it's sometime in April or May. He's Cosmo's older brother/uncle. (Our poor little Cosmo is inbred.) Tuxie had a life-threatening medical issue a few years back. His life was saved by pumpkin pie filling and an enema. It sounds ridiculous, but it's a true story. Tuxie was born to a cat belonging to a relative.

Cosmo was born to the same mother cat about three years later. He was given to me for my thirteenth birthday. Best birthday present ever. Cosmo just turned fifteen years old on June 4th. We honestly didn't expect Cosmo to make it to fifteen after last year. Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, Cosmo experienced total renal failure. It happened suddenly, and he was minutes from death when a vet decided to take a chance on us and made an emergency trip to his clinic to meet us and look at Cosmo. Cosmo barely made it through the night. The vet didn't think he'd survive past that. But while he wasn't optimistic, he also was willing to try, so long as we truly understood that the odds weren't in our favor. Thanks to a truly incredible vet and Cosmo being stubborn as hell and loving life too much to let it slip away that easily, Cosmo made a miraculous recovery, and after several days of hospitalization, within about a week he was running around and playing with the other cats like always. His health is a more delicate than it was, so we're more careful with him, but he still plays and is the same Cosmo he's always been.

Actually, I take that back. While Cosmo was pretty damn affectionate before, after his near-death experience, he became super affectionate. Like he wanted to make sure there were absolutely no doubts at all how much he loved his humans and his feline brothers.

The vet was also very understanding of the fact that I was about to have major surgery. (You may not think it, but having all of your teeth surgically removed is major surgery.) Cosmo was released the day before my surgery, but we were terrified of leaving him home alone in case he relapsed. (I almost hadn't caught how sick he was. He almost didn't make it to the vet in time. But since I know his behavior, and my gut was demanding that I not push one little odd thing off to the side, I followed my gut and we were just barely able to save him.) So we asked the vet if it would be possible at all to drop Cosmo off the next morning so he could be monitored and we'd pick him up after my surgery. We offered to pay the vet for it, of course. Not expecting or wanting to pay would be completely unreasonable.

The vet told us that we could drop him off in the morning so he wouldn't be alone, but told us that he didn't want payment for it. All he wanted was to see me get the surgery I desperately needed and for Cosmo and I to recover and be happy together. Cosmo and I were inseparable for a couple weeks after that.

Nova will be seven on September 7th. He's been special needs since we adopted him as a kitten. Lots of issues. He was very sick when we adopted him, severe sinus infection that left him with some permanent sensitivities, along with a few other things. We nursed him to health. When we took him to the shelter to see the shelter vet to ask about antibiotics, they thought we were returning him! Because he was sick! That absolutely shattered our hearts. I have major health issues. I know what it's like to be rejected because of being sick. The shelter was shocked that we weren't returning him, and gave us antibiotics for him. (We think that Nova was probably returned at least once before we adopted him. He had severe separation anxiety and would freak out really badly over it for the longest time. It's still an issue but not as much as it was back then. Luckily, having a house full of kitty brothers and leaving the TV on and up decently loud seems to get him through it.)

Nova is a massive black Maine Coon/Norwegian Forest Cat mix. He's a ball of love and joy and goes out of his way to make people smile and cheer them up. He also takes very good care of me. Cosmo is one of those cats that's an expert at healing humans. Nova is his apprentice and is nearly as good as the master healer cat.

Apollo will be six on August 28th. My husband rescued him from his workplace a little under six years ago. We already had Cosmo, Tuxie, and Nova, so I flew back to my hometown and gave Apollo to my relatives. We thought he'd be safe and loved. We were wrong.

He belongs to us again. The happy go lucky kitten is a neurotic mess of an adult cat and trying to help him recover from the abuse is a very long and difficult process. I don't want to talk about him too much right now, because I feel an endless guilt about trusting the wrong people, and my husband and I deeply regret not keeping him ourselves. I can't handle that guilt right now.

Comet is the youngest. We estimate that he was born around Halloween last year, so we've decided to use Halloween as his birthday. We've had him since around Valentine's Day this year. He's also a student of Cosmo's School of Healing Humans and he's a very good student as well. (Sometimes I wonder if I keep giving Cosmo kittens to love and teach to heal, if he'll just live forever because he loves his job and his job is never done.)

Comet came to us in a very interesting way. I wrote about it and introduced him pretty well here: https://steemit.com/animals/@novaatebatman/comet-tom-s-tail

One of my biggest dreams is to some day own and run a black cat and special needs rescue and sanctuary. Of course, I'll take any cat that needs me, black, special needs, or otherwise. And dogs. And rabbits. And really, any pet that can't be or isn't being taken care of and needs a soft place to land and be loved. The reason why I want to specialize in black cats and special needs cats is because they're much less likely to be adopted out. And black cats are especially dear to me, as from the moment I was brought home from the hospital after being born, there was a black cat sleeping in my crib with me.

If I ever manage to do such a thing, I fully understand and accept that many animals that end up in the sanctuary will likely never be adopted. That's alright. They'll be loved and cared for and given a nice and peaceful and happy life.

One aspect of the sanctuary I really want to do, is I want to train special needs animals to be service animals. Nova is my emotional support animal, and he mostly trained himself for it. But I want to train them to be service animals, and I want to give them to people that need service animals. No adoption fees. Take care of their special needs, and they'll take care of your special needs.

Nova is the one that truly made me want to make that happen. Nova, with all of his special needs, goes out of his way to love me and take care of me. It's a mutual love and care and an incredibly deep connection like one I'd never felt with another animal. Yes, I'm extremely close to Cosmo. Cosmo is so very important to me. And yes, Cosmo has a few special needs, but never required the kind of care Nova required and continues to require, until the last several years. Nova was a baby and had special needs from the day we brought him home.

I want everyone to experience that kind of love and care from an animal.

Another thing I really, truly want to do is to start a Pet Pantry. Where you can come to get food and other necessities (including cat litter, and toys for whatever animals you may have) for your animals. Discounted health care for their animals if I can manage it. Everyone alive deserves to experience the love of animals, whether or not they can afford to care for them. I want to make having animals a possibility for even the poorest of people. Because the love you can give and receive shouldn't be dictated by how much money you have.

Me and black cats? From the cradle to the grave. There were several years that I didn't have a black cat in my life, and the two I had just lost had left suddenly, one went very violently. And I ached so bad for a black cat in my life. I felt incomplete without a black cat in my life. Cosmo was still very young, and the cat that was violently lost had raised him. They were best friends. Cosmo stopped playing. Stopped eating. Stopped drinking. Stopped moving around for the most part. I almost lost Cosmo when I lost Tom. Velvet, a cat I didn't get along with too well and had never treated Cosmo well, was Tom's soulmate. After Tom died, she was kind to Cosmo, but her soul was obviously broken without Tom. Tom was twenty-two, Velvet was around seventeen. Velvet had spent her entire life with Tom, and he had worshiped her.

Tuxie came to live with us a few months after Tom died. He and Cosmo didn't get along very well until I locked them both up in my bedroom with me for two full days and refused to let them fight. At the end of the two days, they were very close and snuggling with each other. A couple weeks later, after Cosmo was running around the house playing with Tuxie and being a young cat again, Velvet died. As much as that cat disliked me, and the feeling had become mutual, I will always be grateful that she lived long enough to make sure Cosmo would be okay. (Tom and Velvet were both black cats. Tom died just before I turned seventeen, Velvet died about six weeks after I turned seventeen.)

I'm disabled but no longer receive disability. Despite my inability to work, I do still apply for jobs so I can at least try to work, but I never get hired for a number of reasons.

I'm very much into holistic and homeopathic medicine, but I believe in a good balance between natural and pharmaceutical medicine. There are just some natural treatments that won't work for everyone for whatever reason (allergies or simply a body resisting it) and when that doesn't work, pharmaceutical treatments should at least be considered, and vice versa.

Because of my affinity for medicine, I've been called a 'Witch Doctor' by some people. A title I proudly wear.

I'm pretty much always willing to help people out with medical stuff, so long as they realize that while I do have quite a bit of first-hand experience and do extensive research for different medical conditions, their treatments, medications that may be used, and alternative treatments, I am in no way a professional and there's always the chance that I'm wrong. I prefer it if those seeking information from me use the information I provide as starting points to do their own research, to speak with pharmacists (Never take a doctor's word over a pharmacist's when it comes to medication. I had a doctor try to tell me that he knew better than my pharmacist because he took two years of pharmacology in medical school. Pharmacists are those that primarily studied pharmacology. They know far more about it than doctors do.) and doctors themselves, to weigh everything together, and make as informed of a decision is possible. I do have a physician's desk reference of medications (it's a massive book full of small print) and if you'd just like me to look up medications for you and/or translate medical jargon into humanese (because let's face it, so much of that crap is written in a way that makes it hard to understand) I'm always willing to help you out.

Due to my medical problems, my teeth were rotting out of my head. I had very bad infections and they were killing me. I was sure I would die because we couldn't afford to have my teeth removed. In the months before my surgery, the pain and infections had grown so severe that I spent all day screaming in pain and chugging down 15grams of kratom spiked with lemon juice and several other over the counter medications that help to enhance and prolong the effects of kratom just so I could make it through the day. The pain was so intense that I was sure everything was just going to go black and that would be it. There would be nothing after that. (I did actually lose consciousness from the pain a few times. I would wake up confused as hell and if I tried to get up on my own, I'd often black out again.)

Thanks to a couple loans by people and not financial institutions, I was able to have all of my teeth removed June 26th last year. The surgeon even knew I wouldn't have lasted much longer. My body has sustained permanent damage from what happened with my teeth, in addition to the many other problems I already had.

I have a single tooth left. The only one that didn't completely shatter when the oral surgeon tried to remove it. It's in a small jar in a bathroom drawer. It makes a rather pretty sound when you gently rattle the jar.

I don't have dentures because we can't afford them. I can gum pizza to death like a fuckin' pro. Did you know that it's totally possible to eat without teeth? Yeah, okay, soft foods are far easier. Or food that's cut/chopped or crushed up enough to make it very small. Other things I just have to suck and slobber on until they soften enough that they won't cut my gums to shreds.

Chewing gum without teeth is surprisingly satisfying. It's like a massage for your gums. Hey, is it chewing gum, or gumming gum? I've been trying to figure that one out for a few months now.

Whenever I do finally get dentures, I'm considering doing something unusual that appeals to my very twisted sense of humor regarding my health. (You have to find the humor in it. If you can't, you just die.) I'm considering having my dentures made with vampire fangs.

Yes, I am a self-proclaimed vampire. But before you roll your eyes, let out a disgusted sigh, and nope the hell out of here, please allow me to explain.

I consider myself both a sanguine and psychic vampire. No, I'm not super serious about vampirism or anything. Vampires aren't srsbsns. Unless they sparkle. Then they srsly need to gtf away from me because ew vampires don't sparkle.

CoughCoughbackontopicnow...

Because of my medical conditions, I used to receive infusions of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) every four weeks. IVIG is a blood product. I received them every four weeks for six years. I don't get IVIG now for a number of reasons. I don't feel like going over them right now, as it'll add a lot more length to this post than necessary, and it's a rather heated topic for me. (I'm also in constant severe pain, and not receiving any help from doctors for my pain because someone in their twenties can't possibly be in severe pain all the time. I must just be a drug addict looking for painkillers. Which is why I was forced to turn to kratom from pain relief for a while. Not something I ever wanted to have to do.)

Anyways.

On to the 'psychic' part of my double vampirism. While I rarely have much energy of my own, put me in an energetic group of people and I'll feed off that energy like it's going out of style. It's like waking up after a long sleep, brushing off the dust and cobwebs, and almost living for a little while. Granted, I'm usually completely drained and in physical agony the next day, but it's rarely not worth it.

Unfortunately, that doesn't happen to me much anymore. My health keeps me from socializing. Friends never stick around for too long, usually claiming that my health is "too depressing" and they "can't handle how sad it is" and they leave. Or they do the complete opposite and make a huge deal out of the fact that they're friends with me. Parading my situation around like it makes them a fucking saint for being friends with someone like me. I don't tolerate that kind treatment.

I'm loyal, often to a fault, but I've learned a lot over the years, and I've learned to pull away from those that will take advantage of my loyalty. I also don't just hand out trust and loyalty to people. My trust isn't easy to learn.

I can also be a very intense personality, and that can be hard for some people to handle. I understand that, but sometimes intense people make really good friends. They're often fiercely loyal. I'm passionate about the people and things I care about. I also don't consider someone that always takes your side, even if you're wrong, and/or tells you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear, a true friend. I'm not someone that tells you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear. Which is something a lot of people don't seem to appreciate. I don't like beating around the bush or sugar-coating things.

The combination of a lifetime of abuse from the people that were supposed to love me (I don't have relatives or family that's related to me. I have a 'genetic cesspool' and the people I call my family are my husband's family and others that I so choose to be my family and choose to be family to. Just because they're blood doesn't mean they're family. Don't ever let anyone try to demand your loyalty or obligate yourself to them just because you share some chromosomes. Family is everything, blood and genetics aren't.) and my many chronic medical issues, I often find myself feeling inhuman. Not above human, not superhuman.

Less than.

Less than human.

And what lifeform (if you consider them lifeforms) imitate humans but are parasitic and require human blood and/or energy to continue existing?

Vampires.

So I'm a vampire. It's not something I obsess over or anything, I promise. Looking back through all my posts and comments, you'll only see a couple mentions of it. It's more like self-deprecating. There are times when that's the only humor I can find in my situation.

And that's why I want dentures that have vampire fangs. Others will think I'm batshit crazy for it, but that's perfectly fine. It's not for them. It's for me.

Now, on to some other things about myself.

I used to be an avid roleplayer. But due to it becoming harder and harder to find quality roleplay partners, I haven't really roleplayed in a number of years. I did roleplay lightly in @papa-pepper's Steempocalypse game. (It's an awesome game, he's getting ready to start Season 4, you should really join in on the fun!) And I do plan on some lighthearted roleplaying around Steemit. Things like @marxrab's Steemit Diner posts. I'm thinking of possibly starting a lighthearted animal cafe or somesuch myself. I think it might be fun. I dunno for sure yet.

I've been writing since I was incredibly young. I was taught to read at a very, very young age. And I was fortunate enough to have someone read many classics to me as bedtime stories.

I'm actually dyslexic, but learned to cope with it on my own and no one even noticed until I was around six years old and already at an almost high-school reading level. I never required any help from outside sources with my dyslexia. When I'm having a really bad health day, it's harder to cope with, but I tend to get by. I take pride in literacy and such, so please forgive my bad days when my literacy suffers.

I've always had the heart of an artist, but my hands have rarely ever produced anything similar to what I see in my head. As such, I've developed a fairly unique style for drawing certain things, and have an inability to draw many other things. Practicing never really helped me out.

But after starting Freebie Friday here on Steemit, I feel like I'm finally improving overall. I guess having other people tell me what to draw instead of trying to learn to draw things I want to be able to draw is more beneficial for the learning process. I know my art isn't fantastic, but I hope it brings smiles to others' faces.

I'm obsessed with folding origami cranes. I've complete the thousand crane challenge many times, and even when I stopped doing the challenge and wasn't counting cranes, I still folded many, many cranes. I'm back to doing the thousand crane challenge over and over again.

I crochet and make jewellery. I get a lot of compliments for my work, but compliments don't put food on the table. So I haven't done much crocheting or jewellery making lately.

I like taking pictures. I wouldn't necessarily call myself a photographer, but I do love taking pictures. One of the reasons I take pictures is because I want to leave something behind. I want someone to be able to see what I saw.

Because of my health problems, I am genuinely afraid of dying. I haven't done anything in my life. Nothing worth remembering me for. I don't want to be forgotten.

So few people know the real me. So few people even bother to try to get to know the real me. Which means the real me will be forgotten. It'll be like I never existed.

My husband's granny died a little over a year ago. His uncle (other side) died almost a year ago. Our dear elderly neighbor that I'd known since I was born died about a month after that. Cosmo almost died a year ago. I was on the verge of death a year ago.

It hasn't been a good time for me. I feel an ungodly need to do something with my life, but that's damn near impossible to do until I can get an actually competent doctor that'll take my health issues seriously. And it'll take money to pay for the medical care I need. (Isn't the American health care system just absolutely fucking awesome?)

So it constantly feels hopeless. It feels like it's impossible to make anything of myself. And it makes me feel like I'm not even worth remembering.

Okay, on to something else.

Let's see...

My favorite band is Coheed & Cambria. I also really love Black Veil Brides and Starset. Those are just a few. I actually have a really broad taste in music.

I love to read, but I find it really hard to find modern literature that I enjoy. I enjoy a lot of classics, and modern literature is a pretty big letdown for the most part. I'm always looking for a good book. Have any book recommendations?

I'm a big gamer. Gaming is a great distraction from the health issues and everything else wrong with the world. I have a Twitch channel, but at the moment, I much prefer YouTube for livestreaming. I don't currently have a headset, but I may be able to repair my husband's broken headset and be able to use that.

I don't have an active Xbox Live account (can't afford the subscription) and only have a 360. I don't have many games on the PS4, but if anyone wants to game with me, my gamertag is NovaAteBatman, just like my Steemit and my YouTube.

So uh, yeah. This is a pretty long post and I think that's enough soul-baring for now.

I have a lot of content planned, and now that I can use my laptop for Steemit, that'll be a lot more possible.

This took a lot more energy to write than I thought it would. I think it's time for bed.

Goodnight, Steemit. I hope you're doing well.