Today’s deck is the Butterfly Wisdom Tarot.
More than the butterflies, I adore the crochet/canvas texture it has.
Today’s reading is a reassurance that if things feel stuck they’ll balance out in due time.
I had to drag myself out of bed at around 2PM because they came to pick up boxes I was gonna send to Mandarake.
There were a LOT, I listed 11 for shipping and still ended up with one straggler because I can’t think in three dimensions to save my life and one was left in a corner. So many piled up because I already had a couple and cleaned up a bunch afterwards still.
With no boxes, that space was to be taken by the sex dolls I mentioned a while back, and I realized I felt an odd aprehension about the process which was, in fact, the interesting sort of apprehension.
I left the task aside while I went to my office but through the day I chewed on it bit by bit to try and see what my brain was trying to convey.
It wasn’t an emotional attachment, it wasn’t like if I had to throw away any of my girls. It also wasn’t the sort of pathological reluctance a hoarder might feel.
Later in the day I was coloring stuff for a bit and I realized what the reason was.
Long story short, those dolls felt kinda like an amulet?
I’m a very lonely person, I’ve gotten better at coping with it but I’m fundamentally lonely. The sex dolls were purchases born from this sense of loneliness but as I mentioned a couple of days ago, using them proved quickly to be more frustration than catharsis in more than one way. The only reason I had more than one was from wondering “maybe this model will be the answer” and it wasn’t.
Well, to be fair I already had a taste for dolls which made the jump easier to do. Also fun fact: They’ve always been purchased with money I got from selling stuff to Mandarake (not from a singular batch, obviously), which is amusing to me at least
Anyway, I call them amulets because there were periods where the loneliness became just too much and I tried to use them only to be frustrated and not use them for increasing amounts of time each time. The weird aprehension I felt about disposing of them was one of “what if I get one of those pangs of loneliness that becomes too much?”. So having them around felt like a comfort of having a tool for something that’s both very real in my mind but in practical terms happens like 4 times a year at most and I get over eventually anyways.
It makes me think about any other things I might keep around more as a hypothetical safety net than any practical or emotional value.
To be honest, the chance I might get one in the future is non zero, though if so it’ll be a small model and one of those without holes, just a big oversized doll. The holes immediately add a lot more maintenance and (incoming TMI probably) I swear to God I don’t know what kind of penis they’re made for because when I use them it’s PAINFUL.
That future is far away though, because for now the newly freed up space as soon as I moved them near the entrance for the collecting people overwrote any anxieties about amulets and whatnot. Like, one of the ones I’m disposing of was clogging the house’s big closet and now I can store the kotatsu there instead of it just awkwardly staying in the living room all year.
Funnily enough, I actually owe my current love of dolls to a sex doll. The first one I got was back in the pandemic days, I remember it distinctly because I was in the process of moving (I was still doing the paperwork, which got heavily delayed, but I was also boxing everything) and I ordered her expecting her to arrive AFTER I moved which didn’t happen.
I actually got rid of that one a bit after moving just because the vibes weren’t right. I didn’t know about proper disposal services back then (and my Japanese level prevented me from even considering it) so I basically found a service that lets you send them used sex dolls and if they’re in a good state it’s free (they resell them) and if not you gotta pay for the disposal.
GOD that was such a nightmare, because I look up “how to dispose of sex doll” and I got either unfunny people making jokes OR unhinged people OR people pleading with said unhinged people to remember in the end they’re just objects, AND NONE OF THEM ANSWERED THE QUESTION TO BEGIN WITH.
“Used sex doll” sounds nefarious and not like it isn’t, but to be fair they’re so high maintenence (like, holy fuck) that if a service like that one goes “yeah this is fine” it’s probably nothing disinfectant and dissecant won’t leave as good as new aside from maybe one breast being droopier than the other.
Sex dolls nowadays are more commonly made out of TPE, which hey, if it’s good enough for tubes that people in hospitals will plugged with, I’m gonna guess they clean up well for later use.
By the way, I’m already deep into this tangent anyways so here’s another fun bit: TPE has become more common because it doesn’t bleed as much oil as silicone. Silicone tends to be more resilient to the touch but TPE lasts longer without cracking from stress (eg: moving parts and such), silicone dolls (of any kind/size) tend to get cracks and then holes from said cracks if they’re not moisturized properly like they’re a really old leather jacket or something.
Anyway, it was the same story back then where using her was a pain in the ass, but I found the part where I dressed her, set up her bra, brushed her hair and all of that to be the most satisfying part of it to the point where eventually I wondered “you know, what if I got this but in smaller form”.
Got a Black Raven Luluna 1/12 from Azone, then moved to a 1/6 later in summer, then a 1/3 Iris Collect in early 2021, then found Midori’s head in a Mandarake near the end of the year and here we are.
Oh, the humidifier works again by the way. I think the LED stopped working? But not like it had any use to me anyways.