#went off on this one sorry its long but she's fermented my brain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pixieungerstories · 4 years

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Captive - 9

Hi Readers - I hate to be like this, but if you love this story, please go here to subscribe. I’m not intentionally neglecting the free content, it’s just getting overlooked right now. My next book deadline in Nov15 (2020). Normally, it’s just me writing for me and you get the benefit from that. This time Podium Audiobooks has me under contract for second book in the Mistaken Universe.

Also - if you have the time - the occasional gentle reminder is appreciated. Today’s post is brought to you by @dizzy-poncho who sent me some love and made my brain realized I hadn’t posted in a while.

The sound of someone pounding on the door was less than an ideal way to be awoken. As was the kitten, who had up to that point had been curled up behind her knees, screeching and bolting. Elly glanced at her watch, she had managed maybe four hours of sleep. The person on the other side of the door pounded again. Groaning, Ellly got to her feet, stomped over to the shop door and wrenched it open.

“What?!”

The church ladies were clearly taken aback by her tone. They stared at her in stunned horror.

“The sign says we’re closed for the day.” Elly announced.

“I just need-” Posy started to say, but Elly interrupted.

“You need to come back tomorrow.”

Posy narrowed her eyes, “I could just as easily order my yarn off the internet instead, you know!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Elly replied sadly. “Good day then.” She then closed the door on the women’s shocked faces. She leaned against the door for a minute and groaned before rallying the strength to head upstairs. On her way she nearly tripped over the reappeared kitten.

“Jesus, cat! Learn some self preservation!” Elly scolded as she scooped up the tiny thing. The kitten clamored up her arm to her shoulder and settled in for the trek upstairs. Elly tried to remember where she had stored Mitten’s cat stuff. In all likelihood she probably gave it away when she figured her cat had been eaten...Well she’d need to take the kitten for vaccinations anyways. She could pick up whatever she needed then. First thing on the list, a bell collar.

Well, that could be second. The first thing she needed was a name. Elly wondered for a moment if George would want any say in that. The thought could wait. First she needed a nap, or possibly a whole lot of coffee. Likely both.

Ben was just staggering out of the spare room when Elly got back to her apartment. “Shit, boss, I am late getting started this morning.”

Elly sighed, “We are closed today. How are you feeling?”

Ben shrugged, then rubbed his bleary eyes, “Slightly hung over, possible still a little drunk, and baffled that you have a dragon living in your basement.” He looked at her face and frowned, “Did you sleep last night?”

Elly shook her head again, “Not really. I napped.”

Ben winced, “Was that my fault?”

Elly shook her head again, “I was up too late and started getting creeped out by the sounds of the house settling.” Ben really did look awful. “Right!” she announced, making him wince again. “Big glass of water, a couple of aspirin and back to bed.”

Bean groaned, “I would roll my eyes at you except that they feel like they might fall out of my head if I tried.”

Elly snickered under her breath and went to the kitchen for a glass.

“So tell me about George.”

She froze. This was awkward. “I think you should ask him about him. Carefully. I don’t want to offend the dragon in my basement and neither do you.” She filled the glass with water and handed it to him. As Ben drank the water she pulled the aspirin out of the spice drawer.

“Does he breath fire?” he asked, lightly, trying to make a joke.

Elly pursed her lips as she considered that. “More like belches fire, but he can adjust his body temperature to heat the building.”

“You are fucking kidding me!” His eyes went wide as Elly shook her head. “Holy shit.” It was said reverentially, whispered almost like a prayer. Ben took two steps to the left and sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs.

Elly gave him a sympathetic look. “I am honestly unsure if this conversation would be better once you are sober. It could turn out to be worse.” She hesitated for a moment before adding, “Are you planning on quitting?”

“Why would I quit?” Ben asked with a frown.

Elly frowned right back at him. “Because there is a dragon in the basement. And if you tell anyone, they will just think you’re delusional.”

Ben considered this. “You won’t. Think I’m insane, I mean.”

“I’m not really the best judge of sane, Ben.” She sounded sad when she said it.

There was a long moment of tension before the kitten stropped up against Ben’s leg, causing him to curse and stand up fast enough to knock over his chair. It hit the ground with a clatter and the kitten bolted.

“Was that Muffin?” he mumbled, looking sheepish as he picked up the chair.

Elly frowned, “You mean Mittens? No. George brought it home last night.”

“Like a present? That’s sweet.” After a moment, Ben added “And a little weird. Where did George get a kitten?”

“He said someone killed its mom and littermates. He was vague on the details and I didn’t push. He would have told me if he wanted me to know.”

Ben shivered, “Yeah. I was picking up my spice delivery at the post office last week and overheard the Debbie from the pound saying it was less killing cats and more a plaque of cat mutilations.”

Elly went very still. When Ben finally looked up and met her eyes, she whispered, “Are we talking disemboweling here?”

Ben blinked and stared at her in horror before nodding. “How did you know that?”

Elly spun on her heels and fussed at the sink, giving it a wipe before putting the kettle on the hob. “George was unusually circumspect about what had happened. I couldn’t figure out why, he isn’t usually shy.”

Ben snorted, “I can see that about him.” He watched her face, it was easy to see the wheels turning, but he couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. “If someone is hunting cats, it might be safer to take … um. . . her? Or him? Whatever, take the kitten to a vet a couple of towns over. If you are keeping it, I mean.”

Elly gave him a puzzled look, “Of course I’m keeping it.”

Ben fought a smirk, “You sure? Have you named it yet?”

Elly considered this. “Nyx, goddess of night.”

Ben snicked, “Really? What if its a boy?”

Elly rolled her eyes, “Ben, I’m not going to enforce gender roles on a kitten.”

Ben just shook his head. “Fine, but when we go to the vet, you get to drive.”

----

The vet proclaimed Nyx to seem perfectly healthy and old enough for vaccination and FIV testing. They booked her in for a spay in two weeks. Next stop was the pet store.

Ben picked out an adjustable purple collar and neoprene cat harness. Elly gave him a look. “What? You can harness train cats it you get them young enough. I follow Suki Cat on instagram!”

Elly blinked, “Huh. I never would have picked you for a cat person.”

He smirked, “Stupid cat videos is what the internet is for.”

“Really? Because I suspect most people would say porn,” Elly teased, then was surprised when he blushed. She managed to fight the urge to comment on that, and while she was wrestling with her morals, Ben left to go look at cat carriers. Nyx meowed and tightened her tiny claws into Elly’s shoulder where she was sitting.

“I’m sorry!” she blurted out. “That was rude.”

Ben just waved her away. “More unexpected. I haven’t seen that side of you. You are very, um, professional.” He didn’t make it sound like a compliment. When he realized she was frowning slightly, Ben flashed her a smile. “You are a great boss, Elly.”

Elly coughed, “I’m not actually your boss, you know.”

Ben blushed again. That was new. “Any preference on cat food?”

Realizing he was trying to change the subject, Elly turned to face with wall of food. “Wet food for cats. I’ve never had one do well on kibble.”

“Did, um, your other cats sit on your shoulder like that?”

“Nope, this is a first, but she seems to like it up there.”

They watched each other awkwardly for a moment. Elly broke first. “Ben? Are you OK?”

Ben quickly turned his head to the right and scoped out the litter boxes. “Ina wasn’t that fun to work with,” he admitted. “Most of the time you are. Weird, but fun. I’m starting to understand where the weird comes from. And now I know that too. How do you go through your day knowing something like that?”

Elly sighed. “Ben - Look, tell me about yeast.”

“What?”

Elly rubbed her eyes, making Nyx meow and dig her little claws into Elly’s sweater. “You told me that yeast for bread used to come from beer, then the beer yeast changed and there was a shortage, right?”

Ben frowned, “Yeah, brewers switched from top fermenting to bottom fermenting and that process didn’t make the byproduct that bakers use. But what does that have to do with George?”

“How many people do you think know that?”

“Elly! It doesn’t matter! People knowing or not knowing about yeast doesn’t actually matter!”

Elly just raised an eyebrow, “How does knowing about George matter? Yeast is way more practical on a day to day basis.” Ben stared at her like she was insane. Elly kept talking, “Most people, including me, would consider baking bread or spinning wool or knitting a weird and slightly esoteric hobby. George is just one more weird bit of trivia that you now know.”

#Monster #dragon boyfriend #the captive #exophilia #Novel #monster boyfriend

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savingmyguts-blog · 5 years

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A month ago, I went on a blind date. My first blind date. Not only was it my first blind date, but it was also the first date of ANY kind that I had been on in years. That was actually why I told the friends setting us up that I didn’t want to know anything about him beforehand; I knew if I let myself think about the person, and thereby the whole world of dating, I would talk myself out of it before I even got to meet the guy. The date went well - like, unbelievably well. I can’t believe that was literally just 35 days ago, because I am truly crazy about this guy. I haven’t found one bad thing about him yet - until tonight.

For context: I have Crohn’s disease. It’s an inflammatory bowel disease, and I would tell you its symptoms, but one of the wildly frustrating parts about this disease is that there’s no one-size-fits-all symptoms list.

But back to tonight. It’s 9pm. I’m still at work, because I started a new job three weeks ago and have been putting in a lot of hours trying to figure it all out. I’ve had diarrhea and stomach pain day long. So my positive energy tank is already running on fumes when I get a text from my new, amazingly wonderful boyfriend. It says “I’m listening to a podcast that is super interesting about gut health and I thought you might enjoy it.”

Great. Another asshole who just heard about Crohn’s disease five seconds ago is about to ~cure me~ by telling me to drink some kombucha. Whyyyyyy? Why is he ruining everything by trying to fix a problem he knows nothing about? Why do people do that?

But, like I said, I really really like this guy. Everything about him feels so good. It doesn’t connect that he would be that person, that that would be his intention. So I ignore my brain’s massive eye roll, finish up at work, and decide to hear what the podcast has to say during my drive home.

In the thirty minutes of this three hour podcast that Dr. Rhonda Patrick was talking about gut health, here’s what she covered:

LDL proteins transport cholesterol to your cells, and the cells use the cholesterol to repair themselves. The LDL actually slices off a piece of itself to give to the cell for this process, and what remains of the LDL is transported back to the liver to be recycled out.

There are over 100 trillion bacteria in your gut. The majority of this is healthy bacteria, converting the food you eat into energy for your body. Your gut is also the place in your body with the highest concentration of immune cells.

The bacteria and the immune cells (white blood cells) are kept separate in your gut by the gut barrier, which is made of mucin (similar to mucus.)

When the gut barrier becomes compromised, the immune cells begin attacking the bacteria in your gut. As the bacteria is killed, it releases endotoxins. These endotoxins bind to the LDL that has sliced part of itself off to give away the cholesterol. This prevents the LDL from transporting back to the liver, so you just have LDL proteins covered in endotoxins stuck in your system. Your immune system recognizes all these lumps of endotoxins floating around and sends more white blood cells to fight and kill them. But it doesn’t work, because the white blood cells aren’t actually fighting bacteria like they think they are - they’re fighting LDL proteins that have bound to the endotoxins let out by the bacteria killed off in your gut when your gut barrier broke down. So you’re left with several things: a broken down gut barrier, a lack of healthy bacteria in your gut which means less energy being converted from food (and more room for unhealthy bacteria to take over), all these endotoxins just stuck in your gut/bloodstream, and too many white blood cells being produced. None of those are good things.

People with IBD will often notice mucin in their bowel movements. The gut barrier is literally breaking down and just exiting your body on a regular basis. To make more mucin and build that gut barrier back up, your body needs energy. When you don’t have a functional gut barrier, it’s a lot harder for your food to be converted into energy. Circle of death. Eating more fermentable fibers will create more short chain fatty acids in your gut which is what converts your food into energy. On the opposite end, when you eat food with a lot of refined carbohydrates, the saturated fat increases your body’s production of LDL proteins - which is not good, when you have endotoxins binding to all your LDL.

Kombucha feeds/energizes your gut cells so they can keep producing mucin for your gut barrier to strengthen.

A few years ago, she took a baseline sample of her poop and sent it off to be sequenced, to see what bacteria was and wasn’t present in her gut. Then she took “VSL #3 with sachets” probiotic every day for 30 days, and sent her poop off to be sequenced again. Huge increase in the amount of healthy bacteria in her gut (she didn’t specify how much) as well as a reduction of the amount of unhealthy bacteria. There are at least 25 studies that show effectiveness of this type of probiotic in treating IBS/colitis.

The reason she became so interested in gut health and was sequencing her own poop, etc., is because she had inflammatory bowel issues for years following an MRSA infection. Her doctor gave her three rounds of antibiotics, and when the infection still came back again, she decided to treat it herself without antibiotics. She got rid of the infection for good by using garlic/grapefruit seed extract/teatree oil/something else I had never heard of. But the damage to her gut from three rounds of super-antibiotics wrecked her system for YEARS. When she sought treatment for it, gastrointestinal doctors diagnosed her with neuropathy and suggested SSRIs and anticonvulsant medication. She refused. They never asked her about her diet, her medication history, nothing. She said “if I was a dummy - I shouldn’t say it like that - if I were a person who listened to authority, who just did what my doctors said, I might be stuck on a bunch of pointless medicines right now and would never have returned to a healthy gut.”

Do you know how much of that information I’ve been told throughout six years of being treated for inflammatory bowel disease by the “best, most-recommended” gastroenterologist in my state?

None of it.

None.

Of.

It.

When I asked if I should try drinking kombucha/taking probiotics, I was told “you could, but I don’t think it will help you. Your main concerns lately are acid reflux and diarrhea, and those aren’t the big symptoms of an unhealthy gut, so I don’t think that’s your problem.” I tried it anyway, but halfheartedly and with no guidance, and gave up faster than I should have.

I’ve noticed the mucin in my bowel movements for years, but the ONLY poop-related question I’m ever asked during visits is if I can see blood in it.

I too have had multiple experiences with MRSA infections and had to take round after round after round of antibiotics until it went away... the most recent time being a mere two months ago. TWO MONTHS AGO I got a staph infection in my eye, and now, four rounds of antibiotics later, I’m in the middle of a “flare up.”

My gastroenterologist has never asked about my history with antibiotics. When he asks about my diet, it’s never a conversation about healthy foods that might help or how different foods are interacting with my malfunctioning gut. It’s always just “these specific foods have been known to cause more pain, are you avoiding them?”

Eight months ago, I had a colonoscopy. There were no ulcers in my colon this time. He saw inflamed areas throughout my colon, but not general/total inflammation throughout the whole thing. What he actually said when I woke up was that if that had been his first/only look at my colon, he wouldn’t have diagnosed me with Crohn’s disease. So what does that mean? Am I just in remission? Do I not have it? If I don’t, what DO I have, because I’m obviously not healthy? His only answer was “I don’t know. we’ll just have to keep watching what happens and treating symptoms as best we can.”

I feel a strange combination of excitement and fury. why is htis podcast the first time this connection has been made for me? when i asked lydia about kombucha/probiotics and she said it wouldn’t help me. dr. lievens has never once asked about that, looked at my medication history, nothing. and he’s supposedly the best! i love “aha!” moments and this feels like one, but why the fuck is it just happening now?

Right now, I am just overflowing with questions. Every angle I think of it all from, I end up with six new questions and the list just keeps growing. But I also want to find out the answers. Which is more than I can say for my life lately before this.

Sorry Zach, you are still amazing and just like everything else about our relationship that seems to defy what’s supposed to be happening, that bubble has un-popped.

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wiipes · 4 years

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Exploring W/ Waiola & Friends

"Hello everyone! I'm back with my girlfriend, Sara, her brother, Frankie, our friend Tino and today we'll be exploring an abandoned house!" Waiola sits on a ledge with her three friends, smiling widely at the camera set up.

"But that's not all!" Tino interrupts her surprise, jump scaring them all. Sara shoved at him, managing to knock him off the ledge they were on.

"That's right, as a bonus, we were going to explore some sewer tunnels, or at least that's what we think they are." The main host of the channel completes the surprise that Tino tried to ruin.

"So while there's still sun around, let's get to it!" Waiola cheers with her friends, all of them rushing the camera.

A transition into the next scene, edited beautifully by a good friend who would rather remain anonymous, revealed the gang walking in a line on a back road, trees decorating the edge of the frame. Chatter echoed a little, coming from these four teenagers. "Tino, you're a clown if I've ever seen one." And they were ganging up on Tino being the wildest one in the group.

"No, he's the whole circus, Way."

They giggle as Tino threatened them, "if you guys don't stop I'll have to remove your femurs, losers."

"Not if I do it first," Frankie's response was as fast as he heard it.

"Is that a threat?"

"No, it's a promise."

The four teenagers banter like this as the time passed, and not long came before a large house came into their line of vision. Waiola lifts the camera, zooming for a better look at it.

"For a bit of backstory, this house was built for, like, the mayor for our town, way back when it was built. About a hundred years or so, I think. But no one has lived in it for a good decade, for sure." Waiola starts to speak, almost as if it was natural information. Maybe it was.

"No abandoned house looks that good, I'm just saying." Frankie comments, the camera catching a concentrated boy pondering on the outward appearance of the house.

"It's kinda like a museum, Frank. You want tourism to have a leg to stand on? Have something old and touchable, maintain it. I'm just saying, the history teacher went over this like a few days ago." She told him, him rubbing his chin like a philosopher.

"Guys guys guys guys, get in the trees!" Sara hisses, pushing everyone into the wilderness beside them. Everyone panics but stays quiet, watching as an old car wheezes past their line of sight. Several minutes pass, the frame jumping to the scene of them walking again, but dodging trees in their way.

"Tell the viewers what happened, Tino," a voice that's not Waiola, presumably Frankie's, points the camera at the boy. He looks right into the lens as much as he cans, trying to talk in a quiet yet loud voice, if that makes sense.

"So, we found out that the car that passed by us is doing something at the mayor's house. However, because Frankie said we came out all the way out here we might as well-"

"-hold on, I said that? I'm pretty sure it was you, Tino."

"Pretty sure isn't fact, Franklin, and fact is you said that-"

"-Fact is you're a pussy-"

"-you said that we should continue."

Waiola smacks them both on the head, taking the camera away and facing it towards the whole group walking. "Someone complained about how far we came out, so we're going to commit a crime because they didn't want to leave without that. After that, sewers." She finished talking and the screen faded to a different picture.

A picture of the old, yet refined, house that was originally a mayor's home. The white has yet to be repainted, so it looks like an old pale yellow on the outside. Vines curl around the pillars supporting the porch roof. The porch steps seemed to have sported thousands of feet, whether that is true or not, that's left to the porch steps. Window panes gathered dust, or better yet, the window frames are left paneless. The roof looked like someone belly-flopped out of the sky and onto the poor thing.

Needless to say, withering with class.

A shot of the group of friends flashes onto the frame, posing in front of a sign, Carmine Cabins, the official name of the lot.

It transitions over to silent footage of the girls peeking over the bushes, spotting no cars sitting in the gravel. "Alright, we'll check the place for outside cameras, Tino, hold the camera." With that, Waiola and Sara run, ducking well beneath the green hedges surrounding it.

Frankie pulls out puns out of his ass for a solid minute or two before they return, panting ever so slightly. Sara catches her breath first, "no cameras, an opening behind the house, but I'm pretty sure someone is inside."

Tino and Frankie share a look, "you sure there's a person in there?"

"Even if its not fact, I thought I heard someone. Then again, it could've been y'all two I was hearing." Sara started to doubt herself, checking the fresh memory in her brain but everyone starts moving before she's comfortable in that self-doubt.

They try not to crunch too many leaves or branches, but sometimes it can't be helped. Neither can Tino's smartass, apparently, as Waiola smacked him for the third time that day.

"So if we can get in there, then that'll be step one of this be gay do crime agenda, and we can satisfy one demographic of my followers." She flashes a thumbs up to the camera, pointing the camera at her friends as they pull themselves into the house through a somewhat large window. She hands it to her girlfriend, and she slips through as well.

"We're going to have to be quiet for now, so, sorry for no commentary." Waiola whispers, winking at the camera and it fades to a black screen.

The black screen evolves into a scene where Waiola is pointing the camera at Frankie, who's face was utter fear. He mouths some words she doesn't catch. He then makes a running gesture and she agrees, everyone following in suite, quietly though of course. As Tino, the last one to jump out of the window, hits the ground, a shot is released in the air.

"Run!" They shout at him in whispers, dashing for it in the direction of the nearby sewers.

Waiola's lungs burned in her chest, not able to swallow or breathe, and her legs wanted to fall off but they can do that when they're ankle-deep in shit-water. The camera has a view of swinging, thanks to Frankie's expert handling of the camera.

She hears another shot go off, and she ushers them to head down the sloping hill, into the sewer tunnel. Grass is ripped up as they slide down and splash not so gracefully into the tunnel, hiding out in there. They all cover their mouths, leaning against the sewer walls, a little reluctantly.

The group hears one more shot in the distance, before Waiola motions for them to pull out their flashlights out of their packs.

"Alright, time for some sewer exploring, wish us luck!" Waiola smiles tiredly at the camera.

The scene fades seamlessly into a shot of Sara leaning against the wall, holding her leg, and Waiola, the dutiful lover, is worrying over her like mad. "Are you sure we can keep going?" She asks, turning to look over her shoulder to shout at the boys.

"Its a cramp, Way, not some open wound fermenting in sewer water."

"Still! We should be cautious," with that, Waiola then had Tino carry her knapsack while she carried her girlfriend. Yes, she cringed when her wet shoes touched her legs but it was worth it to her, knowing she wasn't hurting herself.

"Alright, I'm tired of this shit."

"Haha, too bad. You're the one who said we had to go to the house, you get to suffer." Tino pouted, flashing the pathway with two flashlights.

The screen fades again, but this time, they're out of the sewers and on the road again, but they're in town, well, the old version of it. "Okay," Waiola huffs, seeming to be in a mood, "the boys were complaining, and what with the guy with the gun, we decided twenty minutes walking in the sewers was enough for the day. Be back in a second with the outro!" She pants, flashing a peace sign at the camera Frankie was holding.

And the screen did black out completely this time, and it was just Waiola and Sara in her backyard, lying in a hammock, napping peacefully for a minute. Then, Waiola gets out, kissing the girl's forehead before grabbing the camera and focusing it on her.

"The boys went home, Sara's staying the night, and I guess that was it? Anyways, thank you guys for watching!" Waiola spews out her outro and when she stopped recording, she let out a breath, returning to her girlfriend's welcoming arms.

"Boys are dumb." She mumbles, and Sara all but nods, leaving the two to their nap.

#if they were human #IF #and everyone could show up on camera #here's the mischeif they'd get up to #waiola #sara #frankie #tino #vampires but theyre humans gang #writing

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ionecoffman · 6 years

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The Meat Cleanse

“I know how ridiculous it sounds,” Mikhaila Peterson told me recently by phone, after a whirlwind of attention gathered around the 26-year-old, who is now offering dietary advice to people suffering with conditions like hers. Or not so much dietary advice as guiding people in eating only beef.

At first glance, Peterson, who is based in Toronto, could seem to be one of the many emerging semi-celebrities with a miraculous story of self-healing—who show off postpartum weight loss in bikini Instagrams and sell one thing or another, a supplement or tonic or book or compression garment. (Not incidentally, she is the daughter of the famous and controversial pop psychologist Jordan Peterson. More on that later.) But Peterson is taking the trend in extra-professional health advice to an extreme conclusion: She is not doing sponsored posts for health products, but actively selling one-on-one counseling ($75 for a half hour) for people who want to stop eating almost everything.

Peterson seems to be reaching suffering people despite a lack of training or credentials in nutrition or medicine, and perhaps because of that distinction. Her Instagram bio: “For info on treating weight loss, depression, and autoimmune disorders with diet, check out my blog or fb page!” The blog says at the top that “many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone.” This is true, if at odds with the disclaimer at the bottom of the page that her words are “not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.”

I told her I’m surprised people need further counseling, in that an all-beef diet is very straightforward.

“They mostly want to see that I’m not dead,” she said. “What I basically do is say, hey, look at all the things that happened to me and brought me to where I am now. Isn’t it weird? And then let people draw their own conclusions.”

Peterson described an adolescence that involved multiple debilitating medical diagnoses, beginning with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Some unknown process had triggered her body’s immune system to attack her joints. “I was unable to hold a pencil, could barely walk, and was in constant pain,” she writes on her blog, which is called “Don’t Eat That.” The joint problems culminated in hip and ankle replacements in her teens, coupled with “extreme fatigue, depression and anxiety, brain fog, and sleep problems.” In fifth grade she was diagnosed with depression, and then later something called idiopathic hypersomnia (which translates to English as “sleeping too much, of unclear cause”—which translates further to sorry we really don’t know what’s going on).

Everything the doctors tried failed, and she did everything they told her, she recounted to me. She fully bought into the system, taking large doses of strong immune-suppressing drugs like methotrexate, prednisone, leflunomide, and humira. “Despite being on multiple heavy-hitting meds, I was still struggling with basic day-to-day tasks,” she writes on her blog.

Her story takes a dramatic turn in 2015, when the underdog protagonist, nearly at the end of her rope, figured out the truth for herself. It was all about food.

Peterson adopted a common approach to dieting: elimination. She started cutting out foods from her diet, and feeling better each time. She began with gluten, and she kept going, casting out more and more—not just gluten or dairy or soy or lectins or artificial sweeteners or non-artificial sweeteners, but everything. Until, by December 2017, all that was left was “beef and salt and water,” and, she told me, “all my symptoms went into remission.”

“And you quit taking all your medications?”

“Everything.”

There is so much evidence—abundant, copious evidence acquired over decades of work from scientists around the world—that most people benefit from eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and seeds. This appears to be largely because fiber in plants is important to the flourishing of the gut microbiome. I ran this by some experts, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that might suggest a beef-salt diet is potentially something other than a bad idea. I learned that it was worse than I thought.

“Physiologically, it would just be an immensely bad idea,” Jack Gilbert, the faculty director at the University of Chicago’s Microbiome Center and a professor of surgery, told me during a recent visit to his lab. “A terribly, terribly bad idea.”

Gilbert has done extensive research on how the trillions of microbes in our guts digest food, and the look on his face when I told him about the all-beef diet was unamused. He began rattling off the expected ramifications: “Your body would start to have severe dysregulation, within six months, of the majority of the processes that deal with metabolism; you would have no short-chain fatty acids in your cells; most of the byproducts of gastrointestinal polysaccharide fermentation would shut down, so you wouldn’t be able to regulate your hormone levels; you’d enter into cardiac issues due to alterations in cell receptors; your microbiota would just be devastated.”

While much of the internet has been following this story in a somewhat snide way, Gilbert appeared genuinely concerned and saddened: “If she does not die of colon cancer or some other severe cardiometabolic disease, the life—I can’t imagine.”

There are few accounts of people having tried all-beef diets, though all-meat—known as carnivory—is slightly more common. Earlier this month, inspired by the media conversation about the Peterson approach, Alan Levinovitz, the author of The Gluten Lie, tried carnivory, eating only meat for two weeks. He did lose seven pounds, which he attributes to eating fewer calories overall, because he eventually got tired of eating only meat. He missed snacking at coffee shops and browsing the local farmer’s market and trying out new restaurants around town, cooking with his family, and just generally enjoying food.

“I was psychologically exhausted,” Levinovitz told me. When he returned to omnivory, and he regained the lost weight in four days.

Peterson told me it took several weeks for her to get used to the beef-only approach, and that the relief of her medical symptoms overpowers any sense of missing food. If even a tiny amount of anything else finds its way into her mouth, she will be ill, she says. This happened when she tried to eat an organic olive, and again recently when she was at a restaurant that put pepper on her steak.

“I was like, whatever, it’s just pepper,” she told me. Then she had a reaction that lasted three weeks and included joint pain, acne, and anxiety.

Apart from having to exist in a world where the possibility of pepper exposure looms, the only other social downside she notices is that she hates asking people to accommodate her diet. So she will usually eat before she goes to a dinner party, she told me, “but then I’ll go drink and enjoy the party.”

“Drink, as in, water?”

“I can also, strangely enough, tolerate vodka and bourbon.”

The idea that alcohol, one of the most well-documented toxic substances, is among the few things that Peterson’s body will tolerate may be illuminating. It implies that when it comes to dieting, the inherent properties of the substances ingested can be less important than the eater’s conceptualizations of them—as either tolerable or intolerable, good or bad. What’s actually therapeutic may be the act of elimination itself.

For centuries, ascetics have found enlightenment through acts of deprivation. As Levinovitz, who is an associate professor of religion at James Madison University, explained to me, the Daoist text the Zhuangzi describes “a spirit man” who lives in the mountains and rides dragons and subsists only on air and dew. “There’s an anti-authoritarian bent to pop-culture wisdom, and a part of that is dealing with food taboos, which are handed down by authorities,” Levinovitz said. “Those are government now, instead of religious. And because they are wrong so often—or, at least, apparently wrong—that’s a good place to go when carving out your own area of authority. If you just eat the ‘wrong’ foods and don’t die, that’s a ritual way to prove that you go against conventional wisdom.”

Peterson’s narrative fits a classic archetype of an outsider who beat the game and healed thyself despite the odds and against the recommendations of the establishment. Her story is her truth, and it can’t be explained; you have to believe. And unlike the many studies that have been done to understand the diets of the longest-lived, healthiest people in history, or the randomized trials that are used to determine which health interventions are safe and effective for whom, her story is clear and dramatic. It’s right there in her photos; it has a face and a name to prove that no odds are too long for one determined person to overcome.

The beneficial effects of a compelling personal narrative that helps explain and give order to the world can be absolutely physiologically real. It is well documented that the immune system (and, so, autoimmune diseases) are modulated by our lifestyles—from how much we sleep and move to how well we eat and how much we drink. Most importantly, the immune system is also modulated by stress, which tends to be a byproduct of a perceived lack of control or order.

If strict dietary rules provide a sense of control and order, then Peterson’s approach is emblematic of the trend in elimination dieting taken to an extreme: Avoid basically everything. This verges into the realm of an eating disorder. The National Eating Disorder Association lists among common symptoms “refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food.” In the early phases of disordered eating, as with bipolar disorder or alcoholism, a person may look and feel great. They may thrive for months or even years. But this fades. What’s more, the temporary relief from anxiety may mean that the source of the anxiety goes unsought and unaddressed.

I asked Peterson about the possibility that she may be enabling people with eating disorders. She said she would draw a line if a client were underweight or inducing vomiting. Otherwise, “it’s extremely disrespectful to people with health issues caused by food to be lumped into the same category as people with eating disorders. More of the same ‘blame the patient’ stuff that doctors and health professionals already do.”

The popularity of Peterson’s narrative is explained by more than its timeless tropes; it has also been amplified by the fact that her father has occasionally cast his spotlight onto her story. Jordan Peterson’s recent book, Twelve Rules for Life, includes the story of his daughter’s health trials. The elder Peterson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, could at first seem an unlikely face for acceptance of personal, subjective truth, as he regularly professes the importance of acting as purely as possible according to rigorous analysis of data. He argued in a recent video that American universities are the home to “ideologues who claim that all truth is subjective, that all sex differences are socially constructed, and that Western imperialism is the sole source of all Third World problems.” In his book, he writes that academic institutions are teaching children to be “brainwashed victims,” and that “the rigorous critical theoretician is morally obligated to set them straight.”

It is on grounds of his interpretation of income data, for example, that he has spoken out against the idea of a wage gap between men and women being unfair, as it can be explained away by biological factors associated with certain personality traits that are more valuable in the capitalist marketplace. From arguments from social-science evidence, he has expressed uncertainty that lesbian couples can raise children without a male father figure. And it is academic evidence that leads him to write in his book that “the so-called patriarchy” is “an arbitrary cultural artifact.”

Yet in a July appearance on the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jordan Peterson explained how Mikhaila’s experience had convinced him to eliminate everything but meat and leafy greens from his diet, and that in the last two months he had gone full meat and eliminated vegetables. Since he changed his diet, his laundry list of maladies has disappeared, he told Rogan. His lifelong depression, anxiety, gastric reflux (and associated snoring), inability to wake up in the mornings, psoriasis, gingivitis, floaters in his right eye, numbness on the sides of his legs, problems with mood regulation—all of it is gone, and he attributes it to the diet.

“I’m certainly intellectually at my best,” he said. “I’m stronger, I can swim better, and my gum disease is gone. It’s like, what the hell?”

“Do you take any vitamins?” asked Rogan

“No. No, I eat beef and salt and water. That’s it. And I never cheat. Ever. Not even a little bit.”

“No soda, no wine?”

“I drink club soda.”

“Well, that’s still water.”

“Well, when you’re down to that level, no, it’s not, Joe. There’s club soda, which is really bubbly. There’s Perrier, which is sort of bubbly. There’s flat water, and there’s hot water. Those distinctions start to become important.”

Peterson reiterated several times that he is not giving dietary advice, but said that many attendees of his recent speaking tour have come up to him and said the diet is working for them. The takeaway for listeners is that it worked for Peterson, and so it may work for them. Rogan also clarified that though he is also not an expert, he is fascinated by the fact that he hasn’t heard any negative stories about people who have started the all-meat diet.

“Well, I have a negative story,” said Peterson. “Both Mikhaila and I noticed that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren’t supposed to, the reaction was absolutely catastrophic.” He gives the example of having had some apple cider and subsequently being incapacitated for a month by what he believes was an inflammatory response.

“You were done for a month?”

“Oh yeah, it took me out for a month. It was awful ...”

“Apple cider? What was it doing to you?”

“It produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom. I seriously mean overwhelming. There’s no way I could’ve lived like that. But see, Michaela knew by then that it would probably only last a month.”

“A month? From fucking cider?”

“I didn’t sleep that month or 25 days. I didn’t sleep at all for 25 days.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“I’ll tell you how it’s possible, you lay in bed frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours. And then you get up.”

The longest recorded stretch of sleeplessness in a human is 11 days, witnessed by a Stanford research team.

While there is debate in the scientific community over just how much meat belongs in a human diet, it is impossible for all or even most humans to eat primarily meat. Beef production at the scale required to feed billions of humans even at current levels of consumption is environmentally unsustainable. It is not even healthy from a theoretical evolutionary viewpoint, the microbiome expert Gilbert explained to me. Carnivores need to eat meat or else they die; humans do not. “The carnivore gastrointestinal tract is completely different from the human gastrointestinal tract, which is made up of a system designed to consume large quantities of complex fibers.”

What the Petersons are selling is rather a sense of order and control. Science is about questions, and self-help is about answers. A recurring idea in Jordan Peterson’s book is that humans need rules—the subtitle of is “an antidote to chaos”—even if only for the sake of rules. Peterson discovered this through his own suffering, as when he was searching the world for the best surgeon to give his young daughter a new hip. In explaining how he dealt with Mikhaila’s illness, he writes that “existence and limitation are inextricably linked.” He quotes Laozi:

It is not the clay the potter throws,

Which gives the pot its usefulness,

But the space within the shape,

From which the pot is made

Dietary rules offer limits, good or bad, that help people define the self. This is an attractive prospect, and anyone willing to decree such rules—dietary or otherwise—is bound to attract attention. Fox News recently declared Peterson “the Left’s public enemy number one” in a segment where he discussed with Tucker Carlson “why the Left wants to silence conservative thought.” Though to have lived through the last year is to have lived in a world where Peterson and his ideas have enjoyed near-constant amplification.

The allure of a strict code for eating—a way to divide the world into good foods and bad foods, angels and demons—may be especially strong at a time when order feels in short supply. Indeed there is at least some benefit to be had from any and all dietary advice, or rules for life, so long as a person believes in them, and so long as they provide a code that allows a person to feel good for having stuck with it and a cohort of like-minded adherents. The challenge is to find a code that accords as best possible with scientific evidence about what is good and bad, and with what is best for the world.

Article source here:The Atlantic

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the-emotional-stoner-blog · 6 years

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Hi Mom and Dad

So here is a brief overview of what this is: my raw thoughts. I write, I don’t edit, and I write exactly what is on my mind. My mind never stops racing, constantly playing every picture, every option, every little detail, and it stays there never leaving; sometimes not leaving until hours or days later. This is my way of trying to deal with it from now on. Instead of keeping the thoughts buried deep in my head trying to battle them on a daily basis, I have now decided to try this method. To write my thoughts, to try and articulate the mess in my head. So here we go, here are my thoughts for today….

Hi mom and dad. I guess its your turn to finally receive a good chunk of my thoughts. And I start off now, telling you that I am sorry if anything in here makes you upset, honestly, I am sure it will, or at least make you uncomfortable. But know that I am okay, and know that I will be okay and I know that, and try and have comfort in knowing that I am trying to be the best me possible…

So here we go. I am sorry to say this, but lately how I have been feeling, I think I may be more into guys than woman, and I feel that I owe it to myself to find out, and to have your guys try and properly understand me more. However, in all honesty that was the main purpose of this. But I think for you to truly understand me better, and how my head works and what goes on in my head on a daily basis you would have to read the rest. And go way back when. So its up to you, I leave that choice to you, but know I’ve realized that I’ve never really talked about my life with anyone in the family. And this is me choosing to have you enter my life in more ways than I have let before.

So lets go back to what I feel is the beginning:

Middle/High School:

It may come at (no) surprise for you that I hated high school and middle school. In my opinion it was probably the darkest point in my life because of how I personally felt. And the funny thing is, that the life I am trying to live now, it wasn’t really on my mind back then, well not by my choice that is.

So to explain that last comment, we will start with a question. Is it a choice or are you just born gay? Well honestly, sometimes I don’t believe I ever had much of a decision. I was just told it. Starting middle school, having people write homophobic comments in books of mine or on stuff of mine. Nothing ever physical, that never happened, but sometimes its words that dig deeper in ways that no knife ever could. It’s alright now, I got passed it, I got passed it then, I guess sometimes I have never realized how much stronger I was until I look back on it.

But you see though back then I wasn’t strong. I constantly thought of ways that could end it, that could end everything that was happening. The constant ridicule of something that I didn’t even think I was. The constant comments and remarks saying that I was one thing when at the time I didn’t feel like that. I honestly think at the time I was depressed but I just dealt with it on my own. Well, I did have one friend who was feeling just as low as me. And its sad, because we would talk about our lives, and maybe what would happen if one time when we were driving we just didn’t stop and went off the road. What would happen then? All the sorrow, and feelings and ridicule would go away, and no one would have to deal with it. But thankfully, it never happened, you guys ingrained too much of a family to me. I could never do that to you guys or J and S, it wouldn’t be fair, and the pain and thoughts of that hurt more than any pain any random kid from high school could do to me.

It didn’t mean everything was okay. It just meant I dealt with it. I never felt I had the choice to think for myself. And its sucked and sometimes still sucks. Everyone has always made comments about the friends I have. But to be honest, has anyone every asked me? Do you think I didn’t want guy friends? No I didn’t want guy friends, because maybe I would be interested in them, no my mind didn’t think that way, my mind still doesn’t think that way! I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how. I had such a poor and sour outlook on myself because of things said to me and how I viewed what people thought about me. It got to the point that anyone I met I would just assume they would think the worst of me and immediately think I am gay and immediately just hate me. It was what my brain had gotten trained to do, to fear. You don’t understand how long and how many new friends have come into my life for me to actually finally learn to get past this fear, and it is still something I battle every fucking day when I meet someone new. Those thoughts never go away, you just learn to push them to aside and tell yourself how dumb you are for thinking that, and people do like you, and honestly if they don’t, then who cares, you will find those people who like you and are meant to be in your life . So yes, I wanted guy friends, but I would imagine the worse and I would think the worse and I would never be comfortable. I couldn’t get comfortable because I would always have the constant thoughts in my head of what could be going through theirs, and those thoughts were never good.

Its funny, my junior year I actually made a pretty decent friend in some ways, and in other ways it wasn’t good. You guys may attribute my pot smoking to this individual. But you know, at times it was good. It was the first time I wasn’t as concerned with my life, where I was hanging out with someone who actually seemed to like me as a friend. Its funny, that one friend who I was depressed was not a huge fan of this individual either. However, she was very surprised when one time he stuck up for me before she even had the chance to say something. It was when him and I were close and had been hanging out and some kids in his grade made the comment going, “C just wants to hang with blah blah so he just doesn’t seem gay.” It took a bit of time for my friend to tell me because she didn’t want to upset me. But she also wanted me to know that the individual stuck up for me and yelled at the for making that comment, that I indeed was not gay, and that I was a good and fun person to hang out with. Yes, maybe this kid wasn’t the best, but sometimes its moments like that, moments when you feel like shit about your life and yourself that, that little things like this can make someone seem like a hero to you and help in more ways than you can imagine.

I eventually got over everything. I haven’t felt as depressed where I have had terrible thoughts in years. Its something that I have always been aware of, and will make sure to never get to that level again.

My reason for sharing my experiences in middle and high school is so you get a better understanding of maybe what goes through my head. How my head thinks, and maybe why it thinks like this. Its not to make you upset, or uncomfortable, its to understand your son.

Feelings/Thoughts:

I know this entire thing is about my thoughts and feelings, but I honestly didn’t know what to have as the header for this subject. Because its going to just be a lot of mini random paragraphs about random thoughts and feelings that go through my head..

People say that as a person you typically are your own worst enemy. And honestly, I believe its 100% true. When this lifestyle first began fermenting in my brain and slowly implanting as maybe who I am, I don’t think you could imagine what went through my head.

“Fuck! I am literally going make everyone in high school correct in their assumptions?”

“Fuck! What am I going to do and tell my family and friends!?”

“No, no, no! You can’t be! You can’t”

“Everyone is going to hate you! And no one will like you.”

“You are going to constantly have to hide who you are…”

Those are tame compared to some thoughts that went through my head. Again, some of the thoughts of leaving flooded in my head.

“Would it be easier to leave this world?”

“This isn’t what I wanted for myself.”

Actually I got to go off on that statement now. This isn’t what I wanted for myself. It is such a weird sentence to say and read, and I don’t know if people understand it. But this isn’t what I dreamed of as a little kid. This isn’t the life that I thought I was going to have. I dreamed of marrying a woman and having kids with a giant house. Please for one day, I know this is not easy on you, but please do not ever think this is easy on me. I have gone days crying because of things like this. Most recently, these are the thoughts that go through my head when I quietly cry myself to sleep.

“… will I have kids myself? Will I actually ever get to be the father I wanted to be, with my own flesh and blood. Will I have my baby Rayne?”

“Will I ever have a kid in general?”

“Will I be alone my entire life or will I actually find someone.”

I have cried myself to sleep on more than one occasion lately because of the kids situation. It is something that has been attacking me hard, because it is something that I truly wanted and something I always dreamed of. If I could choose my life, I would choose to be with a woman, and I would choose to have kids with that woman. But I also want to live a life where I feel I am being true to myself. And honestly, its not to say I couldn’t end up with a woman, there are moments in mine and L’s relationship where I did love her. But sometimes I wonder if I loved what she did for me and the growth and leaps in life she made me take. But lately, that’s not what I have been going after.

Little things can set me off, little things can destroy me. I’ve had more than one conversation about this with S and J. And you know what, that shirt S bought me for Christmas (“all the ladies think im fly”) sent me for a spiral. He is well aware of this, but the shirt to me tells a different story. In reality, S is just S and doesn’t think, and I understand the thought behind the gift. However, for me, something like that can make me think about everything I have ever worried about.

“Does he wish I was completely straight?”

“Does he wish that I was more into girls?”

“Is this what he is trying to tell me with this shirt? “

I got over it pretty fast, and ive trained my mind to not let things like this bother me as much, but it happens, unfortunately it happens every day…

I’ve realized why my solo trip means the world to me the other day when I was driving (which is sometimes how I feel when I just drive). But I was free. I was alone with just me and my thoughts. And I wasn’t scared. I was out there in the world doing something for me, and something that I did for myself, the first time I feel I thought for myself in the longest time. I know I have said this before, but I really don’t think I would have finished college without you paying for it. But looking back at it now, I am so happy and grateful in so many ways because of where I am today. But traveling, I was able to be me, with no worries, and I didn’t care. I didn’t care for the first time in a really really long time. And I was alone with my thoughts and I was okay, and I learned to love who I was, who I had become, and who I would become.

I don’t typically articulate myself very well in real life, and I don’t exactly like talking about my life with people. It makes me uncomfortable. As strong as I have become, I am still extremely uncomfortable talking about this part of my life in person, with my family especially. Its nothing against you guys, trust me. But I realize that I am still just as uncomfortable, and its not something I know is easy for you guys, so its nothing I want to push or talk about, hell, it typically makes it easier for me. But this is me trying to articulate myself to you guys…

So lets talk… I don’t know, well I guess some new things. I guess, never mind, one of my new years resolutions this year was to try and meet and make some gay friends. I just figured it may be a little easier to have some friends to go out with or that. So that’s where my friend H has been kind of helping because her best friend from high school is gay. So that what I did on New Years Eve. So not sure if you guys caught it, but, Uncle T made a comment right before I left saying, “Find the most beautiful girl and dance with her.” According to Zia, I technically did, but it wasn’t in the way Uncle T would be thinking. But a comment like that kinda destroy me, it kind of makes me feel like shit. And I cant even be upset because its not like anyone knows, or he knows. And that is my choice, a choice that I am still choosing to keep. But it sends me spiraling down a mini black hole. Sometimes almost feeling as I lose a little piece of who I think I am and revert back to my old timid high school self who hated himself. Luckily, I have perfected finding that piece again and continuing to grow.

A…oh A… shes not a terrible person. And I will never fault you guys for having certain issues with her, its understandable. But A was the first person I ever told about this. Sometimes I think its killed J that I didn’t tell her first. But remember how I said I was uncomfortable with talking to family, J was included. But A was there for me from day one. Always texting me, making sure I was okay, that I wasn’t upset, to know that it was okay and that everything would be okay. She helped me become more accepting of myself, to lost parts of that self hatred that I have taught myself over the years because of other things that people have said to me. A self hatred that still gets brought up and she is almost always the first person I text because for now she always knows exactly what to say to make me stop thinking what the pessimistic thoughts I have trouble fighting. She somehow handles me incredibly well for how dramatic I am, and almost can always make some of my terrible and hateful thoughts go away. When I was upset and needed someone to talk to, still to this day she will be there when I need her. In times A has helped to make me who I am. Yes, we may smoke pot, but honestly if that’s it, then you guys have nothing to worry about.

Lets talk about pot and alcohol actually. I’ve kind of abused them in the past, maybe still abuse them to some people. However, for me it was an escape. It’s not something I am glad to admit, but I know its true. My therapist and me talked long and hard about my use. What was the reasoning? I was not happy with myself for a while, I wasn’t truly happy with Liz. And all I did was drink to obliteration. You guys blame my friends, but I don’t find it very fair. You only have me to blame, it is always the decision I make, and not my friends. This is me owning up to the things in life that I have done, the trouble and pain I caused because of my use at the time. But yes I still like to go out, and I enjoy it, but lately I haven’t been to that point. I don’t feel like I need to drink to loosen up. I can just have a drink and be fine. I can be me around people, yes sometimes I still overdrink when I get uncomfortable, but its part of my mind, and its something that I have become well aware of. Something that I am trying to fix and something that is working for me. In my opinion I have been much better lately, and I am going to continue to take these steps so that I don’t ever drink take a shot just because of my anxiety.

Its situations like these where I can’t do much. I’ve gotten stronger now. But I still have a long way to go. I don’t think I will ever truly be accepting of myself, there will always be a part of that high school kid. Its who I was at one point in my life, and unfortunately we aren’t snakes. We can’t just shed every layer until we are completely new, its not how life works. Things follow you and they stay a part of you. Its just you learn as you age to accept those times for what they were and what you learned. Every now and then I enter a sad and mini dark place, I have grown used to it. I kind of have some go to movies that I watch and I get out of a funk. Never think that I ignore you guys or am not around because of you. I am just sometimes in my own little world, and I’ve learned that sometimes in silence and being alone is where I am most comfortable and where I am able to properly think. I love you both, I wouldn’t be here without you guys…

YOU GUYS:

So here will be another difficult portion of this. But here we go. As I said, this isn’t the life I wanted for myself, and I don’t want to discredit you guys either. This probably isn’t the life you guys wanted for me, or for yourselves for that matter. It’s something that goes through my head a lot. At times back then when I would be ridiculed, I would imagine leaving the family.

“Maybe it would be easier for them?”

“What if they hear the rumors that kids are saying about me at school.”

I don’t just feel for myself, I feel for others too. I couldn’t imagine having a gay child. Its not something a parent dreams of, “hey I really hope that I have a gay child.” No, no one really wants that, its basically still taboo even as “accepting” the world gets.

You know I haven’t only thought about you guys. Ive thought about your parents as well. Sometimes I feel guilty visiting your parents. I didn’t exactly know all them, and they all lived in a different time. Would they love me? Do you guys actually really think they would? I don’t, it’s a huge doubt I have. Something I fight with everyday, something I don’t ever want a true answer for. I want it to stay this way, its easier. But I love them, and I really hope they love me and understand the emotional turmoil that I go through with this.

Dad, I know you love me. But this isn’t an easy subject with you. We basically grew up knowing that you get uncomfortable with this. And I am not asking or saying that I expect you to be extremely into it. No, I would never even think that. But I, I just don’t know how to feel sometimes about this situation. And it sometimes sucks knowing that I am extremely uncomfortable about it, as are you, which just adds to my uncomfortableness.

I don’t know dad, sometimes I have just wanted to flat out ask you if I ended up with a dude if you would love me still. But I don’t, I am fearful of the answer, and I don’t want to take you by surprise, that wouldn’t be very fair. Will everything be okay? How much are things going to change? I know they will, its inevitable. Its how life is, and its how life works with changes, uncomfortable changes.

I know you love me; I know you always will love me. But will I be accepted, and if so, will I actually feel accepted?

I love you dad, I am so grateful for everything you do and I am so sorry for the emotions that I have made you feel over the years and now

Mother, hi mom, its been hard with you. Its interesting to me. Because I have had more than one conversation with you about this I feel like. And every time I don’t feel much more comfortable or at ease with it. It’s a feeling I cant particularly place, but it feels a little something like this. One time I called upset, and more upset about Dad loving me and accepting me. And you sat there and told me that he would love me and accepted me but it would be hard and difficult for a little bit. But were you trying to convince me, or yourself? Because sometimes I don’t think you understand it…

I know this isn’t what you wanted. It isn’t what you wanted for your baby boy. Its not what I wanted either. But I wanted to try and make myself more open, to be able to talk to you guys. But I know you don’t want to talk about it either. It’s the tone in your voice and the social cues you give off. Its just an annoyance with the word, a loss of patience, a change in things. Life changes, a lot, I’ve slowly been learning to accept it. I am learning to accept it, is it something that you can accept?

I love you mom, I really do, I am your baby, and it hurts more than you can imagine keeping me all of me from you.

You guys, there’s a lot that I cant imagine. I cant imagine bringing a guy home. I really cant. I am still uncomfortable myself about actually being out with a guy in that manner. I couldn’t imagine bringing someone home to you guys. Its terrifying to me now and I don’t even have anyone. Hell, I am pretty pessimistic about ever finding someone. Thank god for traveling because it taught me to be able to love myself and be okay with being alone. I wouldn’t expect you guys to be okay with everything, I probably would get a hotel room if came home (if I was dating someone). Just because its easier. Its easier not to make you guys uncomfortable.

Avoidance isn’t the best method to solve anything, but sometimes, maybe it is necessary? Maybe in some ways the less you guys know the easier it is? OR if we can avoid things that we know would make us most uncomfortable, would ignoring it and avoiding it just be the best method to handle the situation?

I don’t know. I am trying to let into my brain. The way I think. What happens on a daily basis. Things that I think about more than once, things that stick with me. My mind never stops, its like a million atoms constantly bouncing off each other with almost no time to to relax.

I truly have been happier with who I have been lately. I have been happier with myself, and happier with the steps I have taken to better myself. I don’t completely know what my future holds for me. I don’t know exactly what will happen. And I know its going to be an extremely extremely bumpy and terrifying road, that’s what life is about. I’ve battled it so far, and I can continue to keep fighting. But I don’t think I could completely do that until I felt like you guys had a better understanding of me.

I hope you understand me a little more, I hope you understand the weight I put on myself everyday, and I hope you know I love you guys extremely and am so fortunate to have you as parents. I have been lucky and blessed into an amazing family, and I am so sorry for the things I have caused.

I love you…

~ the-emotional-stoner

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