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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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TFW you realize you relate more to a fave character than you ever actually consciously realized, lmao.

So I was just having a remote therapy session, and we were focusing on just some mental pain management techniques since my stupid metabolism makes most pain meds largely useless and my head has been waging all out warfare on me for the past week and a half, lololol. And we were delving into one of my personal fave rants, which is the fact that so many people - including vaunted medical professionals - just fundamentally don’t seem to get that having a high pain tolerance does not mean you don’t like, FEEL pain unless its really a lot or intense. Its just that you’re hard-wired/trained/geared via stuff like an abusive childhood, lol, to not SHOW or DISPLAY any visible or audible pain cues unless the pain reaches a certain high threshold where its impossible to hold them back.

But particularly over the past four or five years, with my ongoing medical shit, its super obnoxious trying to get your doctors to display a sense of urgency about your condition because they’re just fundamentally not grasping the degree of chronic pain you’re dealing with every day, since, y’know....I can literally be sitting there in the doctor’s chair and conversationally talking about the fact that no, I definitely am currently feeling like, an eight or nine out of ten on the pain scale, please don’t be confused by the fact that I’m literally LOLing as I describe this to you rather than gasping and moaning in a more obvious indication of it.

Its like, I’m not TRYING to undersell it or anything, its just, when you grow up since the time you’re like five or six years old, knowing damn well that the only appropriate response to someone asking ‘oh am I hurting you’ that won’t earn you MORE pain is a completely casual or cavalier sounding ‘nope, I’m fine, all good here, no problems.’......like, at a certain point in your development, that becomes pretty hard-wired in, like, you can’t shake it just because you consciously WANT to. (Though it is one of the things I’m trying to unlearn and ‘rewire’ in therapy now, via EMDR techniques aimed at like, literally reprogramming my nervous system and how I react to various stimuli. Its.....slow progress, lmao, but I mean there is some progress so its all good).

But point being, when you’re a physically abused kid and your physical abuser doesn’t want to believe or accept that they’re hurting you, and so they tended to just get angrier and MORE dangerous if they thought you were indicating or even just ‘implying’ that they were in fact hurting you.....you get pretty damn good at not showing even the slightest hint of pain or distress unless its literally a level you’ve never experienced before and thus have no practical experience in hiding or distracting yourself from.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t FEEL every bit of it. It doesn’t mean you’ve found a magical off-switch that means you can just mind-over-body yourself from acknowledging or being aware that you are in fact in a shit ton of pain. You just.....have learned the importance of masking it, and found ways to do that by necessity.

Except, even much later in life when you are in a safe place or more control of your situations or surroundings, there’s no easy way to just....stop putting that mask on by default, the second you’re experiencing any type of pain. And so even when dealing with medical professionals, too many of them just don’t GET that their vaunted ‘tell me how much pain you’re in from one to ten’ scale isn’t really the be-all and end-all of pain measurement, because its subjective and arbitrary as HELLLLLLLLL.....and one of the defining parameters for what that pain scale looks like and feels like for YOU, is....your personal history with pain and how you’re ‘comfortable’ displaying evidence of it. (And I know there’s a ton of people and even groups of people who can relate to this for entirely different reasons, I just can only speak to my own of course).

But its definitely frustrating and invalidating as hell to be in more pain than many people ever experience in their lives, and TRYING to convey that as openly and honestly as you can.....and literally being able to SEE the doubt and dismissal in doctors’ eyes, because all they’re seeing is the visual cues you’re putting out there and which they equate to ‘can’t possibly be in THAT much pain, not if he’s acting this casual about it’.....

And so the frustrating irony is that you end up dismissed as like, a pain ‘lightweight�� who is complaining about an apparent degree of pain that’s barely anything in their ‘professional’ estimation. And thus they’re disinclined to take your requests for heavier or more effective pain medication seriously, or not impressed by your attempts to imbue a greater sense of urgency in their approach to your treatment plan or procedures, etc......when in reality, the only reason you’re showing those cues of not being in that much pain is because you’re MORE used to and familiar with even extremely high degrees of pain than anything a lot of them are accustomed to.

Its invalidating as hell, being treated as though you have no idea what you’re talking about when you say “I am actually in a shit ton of active, ongoing pain, hey thanks, can we maybe do something about this,” when actually, the disconnect comes from you having MORE experience with MORE pain than some of them can even fathom. You just....also have more experience with reasons not to SHOW that pain, if its at all avoidable to any degree whatsoever.

THAT’S what high pain tolerance actually means, and the sheer volume of medical professionals who just flat out don’t get this, or worse, just don’t care or are too proud to reassess their viewpoints on this matter if that carries the implication they don’t actually know as much as they think they do......god, it grates.

(Once, when I was around twenty-three or twenty-four I think, I got caught up in the periphery of a bar fight that resulted in me getting a shard of glass embedded in the back of my forearm. Still have a pretty sizable scar from it. And it absolutely hurt like fuck, but I was conscious as paramedics arrived on scene and when going to the hospital to have it removed and stitched up, and like......kinda cracking jokes about it the whole time because I was uncomfortable as hell and didn’t really know what else to do or how to react, y’know? I mean, I had a few inches of glasses jutting out from the top of my forearm, lol, what the hell are you supposed to do or say about that? There’s not really a protocol, lmao. Problem was, they took one look at me sitting there with this spear of glass sticking out of my arm and making dumb jokes about it like it was no big deal......and they decided this meant I was in shock and kept trying to treat me accordingly. And it was just like.....useless, because lol no I wasn’t in shock, I had none of the physical symptoms of being in shock and benefited from none of their assumptions that I was.....I was just a dude with a shard of glass in his arm that hurt like fuck and I really wanted it out as soon as possible, and I was in full awareness of what had happened and everything I was feeling, I just didn’t know how to convey this in a way that they would believe, because I couldn’t come up with anything to say or do other than laugh about how fucking surreal the whole situation was.)

Anyway, so circling back to the point, or as much of one as I ever have, so today I was just learning and practicing various mental pain management/coping techniques with my therapist and discussing my issues with doctors and the High Pain Tolerance Quandary. Basically like, I would really truly like to know or learn how to display the ‘expected’ physical and visual/audio cues for being a person who is experiencing a ‘4′ on the pain scale, versus a person who is experiencing a ‘7′ or a ‘10′.....so they can stop fucking treating me like I’m only at a 4 when I’m actually at an 8 or 9, just because I look and sound like a person who really is only at a 4 no matter what they actually CLAIM to be feeling.

Course, easier said than done.

But yeah, so as she was coaching me through various techniques and surveying what I was doing with my body and facial expressions and cues, etc, she pointed out something that I had literally never noticed about myself before, even though once she DID point it out I could recognize that its something I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, well back before I was ten and no doubt stemming from smack dab in the midst of the worst of my childhood abuse.

So, y’know on Teen Wolf, how Scott and Liam and various others are at times shown digging their claws into their palms and drawing blood to ground themselves with the pain? (And ironically, how I was just talking the other week about photo doubling for a similar such scene with gashes in the character’s palms, lmfao). Well, obviously I don’t have claws, and part of why I’d never really paid much attention to when I was doing it is because even my therapist wasn’t comfortable classifying it as a kind of self-harm or anywhere near punitive enough to carry that kind of weight or associations.....

But like, I’ve always kept my fingernails fairly trimmed but not completely. Like, just enough of an edge to them that at times, particularly when I’m in physical pain or distress already, I’ll just like....dig my fingernails into the pad of other fingertips, and use that little familiar spike of pain to not ground myself but rather distract myself from whatever else I was feeling. Like, she wasn’t comfortable calling it a self-punitive technique because as we got into it, it was clear I was never doing it to CAUSE myself pain....rather, its something I only do when I’m already in pain, usually far more pain than anything that brings up.....but by deliberately doing that and creating a focal awareness around it, even just a largely subconscious one......I’ve apparently long been using that to hook my attention up to a very specific, very manageable sensation/focal point of pain that lets me and my ADHD brain relegate whatever other pain I’m feeling (even if its much much worse) to the back of my mind for at least a little while, as I distract myself by focusing on this more obvious and consciously directed bit of lesser pain.

And a big part of why I probably never noticed I was doing this, we eventually concluded, is because as a kid I probably came up with it as a kind of survival technique specifically BECAUSE it was something I could do to distract myself/manage my pain covertly, without drawing my abuser’s attention to what I was doing either. And by extension, without the fact that I was doing it at all 'betraying’ that I was in pain or trying to manage or cope with painful sensations in the first place. A lot of other pain management techniques, like even just deep, deliberate breaths, tend to be a lot more obvious and noticeable, and thus would have been counter-productive for my specific purposes. No matter how much they helped me manage whatever physical pain I was feeling, they would have at the same time inevitably drawn attention to the fact that I was trying to do that at all in the first place....and thus only invite more pain.

Merely digging my fingernails into my fingertip pads, not enough to draw blood or make me cry out or anything like that, but rather just to distract myself and deliberately focus me on a source of pain I could deal with and more easily handle, as well as being ‘low in intensity’ enough that focusing on it didn’t bring any other obvious visual or audio pain cues to the forefront.....that I could do without anyone noticing. And thus this is likely why it came to be my go-to move whenever I was in any kind of pain at all, as just a quick and easy way to wrap my head around my physical sensations and shift focus to something more easily dealt with or managed (even if it didn’t actually dismiss or get rid of whatever other pain I’m feeling entirely). And just the low-key nature of it in general likely being a big part of why it became such an unconscious instinct for me until now, something that barely even registered in my conscious mind as I built up/hard-wired instinctive responses that incorporated it without me having to consciously direct myself to do that.

I mean, its still obviously not an ideal response, especially when I’m long past being stuck in any kind of external situations or need to fall back on that and the covert nature of it. So now its another of those things to just be aware of and work on rewiring on an instinctive level, making it a priority for me to focus on consciously using more helpful and positive methods of pain management.

But it was just interesting to me to have it pointed out as something I’ve been doing all this time, let alone being as unaware of doing it as I’ve apparently been. And its not hard to draw obvious parallels to when characters in media I consume do similar things even if for not quite the same reasons or in quite the same ways. So now I’m just kinda contemplating that and wondering how much even just some degree of unconscious awareness that I do that might have made me more alert to when characters or other people do similar things. Made me more attuned to noticing or even fixating on moments when they do things like that, that I related to even on an entirely subconscious level.

*Shrugs* Anyway, that’s all, like, literally not going anywhere with this, was just unwinding and felt like mapping my way through that all contemplatively, because oh no, inexplicable strangeness, therapy puts me in particularly contemplative headspaces, whodathunkit, lmfao. *Shrugs* Just struck me as particularly interesting, so felt like sharing for anyone else who can relate/see similar parallels themselves.

Or just chalk it up to random anecdotal wtf-ery from your friendly (err, mostly. okay sometimes. FINE ideally, let’s go with that) neighborhood over-sharer.

#that last bit is just to head off the usual 'friendly concerned advice giving anons' I tend to get after posts like these #plz stop doing that #i know i over-share its not a secret and I do it with full knowledge and intent because I feel like it #it suits my purposes #my purposes do not have to be your purposes nor do they require your approval #if it makes you uncomfortable thats where the beauty of tumblr being a largely opt-in experience comes from #there's the door #i can understand the confusion - its not actually a big blinking EXIT sign but rather an 'unfollow' button #its really that simple lmfao stop being so concerned with what Im doing particularly in posts where Im not even interacting with anyone #and for the love of god please stop assuming that everyone on tumblr is TRYING to post from a state of being on #an emotional plateau of zen #nah - some of us literally use the medium to vent and unpack stuff we dont have a ton of room to vent about or unpack in our offline lives #and like the relative(ish) anonymous nature of it combined with the potential for at least some kind of validation via #like-minded or experiencing individuals in a pseudo-communal setting #our purpose/usage does not need to be yours and it does not require your condoning #and I would just like to suggest that maybe people who put a ton of emphasis on telling others (like survivors) to do a better job of #curating what content they experience/are exposed to online #might be well served to put a little more focus on curating what content YOU experience if you find yourself uncomfortable with particular #posting habits #there's a bajillion other people out there to follow #you dont need to be here if you dont actually want to be or arent actually comfortable being here #BUT I DIGRESS

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rimmers-swimming-certificate · 4 years

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Red Dwarf fanfic - Comatose (9/16)

This was a stupid idea. Lister hadn’t even wanted to do the jigsaw in the first place. Not really. It had just been something to fill a bit of time. When he had found it too frustrating, he had given up. Now, he was sitting on Rimmer’s bunk, watching with increasing frustration as Rimmer now gave it a go.

“That one,” Rimmer said, pointing at one of the pieces scattered on the table. He moved his pointing finger to a gap at the edge of the partially completed jigsaw. “Put it there.”

There were two skutters at the desk, one on either side of Rimmer. The skutter on his left reached down with its claw-like hand, and tried to pick up the jigsaw piece. It slipped from its clumsy fingers back to the table.

Lister folded his arms and sighed. “Forget it, Rimmer,” he said. “It’s just a stupid jigsaw. It doesn’t matter.”

Ignoring him, RImmer addressed the skutter. “No, you dim-witted excuse for a robot. They had more sophisticated machinery than you in the 21st century. Maybe even the 20th. Watch me, and try to copy what I do.” Rimmer reached out and placed his finger above the jigsaw piece. He slid his hand towards himself, leaving the piece where it was, and mimed picking it up as it teetered on the edge of the table.

The skutter tipped its head to the side like a dog observing its master, then tried to copy. The jigsaw piece slid across the table, off the edge, and landed on the floor.

Rimmer gritted his teeth in barely concealed frustration. He pointed to the other skutter. “Now you,” he said. He pointed to another jigsaw piece. “This one. Just like he did, only don’t drop the smegging thing on the floor. I know you won’t, because you’re nowhere near as stupid. In fact, you might be the best skutter we have.”

The second skutter moved itself rapidly from left to right like a dog wagging its tail. It slid the jigsaw piece to the edge of the table, clutched it between two of its three fingers and held it aloft triumphantly.

RImmer turned to look at Lister, and Lister nodded. He had to admit, that was better than he’d managed to get them to do, and faster too. “So, how about getting them to put it down in the right place?” he said.

“Ah,” said Rimmer, “well, that’s a tad more complicated, but here we go.” He turned back to the skutter. “Right,” he said, he pointed to the part of the jigsaw where the piece belonged. “Put it there, try to make the picture match up with the parts around it.”

The skutter hesitated. It moved its arm so that the jigsaw piece hovered just over the jigsaw, and then let go. It fell to the table, bounced, and landed upside down.

Rimmer pushed the palm of his hand into his face, then turned to look at Lister. “See what I mean?” He turned back to the first skutter. “Now you,” he said. “This other skutter’s useless, I can already tell that you’re so much better.”

Lister sighed. “Honestly Rimmer, give up. If it takes this long for every piece…”

“It doesn’t,” Rimmer told him. “Or, it won’t, anyway. They are capable of learning, eventually. Once they know how to do it, they’ll do it on command.” He paused, then shrugged. “Well, for a while. Eventually they’ll forget and you need to do it again, but with a bit of persistence you’ll get a good couple of weeks out of them.”

Lister got to his feet, crossed the short distance between the two of them, and clapped Rimmer on the shoulder. Rimmer flinched in surprise, still not used to physical contact, then turned to look at him.

“Thanks, Rimmer, really. But don’t worry about it. I get the idea, so I can try it sometime if I get really desperate for something to do, but it’s just a kids' jigsaw puzzle, don’t waste your time.”

Rimmer frowned. “Really?”

“Really. I don’t even like jigsaws that much. It’s just something to do that’s not too much effort, and when it takes this much work…”

He was interrupted by Holly appearing on the viewscreen. “Alright?” she said.

Lister turned to look at her. “Hey, Holly. What’s up?”

Holly frowned. “Er…” She hesitated, trying to remember what she needed to say. “Oh yeah, Kryten wants to see you down in the medibay. Says he’s got news.”

Lister’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected this so soon. A spark of hope ignited in his chest and he turned to look at Rimmer. “Think I’m getting better?” he asked.

Rimmer didn’t answer. Lister spun around and raced out of the door.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

The medical unit was louder than normal. The bleeping of the heart rate monitor was at least twice its normal speed, while the display monitors were updating information every few seconds. The body on the bed looked exactly the same as it always had, despite the hive of activity around it.

“What’s up, Kryten?” Lister said as he entered the room. “Am I better?”

The mechanoid was wringing his hands in a very upset-looking way. Lister came to a dead stop, and was almost bowled over by Rimmer running full-pelt into the back of him. He stumbled, but managed to right himself.

“No, sir,” Kryten said. “You’re… he’s…”

Oh smeg. Lister swallowed and glanced behind him at Rimmer, trying to gauge his reaction.

Rimmer looked tense, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Spit it out,” Rimmer said to Kryten. “He’s what exactly?”

Kryten stuttered for another couple of seconds before he managed to engage his vocabulary circuits again. “You’ve taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “You had a seizure. It’s finished now, as you can no doubt see. Still, I thought it pertinent to inform you.”

Lister stared blankly at the mechanoid, trying to force himself to process the words that he was hearing. The bleeping of the heart rate monitor was slowing now, and the machines around him were changing their displays less often. “What do you mean I had a seizure?” he asked.

“Well, sir,” Kryten told him, “in basic terms, I mean that you suffered convulsions; you had a fit. You…”

“Yes, thank you Doctor Bogbot,” Rimmer interrupted. He stepped forward, placing himself directly between Lister and Kryten and folded his arms. “Somehow, I don’t think he was looking for a list of synonyms.”

“Oh. No. Of course…” Kryten floundered a little, then fell into silence.

Lister tried to rephrase his question, but for some reason, his mouth was refusing to work properly. He opened it and tried to speak, but the sound that came out was more like a squeak than actual words.

Rimmer spun around at the sound of the squeak, grabbed Lister by the arm and pulled him toward the nearest chair. “You, sit down,” he told him. He applied downward pressure to Lister’s shoulder until he gave in and collapsed into the chair. “You,” he said, rounding back onto Kryten, “Give a sensible answer this time, please.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Kryten said, addressing Lister rather than Rimmer, “I assumed you were unfamiliar with the term, so I sought to clarify.”

Lister shook his head. Now he was seated, he felt like he could think again. Sort of. “I know what a seizure is, Kryten. What I want to know is why? And will it happen again?”

“And what does it mean for his recovery?” Rimmer added.

Kryten looked at them both. “I’m not sure,” he said. “On all counts. The medicomp is running diagnostics on you, and at this point all I can do is wait for the results. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about at all.” He began tapping the medicomp nervously, increasingly quickly.

Lister leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. He nodded. “Good, okay, so how long will it take to get the results?”

“Just another few minutes, sir.” Kryten tapped the medicomp again, so fast now that his hand was a blur, the sound of the nervous tapping only added to the noise level of the room. “Just try to stay calm,” he said, in a very not-calm tone, “nothing to panic about.”

Lister took a deep breath. A few minutes. He could cope with that. Although, he could probably cope better if Kryten would stop his furious tapping. “It’s definitely going to be okay though, right?” he said. “I mean, I had a friend at primary school who used to have fits, and it never did him any real harm. A couple of times a year he’d just collapse in the middle of P.E. and start flopping around like a fish out of water. Scared the smeg out of me the first few times, til I figured out what was going on.”

“That he had epilepsy, you mean?” Rimmer said.

Lister shook his head. “No. Well, yeah, he did, but the meds took care of that. Turned out he just didn’t like playing cricket, so whenever he saw the teacher go in the cupboard where they kept the bats and the wickets, down he’d go. Then he’d get up, say he felt a bit woozy and go hang out in the nurse’s office for the rest of the lesson. Nobody ever questioned it, because why would they?”

“Well,” Rimmer said, “that’s fairly despicable behaviour. Imaging exploiting a disability like epilepsy just to get out of a P.E. lesson.”

Lister shook his head. Rimmer was probably just jealous because he hadn’t been able to do the same thing. “He got his comeuppance in the end though,” he said. “Got a job at a bank, last I heard he was on the management track.”

Rimmer frowned. “So?”

“So? So he probably ended up a bank manager. Poor bastard.”

“Sir, the results are coming through now,” Kryten told him.

Lister looked up.

“Oh,” said Kryten.

“Oh what? Is that a good ‘oh’ or a bad ‘oh’?” It was a bad ‘oh’, he was sure of it...

Kryten read the information again. “It’s good. It’s… good-ish, anyway.”

Lister glanced at Rimmer again, trying to decide how to interpret that. Rimmer shook his head, equally baffled. “Kryten, ‘good-ish’ is not a diagnosis. What is going on?”

“It’s... inconsistent,” Kryten clarified. “I think it was probably just a blip; one of those things, but the medicomp needs to run more tests to be sure. In the meantime, why don’t you go and relax? I’ll tell you as soon as I have any news. Which will be good, I’m sure.”

One of those things? Lister shook his head. “Relax? After this? How the smeg am I supposed to relax?”

Kryten shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I noticed a jigsaw puzzle in your quarters the other day. Maybe you could work on that?”

(next)

Thanks to @norwegianpornfaerie for the beta, and the advice on writing Kryten :-)

#red dwarf #red dwarf fanfic #dave lister #arnold rimmer #kryten #my fic

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silencedsonatas · 4 years

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petra nikonova is an americanized version of her name that she had to assume because of her aunt who is now her guardian. her aunt is her father’s sister but unlike her dad, her aunt took off from russia at literally the earliest convenience, marrying the first person who could take her far away from russia and all of its corrupted politics and general state of ‘shoddiness’ as she calls it. her aunt is also a black widow having killed three of her four husbands in the last decade. her aunt has been married a total of seven times. the first died naturally, the second and third were divorces.

her aunt has control of petra’s rather impressive inheritance which is a combination of her father’s business profits, her mother’s (minor) inheritances from the titled side of the family, all of the proceeds of petra’s performances and compositions – she still composes and publishes (she writes mainly pianist pieces though has written a couple of orchestra pieces and is working on an opera off and on though it’s mostly in her head). her manager still retains a large percentage of her profits though her aunt is trying to fight that ‘on petra’s behalf’. petra never performs in front of anyone. ever. ever ever. she literally has such stage fright and true terror of performing in front of anyone ever again that she physically freezes and her head spins and she can’t breathe and the walls close in and all of that manner of reaction. she also still has night terrors regarding performances, regarding her parent’s death, regarding her various suicide attempts.

she has attempted suicide three times. the first was a year after her parent’s death, approximately at around age fourteen when she took a bucco of sleeping pills with a fifth of vodka and slit her forearms from pretty close to wrist to elbow. she tried again in the asylum in russia by hanging herself. a year and a half or so later after being trapped under the aunt’s thumb she overdosed again // still isn’t quite sure herself if it was intentional or not. she half has the idea that she is immortal, that Death itself doesn’t want her. she is also incredibly self conscious of the scars on her arms and keeps them covered almost every single moment of the day, waking or not, whether by sleeves, fingerless gloves, that sort of measures.

in terms of wardrobe she wears a haphazard combination of most of whatever she happens to grab hold of. she is the epitome of glitter grunge. she will wear ten dollar jeans with a two dollar tank top from goodwill and a ratty sweater that belonged to her dad for twenty years with six hundred dollar shoes and a twenty thousand dollar necklace and not even think about it / bat an eye or care. makeup is a constant but it’s just as much a mess and mix. nails are always kept short to keep from getting in the way of her playing but usually painted (chipped of course) and ink stained.

she is usually a mess of bruises of one kind or another whether it’s from shooting up or getting into a fight or a fist fight with her current fuck boy that got pissed at her for whatever fucking reason under the sun. she has a horrible horrible horrible horrible history with relationships. she doesn’t believe in them. people die people leave people beat her up people abuse her use her take her money steal her drugs lock her up you name it. she has maybe one or two friends in the mass of humanity and they had better be well used to her absolute bipolar madness that is only made worse with her drug use and addiction of the month. fickle is her middle name, but let’s be real if you get under her skin and into that one little tiny miniscule part of her heart she will literally fight tooth and nail for you and will do anything to keep you safe (from anybody but herself honestly…) and would literally die if it meant you’d be ok. this is not something that most people would ever get the chance to see or know but because this is the rp world it’d probably more likely that a larger number of plots will creep into that role because i can…

she also totally needs fuck buddies and enemies and people that abuse the fuck out of her because… again… i can

she is always listening to music. she reads everything and anything and almost always has a book shoved into her purse or back pocket or backpack. she speaks at least five or six languages. she hates math but she’s really good at it but she’ll never admit it. wickedly intelligent. never EVER uses contractions, it’s a huge huge huge pet peeve. always has a russian accent when she speaks english because it pisses off her aunt but she’s absolutely capable of speaking perfect and flawlessly, accent free at her whim. she’s also got an amazing singing voice, and if you get her drunk or high enough she will serenade you or kick ass at karaoke.

she loves animals but refuses to keep any because she knows she is entirely incapable of that amount of responsibility.

she has dropped out of school. she could easily get her ged and even probably test out of a lot of subjects at a collegiate level even in her teen / late teen verse and even without her formal education via public schools or anything. she did have private tutors with her manager and on tour and such which was a wonderful experience for her because she was so so hungry for knowledge but she can’t stand going to school with the idiots that are the mainstream american teen and she cannot stand the teaching to the lowest common denominators so she just doesn’t bother. if anyone bothers to ask her aunt says she is being homeschooled with private tutors and what not and, there was some attempt at making that a reality but after her aunt walked in on petra and her tutor banging in the manor’s library, that was discontinued.

on that note as far as sex goes any pretense of being a good girl has never really been a thing for petra. she was molested and abused by her manager, whom she was given over to at the age of seven when she was being pushed into performing and writing and studying and just very very very much being pushed to excel in every way with her musical abilities. she saw her parents on very few occasions, holidays and when she was on vacation from classes, and whenever they decided they wanted to come see her perform. they were not lacking for money by a long shot – her father had seized a number of businesses when everything fell apart and was making a killing financially, her mother was a noble (minor title) – they were just very busy and very focused on their own lives —- which is not to say they didn’t dote on petra, because they did, they just thought they were doing what was best for her by letting her throw herself into her passion.

unfortunately with no other continuous adult supervision, her blossoming mental and emotional instabilities and the control (physical, mental, emotional, financial) that her manager had over her, she never reached out or acknowledged anything in regards to the abuse even after she was abandoned by him and even during her time in the institution and after. ie she’s never told anyone. her parents died when she was thirteen on the way to a grand premiere performance at a renowned hall (have to do some research to see if i can remember which one i’d settled on). they were run off the road by another car. it was believed an accident but it was actually a hit by one of her father’s business partners [ she has never learned this so she blames herself entirely ] and her parents were rushed to a hospital nearby where she was performing. her manager was informed, but he chose not to inform her until after her portion of the performance. she arrived at the hospital basically in time to sit with her father for a few minutes before he died. her mother had died in the interim.

she was institutionalized a year later after her manager gave up his custody of her due to the fact that she would not perform and would not compose and refused to do anything in terms of her music for anyone // combined with the fact that she was now reaching mid-teens, he had no more use for her and dropped her like a hot potato when she tried to kill herself.

in terms of sexuality as a whole, she gives no cares at all for anything in terms of morality. she sleeps with anyone she wants, or anyone (mostly) that wants to sleep with her if she can get something out of them, or if she needs a place to crash, or a ride from one end of town to the other, or finds them attractive or is high and doesn’t care. she’ll sleep with men or women, girls, boys, one, two, many. the more it hurts, the more she feels the better she likes it, which means especially when she’s high on something like ecstasy or heroin. she drinks, like all the time, but she laughs it off as saying she’s russian its vodka which means its like americans and water.

she has scripts for medications for her bipolar depressive disorder and acute anxiety, add, etc. but she really only fills them so she can sell the or for things like her sleep meds when she really needs to crash out she’ll take a handful, she’ll take a handful of her add meds to stay awake and buys scripts for pain meds on a constant basis to level out any other high or crash etc. etc.

she likes sleeping with older men, married ones, married ones with families especially, though she is just as happy to fuck him and his wife if that’s his thing. she likes fucking angry men too, teen or above, and she definitely definitely pushes everybody’s buttons just daring them to beat the shit out of her and/or have their way with her. she is the type that can be on the ground, the guy on top of her, fucking her and throttling her / and or literally punching her for sassing off and she’d just laugh and spit the blood back in their faces. she is rarely likely to call anything with a guy a ‘relationship’

she’s definitely not as violent seeking instinctively when it comes to females she’s just as masochistic with them if the opportunity presents itself. she does tend to be less angsty / violent / sadistic towards anyone of the female persuasion that she sleeps with, and is definitely more likely to have a repeat performance combined with something that resembles a friendship before during and or after the fact.

she has zero problems being somebody’s fucktoy and encourages age gaps in her own relationships but. if it ever came to her attention that somebody was messing with a kid / their kid / somebody else’s kid (and it probably has given the type of people she usually opts to hang out with) it will not end well. as in, in different rps over the years, she’s hired hitmen and or people to castrate people sexually abusing children. physically, she might not hire someone to KILL them but she probably finds a way to encourage a few guys to give the asshole a taste of their own medicine (ironically, unless it’s her aunt who does still physically abuse petra when petra is around and doesn’t do what she wants)

she encourages corruption of self and others, outside of that one area, however and is a hedonist in all things. despite her roman catholic upbringing / because of her roman catholic upbringing she hates religion and, not surprisingly, thinks that if there is a god he’s an absolute asshole and should basically fuck off and die. she has a branding of a pentacle on the back on her neck, following the junction of neck and shoulders about three inches high in almost every verse. she has a multitude of piercings and some tattoos (they tend to vary a lot on verse specific things).

#HEADCANON.#BIOGRAPHY.

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roseymoseyberry · 6 years

Text

Blowing Smoke (one-shot)

Aka Lemon Diesel (bless you @harutemu and @meridianbarony )

Listen, I started this over a year ago, and then when I had to go clean for work I had the deep desire to get back into it

Also my need for TFA OP/Ratch is so strong

Title: Blowing Smoke (Lemon Diesel)

Series: TFA

Ship(s): Ratchet/Optimus

Rating/warnings: Mature/Explicit for smoking Space Weed and getting high, shotgunning, high sex, oral sex, age difference (but both adults). Just a lot of getting high and Ratchet being old and Optimus being very into that

Summary:

“Ok, I’ll give you that I probably shouldn’t try to use the bong again. But maybe you could shotgun me?”

“You need to take a break.”

Optimus frowned over his shoulder and already Ratchet could see the resistance he had expected.

“I had my break earlier--”

“Don’t mean a shift break and you know it,” Ratchet insisted, crossing his arms to make it clear he wasn’t interested in an argument.

Optimus had been running himself ragged again and Ratchet was done watching the young mech push himself closer and closer to the breaking point. With everything they had to deal with, the last thing any of them needed was for their Prime to finally crumple under the pressure he put on himself.

Too young to not still have plenty mistakes ahead of him to make and learn from, and yet too stubborn and prideful to accept that fact, holding himself to impossible standards.

Ratchet had been haranguing Optimus for nearly a week now and Optimus had dismissed Ratchet’s concerns at every turn. But not today. Today Ratchet was going to make the Prime take a fragging night off, even if he had to strap him down to make it happen.

Though, as pleasant albeit inappropriate as that thought was, Ratchet didn’t think it would come to that. Optimus was running out of arguments, and by Ratchet’s estimations all that was left was the how.

Optimus seemed to know it too as the Prime sighed, his shoulders drooping.

“Come on, bossbot. You can’t tell me you’ve never relaxed in your entire functioning,” Ratchet pushed, seeing his advantage and taking it. “It’s just one day. Go. Do whatever it is you need to do to get out of your processor for just a day and you’ll thank me afterwards.”

Finally Optimus turned away from his work screens, his bottom lip momentarily caught between his dentae before he replied, “I can’t just turn it off though. I’d just be thinking about everything without actually doing anything about it, which honestly might be worse.”

“Why do you think engex exists?” Optimus looked a bit appalled and Ratchet smirked as he continued, “Which isn’t to say that, as your medic, I’m prescribing getting overcharged. Doesn’t have to be engex. Lots of mechs get that same kind of disconnect from healthier options. Going on long drives, meditating, that kind of slag. Whatever works for you, kid.”

Optimus seemed to actually consider that, his optics losing focus as his thoughts turned inward.

After a moment, those optics brightened again, but his brows furrowed.

“Well, not that,” Optimus muttered to himself, his optics fading. However, Ratchet wasn’t about to let anything slip by.

“Ah-ah! Not what?”

Optimus didn’t meet Ratchet’s gaze.

“I mean, I can’t say it’s a particularly healthy idea--”

“Let the medic decide that one, would you?”

That got a quick glance from Optimus before he looked away again, now shuffling on his pedes. “I—look, I only tried it a couple times, and I wouldn’t even know where to get any now--”

Ratchet lifted a hand to stop the Prime.

“Dross?”

Optimus only nodded once. Primus did the young Prime look chagrinned at the admission.

Ratchet, however, felt a soft smile tugging at his lips.

“I’ve got you covered, bossbot.”

Optimus’s mouth was agape as Ratchet placed the large bong in his hands – “Hold this” – and then went back into his cabinet to consider his collection of dross strains. They were all his own mixtures, each specialized for specific needs, though it had been at the very least decades since Ratchet had strayed from his usual. In his younger days Ratchet had preferred his party strains that left him giggly and energized or chill out strains that left him melting into the couch, but since the war Ratchet had found comfort in strains that eased the aches in his frame and let him recharge soundly and dreamlessly. Optimus was probably expecting something more uplifting than that though. Something giggly but laid back would probably work best—

“Ratchet?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“What,” Optimus started before audibly rebooting his vocalizer, “what are you doing with all this?”

“You’re a smart bot, Optimus. I think you can figure that one out yourself,” Ratchet replied as he picked a vial. The crystals inside shifted and rolled over each other as he considered them. Ratchet couldn’t remember the last time he had used this particular one, but the seal was air-tight and the crystals were all still intact and separate, so they would still burn well.

“So you…” Optimus trailed off, still sounding dumbstruck, and this time Ratchet chuckled.

“I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed before. Figured the smell alone would tip you off.”

With his selection made, Ratchet shut the cabinet and set the lock on again. That done he turned to Optimus who was dutifully holding the bong.

And looking rather embarrassed.

“If we’re both being honest, I thought it was Bee this whole time.”

That got a genuine full-frame laugh out of Ratchet as he waved Optimus towards his private quarters.

No doubt it was because of the associations with the pleasant high that would follow, but Ratchet could already feel his frame ease as he let the first burst of smoke cycle through his ventilation system. It required him to focus on his frame, to make sure all his vents were sealed shut and his fans ever so gently turning to keep the smoke moving, trapped once his mouth closed to seep into his lines and work its magic. It was an almost meditative process that had many a time centered him when Ratchet felt lost in his own processor.

After a few seconds Ratchet tilted his helm back to blow the smoke up towards the ceiling.

“—And that’s it. You got it?”

Optimus nodded as Ratchet handed the bong and lighter to him, though his brows were still furrowed.

“I think so. I mean, I’ve done it before, but I wasn’t any good at it.”

“Just takes practice.”

“If you say so,” Optimus said, sounding hesitant. His optics flicked from the bong up towards Ratchet’s face. “And you swear this isn’t all some elaborate trap--”

Ratchet snorted as he slapped Optimus on the shoulder. “Kid, what did you just watch me do, huh? If anyone is getting us in trouble, it’s you.”

Optimus smiled a little at that before cycling a ventilation and taking his hit.

Well. Attempting it.

Ratchet already saw the danger signs – aiming the flame over the middle of the bowl and sucking too hard – but there was no time to stop him before Optimus had set the whole bowl ablaze and overwhelmed his frame with thick, dense smoke.

“Whoa, whoa! That’s enough!” Ratchet insisted as he grabbed the bong from the Prime. It was too late though. Smoke billowed from the top of the bong as Optimus started coughing harshly, a thick haze of smoke surrounding him as his vents dumped it out as quickly as they could. Ratchet winced as he covered the top of the bong to keep the remaining smoke in and with his other servo slapped Optimus on the back to help him get it all out.

“S-sorry—I told you--” Optimus managed between coughs, though they were finally starting to slow down. Ratchet just nodded as his servo stopped patting to instead rub soothing circles.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Luckily I don’t think you’re gonna need more than that,” Ratchet said, unable to keep from teasing as Optimus blinked at him. “Just lay back and relax, bossbot.”

With a couple more hacking coughs, Optimus let himself lay back on the berth. Ratchet had brought out his extra blankets and pillows to pile up on the slab, and while Optimus had insisted that was all unnecessary earlier, he was now grabbing a pillow to cover his face with.

Ratchet let the Prime have a moment to compose himself while the medic sucked up the left over smoke still trapped in the bong. It was thick and highly concentrated, but Ratchet’s frame accepted it with practiced ease. He hummed lightly as he let it cycle a couple times before finally letting it billow out from his vents.

Optimus was still hiding behind the pillow.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” Ratchet said as he set the bong aside for the moment, settling back against the pillows he had stacked against the wall. “There’s no shame in coughing when smoking.”

Optimus’s ventilations were evening out now as he said, muffled by the pillow, “You made it look so easy.”

Ratchet chuckled as he got comfortable in the little nest of pillows. “Well, sure. That bong’s older than you are, so I’ve had plenty of practice.”

The pillow finally shifted so that Optimus’s optics peered over it.

“Really?”

“Mmhm,” Ratchet hummed. He reached out towards the bong, patting it fondly. “Ol’ Faithful and I have been together since med school. I had other glassware, but she’s the only one who made it through the war with me.”

Optimus moved again, rolling onto his side while keeping the pillow close to his chest, and gazed at the bong with rapt attention.

“Wow. She’s sure seen a lot then, huh?”

Ratchet couldn’t help the way his mouth twisted into a smirk.

“Optimus. She’s still just a bong.”

Optimus’s face scrunched up, but it was more petulant than anything as he said, “Well, ok, yeah, but I mean. People say that about old things. That’s not a weird thing to say.” His lips pursed as his optics narrowed thoughtfully. “Right? I’m not just making that up?”

Ratchet just snorted as felt his lips wobble and the seemingly ever-present tightness in his chest shook loose.

Optimus groaned with embarrassment.

“Scrap. I’m already so high.”

“Damn right you are, kid.”

There was a moment of quiet before Optimus giggled.

And Ratchet mentally patted himself on the back.

It seemed silly considering his long history with dross, but Ratchet had forgotten how, well, silly he could feel when he smoked more recreational strains. It had clearly been too long since he had smoked to have fun and not just momentarily chase away pain.

But, to be fair, it wasn’t nearly as fun without someone else to be silly with.

Optimus was like melted slag as he sprawled on the berth, his face lax and often curled into a soft smile about whatever they were talking about or whatever was happening on the screen that Ratchet had set up. All they really got here on Earth was the humans’ banal tv shows they called entertainment, but Ratchet had to admit that the dross was helping him to actually enjoy it some.

That and openly mocking it with Optimus. The Prime had a surprisingly sharp glossa when it was loosened up.

Not that Ratchet was thinking about Optimus’s glossa.

Much.

The occasional thought would flit through Ratchet’s processor, unhampered by his usually tight control over such thoughts. It didn’t help that the high came with some warming of his libido.

But Ratchet knew better than to think on it much. If he had the energy and desire to he could overload himself once Optimus left, but for now it was a pleasant hum that was enjoyable all on its own and that was very likely going to be the full extent of it. He didn't feel any need to do anything about it

Primus, he really was slagging old.

Luckily that line of thought was stopped right there as Optimus’s leg dropped unceremoniously across Ratchet’s, startling him enough to jolt, optics going wide and bright.

Optimus gave him a scrap-eating grin.

“Don’t tell me Sammi and Ronnie’s newest fight isn’t holding your interest. This is obviously important and I’d hate for you to miss any thrilling dialogue from spacing out.”

Ratchet rolled his optics, smacking Optimus on the shin as he growled, with far more fondness than he had intended, “Brat.”

And Optimus just snickered.

While it would have been impossible for Ratchet to not notice every damn day just how young all his fellow team members were, relaxation had done Optimus wonders. His expressions were open and wholly honest without any second guessing or forced professionalism. The lines of his face weren’t twisted by tension or stress, leaving them to fully showcase how very handsome the Prime was; handsome and youthful and ever so slightly mischievous as he grinned up at Ratchet.

Ratchet realized he was still touching Optimus’s shin, but couldn’t muster the energy to move it.

“But also, hey, uh, Ratchet?” Ratchet just looked at him expectantly and Optimus’s face wobbled with barely held humor. “You wanna smoke some more?”

With a snort, Ratchet patted Optimus’s leg as he replied, “You sure about that, kid? If you have another hit like that last one, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to move your struts again until morning.”

“I’ll show you moving,” Optimus argued as he lifted one of his pedes again and gracelessly aimed it at Ratchet’s face. He only laughed more when Ratchet caught it with his servo with ease and couldn’t help a chuckle of his own.

“Truly terrifying, bossbot.”

The leg was placed down next to its twin across Ratchet’s lap again, but still Optimus moved, pushing himself up just enough to brace back against his elbows.

“Ok, I’ll give you that I probably shouldn’t try to use the bong again. But maybe you could shotgun me?” Optimus asked, still smiling but his tone softened.

Not that Ratchet could even begin to parse what that might mean when his processor was addled with dross and busy coming to terms with just what, exactly, Optimus was asking him for.

“You--” Ratchet started before his mouth closed again. He could feel how his face was contorting with confusion. More than that though, he felt a pang of heat twist low in his frame. “Really?”

Optimus’s bottom lip caught between his dentae, only to be released when he shrugged and said, “I mean, it’s easier that way, isn’t it? You have better control over how much I get and it’s less harsh, so. It makes sense, right?”

It did. Shotgunning was a perfectly reasonable alternative.

Ratchet still felt his mouth go dry.

“Sure. Just give me a second to get Ol’ Faithful billowing again.”

Optimus perked up and grinned as he pushed himself up straight. His legs stayed draped over Ratchet’s but he was sat upright at least, watching with optics overbright from some mixture of his interest and his high.

“And you know how to shotgun?” Ratchet confirmed as he picked up his bong and lighter again. Some part of his processor was trying to remind him what a terrible idea this was, but it simply couldn’t compete with the almost giddy arousal simmering in Ratchet’s frame. And what harm could it really do? It would give Ratchet a rare thrill, and give Optimus the high he was seeking, and then they would settle back into their relaxed stupor without any harm done.

“Yeah. You blow it out and I suck it in.”

“Good enough,” Ratchet said. “You ready?”

Optimus’s optics managed to flare even brighter with excitement.

“Very.”

When Ratchet pulled his hit from the bong this time, he didn’t cycle it through his frame like before. Some of the smoke swirled down his intake but the majority lingered in his mouth, held there as Ratchet set the bong aside with one servo and the other reached up to coax Optimus’s face down towards his own.

There was an undeniable heat in Optimus’s optics as his full lips parted, tantalizingly close as Ratchet let the smoke in his mouth billow out to get immediately drawn into Optimus’s. Stray wisps of smoke curled up between them as, slowly but surely, Optimus pulled more and more from between Ratchet’s lips.

Primus.

Finally the stream of smoke between them was practically nonexistent and Ratchet forced himself to pull back. He couldn’t however stop himself from watching as Optimus’s lips never fully sealed, instead just left slightly agape as the Prime’s frame lazily cycled the smoke through his frame. There was no coughing this time, just a nearly inaudible hum before Optimus finally let the smoke waft back out of his mouth to dissipate between them.

And something shifted. Intangible and inexplicable but very much real.

Ratchet’s array throbbed.

“See? Told you it would work,” Optimus said, lips curling at the corners, lazy and self-satisfied.

“Didn’t say I doubted you,” Ratchet replied. He was only half aware of how his glossa peaked out to wet his lips, but Optimus’s optics flicked down to watch it before finding Ratchet’s gaze again.

“I think I could handle another.”

“Don’t blame me if you get in over your head.”

“I’m a big bot,” Optimus insisted. “I know my limits.”

The metaphorical ground was slipping from beneath Ratchet faster than he could keep up, urging him to simply follow along, and the dross thrumming through his frame eased him into doing just that.

Another hit, and this time when Ratchet tilted Optimus’s face with the tips of his digits, Optimus moved in closer still, his own servo cupping the side of Ratchet’s face. Closer and closer Optimus leaned in, moving so slowly, and yet still Ratchet was surprised when their parted lips brushed as Optimus pulled the smoke from Ratchet’s frame.

Neither of them pulled away as Optimus held the smoke and then, slowly, released it to linger around their helms.

“You sure seem to know what you’re doing.”

This close, Ratchet felt like he was drowning in the brilliant glow of Optimus’s optics and the too soft gust of his ex-vent against Ratchet’s lips.

“I’ve done this a couple of times,” Optimus admitted, abashment finally managing to tint his tone.

Ratchet snorted.

“Yeah? And tell me, bossbot, how did those couple of times usually end?”

Optimus’s servo moved further, slipping around to cup the nape of Ratchet’s neck. The bravado of before gave way to earnestness.

“Want me to show you?”

Frag.

Ratchet’s frame heated, eager for such a rare chance and emboldened by dross. Yet still Ratchet kept his joints locked, forcing his logic processes to keep running.

“I think you’re high and will regret it later if I let you,” Ratchet stated.

Instead of being put off, though, Optimus actually giggled, his forehelm meeting Ratchet’s.

“Ok, yeah, I’m definitely high, but also – ok, can I be totally honest for a second?” Gone was the none-too-subtle seduction, but truthfully the Prime’s goofy sincerity didn’t lessen Ratchet’s lust in the least. There was something truly lust-inducing about the genuine glee with which Optimus confessed, “I’ve really wanted to do this for a while now.”

Still, even beneath the lust and dross, uncertainty twisted in Ratchet’s tank.

“I’m just an old mech,” Ratchet point out. Because ultimately there was no denying the simple truth of the matter – Optimus was young and beautiful and full of potential. Ratchet was old and bitter and felt most days like his frame was falling apart.

Yet Optimus looked unbothered, shrugging as he grinned.

“I like old,” Optimus insisted as he started to move, his free servo bracing against Ratchet’s shoulder as he shifted his legs. He was trying with some difficulty to either straddle Ratchet’s or kneel between them – which he was aiming for was unclear. Ratchet’s frame decided for the both of them as his thighs parted and his servos helped Optimus to maintain his balance as he fitted between them like he belonged there. Once Optimus was settled, one servo trailed down Ratchet’s chest to rest atop his protruding abdominal plating while the other found its way up to Ratchet’s face, tracing the deep creases and divots of his aged protoform.

Optimus’s glossa wetted his lips before he insisted, “I really, really like old.”

Ratchet wasn’t sure what he had to say to that, but it didn’t matter since that’s when Optimus kissed him.

And Primus could the Prime kiss. It was soft and unhurried, full of sweet lips and a wicked glossa, the taste of smoke and charge thick between their mouths. Ratchet couldn’t get enough of those plush lips or how Optimus’s ventilations stuttered when he held them between his dentae and pulled.

Ratchet couldn’t be sure when his servos had found Optimus’s hips, pulling them in closer as they gave small, gentle rolls against his panel. But nonetheless he could feel the heat coming off Optimus’s array and there was little doubt the Prime could feel his in turn.

“Only feels fair I warn you that old is what you’ll get,” Ratchet said when finally Optimus moved away from his mouth to nuzzle under his chin, laving the plating with open-mouthed kisses. Ratchet’s processor was getting sluggish from the onslaught of pleasure and the haze of his high, but he pushed through even as his engine rumbled with one particularly well placed lick. “I don’t get wet like I used to and it can take perseverance to get my spike up.”

“I don’t mind,” Optimus replied, his words muffled against Ratchet’s neck. “You don’t need to get wet or hard for what I have planned. It still feels good down here, right?”

Optimus’s servo caressed the bottom edge of Ratchet’s abdominal plating, clever digits tracing the seam where it met his pelvis, and Ratchet growled lowly at the pleasure it sparked.

However, Ratchet nearly jumped out of his plating when Optimus’s digits continued to move down to cup his valve unobstructed, though Ratchet couldn’t for the life of him remember releasing his modesty panel.

“Can I take that as a yes,” Optimus teased, and despite himself, Ratchet snorted.

“You better. So what exactly is it you have planned?”

Finally Optimus pulled back from Ratchet’s neck and grinned wide and bright. His digit tips slipped between the lips of Ratchet’s valve to circle the rim once before moving higher to press against his anterior node.

“I was really hoping to eat you out, Ratchet.”

The wave of lust mixed with high flooded Ratchet’s senses.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, kid.”

Time had become a meaningless concept. Between the dross and the slow blissful torture burning his frame up from the inside out, Ratchet couldn’t tell if it had been hours or mere minutes since Optimus had slid down onto his front and first pressed his lips to Ratchet’s valve.

It didn’t matter either way, really. All that Ratchet could focus on was the perfect wet heat stroking his valve from bottom to top, lapping up what little lubricant he could produce before suckling on his anterior node until Ratchet bucked his hips and the suction was gone again. Ratchet couldn’t even get any warning regarding which part of his array would have the pleasure of experiencing Optimus’s mouth next since Optimus’s face disappeared behind the protrusion of Ratchet’s abdominal plating.

Optimus wasn’t in any hurry either. The Prime seemed to revel in the act of tasting Ratchet, humming to himself as he licked and sucked and drove Ratchet mad with waves of ecstasy while lazily grinding his own hips down against the berth. Ratchet could only imagine Optimus’s spike trapped between his frame and the berth, leaking beads of transfluid to soak into the sheets.

Ratchet’s spike twitched in Optimus’s servo, still only half pressurized but still eagerly translating every stroke and press of Optimus’s digits into pure pleasure.

And Optimus had to know full well the way he was slowly but surely building Ratchet up towards overload. He had to considering Ratchet couldn’t keep his mouth shut, rumbling curses and groans aplenty.

Ratchet reached down to where he could see Optimus’s finials poking up over his abdominal plating, grasping one carefully but firmly as a particularly loud grunt escaped him. Optimus’s engine purred and his helm tilted so his finial pressed harder into Ratchet’s hold, sucking on Ratchet’s node again in reward when Ratchet rubbed his thumb along the length.

“Frag,” Ratchet hissed between gritted dentae as his valve throbbed. “C’mon, Optimus, I’m so close--”

The world went hazy as Optimus’s servo pulled at his spike more pointedly and his glossa stroked along Ratchet’s slit with greater pressure, stopping to mouth Ratchet’s node more often and for longer. The pleasure overwhelmed Ratchet’s drug-addled processor to the point where he could feel it lag, unable to do much at all except experience the pleasure.

When overload finally hit Ratchet’s frame seized up from the intensity of it, sharp shocks of climax shooting up his spine and narrowing his reality to the lips suckling him and bringing him sheer ecstasy.

And in the seconds or minutes or hours that passed as he came down from it, Ratchet idly wondered when he’d last had an overload like that, or if he even ever had.

And then Ratchet felt that maddening glossa lick at him again.

“Hey, that’s—frag me, that’s enough, I already overloaded,” Ratchet managed as he tugged at Optimus’s finial. There was one last long lick up Ratchet’s valve that sent a shiver up his spine before Optimus’s arms retreated from where they had made themselves comfortable around Ratchet’s thighs, and with some effort the Prime pushed up onto his elbows so he could peer at Ratchet over the girth of his abdominal plating.

His lips were pursed in a near pout.

“Well, maybe I want to give you another.”

A quick check of his chronometer confirmed for Ratchet that it hadn’t, in fact, been long endless hours since they had started. It wasn’t a short amount of time by any stretch, but not the unending swath of pleasure that Ratchet swore it had felt like. A second overload would easily take twice as long to achieve, and Ratchet considered the fact that that may actually fry his circuits for good.

“Did I mention that you’re going to be the death of me? Because if I didn’t, then this is me putting it on the record,” Ratchet insisted. Optimus still held his now fully depressurized spike, and with a flicker of his optics he leaned in to lap up the lines of transfluid that had dribbled down to pool in the crevice between Optimus’s fist and Ratchet’s soft spike. Pleasure registered in the sensors, but Ratchet’s spike didn’t so much as twitch. Ratchet tugged at Optimus’s finial again as he explained, “Seriously, kid, you have to give my frame a break. It’s gonna be a while before I can overload again.”

Optimus’s servo pulled up along Ratchet’s spike one last time, collecting most of the mess on it before letting go. His optics were dilated and dimmed as he licked Ratchet’s transfluid from his digits, and while Ratchet’s array was momentarily dormant, that didn’t make the sight any less arousing to watch.

And the choked noise Optimus made when Ratchet stroked his finial was the stuff of fantasies.

“Now get up here and let’s see how many overloads I can get outta that big frame of yours in the meantime.”

With a flare of his optics Optimus was moving, quick but uncoordinated. His spike bounced into view, a handful if Ratchet had ever seen one, and lubricant aplenty was streaking down the inside of his thighs.

Ah, to be young again.

Ratchet’s itched to take full advantage of the opportunity to enjoy such a treat.

Ratchet pulled Optimus close and Optimus kissed him, moaning as Ratchet reached down to grasp his spike.

“Just so you know, I’m expecting you to be good with your hands, docbot,” Optimus teased, and Ratchet grinned smugly as his other servo stroked down past Optimus’s aft to reach his drenched valve.

“These hands have been overloading bots since before you were forged, bossbot.”

And, of all things, Optimus snickered, even as his hips jerked, caught between two sources of pleasure.

“Wow. They’ve sure seen a lot then, huh?”

And Ratchet couldn’t fight the full frame laugh that overtook him.

Dross didn’t come with a hangover the way that engex did. There were no pounding processor aches or frame pain or the anything of the like. Some bots didn’t feel anything at all. Ratchet though would wake with a hollow sort of feeling in his tank. It wasn’t usually due to any actual lack of fuel in his system, but rather just an odd but not uncommon side effect of sobering up from a dross high.

As he drifted out of recharge though, he couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t also some apprehension at play as he noticed he was alone in his berth.

Not that there wasn’t still evidence to prove that Ratchet’s memories weren’t faulty. Ol’ Faithful was placed on the berthside table, the ashes of burnt dross still packed into the bowl. The extra pillows and blankets were still on the berth, though now most of them had been neatly folded and stacked at the end of it. The couple of blankets not folded were either draped over Ratchet with enough care that Ratchet knew it hadn’t been his own work, or were outright missing.

If Ratchet had to guess, those missing had probably had some very incriminating evidence and had been thrown into the wash.

No doubt it had all been Optimus’s doing. Nice of him too.

But Ratchet couldn’t help the pang of disappointment.

“Hey. Nothing burned down while we were gone, did it?”

Optimus looked up from the datapad in his servos, his optics now their typical shade and brightness. The slight twitching of his lips was at least half forced as he glanced back down at the datapad, waving it a bit for emphasis.

“Not that I’ve seen so far. Prowl did a good job keeping things running.”

“Who’d have guessed?” Ratchet remarked, and at least this time the way that Optimus’s mouth continued to curl seemed genuine.

“Alright, turns out you were right. It wouldn't kill me or anyone else to take an actual break every once in a while.” Optimus’s smile faded again and, after seeming to take a moment, he placed the datapad in his lap and looked up at Ratchet, every inch of his frame serious. “But listen, Ratchet, I—obviously I got a little too lax last night, so I apologize if I took advantage--”

“Ah, ah, stop right there,” Ratchet interrupted, lifting a servo to wave the concerns away. “You know I’ve never been one for decorum so don’t worry about it.”

Optimus’s face still screwed up further as he insisted, “But I’m your Prime. I need to worry about this.”

“Since when have we ever done anything by the book?” It wasn’t the right thing to say considering the stern frown it earned Ratchet, so with a tired sigh Ratchet changed tactic, saying, “Look, sure, I suggested you take a break because I’m your medic and you’re my Prime. That was a part of our professional relationship. But I forced the issue because I care about you, and I smoked with you because I enjoy your company, and frankly? I fragged you because we both wanted to frag each other.”

Finally, Optimus’s expression softened again.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you’re not just saying that because I’m your--”

“Stuff it,” Ratchet growled, and Optimus laughed.

Ratchet fell heavily into the couch beside Optimus, one arm slung along the back, not touching but certainly within close enough range that it would take nothing at all to initiate it.

“So. How long exactly had you been wanting to do that?”

“I mean, look, dross hadn’t been part of the fantasy since, again, I thought it was Bee who was smoking it, but…” Without the dross, there was far more bashfulness to Optimus as he rubbed at the side of his neck, optics flitting from Ratchet’s face to off to some random corner of the room. “A while. Not right away, obviously, since I wanted to get to know you first but… yeah.”

And perhaps the bashfulness was spreading as Ratchet felt his frame heat up.

“Well, that’s flattering, kid. I am worried that I’m gonna have to do a check up on your processor, or at least your optics--”

“Hah hah, very funny,” Optimus interrupted flatly, knocking his shoulder against Ratchet’s. In truth, Ratchet had only be half teasing, since he still couldn’t see what a mech like Optimus could see in an old rust bucket like him. But there wasn’t time to ruminate on that before Optimus continued, “And you? Was last night just a spur of the moment thing for you, or am I your type too?”

Ratchet gave Optimus an unimpressed look as he said, “Are you kidding? Bossbot, you’re everyone’s type.”

The heat coming off Optimus was palpable as he squirmed, insisting, “That’s not true at all.”

“Well it should be. Anyone who doesn’t wanna frag you is a damned idiot and blind to boot.”

Ratchet got another shoulder-to-shoulder shove, though Optimus didn’t move away and he chewed on his bottom lip as he looked sidelong at Ratchet.

“So does that mean you might want to do that again?”

And, just as planned, it took nothing for Ratchet to let his arm fall against the length of Optimus’s broad shoulders, his servo squeezing and tugging him close.

“Honestly, if you hadn’t gone running off so fast this morning, I was planning on illustrating how much more cooperative you’ll find my spike after a good recharge.”

It had been meant to be at least partially self-deprecating, but Optimus’s engine started to genuinely purr and his face moved in closer.

“I mean… Prowl is off today, and Bee and Bulkhead shouldn’t be back any time soon.”

“Bossbot, are you suggesting skipping work to frag?”

The mischievous grin was back, and it took effort to not immediately kiss it.

“I mean, I can still work. I’m a great multitasker.”

“I think you’re underestimating my spike.”

“And I think you’re underestimating how really good I am at multitasking.”

“Guess we’ll just have to find out.”

Optimus’s helm tilted opposite of Ratchet’s, lips slightly parted, and Ratchet felt nearly dizzy from how they were sober in the light of day and kissing.

And it felt just as easy.

#valveplug #fanfiction

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

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So after the spate of high-profile celebrity suicides recently, and the short-lived discussion of mental health that surrounds them (kind of like the way the gun control debate appears for a week after a mass shooting and then vanishes), I have had some probably disconnected thoughts that I finally felt like putting down somewhere (and honestly, I had most of this post typed up and then tumblr deleted it, so... round two and Fuck You Very Much Tumblr). I briefly thought about putting it on facebook, but a) fuck facebook, I’m barely on it anymore, and b) everyone that I care about is either or also here. So I guess it’s once more using the big blue hellsite as a diary, because I was awake until 1am last night talking to myself about this, and writing is how I work things out.

As ever, please do not feel obliged to read the post or whatever else, especially if you’re uncomfortable with the themes/subjects discussed. Again, it’s essentially for my own benefit and trying to organize things I’ve wanted to say, as a long-term sufferer of depression and anxiety who is also having a really tough time now, and how I see that reflecting on what’s happening both with me and the wider world.

Anyway.

I feel like my main reaction is one of weariness that so much of the response is “get help if you’re struggling! Reach out! Call someone! Things will get better!” Which is... helpful in its way, and I genuinely believe that the people reblogging suicide hotline numbers and “don’t kill yourself” posts and so on really want to help. I am not one to point fingers at anyone who really wants to reach out and do something to make a difference. But that’s also it? We’re barely getting to the place of recognizing depression as a legitimate problem and not stigmatizing people who have it (hah), but to me, it sounds so much like “well, I know you have two broken legs and can’t stand upright, but you should still go walk to the clinic and ask them to help you.” Again. Important. But why is so much of it centered around the assumption that the depression sufferer has the responsibility to go on an individual basis and try therapy or meds or whatever, while the mental health services that even exist are being slashed? While some people seem perfectly happy to talk about how mental health is the problem, and not readily legal assault rifles and a culture of white male entitlement and grievance), and the assumption remains that we can just treat depression on an individual, ad hoc basis, rather than looking at it systematically.

We’ve had a ton of studies and research showing that depression rates are way up, that a lot of people identify as having anxiety and mental issues and are messed up out the wazoo (which frankly, I think most of us are), and then the attendant “everyone’s a snowflake, buck up and take it on the chin!” backlash, because frankly the world is horrible and society sucks. (This opinion is sometimes subject to revision, but still.) Honestly, is this any surprise? When we’re in collapsing late-stage capitalism that has basically utterly fucked everyone born after 1980, we live in this awareness that things are systematically and unbearably evil and oppressive but the vast majority of us have no ability to do anything about that, and birth rates and marriage rates are declining because people (completely understandably) don’t want to bring children into this nightmare of a world and are realizing that traditional ideals of marriage and sexual morality are BS.... I mean, are we surprised that people just don’t want to live in this world anymore? When I find myself worrying about the idea of taking on another student loan (another of the basic commodities that it has become expected that you’ll go tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for) and then am like, “well, there’s a less than zero chance that Western civilization collapses in my lifetime/the next ten years, and I’m going to die in debt anyway, so...”, there’s a sense of surreality and almost despondency that we’re able to know more than ever how shitty things are, but again, can’t do anything about it. Again. We can’t fix depression by telling people individually to go try therapy or whatever else. It doesn’t get at the reasons that so many of us just can’t stand the world anymore.

I feel like I’ve settled well on my belief that people, even if often beholden to centuries-old bullshit and tribalism and prejudice, are individually good, often amazingly and soul-sustainingly so (I’m not joking when I say that I would probably be dead by now if not for the kindness of strangers and friends, including many of you who I’ve met here), but society and the overall structure is pretty much rotten. We find ways to manage, to exist, to ameliorate, to distract, and I am honestly delighted for the people who can live more or less happy existences despite everything, have found a way to do that. Again, this isn’t a “don’t go to therapy!!” sort of post, because yes, if you’re depressed, you have to decide whether and how you want to get better. But sometimes you just can’t fucking do that. You just exist this way and you know how it is and it becomes sort of familiar and accounted for.

I’m lucky to be a mostly high-functioning sufferer, who has lived with long-term and chronic depression and anxiety since at least the age of 18 (and probably, through most of my childhood as well), which has left me latently suicidal, physically fucked up, mentally exhausted, and emotionally isolated for my entire adult life. But I’ve also managed to hold jobs and complete several advanced degrees and get out of bed and put on makeup and keep my commitments and so on and otherwise outwardly resemble a normal person. So I then read posts about people who can’t get out of bed or even brush their teeth, and I start wondering if I “really” have depression or it’s just an excuse or I’m a weak person or just broken somehow else. Which is 0% helpful and is the bad brain talking, as I recognize. Looking at me from the outside, it feels like you wouldn’t guess, which also seems to be a theme with the celebrities who died. They always seemed happy and well put together and confident, until they didn’t. I turn 30 this August, and feel about 800.

And yet. I have made the choice to live, and I have continued to make the choice, and I have learned that I have a lot of strength I didn’t know I did, and I am proud of that. But I also read a post by someone I otherwise admire and whose work I really like, about how you can’t ever have the life you want until you take suicide off the table as an option, as if you can just choose once to live and not think about it again. And I just am like... how? I’ve made it before and I’ll have to do it again, but god, I wish with my entire heart that I could just make it once and not look back. I wish I could ever be confident that I could say without qualification that I want to live more than I want to die. Because well, I DON’T want to die, not really. I find things that make me happy and that give me small joys and distract me and which I enjoy. I still have a lot of things I want to do (even while feeling I won’t get the chance) and feel like it would be stupid to die because my brain doesn’t work. So I’m still here. I’ve never made a serious attempt to kill myself, and I obviously hope that doesn’t change. But it remains in the back of my head, the idea that I just wish I could switch off for five years and come back and find that things have somehow worked out. Which obviously is not the way it works, and you don’t get to temporarily go away. But this world is so hard and so tiring to live in, and sometimes it gets to me.

As for the getting help part -- I’ve been trying to do that myself recently. Go to counselling services and the university support centre and whatever else, even though it causes me anxiety to the point of physically messing me up. It feels like being drunk or hungover or just off balance and unable to see or breathe normally. I convulse in bed at night and wake up just as tired when I went to sleep and just don’t feel like I run correctly. And this is from a relatively high-functioning person who isn’t trying to stop herself (at least currently) from suicide, but just enough to keep her going. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a person depressed to the point of being unable to get out of bed, told to call someone or reach out or whatever else. That’s practically inhumane. We live, for better or worse, in a Western “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” culture that puts the onus on the individual to fix their own problems. When honestly, the collective society that exists right now is a toxic, oppressive, and impossible one that keeps chewing up people from every walk of life and which nobody with the actual ability to do anything about it seems to want to change. Encouraging individuals with depression to seek help is nice, sure. But until something fundamentally and permanently changes in society and how we view our obligations to each other and what we are willing to do to help and to change this culture that tells you you’re responsible for your own illness, people are going to keep dying from depression in droves, and everyone else is just going to figure we’re weak. Or there will be a short-lived mental health awareness campaign, and nice things will be said, and then it will be back to business as usual. Because man, are we good at burying our heads in the sand for any number of things.

The choice to live doesn’t usually have the luxury of being made once and then never revisited. You have to do it yearly, monthly, weekly, sometimes even daily. And frankly, I don’t blame anyone who feels that the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t really add up to staying here anymore. I’m here certainly in part because of you here on tumblr, who have indirectly (and sometimes directly) saved my life. You have talked with me on text or email or in person for years, have read my fics and thought of things you wanted to tell me and sent me nice messages and otherwise made me feel less invisible. Your kindness has been often what has sustained me, and made me decide that I’d rather be here than anywhere else, and given me what little faith in humanity I have left. And one of the reasons I write all the time (books/fics/asks/metas/papers/theses/projects...etc) is because I literally cannot stand to live in my own head if I don’t. I do love creating things and am happy that people enjoy what I post here, and it’s a major source of pleasure and distraction for me. But I also do it because I will literally cease to function (in what limited capacity I have) if I don’t. I have to do it in order to live with myself and this monster at all, and that is also tiring.

Overall, we’re all fucked-up people with a very dark sense of humor, whose compassion and conscience is about all we have going for us, and we just have to try to cling together and do for each other what we can. And god, I’m grateful for it. I have a lot of financial terror right now in addition to everything else, and am looking into the aforementioned student loan for short-term stabilizing (limited work rights are a Bitch), and I basically paid my rent last month because of you guys. So yeah, you’ve made the difference for a stranger on the internet being homeless or not, and I have no idea why, but please know that it means more to me than I can ever say, and I hope to give back what I can.

(I also still have a Kofi account, while I’m trying to get things under control here, so... again, entirely up to you.)

I’m not sure how I will make it to December and (supposedly, ha) my PhD graduation, let alone after that. I will probably have to choose to live again several more times between now and then, and then again after that. I hope I can continue to do that. And I hope I can talk to you, both if you need someone to listen and whatever I can do for you by that, and if I do the same.

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, mazel tov.

#hilary for ts #personal #tw depression #tw suicide

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tumblunni · 6 years

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Aaaaa life update

I now do not know when im gonna be moving to the assisted living mental hospital camp place. It was supposed to be today but then i rescheduled to the 6th cos i was having trouble preparing on short notice and then i had a stupid disaster of running out of my antidepressants and being unable to get my next perscription until 3 days too late. I crashed REAL hard from going straight up cold turkey out of nowhere, i was real fuckin scared of my own damn shadow and unable to sleep and getting huge damn headache and WORRYING SO MUCH I MADE IT ALL WORSE! And now thankfully ive got the pills again but i always get nauseus for the first two days or so after i start taking them and i missed loads of time to prepare cos i was having this freakout and aaaaagh i dont even know!!

I hope i havent missed my chance to go because of this, i mean i wasted like 300 pounds buying suitcases and new clothes and a laptop and all this preparation for being gone for 6 months in an unfamiliar house and just aaaaa! I dont even have anything to drink except water, i friggin threw out a whole freezer full of groceries cos i thought i would be gone by today! And i dont have money to buy more cos i spent it all on preparations and AGH the damn stupid discount laptop still hasnt arrived in the mail and it was such a stupid idea anyway like i know i wont have internet while im there but i just wanted to keep practising my pixelart and writing and such...

Aaaaugh why do i fail everything that i touch

At least i like.. Dont really feel panicked anymore. Im in a weird brain state now, i think the meds are kicking in after an hour so im stabilizing a bit and its just like Man These Things Are Still Bad But I Dont Know How To Feel About It. Like yknow that feeling when youre just.. Confused?? Negative emotion i guess but not any particular type of it. Its like im just generally unsettled and unable to relax but at least im not outright crying anymore. Its so dumb cos i KNOW that theres nothing i can do about it and i just have to wait til i feel better and then contact the therapist again to learn what new time i have to prepare for. (Or if its been cancelled, but i really hope not...) So im all full of pent up panic energy thats syaing DO SOMETHING but i cant. And also im not even panicking anymore and i know the panicking was just a horomonal imbalance from messing up my pill doseage times, rather thsn like my actual feelings and such. But im still stuck in that reactive state even after the irrational feelings have calmed down. Just friggin directionless Something Is Bad Today And I Dont Like It. Stoppppp

Hope i can calm down enough to at least get some sleep soon. I think i migjt be sick for longer than expected cos the insomnia has probably made it all a lot worse! Im gonna sleep for days when i finally settle down

Auauauauuuu

And man i wanna buy an energy drink or something to wake up from my stupor but i know caffeine puts me more on edge when im already in a panic. So im worried ill fall back into the panic state even tho i feel like ive come out of it now? And also might just make my sleeping patterns worse when i finalky manage to pass out.and also its like 3km to the nearest store cos this neighbourhood sucks, and im in no state to hobble down s billion roads all dizzy and sweaty and gross lookin. Also i dont have moneyyyyyy

Auauau prolific.com survey site please refresh with more Things so i can earn 20 pence for looking at bad pics of shoes or whatever. Let me scrape together a bit of spare change from your terrible mess of a site. BAD SHOE COMPANY QUESTIONNAIRES U R THE SAVIOUR OF THE POOR PEOPLE

Ok im just gonna go lie down and feel nebulously worried some more. Maybe think about some dumb kh headcanons to distract myself. Honestly being a Nobody probably feels similar to my PTSD lol. *shakes tiny lil hearts out of a pill bottle*

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kitaryu · 6 years

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an open letter @osavior

firstly, i want to make it very clear that my intention in this post is not to attack daisy, also known as the popular mercy blog osavior (previously valkiriya, and serenidae before that), but rather to spread the truth. the intention of this post isn’t to hurt her, but to increase the awareness of people who have no idea what she’s done and decide for themselves what to do from there. all urls, names, discord tags, and aliases shown here are done so with permission - those that requested anonymity were blocked out. colors remain consistent with people throughout all screencaps, so as not to confuse anyone. in this post ill be discussing how daisy has directly catfished mun photos, lied about being a med student, potentially lied about her age, potentially lied about having cancer, manipulated several people and tried to turn multiple unaffiliated people against each other.

before i get into the details, i want to establish that i considered myself very close friends with daisy some time ago (here is proof, if you need it. there are posts upon posts upon posts of interaction both ic and ooc between us in which we both make our affiliation with each other very clear). therefore, none of this is shown out of any sort of petty jealousy towards her, but rather as a way to open peoples’ eyes. whether you choose to continue interacting with her or not is up to you, but please at least keep this post in mind. with that being said, let’s continue:

catfishing

beginning with the most concrete claim, multiple people have said that daisy has posted fake images of herself. in fact, she took it from specific sources, which i will provide in a moment. while i couldnt find any posts of her putting up her “mun pictures” (i believe she deleted them after people mentioned it), many who there at the time can confirm that she did post pictures. for those of you that remember, here is @beijide (andy) finding the source she took her pictures from:

andy isn’t the only person who saw them, however. multiple people mentioned it:

we’ll come back to the last screenshot later, but here are four people specifically who remember her using the photos from this instagram and this pinterest, run by the same person. you can ask any of the three of us who have opted out of anonymity if you want to confirm that she posted those photos, or anyone else who remembers it. “but, wait,” you might say. “what if daisy really is the person who runs this blog?”

at first, it’s easy to say that she is. after all, her area of living, according to her old skype account, is the same as this woman’s. however, the owner of mod med blog’s real name is mary ella wood, very publicly announced. it’s no secret. daisy’s real name, however, is leonie - a name she used to go by, back when i first met her in october of 2016 (she gave herself an alias after a little while and then changed it multiple times afterward). what’s more, daisy claims to be a medical student. what kind of medical student has enough time to run a popular instagram, pinterest, and on top of that, a very powerful roleplay blog for tumblr? i think i’ve made my case for this part.

lying about education and potentially age

well, just because she lied about her photos doesn’t mean she lied about being a medical student - but there is evidence to support this, as well.

a year ago, when i spoke to daisy on a daily basis, she said that she was six years into med school:

only a little while before this, she claimed to be graduating in about a year:

please note the date on this screencap. october 20, 2016, she says she has about a year left. at the time of posting this, it is november 10, 2017, and her rules, which have only recently been updated (as she just remade her blog within the past few days) claim that she is still a full-time college student:

the text on this is very small, but it says: “gonna make this short and simple.

i’m a full time college student. i will not always be active !”

she also claims to be 20 years old at the time, so 21 now:

however, if daisy was in med school for 6 years as of the time she sent these messages, that means that she started med school when she was fourteen years old...which is literally impossible. so, how old is she?

honestly speaking, i don’t know how old she is. however, she has given some unintentional hints.

in the last screencap, daisy is talking about her mom asking when she’ll get married. so, we know that her older half sister is 20, so she can’t be any older than that, which proves that she can’t possibly be a med student in her 6th year of college.

but just because she isn’t in her 6th year doesn’t mean she’s not a med student at all. however, her work ethic doesn’t at all match what is required out of a med student:

but, wait, that doesn’t sound right. typically, med students are known for being hard workers - and there’s a reason for that.

remember where she said that her gpa and grades were terrible? yeah. i dont have any way to specifically disprove her being a med student (though she can’t be in her sixth year) but at this point, it’s very doubtful.

manipulation and hypocrisy

now that i’ve proven the basics about her, let’s move on. there is so much to talk about here, and honestly speaking, this section and the last are the main points of the whole post - because the body count of daisy’s grasp is terribly large, to the point where i have counted 9 personal victims, including myself, and that’s just who i know about.

so, let’s begin with her direct manipulation:

she was talking about playing heroes of the storm here, because oni genji had just been released, back when he was a promotional event exclusive. this is pretty direct, honestly, because it’s so passive aggressive it hurts - but i had just gotten home from a marching band competition. i was really tired.

don’t get me wrong, wanting attention and nice comments once in a while is fine. there’s nothing wrong with that. but getting upset because you specifically asked for compliments? baiting me to send you compliments? what’s even worse is that multiple people sent things, and were often ignored:

i would send things, too. i sent a lot of nice things, and she would ignore them and then say that no one sent anything.

i poured so much love into my relationship with daisy. i absolutely adored her, and i told her that all the time, over skype, over asks, anon and not. i wrote with her every day, i spoke to her every day, i talked about headcanons and life stuff and shared my joy and pain with her, because i loved daisy. she was one of my best friends for a long time, and as much as i would like to say that maybe, she was just venting to me, she made her feelings very personal. so...

...how in the world did she get this idea? why did she think it was okay to make this personal? it definitely seems like she was trying to get me to talk to her more, or maybe even to only talk to her. i dont know.

she had been baiting me to ask what was wrong for about five minutes if i remember correctly, and then in an effort to respect her privacy, i let her be, and offered my support in case she needed it, where she instantly took the opportunity to complain about how little i spoke to her despite the fact that i spoke to her on a daily basis. whats more, a large portion of my inactivity when it came to speaking to people was that i was constantly exhausted because of marching band, and also because i had so little time outside of it.

i’ll address it more in the next section, but this mercy (we’ll call them red) was constantly under daisy’s scrutiny. on top of that, she was very subtly hinting two things - the first being that i shouldnt even so much as think about complimenting another mercy, and the second being that i should give her compliments, instead.

why is she trying to act like i’m some sort of popular jock here? daisy has always been a more popular blog than me. and that never really bothered me, because i liked her, at the time, but i still have no idea what sorts of “things i was included into,” because there really wasn’t...anything. i’d play overwatch a lot with my friends, but that was genuinely about it, and was more due to the fact that i played the game every day, with or without people to play with me.

as for the shipping, i never even had that many ships. i had one with her, one with bibi, one with michael, and before she deleted her widow, one with tay...and thats really it. she shipped a lot more often than i did, but she would drop her ships and blame it on the other person (which i’ll get to here soon). daisy has been through tons of ships and i spoke to a good amount of people she used to ship with when gathering information for this post. they were the ones abandoned.

not only does this imply that she’s a perfect angel who is wronged for no reason, but it also shoves the idea that you dont have the right to unfollow people for whatever you wish. you are under no obligation to keep following people. even if there is no reason at all to unfollow someone, that is your choice. you do not have to follow anyone you dont want to follow.

this was honestly one of the most direct and passive aggressive things she ever sent to me. i was tired, i had just woken up from about an hour (i think) accidental nap after a stressful day of marching band (which was always very tiring), i was very groggy, and she had the gall to say this right to my face.

its still so strange to me. i remember being confused when she said this, but i didnt say anything...but i have never heard anyone say anything like this. more often, youre asked how you cant like children, or told its different when theyre your own, or told that you will learn to like them and change your mind.

this is still confusing considering the fact that daisy has been arguably the most popular blog in the fandom for a very long time. tons of people liked her, and i know i, at least, absolutely adored her. plus, no one, from my knowledge, has ever called her crazy. no one has called her deranged.

probably the most ironic thing she ever said to me? this. because, i dont know how many of you are aware of this, but daisy dropped me. she quite directly replaced me for another genji blog because i “wasnt active” even though i actually was on this blog, slowly coming back to it with some lowered amounts of replies because i was a week from graduating high school and my focus was more on that than on doing my drafts. and she didn’t just do this to me - she did it to multiple people, as i’ll touch on later in this post. here is what it looked like when daisy dropped me:

considering daisy was always going on about how she didnt want people to replace her, this is pretty obviously hypocritical.

she was talking about people who had dropped me as mains before, here. she says here that i was the longest friend she had and her favorite and her number one (while dropping me? lmao) but after this conversation, she talked to me exactly once, one message, and she never spoke to me again. she never tried. she deleted me off of skype (i never deleted her, so while i cant message her on skype, i still have access to everything we said over it) and we unfollowed each other on tumblr after some time and we never spoke again.

this is the one and only time ill say this publicly: daisy was the reason i went on an indefinite hiatus. i was tired of being dropped (it was the third time i had been dropped so that someone could main another genji, or at least it seemed that way at the time) and it hurt me a lot. i was tired of it. i was tired of getting replaced over and over again.

daisy was talking about how she didnt ever have a real relationship (romantically) and when i tried to explain to her that romance is glorified and she shouldnt value herself based on that, she turned my words completely around. my mom used to do this all the time when i lived with her. it is extremely manipulative.

the funny thing about her trying to convince me to send her stuff here is that i basically liked every one of her starter calls. i would send her almost every meme. i would give her anons and talk to her all the time. she would constantly get things from other people and ignore them:

and then she would complain about people not sending things.

she only apologized for things she said to me when looking for attention for it, or at least it seemed that way. she would purposely say shes not okay vaguely so that i would ask her what was wrong and comfort her, which is the same problem im currently having with someone else - but that’s a different situation.

daisy used her illness as an excuse all the time. she would blame anything toxic or manipulative that she was called out for on her bpd, and the only time she apologized for anything, it was extremely self-deprecating - she clearly wanted me to pity her, despite the fact that she had just fucked me over.

and then there’s this. daisy spoke about this a lot - basically, any d.va ship was considered borderline pedophilia to her. she wanted people to tag their ships with large age gaps, but really, considering she was okay with around a 20-30 year age gap between mercy and soldier but not with a 7 year age gap between d.va and lucio, it was less about age gaps and more about d.va specifically. in fact, she specifically mentioned in her rules that she wanted any and all d.va ships tagged, but didnt specify anything else at all. and considering she claims to be only a year older than d.va? considering daisy was talking to an eighteen-year-old? d.va is a fully matured adult, whether she still occasionally acts immaturely or not. ffs she is in the south korean military. she has a career, and one that requires a lot of mental preparation, at that.

before her mental illness is used as a shield for her, however, whether by her or anyone else, please read this post and this post.

potentially lying about cancer

daisy never spoke often about this, so i’m not entirely certain, but there are definitely things that dont add up here. remember the mention of skin cancer earlier?

well, i always felt it too personal to ask her more about cancer, but out of everything she told me of her own volition, daisy did tell me a few things that didn’t quite make sense.

she is pretty clearly saying that she’s had chemotherapy here. she says she had cancer.

i dont know about most people, but when i had a benign tumor in my brain and needed neurosurgery to remove it (a pituitary adenoma, for those of you who know what that is. my case was apparently extremely rare because it was a tumor inside of a cystic mass, but it was necrotic and not cancerous), i was not okay with tumor jokes. it took a year and a half, maybe two years, for my parents to stop joking about it, and i wasn’t okay with them making humor out of something like that. but, what really doesn’t make sense is this:

she says here, november 23, 2016, that she has only been in remission a month.

but she says here, 5 days earlier, that she is donating blood (and has donated multiple times before), that she is healthy.

i dont know what the specific requirements are, but i know that despite me being physically healthy now (at least as far as illnesses and whatnot are concerned), i was never allowed to donate blood (or plasma) because i took hormone regulation pills as a result of my tumor. if blood drives wont accept someone who takes a hormone regulation pill to stabilize their prolactin levels, why would they accept blood from someone who literally had chemotherapy? someone who supposedly had skin cancer?

im not the only one, either, though. one of the people she claimed replaced her (again, other way around) found out that she was faking cancer, too, and their friend apparently had evidence, though they didnt think people would believe them - which is understandable, considering daisy is an extremely influential figure in the overwatch rp community.

turning people against each other

here is quite possibly the part most directly affecting people. on multiple occasions, daisy would turn people who were completely unaffiliated against each other. people who had never met, or at least never spoke much.

i was talking to @beijide about the upper screenshot, because when daisy dropped andy for another widowmaker, she vague posted about andy (who, mind you, has a hard time speaking with people personally, though they found it understandably easier to jump into a group conversation) the whole time. andy summed up their situation pretty well when i showed them what daisy said to me - though it’s only a guess, and she may not have been talking to me about andy specifically.

and then, later:

she pretty clearly says here that this person (ill call them orange, for the sake of this post) replaced her. i didn’t know orange at all, but with this, daisy convinced me to avoid them. i was under the impression for a year that orange dropped daisy - but in reality, when i spoke to them, they explained the truth:

daisy ostracized people from the entire fandom on multiple occasions - not just once or twice, but all the time, because she found someone better or because they werent active or just because they played the wrong character.

at first, i wasnt going to say anything about this situation. i wasnt going to talk to anyone about what she did to me, even though it hurt, because i thought that the only thing she did was replace me - just a problem to do with me, nothing to hurt other people. i didnt realize just how detailed everything she did was.

and i’m not the first to make a post, either. red (remember when i mentioned them earlier?) tried to make a callout for her before over the same things and was written off as a jealous mercy who faked evidence to make daisy look bad:

this was after daisy had already turned me against red early in our friendship by convincing me that red had stolen headcanons from her:

i’ll come back to this last bit shortly.

she convinced me that red was stealing her headcanons - even though these headcanons are fairly common for mercy players, since she has a certain air about her. i tried to find red to ask them about the truth of the situation, but was unable to find their blog. from my knowledge, they have since left the overwatch community.

later, she sent messages which very intentionally ostracized red:

and then, regarding the callout red made:

but red is hardly the only person who got turned against as a result of her. she also turned against @climxtologist, who was originally her friend, when talking about red:

when i spoke to nicole, however, she told me the truth of what happened.

even if it had only been orange, red, and nicole who had been ostracized by daisy, it would be far too many - but unfortunately, her body count doesn’t end there.

i don’t know specifically who she was talking about here, because there were many stories she told that sounded like that, but i had an idea when i was speaking to orange. i started speaking to nikki about everything daisy did, and though he wasnt directly victimized by her, he felt the affects of having friends who were, as well as being a mercy when daisy made sure that other mercy players would never get so much attention:

daisy, despite saying that she wouldnt keep people from rping or interacting with other mercy players, subtly kept them from ever talking to them. in fact, i was talking about it on discord, too:

i didnt want to upset daisy by talking to other mercy players, and i know that i wasnt the only one who felt this way. she was extremely possessive of her mains:

yet, although she would get upset when anyone else talked to another mercy, she spoke or interacted with other versions of someones muse all the time. so why was she allowed to talk to other genji players when i couldnt talk to other mercys?

she even got extremely nasty about people who i used to main who i had thought dropped me (the circumstances were a bit different when i actually got around to talking to them about it, so my disposition here is pretty gross as well, admittedly, and i dont have any excuses for it):

she was extremely rude about red, who she had never actually held a conversation with. she directly called red a trashbag, called all of their friends trashbags, and claimed no one liked them or their blog, as well as calling it irrelevant. that’s nasty.

but possibly the worst is when she tried to turn me against one of my mains, and closest friends:

i really should have stood up for bibi here, but i was too scared to upset daisy about it. when i spoke to bibi about it, they said this:

yes, she said that void was in the wrong for what they did - but she also spoke about them like what they said to bibi wasnt that bad. and that isn’t okay.

conclusion

daisy pretty explicitly manipulated and lied about a lot of things, including things that would actively harm other people. i am not telling anyone to stop interacting with daisy, but i want people to be aware of everything shes done, because she is actively harming other people, and if anyone decides to break off contact and interaction with me about this, i understand completely. please do not attack or send hate to daisy, as that is not the intention of this post. it is not created for retribution. it is not made for revenge. it was made to protect people and give them the knowledge to make their own decisions.

also this was really funny to me:

#osavior #callout #drama #[ ooc. ] ⁽ ᵒᶰˡʸ ᵃ ᶰᶤᵏᶤᵗᵃ ᶜᵃᶰ ᶜᵒᶰᵗʳᵒˡ ᵗʰᵉ ᵈʳᵃᵍᵒᶰˢˑ ⁾

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cutenessinanutshell · 4 years

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Today was a good day. I washed my hair and I made it look all pretty and took cute pictures of myself outside because it was warm as heeeellll today 😍

I had this conversation with my boyfriend. It felt so productive. I called to tell him a joke and then it just became something else but it felt like more clarity. I honestly didn’t realize how much he loved me. Or I guess loves me. I can’t even comprehend it but he does and I don’t understand how.. idk he’s just very sure and unwavering. Like he just wants me. Just. Me. Like he doesn’t even think about entertaining anyone else emotionally. He just wants me. It’s wild how sure he is. I don’t deserve that, that’s fucking so good and it makes my heart burst and what? I can’t believe he loves me so much. I really didn’t think he loved me more than I loved him. Sometimes I wondered how much he really truly cared about my opinion. And like........... I don’t deserve him 😩

Man I’m working on myself and I gotta do that before I can make that assumption. I gotta figure out how to deal with myself and all the things I project on him that are things I would do or have done. I’m literally trying to figure out how to let it go and stop being like this and just be happy and stop comparing everything. I need to learn how to let it go — I also probably need to get some kind of diagnoses because it could be mild but it also might be getting worse so who knows. I’d rather not be medicated if I’m keeping it one hundos??? I don’t really want to be put in that like.. I don’t want that to be part of who I am as a person. I’m a happy person. I am bubbly and I like talking to people and I’m extroverted and I love flirting and being a tease and I love attention, I am a happy person, how could someone like that be bipolar or have anxiety. Where does it even come from for fucks sake? I’m a happy person. I always am this is just a regular rough patch and everyone has rough patches. I’m literally not any kind of I’ll, I’m just sad about my life and my relationship, those are normal things I think. I don’t know. I just hope it’s like mild and not something that needs an every day medication. I’m so bad at taking my thyroid meds.

I had this really honest conversation with him and it felt normal. I didn’t feel sad or angry or whatever it was just a conversation and it felt productive. And helpful. We don’t talk like this anymore. It was nice. I haven’t had a long phone conversation with him in so long. That’s how we first started talking for a little while. I don’t care what his opinion is on this but I’m fucking telling you guys, we were literally magnetic to each other from the get go — ITS A THING YO. Like literally when I saw him for the first time I felt something and I remember feeling it and like also how do I remember meeting him like it was yesterday? Fucking magnetic. And like why did he always want to talk to me when shit was bad or whatever? He could’ve just kept it to himself, why? Bruh. Call it what you want but that’s some spooky shit 👀 That’s literally why I’ve always thought that one day we’d fall in love and it’d be like happily ever after 😅 turns out shits not a fairytale. And relationships take work and I put in none other than driving to be physically there?? I was always on my phone. I lost so much time. I wonder if he felt unloved. Or if he only felt unloved when I said I didn’t know. I fucked that poor boy up. I love him. I hate that I hurt him. I promise I’m going to do right by him, and that I’ll give him and our relationship the respect that it deserves. I promise to tell the truth and to communicate. I love him and I want him to feel loved. I unplugged from my phone when I saw him and I just wanted to cuddle with him so fucking much. I just wanted to be wrapped up in blankets with him and to kiss him and play with his hair. I think maybe I missed him. Like I’ve been home, but I haven’t really Beeeeen home in months. I love him. I want to give him the biggest and longest hug right now. 🥰

I want him to be okay. I want him to figure whatever he needs to figure out. I am terrified for what it could mean for us. Our relationship from the time we met has never been fucking easy. We jumped through obstacles. I wouldn’t even be surprised if life through me something t else the next few days. The months not over yet. But I want him to figure out what he needs to do to feel okay and healthy and ready.

I met him when we were so fucking young. Do you guys remember the stories from Xanga? I was in grade 11 when I started writing about us. I even have hand written notes somewhere. I was 15 or 16. That was ten years ago. That’s crazy. I cannot believe how fucking long I’ve been in love with this one human. And how messy it’s been. Man that’s what I’m saying, the world would be so fucking cruel if we didn’t end up with each other, like that’s just MEAN 😱 just crazy how we were just stupid kids who didn’t know anything about the world, only that they were horny and dramatic 😅

Thank you to anyone who’s kinda just watch me and him grow up. I don’t know what he’s going to decide. If he needs a break from me and how long. If he decides maybe he’ll just neee periodical shorter breaks from each other? I want to make sure I’m not taking him for granted anymore so I’m trying to make him feel appreciated. Cuz he is, I know how much he does for me — maybe not everything but I know he tries for me and I love him for that. Just wanna play with his hair and have it in my face and his head on my chest. I love him and I want him to be okay. I have to humble myself because boy did I fall far from the throne

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theinvisiblespoon · 6 years

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So here’s the thing:

(Just personal dilemma and my thoughts; trigger warning for mental illness including ADHD, anxiety, and especially depression; gun mention, school shooting mention, suicide mention (it’s pretty brief).)

I’m beginning to choose my classes for my next year of high school.

Context:

I have three mental illnesses: ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I have only been taking ADHD meds since late 2017 and started antidepressants at the lowest dose about five-ish weeks ago. It was just bumped up recently.

I’ve been living with mental illness for a while. It’s alright, last year was really tough, but I’m managing and getting the help I need. I now have a therapist and a psychiatrist.

A week or so ago, I talked with my dad. We’ve started to grow closer than we ever have been; communication has always been an issue. I said something along the lines of “it’s hard when I’m not feeling well to do simple things, like getting out of bed.” My dad and I talked about that for a little, but I could tell he didn’t quite get what it is like to have this. One rarely knows about anything unless they have gone through it themselves, and even then it is debatable. He was trying to understand, though, and that meant a lot.

I am very lucky to be in such a diverse and accepting area where race, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. is understood. If not understood, respected. If not respected, accepted. I can go by the name and pronouns I choose, not the ones I’m born with. It’s awesome.

My parents were divorced...wow, a while ago. I was young enough to vaguely remember and old enough to understand what it meant. My parents, while still disagreeing on many things, both care for me and respect that the other cares for me. The divorce was good; I didn’t have to go to court or have to decide which parent to live with. I have split time, switching on Mondays, and my parents have begun to date others again but still work through issues with each other because they know it is the right thing for all of us.

My mom particularly has found an awesome guy. They are stupidly in love and probably won’t get married. When they argue, it is only arguing, and usually about something stupid. Before the end of the night, they are saying that it is their fault to the other. They grow and learn from each other, and work to improve. They are both there for each other, and it’s awesome to see that stupid smile on both of their faces when talking about the other. They most likely won’t get married because they don’t feel they need to.

Getting a psychiatrist (someone who prescribes meds for mental illness) took a long time, and I didn’t understand why until a couple days ago. My mom and I were talking, and when we talk, my mom tends to ramble and it leads to other and sometimes deeper conversations. I asked if my mother’s boyfriend had a mental illness, and she answered that he has depression. But, because of bad psychiatrists and bad doctors in general, he has lost faith in doctors.

I was surprised to hear this; the psychiatrist I have is awesome. She doesn’t just ask if I’m okay, she asks how I’ve been feeling, how the meds are affecting me, what is common in people with these mental illnesses, how the meds work, how the mental illnesses work, and has given advice on how to deal with anxiety and depression when it gets bad. She recommended the 504 plan, which is a plan at the school that helps people with mental illness succeed in school. For example: longer test times, extended due dates, being able to walk out of class if it is too much. She even takes my blood pressure at the beginning of each meeting we have.

My dad has ADHD, and my mom has ADHD, PTSD, and one or more things, I think. They both have experiences with many types of psychiatrists. During this conversation, she talked about how many psychiatrists will just ask if you are okay and prescribe meds.

Now I know why getting a psychiatrist took a long time; they were looking for a good one.

This struck me as odd. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get a good doctor to help you with mental health, but it is.

With people I know well enough, I am very open about mental illness. When I first got on antidepressants, I told my friends the news happily. The reason why I don’t tell everyone (because I totally would) is because of this whole stigma against mental illness. I honestly don’t understand it; according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. It is a leading cause of disability. One in six U.S. adults lives with a mental illness (44.7 million in 2016), and an estimated 49.5% of adolescents [have] any mental disorder. We should be having discussions about this. It should not be one of those topics most people feel uncomfortable talking about at Thanksgiving, like politics or sex.

However, even in the rather open community where I live, it is still very difficult to talk about.

Trying to explain this to my dad, for instance, took a lot of effort and deep-thinking, and then the message didn’t quite get across. All the while, even I felt a little uncomfortable.

Society in its entirety has this view of mental illness that damages a lot of people to the point where many don’t seek help.

Theo Bennet says, “If we don’t recognize mental illnesses as physical health issues, then we will never get people the treatment that they need. One of the few certainties that I have learned from living with a father with bipolar disorder is that mental health is just as important as physical health. In fact, mental health is physical health; the two are inseparable. It baffles me that many people continue to make a distinction between the two.” I have had to stay out of school some days because my mental state was so bad, but you can’t easily get a doctor’s note for that, so it was rarely excused.

Especially with the tragedy in Florida, many people are focusing on the fact that many shooters have mental illnesses. While the Trump Administration is giving money to certain departments-- 8.6 billion to the Department of Veteran Affairs and one million to the Children’s Mental Health Services program-- the budget blueprint also slashes spending for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration by $665 million. Additionally, the National Institute of Mental Health would see a 30 percent reduction in funding — a half a billion dollar decrease — in 2019. In a statement Trump gave soon after the Florida shooting, he talked about mental illness but made no mention of guns. Earlier in his presidency, he repealed a regulation that made it so people with mental illnesses could buy guns more easily.

This is not what we should be focusing on. Many school shooters have mental illnesses, but most people struggling with mental illness are not school shooters.

Even in things like domestic abuse, people think first of physical abuse. But, the research indicates that [psychological abuse] is just as bad and, in some cases, may be worse.

What I’m trying to say is; mental illness is very real. It can be a monster to the people who have one, but the people who have one are not monsters.

It is important to talk about this. It is important to talk about everything we don’t talk about just because it is uncomfortable to do so; especially because it is uncomfortable to do so. Whether it be mental illness, sex, rape, abuse, or anything else.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), in my case, makes it incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything. When one multitasks with a lot of things, the brain jumps around from thing to thing, making it difficult to focus and remember; this is the best example I can give for what it is like to have ADHD. My thoughts are incredibly scattered. Doing things like homework is a nightmare. At the same time, I can get hyperfocused. The best example of this is reading. I’ll start reading a book and realize that I finished it, and when I look up it has been several hours since I’ve moved. My teachers often say that I am bright and intelligent, but I need to “apply myself.” I haven’t studied for anything for years but still get As on quizzes and tests. It’s a myth that ADHD drugs make you smarter; what they do is help compensate for the lack of certain hormones one has and brings it up to a normal level. It helps people with ADHD with concentration, not intelligence. I am on ADHD meds now; it is going pretty well.

Anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder or GAD). That anxiousness you feel before you take a test is the type of anxiety I feel a lot of the time, for seemingly no reason. It has spiked in class a lot of times, and that panic just becomes overwhelming. Quick tip: a good breathing exercise that helps me is in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. I don’t rely solely on it, but it does tend to ground me. When it does spike, my throat feels weird and it is difficult to breathe (hence the breathing exercises) because my whole body is actually tensing up, and it is literally difficult to breathe because my throat is tighter. I play music or do something to distract myself because for now, that is all I know how to do. This disorder sometimes leads to panic attacks, and it has a lot in the past.

Depression is one of those big ones, where the media often portrays it as someone looking out the window on a rainy day. This, particularly, is difficult to talk about for me, because last year it was really bad. The details I will keep to myself, but I will, of course, still discuss it. Depression isn’t just feeling sad, it’s more of an absence of emotion over a long period of time. I didn’t see the point in getting up in the morning, and my lates rose dramatically. In this absence of emotion, at least for me, it becomes an ache and a constant longing for something I can’t reach. Last year, I began to isolate myself. I didn’t take care of myself because I did not see the point in it. It wasn’t healthy in any capacity. (I’m a lot better than I was then, don’t worry.)

So, now that you have context: I’m beginning to choose my classes for my next year of high school.

I’m smart enough to take AP courses, but because of the way my brain works, I know I absolutely cannot handle the workload. I understand all the material for this year, I pick up on it immediately, but the workload is always what kills me.

While yes, I hate school, it sucks, I want to learn about math and science in higher level courses, and I want to do more with my electives in performing arts. The school district I am in has a lot of opportunities; I want to take music theory, creating music with technology, acting studio, choir, band, be in improv club and the play in the fall and the musical in the spring but I just can’t handle all of it. And it sucks that I can’t do what I love.

I only have one elective this year, and will only have one next year. I also am required to take only two years of history and three years of math and science. If I can not take history and/or math next year and push it over to Junior/Senior year, I might be able to have two or three electives, but this is only if this is allowed.

I want to be able to come to a compromise. Doing what I like for homework is easier than doing what I don’t like for homework, even with mental health issues. I would still fulfill all of my requirements and do what I love while accomplishing more at school if they allow me to push back a class or two a year.

I feel like this is a fitting analogy for how society should deal with mental illness-- understanding and compromise. Helping people with their mental health to succeed at what they want to do instead of pointing at mental illness as “the problem.” If we can come to this as a society, a lot more people can succeed, the suicide rate would go down because more people would feel like they have somewhere to turn-- overall, those with mental health issues would be helped instead of being blamed for something they cannot control and have no one to help them with.

Please, stop the stigma against mental illness. It’s not helping anything.

#update #trigger warning #mental illness #adhd #anxiety #depression #gun mention #school shooting #suicide mention #this is a pretty personal topic #i share a lot about myself #and my opinions on mental illness #so buckle up #i hate essays but i think i just wrote one #whoops

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mysticandskepticmuses · 4 years

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she also totally needs fuck buddies and enemies and people that abuse the fuck out of her because… again… i can

she loves animals but refuses to keep any because she knows she is entirely incapable of that amount of responsibility.

#BIOGRAPHY.#BIOGRAPHY. ( petra nikonova. )#TO BE EDITED.#DO NOT REBLOG.

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ramblinganthropologist · 5 years

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At the end of an email

This was 100% inspired by a fantastic cover of CYaRon’s P.S no Mukougawa (on the other side of a poscript) by @the9mermaids. They’re probably my favorite Aqours cover group, so you should go listen to them once you’re done. Heck, I’ll pop the link in because the video is really well done.

Anyway...

Summary: Far away, they’re far away... only Alistair Shepard and Garrus Vakarian can’t exactly drink the same tea. Still, they have their memories, and their emails, to tide them over until that little chance that they might meet again. Only this is 2185, we’re a little past postcards... emails still count, right? Right?

---

There was something about house arrest that could make a man downright antsy.

“Loco, you look like you're about ready to climb the wall.”

So good of him to fucking notice.

Alistair Shepard shot his impromptu body guard a blank look – James Vega twitched, good. He wasn't used to it yet, even after three months. “I can't imagine why.”

No, not when he was stuck in an apartment when he wasn't being grilled by multiple military tribunals while the world was ready to come down around their shoulders. Why would that make him anxious, especially when his anxiety meds were running low?

Ok... that last one he could have probably controlled, but for some reason the Alliance was really up his ass about how many he took. In his defense, he had been kind of dead the last two years.

Outside the window, it was a lovely day from what he could see. Of course, he couldn't so much as open a window to check without someone being figuratively up his ass about it. He had long since learned the rules over the last agonizing handful of months, but it still rankled at him whenever he felt the other man's eyes on the back of his now exposed neck.

Up above, James snorted. “At least you don't have to go see the tribunal again this week.”

It was a small miracle. Alistair was getting tired of telling the same damn story to people who weren't listening. Of course, he was probably lucky to be telling it at all. Most people in his position tended to wind up in solitary, or worse. It was the only benefit that came from getting through the Omega 4 Relay alive, or at least that's what he told himself on the better days. On the worst, when his mind wandered and his skin crawled, it was a curse like no other.

Ah, the duality of man.

He drummed his fingers on the counter top, staring down at his hobbled omni-tool. “Hey... can I send an email to Garrus?”

Most people probably would've shut him down immediately, and with good reason. After all, house arrest meant limited contact. Lucky for him, James wasn't most people. He often had a look in his eye that made Alistair think he understood the feeling on a personal level. Of course... he wasn't quite sure what that feeling was. You think over three months of sitting on his ass he would have it on lock, but life was funny that way.

Was interacting with turians supposed to be this hard?

James thought about it for a few seconds before rolling his shoulders – that was a nasty crack, someone was getting bored sitting around too. “Why, you want to sext him or something?”

Color leaked into Alistair's cheeks . “I just wanted to get an update on Palaven is all!”

The large man let out a booming laugh, practically shaking the small room they were holed up in. “Whatever you say, loco. Just don't make it too dirty; I really don't need to know what kind of kinky sex you get down with when it comes to turians.”

They didn't get down to any sex, kinky or otherwise, thank you very much.

Alistair's blush didn't die down until he was seated in front of his keyboard, a blank and highly monitored email screen flashing in front of him. So many possibilities of what to say to Garrus... how did he even begin?

Hey Garrus,

Hope you're doing ok on Palaven. I'm still on house arrest.

Poetry in motion.

He let out a low groan and placed his head on the desk in front of him. “Shit.”

His mind had gone absolutely blank. Anything he could think to write was just so... pointless in the wake of what was going on. Of course Garrus wasn't doing ok – they were on the eve of the Reapers dropping down on their goddamn asses! Why would he even think to write that?

Why was this so hard anyway? It wasn't like it was the first time they were talking. They had done plenty of that back on the Normandy, both SR-1 and 2. In fact, they had gotten... rather close... before they had plunged into the heart of the Omega 4 relay. He didn't exactly want to call it intimacy, but... what they had should have made this so much easier.

Maybe he was just bad at writing?

“Fuck.” He ran a hand over the back of his head, catching the short hairs as he stared at his screen. His fingers didn't want to write right then, but James was waiting for him to figure something out in the next room. At least the man had the decency to go somewhere else when he was spying on the ex-commander.

How polite.

Alistair shook his head and leaned back in his chair to stare up at the ceiling.. Honestly, he didn't even know if Garrus would get the email, much less read it. A sick feeling sunk into his gut of the thought he might just ignore it. After all, there was plenty to do...

And plenty of people to do it with. After all, the turian wasn't the one on house arrest.

Now, he wasn't an insecure person. While his self confidence wasn't the greatest, he knew he had at least some strange charm that had pulled the turian in. The fact still remained he was human, and there were plenty of attractive turians of any gender on Palaven to keep Garrus busy should he need to... scratch an itch. War time efforts tended to bring people together too. Any of that could have been happening while he was stuck in fucking Canada of all places, staring at a screen instead of doing something.

“Damn it, it's not like you said you were exclusive or anything. Don't worry about it.” It didn't help, and Alistair knew it wouldn't. Still, he tried as he stood up to back away from the keyboard for a brief break. He didn't want to, but a beeping on his wrist was letting him know he needed something to eat or he'd bottom out. “Shit, I'm not even using my biotics either.”

Stressing over his love life must have consumed a lot of sugar...

He found himself in the small kitchen, staring at a can of... something. It was one of those dual brands that had varieties in both levo and dextro in order to capture both halves of the market. He recognized the can – it was hard not to, after all. He had seen its dextro variety clasped in Garrus' talons so many times.

“You can stop fucking with me, universe.” He let out a dejected sigh and poured some down his throat, grimacing at the taste. Something about crossing the needs of both species left little for taste. “Gross... how the hell does he drink this?”

Maybe turians couldn't taste...

Alistair sighed again as he put the can down and stared out the small window on the other side of the apartment. For a brief moment, he swore he could see the star that would've been Palaven's sun. But that was ridiculous – there was too much distance between their planets and systems to even have a chance. Hell, he wasn't even sure he was looking in the right direction. But something about it was oddly comforting as he let his mind wander.

He missed Garrus; he really did.

“Hope you're doing ok out there.”

Alistair muttered that under his breath as he took another sip of the distasteful can. It was the only thing he had right then to connect him to the turian. With how things were going, he didn't know if he would ever be back in the sky . The chances were slim that he would ever see the turian again.

But the hope was there... very small, very dim, but it kept beating.

“Yo, loco, you writing that email or what?”

James' voice boomed out from his hiding spot, knocking Alistair from his reverie. The biotic scowled and took his snack back to where his letter was waiting for him. At least now he had an idea of what to write as he sat back down, putting the can to the side.

Hooray for annoying roommates being amazing writing material.

---

How's the tribunal going? I saw you in one they br-

No. He didn't want to write about that.

Garrus felt his mandibles twitch in annoyance as he delete the line he had been working on. He had been doing that for the last half hour – by then he had enough deleted lines to write a few letters, maybe an entire book the way he was going.

It wasn't his fault – the damn thing just sounded so awkward when he tried to get his thoughts down.

Really, he had a million other things he could have been doing. Ever since the hierarchy had given him a task force to work with for the Reapers, his days had been busy to say the least. It was a miracle he had a chance to sit down and rest at all. Even when he could have, his mind was running a million miles a minute trying to think of what to do next. Of course, that all stopped the moment he was faced with a blank email screen addressed to his...

Well... he didn't really know what to call Shepard. Alistair. Shit..

He rubbed his scarred mandible while he scanned what little he had written. There wasn't much left after his edits, and what was there was... paltry, to say the least. All he had managed were a few bland pleasantries and a basic inquiry: how are you?

“Clearly he's not doing well if he's on house arrest.”

Garrus shook his head and deleted the whole thing. Back to the drawing board again. The blank page and blinking cursor did nothing to inspire him. In fact, his brain was spinning in circles now, as if to spite him.

Was he even going to get to read it? The turian wasn't really sure how humans handled that kind of arrest. As far as he knew, Alistair was in solitary confinement except for when he was dragged out to answer questions. He was no psychologist, but even he knew that wasn't... great, especially for the social species.

It was kind of an exercise in futility, he realized, trying to write an email. But yet he was trying anyway because he was a fucking idiot like that.

“Get it together, Vakarian.” he hissed the words under his breath, mandibles twitching. He knew he was being stupid, but he couldn't stop himself. Just thinking about the human back on Earth did awful things to his stomach and mind. Dare he say it? He missed the man.

It had been easier when he was dead – at least then he didn't have to wonder if he would ever see him again.

Still... his fingers started to work again, talons clicking as he followed his train of thought. I hope you're doing ok back on Earth. I know it's not easy, but I think you did the right thing by going back to the Alliance.

Empty words maybe, but they spoke volumes about how he felt. Garrus found himself falling into a groove as he continued to write, words and paragraphs constructing themselves under his fingers to be shot across the vast expanse of space to some weird ass place on earth called Canada. It sounded downright boring to him, but what did he know? According to most humans, being a seven foot tall space raptor (whatever that was) was scary enough.

And yet... Alistair liked him anyway.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

A sudden voice caused the turian to rocket up in his seat, fingers hitting the keys hard. He wheeled around hard, carapace groaning from the effort. The turian standing there just so happened to be his younger sister, giving him a look as she watched him panic. When had Solana gotten there anyway?

Garrus had grown too used to being around humans – his subvocals gave him away the moment he let them off. It was downright brutal watching the younger turian's reaction. She was... not going to let him live this down.

“Is this about that human you're doing? Herder or something?”

Garrus shot her a blank look as he made sure to minimize his email program – she was too good at reading over his shoulder. “His name is Shepard, and I was just...”

Just checking up on someone on house arrest for treason against the Alliance? There was no way in hell she was going to believe that.

Solana was practically bouncing on her heels as she put the details together. “Writing a love letter to your boyfriend?”

“No!”

Humans said turians laughed like chickens. While he didn't know what the hell that was, maybe he could imagine it as she chuckled at him. He hoped a chicken was something foul and annoying, because then they would've matched perfectly.

“You can't lie for shit, Garrus!” Her laughter only increased. “You're like a love struck cadet!”

His mandibles fluttered in embarrassment as he turned back to his keyboard. “I'm just checking in. He's the best person to discuss the Reapers with.”

“Uh-huh. Because you act like this every time you write somebody from the Reaper squad.” She patted his carapace with a too friendly gesture – when had Solana become such a little shit? “Whatever you say. Just don't get too explicit. Don't want those censors on earth getting an eyeful of what you two do together when nobody's looking. Might scare them for life.”

She left, still chuckling and leaving her older brother wishing he had been an only child growing up. Garrus scowled once he was alone, waiting until it was safe to return to his work. When he no longer heard her footsteps, he flicked the screen back on.

Shit. That was a lot of typos.

“Thanks, Solana...” scorn filled his voice as he set to correcting them. It ate up some of his precious time, but in the end there was only one left. In the midst of his flailing, he had hit a few keys at the end of his name.

Garrus <3

Now, Garrus didn't know a whole lot about human culture – it wasn't like he had a human fetish, thank you very much. But he at least knew a few things, and one of them was the symbols they used to represent... things. Concepts. Vague ideas?

Ok, he wasn't an xenopologist or anything; his job was to calibrate and shoot things from far away.

Regardless, he knew that one and what it meant, and the thought of it made his face feel hot and mandibles flap. Hearts, hearts he knew. And he knew what would happen if he didn't delete it – some asshole would get a good laugh out of what they thought was something mushy.

But... maybe Alistair would appreciate it if he ever got to see it.

...

With a click, off the email went with a chunk of Garrus' dignity. He shook his head as he stood up from his desk and walked to the window. Outside, it was as busy as ever on Palaven. After so many months away from his home planet, something still felt odd about it. Maybe it always would? Again philosophy and that sort of thing wasn't really his area of expertise.

Still, if he squinted he could just maybe see the mass relay that would connect his system to Earth's. It was a flight of fancy, nothing more, but it was something that made his insides flutter. Somewhere up there was there way to a human he was missing very badly.

Maybe when everything was over, he could go through it and pull the commander out of whatever funk he was sitting in.

“Yeah, right.”

Garrus tore his thoughts away – his omni-tool was beeping incessantly now for something task force related. It was back to work. Still, his thoughts lingered as he walked back into his duties – it may have been a tiny chance, but that was better than nothing.

But first... Reapers. Those he could apply his skill set to perfectly.

---

“Are you sure about this, Shepard?”

“Not like I can go back now, Garrus. We definitely pinged something when we docked.”

The Citadel was a busy place, and the docks were no different. Ships and people alike were in a constant hum of activity, trying to get where they were going. This was a small blessing; nobody noticed the two standing by a shuttle, the main ship definitely under harsh scrutiny at the moment.

Alistair brushed hair from his face that had escaped his ponytail. He was smiling, but he didn't feel it inside. “I'll be ok, Garrus. You know me.”

The turian didn't look convinced as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You know what they're going to charge you with. We need you against the Reapers.”

Yes, especially after what they had been through. The Normandy still bore the scorch marks that came from taking the fight straight to the Collectors and coming back in more or less one piece. It had been a billion to one shot, but they had been the one. Now came the consequences of their actions, and some of them weren't so pleasant.

It wasn't as if Alistair wanted to turn himself into the Alliance, especially with the threat of the Reapers. If he was lucky, they would toss him in solitary until he rot. Less lucky... well, he probably wouldn't be reviving a second time. The thought of just taking off and staying outside their jurisdiction had been a tempting one, especially with his Spectre status.

But he couldn't. Damn it if he wasn't a boy scout to the end.

So all he could really do was smile as he watched the turian in front of him. “Guess you'll be heading back to Palaven once we're through here?”

“Already have a ticket for the next shuttle.” Garrus didn't sound too happy about that. “Somebody has to make them listen about the Reapers.”

If anyone could, it would be him – Alistair knew it in his gut. He would make the hierarchy listen. And with them against the Reapers, maybe they had half a chance in hell. Of course... he should probably do the same with the Alliance, but that was less likely after what he had pulled off.

Yeah... this probably wasn't one of his better plans, but it felt like the right thing to do. Hopefully his gut wasn't turning him wrong.

Their time was growing short, however. Garrus had a shuttle to catch, and Alistair had a short walk to a long headache. There were too many things to say in such a short period, and silence was quickly eating up what was left.

“Shep-”

“Garrus-”

Both stopped the moment they had heard the other speak. Laughter bubbled up at the same time as the two shared a rather hearty chuckle at their own expense. In the large space of the dock, open air gobbled it up. But they had known it had been there, just for a brief moment anyway.

Alistair smiled for real now as he nodded to the turian. “Be safe out there. I'll try to write if they don't throw me in the hole immediately.”

“I'll do the same... minus the whole prison thing.” Garrus' mandibles flapped in that way they did when he was amused. “Don't break out of jail until at least a week, ok?”

The Spectre rolled his eyes playfully as he nudged his... it was complicated... in the side. “Me, break out? You have to be thinking of somebody else.”

Another chuckle, but it was time to depart. Garrus and Alistair faced each other one last time, still smiling in their own ways. The brief warmth of each other's touch would have to be enough to get them through whatever came next.

“Well-” Alistair leaned up on tip toe to peck the scarred mandible. “Here goes-”

---

“Man, that looks uncomfortable.”

Alistair snapped from his reverie. It took him a few seconds to realize why the world was upside down, and it came with a literal crash as he hit the ground, groaning. Apparently, spacing out when hanging off the couch was a bad idea.

Up above, James was giving him that look he did when he thought he had earned his nickname and then some. “That some kind of biotic break out technique?”

Joints popped as he stood, shaking out the headache. “Yeah, all the blood goes to your head and powers the amp up. A few more seconds and I could've phased through the wall.”

Luckily for the universe at large, he didn't think well that way. House arrest would continue on. Still, as he rubbed the back of his neck and tried to focus, the memory lingered. Even thinking about it made him want to smile.

Had it really been that long ago?

The large man currently playing his babysitter nodded towards the counter. A slight smirk played at his lips as he spoke. “You got an email, loco.”

Blood rush or not, Alistair beat a quick path to the computer. Just like James had said, there was an email from far past the cluster. A smile set across his face as he sat down to read it. For a brief moment, Garrus would be there.

Until they met again, that would have to be enough. The emails and the memories would sustain him through countless headache-inducing interrogation sessions and long nights. And with any luck, one day they would speak again.

Now... just what the hell was in there that made James smirk so much?

#shakarian #Shepard x Garrus #Garrus x m!shep #Alistair Shepard #With my love of idol music thrown in #ramblinganthropologist's writing

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mymagnificentself · 5 years

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the thing is, ive always been special or "gifted" or whatever growing up, or at least things would just come easy or naturally to me so that i wouldnt have to do much (and could endulge my lazy nature) and still be pretty well above average, if even still one of the smartest ones (that people would come to for questions and whatnot).

so, accordingly, ive never learned how to deal with frustration (in general, but especially of not Getting something right away) and just generally how to deal with Not Being The Best, or even just Not Being Very Good at something.

and now thats come back around to bite me in the ass bc im still going around with that would-be sense of "superiority" that ive gotten so used to, only now with starting work and school on a completely new topic (taxes if anyones wondering) that ive never had anything to do with and thus respectively, No fucking idea about

with people who very much have had some experience or pre knowledge about it, or are just generally BETTER at it than ME

is absolutely fucking with me.

suddenly basing all my sense of self worth and whatnot on how well i do academically (and by extension at work), without being willing to put any Real effort in it is starting to turn into a slippery slope Downwards :)

and the funnest thing(s) about that, is that since its like a self sustaining system, once its in motion its very hard to get oit of it again.

like, not doing well in class→frusttation, discontent, no motivation→stop paying attention, putting in the effort→ understanding less and less→feeling more and more stupid and incapable→↑frustration and overall ↓↓↓ plummeting mental health

not to mention that the entirety of this piece of shit christmas business is already stressing me out as fuck, honestly WHY the fuck is it even that big of a thing, then as well winter= lack of sunshine (and apparently i am already lacking vitamin d anyways, which ↑makes depression worse (not to mention i literally dont even get to see any fucking sunlight lately whenever im at work, and not even get me started on how stressed out and and anxious ive been about pretty muchEVEry FucKiNG thing regarding WORK))

also this is the first winter in.. a feeewww years that im not on meds anymore (and honestly whos shitty idea was that anyways, especially now that im what feels like Constantly stressed out about *something* or rather *nothing* bc i know in fact its absokutely fucking insignificant but that doesnt change anything so fuck me i guess)

so in conclusion, my brain is fucked (more than usual) and i dont even think that it has nothing to with me bc i know its totally my business to deal with that somehow contructively but honesly, if anyone else comes at me with exercise and that i need to be active and positive and Do Something i will shove their head so far up their ass theyll be able to make a great fucking ventriloquist

#that doesnt work as well in engkish as in german does it #joke here is ventriloquist in german basically translates to stomach speaker #haha #mags speaks #to be fair ive done a lot of fucking shit this weekend and i suppose im comparably good on time #but honestly #fuck that #fuck everything #this shouldnt be so fucking hard on me #not even just christmas #not just school or work #or dealing with my family issues #or trying to just remotely look after myself in the entire fucking progress #another great example of how bad i am at Not Being Good at something #i dont even know how much longer this is gonna be supposed to go on #but something better fucking chsnge and it better be hsooening fucking SOON

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eds-zebra-warrior · 3 years

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2021 Ehlers Danlos Society Awareness Month (Day 9 Prompt: Inclusion)

Inclusion is a difficult topic for me as it's very difficult to feel included. This actually comes hand in hand with discrimination, segregation and inequality, especially being someone with EDS who can’t walk. When it comes to family, I can go into my own house and into my neighbor's house and that's about it. I grew up in the invisible illness community, eventually making me part of the rare disease community. As my symptoms progressed and I was paralyzed, becoming a permanent wheelchair user, then fell into the visible illness community. I will explain my lack of inclusion not only among the community, friends and family but also exclusion I face within the medical system and law enforcement.

I have been excluded by all outings and holidays by my extended family. My aunt likes to have holidays at her house and had a wheelchair ramp installed when her mom got older. Not long after the passing of my grandma, I was paralyzed, going into a chair. Being in a chair and my aunt knowing I cannot walk soon after removing the ramp from her house with little to no consideration of my needs so now when she has holiday dinners at her house I cannot go. I brought up the ramp once and she said “Well I didn't think about you” then later I realized how hurtful and mean what she said was so I sat down asking questions like “So you can't walk at all? “Have you ever tried to see if you can stand up?” “Well what about physical therapy?” “Well, I went to physical therapy when I had cancer and it helped a lot so I don't know why it didn't help you.” Which honestly was even more hurtful because I am not even a candidate for physical therapy after being paralyzed during physical therapy.

With cancer going rampant in my family somehow when family members ask about me and how I've been, they somehow seem to turn the conversation into cancer. “Trust me I know what pain is, I had cancer and if you ever get cancer you will learn what real pain feels like.” of from those older than me saying “You're too young for pain, Wait till you’re my age, then you’ll know what real pain is”, failing to even research EDS, Multiple Neuropathies, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome or any of my other conditions. The McGill Pain Scale has recently been challenged with a study done on a cohort of EDS patients. It was found that EDS is more painful than Complex Reginal Pain Syndrome which originally took the top place on the chart as the most painful condition with Cancer pain hitting around the mid range area of the scale. Some tend to downsize EDS and make it sound like I’m just a wimp for needing medication for my pain. I always hear things like “Me and my daughter were sick and we are both doing great now. Why aren't you getting better? Again, this relates my condition to cancer and other long term conditions that are a lot more common and have treatment and/or surgery that can put them into remission.

EDS has no remission. It doesn't magically go away. I have a gene mutation and as of now, you cannot repair a broken gene so this is forever. There is no remission but society is raised to believe cancer is the worst thing a person can ever go through and cancer is also one of those conditions where there are two outcomes. You go into remission and get better, living life normally or possibly on several meds to keep you functioning well, with the exception of younger children or some adults who have organ systems permanently damaged by chemo but even then they are much healthier and have a much more normal life than they did with active cancer. There's also the other side of the spectrum. You die. There are so many conditions that, depending on the type of cancer or hormonal mutations can easily be much worse than cancer leaving people much sicker than chemo patients but with no chance of remission. Imagine being on chemo for 50 years straight.

I have learned to hate the discussion of cancer when others compare pain and symptoms because many with chronic and/or rare diseases like Ehlers Danlos, Lupus, Muscular Sclerosis, Lateral Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Osteogenesis Imperfecta and many more are also very dangerous, have a lot of serious symptoms and comorbidities, risk the person's life and can very well cause more pain or more systemic symptoms than cancer. I am not saying cancer is not important, I am just saying people with these conditions are also compared with people who have cancer with most people who do this not knowing anything about our condition, just going off of the assumption that what we hear about most in the media, what has the most fundraisers and financial backing and what has the most attention has to be worse. Many more will get offended if you explain or give them information relating to the pain levels found in EDS mad that you would ever compare your own medical condition to cancer even after they just did the exact same thing by invalidating your pain and saying something like "If you think you're in pain now you should experience the pain that comes along with cancer. Now that's real pain" Its as if its okay for them to compare but not you making it automatically wrong for you to stick up for yourself when they try to invalidate your pain. The worst part is when they do this day in and day out without even noticing they are doing it. It gets exhausting and frustrating when someone is always trying to tell you why you are weak and spread the misconception that all cancer patients are much sicker than these other conditions, downgrading you. This leads to a lot of people giving unsolicited medical advice, telling you all the reasons why you aren't getting better knowing nothing about your condition so it really does go both ways and gets old to hear.

Another issue I had with inclusion was when my cousin got married. I have food allergies and couldn't eat anything they were serving. At the time I was a teenager and couldn't drive so my mom told my aunt she was going to go to Wendy's and get me a baked potato because I needed to take my medications and needed to take them with food. We were at the reception and next thing I knew my aunt was literally screaming at the top of her lungs at my mom about how she wishes my dad had never married her, she cant stand her and I’m a spoiled rotten little brat. My mom kept trying to get a word in telling her I have food allergies and can't eat what she has so it has nothing to do with being spoiled and it's not that I don't want what they are eating and honestly would probably rather have what they are eating but that I can’t because before my diagnosis gluten put me in multiple organ failure. My aunt was yelling about how she will not take my mom leaving and coming back and me eating Wendy's at their beautiful wedding and continued saying, if I’m hungry enough I will eat what they have and she needs to quit spoiling me and allowing me to have a different meal than everyone else was eating like I was a picky little kid instead of someone who if I ate what they were serving I can go into organ failure or anaphylactic shock. If she didn't think a Wendy's baked potato fit into her daughter's wedding décor scheme she would have really not been happy to have an emergency squad backed up to the door, a gurney and a bunch of paramedics so my mom, myself and my dad didn't understand why she was making such a big deal out of it. My dad then told my aunt we are going to leave and apologies to my cousin for leaving the reception early. After he did this my aunt started calling my mom and I derogatory terms still yelling while my mom was simply talking and trying to keep it quiet so it wouldn't be a big deal but she started calling me and my mom derogatory names and didn't talk to my mom for two years all over a baked potato and my food allergies.

Outside of the family also have little access to inclusion as I have not one friend with a wheelchair ramp or no steps going into their house so zero access to visiting friends as well as family. The lack of understanding crosses over to friends as well and I have lost most of them. I’m not the best when it comes to visiting friends as my health is so unpredictable and many people take this as me being flakey or not wanting to visit when most of them knew how timely and never canceled on them when I was healthier. I also had two friends who used me and manipulated the situation to make it sound as if I was the reason we never hang out. One of these people, she and her husband did a lot of traveling and it seemed like every time she was out of town she would contact me and ask if she and her husband could come visit me when they came back. I would agree and when she was back in town she would usually ignore my messages until a day or two before leaving again and say “I wish you would have said something sooner. We’re packing up now and about to leave to go to Florida now. They would leave and she would message me saying they were on a Disney cruise but when she comes back they wanted to visit me if I was up for it. Again she would either not tell me when she got home or I would message her that day or a day or two later telling her if they want to visit it's fine with no response and no response until right before they were about to leave again saying something like “Oh, well we're about to go to California. I wish you would have let me know sooner, not acknowledging the message was originally sent a week or two prior. When I finally asked if they really wanted to visit or not and what was going on, she then responded saying, well every time I ask if you want to hang out, you never do which was far from the truth since she would only talk about visiting when on vacation or while packing to leave the state again.

Another friend of mine since high school did something similar. She would call or text me and ask if I wanted to hang out the next day and of course sometimes I said no but a lot of the times I said sure because it was something low key like she would come over here to visit or just meet at the dog park or something. If I said yes she would say “I know you have good days and bad days and your health can change so if you are still up for it call me at 10:00 in the morning and let me know what you want to do. Well 10:00 am would come around and I would call her and say I was up for hanging out and she would say “well, I’m actually at my sister in laws now so can we do it another time” another time she would call and tell me if I’m up for it call her around noon and I would call her at 11:30 or so and tell her I’m up for it and she would say “Oh, well I didn't know if you would be up for it or not, I actually took my daughter to the park so we will have to get together another time.” Next time she would call me that morning and tell me she was going to be in my area and asked if I wanted to meet her for lunch. I would agree and she said she was going to take a nap and to call her at noon. I would call and she would say “Oh, well I’m at the mall with another friend, can we meet up another day”

Don't get me wrong, she was like this before I got sick and when we were kids where she would cancel a lot but when I got sick and she was calling me at least once a month to hang out and after two years went by and every single one she canceled out on me to hang out with another friend or go somewhere else and only two of those were because you had a doctor appointment or something and declined on your own there's a problem. I asked why she didn’t seem to want to hang out and she said “What's the point because every time I call you say you're not up for it. When I only said I wasn't up for it twice and she canceled more than 20 times in a row, having no problem telling me she was hanging out with a friend from work or someone else making plans to replace the plans she made with me so this is another struggle I have faced since getting sicker.

The people I used to think were my friends who obviously don't like me because I’m boring and can't go out and party, run around the mall for 8 hours or go to the fair and ride all the rides with them but now can only handle the low key stuff like lunch, going to watch a movie, stay here and play cards, go to one of those paint with a friend things or something low key like that and I know the fact is that they don't like these low key activities and think I’m boring to hang out with but don't want to tell me this and I truly believe they don't want to admit to themselves that they don't like me anymore since I’m now disabled so they try to push the blame on me and throw it into the pile of problems I already have lol so friendships just don't work out well for me either.

Now that we have covered inclusion with family and friends let's talk about the community. I have always said, even before I was disabled that the communities that face the most inequality and discrimination are the communities you never hear about when discrimination and inequality is brought up. The Deaf Community, the Disabled Community, the LGBTQ+ Community, the Rare Disease Community and the Invisible Illness Community are the communities who I believe have the most severe lack of inclusion, face the most discrimination, face the most prejudice, endure the most physical, verbal and emotional abuse and have the fewest rights many take for granted. Black Lives Matter has really made me realize how severe these disparities are. Being in a chair I can’t just go to a small town. If we are going on a trip to Cleveland Clinic or the University of Toledo and we are driving through a small town with a lot of small, mom and pop businesses I can't stop and shop at one of those stores. If I have to go to the bathroom they don't have a wheelchair ramp going into their building so not only can I not go into a single store but I am unwelcomed by the entire city.

With ADA being signed in 1990, 21 years later the Columbus Police Department says and I quote “ADA laws aren't real laws and shouldn't be treated as such. Our own police have left me outside on the second coldest day of the year in January when two cars parked illegally in front of both handicap curb cut ramps going down to a parking lot. Instead of enforcing these laws and punishing those who illegally parked in front of these ramps or taking the time to send an officer out to help get me and my chair off of the curb they told me it was my problem and though every building in the strip mall had closed down that it was my responsibility to sit out in the cold with pure autonomic failure and the inability maintain my body temperature indefinitely until someone came back for their car which resulted in me going into hypothermia.

With BLM coming to the surface the disabled are seen as weak and also are essentially the punishing back for the black community now just because we are seen as weak and easy targets to take their anger out on. I have been through the illegal parking issue time and time again. Another time a black man parked in front of the curb cut. My dad kindly asked him to move his vehicle and he told us we had to wait while he finished his conversation with his friend which took about 20 minutes. We were in a bad area of town and my dad and I were the minority so there wasn't much we could say or do or we would be seen as the ones who were racist. This 20 minutes was one of the scariest times of my life as a woman overheard my dad asking him if he would mind moving his vehicle so I could use the ramp. She came up to me and pointed to my dad who is a senior citizen, asking why he can't lift me up in my chair and off of the curb. This area was old and fan down so the sidewalks had been done multiple times so the curb was quite high. It was about 10 inches up from the parking lot so not a little bump I can just back off of and I was 112 lbs., sitting in a 39 lb. wheelchair with a 17 lb. service dog and I didn't understand what she was talking about because she couldn't possibly mean for him to lift all of that weight himself and put me onto the ground plus the wheels spin and even with the wheels locked the wheels will still move so you need two people to lift a person in a chair without flipping it. Anyhow, kind of confused I said “No, I don't think so”

She then went off yelling about how I'm an overly entitled white bitch who thinks she can get whatever I want handed to me on a golden platter. My family probably owned slaves and how I have a lot of nerve to ask a “N word” to move their car so I can use a ramp that belongs to the community and doesn't have my name on it. How he can park wherever he damn well pleases and white bitches like me need to be shot thanking we can get all our NEEDS met when we don't even know what needs are because they “N words” have had to go without their needs for 400 years now calling me multiple swear words and derogatory terms as well as saying multiple times that I need shot. After about 20 minutes of her in my face screaming at me during Covid and me saying please, I have a compromised immune system or I’m sorry, I just can't get to my car the guy finally said he would move his car for us to leave. It was terrifying but things like this happen all the time.

Another incident happened in Aldi near the beginning of the pandemic. The checkout line was massive and stretched ¾ way down the second isle. And there was one of those electric pallet jack things they use that can't be moved because you need a key to start them on the right side of the isle so no space to get through I just waited at the back of the line until it got past the pallet jack so I could get by which wasn't an issue because the line always moves really fast at Aldi and there were only two people with carts in line behind the pallet jack so I got in line behind the last woman in line and locked my breaks. I put my smaller service dog on my lap because the isle was really crowded and I didn't want her to get stepped on.

Next thing I knew there was a black woman coming around the corner yelling everybody move, get out of my way slamming her cart into the back of my nearly new $7000 wheelchair and $7000 smart drive so hard that she shoved me in my chair, with the wheels locked about two feet forward and my foot plate into the ankles of the woman in front of me and kept pushing her cart yelling at me to move. I was still shocked at what was happening so all I could do was say “I can’t” because of course the line ran beside the pallet jack which couldn't be moved so there was only about 4 inches between the edge of the fork of the pallet jack and everyone's cart. The woman let go of her cart and walked up to the side of my chair, grabbing my right side push rims and tires and yelled “I SAID MOVE!” and pulled up flipping me and my service dog out of my chair and onto the ground with my body hitting the shelf to my left and dragging a ton of baking products off the shelf and on top of us. A bunch of people turned around and gasped when she did this and the woman's teenage daughter embarrassingly yelled “MOM NO!” then ran up around her mom and flipped my chair upright.

I was sitting there on the ground so shocked I still didn't know if I was hurt being someone who is prone to dislocations, traumatic brain injuries and having multiple spinal cord manifestations. The woman's daughter was almost in tears from embarrassment and reached down to grab my arm to try to help get me back into my chair when her mom yelled at her to get over there The girl said “but mom” and she said “get your ass over here now” and turned around her cart to start to go around the next isle. The girl then let go of my arm, her eyes still all watery because she was about to cry, she mouthed to me “I’m sorry” and ran around to the other isle where her mom was. Of course I didn't blame her daughter. She tried to help and I felt bad for her too. She tried and proved she was different from her mom.

After they went down the other isle the woman in front of her and the woman in front of me started helping me. I was checking my service dog Maggie to make sure she wasn't hurt and she seemed fine, just had eyes as big as saucers like she was kind of in shock over the whole thing too. The lady in front of me picked Maggie up off of me and held her in one arm while both picked up all of the cake, brownie, cookie and powdered sugar laying on the floor and all over me and put it on the shelf. She then put Maggie down on the floor for a second while they both helped get me back into my chair and then the one in front of me picked Maggie up again and put her on my lap. The Lady in front of me pulled up her pants leg to look at the back of her ankle where my foot plate slammed into her and she was bleeding. I apologized and she laughed sarcastically and said “It's not your fault, trust me, you are not the one who should be apologizing for this.

The three of us started talking with the one in front of her talking about how disgusting it was that she did that to me when right then the woman who slammed the cart into the back of me came up the front of the isle yelling at everyone near the front of the line to get out of her way. She didn't physically assault any of them like she did me but she was yelling at everyone to get out of her way, shoving her way between carts to try to get things off of the shelf and throwing it into her cart. There were only two employees working that day, one ringing people up and one trying to stock all of the shelves that were being picked through faster than she could stock so I can't blame the employees either because they were grossly understaffed.

I have had so many experiences like this since Black Lives Matter took off, a lab core worker talking bad about me because I showed up without an appointment when their door and website says “Walk ins welcome” and I tried to make an appointment but the captcha was down on their website so I wasn't able to confirm that I wasn’t a robot in order to submit my appointment and purposely showed up at 11:30 am because you could see already claimed appointments and 11:00, 11:30, and 12:00 were all open appointments. To make things better, My doctor had already sent the request and I scanned it into the tablet they had there as well as scanning in pictures of my license and insurance so everything was filled out and all I needed was to pick up two plastic, half gallon jugs for a 24 hour urine test.

She was in the back calling me similar names to what the woman did at the eye center when the guy was illegally parked, bringing up slavery and how my grandparents may have been able to get away with whipping “N words” to get them to do what they wanted but I can’t, how inconsiderate I was for walking in and who did I think I was thinking I can just walk in all unannounced without an appointment. She said “I ought to slap that bitch! Girl, you gonna have to hold me back before I slap that bitch” talking to the other phlebotomist. I could hear everything she was saying after she closed the door and she went on and on, came out and asked for my paperwork so she could put it in the system, ripping it out of my hand, kept going on and on saying nasty things about me then finally came back out and nicely said “Oh, I didn't know you already put all of this in the system for me. So you’re just here to pick up the jug?” I said “Yeah, I've done one of these before so I don't need any instructions or anything, just the jugs. She went back and still talking nasty about me came back a minute later with the jugs and said nicely have a nice day but still her body language wasn't nice and you could tell her friendly voice was sarcastic.

That's when I decided to stick up for myself and stopped her before she closed the door again and said, “Did you know your walls aren’t sound proof? I heard every word you said about me while I was back there and just so you know, I tried to make an appointment before I came here. The captcha is down on your website; you know, the little thing you have to click online to prove you’re not a robot? It wasn't working so I couldn't click it to submit my appointment request but it said online and on your door that walk-ins are welcome. I saw you had empty appointments from 11-12. I didn't know if anyone else would be here since the site was down but that's why I chose to come now because I didn't think you would be busy because of Covid and all but I did try to make an appointment. Her facial dropped.

She then started kissing up to me saying “Oh sweetie, you are totally fine, that's what we're here for, come anytime you need to, she walked over to the double doors and opened the first one saying “Let me get that door for you sweetie.” pointed to the floor and said “Do you see that spot right there with no carpet? There used to be a big lip in the door right here and I personally had it removed just for people like you who are in wheelchairs so your wheels won't get stuck on it. Would you like me to get the other door for you?” I said “No, that's okay, It’s not that heavy, I’ve got it” she then said “No, no, no, I insist. I’ll hold it open for you, I’m here to serve you. She then followed me outside where my dad was parked which was awkward and said “would you like me to help you into your car?”

These are the more major examples but I’ve had more minor interactions too such as trying to buy vinyl for my Cricut maker from a black small business owner to be told “Sorry, I only buy from and sell to black people” I had a dental appointment and Medicare and Medicaid is a death sentence for those with rare diseases with only two dentists that took my insurance within a 30 mile radius. I settled for Refresh Dental in Hebron, Ohio which was quite a drive but none that took my insurance were close so I made an appointment. When I called I asked if they were ADA accessible because I’m a wheelchair user and the receptionist said yes. I then asked about Covid and the precautions they take because I’m immunocompromised. She said they are very careful, told me they wear full PPE, mask, face shield, smocks, they have updated their HVAC system and are really clean. She said none of their staff had contracted Covid so I made an appointment.

When we got there we parked at a building that looked like it was about to fall in. Termites had eaten all the way through the window ledge, and you could see the studs behind it. When I went up to the door I was relieved to see a sign saying to go to the white building behind that one, surrounded by a bunch of orange stickers which looked like condemned stickers. Their driveway was gravel and anyone who is in a chair knows, a gravel driveway isn't easy to roll on at all so though it was cold outside I was getting myself into a sweat going back to the building behind it. The first thing I saw was a staircase with about 9 steps up into the building and I was thinking uh oh. I hope they have another door. I went around the building and found another door and this one had two steps into it. It was a door with a step into it, you walked about 5 steps and stepped up another step into a second door. I called the office and no one answered.

I then called my mom who was in the car by the first building and asked her to come over there. She saw the steps and said “You’ve got to be kidding me” and went into the building to talk to them and then came back out and told me what they said. She asked the receptionist if they had a ramp or another way into the building for people in a wheelchair. The receptionist pointed to the door that my mom just came in and said “That's the door our disabled patients use” My mom told her I’m in a wheelchair and called ahead of time and was told they are ADA accessible and the receptionist said “We are ADA accessible.” My mom followed up saying “Then how can someone in a wheelchair get in here? The receptionist said “Can't she just walk in here?” My mom said “No, she’s paralyzed” The receptionist then said “Well we have other patients in wheelchairs and they just leave their wheelchair outside and walk in here. It's only two steps.” My mom then said “So, we just drove 40 minutes here and you’re not ADA accessible?” The receptionist said “Yes, we are” my mom said “but you don't have a ramp?” She said “When your daughter called she asked if we are ADA accessible. We’re ADA accessible, not wheelchair accessible.” My mom said “First of all wheelchair accessibility is part of being ADA Accessible, you don't have wheelchair access you are not ADA Accessible and second of all, she told you she was a wheelchair user so I don't know what else you could have thought she meant by ADA accessible. The receptionist said she had to go speak to another staff member. She then told my mom to have me go back up to the front building and they would bring supplies from this building and meet me over there to see me.

We went back to the first building and I had been sitting out in the cold all this time. We sat outside the building for 20 minutes waiting for someone to come unlock it. I then called their office and this time someone answered and I said “I’m really sorry for bothering you but will it be a while before anyone gets over here? The reason I’m asking is because I have Autonomic Dysfunction so cant maintain my body heat well and was wondering if it was okay if we go back out and sit in the car until someone is ready for us” She said “stay there, she should be there right now” I said okay and waited, finally about 5 minutes later someone came to the door and opened it. The concrete wheelchair ramp was so old that it had sunk about two inches into the ground so I still had to pop a wheelie and push on my wheels while my mom pushed the back of my chair to get up into the door.

When we got in there it was filthy, every surface was covered in dust, dirt, wood chips and dead bugs. It smelled like the moldy basement of my sisters 1890 house. It was so dirty that I put my service dog in my lab because I didn’t want her to sit on the floor. I could see a trail from my wheels and my mom's footprints in the coat of dirt on the floor. The receptionist brought out paperwork for me to fill out and while I did she and the hygienist were flipping breakers to turn on electricity to one of the rooms and were bringing over a laptop, air purifier and some dental tools. I could see them in the room. The hygienist took a dry paper towel and brushed the dirt off of the chair and edge of the countertop onto the floor, not using any chemicals or even moisture to clean anything. The dirt started floating around in the air which was when they brought in the air purifier to suck some of it up. She sat the dental tools straight onto the counter she had simply brushed the dirt and dead bugs off of. I watched them do all of this while I filled out my paperwork and sat in my chair waiting for my appointment. They eventually called me back, now well over an hour after my appointment time. I gave my service dog to my mom because they had to do x rays and went back.

I got in the dirty chair and the hygienist only had a mask on and nothing else. She wheeled in an old x ray machine that looked like it was jimmy rigged to a sawed off IV pole. She put the bite wings in my mouth and tried to take the image and nothing happened. She yelled at the receptionist to hit another breaker and took the first image of the tooth that was bothering me. She then pulled the bite wings out of my mouth and that's when I noticed that they were reusable bite wings and having a lot of medical knowledge I knew those cannot go into an autoclave and was horrified when I saw that they didn’t have the clear sanitary cover bags on them to prevent the spread of disease but at this point I had already had them in my mouth and the damage was done. Having no clue if I had just essentially French kissed a Covid patient while being immunocompromised myself and having a condition that so far no one with it who has contracted Covid has survived it was too late so I didn't say anything. She put it back in my mouth for another image. Once she was done she grabbed a camera made for taking pictures of the inside of the mouth. It also had no sanitary covering on it and she took pictures of my teeth and said we have to wait for the dentist to come over.

I looked around the room while waiting and it was totally empty except for the chair I was sitting in. There were no pictures on the wall, no curtains, no TV, no pedestal where the little sink you can spit in usually is and where the cleaning tools and suction hook up, no chest of drawers with toothpaste or other supplies. They didn't even have any light in the room, just a light fixture with wires hanging out of it. Just a very thick coat of dirt, dust and dead bugs everywhere and a window letting light in. When I looked at the window I noticed there was light coming in around the window where termites had eaten holes all the way through the wall around the window casing. There were brown streaks running down the wall where water had come in the holes which I was assuming explained the moldy smell because if there was water getting all the way inside through the swiss cheese termite walls then there is probably a ton of water and mold behind the walls. I I continued scanning the room while talking to the hygienist about my dry mouth and she told me she was going to give me some jell to trial for dry mouth. Soon after, the dentist came in and was very cold. He said nothing to me at all but said to the hygienist “Cavity on 15 and 16” and left totally ignoring me when I said hi. The hygienist told me to go to the front where the receptionist was to schedule a filling and a second appointment for a comprehensive dental since they refused to do them the same day or do the imaging of my whole mouth when doing the images of the one tooth.

the receptionist had brought over a laptop of her own and tried to schedule my filling for two days after I got the second Covid vaccine and I told her I didn't think that would work because I would get the vaccine less than 48 hours prior to the appointment and I didn't know if it would make me sick or how long your sick for when you get it but I know my nurse didn't feel well for about a week after hers. The receptionists said “You’ll be fine” and scheduled it anyhow making sure to tell me about their cancellation policy and fine which she should know with the vaccine I wouldn't know how it effected me until the cancellation policy had passed. She then went on to tell me that she cant get it because she has a heart problem. I told her I couldn't either at first either but not because of my heart problems but because I'm a high anaphylaxis risk but my doctor came up with a concoction of meds that we can take starting two days before the vaccine, the day of and three days after that has shown to prevent full blown anaphylactic shock in most of us. She said we would have some kind of allergic reaction and still can go into anaphylactic shock but it will reduce the chances so hopefully the allergic reaction is tolerable and we won't need to go to the hospital. So I went that route and got the vaccine at a place close to the hospital. I then said, It's too bad that more healthy people don't consider people who literally can't get a vaccine or are immunocompromised and won't get the full benefit, or any benefit at all from the vaccine before they refuse to get it. She said Actually, I can get it, I just dont think I should get it. My dad got it and my sister and I tried to tell him not to get it but he didn't listen to us and got it anyway but I guess when you're old or sick like you guys are and are going to die sooner than later anyhow you don't really have much to lose.”

I felt like she was throwing me in the grave. She then said “you know that they chop up aborted babies and put them into the vaccine right? I said “Nahh.. that's just a rumor that went viral on Facebook that was originally created by some college freshmen. There's no fetal tissue at all in the vaccine. Where the fetal tissue comes from was in the 70s and 80s two women voluntarily donated their aborted fetuses to science. No other fetuses have been used since then because they have replicated the cells over and over again. Think of cloning. They do this so they won’t need any more fetal cells. The replicated cells aren't used in the vaccine, they are used in the early states of testing potential vaccines before they even start conducting studies on animals and after the hypothesizing stage to see how human and living cells respond to benign injected with the possible vaccine to ensure it doesn't harm the cells and does what its supposed to, which not only saves money because the cells can be replicated over and over again but it also helps save animals because its a way to test the vaccine before moving on to testing on them. Of course a lot more can be found on living animals than just in cells so things can still go wrong in the animal phases but there is no aborted fetus at all in the vaccine, it's simply used as a cell to test the vaccine on.” She said Well I’m a nurse too, not just a receptionist so I would know.

I then thought this would be the perfect opportunity to change the subject and said “Oh, really, I am too. I graduated from Columbus State, where did you go to school?” She changed the subject back saying, I know a lot of nurses and none of them have gotten the vaccine. Only a few people here have gotten vaccinated and this place has been riddled with Covid. Almost all of the ladies have had it at least once and they all are okay now. How many people do you know who have gotten vaccinated? I said “When I called to make this appointment I asked about Covid because of being immunocompromised and the person I spoke to told me no one had gotten it. Why would they lie to me? She said “I don't know who you spoke with but that's not true. This place has been riddled with it” At this point I was letting what she said simmer a bit and sink in, honestly not happy at all that they had lied to me more than once at this point and about very important issues.

She then went back asking me how many nurses I knew who had gotten vaccinated. I said all of them and not even just people I graduated with my home health infusion nurse got hers but she ended up getting Covid too. Idk if you saw on the news about the senior husband and wife that got Covid and the nurse arranged for them to be put in a room together and they died within minutes of each other? Well the nurse who set that up, her name is Mariah and I went to high school with her. Just a fun fact I guess.” She said “Well did she get vaccinated? I said “yeah and right then the hygienist came back with the dry mouth gel so I cut the conversation off and said I needed to go because my mom was out in the car. I couldn’t believe they had a halfway decent office for their able bodied patient but put their patients in chairs into a filthy, condemned building that is moldy and about to fall in from termite damage. If that's not discrimination, I don't know what is. and to top things off, I put the dry mouth jell into my mouth and it tasted awful. I looked at the expiration date and they had just given me and it had expired over a year prior. I saw another dentist and also found out that I never had a cavity at all and my wisdom tooth was coming in.

I do not feel included when it comes to my extended family, friends, community or country. Most things labeled handicap accessible aren't including the Franklin County Social Security Office which slaps a handicap sign on their bathroom stall which the door is so narrow that my tiny wheelchair for my 112 lb. self rubbed the edges of the door trying to get into it, not meeting the 32” door clearance standards listed in the ADA laws nor did it meet the minimum 5’x5’ size limit in order to be ADA accessible so most people in chairs cant use it at all and even those with tiny wheelchairs like mine cannot get their char in far enough to close the door so are forced to use the bathroom with the door open, on their period while people walk past and see everything. It’s disgusting that we live in a society where people in wheelchairs, even if they can hold their bladders are forced to wear adult diapers or map out every public facility, only going to ones they know are accessible enough because here in the US we are so welcomed and marginalized that we don't even have access to about half of the businesses in the US let alone a bathroom that everyone else in the world who is not a wheelchair user takes for granted and when we are lucky enough to find a palace that has a toilet we can use, it's always the filthiest ones, the ones that able bodied people use as their private pooping palace believing that just because it’s two or three feet wider that extra three feet will make their fart inaudible.

This is a country where an able bodied person can buy a new car for $16,000 and a used one for sometimes less than 2 grand but if you’re disabled your new accessible vehicle costs around $75,000, a used… well many states you can’t insure a van that is more than 5 years old and cannot convert one more than 4 years old and it has to be less than $50,000 miles and fit a bunch of other criteria so used isn't much less. We live in a country where you are not allowed to pay an able bodied worker less than minimum wage yet SSDI comes out to $2.60 less than minimum wage and employers are allowed to pay disabled workers less than minimum wage. We live in a country where ADA laws were passed but police officers don't have to enforce any of these laws. Here in the US they have schools for girls only, boys only, black only, deaf and blind but no special schools for children with physical or developmental disabilities, just life skills training for adults so education is still not equal. A country where if the Black or Asian Americans are brutalized by the police or community members and it is broadcasted on the news even though more than 70 percent of police brutalities in fact occur to those who have physical, psychological or developmental disabilities but this is never mentioned even if the person fits into two minority groups.

This is a country where if you have a service animal that you rely on you still don’t have the freedom of religion because a church can legally turn away a service animal. A country where if you are a drug addict you can get 50 mg of low dose naltrexone free and go to suboxone clinics free of charge but if you are a chronic pain patient you have to pay over 300 for 2 mg of naltrexone to control your pain and stay off of opioids which are oftentimes the only things covered on Medicare but also the same medications being cracked down on not by people who need them for chronic pain but by addicts in turn putting limits on opioids so drug addicts can live and chronic pain patients who are in so much pain they have seizures and go into organ failure to live in agony and possibly even eventually die weather it be suicide because they cant stand the pain or from organ failure that results from the pain.

A country where doctors are taught “if you hear hoof prints on the ground think horses not zebras'' meaning when a patient presents with a symptom consider common conditions that can be associated with these symptoms not rare diseases allowing doctors to abuse and neglect patients and slap psychological diagnoses on them so they don't have to jump into the rare disease realm of medicine or even learn about it in school. This results in more than 250,000 deaths each year from medical neglect alone and that's not even the people like my mom who wake up on life support to find out days of their lives have passed and they are now living with permanent disability. A country where there are still states like ohio where you cannot sue for medical abuse and neglect unless someone died or comes out essentially a vegetable and if this results in disability where you are in a wheelchair or have limited cognitive impairment but can still speak and think to some degree, yet still resulting in permanent disability, it's just too bad, so sad for you because sure you went in for a simple gallbladder removal and came out needing the blood in your body replaced 4 times, going into exploratory surgery with a 5 percent chance of survival, split from your breast to your pelvic bone to have all of your organs removed, your liver repaired which fell apart multiple times in the process of trying to sew back together your liver the other doctor cut open and tried to hide for 9 hours while you bleed to death, sure you came out on life support after being deemed legally dead multiple times and had four brain aneurysms because of this trauma, which resulted in cognitive impairment, missed months of work only to get laid off, now deal with chronic pain, fatigue and weakness for the rest of your life and will never be able function like you once did ever again but you didn't die and you're not cognitively impaired enough so that's on you, the doctor on the other hand can keep operating on people as if nothing ever happened.

America is where people on Welfare, who are poor and in many cases don't want to work, make more money and get more financial benefits than someone on SSDI who is disabled and literally can't work. A country where people on Medicaid who are poor get better healthcare than the sick and elderly on Medicaid and if you qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid you might as well forget it because your insurance isn't much better than having no insurance at all regardless as to what special programs you fit into, where the Medicare formulary trumps the Medicaid formulary and if Medicaid for the poor covers a service but Medicare doesn’t, what Medicare says, goes and you simply don't get coverage for your needs. A country where a president cuts funding to the Orphan Drug Tax Credit, oftentimes the only funding that most rare diseases have to study possible treatments for these diseases while cutting taxes multi billion dollar industries have to pay in taxes such as his hotels and golf courses and every time they send out a relief check during Covid they make up for it by cutting funding to either schools or Medicare, particularly Medicare recipients with rare diseases, removing them from the formulary and allowing them to die to pay for these checks, hitting those with rare diseases because they are just that rare, meaning less people to complain so it's less likely there will be large riots for these people. This essentially reversed the act put in place ensuring those with preexisting conditions can get insurance leaving us so underinsured that many will likely die because they cannot get their medical care covered and can't afford it.

A place where those with disabilities are still not accepted, ADA is not yet being utilized in many areas or even seen as real or legitimate leaving us to be isolated from all aspects of our lives. We have very few rights, access, equality or inclusion more than 20 years after the signing of ADA into law. This leaves a lot of people like me to live lonely lives where we have no chance to succeed or in some cases such as those issues related to Medicare, not even a chance to live. By law an insurance company cannot deny you insurance based on pre-existing conditions however they can deny you coverage of the vital care you need once issuing you a card leaving insurance virtually useless with many rare diseases making survival of the fittest a terrifying reality. Welcome to America. The home of land of the free and home of the brave.

#MyEDSChallenge #MyHSDChallenge

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rjhamster · 4 years

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Overnight those tasks and routines can become the precious little places where joy is birthed. ~ Dawn Barton, Laughing Through the Ugly Cry

You Get ToDawn Barton, Laughing Through the Ugly-Cry and Finding Unstoppable Joy

Learning to Treasure What You Didn’t Want

Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. And yet I will show you the most excellent way. — 1 Corinthians 12:31

A deep breath and a huge, slow eye roll. That was my immediate reaction. A family member had just said to me, “You get to.” This was her attempt at reminding me of the holiest of postures — gratitude — so I’d do something I absolutely did not want to do: clean my child’s vomit off my dress and new suede shoes. I can assure you there was no feeling of gratitude in this moment as I stood covered in vomit at my cousin’s wedding. “Honey, you get to clean that vomit.” You get to. If you’re not familiar with this worldview, it’s an idea espoused by pretty much every pastor, women’s conference speaker, and all-knowing aunt I’ve ever encountered: to truly enjoy life the way God wants us to, we must be grateful 24-7. We should be grateful for the little things, the big things, the smelly things, the happy and the sad — in all things we should be grateful. The truth is this: that annoying family member was right. And I do believe it now. Finding joy in the messy, tedious tasks of our everyday lives is darn near impossible sometimes. Driving the kids to school, going to your job, helping with homework, keeping up with sports, meals, and exercise, feeling miserable about what you just ate, and wearing an underwire bra when all you want to do is let those puppies loose — every single day, life is hard, ladies. I know. The tasks seem never-ending, and it can be so difficult to find joy in the tedium. Until one day, when everything that makes your eyes roll is taken away. Overnight those tasks and routines can become the precious little places where joy is birthed. The struggle quickly becomes the gift. My youngest daughter, Ellason, was four years old when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Makenzie, my oldest, was married and out of the house, tending to her own family about an hour away. My husband, Craig, was in a dusty tent in the Middle East. It was just Ellason and me at home, with a lot of love and support from family and friends. During the biopsy on my right breast, something went wrong, and they burned the skin, leaving a half-inch, black, circular burn at the incision point. Believe it or not, that burn turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me. That burn became something visible and tangible I could use to explain cancer to a four-year-old little girl. We called it the “booby bug,” and it made sense to her sweet four-year-old mind. The booby bug made mommy sick. Getting rid of the booby bug was a lot harder than I imagined it would be. Chemotherapy was a wild beast, and it kicked my butt. The plan was six rounds of a chemo combination called “red devil” (because one of the drugs was red in color), and I would receive those treatments every two weeks. The next phase was a different type of drug that I would receive weekly for twelve weeks, totaling six months of chemotherapy treatments. My chemo weeks looked a little like this: Day 1: Chemo infusion. A nurse covered in protective gear — large plastic mask and all — inserted IVs into the port in my chest and changed them every hour until my body was filled with what I like to call “the poison drugs.” (Side note: Someone should give you a heads-up that your nurse is going to look like the hazmat dudes in ET when she walks in to give you chemotherapy drugs. That image sort of shakes you up. I mean, if the nurse is covered three ways to Sunday so she won’t touch the drugs, why is it a good idea to put them inside of my body? Food for thought.) The entire process lasted about four hours, and then someone would drive me home. Off to bed I would go, feeling tired but otherwise alive. Day 2: The poison drugs hit. Nausea meds and painkillers were a must, but this wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I had to go back to the cancer center for a bone marrow stimulant injection that increased my white blood cell count so my body could fight infection. I hated it. Imagine feeling so nauseated, with pain seething through every inch of your body, and knowing you have to go back to get a shot that’ll make you feel substantially worse. From a mental perspective, Day 2 was always the hardest for me. Days 3–4: The crescendo of suffering. The poison drugs battled with my body. They were pure misery. I prayed, cried, and begged for God’s mercy through them. Day 5: A hint of hope. A small flicker of light appeared at the end of the tunnel, and I began to feel a bit of relief from the process. The first five days are followed by nine days of recovery and desperately reaching for normalcy until the cycle ends and I am shoved back to the starting line all over again for the next Day 1. The more rounds of chemo I had, the longer the miserable part of the process would take. The effects of Day 2 would stretch over two or three days. And the effects of Days 3 and 4 — my rock-bottom days — would sometimes last almost a week. The overwhelming pain, nausea, and discomfort were constant, and so were my pleading prayers. But I can’t write honestly about my chemo days without adding this: it was in the agony and sickness that I found God on the most beautiful and intimate level. Nothing has pried open my raw, aching heart like having my body and soul assailed by that disease and its horrific treatment. In the depths of my pain, I came to know Him best. I believe it is often at our most helpless, our most vulnerable, that we are most primed to hear and see Him. Anyway, back to the vomit at my cousin’s wedding. Yes, it all comes full circle. I’m sharing the not-so-pleasant details of my chemo routine to paint a picture of what life was like in that season, but also to give you some background on how I learned to embrace the “you get to” philosophy. While I was undergoing treatment, there was no driving Ella to school, no making her lunches or picking out her clothes. There was no playtime, no homework together, no running and tickling. I wanted to play an active role in my own life, and I couldn’t. Chemo was a prize-fighting boxer, and I was on the ground slamming my hands against the floor to tap out. I wanted to be done; I begged for it to be over. I wanted to be a mom, and I didn’t want to be sick a moment longer. Despite how hard I was fighting, I was still riddled with guilt over the kind of mother I was to Ella. I think women are the only creatures who can be gripping the ring of a toilet in sickness and still feeling guilty that they can’t drive their babies to school. We are crazy, beautiful creatures, aren’t we? As I fought through weeks of chemo, I found moments of joy and laughter with Ella. Not on a playground or in a car drive, but in the sweet, quiet moments lying in my bed with her snuggled next to me, close to my belly and wrapped in my arms. I am not sure if I comforted her more or if she comforted me, but Ellason was my saving grace at the end of each day. When I felt well enough, I would make up stories, starring her as the princess, me as the queen, and daddy as the king. (The queen was always very beautiful, of course.) The stories would change daily, and she loved it. After months of treatment, I remember the day I was finally able to pick up Ellason from school. I was elated that I’d been given a two-week break from chemo, and I finally felt well enough to drive. It was something so small, but it meant so much. When the normal, everyday pieces of life get taken away, you realize they make up a beautiful and wonderful existence. Before cancer, I had taken so much of this for granted; I even thought of some of those activities as the burdens. (What do you mean, you need lunch again? Didn’t we just do that yesterday?) In reality, these mundane activities were the sweet blessings of life. When cancer took away the mundane, I finally understood driving my daughter to school was a gift. Chemo was teaching me how to fight for moments of joy and hope. I was learning to look for them, and I was realizing all those things I resented were actually things I got to do. In fact, I eventually reached a rather revolutionary level of “you get to” mastery. Remember what Days 1 through 5 looked like during my chemo treatments? The beast of chemo was destroying me and my life; I hated the treatments and all that came with them. I hated walking into that cancer center and being poisoned each time. Chemo was the enemy — that is, until I learned my hardest “you get to” lesson. Every time I arrived to get chemo, nurses took my vitals and drew my blood to make sure I was “healthy enough” to be poisoned. My body was weaker each round, and my white blood cell count needed to be more than one thousand. When I walked in for my fourth round of red devil, I was fighting with all that I had — but this time I was also battling a fever. After a few minutes, the nurse walked over and with pity in her eyes said, “I’m so sorry. We can’t give you chemo. Your white count is too low.” My body wouldn’t be able to fight the infection. I actually couldn’t get the thing I hated getting most. This was the beginning of a big mind-shift for me. At first I was a little relieved. They gave me a shot of white blood cell booster, hoping to increase my white count overnight, and sent me home. The next day I arrived, and I was ready. My vitals were taken, blood was drawn, and soon I would be heading back for the red devil. But wait. “Dawn,” the nurse said, “your counts are too low again. I am so sorry. We will try again tomorrow.” The tears fell so fast and so hard and wouldn’t stop for hours. I needed this chemo to fight cancer; I had to have it. How could I want something I so intensely loathed? That’s when I realized: I needed to change the story in my head. Chemo was a gift. I get to get chemo. Chemo gave me the ability to fight cancer and live. It was a gift that generations before me did not have. Three days later I was able to receive my gift again. I would love to tell you that my view on making lunches and driving to school has remained in a place of gratitude, that I do it daily with a skip in my step and joy in my heart, but I would be lying. I am human. I complain. I get overwhelmed and annoyed. I grow tired of driving back and forth to school. I roll my eyes at a busy schedule. I loathe going to the grocery store. But I do have a gift that many don’t. When it all seems like too much, I have the gift of remembering what it felt like to have it all taken away. I remember what it felt like to desperately want to drive a little girl to school and go to a playground with her. I know that feeling, and I am grateful for it. I get to make those lunches. I get to clean her vomit off my shoes. Never in a million years would I have dreamed the diagnosis of cancer was a gift. But I can tell you unequivocally it was. A crazy, wild, precious gift. I got to battle cancer. In that battle I learned to love my family more, and I met God on a whole new level. So whether it’s a life-changing battle or one of those mildly irritating or gross parts of life, they don’t look so bad when that story in your head changes. When you realize that the gifts you’re being given are right there in that unattractive packaging. You get to open them, and you might find out that God designed them just for you — for your good and His glory. Excerpted from Laughing Through the Ugly-Cry and Finding Unstoppable Joy by Dawn Barton, copyright Dawn Barton. * * * Your Turn What do you get to do today? Do you get to work from home? Supervise kids' distance learning? Clean the house? Do the laundry? Deal with frustrating co-workers? Shop for an elderly neighbor? How are the get to’s changing your perspective? Come share with us on our blog. We want to hear from you about what you’re grateful for! ~ Laurie McClure, Faith.Full

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