#funnily enough i’m not diagnosed yet

[adhd-culture--is]

adhd culture is strategizing the time you take your meds down to Like. The Minute. to minimize the bad effects and maximize the good.

#yes this does mean DURDLE GOT THEM DRUGS!!! #funnily enough i’m not diagnosed yet #😐 #but the fact that adderall doesn’t make me go batshit insane #is a pretty damn good indicator i have adhd #it helps me focus a lot #i’ve gotten so much done guys u have no idea #i was lucky that my first med worked out #so remember guys #you can do anything #including finally cleaning ur goddamn room #and putting away the Fucking Laundry #tw medication #cw medication #neurodivergent #nd #neurodivergence #neurodiverse #adhd culture is #mod durdle

[impunkster-syndrome]

thanks for responding

well, i’ve interacted with ppl of various stances, but what’s more important is that i’ve never been victimized by either of them, that’s for sure.

yes, i am aware of most thing you have listed, tho that’s not really what my ask was about.

i should’ve explained my intentions or something ig. and yes, i do mean no disrespect, as in “i have no beef with your views in general or with you personally, i’m not trying to defend or call out or proselytize any syscourse position” and i’m not here to invalidate your personal experiences, okay? i’ve read a post in my recs and i felt like i don’t agree with this wording yet am unsure if i’m on with this sentiment, so i wanted to challenge the part i’m weirded out by and mb see the logic behind it. that’s all, basically.

i believe i don’t owe my medical information to anyone? i’ll just say that if i didn’t think it’s appropriate for me to speak on this i sure as hell wouldn’t. anyway, you don’t have to believe me and i have no way to prove that my intentions aren’t sinister, so idk whatever.

frankly, i personally really dislike online discourses as a whole - it’s just an unstructured swamp of polarized radicalizing opinions that lead to no factual real-life activism, breeding hypervigilance and hostility instead, perpetuating constant infighting and harassment. i do understand where both positions are coming from but imo both “camps” suck if you dig deep enough and i’d say the “pro-/anti-endo” and “anti-/sysmed” labels are entirely useless beyond mentioning in DNIs and blacklisting tags, but i digress.

back to the ask. what i said wasn’t just “the experiences are different”, i specifically stated that disabled disordered systems are generally more vulnerable to ableism, saneism and stigma cuz of the symptoms that the disordered dissociation has vs. cases where plurality is non-disordered and non-disabling. so how is it “punk” and “pro-disability” to claim otherwise? i agree that disregarding any non-dissociative case as not oppressed is unfair, but if such case has any other stigmatized or systemhood-adjacent mental health issues then i wasn’t referring to that as “non-disabled” in the first place. or is that literally what you meant by “regardless of the intersection” bit in the og post?

the second part of the ask is settled, i agree to that.

Nowhere in either the ask or the original post does it say "regardless of intersection." It does mention intersectionality, but you're literally putting words in my mouth that never were there. At this point you are coming at this from a defensive perspective because you just keep making up shit like the idea of sysmedicalism being useful to disordered systems and making up your whole ass new definition of it (Plus the idea that plural always = dissociative disorder when that isn't the case even for some disordered systems!). Go reread the first post because you clearly didn't remember jack shit from it.

I have DID. Professionally diagnosed and medically recognized before then. I've been denied psychiatric and medical care due to it. We're RAMCOA survivors and have multiple sidesystems. We have experienced ableism from anti-endos and pro-endos. And I used to be a sysmed right before finding out I was a system at all. I've seen people actually fake systems and get outed due to admitting it- and funnily enough most were sysmeds.

My idea was that all plurality is a mental illness that was inherently always medical and is something to be "fixed." I saw a lot of chronic conditions like that. Now that I've gone through the journey of discovery, I don't see the state of being plural as inherently medical- but the distress and trauma can be. That's the big difference. Sysmedicalism sees the state of existing as plural as inherently from trauma and suffering, and therefore inherently a disorder and medical.

I don't think every system should have to see their existence as something that is inherently disordered or from trauma if they personally choose not to. Forcing disabled systems (Because, let's be real here, disordered systems are disabled and you brought it up) to view their existence as inherently medical, as something defined by suffering, is cruel and allows for no diversity in our disability. We aren't allowed to be happy in how we exist- we have to see ourselves as ableist singlets see us. Poor disabled things so broken by our experiences that we cannot know ourselves.

Sysmedicalism has this kind of ableism too since it bases the view of systems on the ideas of the ableist people who want to "cure" us of plurality. You see it in the "endos just don't know they're traumatized," "(introject) is too popular so everyone with it is faking," "you have to be traumagenic to really be a system," etc. The term itself- "system medicalist" is not useless. It is specifically for describing a set of beliefs that do actual damage. Calling it useless or performative to have a stance on something that is ableism that is extremely common online and so frequently has lead to doxxing, suicide baiting, threats, and no progress on actually talking about plural unity just shows how disconnected you are. So many people are so "Oh this is just online" when you do realize that these beliefs are held by people when offline, right? Online is just where people can be as rancid and ignorant as possible with little to no consequences.

You're playing defense for ableism because your whole ass first ask was going "Oh sysmedicalism isn't too bad because of my personal definition of it and inexperience with being impacted by it." Do you realize how you sound to anyone actually in tune with disability advocacy and has been in many plural spaces for years? To someone who has actually seen what sysmedicalism is and how that is the same beliefs of the neurologist who believed my DID makes me unlikely to actually know what I am experiencing just coming from the mouth of often a singlet inserting themselves into our discussions with tokenization or another system?

You keep making shit up. No one is saying that disabled systems are not impacted by ableism. What I am saying is that the idea of all systems being disordered, traumagenic, needing to have arbitrary criteria hit, and defined by our suffering is not helpful to fighting the ableism we experience from each other and others. This is on you for not knowing what sysmedicalism actually is and making it my problem that you keep pulling shit out of thin air to say I am saying it. Send me an ask one more time and you're getting blocked because I have repeatedly told you what sysmedicalism actually is and you're just being intentionally obtuse if you send another ask making shit up.

#madpunk #the blackbox askbox #mad pride #pluralgang #disordered plurality

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

This post is scheduled for April 11th, 2023.

This is the day I get the results from my diagnostic evaluation for autism.

I have been seeking a diagnosis since November of 2021. That’s when I was alerted to the possibility of being autistic.

Funnily enough, everyone I told misunderstood what I was saying, and I got a lot of congratulations about finally being officially diagnosed. I was not diagnosed. I was trying to say that I had just learned I might be autistic at all. I wasn’t even sure I was allowed to say that yet.

Now, 18 months later (and I am very lucky it was not longer), I might finally know for sure.

I hope I do get diagnosed.

To break this down for people who may not have experience seeking an autism diagnosis, I live in an area in the US that’s known for having a higher concentration of diagnostic clinicians. People move here on purpose to get access to services they don’t have in their own state. Even so, I’ve been on several waitlists, been explicitly turned away from clinics because their waitlist was too long, been turned away because I’m over 18, or been turned away because the price was too high for me to afford. On one occasion, I made an appointment asking for a diagnostic test, only to find that the doctor (whose secretary had sworn they could do it) was unable to do more than refer me to… yet another doctor whose waitlist was too long. I’ve been asked to drive to a clinic three hours away for an appointment at 7AM because they couldn’t possibly let me do the appointment virtually. With my parent. Because they couldn’t possibly call my parent for the interview portion, either.

In the end, the place that had the earliest appointment open up was able to do virtual appointments, didn’t require a parental interview, and was partially covered by my insurance. With my very good, very rare, high quality insurance from my dad’s job, the test only cost me $525. Which I still can’t afford to pay right now. And will have to pay in stages. This is, of course, before I know if I’m diagnosed or not. At least they use the DSM-5, unlike clinics in the area who were saying they were willing to consider testing me for Asperger’s syndrome, which is over a decade out of date and named after a known eugenicist (and literal Nazi).

All of this, of course, because my school actively punishes professors who accommodate students without an official disability diagnosis. Because I might get an unfair advantage over other students. Coupled with the fact that my scholarship requires I stay in the Honors College, many of my professors have straight up denied or ignore that I’m disabled. I am lucky that my professors this semester are kinder, or at least don’t care one way or the other.

Maybe today will make all the hoop jumping worth it. Maybe I can finally call the clinics and tell them to give my appointment to someone else, a sickly sweet “paying it forward” to some other desperate person whose wellbeing likely also hinges on an appointment several months or years away. Hopefully it makes their day to get bumped up to June.

And if it doesn’t? I’m not sure I can afford to try again.

[chemacetree]

A letter from a queer daughter to her mom

I love you

I know you love me

You held me in your arms tight, before they rushed me off to the NICU, without even a name picked out for me yet. You were so sick after I was born, and so was Dad, and so was I. What a trio were we! 

And yet, after all the APGAR score scares and the feeding worries and the bouts of preeclampsia and flu, we made it. Your little daughter, your first child and only little girl, named after both of your grandmothers. Here I am, all grown up, and queer. 

Dear Mom, I know you don’t get why queer people are queer, or choose to be out, and marry, and transition, and everything else queer people do. It’s not something you’re really meant to get. It’s not about you. But I know that’s not a satisfactory answer. It wasn’t for me for a long time. I know you don’t know all the right words to say, or the right pronouns to use, or the right phrases to stick to. I get it. I wish I could make it easier for you to keep track of everything; heaven knows how much has changed since you were born. 

You didn’t understand why I felt like I was running out of grace, or having to tiptoe between being queer and being your daughter. You promised that you’d love me and treat me well no matter what, and I believe you. I promise that I know you love me. 

I don’t know if you’d love my best friends, if you knew. I don’t know you’d take me seriously if I told you that the “boy” who wanted to date me in high school was actually a girl, or if you’d write her off as being too mentally ill to really know. I don’t know if you’d be excited for me to visit my internet friends if you knew they were getting married, as two non-binary people, instead of moving to a new country. It feels like every queer person you can think of has some extenuating circumstance or excuse to make you wonder if they’re really queer, or just traumatized, which doesn’t really comfort your daughter, diagnosed autistic and wondering if you blame my sexuality on my disability. Not, to be fair, that you’ve said anything to that effect. 

There is a whole part of my life that I just cannot share with you. How am I supposed to tell the person who spent an hour raging about trans people “forcing new grammar on people” that I’m happiest in my own body when I look visibly queer? That I want to be seen, not just as a girl, but a queer girl? That, if you didn’t FaceTime every week, I’d hang a pride flag in my room next to my crucifix and rosary? 

I dyed my hair and bought “unprofessional” skirts and got a button up with whales on it. I started doing my hair more and putting in hairbows and dressing up for no reason. I put pins with colorful beads on my lanyard. You see the clothes and the hair bows and the shoes and think “finally, she’s taking an interest in her clothing after twenty years”. I see the way my rainbow-pin-wearing classmates clock me and drop the tension in their shoulders. 

You have told me since I was little that God blessed me with a big heart. For a while, I wrestled with that, because I was naïve and gullible and too emotional for everything. It’s hard to make peace with, some days, that trusting people wholeheartedly sometimes means being led astray or hurt. But you encouraged me to surround myself with good Christian people, people with kindness and compassion, people who loved openly and gave generously without counting the cost. I have found them! I’ve found the people I want to grow up to become, people who love openly and warmly and reflect God’s love to others. And they are very often queer.

It keeps ending up that way, funnily enough. The people who seem to most embody God’s love keep ending up queer, or very supportive of queer people. And I think I understand why; the longer I held vinegar in my mouth, dripping hatred and condescension for queer people, the harder it became to love without some measure of distrust and fear, because what if they were gay? Or trans? Or something else I didn’t understand? I spent so long not knowing my own sexuality because I flatly refused to acknowledge it, even when my friends point-blank asked. I spent even longer terrified of how you reacted when I told you. My brother outed me. I’m lucky I’m the palatable flavor of queer for you, so you could encourage me to be a nun instead of trying to keep me from kissing girls or wearing boy’s clothes. 

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to do all the time. It matters that you care. It matters that you try. Queer people are not your enemy. They’re my people. Not some nebulous “them” with an agenda; but my community, my friends, and me. What you say about the most baffling and unpalatable queer person you can think of, in the privacy of your car ride home, you say about the comprehensible, palatable queer daughter in that car. 

I want to be able to tell you about my friends, my classmates, even my favorite DND podcasts. I want to be able to tell you about how cis people can get gender euphoria after all, and that when I looked in the mirror that first time with my blue hair and my new skirt, I got it. I want to be able to tell you that I’m finally going to participate in a wedding as the maid of honor, and not just the flower girl.

I wish I could rejoice with you and show you the Side A churches in our city, and have you come to Mass with me there one time. One day, when we’re both older, I hope we still can. There is so much joy to be had in being an openly queer child of God. 

Please come home with me. I want you in my life.

Sincerely, 

Your queer daughter, who loves you very much

[liu-lang]

i had another therapy appt that felt combative which made me cry afterwards. my therapist and psychiatrist are going to talk to each other on Thursday apr 13. Since I last wrote, I managed to have an appt with my psychiatrist after last week’s therapy appt where I brought up concerns about changing the diagnosis. We went down thé DSM 5 traits for this new diagnosis that my therapist is adamant abt and my psychiatrist said she doesn’t find that it fits and that she sees lots of patients with this diagnosis and doesn’t think it’s applicable to me….…funnily (scarily ?) enough, my therapist said today that bc she also sees lots of patients with this, she does in fact think I have this …

I told my therapist today that I felt that this diagnosis is fundamentally wrong and she said my reluctance / resistance to it is a sign that I have dichotomous thinking which means I do have this and I need to work on acceptance. I tried to explain well this is the first time I’m hearing it and the visceral rxn (her words) I’m having to it is bc it’s just so foreign to me …and she again reiterated she takes diagnosing seriously and is very careful about it.

I’m still trying to approach this with an open-mind and have some sort of hope since my psychiatrist and therapist haven’t spoken to each other yet. I know that ultimately the point of the diagnosis is to inform the course of treatment …and the course of treatment is to treat a symptom and I don’t have to agree with her on the diagnosis for it to potentially work but ….having a relationship with a therapist whom I don’t feel safe with or trust can’t be good for my healing.

anyway I made rosemary lemon orange zest crinkle cookies bc I didn’t know what else to do with myself since it seems quite apparent that therapy demolishes my sense of self.

#personal #baking #nyc move

[goldenlilium-ocs]

Who is your current muse, and who is their faceclaim/what do they look like?What is one item that you associate without fail to them?What is their favourite colour?Is there a song you associate with them? If not, what quote fits the best for them?What do they like doing in their spare time? How much spare time do they get?What one fact do you love about them, but might not have had the chance to share yet?

I don’t really have a ‘current’ muse because I partake in multiple roleplays at once but Juliette Bishop is who I’m using the most rn.

Her fc is Simay Barlas, except she had blue eyes and is a few inches shorter

Butterflies will always be associated with her along with the colour blue, which also happens to be her favourite colour. She’s a bit of a walking stereotype that way.

The quote I associate with her is ‘there is chaos in calculation’. I’m not sure who originally said that though.

Most of her spare time is spent on her chosen sport or reading with her friends. Sports take up most of her free time but she usually has weekends available and that time is devoted to her loved ones.

A fact not many know about her is that she suffers from PCOS. Funnily enough a few years later I was diagnosed with that myself.

#juliette bishop

[greenygreenland]

Riptide: Cole x Reader

-HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY NINJAGO!! -I write for females (just as a side note) because I’m a girl and it’s easy for me soooo yeah :/ -i know jay and cole are besties, but for this, let’s just say jay still likes to tease cole (friends do that anyway tho??)

Summary: Cole finds you at the beach trying to drown yourself. When he rips you out of the ocean, he realises you look familiar.

WARNINGS: Near-death (drowning)

The waves quietly lapped against the edge of the sand, tickling Cole’s toes as he made his way across the wet grains. The moon stood high in the sky, shining brightly overhead like a lighthouse. Cole promised to catch up with the others, but he couldn’t rip himself away from the calm of the waves. 

His heart stilled with the quiet waves, sinking into the wet sand like his feet. A cool breeze passed over his face and it brushed through his windswept hair. If only Ninjago could stay this calm. If only he could be like the ocean, free, never ending. 

Cole found himself walking deeper into the ocean and away from the banks. The waves slowly met his ankles, then his knees. It soaked into his rolled up trousers, travelling up until he was waist deep. He didn’t worry about being so far out since it was low-tide. And even if he did find himself getting swept out to sea, he still had his powers. 

Something softly splashed over to his left. He whipped around, immediately taking a defensive stance. As ineffective as it was, he’d rather be safe than sorry. 

Cole eyed the smooth waters. He wondered if it was a shark, or worse, a mystical beast he never heard about. For a few moments, it was quiet, save for the waves, the calm breezes, and Cole’s steady breath. “Maybe it was a fish.” he whispered to himself with a chuckle. Something brushed his leg and he reared back with a squeal. 

“Not a fish not a f--First Spinjitzu Master!” 

The first thing Cole saw was a shirt, then a bundle of floating hair and a face hidden among it. He wanted to freak out, but a girl was laying in the sand underwater. Underwater. He plunged under the cool waves, wrapping his arms around the girl’s torso and hauling her up. “First Spinjitzu Master... First Spinjitzu Master...” Cole placed a hand on his earpiece.

“Guys! I found a girl in the ocean. She’s unconscious and...I don’t think she’s breathing. Come quick!” 

“We’re on our way.” said Zane. The nindroid’s voice was a relief to hear. “We will arrive in five minutes, and as an extra precaution, I have phoned nine-one-one.” 

“Okay, great, great.” As Cole laid the limp girl on the grainy sand, he frantically looked her up and down. Even through the curtain of hair plastered over her forehead, he could tell her face was unnaturally pale. So much, that it could have been a mirror of the bright moon.

It suddenly occurred to Cole that he had to do something. The girl wasn’t breathing and she’d die if he didn’t do something. “Gyah! I’m not the smart one!” He ran a hand over his face. There was one thing Zane did bother to teach everyone in the group, whether it be for civilian use or themselves. Cole pictured Zane standing by his side.

Place the heel of your palms on the centre of the chest.

Cole placed his hands on the centre of the girl’s chest. 

Interlock your fingers. Remember to press two inches down.

Cole interlocked his fingers. 

I have read somewhere that pressing down to the beat of Stayin’ Alive is said to ‘do the trick’ and make it easier. 

And so Cole did just that. “Ha... Ha... Ha... Ha... Stayin’ alive... Stayin’ alive...” He wasn’t sure if it was working, or even if he was doing it right to begin with. How would pressing two inches down on someone’s chest do good? How would this save her from being killed?

Suddenly, she jolted upward, coughing and sputtering out a load of water right into Cole’s face. He didn’t care though. That meant the water had come out of her lungs, right? The danger had been avoided, at least for now. 

“COLE!” 

He whipped around, letting out a loud sigh of relief. Zane and Pixal took Cole’s place, reviewing her vitals and diagnosing her with whatever. He wasn’t sure what they were doing, so he stood off to the side as Jay babbled away. “What happened? Are you okay? How did you find the girl? You didn’t have to swim out there did you?” 

Kai looked at Jay weirdly. “Do you think Cole would swim out that far to begin with? He probably found her washed ashore.” Cole wanted to say something, but he was in a daze. The more he thought about the girl, the more he wondered where he saw her from. It was like a smell you know you’ve smelled before but can’t put a name or memory to. 

He ignored the background chatter and zeroed his gaze on her limp body as Zane carried her to the ambulance. When Zane turned around and motioned for him to come over, Cole finally came back to his senses. He could think about the girl later, right now, he had to answer some questions. 

Three weeks later

“Urgh,” said Cole. “Why do I have to go with Jay?” Sensei Wu raised a brow at him as if to say, ‘really?’. “What is wrong with Jay?” he inquired. “He is a brother, and brothers should be respected.” Off to the side, Jay loudly applauded. “Period. Brothers should be respected, Cole.” He rolled his eyes with a sigh. 

“Now,” Wu interjected. “I want you both to visit Jamanakai Village. You will find Mystake’s tea shop. Get these and only these.” He handed Cole an old drawstring bag. It had a label on the string, but the handwriting was so wonky that Cole couldn’t read it. “If she tries to kick you out, tell her I sent you. That is all, I expect you both back by Thursday.”

Jay let out a long groan. “Why can’t Kai do it? Or Zane? Or Lloyd?” He smugly glanced at Cole. “Or even my wonderful girlfriend Nya? I thought they were the responsible ones.” Wu raised a brow and Cole snickered. “You will both go to Jamanakai Village. That is final. While you are out, do not forget to eat and whatever you do, no Elemental Dragons and no vehicles. You will walk the entire way to the village, am I clear?”

“Yes, Sensei.” 

To say the walk was gruelling was a nice way to put it. There were tens of thousands of other words Cole could have said to describe the terrible pain of having Jay around. Of course, he didn’t actually mean that, but hypothetically, the walk was terrible. 

“You know,” said Jay, “these birds are said to have been exported from the Dark Island.” He pointed to a nearby tree, where three or four birds sat. Their oily wings were like liquid obsidian. Funnily enough, the colour matched both Cole’s gi and hair. He watched as one of them flew away, fluttering straight over his head and into the sky above. 

Cole wondered if it would be nice to live life as a bird, but then he realised he wouldn’t have a bed or cake or chocolate and candy. 

“I’m guessing they were exported before the Dark Island became...you know.” added Jay. “I mean, how could these cute little guys be from there?” He reached out to pet one of the birds. It squawked and bit his finger. “OW!” Jay rounded on the tiny bird, who actually appeared to be laughing. “Bad bird! That’s a no-no! You don’t bite people like that.” 

Jay ripped off his glove and sucked on his poor finger. Cole stared at him as he whimpered. “Is it bleeding?” 

“Gwee, I fondt knowh.” 

Cole dug a hand in his pouch. He felt around and pulled out a band-aid along with a small alcohol wipe. “Here.” Jay took the band-aid and wipe, gingerly dabbing it on his wound and wrapping the band-aid around his finger. “Thanks.” 

“Yeah.” 

They continued on in a comfortable silence, caring only to watch the leaves sway in the wind. When they arrived in Jamanakai village, their feet were sore, and they were tired. Jay’s stomach grumbled, and so did Cole’s. 

“I knew we should have eaten before we left.” Cole muttered. Jay let out a long yawn. “Sensei Wu said we were supposed to be back by Thursday. That’s three days away without video games. Do you think I can survive like this? Do you Cole?” 

He wasn’t listening. A heavenly smell reeled him in like a fishing line. It was sweet, yet it smelled like green tea. Maybe it was cake; Cole hoped it was cake. “Do you smell that?” he seriously inquired. Jay knitted his brows together. “The bakery? Oh, it’s right there.” He pointed to a small shop to their left, where a girl stocked freshly baked cakes and buns. 

Cole could already imagine how pillowy and soft the buns would be. They would have sweet fillings that melted in his mouth, and the cake would be the perfect texture with the right amount of cream. He made his way to the bakery, keeping a keen eye on the fresh chocolate cake. 

“Cole, we’re not here to buy cake.” said Jay. “If we’re gonna eat, we might as well eat a real meal.” Cole rolled his eyes and pointed to a slice of chocolate cake. “I’ll take one of that, please.” 

The cashier took out a pair of sparkling tongs. “Will that be all?” she inquired with a smile. “My grandma just finished steaming the buns, they’re fresh.” Cole whipped towards the cashier. For some reason, her voice sounded so familiar. It was again, like a smell that reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place. Sweet, nostalgic, kind.

That’s right, he thought. This was the girl he saved on the beach. But before then, he knew her as the studious (Y/n) (L/n) from the Marty Oppenheimer School of Performing Arts. When Cole had no one to talk to in class, she was there. When he forgot his lunch, she shared it with him. When he decided to run away, she promised not to forget him. 

(Y/n) walked out from behind the counter. She handed Cole a bag of two containers. “It was you, wasn’t it?” Her voice was rather soft, like she were embarrassed anyone else would hear. “You saved me, on the beach.”

“Y-yeah, I did.” Was it just Cole or was it getting hot out here?  He didn’t need anyone to tell him his face had gone beet red. “Thank you Cole. I might have snuck ‘a few’ more cakes in the bag. That guy’s your friend, right? There are some buns in there for him too.” 

Cole met (Y/n)’s bright eyes. They weren’t as lively as he remembered, but they still held that warm glow that always made him feel safe. “I--uh--(Y/n)...” 

“Yeah?”

“Uh...do you still go to the Marty Oppenheimer School?” Do you want to hang out sometime? “I mean...uh...” How have you been? “T-thank you for the food.” He let out a nervous laugh and (Y/n) chuckled a little. “If you’re wondering, I graduated last year.” she said. Cole’s eyes widened. Had that much time already passed? 

“I live in Ninjago City now.” she added. “I didn’t think I would make it this far, but I did. I’m here in Jamanakai for the next three months before I go back to the city. I heard you’ve been up to things too--ninja stuff. Saving lives.” She smiled at Cole, as if the two shared an inside joke. 

“(Y/n)! Help me carry this, it’s too heavy for me!”

(Y/n) glanced over her shoulder. “One second, grandma!” She turned back to Cole and wrapped him in a tight hug. It was brief, it was sweet, and it made Cole remember just how close they used to be. “I have to get back to work. See you soon Cole?”

“Yeah.” he awkwardly replied. “See you soon.” He watched as she disappeared out back. When did he finally become taller than her? When had she actually spoken so nonchalantly? Last time he saw her, they were still kids. They were young, and even with responsibilities, they were still free. 

“Sooooo, you’ve got yourself a girl?” inquired Jay. He took the bag from Cole and made his way over to the fountain. The two sat on the ledge as Jay sifted through the food. There were buns filled with red bean paste, lotus paste, and even barbeque pork. Under that were five different desserts. Two velvety chocolate cakes, one egg tart, and three pieces of perfectly wrapped mochi. 

Jay took one of the meat buns. “Wow, this is really good. Tell your girlfriend to teach you how to cook.” Cole let out a short sigh. “She’s not my girlfriend, Jay. I haven’t even seen her in years.” 

“What? Why?”

Cole closed one of the boxes. He dug around the bag for a fork, but he grasped a small slip of paper instead. Jay peered over Cole’s shoulder with wide eyes. “Ooooo she gave you her phone number? See! Dating. Case closed. I’m gonna tell everyone when we get back.” 

“No you aren’t.” Cole retorted. “Like I said, I haven’t seen her in years. She probably only wanted to get back in touch.” Jay raised his brows and Cole elbowed him in the stomach. “Get your mind out of the gutter.” He pulled out one of the buns and took a big bite out of it. “We went to the same school together as kids. We became friends there, but when I ran away from home, we lost contact.” 

“So go talk to her!” exclaimed Jay. “Before we go, I’m setting you both up on a date, or at least a night out together. We’re not going home on Thursday, got it? We’re staying ‘til Saturday and that’s final.” Cole raised a brow in amusement. “I thought you said you wanted to play video games.”

“If your girlfriend has a phone, then she has video games.” said Jay smartly. Cole let out a bright laugh. All he really knew now was that he’d have to come to Jamanakai Village more often. 

NOTE: I will make a part two soon, so stay tuned! Tip jar

#ninjago #lego ninjago #ninjago x reader #lego ninjago x reader #ninjago cole #ninjago cole x reader #x reader #fanfic #ninjago 10th anniversary #happy 10 year anniversary

[sophygurl]

Where’ve you been?

So sophygurl, what have you been up to during these past couple of years that you’ve been absent?

Well, it started in the fall of 2019 when my platonic life partner’s father got sick and died. Then in Jan. of 2020, my bestest friend in the whole wide world was diagnosed with terminal cancer - given about a year to live. Then this whole pandemic thing started. 

Somewhere in all of the swirl and chaos of the pandemic, the attacks on democracy, and the increasing climate damage, as well several crises in the lives of my loved ones - I also managed to develop three new health issues. Add chronic sciatica, gallstones, and well, a butt thing I won’t discuss in detail to my long list of symptoms and syndromes. 

Then, as I dealt with all of the above while also trying to support my bestest friend in her diagnosis, first my mom got diagnosed with cancer and then one of my roommates and closest friends was hospitalized for appendicitis which also ended in a cancer dx. 

Meanwhile, platonic life partner’s mom needed him (he’s my other roommate) to come stay with her for awhile because she needed hip surgery and I went to spend a week with my mom after her surgery. So there was a lot of upheaval in the homestead.

My mom has finished up all of her cancer treatments and has been decreed cancer free! However, it’s a type of cancer that is very likely to return and will be incurable when and if that happens.

Roomie’s cancer is very slow growing, so she hasn’t started treatment yet. The treatment is a very serious procedure - dubbed “the mother of all surgeries” - so they want her to get a little more in shape before going through it. She’s also had to switch jobs, and therefore health insurances, in the midst of all of this. 

I spent a lot of time helping bestest get her affairs in order and as she got sicker, just spending time with her to help her out. Eventually, her sister and I cared for her at home in her final weeks and said goodbye to her on July 13th. I spent another week at her place, helping her sister get ready for the funeral and sorting through her belongings - that kind of stuff. 

When I got home, I thought I might collapse. But instead I started coping with a frantic cleaning and organizing energy. That’s started to slow down, and I am finally taking the time to feel and grieve. It sucks. Do not recommend. 

I have a lot of support. I started about a year ago with a therapist that I really like and work well with. And I’m trying to add back into my life the things that I miss and that fulfill me. Tumblr, funnily enough, is one of those things. 

So hi, hello. I miss sharing all of my fandom joy and misery here with you all and the specific weird sense of humor this place has about itself. I’m hoping to keep popping my head back in more often. 

Life’s been chaotic. And hard. But here I am. How are all of you?

#tumblr meta #my life #cancer #terminal cancer #grief #loss #death #life with chronic illness

[chumpmagump]

24 things you've learned about your 24th year on this planet. 1. After having lots of trouble with love and loss, I've learned I will be ok. Remember you are growing into the woman you are are piece by piece.. reclaiming the person you were before the rest of them thought it was okay to take you away from yourself and you thought it was okay to let them. Many will come and go, but you dont have to lose a piece of yourself with them. Be strong, don't let them. 2. It is okay to love someone but not like them. It is okay to have compassion and empathy yet still hold your ground that you deserve better treatment. Compassion is not synonymous with lack of boundaries. 3. After talking to your therapist and doing some hardcore reflection you know you show traits of bipolar disorder or borderline personality. Your therapist thinks its bipolar, you're pretty sure its BPD.. this hurts because BPD is stigmatised to the shit house - you would almost rather have bipolar. You work in a hospital where BPD presentations are rampant and you diagnose them in your assessments a lot. Your coworkers like to say things like '' we got another borderline up in ED...'' as if its a massive inconvenience. You feel kind of weird being a 'quiet' borderline because you function quite well but know you have this fucked up secret that you keep from others for fear of judgement. Your behaviour isnt affecting your functioning enough to warrant a diagnosis. But that doesnt mean your experience isnt true. You're good at recognising when your triggered and where it originates from, and actively pull back more and more from impulsive decisions. You can sit with your emotion at times and you've stopped abusing phenergan and have been self harm clean for almost a year now? so yay for you regulating more of yourself! 4. You realise searching for validation only leads to experiences of invalidation. Stop doing it. 5. You're good at empathising to a point where you find it hard to be angry at others for long, you sometimes tolerate too much because you can reason with the persons reasoning for acting the way they are. You shouldnt mistake this for respect, because its not. You still need self-respect. 6. Making spontaneous choices has led to some new experiences, like changing jobs, moving towns, meeting new people. You've learned you've missed out a lot in your last 5 years of 20 hood because of fear of rejection/anxiety/ unsafe situation phobia. but now thats all you want to do, you fear staying static for too long more than you do change. You're ready for new exciting things. 7. Friendships matter way more than romance ever will. Build your friendships and you will always feel connected and OK no matter what the status of your dating life is. 8. Going for solitude car trips with your music blaring, singing meaningfully, on a road in the dark to no particular, with no particular deadline is your muse. You spend a lot of time in your thoughts and with yourself, and sometimes you imagine being in company when the loneliness hits. But funnily enough when company does finally arrive, you yearn for the space you had with yourself. Honour that time. 9. What you make of this life literally doesnt fucking matter. You will be born again. You will never get another chance to be in this body, with this family, with these friends, in this place, at this time though. Do whatever you can to enrich your experience and dont worry about if other people are having a better time. Concern yourself with your own experience. 10. You validate yourself. Stop asking your friends what you think you should do about a situation, dont feel the need to tell them every situaiton thats going on with you to hear their perspective. Listen to your own voice. You dont listen to her enough. 11. You dont actually have to put up with people being rude to you anymore, you can voice that things bother you. You're not quite there when it comes to friends you dont know too well.. or family you know blow up easily, but you're less of a people pleaser somewhat and i'm proud

of you for that effort.

12. You realise you need to stop seeking validation that others have hurt you. If it hurts it hurts. Simple as that. 13. Trust a person by their actions waaaaaaaaaaaay more than their words. And give a person 6 months. They tend to send their representative first for a while. 14. Sometimes you dream up people without knowing first who they are. Its ok to do this but don't be surprised when they dont fit the version you had of them in your head. Sometimes living in fantasy is far more intoxicating than what comes to fruition. Sometimes i wish i only knew some people for the period of time where they were warm to my heart.

15. Keep going to therapy, its doing amazing things and slowly but surely helping you change your procedurally learned patterns of behaviour including the desire and panic to want to fix social relationships that sometimes shouldnt be fixed. If someone did something shitty to you, and they are upset with YOU , for whatever reason- this does not mean what they did to you is void. It may even mean they are deflecting and gaslighting you. Get out of there and you know dont like goodbyes of any kind. so in this case slowly drop off contact. 16. people cant read your mind with how your feeling, so tell them.. what they do with that information is on them after that.

17. you dont have to take pictures of everything. You will remember the experience more if you dont. 18. Drink your damn coffee!! its not going to stain your teeth anymore. you are so diligent with your skin and teeth care, you deserve to live a little.

19. Dont have sex with friends, just dont. its messy.

20. Just because someone doesnt choose you, doesnt mean you arent good enough. It means they're blind, theyre not meant for you, or better doors are opening. Sometimes you need to shut a few doors for some to open. Trust the process. 21. Its time to start doing the things yu have said you were going to do for years. Its time to sign up for that dance class, its time to start writing again (and you have been!), its time to start stretching (and you have been!), its time to finish your courses (and you have been chipping away!). The best thing is you are so motivated right now to do all of these things. They no longer feel like words, they feel like happenings. 22. Your body and mind is so much stronger than you think. You are managing a 23 + caseload, and working across emergency and intake. You sometimes dont have a lunch break and work 9 hour days at times. You still have the ability to relay information and type notes at great speed, connect with clients at a great depth and come to eat, shower and have been dedicating time to study and friends. Your body is a machine, and you are so much more robust than you give yourself credit for. People look at you and see a small petite typical white girl, but you are strength! 23. You have learned sex can be a safe and very enjoyable experience this year very recently. Even though the partner turned out to be a careless character emotionally within the friendship, you were able to experience what it was like to be that connected with someone sensually in such an intense way which was a first for you. Now you know what kind of sex you like - well you always did but now you know it exists. Good for you.

24. You spend the most time by yourself with yourself. Validate your own experiences and try to interrupt the fantasy that you should be waiting for someone else to enhance or witness it. i know you like to think about what it would be like to sing in the car with someone next to you, or to laugh about a ridiculous vine and hear someone elses laughter drown out your own, or to dance around your house and have someone watch you in awe... but its okay to be your own witness. This is one is probably the hardest ones of them all... All you've ever wanted is to feel seen. You fantasize about it all time, you live in fantasy because atleast you can always feel seen there. You're not so sure if you put yourself out there you'll leave feeling more discarded and invisible than before. This way its safer. It's time to witness you. It's time for 25. A year full of spontaneity, new experiences, enhanced friendships, self validation and enormous growth.

It's finally time to stop hiding from people, pleasurable experiences and desire.

It's time for 25.

#august 2021 #birthday #reflections #journal #25th

[ms-hells-bells]

How did you feel or react when you started finding out you were bi? What was the journey like?

i knew in some way since i was young, i frequently had crushes on girls and was very jealous and possessive as a child. but i had no idea that that wasn’t how girls felt about their friends, especially being autistic and mentally ill (so, having attachment issues). but after i hit puberty and funnily enough, joined tumblr, i realised that you could like both men and women. a big part of me realising was my obsession with evanescence singer amy lee. i thought it was just a special interest thing (i wasn’t diagnosed at this point and didn’t know the term was special interest, but i knew i got more attached to things than most people), but then my friend pointed out that no straight girl would have literally hundreds of pictures of a woman, even a female celebrity, saved to their phone (i would save every picture i came across of her and it built up to like 430 pictures of her and the band). i was like “ah...yeah”. 

wanna know something embarrassing though? like i said, i had just discovered tumblr and although i was already falling into radical feminism, mogai caught a hold of me for two seconds because i hadn’t reconciled with the reality of gender yet (nearly thought i was agender, but as that thought entered my head, i was already in full radfem so despite being only 14, i quickly shook it off) and i came out as pansexual to everyone. i said that “bisexual was attraction to men and women and may have a preference for one or the other, pansexual is attraction to men, women, trans people, and non binary people, and there is zero preference”. to be fair though, that almost makes more sense than any definition genderists ever gave. but then like 2-4 months later people asked me about it and i was like “nah lol, i’m bi, that stuff is bullshit”, and EVERYONE went “yeah we knew, we were just waiting for you to realise”, proving that people staying silent about your bullshit identities doesn’t mean that they believe or support you.

so, i never OFFICIALLY, did a big come out, people at school would just ask and the topic would come up and i’d be like “yeah, i like women”. everyone just kinda knew. some figured before i realised, because from a very young age, i constantly got stuck with lesbian and bisexual rumours, and girls would freak out at me talking to them in changing rooms. and my mother always suspected because for my brothers and sister when mentioning dating, she’d say “girlfriend” and “boyfriend”, but for me she’d say “boyfriend or girlfriend” and i never noticed until i was older looking back. i asked her and she was like “yeah, it seemed like it since you were young” lol. i guess i was/am lucky that despite all the family issues, it was a non religious, non homophobic household and i never felt shame or fear of saying what i was, and never had to do a come out. i did have a semi crisis when i was an older teen, trying to figure out whether i was bi or lesbian though, because i had a severe phobia and trauma from men so it was hard to tell if i had compulsory heterosexuality or that i could be attracted to men, but men fucked me up to much. then i kind of just relaxed and stopped caring, and i can confidently say now that i am bi, i just don’t like being around men haha. 

[lixiefe]

The Sin’ Aid

Episode 2: “I want shit” - Greed

                    “I want your shit” - Envy

↳ Summery: here

↳ Disclaimer: Yang Jeongin here is not a psychologically diagnosed depressed person. He just bears a weak mental capacity and extreme nervous system driven by anxiety. I’ve made him so solely for the sake of the story. I personally don’t see him like this. This Jeongin has no correlation with the Yang Jeongin whatsoever.

↳ Type and Warning: It’s like a self-building process of the main character from a feeble to a confident persona, paired with comedy and humor. Self indulgent, but I don’t think mc will appear any time soon. As for warnings, there are descriptions of anxiety or negative thoughts one can have, but they’re portrayed as funnily as my boring self can.  

↳ Words: 1.6k

“I want shit.” - Greed

The next when he wakes up in uproarious confusion, Jeongin sees no one in the glittery crimson room. He looks around in frantic worry, trying to find any trace of human existence, anything to prove that he was not hallucinating under suns’ cretinous glare. But there really was nothing. It was as if he’d travelled to archaic fantasy with black swashes, silk glows and rambunctious voices and he’d just woken up, woken up into the reality he’s never liked.

But wait,

“Nonononono, it wasn’t a dream!” Jeongin exclaims, clutching onto his head as his pristine agony resembles his knitted brows and pessimism falls upon his curled body. It couldn’t have been. The rumpled vases and tripped upon silk sheets were intact, as new as before. There was nothing wrong with the hanging curtains, or the obsolete sills, or the modern vanity, or even the encompassing atmosphere, or anything in general-

“Oh, you woke up.”

Heart beat accelerating in half, no full, double, triple, quadruple and then even more- “Why are you here!? Who are you!?” 

Jeongin’s at the very verge of combustion as he points an accusing finger to the black figure emerging from behind the threshold. He finds himself shrouding among the slick blankets in an attempt of primary defense, but it’s of no help.

Heart beat on the verge of failure, countdown from ten, nine, eight..

The man advances towards Jeongin, only for the terrified boy to cower back on impulse. Jeongin watches as the very much attractive homo sapien, or maybe not, puts down a tray beside his bed in complacent lethargy, taking a seat beside him as if Jeongin’s never been scared, never opposed. The head to toe- pale white man clad in nothing but dark apparel offers Jeongin a scant smile, eyes congregating with a mischievous glint that has the poor boy going even more backwards. But the man doesn’t flinch, almost as if he’s waiting for something, waiting for an anticipated future, a blurt of words, a tornado of screeching dolphins or-

That’s exactly what he gets.

“Who are you!?” Jeongin’s so sure his voice has surpassed the vicinity of the mansion and further to the faraway neighbors, because at this point, his vocal cord cannot but hurt like hell. The man calmly lifts up a cup of steaming liquid from the tray before stretching it towards Jeongin, who hasn’t yet recovered from his post-awaken paranoia.

“If you drink this, I’ll tell you. How about that?” 

Jeongin takes an observing look of the person, partially flabbergasted at how superficial he looked. His build was like the masochistic virile soldiers, with broad shoulders and manly arms attiring folded sleeves upto his elbows, not to mention the tussock of chivalrous veins scrambled across. In all, he’d have been statistically intimidating if he didn’t sport the heart shaped smile on his suave face.

This was unreal.

“Come on, your throat must be sore,” Jeongin visibly flinches as he is drawn back into reality. He shakes his head multiples times, somehow in denial that he was, undoubtedly, checking a stranger out. He timidly takes the cup with a curt nod, it’s liquid emitting a whiff of delectable smoke. He scrutinizes the cup with ultimate glare, as if sending the cup of transparent tea into a dilemma of existential crisis, together with himself.

“What is this?” he asks. Even though he had a strong hunch of it being tea, possibility was that, he could be wrong. He hears the presence beside him emanate a melodious chuckle, attaining his attention in the span of an instant. “It is licorice root tea. It contains both antiviral and antimicrobial properties, it helps in alleviating the soreness of throat.”

It’s to kill me.

Jeongin tries his best to conceal the suspicion that crawls up his intestines, but cannot help how his eyes squint with skeptic gleam, neither can he help how the mystic man catches up to that almost too easily. “It’s not poison,”

Jeongin nervously nods as he pretends to give in, sniffing the tea in disputable sanity as he gingerly takes a sip, immediately scrunching his nose afterwards. No matter how impetuous his pretense of disgust was, he couldn’t deny that the warm tea really did something to his throat. There was a unique sensation, something subjectively pacifc traversing with the flow of it. As much as he’d wanted to restrain moaning out in pleasure, he couldn’t object the little hum that left his lips at the heavenly cognition.

“Does it feel better?”

Jeongin’s eyes snap back to the older male, a tumult nod following suit. He hears him elicit a throaty laugh, the other’s black eyes penetrating through his quivering orbs in an expectation he couldn’t guess. The man raises a brow, his indicative smile rendering Jeongin even more confused than he’s ever been. “What?” he questions.

“Won’t you ask?”

“Ask what?”

“Alright, I’ll just tell you,” the man pursues his lips into a thin line, almost imitating a dimpled kangaroo. But the curve of lips was as momentary as the wee gap of silence before he speaks, “I am the ferrets sin of Greed. And welcome to my humble abode.” Sin of Greed engages into a small bow, hands upfront into a gesture that reminded Jeongin of all the historical movies he’d watched.

Despite of this being an introduction, no matter how much anachronistic as it seemed, Jeongin was intimidated out of his lungs. But ferrets sin? It seemed highly unlikely that a ferret would sin, much less be used as an euphemism to demonstrate any type of iniquity. Ferret was such an innocent animal; how could he dethrone such a feeble animal from its carefree label?

Its cruel to Jeongin.

“I want your shit.” – Envy.

“Do I have a choice to leave?”

“No, we’re keeping you.”

Don’t fall down for god’s sake you weak human being.

My legs....

“I think we can give you that room, Sloth was just vibing wherever he saw fit. He sleeps everywhere,”

Jeongin has experienced quite much of emotional, physical, somatic or whatever twisted rollercoaster there was, but not one like this. Not one where he’s walking on the slippery tiles of a mansion with an unknown man who’d started basic overture with exclaiming a ferret to have sinned. To have accumulated enough courage as to walk with ferret’s sin, on the floor of ferrets sins’ house, listening to the oblique words of ferrets’ sin and right beside the ferret’s sin himself, Jeongin was somehow proud of himself, besides being menaced. Even though this was unusual, extraordinarily odd, to be in company of someone he didn’t know was even a human to start with, there was a comfort in how the ferret’s sin talked, swift like wind and smooth like silk that had Jeongin obeying him without a second complaint.

“And here! Oi bro,” Greed calls over with a prominent thick accent, waving his hands in vigorous waves as he hollers to the other side of the spacious area. Jeongin dares to sneak a look at whoever he was calling, eyes immediately forming the shape of saucers and throat emanating a gasp. He'd seen the guy before, tumbling over the hanging silk comforters in a panic that surpassed even Jeongin’s.

But right now, he looked so intimidating, with a red beret and black wear, he was like a demon's reincarnate. But that vanished as soon as he broke into a wide smile, simultaneously ‘Oi bro'ing back at the paler man. Jeongin was displeased with how terribly quickly the beret man changed from murderous to an innocent cat who beamed at the mere sight of their friend. He came almost rushing, in the duration of a second as the both of them shared a knowing look.

“Well, meet-” Greed pauses in mid-sentence, lips agape at the revelation that he, as embarrassing as it was for him, didn’t know the name of the latter. “What was your name again?”

Jeongin gulps, eyes settled downwards in strange concentration, and If I take a second look, I’ll die chants. “I’m- I’m Yang Jeongin,” he says. And no sin of any silly animal. I’m normal, I’m Jeongin. And I shall not be nervous in front of two confident people who are going to do nothing-

“He’s the one we’re keeping right?”

Shit.

Jeongin thinks of any plausible accumulation to justify what ‘keeping’ could mean. But it seemed like they’d abducted him, or adopted him from an orphanage, or simply decided to raise him out of pity. And the thought of it, made him even more nervous than he’d been.

The stupid nerves.

“Yes, well, meet Jeongin.” Greed acquaints. Jeongin finally looks up, eyes trailing upwards to the gorgeously shaped new presence. Jeongin feels a spike of self-conscious terror pass through him like tsunami evading his guts; because from berret guy’s dirty blonde tresses to the marvelously dotted freckles scattered on his pronounced cheek bones to his button nose and to his heart shaped lips spread into a gargantuan smile, it’s the epitome of ultimate beauty. A type of glamor that cannot be rated, because no one is qualified enough to evaluate someone like him.

“Hello! My name is Felix,” he speaks with enthusiasm subsequent to his every word. He’s normal. Haha, he’s normal. Jeongin is partly surprised, partly surprised at why he is surprised, and partly surprised that this man did not have an animals sin incorporated into his prelude. Jeongin almost breathes a sigh of relief when the latter speaks again, “I am the sheep’s sin of Envy,”

Shit part two.

First ferret, now the sheep has sinned? Which sheep has sinned doing what? Jeongin doesn’t know why he’s stressing over the animal’s anonymous sins, but one thing he knows for sure is, this is supernatural. There’s no way the reality is the reality, no way he’s experiencing this; because first of all, in no way have ferret or sheep sinned! Secondly, these people are as surreal as they could be and that’s enough reason for Jeongin to think that he’s crazily dreaming in evening’s artificial light.

“Sh- sheep?” Jeongin stutters with an inaudible hiccup. Felix’s eyes transform to a darker shade in utter abruptness, squinted eyes forcing Jeongin to lean back in fright. “You’re really provoking my sin,” he pauses; and Jeongin is sure he’s done something wrong in these faint minutes. He knows he’s signed up for a crying session, a series of ‘I’m always trouble’ and such negative words plundering his head. But he doesn’t expect the next words at all.

“Why are you this perfect?”

Because who would believe?

~♪~

A/n: Uh....hi, i donno.

#stray kids #skz #skzwritersclub #yang jeongin #bang chan #lee minho #lee know #seo changbin #changbin fanfic #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin fanfic #han jisung #han fanfic #lee felix #felix #kim seungmin #seungmin fanfic #stray kids fanfiction #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #comedy #seven deadly sins #seven deadly sin' au #greek mythology #yang jeongin fanfiction #stray kids imagines #skz imagines #i love stray kids #stray kids x seven deadly sins #lee minho fanfic

[theravenclawmonster]

I thought getting diagnosed would be able to get me help...(post 2 of dunno how many)

The previous post of this series of posts can be found in this link post 1

Trigger warning: This post (and the later continuation posts after it titled the same) may contain mentions of abuse, mental illness, suicidal thoughts and many more things which i will try to edit in it after writing the post(s) (hopefully i’ll remember to) [yes, this is the same in all posts in series]

Disclaimer: this is just a written account of events that happened in my life in the past few weeks and my emotional/ physical response to those events. I am writing this here so that it stays here as help for people to read and maybe see what certain things feel like, and as proof or diary for when i forget what really happened and start to believe her words. Also, this is going to be a long post... a very long post. 

Okay, where was i? The first visit to the doctor. I had my tests done and bought the acidity medicine and the vitamins he suggested (i had already started to take vitamins again since a couple of weeks before, he just added folic acid to that. I also have a bit of an issue with vitamins and people telling me to eat them indicating that all will be well after that; but more about that later). in the pharmacy, my mother was pretty upset with me cuz i kicked her out of the room and told me some stuff i don’t want to remember right now. ummm... basically she said “ why did you ask me to leave, what secret were you going to tell the doctor? what did you tell him we did to you? i know what you think about me. you could have just said it all in front of me. what was with all the secrecy” [funnily enough, although i did ask her to leave, my reason was cuz i can’t really speak in front of her (she interrupts a lot too) and i was worried that i’d cry and didn’t want to hear about it for another 6 months. there was no secret or i didn’t even think about mentioning the abuse, cuz how do you just go to a stranger and say “ hi i am in pain and my parents abuse me”. even asking for help for my pain was demanding enough for me.] . she also “informed” me very angrily that the it wasn’t allowed for a woman to be alone with a male doc, a nurse must be present (which was not present) and that is probably why doc didn’t do the proper physical checkup. Well! he should have (if he thought an extensive one was necessary; he did check my breathing and stomach softness), called a nurse in or my mother in. i didn’t have any issues with him doing my physical checkup alone too.  and he didn’t mention anything about that to me at all.

Anyway, I went back thinking God knows how long was this process was going to take and if i had the energy to fight for myself and make people believe that i was actually in a lot of pain. the reports came back fine (the expensive test one too, to much displeasure of my father “but this came back fine, so expensive for no use. why did he even write that test?” as if it would have been somehow better to get a positive test back for a disease?! I really don’t know how his mind works. By the time all reports were in, it was time for my appointment at the psychiatrist and it was decided to go to her first, then on our way back show the reports to our primary doc. that way we could also talk to him about what she said.

Oh wait, i forgot to mention in my last post. the doctor only suggested the psychiatrist and later sent me her number saying that i have told her about you please take an appointment. i had to call her and i asked about her fees which she very nicely said would be discounted and that helping me and understanding what was stressing me was more important. I felt so weird then, i don’t really hear these type of things very often.... or almost ever. 

going to the clinic was easy enough, of course my mother and father accompanied me. and my mother did follow in. [let me just add that i only remember about half of what happened so...] the doctor ( hereby referred to as Psy lady) asked me “so, how are you?” and i said “ i’m good *smiled awkwardly as she realised that was not what she meant to ask*. she was like okay, how do you feel and what do you want to discuss me with. so i just sat there like a dumbass. then i asked her how much the other doc told her about me. she said it was just that you are his patient and needs psychiatric help in his opinion.

I am just going to make a dialogue format written account for that and the next doctor’s visit as this seems way too confusing.

At that time (not sure) my mother interrupted;

Mother: *turned to me* “if you don’t mind may i tell her the history etc” *in pointed politeness*

Me: “ok.”

Mother: *launched from how i was such a brilliant smiling child and wanted to take this scholarship abroad but she said no* *went off a long tangent about how she was just being a nice worried parent in controlling my life and now feels guilty cuz i can’t let it go* *finished by saying* “Dr., she just can’t forget that, she is stressed no job plus the lock down etc you know how it is. then she found out she has scoliosis in january and i think she has taken it to heart, like really it is completely asymptomatic and i have asked the doc she won’t have any problems cuz of it in the future” (i am guessing she meant having babies but really who knows) “she has just taken stress over that”.

Psy lady : *scribbled something on her paper* “My i have some time alone with her?”

Mother: “yes yes sure” *left* 

Psy lady : “so tell me a bit about yourself.”

Me: *was still fuming and recoiling and shaking in my seat cuz i just don’t understand until how long is my mother going to throw that in my face. it has been years and i wasn’t even that upset about it (at least i just quietly internalized it) but she refused, controlled my life (since birth btw and still does now) and not even let me do anything else i want to do, nor find a job, then proceeded to throw her ‘oh i feel so guilty, i am such a good parent. i have commited a crime by being caring and now i must be punished oh!’ at me. Like where am i in all that? you say no, you control, your guilt, your love, your care, your image as a parent that must never be broken. where am i in all that? ALSO you never listen to my complains about pain so shut up* 

Psy lady: ...

Me: “umm... hi... i umm never had a dream, but then i found this thing in my mid-twenties and i loved it, but they didn’t let me pursue it, then didn’t let me do anything. and now they act like i am a burden on them. now i have nothing to do or like, and i can’t even find a job or have anywhere to go. i don’t even really wanna die, i am just tired” *burst into tears yet again as i realized i had no idea why i was telling her all that and it felt so fake and story like at the same time*    “... i can’t even breathe and i am in so much pain all the time that i feel like detached from my body cuz every time i try to be in it it fucking hurts.”

Psy lady: “are your parents always this much controlling” *pointed to the door indicating my mother*

Me: “they are emotionally abusive”

Psy lady: *had been looking into my eyes but looked away at the word abusive and didn’t say anything*

Me: *continued after a little shock that i actually said it out loud* “I can’t walk, my knees hurt” *tried to repeat almost all that was possible from the previous doc*   *also told her about feeling dissociative and explained a bit how that feels for me* * told her all about how i was fine in dragging me through life but now that my body has suddenly collapsed (where as before it was just emotional pain and numbness and occasional body pains in back and stuff nothing too overwhelming or maybe i was mentally strong to ignore it) i feel very scared and lost. I was dealing with everything fine on my own even when i felt like dying but now i cant handle anything, i can’t even act in front of others; something i am exceptionally good at* *talked about lowered brain function, slowness, low blood pressure, no energy suddenly, not being able to retain information or remember anything, not having a concept of time and memory*

Psy lady: *explained about DPDR disorder and asked me about sleep eating etc.*

Me: *repeated the same: loved sleep can’t now, loved eating can’t now* 

After some time of explaining asking and answering, she said that i have depression and what happens is that our brain stops making certain chemicals and to get it to make them again we have 2 options. one is medicine; the other is motivation and exercises. it seems like the latter would be hard for me (and i confirmed that i infact cannot walk or do almost anything and exercise is too painful cuz pain everywhere) she said that the best route in my situation is to start the medicine for some weeks (she said she’d not give them for more than 4 months; whole course including tapering them out) and explained that the medicines were very safe and answered all my queries about dependency on them or side effects etc. I said if that is what she thinks would be best and if taking them means i could feel alive again and my brain function would return to normal.

she then asked me to bring my mother back in. she explained the medicines to her and said i have diagnosed her with MDD. My mother asked what is that. She said Moderate Depressive disorder. my mother asked if the medicine was necessary. she  said yes, and to not worry as these were safe and she’s only giving to get me started and pull me out of this extreme state, only for a short time. she also said that come back after 10 days of eating these, so we can see the effect and the side effects if any, and that day she’d also get me an appointment for a psychologist who worked in the same clinic as she thinks it would help me immensely. we agreed. took the medicine and left for the doc no. 1′s clinic. My mother didn’t say anything.

we reached his office and throughout the short car ride and while sitting there waiting for my turn, i was feeling very... accomplished? enthusiastic? Dunno... I was just trying not to cry cuz i finally had it written on paper, i was finally diagnosed, i had finally gotten help. yes, it was only a start and i don’t know much about how doctors work diagnosis and how much more can be added in future visits but it was a start. i finally did something to actually help me.

Finally, our turn came. we showed him the reports and told him what she said and prescribed. My mother asked him if the meds were necessary. 

doc: “yeah they really believe in starting meds right away.”

mother: “I don’t want her to take them, it’s like giving up. she can use her will power and get better right?” [she also added something very weird like ‘these stamps (mental disorders diagnosed on paper) are not good for a woman’ or something along this line]

Doc: “yes she can. i too would suggest she do that.”

Mother: *went off on a long tangent about how when she was my age she had depression after having my older sister. but she will-powered through it and didn’t take the meds etc*

doc: “yes i agree, but it really depends on her is she willing to do it” *in a tone that suggested that i should say yes immediately and will-power though life*

Me: * realizing no one is listening to me* “doctor, can you please talk with the Psy lady and ask her if they are necessary in her opinion cuz i have no will left to power though with.”

Doc: “okay.” *called her and talked right then* * told her that he thinks it would be better to willpower through it?

Mother: “well she can will-power through right?”

Doc: “well the Psy lady said that she has been powering through with her will power for years; she has none left anymore. so she thinks that meds are the best option and besides” *looked at the prescription again* “these meds are not addictive and very safe.”

Mother: * insisted on no meds for 15 more minutes and had a long discussion with doc about praying, watching motivational speakers and what not*

doc: *joined in enthusiastically*

Me: *stared into the distance and stops listening with my wobbly neck and painful back*

Doc: “well she is not even listening. can you do it? exercise?”

me: “no it hurts, as i have explained before, not like the yayy muscle cramping up cuz i worked out way and i will love exercise in 2 weeks time way. No! the tendons hurt the bones hurt the joints hurt extremely painfully and it increases with time, even after 2-3 weeks it doesn’t get better.”

Doc: “okay, how about friends? social life? what do you do at home etc”

Me: “my friends are not here, i never made new ones. no social life. even when i was going to class before the lock down, it was from home to uni, uni to home. had no friends there. and i did walked in uni for about half an hour or even more but it hurt in the beginning, i thought okay, cramps (although my knees and heels were very painful too) but it almost felt like it got better (the cramps part) but then it got way worse and after a month i couldn’t walk for more than 10 minutes at a very slow painful speed.”

Doc: *asked about pets, anything that would suggest i was a living being with a life*

Me: “pets are not allowed and so is leaving the house by myself.”

Mother: *interjected* “we have never restricted her for anything.”

By this time, i had frankly given up and i don’t remember what happened next or where the conversation went. just remember something along the lines of “ for these 10-15 days before the next Psy lady appointment, let her do whatever she likes to, don’t ask her don’t control her. let her start up her social life again. she needs to be around friends and the things she can enjoy” something like this. to which my mother said very confidently “sure whatever she wants to do”

then, we left his office and in the car she told me to “not eat the meds as we have ‘now discussed it with your doctor”

this is getting way longer. i think i’d make one more post about it, or maybe one more after that for bits that i forgot. this post seems so badly written upon second inspection. this is not even the 40% of what happened but i don’t remember what happened exactly, or even the timeline.

The third and hopefully last post of this series can be found here post 3

#emotional abuse #abuse #actually abused #abusive parents #depression #MDD #chronic pain #tired of life #dpdr disorder #dissociation #scoliosis #migraine

[xanyoules]

Aspiring To Be A ‘Good’ Psychopath

Since studying psychology, it’s been hard to pinpoint a specific area that I love the most. There comes a point you’re encouraged to pick a discipline. Are you a neuroscientist? Are you a social psychologist? Perhaps a statistician? Personally, there’s too much out there that fascinates me for me to pin down a specific area. Maybe I will in time, but for now, I’m enjoying exploring all psychology has to offer.

One debate we come back to time after time is the validity and consequences of labels. Medical professionals have the ability to label a human being, usually according to a medical model, and that label has a lot of power. It can both liberate and oppress. I was curious about how labelling works and if there’s scope for expanding a label despite popular stereotypes and myths. I decided to research psychopathy, after all, who isn’t morbidly fascinated by psychopaths? I began to read Kevin Dutton, a British psychologist who specialises in psychopathy. His pop-psychology books, ‘The Wisdom of Psychopaths’ and a collaborative project resulting in ‘How To Be a Good Psychopath’ (written with Andy McNab) were some of the first literature I’ve read that suggests psychopathy could be a neutral phenomena or even good.

Dutton’s argument rests on the fact that the traits that define psychopathy are traits we all can cultivate and they are not inherently bad traits. They include: ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, charm, persuasiveness and a lack of conscience and empathy. In ‘The Wisdom of Psychopaths’, Dutton looks at how if someone from a low socioeconomic background or with challenges in life experiences these traits, they are more likely to develop into a ‘bad’ psychopath simply due to their environment. If you are fearless, ruthless, and are by no fault of your own living in an extremely deprived area, you may turn to criminality to advance your situation. However these traits when linked with more affluent settings can be a great advantage. The charming CEO? The persuasive City broker? The ruthless lawyer? The difference lies in whether you are privileged or oppressed.

Dutton and McNab’s collaboration whilst easy to read and mildly amusing gets a little tiresome after a while, drifting away from actual psychological insight and into boorish, macho banter. I would still recommend it if you have an open mind, enjoy psychological discourse and would like to hone your (good) psychopathic skills! I’m cursed with something diagnosed psychopaths are lacking: emotions. I feel everything on a deep, intense level that rocks me to my core. Psychopaths can feel but it is extremely unlikely they will feel remorse or depressive emotions. Some neuroscientific research suggests psychopaths have less activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for the emotion of anxiety and fear. This is what can lead to psychopaths constantly chasing the next thrill; they aren’t scared of the consequences and are always looking for excitement.

A prisoner in Broadmoor Hospital, England tells Dutton: “I have to feel good. Feeling good is an emergency for me.” However, his psychopathy and personal actions have led to him being a patient in a high-security psychiatric setting, so we can already infer this emergency was causing harm in the outside world. Yet, the quote stuck with me. All too often (in my experience and many other millennials) we can forget to prioritise feeling good.

Here are the self-growth points I took away from Dutton’s insights.

A Good Psychopath:

Lives in the moment. Psychopaths don’t plan! They live in here and now. Dutton even talks about how this trait is linked to the current trend of mindfulness. So … that email? Those cross words with my BFF? I’ve already moved on — good psychopath style.

Doesn’t take it personally. Dwelling on an insult or perceived injustice towards you for hours, days, or even longer is simply giving your energy to something or someone for no good reason.

Funnily enough, a good psychopath is agreeable. Non-psychopaths will fight a corner for their whole lives. Psychopaths, because they don’t things personally, can agree with you even if they think your idea is trash. They’ll end up doing what they want anyway, so why waste time in an argument?

Is rational. They can step outside of the moment and put emotions to a side, therefore less likely to get into a verbal-bust up or have their ego bruised (it’s unlikely they’d be feeling the way many of us do in heightened situations anyway, especially those of us who are atypical/non-neurotypical). They won’t be feeling hurt, upset, angry, frustrated, anxious, fearful.

Has fun! A good psychopath likes to have a laugh. They love charming people and they enjoy people admiring them but their whole self worth doesn’t rest on if others like them or not. Psychopaths actually don’t care. They’re uber-confident.

I don’t always manage to achieve these goals. Like with any form of self-care, practice can take time.

Concluding, I would argue that yes, there is such a thing as a good psychopath. I know I am not one and never will be due to those pesky emotions and my ridiculously overactive amygdala. Some of my personal growth goals are related to being grounded, more present and less reactive. I’ve made progress with these over the past couple of years and I believe the actions I’m taking forward from Dutton’s work will contribute to my journey. I also have a few friends who, if not are good psychopaths, irr on the side of good psychopathy and inspire me with their pearls of wisdom. They insist “playing the game”, chilling out, cutting your losses and jumping into the next big thing is worth it. Whilst I’m good at these in theory, I’m always left with an emotional hangover: I can get stuck with feelings and anxieties, a need to constantly defend myself, overthink something or worry of other people’s perceptions of me. I’m working on replacing that inner critic’s voice with an inner good, kind psychopath. Instead of “ugh, now they hate you. You’ll never get past this” I’m working to implement a “aw shucks, that’s awkward. Never mind. You did your best, kid. No hard feelings. Let’s crack on!”

Much better, isn’t it? I hope you can find your inner Good Psychopath too.

#psychology #psychopathy #mental health #self care #self growth #personal growth #goals #self reflection #good psychopath #labels #kevin dutton #psychopath #psycho #writblr #writing #academia #research #academic

[bathedinobscurity]

//OH BOY. 2020.

It’s been a year, hasn’t it y’all? I know for most of us it hasn’t been a good one by a longshot, including myself. Most of us have been on lockdown since March or April, some more so than others. And of course there’s all the other things that happened in 2020 that I can’t even begin to list here.

But ignoring all of that for a moment, a few big things have happened to / with me this year. And I figured I might talk a bit about those. Under the cut because it’s long [in hindsight, it’s REALLY long hsddfkjfkjf] and goes into some personal stuff not everybody is gonna want to read.

I wouldn’t call it a vent exactly, but both negative and positive stuff is talked about in this in a lot more detail than I’ve gone into otherwise, so beware of that.

Of course, the first big change was me choosing to archive @alchemyready​ and move here. I think it was the right choice, because I really was losing muse for Varian, and honestly... Tangled the Series was my life for an entire year, but I was getting burnt out. I needed a change.

Funnily enough, when I switched blogs, I never even predicted that Infinity Train was gonna take over my life. I had fallen headfirst back into one of my first three main fandoms- the RPG horror game Ib. That lasted for all of about a month before I caved and finished Infinity Train.

I’m super happy I got into Infinity Train, even if I really wasn’t ready to switch main fandoms when I did. I’m still really hoping it’ll get renewed soon. I have a lot of hope for a book four, but not so much for books five-eight. But you know what? We’ll see. Maybe HBO will surprise us.

Then there’s the second thing, which has less to do with the blog and more to do with me. I finally hit the milestone I’ve been waiting to hit for the last two years- I turned eighteen. That happened back in September.

I didn’t post about this a whole lot, but I was having a lot of problems with my mom prior to that. She’s been one of those parents that’s over-paranoid about the dangers of the internet, and she didn’t know I was on social media until late 2018 when she forced me to show her everything I was doing online.

Ever since then she was constantly threatening to make me give her all my login information so she could read what I was doing, which I did Not want to do, and I’ve been waiting for baited breath to be legally allowed to say no.

Now that I’ve passed that milestone, she’s stopped asking. I’m so thankful for that, ‘cause this year has been too stressful to deal with that on top of it.

The rest of the year has been kind of scattered ups and downs. I’ll be honest, my anxiety problems have gotten worse. I don’t talk about this a lot here either, but I’m nearly constantly dealing with that. I haven’t been formally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, but I know I have at least one if not multiple.

I struggle with health anxiety and social anxiety, as well as some anxiety issues I’m not entirely sure what to call. I deal with intrusive thoughts and anxiety attacks, and tbh some of my frequent bouts of writer’s block have a lot to do with this problem.

The lockdown has been dragging me down quite a bit. I’m under more restrictions than I’d really like to be under because I have yet to learn how to drive, and my mom is determined to keep us totally locked down for the most part. I haven’t been to any public business since February, and it’s extremely draining.

But, I’ve also discovered some things through the pandemic. I joined a survey website that gives me points to redeem for digital gift cards once I do enough surveys, and I’ve been getting more of the arts and crafts supplies I’ve really been wanting to get through that.

My brother got me a $25.00 Amazon gift card for my birthday, and I suddenly realized I could order a lot of stuff through there, which is what I’ve been doing. I finally got a couple of sets of Ohuhu brush markers which I’ve really been wanting to use with my traditional art.

My art has improved in leaps and bounds since the beginning of the year. I didn’t realize it until I went and looked back at some of my Tangled the Series art from January-February in comparison tor recent OCs and Infinity Train stuff I’ve drawn, but I have gotten SO much better. It’s wild.

I discovered new YouTubers to watch that I’ve really been enjoying. ZeRoyalViking and ChilledChaos caught my attention via Among Us videos, and I’ve been watching a lot of them lately. Also, I finally remembered to actually SUBSCRIBE to Ethan (Crankgameplays) which I should have done a long time ago LOL.

The Christmas season was difficult because things were so different, but I still had fun. I managed to get my family (meaning my parents and brother) some better gifts through Amazon than I usually do, and they all seemed to be really happy with what I got for them.

I got an Infinity Train shirt which I swear I will take a picture of me wearing at some point or other. As well as more arts and (mostly) craft supplies that I’ve been wanting.

ANYWAYS. I’ve rambled enough, I think. Kudos to you if you actually read this far. I wish you a very happy New Year, and I pray that 2021 is a much, much better year for all of us. Here’s hoping for a miracle and Covid-19 leaves us much sooner than expected.

#ooc | general #tw: long post #tw: covid mention #//lemme know if y'all need me to tag this any other way!!<3 #//i went on a tirade and i'm so sorry LOL #//i think this was all just stuff i needed to get out of my head tbh

[purplesurveys]

1109

What were you like at 17? Infinitely more naïve than I am now. I was going through my first heartbreak, funnily enough caused by the same person who is the reason for my current heartbreak, but that’s a story I’ve shared a million times. Anyway, at 17 I was still in high school so I was definitely more carefree about a lot of things; I wasn’t worrying about the future too much just yet, and I was still set on taking journalism. I was also going through my first family death which allowed me to explore a new side of my emotions.

Tell us about your first kiss. I had been really nervous about it and I felt like I wasn’t ready. But she was very gentle and took her time with me that night, even though I could tell she really wanted to have that kiss. I knew I hadn’t been a good kisser for my first, but she seemed to have good memories of it years later when we revisited the experience.

Tell us about your worst date. I’ve never been on a date with someone I wasn’t seeing.

What’s your biggest flaw? I’m extra sensitive and can’t take even the most playful of jabs without feeling the least bit hurt, unless the dig came from someone I’m extremely comfortable with, like Angela. That makes me the worst person for banter in most cases and it makes me not the most approachable person.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve bought lately? To be honest with you, I only ever buy food lol. I’ve been an employee for three months now and I have yet to buy something that’s meant to be an investment or is meant to last with me. 

Who is your celebrity crush? Can’t really decide between Kristen Stewart and Kate Winslet. Love them both.

What is your biggest pet peeve? I don’t appreciate lateness very much, especially if people have no reason to be.

What’s the song you most wish you had written? I don’t really think like this. If anything, I’m grateful there are songwriters out there who can pen songs that perfectly encapsulate my thoughts and feelings.

What do you always take with you when you travel? Phone, laptop, my chargers for each, wallet, and too many clothes because I like having multiple choices on what to wear while I’m traveling.

Do you have any pets? Two dogs.

Have you or someone you know ever drunk dialed? I never have, but I probably know a ton of people who have.

What is the worst break up you have experienced? The most recent one. The person I trusted the most hurt me in more ways than I could ever imagine. She seemed so desperate to get rid of me, and I will never be able to shake off the excruciating pain of feeling unwanted. She made it sound like I put her on a leash when I did nothing but attend to her every need and adjusted in a million ways for her comfort while never asking for anything back. I blamed myself for months, never knowing what exactly I was blaming myself for.

I worked my goooooooddamn hardest to get to where I am today, and I’m not sure she deserves to re-enter my life after the work and fixing I’ve done to be able to forgive and love myself.

Have you ever been stuck by someone very annoying on a plane/bus/etc? I don’t think so. The only one I remember was a seatmate on a plane who snored for the entire trip, but it didn’t bother me too much. When was the last time you were rejected by someone? Late 2020.

Has someone way older than you tried to hit on you? Nope.

Have you ever been cheated on? Never. 

Did you get lost at all on your first day of high school? No. I went to the same school from kinder to high school, so by freshman year I could’ve gone through the entire campus blindfolded.

Have you ever been interrupted during sex? Yeah many times.

Have you ever been recorded doing stupid things while drunk? Yeah, I’m the favorite for that kind of content haha. I can get quite silly when drunk.

Has a significant other ever called you by the wrong name? Nope.

Have you ever cooked anything and it turned out horrible? Not exactly, but close. I’ve baked stuff before that ended up tasting like nothing.

What is the worst birthday you have ever had? I don’t think I have one that’s in the running for absolute worst, but my 21st birthday coincided with Easter Sunday so I couldn’t invite anyone to celebrate with me. Gabie’s parents, who aren’t even particularly religious, didn’t allow her to celebrate with me because it was Easter, so that was a blow. Angela saved the day by taking me to dinner and spending the whole evening with me, but by the end of the evening Gabie and I had a lengthy argument and she kept trying to break up with me. It was a miserable end to a mostly miserable birthday.

Have you ever choked on chewing gum? Probably briefly in the past. I don’t have any moments that stuck with me.

Have you ever found anything dirty in a siblings room? No, but I also don’t go looking around through his things. < Same.

Have you ever made a bad first impression on someone’s parents? I’m sure I have. I once made a mess in a high school classmate’s bathroom when I cleaned my hands to get red food coloring off of them. I did want to clean it, but my mom suddenly came to pick me up so I had to leave the sink in such a messy state. Years later and I still feel bad about it, even though I’ve never been close to that girl and I’ve never visited her house since.

When is the last time you got into a fist fight? Idk man, 15 years ago? The only physical fights I’ve gotten into were with my siblings and cousins when we were kids.

Have you ever been spit on by a llama? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a llama in real life.

Have you ever locked yourself out of your car/house? The house, yes many times. Never out of my car.

Describe how you got one of your scars. My right ring toe got caught in the gears once when I was riding my bike.

Describe how you’ve broken a bone, if you have. Never have. Would hate to feel what it’d be like D:

Have you ever had a near death experience? The time I got shocked when I was 11 probably comes the closest.

When you get cold at home, do you get a sweater/hoodie or get a blanket? I rarely get colds. When I do, I just wait for it to leave; I don’t really do anything to deal with it.

Do you require visual assistance? (i.e.; glasses or contacts) I’ve had glasses since I was 11.

Do you work out? Occasionally.

Describe the last cup you drank from. It was just a clear glass that had water in it.

What is a food that you always are in the mood to eat? Sushi and sashimi.

Do you like sausage? I’ve never liked sausage tbhhhh. It tastes odd to me.

Ever held a newborn animal? I don’t think. The closest I’ve come to holding a newborn was meeting Cooper when he was two months old and barely looked like a beagle.

Do you make a wish when you blow out your birthday candles? I haven’t had a birthday cake in a while, but in general I do make wishes when I get the chance to blow out candles.

Have you ever been to Boston? Nope.

Describe your hair at the moment. I showered a few hours ago so it’s still a bit damp, but otherwise it’s nothing special.

What is the last thing you searched for online? I looked for a synonym for a certain word, but I don’t remember what it was.

What are you sitting on? The chair in my room. I actually haven’t sat on it for a couple of months, so it feels pretty refreshing to do so again.

Could you use a massage right now? If I could get rid of how terribly ticklish I am, I would so appreciate a massage right now, yeah.

Is it wicked hard for you to sleep when its hot in your room? Yup and I also get insanely cranky as well. Being hot is one of the worst sensations ever, if not the outright worst.

Do you sleep on your stomach/back/side most often? On my stomach with my arms and legs wrapped around a pillow.

Do make sure you dot your I`s when you write? Yes.

Do you dunk your cookies in milk? No, I just like to eat them on their own.

What did you wear today? I had a tank top and shorts for most of today.

Do medical terms make you uncomfortable? Not really, unless I’m diagnosed with a certain condition lol.

Are you afraid of failure? Yeah because I really hate losing or people thinking I’m not capable enough. The older I get and the more experiences I gain, though, the more I’ve been less afraid to commit mistakes. More and more I realize everybody I deal with are people who also make mistakes and are afraid of making mistakes.

Have you been called a bad influence? I’m sure I have.

What about Chinese food? Love it or hate it? I loooove Chinese food, but it’s not one of my top favorites.

How do you feel about getting new neighbors? I honestly have no clue who any of my neighbors are, so I would barely notice if we got new ones.

Why were you last in a hospital? I needed to get blood and urine tests because my fever wasn’t going away and it was time to figure out what was wrong with me.

When is the last time you went to a doctor, and why? We needed him to figure out what I had from the results of the aforementioned medical tests, and for him to prescribe the proper medicine for me to take.

#survey #surveys

[isa-ly]

HOW TO EMOTION?

TW: mental health, therapy, repression, dissociation

Today’s just one of those days where I’m questioning whether or not I’ve completely lost the ability of functioning like a normal human and kind of feel like the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz. You know, casual Friday. 

I know this is a written blog, but since I am also very much a woman of images and metaphors, I shall once again try and elaborate the issue of today’s post by making it into a well-known, kinda dead and yet very accurate pop culture meme:

I am not kidding, this is what I look and feel like in most of my therapy sessions. I’m pretty sure Kerstin would agree with me here, as the topic of feeling, or more like my inability of doing so, has been pretty much been the red string winding itself through my mental health journey so far. I mentioned it briefly in the last post, but I figured since today is just one of those pesky overthinking ones, I might just dive in a bit deeper and try to detangle my knotted thoughts into something a bit more coherent.

I’ve talked about this before to some of my closer friends and honestly, every time I tried to explain it, I just felt like an absolute mad psychopath. Don’t get me wrong, I know that I’m not, but it’s kind of hard to get people to understand what it feels like to just ... not feel. Okay, that sounds a little bit too dramatic, let me try and re-phrase it in a way that makes more sense.

I talked all about the metaphorical elephant and it’s even more metaphorical stake last time and this is kind of the extended version of that issue. The Stake Supreme, if you will. Basically, one of the earliest coping mechanisms that I picked up when I was very young, was to simply swallow down any feelings of anger, rage, sadness or hurt and pretend that they just weren’t there. Now, that’s not really something very unusual, as we generally live in a society that doesn’t leave a lot of room to healthily express or work through our emotions with the crushing weight of professional, educational, financial, social and personal pressure constantly weighing on our shoulders. So, again, I’m very well aware that me pretending that my bad feelings don’t exist, does in no way, shape or form make me a special snowflake.

It does, however, make me a very emotionally repressed and mentally inept snowflake. And that’s not really great either.

It took me many therapy sessions to figure out that what I had used as a necessary protection mechanism for all my childhood and young adulthood, had slowly but certainly turned into the root of pretty much all my current mental health issues. And here I was, thinking that mommy and daddy issues were just a try-hard-to-be-relatable brand that pseudo-depressed people on Twitter liked to use to excuse their shitty personalities. Oh no, am I one of them now? Alright, back to the point.

I’m just going to try to explain, both to myself and you, what happens in my head whenever the aforementioned process of ~A Feeling~ occurs. Where normally, I would experience something that elicits an emotion that I then experience and feel, lately (and by that I mean ever since some of the more severe of my mental issues started happening) I instead feel like the actual emotion gets stuck somewhere between having been produced and actually reaching my consciousness. In a way, to get back to that earlier visual, it feels like I’m the Tin Man. The feeling gets dropped into my empty tin chest and while I try my absolute hardest to actually feel it, it just sits there. Not really arriving, not really unfolding, just existing while remaining completely detached from me. And I continue to feel how you would imagine a man made out of tin and air would feel: hollow.

I’m trying really hard not to make another load of self-deprecating jokes here, as sharing and trying to explain this makes me beyond uncomfortable. Instead, I’m just going to keep going because that’s kind of the point of this blog. When I told my therapist what I typed up there just now, she explained to me that this strategy of processing (or lack thereof, actually), is commonly referred to as repression and dissociation. And that with my history of handling emotions (or, once again, lack thereof), it actually made quite a lot of sense for me to struggle with this.

She then went on to explain that one could imagine it like this: Whenever anything triggers an emotion to be formed (which, you know, happens quite a lot, since that’s kind of all that human brains do), my self-taught mechanism is to immediately replace it with a so called ‘non-feeling’. I know, that word seemed strange to me too in the beginning. What it means is that by having constantly invalidated and swallowed down my own feelings of anger and sadness through the course of my youth, I unintentionally created this perfect, well-oiled machine of repression that unquestioningly does its job without me even noticing. In a way, I somehow mastered the art of literally, fully and completely detaching myself from my emotions and simply viewing them as separate entities to my own mind.

Now, while that sounds like a sick villain superpower, I’m gonna be honest: It kind of fucking sucks. Especially on days like these, where old habits resurface and I once again find myself looking at my own emotions as if they were statistics on a computer, knowing that they are there, knowing that they exist within me, but for the life of me not being able to actually feel them.

That’s yet another thing I also learned in therapy. There are miles, literal continents, if not even multiverses, between rationally knowing you should feel something and actually feeling it. I’m not completely insane and oblivious, I very well know that I am capable of having emotions and that they are there and being produced by many funky chemicals working together in my brain. However, simply knowing this on an intellectual level is no where close to satisfactory if you cannot actually feel it too.

It’s like looking at ice cream, knowing that it’s there, seeing it with your own two eyes, remembering and being able to imagine the taste, the texture, the sweetness and yet never really actually being able to eat it. Never really feeling it melt it in your mouth. It remains an idea, a concept, close to smoke in thin air that you can very clearly see, and yet never really grasp.

And that, as you might be able to imagine (or even relate to, if you’ve experienced it before), is just not a lot of fun, to be quite frank. Emotional repression? Yeah, no, that one definitely gets a bad Yelp! review from me. Wouldn’t recommend. Zero stars out of five.

In addition to accidentally failing to process my own emotions (are you proud of me, mum?), there’s also the other half of the problem which is, as my therapist already mentioned, the dissociation. Now, I want to be clear here: While I’ve gotten quite a few medical diagnoses in my time in therapy, the actual condition of dissociation or dissociative disorder, which is actually a personality disorder, is not one that I ever received. The dissociation my therapist talked about, ergo the one I am experiencing, is more situational and linked to the repression. Funnily enough, it is literally happening at the current moment, while I’m writing this post.

Actually, it’s been there for every post I wrote. It is also there during almost every therapy session and whenever I attempt to talk to someone about my problems or feelings. If you ask me how I am and we get talking about my mental health, you can assume that I’ll be dissociating about two minutes into the conversation. Usually, it’s not something that is very noticeable. At least that’s what I like to believe, maybe it’s also super obvious, like my soul leaving my body, and people are simply confused or kind enough not to mention it. Who knows.

My therapist, however, did notice it, as she let me know after a few sessions, when I first tried to describe what dissociating felt like to me. “Oh, yeah, I can tell whenever it happens. I just thought I’d give you your space until you wanted to talk about it”, was what she had said. Oh, Kerstin. You’re a real keeper.

So, what does it feel like to dissociate? (I once again pretend that someone is asking so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself about myself). It’s a little hard to explain but here’s what I have told some of the friends I have talked to about it before: Imagine from pretty much one second to the other, your entire head is filled with cotton, kind of like you’re really tired and exhausted and everything that you see or hear doesn’t really get through the thick wool that seems to have replaced your brain. Forming thoughts and staying in the moment gets harder with every minute that passes. There’s this weird pull at the back of your neck and the front of your forehead that kind of just wants you to close your eyes and drift away. Far away to somewhere where it’s quiet and cotton-y and there’s no one or nothing else around you.

It’s not just mental, it’s physical. It feels like your brain hit the shut down button without your consent, like it’s slowly closing the blinds as it gets darker and darker and you just want to fall asleep. Speaking seems to become almost painful, thinking coherent thoughts is close to impossible and following what others are saying is a million times harder all of a sudden. It’s like the world has gone out of focus and you’re trying to sharpen the lense again, to no success.

Actually, I think that a lot of people have experienced dissociative symptoms before. Not to play Dr. Freud here, but it happens quite a lot, for example during panic or anxiety attacks. Some of my friends have told me that it felt like they had suddenly left their body and were watching themselves as from across the room. That’s why often dissociating is also described as an out of body experience. Because in a way, it literally is one. 

As my therapist explained to me, and as I experience it too, it’s comparable to your brain throwing a metaphorical fuse because it’s in danger of short circuiting. My dad would be so proud if he saw me making electrician references (yes, he is a trained electrician, okay). Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: Often, when I’m exposed to emotions (and that includes talking or writing about them), my brain will run a little too hot like an old, wary car engine, and before it gets too close to exploding into a fiery death, it simply flips the switch and disconnects itself from the body and the emotions that are happening in it. Just like the repression, this is yet another safety mechanism that my brain came up with in reaction to me never really learning how to correctly process emotions. So, whenever some of those stronger feeling resurface or leak out, it tries to protect me from them by cutting the connection between the both of us.

In almost every way, it feels like I’m being locked out of my own head and can no longer really use my own brain. To someone who’s never felt that before, this might seem a little terrifying. And I agree that, objectively, it is. Knowing that the grey goo behind your skull has the power to shut out what in the ever-loving fuck is considered your conscious self, is a bit worrisome, to say the least. However, to me, it’s something that I have a) gotten very used to by now and b) in the moment don’t actually experience as something scary at all. I’m disconnected, remember?

Which is also why it’s sometimes very, very hard to get grounded again and find the way back into my own head. Like a bird that’s accidentally escaped its cage, proceeding to go fucking rogue in the living room, then crashing into a wall, all while trying to figure out what the fuck is happening while it’s on the verge of blacking out. I’ll often feel so dull and dizzy that all I really want to do is curl up and stare at a wall until eventually, my mind and body connect again and things are back to normal.

To kind of circle back to the whole theme of this post: This whole dissociation thing is very strongly connected to my tendency of emotional repression. It’s somewhat of a vicious cycle, which is why days like the one I’m having right now, can be a little tricky. It starts with me feeling empty and hollow, bim-bam-Tin-Man, and is usually followed with feelings of isolation and depression, since I cannot seem to get joy, satisfaction, or any emotion, really, out of anything. This then often leads to me trying to force some sort of emotion into myself, struggling to dig through my subconscious in hopes of finding something, anything, and eventually becoming even more frustrated. Aha! Frustration! That’s an emotion, right? It’s there! Can you feel it? I think you can, oh wow, there it is! Oh, wait, no ... no, now my head is getting heavy. Everything’s blurry. Is the feeling still there? Maybe. Who cares, just close your eyes now. So sleepy, hm ... floaty float.

Okay, sorry, that just turned into a weird combination of a badly written slam poem and a pretentious high school theater class rendition of some old play no one has ever heard of. I’ll just use the fact that I’m still dissociated as hell as an excuse for now. Wait a minute ... if I’m this spacey and zoned out right now, how am I even managing to write this post? Huh? Isa? Explain yourself!

Well, I haven’t been in therapy for nothing. It’s been over eight months of Kerstin and me figuring all of this out, finally putting a name and label to it and therefore understanding why it’s there and how it works. Which has helped me a great lot in actually handling it. That’s kind of the whole point of therapy after all, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong: These days where I feel repressed, empty and dissociated, can still be hard and they’re rarely ever fun. They honestly make me want to bash my head against a wall in hopes that that will make it go back to normal.

But since I don’t really favour having a concussion on top of feeling depressed and detached from my body, I have learned to use other counter-measurements to help the process of finding my balance again. Rebuilding that mojo, am I right? This post is already pretty long, so I won’t go into even more detail on all the different methods and mechanisms of bouncing back, but I’ll say this much: I spent a good portion of therapy trying to learn when to push and when to rest whenever I’m feeling dissociated. And yeah, it’s a fine line and I still haven’t fully figured out how to walk it without falling from one extreme into the other.

But take this blog, for example. I know that writing it, actively facing my problems and the very strong, repressed emotions connected to them, will make me dissociate like hell. A few months ago, that would have been reason enough for me to not do it and simply ignore it again. Now, however, after working with my therapist and on myself, I have learned how to push my own limits just far enough in order to, in this case, continue to write even though it feels like my brain is about to burst into a cotton explosion. It’s a give and take, a sort of push and pull I’m playing with my own mind and head. But as time progressed, I figured out the game plan a little better, I learned my own rules and the secret short cuts and cheating methods (because come on, who really plays fair, that’s for boring losers) and the resting time it takes for me to restore my strengths again.

So, today for example, I woke up as Mr. Tin Man, progressed to being a lost, numb and rogue dissociation-bird (man, I really gotta work on my metaphors, this is just getting worse by the minute) and then decided that the best way to counter-act all of it, would be to sit down and write my lovely new blog. Has it helped? A little, yeah. It took my mind off the right things, made some others a bit worse and intense but now, I feel a little more stable and like I managed to talk some sense back into my spiraling, detached brain.

Kerstin, please tell me you’re proud of me. Because as we all know, therapy is about impressing your therapist and not about getting better for your own sake. Pft, who needs that. What do we want? Validation! When do we want it? All the time, because we never got it as a child, so now it’s the only thing we crave in life!

Yikes.

Alright. So, here we are. Since I’m still feeling a little zoned out and dopey, I’m not fully sure if everything I wrote made complete sense. But hey, while this blog is for others to read should they feel like it, it’s still mainly there for me to sort my own racing thoughts before they can spiral out of control. And I think I managed to do that just now. And I know that that feels kind of nice.

Actually, I feel it too.

P.S.: I just had to. A little self-deprecation doesn’t hurt anyone.

#therapy #retrospection #repression #dissociation