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andthebeanstalk · 11 months

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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

#hlep #original #mental health #my sympathies and empathies to anyone who has to rely on this kind of hlep to get what they need.#the people in my life who most need to see this post are my family but even if they did I sincerely doubt they would internalize it #i've tried to break thru to them so many times it makes my head hurt. so i am focusing on boundaries and on finding other forms of support #and this thing i learned today helps me validate those boundaries. the example with the milk was from my therapist.#the example with the towing company was a real thing that happened with my parents a few months ago while I was age 28. 28!#a full adult age! it is so infantilizing as a disabled adult to seek assistance and support from ableist parents.#they were real mad i was mad tho. and the spoons i spent trying to explain it were only the latest in a long line of #huge family-related spoon expenditures. distance and the ability to enforce boundaries helps. haven't talked to sisters for literally the #longest period of my whole life. people really believe that if they love you and try to help you they can do no wrong.#and those people are NOT great allies to the chronically sick folks in their lives.#you can adore someone and still fuck up and hurt them so bad. will your pride refuse to accept what you've done and lash out instead?#or will you have courage and be kind? will you learn and grow? all of us have prejudices and practices we are not yet aware of.#no one is pure. but will you be kind? will you be a good friend? will you grow? i hope i grow. i hope i always make the choice to grow.#i hope with every year i age i get better and better at making people feel the opposite of how my family's ableism has made me feel #i will see them seen and hear them heard and smile at their smiles. make them feel smart and held and strong.#just like i do now but even better! i am always learning better ways to be kind so i don't see why i would stop

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nomazee · 29 days

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close to your heart and that bed of yours too

you've been having the same weird dream about dan heng, over and over, and it just so happens that he's had the same dream, too.

dan heng x gn reader — 2.4k — super suggestive content but definitely nothing serious or graphic, some guilt abt attraction, dreams, romantic fantasies but not weird ones, kissing and closeness and physical touch, literal sleeping together

notes: forgive me and my debaucherous writing... this is nowhere near smut but it's definitely suggestive they get touchy and feely but it's very emotions-focused...oh my god what did i write this is so

—°+..｡*ﾟ｡*ﾟ+.*.｡.—

It’s probably not possible to get cabin fever on a constantly-running space train, but that’s the only reasonable explanation for the weird, weird recurring dream you’ve been having about Dan Heng. It’s not— not that weird, not weird enough that you feel like a complete deviant, but enough for you to realize that it’s a complete reflection of your innermost thoughts and desires, and that scares you more than anything.

The dream— it goes like this:

You wake up—not in real life, but in the dream world, which freaked you out the first time because you didn't realize you were dreaming at all so you thought everything was entirely real—and it’s usually because of the noise of your door sliding open. The instinct to look and see who it is doesn’t hit you. You lay there, gaze fixed distantly on the steel surface of your ceiling until the feeling of your bedsheets moving next to you pushes you to full awareness.

You still don’t move your gaze until you feel a body—warm, breathing, real real real?—lift up your blankets and slide underneath them, pressing next to you, curling into your side as if seeking out your life source. Your breath catches in your throat every single time as you turn to see that it’s Dan Heng, still dressed in his work clothes because he doesn’t understand the concept of pajamas, and his arm reaches around you and curls around your shoulder and he rests his head on your collarbone, gently, and you can feel his breath fan against the fabric of your shirt and your skin.

Dan Heng says your name with reverence, with something like desire, and it makes your stomach clench and he turns his body into you more. He tucks his leg between yours—not moving, just sitting there, a reminder of him, his warmth—and he’s so, so warm, it amazes you that he’s like a furnace, and that he’s so unbothered by laying so close to you under all of your blankets.

And he says your name again, each and every time, and it spurs something in you and you bring your arms around him each and every time, and pull him close, and feel the way he shudders, like a cold breeze wracking his body, like he’s never been this close to anyone before, and it dawns on you that he probably hasn’t—and that thought alone spirals into the realization that Dan Heng would never do this—

And then you wake up. Each time.

The first time it happened, you didn't realize it was a dream, and you were so overwhelmed with thought after thought and feeling after feeling and sensation after sensation. When you finally woke up, it felt like you were grieving a loss. You felt too cold, and too empty, and curled into yourself and laid in your bed for an hour taking in shaky breaths until you finally got over yourself.

You couldn't face Dan Heng for that entire day. Which was fine, because he spent his whole day in his room shuffling through the archives, so he was easy to dodge. But then you dreamt of him again. And again, and again, and then it just became a part of your nighttime routine to dream of your own friend so intimately and then wake up and pretend like nothing matters and nothing changed. Pretend like you didn't feel anything, and pretend like these dreams didn't flood you with guilt about your sick sick feelings and your sick sick fantasies.

You tried to rationalize it, make yourself feel less awful. The dreams never went past him laying beside you, for the most part, and you preferred it that way. If they got any more intimate than they already were, you would’ve thrown yourself off the Express the next morning.

Regardless, the Dan Heng in your dream and the Dan Heng that you saw every morning were different people, because the Dan Heng you saw every morning would never get so close to you. Would never lay in your bed and breathe on your neck like that.

Never. That distinction is the only thing that convinces you to let yourself dream. You indulge, and it’s sickening, but you let your dreams happen over and over, and each time you hold Dan Heng tighter and tighter and tighter, and let him breathe against your neck, and feel the rush of his blood circulating through his body.

One night, in one iteration of this dream, Dan Heng kisses you. It feels so real that it makes you nauseous. His lips were warm and damp and clumsy against the corner of your mouth, and he let out anxious breaths until you tangled your hands in his hair and tugged him closer and kissed him back.

You woke up sick, running to your bathroom to puke in the sink as your hands shook in guilt. Somehow, you could still talk to Dan Heng normally that day, stomach twisting only the slightest bit whenever your gaze lingered on him for too long.

Welt might have noticed how weird you were acting. There was a nagging furrow in his brow and he caught your gaze more than once and each time, you felt waves of humiliation crash into you, flooding you in heat and guilt and vertigo. He looked like he wanted to pry in that odd, awkward, old-man-paternal way of his, but you just shook your head and looked away and begged, hoped, wished upon a star that you would have a normal dream tonight.

The night— it goes like this:

You lay in your bed, staring at your ceiling, leftover remnants of guilt swimming in your lungs and nightly congestion forcing you to take shallow breaths through your mouth. Thoughts run through your mind and slam into your skull at rapid speed. Has Dan Heng noticed how weird you’ve been acting? He hasn’t treated you any differently, but maybe it’s out of pity. Maybe you haven’t been paying enough attention, because you’re so busy replaying that dream over and over and over, obsessive, wondering if you should just let go of the rope you’re suspended on and slam into the water and drown in your wants and your needs.

So you close your eyes, and you let yourself drift off and wake back up in your dream. You’re on your side now, instead of on your back, and the door is on the far wall behind you. You still hear it slide open, as it always does in this dream, and the footsteps get closer until you hear the shuffling of someone kneeling behind you. And then there’s nothing.

Your blankets don’t get lifted up. There’s no warm body tucking itself next to you. But there’s— a voice, Dan Heng’s voice, and your heart sinks into your stomach as you hear the pitch of his voice, the vibrations of sound.

“Are you awake?”

Your brow furrows, and you clench and unclench your fists twice before parting your dry, trembling lips. He’s never spoken in a dream before, not like this. He’s only ever said your name. Your fingers twitch with the instinct to pinch yourself.

“Yes,” you respond, hoping that the confusion isn’t clear in the timbre of your voice. “What’s— is something wrong?”

“No,” he says immediately. Clothes rustle as he adjusts himself. You’re scared to turn around and face him. You don’t know what you’d see. “You…” and he pauses, thinking of his words. Dan Heng would rather take a full minute to think about what to say, what words to pick, instead of stumbling over syllables, and it’s so unlike your own habits and as you think of this, your fingers twitch again. This time with the desire to hold his hand, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in this dream, but everything feels too real now and you don’t know where you are.

Finally, he finds his words. You’re patient with him. “I can’t sleep alone,” he whispers, as if embarrassed to admit it, “not tonight. I trust you.”

God. He can’t say that. He shouldn’t say that, because your head is spinning and you’re going to throw up. Your hand finds the strength to pick itself up and pinch the skin of your forearm. You’re not dreaming.

“Yeah,” you cough out, sniffling afterwards to cover up your budding anxiety as you finally sit up and turn to face him. “Yeah, you can, um. Sleep here.”

When he finally enters your field of vision, he looks the same as he always does—both in your dreams and in real life. It makes you sick. The guilt that you feel now comes more from the fact that he’s still in his typical outfit instead of pajamas.

“Dan Heng,” you start as you shuffle back on your bed to make space for him. He follows your motion, kneeling on the edge of your mattress before adjusting the sheets around you to tuck himself underneath and lay down. “We need to get you pajamas. I don’t know how you sleep like that.”

“I don’t sleep,” he admits, “not usually. I don’t need a lot of sleep.”

“You do. You might not think so, but you probably do. I wish I had a spare set of pajamas, but— they’re all, um, in the wash right now.”

“It’s okay. Your blankets are nice.”

Words tingle against your gums, syllables of confessions lighting up in your mouth. You want to tell him that a dream-version of him has slept under a copy of these blankets multiple times before, that you’ve dreamed for weeks about him curled into you and sleeping, and saying your name, and kissing the corner of your mouth. Right now, you’re just laid side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, but you can feel how warm he is and his hand is so close to yours and you just want to hold it. You want him to say your name and look at you and hold your hand.

“Good,” you say instead of everything else that you could say, because you have a sense of self control at times.

Then Dan Heng says your name, rolling onto his side to face you, hands tucked underneath the side of his face in a stupidly endearing sleeping position. You follow suit, because your self control isn’t that strong. He doesn’t say anything else. Just your name, once. With reverence and desire. Maybe you’re dreaming it, but you pinch your knuckles again and yet you’re still in the same room with the same man in front of you.

One of your arms is bent between you two, hand resting on the pillow that separates you two. Dan Heng’s own hand—warm, and breathing, and real— comes up to rest on top of yours, and you cannot believe any of this is happening. You want to pinch yourself again but his hand is curling around yours and he’s inching forward and you hope that your deer-in-headlights expression doesn’t scare him off.

“Dan Heng,” you whisper, voice cracking with an embarrassing desperation. It’s a warning for him, before he does whatever he’s about to do. But he says your name, again, and his face is so close to yours that you can feel every breath fan against your face, and your entire body is warmed and your hand flips over to hold his, fingers slipping between his and tightening around it.

“Have you had these odd dreams these last few nights,” he asks, a leading tone in his voice, “because I have. About you,” and he’s too honest, and you have to swallow your saliva before it turns into sweat and blood, and you feel his hand squeeze back around yours. His is shaking, and you find some kind of comfort in knowing that you’re not the only one.

“Yeah,” you answer, because you can’t get more than one syllable out at a time tonight. Could anyone blame you? Would Dan Heng blame you for that, afterwards, even though his face is so close and his hand is so warm and it’s tight around you, and he’s shuffling around again, constantly fidgeting, and he takes his other arm and slides it around you, hand between your shoulder blades. He hooks a leg between yours, tugging you closer and closer and closer. You’re blinking at him, heart caught in your throat and eyes landing on his lips so that maybe he’ll finally take the hint.

He does. He does, and as cliche as it is, it’s better than your dream. He kisses you, desperate, and right before your eyes flutter shut you catch the contemplative furrow in his brow. His mouth is—warm, damp, but you feel the crack in the skin in the center of his bottom lip. It scrapes against you and you can’t help the shaky sigh you release at the feeling, and the hand on your back curls into the fabric of your sleep shirt.

Your eyes are closed, tight, scared that if you open them, you’ll just wake up back in your room, alone and cold again with your empty steel ceiling. Dan Heng’s mouth is moving against yours with a practiced proficiency that you’re almost jealous of. You let your tongue trace the edges of his teeth, carnal in your desires, before you bite down on his lip hard enough to leave a temporary dent. He shudders, hand trembling against yours and lips pulling back from yours as he tucks his head into your neck and lets out shaky breaths lines with addictive sounds. You’re going crazy. He’s driving you crazy.

The hard, carved metal parts of his clothes dig into you. Your hand goes around him to rest on the back of his head, threading through his hair as his breathing slows against you. “We can go shopping somewhere tomorrow,” you tell him, already thinking of how you’d convince Pom-Pom to land at some shopping district of some planet. “You need pajamas.”

“There’s no need for me to have that,” he says, stubborn and set in his ways, even with something as mundane as sleep clothes. “My normal clothes are fine.”

“Not if you’ll be sleeping in my bed.”

And that makes him succumb to your whims, much too easy for your own good, and you laugh when he lets out a weary sigh at your reciprocal stubbornness. Your fingers keep combing through his hair, soft and meaningful, until he falls asleep. You think you'll get him a blue plaid pajama set. He'd look nice in it.

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