#IN EXACTLY 2 WEEKS. AUTISM IS ONE HELL OF A DRUG

[goldiipond]

SKYE WIN: PAPER MARIOS 100% GOLDEN SHINY PAPER MARIO

[shikagemaru]

Been having an identity crisis recently. There's It a whole lot of things adding up to that. Call it a rant and ignore it if you want. There's only like 3 of you guys anyway.

I would put a readmore here if I knew how to do that on mobile (thanks for sucking, only social media app I feel at all comfortable with)

•It really doesn't help that the past 7 years of my life have been completely stagnant. Since I haven't been able to work my wife and I have had basically no freedom of our own.

•2 years ago I was put in jail because a pair of psychopaths decided to go from 70 to 0 on the highway in front of us, and get out to try attacking us. I tried backing up to go around but obviously the car behind me was too close and the highway was at speed in the right lane. So I had to go around on the grass while these 2 crazy assholes were approaching while shouting threats. One was coming for my wife's window. So I did what I had to and bumped one of them. He wouldn't move and our safety was more important than him being hurt a little. There was a high speed chase through our community, and while we're on the phone with the police these two are trying to force us off the road. The cops even see one of them hanging out the window shouting threats at us. We pull into a mcdonalds parking lot and after talking to them for a bit the cops arrest me because he said I "ran him over" on purpose. He was so uninjured that he refused medical care at the scene, but he kept telling people I ran him over. They were also both arrested btw. I was held without food or mpving air for over 13 hours and I have a history of heat stroke and hypoglycemia (it's bot exactly that, but it's like living outside of a big city and tellinf people you're from there instead of the local podunk you actually live in). Long story short it was torturous, and then I got put in actual jail. They didn't care that I have a long list of disabilities. When I was released I had to wear an anklr monitor while taking weekly drug tests. The numbers on the drug test kept reading that I was using weed even though I wasn't. It was insanely stressful as the numbers didn't change from one week to another. My fear was that because I was rapidly losing weight from stress that the thc being held onto in the fat was being detected. NOPE. turns out one of my DAILY meds was testing false positive. "Shouldn't they know about the false positive drug and account for it?" Youd think. But when they scanned my medication bottles that one came out blurred and they never entered it into their system. In case there are any lingering feelings that I was guilty, the court case more than handled that. The prosecutor was the kind of scumbag that, before my trial, tried prosecuting this guy's mother-in-law for assaulting him when she tried taking her grandkid out of his arms because he was using the baby to shield himself when the family confronted him about having a fake medical license and it ruining all their lives. It turns out I was put through hell and all he was seeking was "anger management counciling" because he believed that I, the guy protecting his wife, had road rage issues. One listen to the 911 calls would have straightened thst up. My lawyer kicked his ass just a little more than I did on the stand. Long story concluded, thanks for the ptsd. The nightmares have been lovely. So is panicking whenever a door closes kinda loud.

•Last year I was able to self diagnose myself with autism. For those who don't know, the vast majority of autistic people self diagnose, largely due to "experts" on average not being well educated on what autism is outside of the stereotypical cases. Most women aren't diagnosed until adults. Most "high functioning" (which is an awful description when you lesrn that it was created by a literal nazi to separate autistic people into "kill these ones" and "don't kill these ones" categories) people aren't diagnosed until adulthood. And by then actually getting the diagnosis is a challenge. And frequently it involves exercising privelege to get the right people involved.

So knowing what I know now a lot of my life suddenly makes sense. People accusing me of being manipulative when I literally don't know what it is that makes them think that? Severe miscommunications? Obsessing over specific topics to the point where people want to avoid me? Always being "the weird one" and as a result being a social outcast from day 1? Despite being considered very intelligent, I've been super easily manipulated by people my whole life. I can barely ever tell a person no, even if I know I should. Hell. There have been entire relationships I've had with people where I thought we were friends and they didn't think the same thing. Learning who or even how to trust becomes a challenge.

Yeah, it all makes sense now. I want to say "i don't know how they didn't see it", but I do. The 90s was shit for mental health. Since they knew I had tourettes (thanks for that, universe) and adhd, my obsessive tendencies were labeled ocd. Actual adult relationships have gone entirely to shit because of miscommunication. People seem to think I mean one thing when I mean another entirely. People think I'm angry when I'm not. I've basically been told never to be passionate about a topic.

How does a person handle that? It doesn't unfuck relationships with people. Once someone thinks you're lying and manipulating that's it. Nothing you can ever say will ever dissuade them. It doesn't matter that they were the ones that misunderstood. Somehow it becomes the fault of the autistic person. And good luck if you're ever autistic and have a panic attack. So I'm trying not to care about that. It's hard. It's especially hard knowing that things didn't have to, and may not have gone the way they did if i had known about it earlier. I wish I could rebuild certsin relationships. My wife and I used to fight, but since we realized that both of us have these triggers because we're both autistic, we resolve almost every misunderstanding like a walk in the park. But that doesn't work with people you haven't spoken to in years. Even if a lot of it was frankly their fault.

•And the latest fuckery? I have no idea what gender I am. If I had the power to shapeshift I'd probably change on a daily or hourly basis. I had an alt account years ago where I posted fanfiction. Some people in the community assumed they knew my gender and pronouned me as such in the comments. That was the first time I had ever experienced gender euphoria. I was....upset, when someone corrected them. Would have been nice if they asked me first. I enjoyed the confusion quite a lot actually. And since I have a terrible time coming up with names for things (my screen name is from 20 years ago and I never figured out a new one) so I don't know where I would start building up a new persona. And for what? To get the rush of people not knowing which pronouns to use? I hate it. I want it. I don't know if I can ever come out as trans. People think trans means m2f and f2m, and it doesn't really matter to the public consciousness that there's more to it than that. I want to scream at people that I'm trans, but i don't know what I even want my body to look like. If I woke up tomorrow and I was suddenly transformed would I be happy? I have no idea. No? Yes?

I don't know who I am or how to even identify. I'm a disabled, autistic, lgbtq ethnic minority with no financial freedom, and my 40s are approaching. Life is a challenge. Sometimes I wish I could just Danny Phantom it up. And by sometimes I mean daily.

[fatesxedda]

Mun Day Ghost Story

A bit late since my day off has been consumed by pokemon but better late than never. Something I have wanted to talk about is my own experiences with the supernatural. Nothing as cool as you see in media or see in anime but they are experiences that have imprinted on me for good or worse.

I will put this under a read more but if you’re interested? Take a looksee.

So before I start, I want to make my mental health history clear. I am not a schizophrenic, I am not known to hear voices or see things, and if I were? My parents would have had me diagnosed long ago. My family has a plethora of health issues so we try to stay on top of things as best as we can, my self included.

What I do have is autism, asbergers to be specific with ADHD with a bit of neurosis however none of these are known to cause hallucinations. I want to get this out of the way because for a little while, I thought I was going crazy or that I had something else going on in my head. It should also be noted that after we left, I have not had any more of the experiences I am about to talk about. I have not heard voices or seen anything since. We moved when I was 18 and I am 23 as of writing this so it’s been a good 5 or so years and I still haven’t heard or seen anything.

With my mental health covered, I can now get to the real topic. I will try not to ramble too much but I will set up the story a bit. Before we moved to North Carolina, we lived in West Virginia. When I was about...8 or 9 my mom just had my second sister. We lived in a small house, not big enough for a family of 5 so we had to move from Crab Orchard to Beckley, a short distance but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the house. On paper, it was perfect. A bit of a fixer upper but it had 4 bed rooms, one for each child and one for my parents. My grand parents lived down the road and despite it being in what would eventually become a bad neighborhood, things were quiet and peaceful.

It was an old house, built during World War 2 according to my grand parents. I think I heard someone say the original occupant was an old lady and that she died inside but it’s been so long, I could be remembering wrong but that has stuck with me ever since. For awhile things were alright for the most part, but as a child I would hear creaking and movement through out the house at night. I was never one to sleep at night, and if you know anything about ADHD, those who have it don’t sleep easily. I never slept much as a child and if you look at me, it shows. Every night, I would hear what would sound like creaking to the point I would cry and hope what ever it was would go away. Eventually, I would start closing the door at night, hoping that it would just stay outside the door. It could have been my anxiety but it always felt like something was at the door, just standing there. Hell, to this day, I can’t leave a door open at night, lest I see something I REALLY don’t want to see.

Something TV shows about ghosts get wrong (in my experience anyway) is how they make it seem like it’s a constant threat, something is happening every night. If that were the case, you would grow used to it. In the old house I grew up in, something would happen, stop for looooooooong periods of time and then it would start up again. Like, something happens and then you are in this constant state of fear like “Is it going to show itself tonight? Tomorrow? Next week?” Whatever was in the house was scarce enough for me to not be able to predict what would happen and when, which really fucked me up in that regard.

Through out my middle school and high school years, the following would go on. Instead of going into long anecdotes, I’ll just summarize each encounter:

As mentioned before, I don’t hear voices. I don’t have schizophrenia nor am I on heavy drugs that cause hallucinations. With that said, on two separate occasions, I would have a man whisper in my ear one night and then a woman. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but I think it was one word like “Wait” or something along those lines. To be honest, I think I was too scared to really memorize what they had said and to this day, I sleep with a pillow over my head as it keeps my ears covered.

My mom’s mother would occasionally visit us and on this one particular visit, her purse flew off the counter. She looked at my mom, told her she had to leave, and she quickly hopped in her truck and drove off. That was the last time she visited us; she refused to come to our house unless she was with our grandfather and even then she refused to step inside.

I always knew something was in the house, so I always kept a light on somewhere in my room. My night light was the private bathroom my bedroom had. But once or twice, I would see a shadow move across the light. After that, I would close the bathroom door and use my TV as a nightlight. This may sound childish but I still need some sort of light or I won’t sleep well. Luckily I have a salt lamp so it makes me feel better but it still feels silly that I need it...

Speaking of the bathroom, something was DEFINITELY in there as I had three encounters! The first being while I was in the shower. I recently came to the conclusion this had to be supernatural because I was showering, something fell, busted a piece of porcelain off the toiler and cut my leg. I thought about it the other week and I can’t think of what caused it. On one hand it was so long ago that maybe I don’t remember but at the same time, I don’t think I was close enough. The bathroom was small, small enough to where the toilet and tub were adjacent to each other. I’m still iffy on this one but I can’t think of any logical explanation for how a piece of the toilet broke off and cut my leg. It hurts my head thinking about it...

The second encounter was, once again, shower related but instead it was after I got out. I was drying off, taking my time, probably getting ready for school the next day only to hear a loud *BANG* and something fly past my head. It was a shampoo bottle. I know I didn’t have it on top of the medicine cabinet as it would make no sense to put shampoo there. I looked behind me and nothing was there. If it wasn’t for the fact that I didn’t want to tell my parents at the time, I would have totally used one of the other bathrooms.

And then the third and last remembered encounter with what ever was inside that house. I was in my room, my mom came in and laid on my bed while I was chilling at my desk. She was bored and just wanted to see what I was up to and made herself comfy in my room. We were shooting the breeze for a bit until at the corner of my eye, I see something in my tub. I thought it was my sister and I was “Hey! What are you doing in the tub?”. Well my mom left my bed room door open and my sister was in the room next to mine and is all “Uh what are you talking about?”  I made one take and for a second I saw something black with red eyes peering at me from behind the shower curtains. But because I did a double take, it was gone when I looked the second time, the only evidence of it being there was a shifting curtain that close. Suffice to say? I freaked out a little.

This one is a bonus as this did not happen to me but one of my sisters. This is after we moved from one state to another and one day while she and my mom are out and about, she(my sister) gets a call from the old house. Last we heard, it was vacant so there should have been no reason for her to get a call. Well, she answered it and when she asked who it was, there was response, only a moment of silence before the other end hung up. We never figured out what happened but we haven’t gotten a call from the old place since.

There’s probably more that I’m forgetting but that’s basically the run down of the major stuff. I was there until I was 18 and I have to say, it’s been unpleasant, I won’t lie. I told my mom all about it since she believes in this sort of thing I later learned. She had a few occurrences happened but nothing like I had to the point she thinks I’m sensitive to this sort of thing. Everyone else in my house are skeptics but I know what I say, I know what was in there, and it wasn’t friendly.

As a side note: According to my grandparents, the area we lived in was once fought on during the civil war. They would use a metal detector and found quite a few things, even a canon ball! If I had to guess? I think the house is haunted by a pissed off solider maybe? Maybe even the old lady that lived there over a decade ago but I’m not completely sure to be honest. Frankly, I don’t care as long as i stays over there. We considered asking some local priests to bless the house, and considering Catholics are known for training exorcists (look it up), you would think it would be a good idea but I learned it isn’t that easy and they will more than likely turn you away.

But yeah, that’s my long winded story of my old haunted house. Take it for what you will. If you made it this far? Good on you, I applaud your patience! Have a good night and don’t fuck with the dead.

[nunaya-business]

There Have Been a Few Times When My Dad Has Left Throughout My Life...

Some for normal reasons, others for mental illness reasons. All of them have left their mark on me and my brother especially.

To begin, my father has not had a good life. He was brutally physically, and I believe sexually, abused throughout his entire childhood. His mother is a munchausen bitch, his brother a psychopath, and his father an asshole. Mental illness runs in the family on both sides, though it's hard to tell which side it effects the most. My father started out with ADHD, or that's what the doctors have said. He got heavy into drugs when he and my mother first got together, and of course the mental problems plummeted from there.

Both parents quit drugs before I was born, and my father went overseas to Iraq. He was there when I was born to give me my name, and left a few months later. I didn't meet him in person again until I was nearly 2 years old. I didn't walk until then either, but that's from a birth defect.

I don't remember much of my childhood with my father, because he either stayed inside at home or he was overseas. Having a parent or both parents in the military is shit, and in my opinion, abuse. Psychologists are always saying that both parental figures in a child's life is extremely important and, when both aren't present, whether from abandonment, death, or lack of interaction, it effects a child greatly. What they refuse to consider in my opinion, is parents who go into the military. That's abandonment. Period. I don't care if that parent is doing a deed for their country, you're risking your life, and deliberately not there for your children in the way you need to be. That's the tea sis.

My father broke his back twice in Iraq. Once when I was a toddler, and once when I was around 8 years old. The things he's seen and done mixed with his childhood traumas turned this man from mentally ill, to mentally unstable, to mentally insane is the span of nearly 10 years. The last time my dad came home from Iraq, he had gone up the scale of insanity to the brink. In case y'all didn't know, the brink before complete legally recognized insanity is Paranoid Schizophrenia.

Every. Single. Year since I was 8 years old, my father had mental meltdowns. It started with yelling, to throwing things, to leaving for days (and one time a whole month and my mom had to pick him up at a bar and send me and my brother to my grandmother's house for a week), to an incident in 2016 when my father officially snapped.

In 2016 only a few days after New Years when he came home from a doctor's appointment, he went into our kitchen, downed half a bottle of straight vodka, and started screaming at my mother. She told me to take my little 2 year old brother into my room, shut the door, and put on a movie. I did. I was 12 years old, and it was about 16 days from my 13th birthday that j was really excited for. I remember because one of my friend's birthday's is only 12 days before mine, and I asked mom to go to her birthday party that Tuesday.

I put on Disney Pixar's Cars, because that was his favorite movie, and turned the volume up all the way so he couldn't hear anything. I stood by my door, and quietly opened it enough to see because I heard my dad shouting and things crashing. I don't remember what exactly he was flipping out about, but I remember him throwing a wrench at my mother's head. He missed, and it hit the wall above the kitchen window, making a hole that we had to patch up later. My dad got the vodka bottle, and some guns from our gun cabinet, and tried to get my dog Krypto, a Rottweiler, to go with him. I though he was going to kill him, and the other dog we had, which was the last thing I had inherited from my grandfather.

He kept telling Krypto to come and help him kill the neighbors, but Krypto was hiding behind mom. Dad was scaring him. Since he didn't go with my dad, he tried to beat him, but my mom was on top of Krypto trying to protect him. I don't really remember much after that moment, I think because I either changed or replayed the movie for Little Brother, but I do remember dad stomping back the hallway towards my room, and mom yelling something like, "Don't you fucking dare!" And Krypto running after him, so I got my pocket knife from my desk and stood by the door ready to kill my dad to protect my brother. He stopped though, and I remember listening to his fading, pounding footsteps as he slammed our door shut to go outside.

At the time, my room was at the back right of the house, straight back through the hallway. I only had one window against the wall opposite from my door, facing the back of the house and the woods, but I still saw the brightness of the fire my dad had set on the neighbor's weekend cottage at the front of the house, across the driveway. I remember my mom going into what was the spare room (now my parent's room) with Krypto, crying, and talking to the police. When she knew for sure they were coming and my dad was outside emptying the guns into the surrounding trees and the cabin, mom came back, told me to open the door and gave me a hug. We were both crying, and my brother was asking what was wrong with us. She told me to stay in my room with Little Brother, and that she would come get us when it was ok to come out, then went back into the spare room.

My dad came back inside drunk and crashed onto the couch. It was quiet, and my mom had snuck outside to meet with the police to describe that she wanted him taken in as a mental patient, not a criminal. I had to pee really bad, so I knocked on the door five times because I didn't know where mom was. Dad thought someone was at our door, and told whoever he thought it was to go the fuck away. I snuck put of my room as fast as I could, went to the bathroom, and when I came back, the movie was halfway over for about the 3rd time, and I sat on my bed to finish it with my brother.

I don't remember what time it was, and I don't remember how close the movie was to being over, but I do remember men yelling to "get down", and, "come out with your hands up" outside the window. Someone looked in the window with a flashlight, so I took my brother, and hid under the top bunk of my bunkbed. I covered his ears and hid him under my blanket so no one would find him. The entire state police department came from around the state hours away, to my home in bum-fucked Egypt (aka a small hick town). My mom came in after a couple of minutes with a shaky voice and said "Todd, get up, and go outside now."

He replied with something like, "Christ woman", or "here we fucking go", and I peeked out my door one last time, to see my dad put his hands up, go outside and yell, "HERE I AM MOTHER FUCKERS AND IM GOIN DOWN IN A BLAZE OF GLORY". They gazed him, got information from my mom, and left.

The whole ordeal that Thursday, or maybe it was Monday, night lasted 7 hours, and I think it was 2 in the morning by the time the police left, and we were allowed out of my room. My first question when I hugged mom was, "where did Dad go?" To which she replied, "the police took him."

I didn't go to school that week, dad went to prison for 2 years instead of a mental institution like he was supposed to, my mother was put on antidepressants, I was put in counseling in three places, (the pediatrician's office, a professional office, and school counseling) for severe depression and anxiety, my brother developed an antisocial disorder in addition to pre-diagnosed autism, and I was now in charge of taking care of the house along with my 2 year old brother like an adult. I didn't really have time to be rebellious, having only a short few months when I turned 13 where I "hated" my mother. But how the hell was I going to rebel? Not do the dishes?

... yes actually. I didn't do my chores around the house for a few months as a sort of rebellion. What else was there to do? There was nowhere to go, no one to run to, and Mom wasn't home long enough to fight with so... yeah, refusing to do chores was my way to rebel against my parents.

My dad's mom, the bitch in forced to call a grandmother, called child services more than 5 times while Dad was in jail for no reason. They blocked her number. She got ahold of dad's disability checks and used them for herself, and we nearly starved because of that, and from that fateful night on, I was labeled a psychopath by my peers. Good. I don't like those retards anyways.

That's the story of why I'm not very close to my father, why I believe going to the military is the appraised way of abandoning your kids, and how the military also fucked up my Dad. Because, if they would've done their job of an actual mental evaluation on their soldiers when coming home from war, my father would have gotten the help he needed, and lastly the reason why I believe in gun control. And with that, I bid you guten nacht.

[the-mira-life-project-mtf]

Gender Dysphoria

                                   Intro To Gender Dysphoria

     Gender dysphoria is described and experienced as the mental distress due to discomfort with one’s assigned sex at birth, and they desire to live either as the other sex or a mixture of the two. The condition of gender dysphoria is common among LGBTQ individuals, although it should be noted that being transgender is not itself a condition or mental disorder, nor do you need to be gender dysphoric to be transgender. Not all LGBTQ people have gender dysphoria or experience their dysphoria in the same way: some are uncomfortable with their assigned sex, their body, their presentation or privilege. (PERSONAL NOTE: My dysphoria seems to be focused on my body and the presentation, however I have no issues with my assigned sex. In the last 10 years, society has certainly gave me time to think about my white privilege and have punished me for who I am.)

     The most common symptom of gender dysphoria is that it is linked with our gender as society announces it and our biological sex assigned at birth. The distress of dysphoria might make the individual feel ‘trapped’ inside their own bodies, ‘disconnected’ from reality, ‘alien’ from what they look like on the outside, but what they should be on the inside. (PERSONAL NOTE: When I look at myself in the mirror or I look at my body, it is like looking at a stranger, looking at skin that I could not be in. Inside, my mental image was gender fluid~shifting from male dominate to female dominate. As my image solidified, I appeared more female then male however, my eyes only see a male with a few feminine characteristics.)

                         Diverse Experiences Of Dysphoria

     First off...the understanding of gender dysphoria is best described: Incomplete. So what exactly is dysphoria? Outside of gender dysphoria, it is hard to find a useful definition to describe what it exactly means. Gender dysphoria is actually a whole spectrum of mental and physical disorders: Anxiety disorders, personality disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, insomnia, PMS, stress, white male privilege, autism spectrum disorders, bullied, misogyny, homophobia, PTSD, sexual trauma, autogynephilia, peer pressure, munchausen disorder, needing to please a parent, parental divorce and discomfort of body changes during puberty.

     Understanding the causes of dysphoria isn’t anywhere close to expressing what it feels like. The question you should pose to yourself: ‘How does it present to you?’ You will not find an official symptom list used my doctors or find much information on the internet. Wikipedia describes it as ‘a state of feeling unwell or unhappy; a feeling of emotional and mental discomfort.’ According to the Australasian Psychiatry regarding dysphoria: ‘The current semantic status of dysphoria is most unsatisfactory. Its definitions are usually too broad or too simplistic and, therefore, not clinically useful.’

      Those who are in distress; who want to understand what exactly they are experiencing finds that the definition of ‘feeling unwell’ or ‘mental discomfort’ are not very useful. They already know that they are not feeling ‘well’ and their brains can’t seem to understand the mental discomfort that causes the personality to suffer. To label Patient 1 as gender dysphoric does not mean that Patient 2 exhibits the same reactions, thus making the diagnosis invaluable to the patient. For example, my girlfriend who is bisexual claims that her dysphoria is due to autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Whereas my dysphoria is due to parental divorce, anxiety and peer pressure. We both suffer from gender dysphoria, however our symptoms are entirely different.

     Once we identify that we are suffering from gender dysphoria, we have to make the difficult task to understanding it and determine if transitioning is something that could help us cope. Do we transition by the process of just labels, mental changes or physical changes.

                    Importance Of Recognizing Dysphoria

     First! How do you know that you are actually experiencing gender dysphoria? How do you distinguish something that has no set symptoms or tests to measure your likelihood that you are suffering from dysphoria? It is easy to mistake gender dysphoria for who you naturally are. You might think it’s part of your innate personality or physical characteristics and is just something you will have to learn to cope with. This internal struggle can delay recognizing that you are actually LGBTQ. (PERSONAL NOTE: My lifelong struggle to even realize I was gender nonconforming was delayed by my upbringing, social lifestyles and accepting my thoughts and anatomy for what it was. Religion and family added further blocks. When I felt dysphoric, I just thought it was just me; a natural phase that everyone went through. The real extent of my gender dysphoria became clear during the transgender movement here in Washington State which forced me to reflect my deepest struggles. By the time I was in my 20s, my desire to influence physical feminization and prevent masculinization grew to a ‘sickness’ that made my anxiety worse. It was only then did I realize I was gender nonconforming through the aid of my bisexual girlfriend.)

     Once I realized that my internal image wasn’t matching my physical body and I dreaded my masculine side due to my abusive father; this lead to mental feminization as I desired to correct my biological and anatomical mistakes. It was only in the last three years did I realize I was experiencing gender dysphoria as I failed to recognize it due to three blocks: Ignorance for homosexuality, Religion and fearing of going to hell and Family expectations and their vocal hatred for the LGBTQ community. The longer I tried to pretend it did not exist only made my anxiety worse, fear of intimacy with another and soul sickness.

     Doubt is something that all LGBTQ individuals seem to have in common. They first doubt that they are actually transgender as they don’t recognize the symptoms. They might face a great deal of confusion and anger as to why they feel this way and find that medication does not help to relieve the mental anguish. They might doubt their feelings as they are afraid of what their family and friends might think. Nevertheless, doubt always seems to be the one symptom that will plague a LGBTQ individual through their initial gender dysphoria, post ‘coming-out’ and even into transitioning. 

     Even right now, you can’t run a diagnosis on just doubt, discomfort and unhappiness. It is much more. Those who suffer from gender dysphoria; reading this article, might agree with only 50% of the symptoms and have symptoms never even considered. Gender dysphoria, like any mental or physical condition changes and evolves from patient to patient...however, simply acknowledging it is the first step to understanding the condition.

     Again, as mentioned earlier in this article, not all trans individuals will have all or any of the signs of gender dysphoria. Some might not even have a single sign of dysphoria...they might have been simply born into a LGBTQ environment or society. Some people have more obvious gender-related symptoms whereas some people have more obvious non-gender-related symptoms. Also, you can suffer from gender dysphoria and not be transgender; but fall in a new spectrum of LGBTQ that defies the current understanding of transgenderism. The only thing that seems clinical about gender dysphoria is that once it is treated accordingly, the symptoms seem to resolve or lessen in severity.

      The overall dogma of gender dysphoria has been tabooed by society which has lead to many cases of gender dysphoric trans doing self-harm like turning to alcoholism, drugs and death. The ‘fear’ of the unknown has made transgenderism a disease to those who oppose it and law to those who welcome it...birthing a new form of hatred that has been divisive around the world. Science and research will not study the phenomenon out of fear of offending either group of people. And politics and religion continue to use the LGBTQ as pawns and control. Like any idea, written word might one day help cis-people understand how damaging gender dysphoria can be if left untreated and how important it is to treat it as you treat any condition.

                                   8 Signs Of Gender Dysphoria

1) Continual difficulty with simply getting through the day.

(Personal Note: As humans, we are social creatures and make a life around family and friends. Imagine finding this hard to maintain as any form of stress can trigger the dysphoria. I found myself being unhappy with my life. Everything I did seemed to be in defiance to who I was. I felt out of phase, spending more time inside myself where I felt complete and being irritable and annoyed with the real world. I had to write stories to release the stress to get through the day and even tried to mentally impose the image of my gender nonconforming self over my male form which made me uncomfortable and overall disgruntle to do anything.)

2) Your emotions feel misaligned, disconnected or estrange.

(Personal Note: I would find myself crying whenever I was being reprimanded or called out for failure. I would be called into my boss’s office to be informed of my performance and I would tear up which made me angry as ‘men don’t cry!’ I would have to hide away as I cried hard and I did not understand why. I called it a weakness, a hormonal imbalance and punished myself for it. Besides crying, all my other emotions seemed turned off; I did not laugh when a joke was told, I did not cry when my grandfather died right before me. I did not show much compassion to the patients I oversaw. However, the smallest things would make me cry and I hated it as I felt depressed for the rest of the week as I had to hide my feelings.)

3) Feeling you are just going through the motions in everyday life, as if reading from a script.

(Personal Note: Some days I would walk through life feeling like I was in a dream...as if I was in a made-up world. I even wrote many articles on dreams as the dreams felt more real then the real-world. I would look at myself in the mirror and it was like looking at a stand-in for me. I could see some characteristics I recognized, but the body I possessed felt...fake. I began to identify myself as ‘we’ in my writings and verbal language as it was the only way to express myself without feeling disconnected. To do anything as my male-self felt wrong and I found joy in things that my family considered feminine like nursing, caring for children and just being an avid listener. I disdained military-life, labor-centered jobs that required muscle strength and mathematic-dominate jobs. All jobs that the men of my family held.) 

4) Life seems pointless, and there is no sense of any real meaning or ultimate purpose.

(Personal Note: It look a lot of effort to find hobbies and when I found one, I did not really enjoy it...I was just killing time...trapped inside my thoughts. I went through life marking off the calendar...death even seemed inviting as I wasn’t thriving, I was just living. I wanted purpose, but I found nothing but failure. I learned a lesson: If you are not comfortable with yourself, you are not comfortable with anything. Having a terminal disease had me thinking: Is this all life has to offer? I want to be comfortable! I want to be content with myself and only then can I make a difference. As I merged with my feminine side, I began doing more things for other people to change their lives and it gave me purpose. I began to do the things I liked as I was no longer retreated inside my head, but living life outside.)

5) Knowing you’re somehow different from everyone else and wanting to be normal like them.

(Personal Note:  As a child, I did a lot of observing and wondered how they could just go throughout their days talking, laughing, calm and happy with everything. At one moment, I feel like I should play rough like all the other boys, but also show compassion and emotion that had me bullied as a child and caused making friends almost impossible as I was ‘weird’. I knew I was different! How many boys had tits? How many boys hated sports and preferred the arts? Singing soprano until I was 21 years old also did not help my case! I purposely removed myself from social interactions as I was afraid that they would see through me or question my true self that did not match the skin I was dressed in. By the time I was in my late 20s, I began to wonder: Maybe it isn’t me that is different...it is the world! The more I acted like my true self, the happier I was and I noticed people seem to enjoy the quirks from time-to-time.)

6) The symptoms escalated during puberty.

(Personal Note: Prior to puberty, I did not really care about what gender or sex I was. I played with both Hot Wheel Cars and Barbie Dolls with no care in the world. Due to the medication I took, I developed in the chest; but paid no mind to the sexual organs I had from birth. That however all changed around the age of 13 when I began to question my existence and gender. I saw myself as a combination of the two genders and expected puberty to deliver those results; however it did not. My mental image did not match my physical image and I tried to adjust. With my radical emotions and social upbringing, it only made my dysphoria worse. My family upbringing to hate gays and lesbians as they were a disgrace in the Lord’s eye and spawns of Satan only scared me. Why was I having these thoughts, why did I desire to be seen more as feminine than masculine? Was I possessed by the devil? Would I burn in hell for denying the person the Lord wanted me to be? It only made me struggle with accepting that somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum...I fell.)

7) You attempt to fix this on your own through coping mechanisms.

(Personal Note: Even to this day I would never admit out in public that I’ve been down this road when my dysphoria went bad! It is always much easier to talk about this via writing-prompt and I can honestly tell that I’ve done my share of coping mechanisms to ease the pain of dysphoria. Many turn to drugs and alcohol to ease the pain...I did not...as they were not available to my person at the time and built a fear of booze and drugs to keep me clean. For many years, it was my writings that got me through it, then it was writings and art. When my desire to appear more female then male hit me, I would wear breast forms to give me what I was missing. However, when my family found out...it nearly lead to suicide as I took a handful of pain meds which luckily only made me vomit and damaged my liver in the process (if you are considering suicide, please seek help. It is a lonely road and leads to pain and suffering of you and the ones that love you!  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255). About 9 years later I left prosthetic’s behind and turned to hormone replacement therapy to slowly correct my body.)

8) Consider resolving these symptoms through either Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and/or Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS).

(Personal Note: Transitioning isn’t something you should take lightly and consideration is needed prior. Try transitioning by dressing up, appliances or mental projection before taking drugs or going under the knife. If you move to quickly, you can end regretting your decision. My first form of transitioning happened when I was 13 years old as I needed to find something safe to wear that would not label me as ‘gay’ so I wore robes as a dress and it helped me great through high school...but wasn’t a solution as I was just a man wearing shower robes. When I entered collage, I identified that one of my dysphoria’s was the lack of breasts and I bought a breast form and wore them at night as I slept as I could hide my transformation from my family. When my family found my molds, I was greatly punished and threatened to become homeless and found that this transformation was too obvious and I began to hate myself and tried to kill myself, but failed. After recovering and feeling the dysphoria grow, I began dating a bisexual woman who allowed me to be who I was and our relationship went as far as my dysphoria would aloud. By the time I was 33 years old, I received my terminal diagnosis and decided that the only way I can escape this fog was by chemically transforming through the aid of HRT. Lately, I have began to consider SRS, but find that my family will not accept and as long as I live under their house...I can’t transform...but will make this transformation (hopefully).)

                                        Analysis Of H.R.T.

     The consideration of hormone replacement therapy wasn’t lightly. I had considered it for three years and even tried bovine ovaries to see if I could adjust. BO was a terrible idea as it did nothing but made me sick. I tried to ignore the thoughts and desires to transform, but when I turned 33 years old, I made the decision that the only way I could stop the depression was through the process of H.R.T., but I had to be careful to not let my family know I was trying to transform. For three months, nothing happened...I lost almost 30 pounds of weight as my disease nearly took my life and I was off H.R.T. for almost 2 months and began to doubt my actions.

     I found that to stay dedicated to HRT, you need achievable goals. I found satisfaction in taking hormones and felt that I was bridging my genders to what they are suppose to be. My attitude and demeanor changed greatly as I found that I could smile and laugh. I cried when appropriate and felt emotions that I’ve suppressed. I became willing to form relationships and emotional.

     When I was conducting my HRT, I felt my symptoms dissipate and I desired to transform further. At first, I wanted to do 6 months of hormones, then I wanted to go 50/50 and then wanted to become more female and less male. The longer I was under the illusion of HRT...the more I wanted to complete my change. I wasn’t certain if it was the drugs or the idea of taking them.

     As mentioned if past articles, it might have been both. HRT over time will influence the brain and transform it. However, taking the pills also is a ‘hope’ that the discomfort and feeling unwell will end. And to be truthful, it did! Taking hormones is the greatest indicator that you are suffering from Gender Dysphoria if the symptoms go away...however, the more obstacles you have in your way, the unlikelihood you will continue it.

     At six months of HRT...I felt peace...I felt like myself. I no longer was hiding from myself, I could cry and feel appropriate about it. People called me by my name and I felt it was me. I became connected to the person in the mirror as I was slowly merging with my mental image. I felt that there was nothing ‘weird’ about me and went out to parties and made new friends. With my testosterone lowered and my body developing, I felt like I was gaining back years dysphoria took away from me.

                                                  Conclusion

     In conclusion, please note; these signs aren’t shared by all LGBTQ. Every person’s dysphoria is a little different, and transitioning can have different effects on each and every one. But it seems that a significant portion of trans people, whether their dysphoria is clearly gender-related or non-gender-related. Since gender dysphoria can not be labeled or treated as a condition at this time. It is up to you, the patient to make the decision.

     The great thing about Gender Dysphoria is that considering transitioning is usually the only goal and most LGBTQ individuals never turn back to what they were prior to transforming...even if they give up on their HRT regiment or deny they fall on the spectrum of alternate genders. Gender Dysphoria, in the end, is treatable and you do not have to suffer any longer.

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

On iZombie and How Putting on Different Lenses Gives You Different Readings

I didn't think about the central metaphor in iZombie much when I originally watched the show during season 1, but now that I finally finished the show I have some thoughts.

A lot of the shallow literary criticism I see on this site sort of boils down to either "you're stupid for not reading into it that this plotline is problematic even if the author didn't intend it" or "you're stupid for reading that much into it BECAUSE the author didn't intend it". So today we're going to take the position that multiple unintentional readings of the same text can and do exist and coexist without anyone being stupid (unless you're blind to queer subtext, in which case you should consult with a doctor). So let's put on some lenses in the order in which I received them and look at this piece of work.

Lens 1: The Trauma Narrative

I first watched this show when I was still living with my grandparents after my stepdad had been jailed for being a pedophile and child abuser. I was still processing what had happened to me, but I wasn't processing it well because I didn't have therapy at the time and was still living in an emotionally abusive and invalidating environment. Within 5 minutes of starting this show, I was convinced that Liv was a metaphor for trauma. And I'm not the only person who noticed that. I remember seeing a critique at the time about how if you take away the Zombieism, the Boat Party Incident could be paralleled with the trauma of acquaintance rape since it occurred at a party and was perpetrated by a drug dealer who had been offering her drugs earlier in the night.

The boat party was clearly a traumatic incident for Liv. I saw my own experiences reflected in her. She had a whole life path laid out for her, but it was derailed by an experience that made her fundamentally unable to relate to and socialize normally with other people. She broke up with her fiance and became socially withdrawn, refusing to talk about what had happened to her out of fear of the social stigma attached. She even underwent a drastic fashion overhaul and completely changed her career path. It sounded familiar. You could even equate brains in this equation to Liv seeking out an addiction in order to make herself able to function within society that isn't giving her the tools she needs to process.

Lens 2: The Racial and Straight Passing Metaphor

I hadn't really thought of this AT ALL until I started rewatching. Oh give me a break - I was a barely 20-year-old white girl who hadn't even thought about the possibility of a sexuality when I first watched it. But upon doing a rewatch and seeing some behind the scenes stuff, it's pretty clear that the writers were going for a passing metaphor.

But I'm not entirely sure that it holds up under close scrutiny.

On the surface, sure. It's a narrative about discrimination where someone must "pass" as human in order to survive. Understandable. But it sort of breaks down when you recall that it's a show about zombies who eat people. When they "rage out", I can only think of "super predators". The implication being that there are good minorities and bad minorities - the good ones being those who are willing to pass for your comfort and the bad ones being the ones who can't or won't. Especially when equating zombie struggles to LGBT issues, I see a sexually transmittable zombie virus as akin to the AIDS virus in a JK Rowling sort of "intentionally infecting people" sort of way.

Lens 3: I'm Autistic and You Didn't Ask

Something occurred to me right around the time that the zombie virus was introduced to the flu vaccine supply: This is gonna create a whole new generation of in-universe anti-vaxxers.

My immediate reaction was 'oh fuck, how will anyone in Seattle ever trust a vaccine again'? Zombie cure, what? I bet that's more zombies intentionally infecting people! The zombie truthers will have a field day!

It was a baffling choice to me from the beginning to have a group of militant zombies intentionally infecting people to protect their way of life. I simply could not wrap my head around why you would want to still have this virus and why you'd want your kids to have it. You have to eat brains to survive and you're constantly at risk of horrible symptoms if you don't get them. The entire zombie population is easily controlled by the withholding of brains by what again seems like a pretty blatant addiction metaphor. This is horrifying. Why would you want that? Then to go and intentionally infect others with this virus...I just don't get it. You should want a cure. You really should.

Of course I thought about it further and knew they were still going for their passing metaphor. Of course I didn't believe zombies deserved to be murdered in the streets. I thought all available resources should be going to making a vaccine and a cure. I didn't think this was equivalent to the struggle for equal rights we've seen in real events because of the aforementioned "raging out".

But then I thought about it again. If there's any group that the struggle more closely parallels, it's the disabled community - particularly those of us with autism. Liv is trying to pass in a world that isn't set up to accommodate her particular needs but she's able to pass as a "high functioning" zombie. Her brain of the week could be compared to a hyperfixation. "Low functioning" zombies would be the Romeros, who physically cannot "pass for human".

This is a theme that comes up in most everything I write, in some form or other. The autism passing for human metaphor. Because I've never felt like I actually do. Some days I can be Liv-ing it up, but other days I'm halfway Romero. But when I tackle the issues of not passing for NT by creating an alien or a nephilim, I'm doing it with the knowledge that passing isn't the end goal. And I guess, for that reason, I respect the choice at the end to not cure Liv.

But even this reading sort of falls apart when you think of how "high functioning" zombies like Liv would get to throw Romeros under the bus because they're too far gone to be useful to society so they're expendable. That's actually not even the main reason it would fall apart. The main reason is that they intentionally infected people with a zombie virus using a vaccine. I mean every anti-vaxxers argument is that vaccines cause this, right?

And you really don't want to equate disability to a virus. Viruses are deadly things that should be eradicated. Autism is not.

God, this reading is so particularly complicated for me. Because the closest disability parallel you can make is some strange mixture of autism and AIDS. And as an AIDS parallel, it can almost make some commentary. There's the fear and social isolation thrown at people with a confirmed diagnosis. The incredible stigma and misinformation. Also how resources are withheld from people who cannot afford to pay for them. But you really don't want this as an AIDS metaphor because, again, there were people intentionally infecting people.

Which brings me back to why would you want to be a zombie? The side effects are too severe. Even if you're dying of a terminal illness, how is that not swapping it out for something worse? And what happens to people infected as children? Do they stay children forever? Did we learn nothing from Interview with the Vampire?

And even typing that last paragraph was complicated to me, because it harkens back to arguments people have about curing autism. That it's supposedly a life-destroying disease and that being alive with autism is worse than being dead. Hell, even throw in the perpetual child thing.

I'm reading this show with all these mixed feelings. They all exist within my brain, so it's very confusing up here. I get multiple readings and I'm just one person! It's very difficult to write a supernatural metaphor for an actual social issue, because it's very VERY easy for it to have unintentionally shady readings that don't really work upon closer scrutiny. And you know why that is? Because people who consume media come from all different backgrounds and different life experiences. I still don't exactly know how I feel about the central metaphor of iZombie. All I really know is that it's weird that they didn't address the in-universe anti-vaxxers.