#actually i tried calling my doctor to set up an actual diagnosis process for the very obvious tourettes bc man. id love some accomodations

[pommy-granite]

my neuro is soo divergent today tic toc tic toc tic toc

[mt-lowercase-m-derogatory]

{typical tumblr discourse disclaimer: trying for a chill vibe, I'm just taking an aside to peddle some of the nuance OP was talking about. This post was probably not addressed at whatever collagenopathy mutation "never before documented in the literature" I've got, and I'm not trying to imply OP wronged me somehow}

What is medically/legally considered "schwerbehindert" here might be different, but I really urge caution around thinking someone isn't severely physically disabled because they walk and move perfectly well using light/no mobility aids

Personally, in the health state when I actually present to the world, there are very few non-exercise activities an abled person could do that I cannot also do for a bit, albeit with some pain and uncertainty. The trouble is that something bad is happening while I do things or sit/stand upright for longer, and all I'm sure of is that it's not my respiratory or (probably) my circulatory system.

I'll be at a rare and cherished social gathering for a few hours, just seeming a bit loopy and dissociated in the latter half, then I'll safely arrive home unaided if the Vienna underground is in sight, not even using mobility aids! (I've tried a few but my physio found none to be safe for me). I'll manage to change clothes and go to bed, and then... I'll manage to be awake around 60-70 hours the following 7 days, mostly out of my mind with more brain fog than brain.

The only answers my doctors have feel more like questions: it might be an unrelated hypersomnia that just didn't show up on the polysomnography, it might be post-exertional malaise, it might be some kind of comorbid kleine levin syndrome, it's so odd that it's not POTS, it might just be a symptom of "whatever is going on, let's call it Ehlers Danlos Syndrome because that was the original diagnosis", or my blood-brain barrier might just not work right with whatever third-grade materials my body made it of.

And all I personally know is that... I have the full physical and neurological capability to move, I can manage the pain, I can manage the psychological aspect... But any given activity still comes at a high cost beyond all that, and neither any process I can observe nor any version of god damn spoon theory can adequately explain it.

It's more like my mind is a bottle of water, and every few minutes I stand upright is a spoon of milk dropped into it. I lose full clarity basically immediately, and then it just becomes harder and harder to tell how far I'm gone until I stop being able to talk fluidly or make decisions.

And this is not something I just realized when it set in - like any good child used to being gaslit about their body-wide chronic pain, I didn't even realize I had any health problems when I started waking up disoriented, unsure whether my alarms had rang already, with me having decided to skip school and go back to sleep without remembering any of it.

It was only with covid lockdown that the physical attendance I was forcing myself into naturally tuned down, leaving my "free time" lucid and awake enough to become sure that I had a health problem beyond migraines, with my first few doctor's just leading to a psychologist suspecting schizophrenia

... Lockdown might genuinely have saved my life. I- I hadn't processed that before now.

I think I had something more in mind about this vague group of conditions science is recently getting much better at diagnosing. Especially how the problem in figuring them out is that the causes (and the most informative and dangerous symptoms) are physical issues outside the brain, but the signs that cause most of the Leidensdruck (the pressure of suffering a patient's diagnosis and treatment is in service of) are more classically studied and discussed in psychiatric disability.

... But I've been trying to write a coherent tumblr post for 3 hours now and my brain is trying to erase all caches so I think I'll just hit post.

Also the term "severely disabled" is getting stretched pretty thin too, I see a lot of people who are like... talking about how severely disabled they are and how their body is rotting and they're a total lost cause who can do nothing for themselves, and then I look at their blog and they're like... a cane user or something similar.

I really hate to be like "that's not that bad" when someone else is suffering, but it makes it really hard to find people who are in a similar boat as far as being nonambulatory and who need constant care from others. It's taken me a long time to find a precious few friends who share those experiences and that I can relate to and it certainly doesn't make it easier when the definition of severely disabled is stretched so thin.

I really don't think it's helping the impostor syndrome some people face either. There are a ton of people who are in constant pain with mobility issues and stuff like that who are on the fence about calling themselves disabled at all because they see people talking about how their glasses that correct their vision to 20/20 are a disability aid that makes them Visually Impaired and Disabled and want to avoid looking or sounding like them.

There's a lot more nuance to this than I could put into words because holy cow I don't want to hurt people that don't deserve to be but also I want to be able to find and talk to people who are also disabled without sifting through 10,000 "I'm severely disabled because I need to eat microwave meals when I don't have the spoons to cook" people first. I don't have the capacity or ability to do that sifting, it's almost like I'm severely disabled or something.

[jonsa101]

Episode 3x14: A Reflection of How Max Stepped Into Love After A Season of Suffering

Gif credit @supagirl

Hey guys! I can’t believe the season finale has come and gone! I think my mind is just taking time to comprehend everything that has happened! Sharpwin is officially canon! As I’m typing this out, it feels strange writing a meta on the other side of things. Since season one, I’ve been writing metas about how these two belong together and making predictions about the trajectory of their relationship. Now, to be on the other side of things where I know longer have to do that because these two are finally together is kinda crazy. I feel so elated!

Now y’all, I’m not going to lie to you, I had a totally different meta planned out and that meta is still in my drafts. I will probably release it because it was a general review of the episode but I thought it was more important that I put this meta out first. When I was watching the finale live, I didn’t love it. I just didn’t. I loved that Max and Helen finally got together at the end of the episode but I had a major issue with how it unfolded. The issue my friends was this scene right here: 

Baby!!! When I tell you this scene TRIGGERED me, it did! Now mind you, I wasn’t upset with Max’s storyline of searching and struggling to take off his wedding ring. It is human nature for Max to still have an emotional attachment to his ring. He’s not still grieving but essentially that ring is the only thing he has left of Georgia and represents a life he once had. Him taking it off was always going to be a monumental moment for Sharpwin and for himself. The issue that I had was Max casually telling Helen that he freaked out about losing his ring!!! To me, after the voicemail he left her, after Helen flew standby and was in a six hour flight to see him, it was an incredibly CALLOUS thing for Max to say. I know Max wasn’t thinking in this moment. I know his intentions were clearly not to hurt her but words matter and him being careless with his was a complete disregard of Helen’s feelings. She was deeply hurt and upset when he said this and rightfully so! I mean just look at her expression here:

Helen’s entire being read like

“I can’t believe you”

And girl same, because neither could I!! He knew he fucked up and he obviously made up for it in the end but y’all when I was watching it live, everything that came after that elevator scene was was tainted for me. I had a hard time believing that Helen would let what he said slide so easily and in the moment, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of them finally coming together! 😩 In my personal opinion, there were so many other ways that scene could have played out without Max having to literally tell Helen to her face that he was worried about his wedding ring! I know they were trying to build up to the “big moment” where he finally takes his ring off and runs back to Helen’s apartment but man, that moment did not sit right with me in my spirit! It still doesn’t and I don’t think my opinion will ever change on this.

With that said, I’ve now done several rewatches of the finale where I specifically watched the scenes after that awful moment by the elevator. As I’ve had time to reflect, my perspective has changed. I no longer view the moments after the elevator scene as tainted but as something deeply profound and beautiful. Hell, even as I reflect on that scene by the elevator, I still don’t like it, but in a way I understand it in how it relates to Max’s overall journey when it comes to Helen. To me, Max Goodwin is a man who fell deeply in love with Helen in the midst of the most complex situations and a season of him suffering. It’s been deep rooted, complicated and messy from the start and over the past three years we’ve seen Max navigate through the complexities of his feelings for Helen and the circumstances he’s found himself in on our screens. I think when you look at season three finale and specifically the journey of Max finally making a choice to be with Helen, you have to put into context Max’s history and how it influenced what that looked like. So y’all that is exactly what I want to do in this meta so let’s dive in.

One thing I think we need to acknowledge is that, even though as an audience we have loved seeing Max and Helen’s journey unfold, the road has been so TOUGH for them. As Helen said in 3x13, it’s been a fight! Especially for Max. The suffering he has endured over the past three years has been unfathomable and much of his relationship with Helen and his feelings for her have been developed under these traumatic and tragic circumstances. 

At the very beginning of the series, when Max and Helen first meet they clash but it doesn’t last for long. It’s his first day at New Amsterdam and as the new Medical Director, he wants her to stay at the hospital and treat patients instead of doing press tours. Helen on the other hand wants to continue doing press and for the most part ignores his demands for her to return to the hospital. When she finally does return, she does so because she learns that Max has cancer. This bonds them at the onset as Helen is the only person in his life that knows about his diagnosis. As an audience, when we first see them interact, we instantly saw the sparks fly between them. Their chemistry and natural witty banter made us immediately take a look at their relationship and what potential they could have in the future. Though we were shocked by his cancer diagnosis, I think the fun and lightheartedness of Sharpwin’s first interactions really masked how traumatic this must have been for Max. On the first day of his dream job, that he sacrificed his marriage for, he learns that he has cancer while having a baby on the way. Those are the awful circumstances that first bring Max and Helen together. 

As Helen becomes Max’s doctor and he swears her to secrecy about his diagnosis, their friendship and bond grows deeper. His passion and drive to help his patients, reignites Sharpe’s love for medicine again and inspires her to put her patients first. They become vulnerable with each other more than anyone else in their lives. He confides in her about his broken marriage and she tells him that she wants a baby. When he almost dies, she becomes his deputy medical director so that he can focus on his care. All of these moments are significant to them because somewhere along the way they develop feelings for each other. They didn’t plan for it and it’s something neither of them are consciously aware of but unknowingly, they both start to fill a place in each other’s lives that was clearly more than a doctor and patient relationship or a friendship. This “place” wasn’t called out until episode 1x16 were the clairvoyant called out their feelings for each other. When episode 1x17 comes around, after a night of revelations and a scramble to get the power back on in the hospital, Helen decides to step back as his doctor. If she wasn’t aware of her feelings before, in this moment, she’s fully aware of them now. This is an effort to safeguard her heart and set boundaries because the lines of who they are to each other were already so blurred. When she “triages” their relationship Max’s reacts badly and honestly they’re both devastated and are on the verge of tears:

As viewers, we loved this moment but when you peel back the layers of what’s actually going on in this scene, it’s gut-wrenching. The subtext is so clear here yet their situation is so complex and layered. We know for a fact that Max wasn’t trying to lose her in ANY CAPACITY. We also know that in the way he TRULY wanted her he couldn’t have her and Helen knew that too. Not when he was married, had a baby on the way, and fighting cancer at the same time. Y’all that’s hard and profoundly painful when you think about it and it makes this scene all the more tragic. 

When Helen steps back as his doctor, at first Max seems to be handling it well but as his cancer starts to get worse, he completely breaks. Like I said earlier, over the course of his cancer treatment, Helen filled a place in Max’s life that was so much more than just his doctor or his friend. So when he’s dying and no longer has the person he feels deeply for play an active role in his treatment, he lashes out. He’s dealing with a range of emotions he can’t handle or properly process. Things only get worse from there and at the end of season one Georgia and Luna’s life are on the line and Bloom and Helen scramble to save them. When it seems like everyone was able to come out of that traumatic event unscathed, they get into a devastating ambulance crash that changes everything. 

Season 2 brings another level of pain and suffering for Max when he loses his wife after the crash and is thrust into single fatherhood. Not only is he grieving but he’s also dealing with guilt of falling in love with Helen while he was married. The complexities of his feelings is something he struggles with throughout this season and it affects his relationship with Helen. At some points he pushes her away and at others he desperately needs her. Once again, Helen and Max’s relationship is caught up in the most complex of circumstances that is riddled with agony and trauma. 

By time we head into season 3, Max doesn’t even have time to breathe or think about his relationship with Helen because they’re both thrust to the frontlines of the pandemic. 

I bring all of this up again to emphasize that there has never been a time where Max and Helen’s relationship hasn’t been wrapped up in trauma or some sort of suffering. It has always been one thing or another with them. It’s been A LOT and Max has tried to navigate being in love with Helen through his suffering and under these crazy ass circumstances. So after rewatching the finale, the questions that run through my mind are:

How do you step into love when all you’ve known for the past three years has been suffering?

How do you love openly and freely when for so long you’ve emotionally suppressed your feelings for someone because it was “wrong?” 

How do you let go, heal, and move on with your life?

To me, answering these questions is what the season finale for Max was all about. When you’ve suffered so much and endured so much it’s not easy to step into a new chapter in your life that’s hopeful and filled with love and possibilities. For Max, I don’t think in his wildest dreams that he ever imagined that he and Helen would be in a place where they could actually be together. Considering everything they’ve gone through, quite frankly it’s a fucking miracle! So when he actually makes it to the other side and not only SURVIVES but has a chance for happiness, I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. Pursuing/having feelings for Helen from a place that isn’t wrapped up in trauma and tragedy, where there are seemingly no obstacles in his way, is totally and completely new territory for Max. I think he’s clueless in how to do that in the right way and as he navigates through that, naturally there are hiccups.

That’s evident with what he said by the elevator and also in this moment here: 

Max doesn’t have a clue but he wants to make sure that he doesn’t fuck it up because he DESPERATELY wants this! I also think there’s something to be said about how we as human beings can self-sabotage ourselves when we finally have an opportunity to get what we want. Fear, guilt, worthiness usually comes into play with that and I think for Max there was definitely a fear with moving on with his life, guilt of surviving it all and having a chance to be with the woman he’s loved for so long, and a question of if he’s worthy of actually having happiness.

Their walk in my mind perfectly embodies him self sabotaging while also trying to navigate his feelings of desperately wanting to be with her. At the beginning of their walk, you see that at one point he clearly wants to hold Helen’s hand but he doesn’t (I would use a gif here y’all but I literally only have room for 10 😩). I’m focusing my attention on Max here because essentially this whole moment between them is a part of Max’s “mini story” in the episode. The ball has always been in his court and truly what we are witnessing is his journey to step into love because Helen is ready and has been waiting on him. 

The most compelling moment in their walk scene for me was this one: 

I find it strange for Max to walk so far ahead when he was the one who asked her if he could walk with her. My first thought while watching it live was “what is he doing” and I think Helen’s expression reads the same way. After analyzing this for a bit, I genuinely think that’s the point of this scene. Like I said earlier, Max doesn’t know what he’s doing. To be with Helen like this is, where its romantic, peaceful and drama free is probably blowing his mind and he doesn't know how to navigate this. He doesn’t know how to receive this second chance at happiness. 

The internal war of Max stepping into love or allowing fear, guilt, and unworthiness to hold him back becomes all the more evident when they get to Helen’s door: 

He knows he wants to come in. Helen know he wants to come in too. This man literally says goodnight twice and when Helen responds with “you said that,” it perfects this scene. She wants him to come in as well but she’s not going to ask him to. In this moment, she sees his internal struggle and she knows that he has to make the choice himself on whether or not he wants to move on with his life with her.

When he walks away, for a moment that was Max choosing to hold onto the pain and trauma of his past. That was him choosing to hold onto the guilt that was keeping him from healing and moving on. With the suffering he’s been through, it makes sense. In many ways he’s been conditioned to fight, to suffer and to endure. It’s what he’s used to. But praise the lord, he thinks of the moments he just shared with Helen. 

The joy he has with just being in her presence. 

The opportunity he has to freely be with her and have a life with her after loving her for so long.

He is not condemned to a life of suffering. It was only for a season. He’s in love with Helen and wants to be with her. Like hell is he going to let this opportunity at a second chance of love and happiness slip away from him. So guys, he slips off that ring, runs back to Helen’s apartment and makes a choice to step into love. Step into this new, uncharted, chapter of his life with Helen Sharpe. 

Anyway guys! I hope y’all enjoyed this! I might be releasing one more meta but we will see how it goes.

As always feel free to reach out to me on Tumblr and on Twitter @oyindaodewale. Love you guys!

[occasionalstorytelling]

A slightly-belated fic written for Jason’s death anniversary. I just really wanted to write a story with autistic Jason, so here it is!

Summary: Jason Todd shows up at the Manor and asks if Alfred can spare some time for a chat. They head down to a coffee shop and settle in to talk. Jason has been thinking, and he wants to tell Alfred that he thinks he might be autistic, actually.

Word Count: 2,888

Read it here:

Damian wandered into the kitchen, where Alfred was finishing up cutting some apple slices for him. Damian took one, and crouched on a kitchen stool, balanced on his feet like some kind of bird of prey. Alfred was used to this behavior—it tended to be typical of Robins.

“Todd’s coming,” Damian shrugged in between apple bites.

“Really?” Alfred turned to the window. Lo and behold, Jason Todd was walking down the path to the Manor’s front door. With lightning speed, Alfred grabbed a medical kit from below the sink, then ran to the front door. He threw it open before Jason even made it all the way up the walk.

“Jason! Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Alfred was too panicked for formalities. The boy didn’t seem to be limping, and there were no visible bruises or cuts on him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hurt. Alfred opened the kit, ready for whatever it was was.

“Yeah, Alf, I’m fine,” Jason winced. It didn’t take Alfred more than a few seconds to notice the wince was at Alfred, not out of any kind of pain or duress.

“You’re…that’s good to hear, then, Master Jason,” Alfred said, awkwardly closing the kit. He tucked it loosely under one arm.

“Guess I don’t, uh, visit that often,” Jason rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“It’s good you’re not hurt. Is there something you need, then? Anything,” Alfred said. “Would you like to come inside?”

Jason looked up at the house, then down at the ground as if he was staring through the dirt right into the Batcave. “Don’t need anything. Just wanted to talk. Not inside, though.”

Alfred nodded. “I’ll fetch my coat.” He went inside, set the medical kit on a counter, and grabbed a coat and a hat. Then he went back outside to the front lawn, where Jason fidgeted nervously, still staring at the ground like he expected Batman to pop out of it at any moment.

They left the Manor grounds and walked into town. Alfred suggested a diner for a quick bite. Jason shook his head and suggested a coffee instead. They went to the nearest Jitters.

Alfred ordered a tea. Jason ordered a hot chocolate. They smiled awkwardly at each other then. Alfred paid, then joined Jason near the pickup counter to wait for the drinks.

“I don’t know why I said coffee,” Jason smiled, still awkward. “Neither of us drink it.”

“I’d wondered if your tastes had changed,” Alfred said fondly. “As I recall, you don’t drink soda, either. You’re still the only one of the boys who refuses.”

“So?” Jason shifted slightly, uncomfortable. “The bubbles go up my nose.”

“It’s healthier for you, anyway,” Alfred said. “If only Master Tim could be convinced to lower his caffeine intake, I’m sure we’d all feel a lot better.”

“Yeah,” Jason snorted. “Replacement’s the one who’s not…I mean,” Jason froze, sentence only halfway out. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, like he was trying to figure out how to say whatever it was he’d meant to say, but he eventually just trailed off and went quiet. They were saved from the awkwardness of the moment when the barista called “Pennyworth” and Alfred had to go retrieve their drinks.

“Shall we sit down?” Alfred asked.

Jason nodded. They found an empty table outside. Alfred took the seat with his back towards the street—another behavior typical of Robins was that they liked to be able to see their exit strategies. Not that Jason was a Robin, of course, but he was still Jason. Jason sipped his hot chocolate, and generally failed to make eye contact with Alfred.

“You’re looking well,” Alfred said.

“I’ve…been doing the thing you told me about,” Jason said, with just a slight flush of embarrassment in his cheeks.

“Which thing?” Alfred asked. He’d given Jason a lot of advice over the years.

“When you said it’s hard to take care of a Robin,” Jason said.

“I never meant that as a slight on you or any of the others,” Alfred said. “My sincerest apologies if—”

“No, no, I mean…um,” Jason took another sip of his drink while he figured out how to say it. “The self care thing. I’ve been…the thing about being gentle?”

“I’m not…sure what you’re referring to?” Alfred said.

“I’m the Robin,” Jason said, twisting his fingers in his lap. “I don’t have to…punish myself? You said that when I’m struggling with something, to pretend the thought or the idea or the thing or whatever is coming from my own Robin sidekick and deal with it like that. So I’ve been doing it.”

“Is it helping?” Alfred asked.

“Yeah,” Jason let out a relieved breath in a whoosh, at finally being understood. “It’s been really helpful. The other day, I bought a bunch of frozen mini corn dogs for him. Me? Me, I mean. I just…you know. I’m trying to…take care of myself.”

“That’s good to hear,” Alfred said. He sipped his tea. It was a little over-sugared, but Jitters tended to make all their drinks like that.

“And I was, um, researching on the internet about stuff too,” Jason said. “Self care stuff.”

“I’m proud of you,” Alfred said. “God knows Bruce needs to take better care of himself. I’m glad to hear you’re not following his poor example in that regard.” Alfred knew Jason very well, so he called Master Bruce simply “Bruce” to put Jason at ease, and he gave Jason praise that amounted to “you’re doing all right without Batman.” Jason always insisted he didn’t need to hear that, but the way he glowed after the praise…like he was glowing now. Jason took a long sip of his hot chocolate and relaxed enough to put his hands on the table.

“There was something else,” Jason said. “On the internet. That I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Please,” Alfred waved a hand. “You can talk to me about anything.” Admittedly, it had been some time since Jason had taken him up on the offer, but what better time than now to start changing that?

“I think I’m autistic,” Jason said. He stared at his drink when he spoke, but it came out smoothly, calmly, practiced. He’d practiced this conversation, Alfred realized.

“All right,” Alfred said. “Thank you for trusting me enough to say so. How can I support you?”

Jason laughed. “That’s what you said to Dick when he told you he liked boys, Alf.”

“The sentiment is no less true in this scenario, Master Jason,” Alfred said. “I am happy that you’ve…confided in me? Is that an appropriate term?”

“I guess so,” Jason shrugged. “It’s not a secret, I’m just not…not telling Bruce, and stuff.”

“Have you seen a doctor or a therapist?” Alfred asked.

“No,” Jason tensed. “I, uh, self-diagnosed. But plenty of people in online communities say it’s totally valid, and a diagnosis could only make my life worse, so—”

“Worse?” Alfred didn’t mean to interrupt, it just slipped out.

“Yeah,” Jason grit his teeth. “I mean, even if I wasn’t legally dead, it’s apparently really hard to get diagnosed officially as an adult, and even if I got a diagnosis it’s not like…I mean, it wouldn’t help, you know? It would be yet another excuse to get passed over in Bruce’s inheritance, and fired from jobs, and…stuff.”

“I understand,” Alfred nodded. “And you’re right. You don’t need a diagnosis to be valid. But, if I may…why tell me?”

“It just…seemed like something you tell people,” Jason fidgeted, cracking his knuckles over and over again. “Dick told you he likes boys, so…I’m telling you, this, I guess.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Alfred repeated. “I am…honored that you trust me with this. It’s clearly very personal.”

“Yeah,” Jason sighed. “I don’t know…I don’t know that there’s much you can do to support me, I just wanted you to know.”

“Talking is supporting,” Alfred said.

“Talking is supporting,” Jason repeated it with a smile. He took another sip of his hot chocolate. Alfred finished off his own cup of tea. They both watched people walk by along the busy streets of Gotham.

“And, I can’t tell Bruce, because he’ll think it’s more…you know,” Jason said, picking up the conversation as if there hadn’t been a pause.

“He’ll think it’s related to your death,” Alfred nodded, finishing the sentence.

“See? You’ll at least talk about it. Bruce won’t even say it…” Jason sighed. “But yeah. That’s kind of what I worried, too? Do you remember if I was always like this,” he gestured at himself, “before I died?”

“What do you mean?” Alfred asked. “Your hairstyle has certainly changed.”

“Like, my costume,” Jason said. “Um. I was researching…I think I’ve got a sensory processing thing. And that’s why I don’t like soda bubbles, and why I need a helmet that blocks out more distractions than just a mask, and why I can’t wear leggings.”

“You wore leggings for a significant period of time,” Alfred pointed out.

“I know,” Jason frowned. “I remember doing it. And I tried it again the other day, someone lent me a pair of fishnets to try on…but the feeling on my legs doesn’t go away. I can’t wear leggings or skinny jeans for more than ten minutes without feeling like I’m gonna go crazy.”

“I see,” Alfred said.

“So…I remember wearing leggings before, but I don’t remember how it felt,” Jason said. “What if…I don’t know, what if all of my autistic symptoms, traits, whatever, what if if is all after-effects of being dead?”

“Would that make it any less real?” Alfred asked.

“I guess not,” Jason huffed and leaned back in his seat. “But…I want to know.”

“You hated the leggings, even back then,” Alfred said, remembering. “But you were too stubborn to wear anything else on patrol, which meant that when you got back, you threw them on the floor and went around in your underwear, and I was the one who had to pick them up and wash them.”

“Okay, that I think I remember,” Jason smiled. “I remember Bruce telling me to put on pants because Selina was coming over, at least.”

“Your new costume is more comfortable, I hope?” Alfred asked.

“It’s heavier. It’s nice,” Jason said. “I like the weight. It’s grounding. And it’s looser…no more leggings and spandex. It’s comfortable.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Alfred said. “You know…it occurs to me, you were also very particular about your bedsheets. You only liked the ones with the purple flowers, even though Master Dick’s favorite were the ones with the little rocket ships.”

“The flowers were the only ones with the right texture,” Jason said. “Yeah…that’s still how I buy sheets. It doesn’t matter what color it is, so long as it’s soft enough that it’s not gonna distract me from sleeping.”

“Would that also be related to…sensory processing?” Alfred asked, trying to remember the phrase Jason had used.

“Yeah,” Jason nodded. “Same with picky eating. I mean…yeah. I don’t have a better word for it, but—”

“There doesn’t need to be a word for it,” Alfred said. “Your food preferences are individual to you, just like anyone else’s.”

“Bruce still thinks I eat like a little kid,” Jason mumbled. “He thinks it’s stupid. I can tell he does, even when he doesn’t say it.”

“If that is the case, we will simply not discuss it with him,” Alfred said.

“Yeah,” Jason said, relaxing slightly. “That would be the one thing I’d change, though. If I could, I mean. I’d want to be less picky. I’m sorry I didn’t eat much of those dinners you used to make.”

“I’m only sorry it took so long for me to adapt to your tastes,” Alfred shook his head sadly. “I remember you claiming not to be hungry one too many times…”

“I didn’t want you to be mad at me, it’s just you worked so hard—”

“Nonsense,” Alfred said. “You should have been mad at me. I should have provided.”

“Your mac and cheese was always delicious,” Jason said. “I make it for myself, like, once a week.”

“I’m happy to hear it,” Alfred smiled.

“There’s other stuff too though,” Jason said. “Other than sensory processing. I mean, I’m not making it up—”

“I never accused you of doing so,” Alfred said.

“I mean, I was looking at traits online…the thing about making scripts to talk to people? I do that all the time,” Jason said. “And I always get told that I’m too blunt and unreadable, and you know how I like to stick to my schedule, and I’m not really great at emotional regulation, and I can’t always tell when people are being sarcastic or trying to tell me something…I’ve been trying to relearn how to stim. I’m still not sure what masking is, but I think I’m doing it. Have been doing it? It’s…I got a spiky ball to play with, see?” Jason pulled a small, spiky stress ball out of his pocket. “And I got a chewable necklace so I could try to stop biting my fingernails…”

“Jason, I trust you,” Alfred said. “I believe you’ve done your research. You don’t need to convince me. If you say you’re autistic, I believe you.”

“Okay,” Jason said. “I just…you know. It’s weird, saying it out loud? It doesn’t feel real. But I also know it’s real, it’s my own brain and I know how it works, but…and Bruce would never understand, and I don’t really have—” Jason hesitated. Alfred hoped he hadn’t been about to say “I don’t really have any friends.”

“I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this,” Jason finished. “Online isn’t the same. I don’t…I want to talk to someone about it.”

“Talk to me about it,” Alfred said. “I’m happy you came to me. What were you saying about learning to stim?”

“Oh,” Jason said. “Well, now that I live alone, I can play a song out loud on repeat as many times as I want, you know? And I’ve been letting myself move more…I’ve seen the replacement do the flappy hand thing, and I’ve read about it online, and I don’t know if it’s really a thing I do or if I’m trying to copy it so I’ll feel more autistic—”

“It’s okay,” Alfred soothed. “Take a deep breath.”

“Yeah,” Jason sighed. “Sorry. I know I talk fast.”

“You talk at the perfect speed,” Alfred said. “You just seemed…anxious.”

“I keep picturing how Bruce would take it,” Jason fidgeted awkwardly, digging the spikes on the stress ball into his palm.

“Are you sure he’d take it poorly?” Alfred asked.

“I’m sure,” Jason snorted. “Either he’d tell me he doesn’t believe me and I’m not autistic, which would be no more emotionally devastating than anything else he does, I guess, or he’d act weird about it and walk on eggshells around me and constantly misunderstand my whole life, which is already how things are with him! Ugh,” Jason put his head down on the table.

“You don’t have to tell anyone you don’t want to,” Alfred said.

“I know,” Jason said. “But, like I said. Wanted to talk about it. Don’t have anyone. So.”

“Thank you for talking to me about it,” Alfred said. “I do appreciate your faith in me. Trust me—Master Bruce won’t hear a word of this from me.”

“I trust you, Alf,” Jason picked his head back up. “Thanks.”

“Is there anything in particular I can do to support you?” Alfred asked.

“Just this,” Jason said. “Thanks.”

“Would you like a hug?” Alfred asked.

“Yes,” Jason said, sniffling slightly. They hugged, and they both pretended not to notice that Jason was almost in tears with happy relief.

“So, uh, yeah,” Jason sniffed and sat back in his chair. He continued to fiddle with the spiky ball. “I guess that’s it. Wanna start walking back?”

“I am at your service,” Alfred said. They walked back to the Manor, and hugged one more time on the front step.

“If Bruce asks, this conversation didn’t happen. I did come here because I was injured, or something,” Jason said.

“My lips are sealed,” Alfred smiled.

“See you later,” Jason waved, and walked back down the path, heading back to wherever he lived. Tim had mentioned Jason had some kind of safe house near Crime Alley. Maybe he’d invite Alfred to see it sometime.

“What did Todd want?” Damian asked.

“Nothing in particular,” Alfred said.

“I ate the apple slices,” Damian said. “And we’re out of granola bars. I ate all the ones in the cabinet.”

“You’re a growing boy,” Alfred ruffled his hair, and Damian grudgingly allowed it before smoothing it back into place.

“Bye,” Damian said, and slipped off into the house like the little ninja he was. There was a soft chiming sound. Alfred looked at his phone. He had a message from a number he didn’t recognize.

Thanks for talking. Could we meet there again, same time next week?

Of course, Alfred texted back with a smile.

[k-k-keroppi]

How I got diagnosed

When I was in the various waiting periods for my diagnosis procedure, I tried to hard to find an account of what was actually going to happen, what stages there were, anything to make the situation clearer, and I couldn’t find anything. I am since diagnosed, and so am writing down everything that happened to help other people who are frustrated by the lack of information. This is for england, and this link is also very helpful for more professional information, it’s an interactive flowchart for the NICE guidelines. Anyway, on with it. 

First, I want to say don’t be discouraged about the time periods. It took me two years to be diagnosed, but I had a series of circumstances that led to it being that long, covid being one. So, I first had my appointment with my GP on the 5th march 2019, when I was 15. I went with my mum, and the doctor asked some questions about how I was generally, I don’t completely remember. I blocked a lot of it out, because it was really stressful, and my doctor wasn’t really making sense, but that was just a him thing. He agreed that I needed a referal at the end of the session, which was really lucky, and so that was where it started. On the 21st of august 2019, I recieved a letter from the NHS telling us that we had to do an evidence based program through my school. #

Since my referal was through my school, my pastoral team were technically involved. What actually happened was that in (possibly) december/january, my mother had a meeting with one member of the pastoral team, and that was it. My mother was instructed to complete an online parenting course to make sure she understood how to properly look after me, and the referal process couldn’t properly start until she had done that. It was emailed to her, and she completed it on the 22nd of february 2020. In march 2020, england obviously went into lockdown and both my school and the referal offices weren’t active, so the process halted again. We got a letter all referal services had been paused, and we could email them again once three-four months had passed. 

In August 2020, we emailed them again, and the referal started again. I’m sorry I can’t remember exactly what happened then, but this was the worst period of waiting. Me and my mother think that, because of the backlog they presumable had, they forgot about me. On the eighteenth of february 2021, six months after my referal resumed, I recieved a letter with a series of surveys in it. There was an extensive one for my parents to fill in, and there was one for me to fill in. It asked questions like how I felt I interacted with people, had I ever done xyz before, and I ticked a box out of strongly agree to strongly disagree. My parents survey asked similar questions, but also included questions about my habits as a baby or a young child, whether I had ever slf hrmed, how they percieved my behaviours, and things like that. I wasn’t in the room when they filled it out. 

We sent it back to them filled out the next day, and on the 14th of april 2021 i got an appointment for an observational assessment. The observation was on the 5th of may 2021, and included me and my mother. I was taken into the walk in center and my and my mum sat in a room with a one way mirror, where the nurse who led us in was sitting. There was a table with some activities on it, and I was told to sit on a specific side of the table. First we had to play snap. There was only one snap in the pack, which my mum won. The nurse would knock on the glass when she wanted us to move on, and we would have to stop what we were doing even if we weren’t done and move on to the next one. 

The next activity was a plastic jenga tower. When each person took a jenga piece the person had to ask a question from a set list of questions they had on cards, and both people had to answer. Some of the questions were things like ‘have you ever saved money for something you wanted’ ‘what makes you angry’ ‘what makes you sad’ ‘what do you enjoy doing with friends’ and other things like that. 

The next activity was conversation again, but only my mum had instructions. She was told to engage me in conversation about anything, and it specified that she could ask me about something I liked. I talked about the magnus archives, and the woman knocked on the glass before I could finish talking and I had to stop, which I did. I don’t know what would happen if you chose not to. 

The final activity was similar to the jenga game, where we both had conversation cards. There was a metal pole hanging from a a frame, a bot like a bigger desk toy, and we had to balance other metal poles on t without it tipping, so we had to work together. My mum had more conversation cards to ask me, similar to the jenga ones. At the end, she had to engage me in two way conversation, rather than asking me about my special interest, and then the nurse came in and led us out. The nurse was really lovely, very smiley even though I kept saying how condescending I found everything during the observation.

On the tenth of may 2021, my mum and dad had a virtual meeting to talk to a different nurses about me. The meeting was meant to last two hours, and ended up lasting four and a half. They were asked about the family’s history of autism, my traits as a child, my traits now, going very in depth about my behaviours. I obviously wasn’t there, so I cant say with clarity what happened then. 

It was mentioned that there would be a virtual feedback meeting to talk about the results of the assessment, but that never happened. What did happen was a phone call on the 24th of may 2021, confirming that I had been diagnosed. A report explaining my traits, and the results of the assessment was said to have been posted to me, but I haven’t received it yet, The report will allow me to send to information to my teachers and receive help from my school.

So there you go, i don’t know how helpful that was but I remember the lack of information and I wanted to add mine to the fix, so heres a full post about the two years it took me. :)

[theprideful]

Hi :) can I ask about your diagnostic process for ADS? I just learned about inattentive ADHD this year...and I've been reading and researching lots about it and now that I know the symptoms I'm pretty sure I have ADS but I'm anxious that maybe the doctor isn't going to take me seriously because it took me so long to figure it out. I always thought I was just being overdramatic, oversensitive and depressed and just forgetful in general but things really add up. I want to get a diagnosis because I know smth is wrong with me and I want to be able to label it but I'm afraid I'm just making things up or that it's because of the pandemic and quarantine and idk. Do you have to get tested or is there no such thing? (although I imagine it's probably different in every country) thanks in advance!! And if you're not comfortable answering just ignore it haha :)

Hey! First of all, let me just say that your concerns are totally valid. A lot of us feel like we're just exaggerating, or that no one will take us seriously. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bias in the medical and psychological industries, especially against women and girls who are post-pubescent -- e.g., we're more likely to be diagnosed with a personality disorder or social anxiety instead of what's actually responsible. But, that doesn't mean there's no hope. It can take a few tries and several different meetings and "specialists", but try not to feel discouraged. My advice is to talk to your primary care physician or doctor. If you have a neurologist, seek them out first. Tell them your concerns, and if they're unable to diagnose you, ask for a referral, preferably to a qualified neuropsychologist. If you do not have access to a healthcare team/provider, you can also ask your school counselor.* This generally works better if you already have an IEP, but it can still be done without one. (*I'm not sure if this applies in other states/provinces. It's best to do your own research beforehand.) The counselor should have an idea of who to call, and they can give you a number or website for access.

Run-of-the-mill psychologists aren't terrible, but should only be used if necessary. If you are able, I recommend going to a neuropsychology clinic. They are more specialized and will be better suited to assess and diagnose you. Getting an actual appointment set may take a while (with an average waiting period of 4-6 months), so it's better to set one up sooner rather than later. The testing itself will most likely be a bit exhausting, and they may or may not offer you snacks during the process. It's best to get good sleep the night before and eat a good breakfast for good measure.

Before they do tests, they will most likely ask you about general background information. Why are you here today? What prompted you to set up an appointment? Are you here of your own accord, or was it your parent/guardian's idea? After those questions, they'll ask you more specific stuff. Like, When did you first notice odd behaviors? What were they? Did you play with other children when you were younger? Do you find it difficult to make friends? Was it always hard to form relationships, or did it get easier/harder over the years? Did you ever play pretend? Do you find it difficult to interpret facial expressions? Do you experience vocal or physical tics? They know it can be hard to remember stuff from early childhood, so they do their best to account for the margin of error. Just do your best and try to be as honest and clear as you can. The doctor will most likely take notes about what you tell them, as well as behaviors you exhibit.

After they ask you these questions, they will probably start doing performance assessments. These will most likely include a test for your attention/concentration abilities, word association, vocabulary breadth, memory strength, and other basic cognitive functions. After these, there will probably be a few questionnaires for you to fill out: for me, there was one to assess possible OCD, one for Autism Spectrum Disorder symptoms, and one long one that covers all their bases (e.g. schizophrenia, paranoid personality disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD, etc.). Your parent or guardian will also have to fill out a questionnaire. Just be honest, and be yourself. Try to relax.

Remember, even after diagnosis, it's wise to seek out therapy for coping skills and just day-to-day functioning. It's a long journey -- I'm just starting mine -- but it'll be worth it. Hope this helps. Good luck!

[hexalt]

CW for discussion of suicide

- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - What? No, I'm not. - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - That's a sexist term! - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - Can you guys stop singing for just a second? - She's so broken insiiiiiide! - The situation's a lot more nuanced than that!

There’s the essay! You get it now. JK.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the culmination of Rachel Bloom’s YouTube channel (and the song “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” in particular where she combined her lifelong obsession with musical theatre and sketch comedy and Aline Brosh McKenna stumbling onto Bloom’s channel one night while having an idea for a television show that subverted the tropes in scripts she’d been writing like The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses.

The show begins with a flashback to teenage Rebecca Bunch (played by Bloom) at summer camp performing in South Pacific. She leaves summer camp gushing about the performance, holding hands with the guy she spent all summer with, Josh Chan. He says it was fun for the time, but it’s time to get back to real life. We flash forward to the present in New York, Rebecca’s world muted in greys and blues with clothing as conservative as her hair.

She’s become a top tier lawyer, a career that she doesn’t enjoy but was pushed into by her overprotective, controlling mother. She’s just found out she’s being promoted to junior partner, and that’s just objectively, on paper fantastic, right?! ...So why isn’t she happy? She goes out onto the streets in the midst of a panic attack, spilling her pills all over the ground, and suddenly sees an ad for butter asking, “When was the last time you were truly happy?” A literal arrow and beam of sunlight then point to none other than Josh Chan. She strikes up a conversation with him where he tells her he’s been trying to make it in New York but doesn’t like it, so he’s moving back to his hometown, West Covina, California, where everyone is just...happy.

The word echoes in her mind, and she absorbs it like a pill. She decides to break free of the hold others have had over her life and turns down the promotion of her mother’s dreams. I didn’t realize the show was a musical when I started it, and it’s at this point that Rebecca is breaking out into its first song, “West Covina”. It’s a parody of the extravagant, classic Broadway numbers filled with a children’s marching band whose funding gets cut, locals joining Rebecca in synchronized song and dance, and finishing with her being lifted into the sky while sitting on a giant pretzel. This was the moment I realized there was something special here.

With this introduction, the stage has been set for the premise of the show. Each season was planned with an overall theme. Season one is all about denial, season two is about being obsessed with love and losing yourself in it, season three is about the spiral and hitting rock bottom, and season four is about renewal and starting from scratch. You can see this from how the theme songs change every year, each being the musical thesis for that season.

We start the show with a bunch of cliché characters: the crazy ex-girlfriend; her quirky sidekick; the hot love interest; his bitchy girlfriend; and his sarcastic best friend who’s clearly a much better match for the heroine. The magic of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that no one in West Covina is the sum of their tropes. As Rachel says herself, “People aren’t badly written, people are made of specificities.”

The show is revolutionary for the authenticity with which it explores various topics but for the sake of this piece, we’ll discuss mental health, gender, Jewish identity, and sexuality. All topics that Bloom has dug into in her previous works but none better than here.

Simply from the title, many may be put off, but this is a story that has always been about deconstructing stereotypes. Rather than being called The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where the story would be from an outsider’s perspective, this story is from that woman’s point of view because the point isn’t to demonize Rebecca, it’s to understand her. Even if you hate her for all the awful things she’s doing.

The musical numbers are shown to be in Rebecca’s imagination, and she tells us they’re how she processes the world, but as she starts healing in the final season, she isn’t the lead singer so often anymore and other characters get to have their own problems and starring roles. When she does have a song, it’s because she’s backsliding into her former patterns.

While a lot of media will have characters that seem to have some sort of vague disorder, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend goes a step further and actually diagnoses Rebecca with Borderline Personality Disorder, while giving her an earnest, soaring anthem. She’s excited and relieved to finally have words for what’s plagued her whole life.

When diagnosing Rebecca, the show’s team consulted with doctors and psychiatrists to give her a proper diagnosis that ended up resonating with many who share it. BPD is a demonized and misunderstood disorder, and I’ve heard that for many, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the first honest and kind depiction they’ve seen of it in media. Where the taboo of mental illness often leads people to not get any help, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend says there is freedom and healing in identifying and sharing these parts of yourself with others.

Media often uses suicide for comedy or romanticizes it, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend explored what’s going through someone’s mind to reach that bottomless pit. Its climactic episode is written by Jack Dolgen (Bloom’s long-time musical collaborator, co-songwriter and writer for the show) who’s dealt with suicidal ideation. Many misunderstood suicide as the person simply wanting to die for no reason, but Rebecca tells her best friend, “I didn’t even want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. It’s like I was out of stories to tell myself that things would be okay.”

Bloom has never shied away from heavy topics. The show discusses in song the horrors of what women do to their bodies and self-esteem to conform to beauty standards, the contradiction of girl power songs that tell you to “Put Yourself First” but make sure you look good for men while doing it, and the importance of women bonding over how terrible straight men are are near and dear to her heart. This is a show that centers marginalized women, pokes fun at the misogyny they go through, and ultimately tells us the love story we thought was going to happen wasn’t between a woman and some guy but between her and her best friend.

I probably haven’t watched enough Jewish TV or film, but to me, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the most unapologetic and relatable Jewish portrayal I’ve seen overall. From Rebecca’s relationship with her toxic, controlling mother (if anyone ever wants to know what my mother’s like, I send them “Where’s the Bathroom”) to Patti Lupone’s Rabbi Shari answering a Rebecca that doesn’t believe in God, “Always questioning! That is the true spirit of the Jewish people,” the Jewish voices behind the show are clear.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to challenge our perceptions when a middle-aged man with an ex-wife and daughter realizes he’s bisexual and comes out in a Huey Lewis saxophone reverie. The hyper-feminine mean girl breaks up with her boyfriend and realizes the reason she was so obsessed with getting him to commit to her is the same reason she’s so scared to have female friends. She was suffering under the weight of compulsory heterosexuality, but thanks to Rebecca, she eventually finds love and friendship with women.

This thread is woven throughout the show. Many of the characters tell Rebecca when she’s at her lowest of how their lives would’ve never changed for the better if it wasn’t for her. She was a tornado that blew through West Covina, but instead of leaving destruction in her wake, she blew apart their façades, forcing true introspection into what made them happy too.

Rebecca’s story is that of a woman who felt hopeless, who felt no love or happiness in her life, when that’s all she’s ever wanted. She tried desperately to fill that void through validation from her parents and random men, things romantic comedies had taught her matter most but came up empty. She tried on a multitude of identities through the musical numbers in her mind, seeing herself as the hero and villain of the story, and eventually realized she’s neither because life doesn’t make narrative sense.

It takes her a long time but eventually she sees that all the things she thought would solve her problems can’t actually bring her happiness. What does is the real family she finds in West Covina, the town she moved to on a whim, and finally having agency over herself to use her own voice and tell her story through music.

The first words spoken by Rebecca are, “When I sang my solo, I felt, like, a really palpable connection with the audience.” Her last words are, “This is a song I wrote.” This connection with the audience that brought her such joy is something she finally gets when she gets to perform her story not to us, the TV audience, but to her loved ones in West Covina. Rebecca (and Rachel) always felt like an outcast, West Covina (and creating the show) showed her how cathartic it is to find others who understand you.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the prologue to Rebecca’s life and the radical story of someone getting better. She didn’t need to change her entire being to find acceptance and happiness, she needed to embrace herself and accept love and help from others who truly cared for her. Community is what she always needed and community is what ultimately saved her.

*

P.S. If you have Spotify... I also process life through music, so I made some playlists related to the show because what better way to express my deep affection for it than through song?

CXG parodies, references, and is inspired by a lot of music from all kinds of genres, musicals, and musicians. Same goes for the videos themselves. I gathered all of them into one giant playlist along with the show’s songs.

A Rebecca Bunch mix that goes through her character arc from season 1 to 4.

I’m shamelessly a fan of Greg x Rebecca, so this is a mega mix of themselves and their relationship throughout the show.

*

I’m in a TV group where we wrote essays on our favorite shows of the 2010s, so here is mine on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I realized I forgot to ever post it. Also wrote one for Schitt’s Creek.

[chibisquirt]

You don't have to answer, but if you wouldn't mind. What are some things you've learned about ADHD from Tumblr that are applicable to you, or others you may now? I've been reading more on it and how it manifests in girls/women and was curious when I read your rb on that post about Grammarly

I don’t mind at all!  Fair warning:  this is gonna be LONG.

I’m going to start by repeating something I mentioned in that post:  I was diagnosed in third grade, which was over two decades ago.  I had my diagnosis halfway through elementary school, much less high school and two rounds of college.  So a lot of the old information about ADHD I learned as a young person, and those things are worth exploring, too.  

Example:  It’s not that I’m not listening, Mrs. Nock, it’s just that if I try to keep my hands still, then the only thing I will retain from the lesson will be keep your hands still and not the things you trying to teach, which are supposedly important! 

(Mrs. Nock was the one who said to me, “I believe you believe you’re paying attention.”  Yes, it’s been fifteen years.  Yes, I’m still mad.  If you can’t have basic respect for your students, don’t teach.)

I figured out half on my own, half because of the counselling that if I had a fidget tool that didn’t require words I would pay better attention than if I tried to sit still.  (I still remember being mocked by my dad for fidgeting well after making that discovery, though.  Apparently diagnoses should only inform compassion when they’re his.)  On the same lines, I also figured out that music in the background wouldn’t work for me if it had words, and television is too distracting for me to use at all.  (I have a friend, though, whose ADHD works the opposite way:  he has difficulty focusing if there isn’t a television in the background.  Yes, both are valid.)

So, the Classics:  

I always had trouble with organization and cleaning, had trouble with schedules and calendars and managing my time.  Those are the things they’ll warn you about, the things they’ll tell you in counselling are natural and normal things for people with ADHD to have trouble with.  Trouble paying attention, sure.  Trouble sitting still.  Procrastination.  Got it.

But if you turn those traits around and re-frame them, they become a new set of symptoms.  Adaptations for these new symptoms are more personal and universally applicable in my life, and therefore, to my mind, more useful.

Take Procrastination.  (No really: please take it.)  That just means “putting it off until tomorrow,” and there are lots of reasons to do it:  “don’t have the tool I need” is one of the biggies, “want to conserve steps” trips me up a lot, “I still have time to get to it” is HUGE for me...  But a lot of times, these are just superficial reasons.  The re-framed symptom is, Trouble making yourself do things you don’t want to do.  

ADHD is an executive function disorder.  That’s a phrase I first learned on Tumblr, by the way; it may have been mentioned by one of my earlier counsellors, but it definitely wasn’t taught.  

This is why soooo many of us have struggled with the perception (including self-perception) that we’re lazy!  But no one tells the kid in the wheelchair he’s just lazy for not playing basketball.  (Okay, they totally do.  People are terrible.  Ignore that, stick to the point.)  I reframe this the way I do because acknowledging this as a symptom, taking the blame out of it, makes it easier to find adaptation.

Now, this is a personal post.  YMMV.  But I have an easier time managing my conduct if, instead of calling myself lazy a procrastinator, I say, “I keep not doing that --> oh it’s because I Don’t Wanna --> how can I con myself into doing it?”  (Strategies include bargaining, making it easier, powering through but then allowing yourself to stop afterwards, just acknowledging that I Don’t Wanna and allowing that to be valid...)  Procrastination is an action, but “executive function disorder” is a disease and “I Don’t Wanna” is its trigger, just as much as an allergy and a clump of ragweed are.  “Procrastination” is a powerful sphynx against which I’m helpless, but “I Don’t Wanna Disease” lets me start cultivating my metaphorical catnip and researching the answers to common riddles.

And while we’re talking about procrastination--and trouble with deadlines, and schedules in general--let’s talk about Time Insensitivity.  Missed deadlines and perpetual lateness (perpetual) are external actions, just like procrastination, and they can have all sorts of explanations.  

(Shoutout to Mrs. Pollack, who looked around a classroom containing thirteen-year-old me, and, knowing full well that I was chronically tardy, declared that “anybody who’s always running late, deep down, they just doesn’t care about anybody else’s time.”  Great job with calling the thirteen-year-old a heartless bitch, Mrs. Pollack!  As you can tell, I definitely forgot it very quickly, and didn’t at all have a self-critical breakdown about it, periodically revisiting the question of my own inherent selfishness for years!!!)

But ignoring the external actions, let’s take a compassionate look inside the head again.  Executive function includes regulation of, and awareness of the passing of, time.  Again: you can’t play the basketball with no legs.  We literally do not realize what time is doing.  Sometimes we do--if we devote enough of our attention to it, which may be a large amount for some, a small amount for others, or a variable amount for the same person.  But our brains literally don’t process it the same way.  

But hold on a minute--let’s go back to that analogy.  Because actually, people with no legs can play basketball!  It’s just that you have to use the adaptation of wheelchairs to do it--and that’s an adaptation for the game and for the players.  

I use alarms.  I’ve recently seen a post about audio memos as alarms.  There are people who just slap clocks everywhere.  When I was forced to work in a kitchen with no clocks, I used the multi-setting timer and set it for like four hours so I would know if I was keeping on schedule.  I also chose a job environment where much of my shift is the same as itself, and rigid punctuality isn’t enforced--that’s adapting my environment, instead of myself.  There’s all kinds of adaptations.  But you have to know you have the condition before you can compensate for it.

Here’s a fun little story:  when I was... oh, eleven?  Twelve?  My Quaker Meeting’s youth group (#7 whitest phrase I’ve ever written) went to the museum together.  One of the stops was in the children’s section, there was a... a pegboard, I think?  With some kind of problem on it.  A puzzle.  Me and a couple others sat down at it, and it took me a while, but eventually I solved it, and I looked up.  

I blinked.  “Where is everybody?” I said.

“They left,” said my mom.  “Half an hour ago.”  

I was stunned.  “Half an hour ago?!  But I couldn’t’ve spent more than ten minutes on this!”

“I promise you, it was half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you call me??  Why didn’t you say my name?”

“We did.  Several times.”

To this day, I will swear myself blind that I never heard a thing.

Hyperfocusing.  They’ll tell you about the problems focusing; oh yes.  They’ll tell you allll about that one.  But they won’t tell you about the flip side of it.  They won’t tell you about the times when the rest of the world falls away, and the only two things in the world are you and whatever problem you’re trying to solve.  

D’y’know what, I bet that’s the reason I test well.  I just realized this now, phrasing it like that, but--I’ve always tested well, even when my actual practical applications of things are mediocre I do well with the classroom testing on it.  I scored a 39 on the MCAT, back when it was out of 45 and not whatever it is now.  (To those with the plain good sense not to want to be doctors:  that’s pretty good.)  And I just bet it’s because, once I get focused on solving the problems, the other problems--nerves, intrusive thoughts, anxiety--just don’t have room to get in.  Hyperfocusing can be a superpower, if you can harness it.  

But it can also blind you to everything else.  And it works in smaller ways, too:  once I think I understand something, it is very difficult for me to perceive information that contradicts that understanding.  I still get the map of the Elflands backwards every time I read The Goblin Emperor, just because I pictured it one way, and every indication in the text that it was the other way just fell on deaf ears.  

And this one leads right into the next, which is Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  RSD is hyperfocus, but it’s hyperfocus on how everyone must hate you.  It’s delightful!  I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, as well, and I do have both of those things, but for my money, I think that this one symptom of ADHD--which no doctor has ever even mentioned to me--has hurt me more than both of those conditions combined.  

The last one I’m going to bring up is Auditory Processing Disorder.  Now, I’ve gone and gotten re-diagnosed twice in my life, and the last time was just a few years ago, so they actually used this one in the test.  The psychologist told me about it, she just didn’t use the phrase Auditory Processing Disorder, and she didn’t tell me that it was its own symptom--she just used it for the test.  

What she did was, she gave me two hearing tests, one to test whether or not I could hear, and then the other a list of words that all sounded alike, and I had to mark which one I was hearing.  The second part of that was very long, and very boring, and despite scoring perfectly on the first test, I got several wrong on the second.  I was actually surprised by that; I at no point suspected I had heard any of them wrong.  When she gave me the test, told me this was proof by contradiction, that we were ruling out hearing loss as an alternative explanation for my difficulties.  It was only after the test was done that she explained that the pattern I showed was actually part of the diagnosis of ADHD; that we get bored, and stop really paying attention, and that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

...Okay, but you couldn’t have mentioned the part where I also do that every day in real life, lady?!?!  It’s not just when we’re bored, it’s not just for long processes.  I do this all the time.  I actually tell people now that “I actually have a neurological condition that makes it hard for me to hear; I can tell that you’re speaking, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.”  

This is 100% true.  It is a neurological condition.  

We label this a condition, but as a society, we don’t treat it that way.  Society treats it as yet another excuse.  It’s not.  You’re not lazy, stupid or crazy.  Neither am I.  

I have a condition.  Acknowledging that is the first step of treatment.  Not five thousand sticky notes, not binders or filing systems or even taking all the doors off the cupboards (although I definitely plan to do that one as soon as I possibly can).  Not counselling sessions with so many different people I can’t even name them all, for the love of god please understand that you can’t just fix it with pills.  

(Although mad props to the people who thought Concerta would magically solve me at the age of nine!  Spoiler alert:  it did not do that!  But it did mean that my parents felt comfortable blaming me for all my failures again, so it did at least some of what it was designed for, I guess. :) )   

I have spent the last few years re-understanding my ADHD it as is:  a neurological condition, a disability, and a simple fact of life.  A starting place, instead of yet more proof of my own inherent insufficiency.  And you know what?  When you take the blame and self-hatred out of the diagnosis--when you stop cursing it as the cause of all your problems and start trying to work with it, instead--it gets a lot easier to manage. 

[thisadhdlife]

Medication 💊 isn’t for everyone. But, sometimes, it works as intended. This is my experience.

Disclaimer: I am someone who has a BA in General Psychology, and an MA in Clinical Psychology. So, unlike a lot of people with uninformed/misguided opinions on the subject matter, I actually DO know what I'm talking about when it comes to something like ADHD and mental health. I’m not a licensed counselor. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a psychologist. Nothing I say/write here is medical advice. If you have concerns, I recommend you speak to your own medical and/or psychological professional.

With that out of the way, I’d like to start by asking: What was your first experience of taking the (CORRECT & APPROPRIATELY PRESCRIBED) ADHD medication like?

The following is my personal experience. Your experience may vary.

I’m between 30-35 years old at the time of writing this.

I was diagnosed with ADHD after age 30, pretty recently in fact.

The first time I tried a (stimulant) medication 💊 for this condition (exactly as prescribed), the sensation I felt as it kicked-in was that of which I’d liken to... peace.

Tranquility.

Calmness.

The kind of stuff I’d only ever read about and listened to in books bout calming the mind, and meditating. I’d tried everything for more than a decade now: diet, exercise, meditation supplements. NOTHING had ever worked the way the medication for treating ADHD worked on day-1.

I often wonder if THIS is how neurotypical brains 🧠 feel ALL the time. This ease of focus, this deliberate ability to switch from one-task-to-another with ease. This ability to simply use what people have been referring to as “willpower” all my life to do things like put down the phone, start a class, finish a project, clean the apartment. Is this how people who don’t have ADHD experience the world?

And then, I felt... empathy. Empathy for all the people who’d ever told me to shape up, to get it for their, to have some drive and willpower and make something out of myself.

If it’s THIS easy to use willpower for them (those who do not have ADHD), to organize things, and get started on stuff... then that means that neurotypical brains play the game of life on EASY mode without even realizing that they’ve got a lower difficulty setting enabled, 24/7/365. 🎮

At least that’s how it felt like to me. Your experience/opinion may vary. “Of course they’d think I was lazy, or unwilling to work”, I said to myself. If your experience of the world is to be able to do things and keep focus THIS easily, of course you’d think that everyone else who couldn’t do it was somehow lazy, or had some kind of deficit of conviction or even morality.

I’ve been taking my medication for more than a week now. In that time, I’ve been able to do things that took a Herculean effort before for me. But... the thing is... I didn’t know that my effort was Herculean. I just knew that I kept failing at the “easy” stuff that everyone was just able to do somehow. But this also shocked me a bit: If I put in the amount off effort I've been putting into things before my diagnosis, but that effort can be directed, focused, regulated, and managed properly because of that medication... doesn’t that mean that I can, truly, for the first time EVER in my life, achieve anything I set my mind to? Doesn’t this mean that I've never truly been “stupid” as everyone around me has called me, or implied when referring to me?

The medication, more than any amount of dieting, exercising, supplements, and meditation... saved my life.

My doctor, the one who believed me when I told her and described to her my condition and my suffering, saved my life. Of that I have no doubt now. Before, it felt like I was drowning in the deepest part of a really wide river. Unable to swim, but everyone on the shoreline yelling at me to “swim harder!” And then, from the first day I took the medication... I felt like Neo, from The Matrix. “I know kung-fu.” (Yes, yes, yes, I know. It’s overdone and clichè).

Except, for me, it was “I know how to swim. I can swim. I can focus on swimming, one movement at a time, but I KNOW this, I can do this.” And then, I did. I started to be able to focus. For the first time in decades, I have clarity. And I'm not just talking about clarity of mind (from the “fog” that people often describe when it comes to ADHD)... but also clarity of purpose. I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt what I want to do in life. No ands-ifs-or-buts. I know what I was born to do, what I was put on this earth to do. The longer I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve been kicking myself for wasting my time with trivial things. But no more. I know I mentioned “clarity of purpose”, but that portion is for a different post, I’ll write later.

Also, while I'm on the topic of medication: I’d like to address something utterly incomprehensible. Dear neurotypical brains, your inability to comprehend how it feels to have ADHD does not make it any less real, nor does it automatically negate the effects that ADHD has on our lives, along with the multitude of ways it can make us suffer.

Do you tell a diabetic to not take their insulin because they use needles to inject the insulin into their body? Drug addicts also use needles. But, if you’re a rational and compassionate human being, you’ll be able to distinguish between the two. And yet, where does that rational brain go when it comes to ADHD medication? Because some idiots abuse the medication, doesn’t mean that the medication doesn’t work when taken AS DIRECTED, under the strict guidance of a physician.

On the other-hand: NOBODY should be made to feel that they NEED to take the medication. No one should ever be forced by anyone to take medication for ADHD either. It’s a personal decision, to be discussed and made between you and your doctor. Medication, in combination with therapy, is the most effective way of managing ADHD that we have as of the date of me writing this. My body, my mind, my medical/mental diagnosis, my life, my money, my doctor, my (informed) consent, my choice. Your opinion DOES NOT matter to me. 

That’s all I have to say on the matter.

For most conditions, the diagnosis is the day peoples lives start to come undone. For people with ADHD, in my opinion, I think the day we get an official diagnosis... our lives finally start to come together. At least that’s what it felt like for me.

I don’t even know if anyone else will read this looonnnggg blog post. Or if anyone else can empathize with this. But I can’t help but write, because it’s the way I process my thoughts: I write them out. Sometimes I post them, other times I don’t. But I usually write out things.

Take care of yourself.

Until next time.

[letstalkaboutpain]

Where it all began

I really can’t say where it ‘actually’ began because no doctor can tell me how long endometriosis has been growing inside me. But I can tell you when my discovery of it began and that date is 19th February 2021.

I was diagnosed with endometriosis and I will be having surgery about a month from now on 20th April, if all goes well with the Covid lockdown situation. I'm 31, I've been menstruating since I was 11 and have had excruciating pain for many months in that time span. 

And only after 15 idd years did have I got the right diagnosis. The reason it took me this long is many-fold. One being that as a society we tend to normalize pain, I don't know if it's worse in India than other countries, but I do see that we normalize pain a lot. Physical and emotional. For eg if someone is crying and you tell him he shouldn't you're not only invalidating his feelings but also making him believe he needs to suppress his emotions to be accepted in the world.. how heartbreaking is that. That's kinda what happens with endo too. It's like since for as long as I can remember I've been screaming in pain and people have either told me it's okay, it's fluctuating, maybe your hormones are out of whack and some more unhelpful stuff. Some people comforted me like my family. They made the food that wouldn't make me puke and got medicines and tried every remedy possible that they knew of. I went with it

In 2015 I decided I needed answers and I wasn't willing to wait another minute. I saw a gynaecologist in a reputed hospital who said she suspected endo, asked me to do a scan but didn't see any endo on the scan. She did not try to investigate further. She put me on a contraceptive pill. This eased the pain but it wasn't the answer I was looking for.

Another gynaec told me it would go away after marriage and children 🤦‍♀️ I wonder how she's even allowed to practice. Is that a prescription, really?! Though she did prescribe a 3D pelvic ultrasound which I will couldn't get in part because I was finishing my treatment for another illness, perhaps a bit of laziness and also because Coronavirus put the city on lockdown and diagnosis something I’d been facing for 15+ years didn’t seem ‘essential’ to me.

In January I developed gastric symptoms. I'd feel bloated and nauseous after eating just one slice of toast. This was alarming and I booked a visit to the gastro and thanks to my dad's advice went in for an ultrasound immediately before seeing the gastro to save time. The ultrasound showed a 6cm endometrioma also called a chocolate cyst ( I hate the term and intend to get it taken off medical books)

It was this cyst that lead me to do some more research where I was no longer looking for a gynaec but for a specialist in endometriosis. I was all prepared for no results to show up in my vicinity. Hallelujah I found the right doc not too far away. Incidentally, he is the only peer vetted specialist in India, Asia and the Middle East.

So this unicorn of a doctor diagnosed me with endo, explained in great detail what the surgery will be like and patiently answered all my questions over my first and several follow up appointments. And I will still have more and I know he will answer them as well. So I'm in safe hands and confident my surgery will go well.

But I have many other feelings inside. The anger of not being diagnosed all this while. The anger at the world for creating the circumstances that allowed this to happen. The deep sadness of knowing so many women will never get to this point and perhaps go their whole lives normalising and accepting pain as their fate. These are the things that plague me often. Surgery bothers me in much smaller doses. I am fuelled at this stage in my life to make some noise, to set some fires, to shake up all the systems that allow a disease which has a 1 in 10 incidence to go undiagnosed for so long. This is not okay. I don’t accept this level of healthcare for me and I will shout it from the rooftops on behalf of every woman in India, we don’t deserve this and we don’t accept this. I am in the process of building something to address a few of these systemic hurdles. And I need your help. I hope you’re listening and I hope you’re ready. The movement will begin soon.

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 16X21

I loved this episode! It finally happened! Hayes asked Meredith out and she said YES!!! I’m so happy right now! We're going to see them go on a date and have drinks next season! It’s all I could have hoped for and more! I can’t wait! This episode was a finale that wasn’t supposed to be a finale. With that in mind I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was great! I loved this episode! Mainly because it delivered on the one thing I’d been hoping for since the mid season premiere! It didn’t have the usual shock factor that comes at the end of a planned Grey’s finale, but it was exciting and we got movement on pretty much all of the major storylines up to this point. It’s not where the cast and crew were planning to leave things for this season, but with the sudden onset of the COVID-19 virus and the mandatory shutdowns worldwide they were forced to halt production when filming for this episode had wrapped.

So with that in mind this episode leaves things in a pretty good place with some great set up for next season. Originally the shutdowns and the quarantine was supposed to be temporary and so I had hoped that they would be able to come back and film the remaining four episodes for this season as from what I’ve read the scripts have already been written and the plan was already in place. Unfortunately, since none of us know when the quarantine will end they have decided to roll those episodes into next season and rejig what would have been episode 16X22 to make it more exciting so that it can be the season opener for Season 17.

While I’m sad we won’t see the remaining four episodes as planned this hopefully means that there won’t be any filler episodes next seasons as they’ll rejig and add the four from this season and then write 21 new ones. So let’s talk about that scene with Meredith and Hayes! It was so so great! After hearing the news that she and the other doctors had finally found a diagnosis for Richard’s condition Hayes sought Meredith out as she was leaving for the night. He congratulated her on a great catch and asked her if she’d like to grab a drink with him and celebrate. She said yes, but said she was to exhausted to go out right now and asked her if he’d ask her again some other time. He said of course and told her he’d see her later and she said goodbye for the night.

There were so many things I loved about that scene! It was perfect! I loved that Hayes respected Meredith’s boundaries. He didn't push or try to change her mind. He understood what she was saying and accepted it. With any other love interest they’ve put her with that would have been a whole thing. They would have tried to change her mind or argued with her or tried to convince her and that’s not okay. But Hayes doesn’t do that. Why? Because he’s a mature adult who’s got his stuff together who understands the concept of consent and that yes, but not right now does not mean convince me.

I love that he's so understanding! He gets it! She's tired. She wants to go home and sleep, but she also wants to go out with him when she's feeling better and he wants that too! I can't wait to see them go out! I'm so happy. He's so smitten! Just the way he looks at her! And the way she looks at him! She's so into him! My heart! I love that they established that Hayes doesn’t like setups and he doesn’t even know that he’s in one right now! Jo’s sure not going to tell him. Where would be the fun in that? And he’s right that people are talking about his personal life when he’s not around. Specifically, the fact that Cristina sent him across the Atlantic and set him up with Meredith and everyone’s into it. I love it so much!

Also how deceiving was that episode description? “Hayes asks Meredith a surprising question.” It’s only surprising if you’ve never seen the show before or aren’t caught up on this season! Hayes has been into Meredith since he got to Seattle and Meredith has been into Hayes since they worked that Vaping case together. It’s very obvious in the googly heart eyes they keep making at each other all the time. I love that Hayes asking Meredith out was done in a subtle way with not a lot of fanfare. I really loved that. Because the episode description made it seem like it was going to be this big dramatic thing and I love that it wasn’t. Because real life is not like that. Real life is about the small moments. The intimate moments. The moments that matter. That come naturally when you build up a rapport with someone over time. And that’s what Meredith and Hayes have built.

I was also worried, especially after the Conference episode, that Hayes was still processing his grief in such a way that he wouldn’t feel comfortable asking Meredith out or that everything that’s been happening with DeLuca and now Richard would make him hesitant to ask her out or take the next step. Instead, we saw the opposite. Jo made comments about how him and Meredith would be good together and implied that other people thought so too. He heard about the nonsense that DeLuca had pulled yet again and he heard about what was going on with Richard and his eventual diagnosis. Instead of preventing him from asking her out it actually propelled him. He heard about what had happened with Richard, sought her out, offered his sympathies, congratulated her on a great catch. He then used that as a spring board to ask her out and in response she reciprocated his feelings and said yes! It was subtle, simple, and sweet. As it so often is in real life when you meet the right person.

I’m a big Taylor Swift fan and the slow burn they’ve created for Meredith and Hayes and the way he asked her out really reminded me of Taylor’s music and album journeys from reputation to Lover. The reputation album is about the death of Taylor’s reputation and her response to it. But as she has spoken about in interviews it’s also about a beautiful love story. It’s about how in some of her darkest times she found and formed the most beautiful and amazing relationship with her partner Joe. There’s this undercurrent running through the album about that relationship as it begins. Then in Lover it blossoms fully and we get to hear all about it and how great finding that kind of whole hearted love really is.

To me there is such a great parallel between that musical journey and the relationship we see forming between Meredith and Hayes. It’s this beautiful undercurrent that’s forming amidst the constant chaos that is Meredith’s life and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s this steady current in the background that once given the chance to fully bloom will blossom into this beautiful thing. I’m excited that we’ll get to see that next season. Hayes was back in a big way this episode and I loved it! I love him as a character. I really hope they make him a series regular next season because he is great and he needs more screen time. The female patient Daya who couldn’t express emotion or smile because of her condition and needed facial surgery was hilarious! 

I'm really glad that they figured out what was wrong with Richard and he's on the mend! I'm glad Richard kicked Catherine out. She deserved that and in fairness to him he doesn't remember her being there. It looks like he doesn't remember anything prior to the Conference so I get why he's mad. He was also real petty about it and I loved that. Although I was surprised that Meredith wasn't in his room with Maggie and Jackson and Catherine at the end.

She’s his family too and up until he married Catherine she was he’s next of kin, his emergency contact, and had medical power of attorney. Catherine’s left him and was MIA prior to him getting sick, Richard didn’t even know that Maggie existed until a few years ago, and Jackson had barely spoken to the man until Maggie pointed out that Richard thought he was taking Catherine’s side in the divorce. Side note: I’m glad that Maggie and Winston are still texting! Steamily I might add! He should definitely move to Seattle next season!

DeLuca annoyed the crap out of me this episode not because he was wrong, but because of the way he chose to express his opinions as usual. He was right but instead of explaining that calmly to others he screamed at Richard's family and threw a bunch of sharp surgical instruments onto the OR floor while Richard was on the table. I really hope they write him off next season because he annoys the crap out of me, he still hasn’t picked a speciality yet, and I feel they’ve gone as far as they can with his character and then some.

As for that end scene with Meredith and DeLuca here’s how I saw it. I didn't see it as her going home with him. I saw it as she was on her way home when she found him crying on the floor and either drove him home or admitted him for treatment. They established that Carina's back in Seattle so I think she either she drove him home and then called Carina to come take care of her brother or got him admitted and then called her to follow up and then went home and got some well deserved sleep.

I'm glad that he's finally acknowledged that he's got a problem and needs help. That's the first time since he started behaving erratically that we've seen that so that's good. I hope Carina can get him some help and get him admitted somewhere or that Meredith already has. More and more I see the interactions between Meredith and DeLuca as motherly. She’s clearly concerned about him and feels guilty because he went to jail for her and is now failing apart. I hope they write him off next season, but if they don’t I hope he gets the treatment he needs and they both move on or they remain in each other’s lives on a friendly co-worker basis as that’s the only time they ever really work on screen in my opinion. They don’t have chemistry romantically or as friends. I loved that moment in the OR where Bokhee prayed over Richard! Bokhee for the win!

Teddy was a hot mess as usual! I knew the truth was going to come out eventually, but I did not expect that god damn! I'm not an Owen fan, but that scene in the supply closet was still a gut punch. Oof! I loved Tom's speech to Teddy and how he called her out on the fact that she was running into marrying Owen rather than confront her own confused feelings. Teddy really needs to figure out what she wants and pick a lane! I hated the fact that she had sex with Tom in his office and then when he said let's run away together she told him this was goodbye and she was marrying Owen. Who does that? No matter what side you are on here Teddy’s behaviour is just not okay! Oy vey! 

I’m glad that Owen stood her up and cancelled the wedding. It’s bad enough that she’s engaged to Owen and carrying on an affair with Tom, but the fact that she had sex with Tom in his office on the day of her wedding and then had the audacity to tell him that was goodbye and she was marrying Owen when she is clearly conflicted is an awful thing to do to everyone. She’s literally hurting all parties involved and that’s just awful. Also how is she planning on explaining this to her kids when they’re older?

Amelia and Link we're super cute this episode! I'm glad that their baby is okay and healthy and that Amelia is okay after what happened with her first pregnancy. She’s been through enough and it looks like she’s finally getting something good in her life with a beautiful new baby and a healthy pregnancy and delivery and a wonderful supportive partner. The throwback to Bailey being there for Amelia like George was there for her was so beautiful! Kudos to Bailey for showing all that strength after she suffered a miscarriage recently!

I'm glad we got to see Bailey spend time with Richard as I felt that was missing last episode. Carina was great in this episode! She has so much potential as a character and I wish they would use her more. She’s such a badass and her facial expressions are always on point. Although I only watch Station 19 sporadically these days I love her relationship with Maya. I’m not an Andrew DeLuca fan at all and I would love if they would start focusing on her more and move her brother back into the background or off the show entirely.

Jo was hilarious! I’m glad she’s getting her spunk back. She reminds me in a lot of ways of Amelia from her early Private Practice days. I loved her comments to Jackson in the OR! Real talk though, what do you think Jackson’s dating profile pic would be? Jet or Yacht? Comment below! Also I love that Jo is so team MerWidow! She totally ships them together! And she's helping to make it happen! Go Jo!

I love how she almost spilled the beans to Hayes about Cristina setting him and Meredith up but then stopped when she realized he didn't know and didn't like set ups. I'm glad she did. Because if she'd said something further then Hayes might not have asked Meredith out. I feel like by the time the truth comes out Meredith and Hayes will already have been dating for a while so he'll be annoyed, but it won't change the way he feels about Meredith. Although let’s be honest nothing could he’s so smitten and he should be! Meredith is amazing and she deserves an amazing man like Hayes.

I saw someone on Twitter comment that it looks like the storyline with Meredith and Hayes beginning to date and the truth coming out about how Cristina set them up was supposed to play out in the next few episodes and I think that’s true. I’m sorry we won’t get to see it this season because of the shutdown but I’m really excited to see this play out next season. Something that did surprise me is that the character interactions in this episode imply that Jo didn’t tell Meredith about what DeLuca did to her and tried to do to her at the bar in the episode ‘Life on Mars’ and still hasn’t told her. I’m surprised by that because Meredith and Jo are friends, what DeLuca did was disgusting and unforgivable, and Jo clearly hasn’t forgotten. In fact in this very episode she made it super clear to Hayes that she detests DeLuca and hates the idea of him and Meredith together and so do others.

This once again brings to light the big problem with DeLuca in that the only reason Meredith went out with him, continued to date him, and continues to interact with him out of concern is because her friends and family aren't being completely honest with her about his behaviour and how he acts when she’s not around. Because let’s face it. If Meredith knew what DeLuca was really like when she wasn’t there she wouldn’t give that asshole the time of day. I can’t emphasize this enough. Your friends and family should be able to be honest with you about the person you’re dating and anyone that’s in your life. They should feel comfortable being honest with you and telling you how they feel. They shouldn’t have to hid the worst parts of them in order to protect you or so that you can be happy. I also don’t get how anyone can ship Meredith and DeLuca together or want him to continue to be a part of her life when he treats the people she loves so horribly and they openly detest him so much.

I’m sorry we have to wait so long to find out what happens next to our heroes. But I am very much looking forward to next season and watching Meredith and Hayes develop further!

Until next time!

[far-off-flower-fields]

Okay another update on the situation with the psychiatrist situation.

I heard back about a week later, but it was the receptionist again. She said that my appointment hadn't just been cancelled without actually telling me, I'd actually been removed from his patient list, ie I wasn't on the waiting list and needed to go to a doctor again to get another referral. I tried to play it cool but just kinda started to cry because I can't try to get on with my life until this shit gets sorted so I can get some benefit stuff sorted and maybe find a mental health management system that actually works for me. She's really nice so she was asking if I was okay and I was trying to just say I was because I was also about to have a meltdown, but then I managed to explain that I had trouble getting referred in the first place because my go sucks. She literally was like hm I wonder if we have the same gp, and then said she'd send another email to the psychiatrist to see if he could work something out.

I should maybe preface this but by explaining the steps I had to go through to get referred, I spent about 3 years going in and complaining about my mental health, I tried a new medication which did literally nothing, I saw a counsellor who was a terrible fit for me. Then when I stopped that I went in to the doctor and said I don't think I have my full diagnosis and why I think that and that I want a referral for that without saying what I think could be my issues and they said they couldn't. I went in again and asked again to a different doctor, this time saying the things that could be going on in case that made a difference but as soon as I mentioned that I think autism or add could make sense (without speaking in certainties even though I've done a ton of actual research) and they point blank said that even though it was so long ago and I had to convince them to even look at me that my diagnosis is exactly what I was told (doctors don't like when you say another doctor got it wrong even if you speak as cautiously as you can and the doctors were literally on the other side of the world). I went in a third time this time only mentioning the possibility of bpd and they actually referred me through. Then I waited several months (like 4 or 5) and my mum buried my appointment notice under some towels so I missed it, then had to reschedule, then that was set to march 31st and the lockdown happened and I've covered the rest already.

The day after I spoke to the receptionist I got a call from a doctor, this time it was the one I spoke to when I got a medical note because of my mental health when I first went on the benefit and I'd told her back then about my "postponed". She was confused because she received an email from the psychiatrist basically asking if she thought I actually needed seen. I explained to her that it was starting to feel like he just didn't want to help me (because it does), but I also explained how my day to day life/mental health is rn and she was like yeah no that's not acceptable and that I shouldn't really be waiting this long so she re-referred me as urgent. She asked if I'd likecto try some medication or just wait and see what the psychiatrist says, I ran through all of the meds I tried that haven't worked and that I've seen so many counsellors who all tried cbt on me to no avail, and she was like yeah you've run the course and tried all there is.

So now I have to wait, probably 3 months minimum but more likely closer to 6 months to move back through the waiting list. Which means I'll be just starting the process of getting diagnosed for whatever is in my head literally a month or two before I wanted to move out of my toxic parents house so there's that out of the window. It also means I have to push back getting married because I'll be doing that just after we move out since otherwise we can't actually see each other more than every second weekend and my benefit will be reduced. My life literally has to continue to be put on hold because the nhs (especially for mental health services) is hugely underfunded and most GPs are shits who won't listen.

I'm so sick of this, I bet they're just hoping I'll give up and just like go back to work and promptly fucking drop dead.

Still 99% sure I have some sort of neurodivergence and/or bpd and I have serious doubts after how the psychiatrist has been acting so far that they're going to listen to me when I actually explain all of my shit and take me seriously because he just seems like he can't be bothered or doesn't have time. I literally have no choice but to keep pushing though.

[ketopian]

Putting Your Money Where Your Research Is

So my wife and I are starting a business selling all the Ketogenic Diet related things that we wish there was already a website for. We've been eating keto for a couple of years now and it has had a huge impact on our health and our lives. My wife has lost a huge amount of body fat and overcome multiple metabolic issues and I've been able to stop taking immunosuppressants for Crohn's Disease and am now completely drug free. We both have hugely increased energy levels. There are loads of great Keto and Low Carb blogs in the world, so I thought long and hard about writing yet another one, but I thought that a) it might help me to get more clarity on certain issues b) give me reason to experiment a bit more with my meals, as I've gotten a bit lazy of late and everyone loves a recipe, and c) force me to consolidate all I have learned from reading various bits of scientific literature in relation to nutrition, which is something I do a lot given my past as a scientist, engineer and science teacher. While my background isn't medicine, I have spent the last few years educating myself on biochemistry. This was originally to help my wife with various issues (many of which a plan to go into at a later date), but I quickly discovered that there was a lot more I could learn.   

I, like most scientifically minded or "sceptical" (there's a word that's been seriously corrupted by the internet) people, thought I knew all there was to know about nutrition: a calorie is a calorie, an energy deficit is all you need to lose weight, and no, you aren't fat because of your hormones. I went at least a little further than most; I understood how digestion worked and that starches ended up as glucose in the body, a message some medical professionals still seem to have trouble with. Nonetheless, it came as a shock to me when all this stuff didn't seem to work for my wife. I was seeing how little he was eating, how hungry she was getting and how difficult it was for her to shift those fat stores. Her pregnancy was a major turning point. PCOS had been mooted before but it was never confirmed until a scan ended up with the radiographer saying “Your ovaries look a little polycystic to me”. This was followed a number of weeks later by a diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes, accompanied by the standard advice – eat regular meals (six per day plus snacks) and make sure you have loads of carbohydrate at each – accompanied by the offer of medication. Well, we were both determined that that wasn’t going to happen, so I set about researching, which is what I do best (well, one of two things, but we’ll come to the other much later). The obstetricians could not believe her blood sugar readings – they were better than most non-diabetics. One of them even asked to see the glycometer, as such low readings could not be possible. How did we do it? By ignoring all the advice we were given, reducing carbohydrates to a very low level (although not keto levels at that point) and using a small number of carefully researched supplements. We didn’t mention the supplements to any medical professional; we had enough patronising advice from them, but it was following the science that allowed my wife to avoid medication and to produce a daughter who was born incredibly healthy and with a great start in life.

I don’t want to criticise the medical community too much, most of them are only trying their best, but there is a certain amount of arrogance which tends to come with being a doctor, which often is not concomitant with their intelligence or knowledge. Just as in any other field of endeavour, ability as a medical practitioner is on a bell curve. In other words, there are a few who are fantastic at their jobs, a few who are truly awful, and most are pretty much middling in ability. I’ve taught students who became doctors, and if I were ever given an appointment with them, I’d run a mile! Most doctors follow the guidelines, and it’s a lottery as to whether you get to see the occasional few who do enough research in the right areas to go beyond that. If we educate ourselves to a high enough level, we may be able to help our doctors to help themselves and then eventually to help everyone else.

So back to the story. So this whole pregnancy episode got me really intrigued. Was everything I knew actually complete bullshit? I had spent around close to 300 hours during Hayley’s pregnancy reading papers and getting familiar with the biochemistry and biology of nutrition, and countless more hours not sleeping but thinking about what I had read. It completely changed my attitude to my own knowledge. It had also deeply concerned me. How could everyone have been so wrong on this for so long? Well, it turns out that they absolutely could be, and the reasons are complex and too long for now (stay tuned for a post on this precise subject), but there was something else that intrigued me.

I have Crohn’s Disease. For those of you who don’t know, Crohn’s Disease is an autoimmune disease of the gastrointestinal tract. What this means is it causes inflammation, ulceration and pain, anywhere from the mouth to the anus. It is essentially when your own immune system decides that your gut is a foreign object and therefore needs destruction. My own Crohn’s was mainly confined to the colon, although I also got very large and painful mouth ulcers. Crohn’s is usually treated with steroids, anti-inflammatory drugs, immunosuppressants, which damp down the immune system, and a more recent sort of therapy called biologic therapy. I had been a biologic many years ago, but I was fairly lucky in that I was OK on just anti-inflammatories and immunosuppressants, however the immunosuppressants were not pleasant. I got every illness going. If I got a cold, I had it bad for two weeks, including having to spend a day or two in bed. I had got to the end of my tether; there had to be another way.

Enter ketone bodies. So if you know anything about ketogenic diets you probably know that when you restrict carbohydrates enough that your body starts to use fat to create substances called ketone bodies, the most important of which for human metabolism is a chemical called Beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB). Well, it turns out BHB has a strong anti-inflammatory effect. “Aha,” I thought to myself,” This might be worth a go”. It was. I had tried to come off medication several times previously, under medical supervision, of course. Always, within about six weeks, I would have a serious and painful relapse. Not this time. I bit the bullet, stopped my medication (this time without telling any medical professionals) stopped the carbs and waited, fully expecting the usual relapse. It’s now been two years drug free and I have never felt better. I would go as far as to say I have no symptoms of Crohn’s. While I would hesitate to say all Crohn’s sufferers should do this, especially the way I did it, it might be worth a try if you’ve had enough of the side effects of your drugs, or if you can’t get any relief and just want an extra bit of help. With medical supervision, of course. It might also be worth a try if you have any other autoimmune disorder, such as ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, lupus and maybe even multiple sclerosis. Please don’t take this as medical advice but try to educate yourself and your medical practitioners as much as possible on this subject. If you want any help in this endeavour please let me know.

Well, this has been a long and rambling story, but we’re almost up to date. Since my discoveries I have helped a number of friends and family members send their type 2 diabetes or prediabetes into remission, lose weight and become healthier, both physically and mentally. My wife is slimmer, healthier and feels generally better. I didn’t even realise I had fat to lose but the recent appearance of my abdominal muscles seems to confirm that I actually had a fair bit to get rid of. All by getting rid of refined sugar, starchy carbs and the vast majority of processed foods, and getting BHB levels up. Do I think that everyone should be doing keto? Absolutely not. Everyone’s biology is unique – some people will respond fantastically to a ketogenic diet, some people will get less than nothing from it. But for those for whom it works it is life changing. Hopefully via the website, this blog and the planned videos we will be able to help more people get what they need out of this incredibly powerful dietary intervention. 

TL;DR: For lots of people Ketogenic Diets are awesome. Welcome to Ketopian.

[kaspmatic]

How would you say you relate to Eddie?

BIG FUCKING OOF –ok, I hope you guys are ready to go on a wild ride with me down memory lanehere. there is quite a bit that I can cover on how I relate to Eddie – soplease bear with me and if you read this then; kudos, brownie points, goldstars, all of that shit to you. I’m going to put my actual answer under a read morebecause I know this is going to get lengthy. And honestly, probably a littlepatchy and I might jump around a bit so I won’t force this shit on anyone whowon’t intentionally click that read more for the deets. LOL.

OVERBEARINGFAMILY - REPRESSED HOMOSEXUALITY

To lay a little backgroundon everyone, I grew up NOT knowing my biological father. I lost himat a young age and spent a lot of my younger years growing up with a singlemother – my mom worked in a hospital, so every little thing that happenedbecame a giant issue; I had a cough? go to the doctors. I was always cold? goto the doctors. I sneezed funny? go to the doctors. (I think you guys get mydrift with where I’m going here). as a child I spent a lot of time in and out of thehospital because of this, now I’m not saying my mom has Munchausen Syndrome byany means, she definitely didn’t force diseases onto me. I justrelate and understand that pain of always having to go to the hospitalfor the most trivial of concepts. As a child, however, I did spend quite a fewyears toting around an inhaler that I didn’t even fucking need. Call it a baddiagnosis or whatever you will – but it was still something that I had todo that I didn’t even need.

Not having my dad aroundlead for a lot of weird and one-sided views in my mind throughout my youngeryears of life – for a long time I had only the woman’s point of view onevery aspect (at least until my mom remarried years later - I was in myteens by that time).

To continue talking aboutmy overbearing mom – she still tries to be to this way alongsideher husband to this very day (hi, I’m fucking 32 years old here – just tothrow out my Grandma age on tumblr so you aren’t shocked in a paragraph or two).Everything has to be done a certain way or its wrong – they thrive on avery myway or the highway look of things, and this has been something that Ihave constantly had to push back against in more recent years - because I havefound love and support from those who are willing to tell me that its fuckingOK to not be the person your parents want you to be.

Like Eddie, I’ve lost partsof myself throughout life appeasing my family with moldingmyself to fit what they thought I should be - what I needed to be. The biggestissue being homosexuality. I grew up with a Catholic Grandmother who wouldat anychance and drop of a hat find any reason to bitch about the gaysin the most hate speech and closed minded filled way I have everheard in my entire existence. I grew up believing that I couldn’t come out –that I couldn’t truly be who I wanted to be because my family wouldn’t be onboard and I was terrified that they wouldn’t understand or support me and Ibelieved wholeheartedly that if I DID comeout, that I would lose each and every family member that I had becausemy Grandma and other members of my family have very strict views on it - andneed I repeat, are overwhelming overbearing and controlling. When I was firststruggling with the idea that I was part of the queer community, oddly enough,I was 13. By this point in time I was used to listening to my Grandma bitchabout the LGBT+ community for years. I remember one instancedirectly with my mom; we were on a vacation and I remember asking my mom what shethought of the LGBT+ community and she told me flat out that I wasn’t allowedto be Gay.

That right there told me everythingthat my young mind needed to hear. That no matter who I was as a person, that myfamily wouldn’t support me – even over something so simple as lovingsomeone of the same sex. I spent the next 17 years hiding who I was, just toappease the ideals that I thought I had to adhere to. I dated strictlyboys and it landed me in unhappy relationship after unhappy relationship– ultimately my last relationship with a CIS male was a completelycontrolling and abusive one. One where they wanted to control everyaspect of my life - much like how Myra does to Eddie once he’s given in andfallen to Sonia’s whims and has told himself that he has to take the easy wayout. I was miserable in the relationship and everything had to beapproved of by him. It was some of the darkest times in my life but thatrelationship was one that defined me and really made me realize just how unhappyof a life I was leading just by appeasing those around me.

Granted, my repression andcloseted sexuality doesn’t end there. I got out of that relationship when I was22 and spent years recovering from the sheer amount of abuse I was taking fromhim – all the while I was still so tightly wound into the clutches of myparents. I traded off from one controlling household, to a new controllinghousehold, and back to the one in which molded me.

I spent the next 8 yearsgoing through a lot – all the while I was being medicated on anything andeverything under the sun just to right me as a person – because obviouslythat’s the answer here. I spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals due tobad reactions to medications, medications not mixing well, just generallytrying to get myself back to WHO I was. I was just a shell of myself duringthese years, I was in college and struggling even more so with myself and mysexuality as a free bird – so to speak. I tried dating around and nevertold my family when I was with a woman because I didn’t know how. I didn’t knowhow to tell a family so openly against it that’s who I waswith. So, I continued to lie and appease and struggle.

The entirety of my closetedyears – those 17 years – I struggled with every sexual thought Ihad toward a woman. I hated myself. Told myself I was wrong and that it wasn’twhat I was supposed to do. It took me a long time and some reallyfucked up situations to really start to love myself for me. To understand thatno matter what – whether my family love me or accept me – that I am who Iam and NO ONE can fucking changethat.

Granted this story at thevery least has a happy ending, unlike Eddie’s, I met Ari and finally came outat 30 – much to part of my family’s dislike – but my parents wereaccepting and my Mom ultimately didn’t even fucking remember the trauma she hadinduced when I was young. BUT I DIGRESS….

 EMOTIONS - DEALING WITHEMOTIONS

Eddie and I both similarlyshow our emotions – and it’s not always in the best light. I struggle withsomething called Emotional Overwhelm which I actually have a headcanon for I’vebeen meaning to write up for Eddie for fucking weeks since I went and saw ITChapter 2’s early release. It’s something that I recognized in Eddie and reallystruggle dealing with in day to day life. Emotional Overwhelm is an instancewhere things kind of pile the fuck up – everything,even if it’s something small, can feel like a deep wound. People whostruggle with emotional overwhelm feel things differently than normal – anoffhanded comment that could make one person laugh and blow it off will feellike a stab to the heart and a betrayal to someone who deals with it. Strugglingwith this kind of an emotional issue causes me to lash out at unnecessary timesand can be rather debilitating in relationships if your friends, family, oryour partners don’t understand it. It’s worse when you feel a sense of being “gangedup on” (at least for me) so during times of joking around I can easily lash outand take a simple joke as a complete attack.

My chest constricts – mybody will not allow me to breathe easily and if I don’t force it – and ithurts deeper than it should. My anxiety runs high during these times and that panicsets in deep. I can’t fathom emotions if there are too many in place, my mindwill refuse to address them so they pile up. During this time, my mind will fogand I can’t even process anything being said – for instance; if I’m in asituation where issues are being listed off to me and I start to hit thatemotional overwhelm peak – my mind is still focused on exhibit A while theperson is already listing exhibit E. My mind will not allow me to process situationslike this as a WHOLE not in a rapid-firesuccession. The buildup can be excruciating and takes a toll on my body that itall will spill out in a sassy, feisty, and – for the lack of a better word – kindof a shitty outburst. 

Having these outbursts stemfrom growing up in a household where I wasn’t appropriately taughthow to handle my emotions. My family were not people who would discuss emotionsor situations where my emotions got “out of control” – it was always a “stophaving emotions” type argument. I was gaslighted, manipulated, and bullied intothinking any and all emotions were bad. Plain and simple. I wasn’t allowed tocompose my emotions into words as this was not a thing that would everhappen with my family.

Much like Eddie, I tend tohave my emotions out there regardless of what I was taught – regardless ofbeing able to recognize those emotions I hate talking about them. It’s a viciouscycle. Discussing my emotions brings out my emotional overwhelm and it’s justan all-around messy situation at that. So, I try my best to hide my emotions– I clench my jaw, I go silent, I refuse to talk about it, I completelyshut down – I’m stubborn. It takes someone remarkably special and someone Itrust completely for me to really level with them – to be raw and showevery little bit of emotion that I have. Someone who is tolerable of it andunderstands what I’m going through, how I process my emotions… So needless to say,I have only ONE person who I feel comfortable with being this raw andvulnerable towards given my home life. So, a lot of the time my emotions– if every questioned by anyone will mostly be met with anger, because itwas the one emotion I was used to receiving growing up. It’s easier to lash outthan it is to make yourself vulnerable.

When I’m not having a terriblytraumatizing day and my emotional overwhelm hasn’t taken over, I tend to hide myemotions behind my sass. If I magically have a day where I’m notcompletely losing it and on an emotional overload type of day, my hurt showsthrough real quick sass and sometimes it’s not always tasteful. My brainto filter usually shuts off when I’m hurt and I feel like I’m being come for.

 UNDIAGNOSEDADHD - MENTAL HEALTH

Ok, this is another headcanonsituation I want to write up – mostly because of instances between Chapter 1 andChapter 2 that I picked up on. But I’m a firm believer that Eddie has undiagnosedADHD – take for instance the entire scene where they’re first introduced to TheClubhouse. Eddie’s reaction and the way he bounces from subject to subject withhalf sentences, his reaction to the paddle ball with Stan, his rapid fire nearlystumbling speech. I wholeheartedly believe that Sonia wasn’t concerned in theleast about mental health issues, only concerned for issues that would harmEddie physically and more in the realm of physical health issues.

Much like this, my Mom wasadamant that I didn’t have ADHD and refused to have me tested by any means. Istruggle with half sentences where my mind will be moving faster than my mouthor fingers – I notice this more when I’m typing, whether it be having adiscussion on discord or responding to replies. I don’t know how many times Ihave gone back to proof read and somehow, I’m missing portions of sentences andeverything is nearly a half thought. My mind processes things too quickly andone moment I’ll have my attention in one place and within a second something elsewill catch my attention. It’s always fast and catches nearly everyone around meoff guard that don’t really understand what’s going on.

To kind of wrap this backaround to my abusive situation and the lack of HELP in the metal health realm where the Mom’s are concerned. WhileI was dealing with these issues I dealt with a lot of mental health ailments(ptsd, manic depression, insomnia, and major anxiety/panic attacks to name afew.) these were all situations that required a lot of help through doctor’s,psychiatrists – you name it. But my Mom (and her husband) were always inthe realm of thought that a mental battle can be won without the use of medication– and this is honestly how I feel Sonia Kaspbrak thought and took mentalhealth issues. That they weren’t as big of an issue as say “health” issues areconcerned. That they were easily bypassed and just a “phase” that could begrown out of. Considering Sonia, who is a woman suffering with MunchausenSyndrome – mental health issues don’t get you the same attention as say asick and suffering child would with an actual sickness or disease that can beSEEN. And that is the biggest difference and I think why Eddie was nevertreated for having ADHD.

It’s seen, but it’s not onethat would necessarily bring about any sort of sympathy from others or keepEddie bound in her realm of control that she preferred to rule. 

[rahullkohli]

A LITTLE ON NUTRITION AND HEALTH

ok buckle up kids, because i have a load to share on this subject. in this post there will be no shaming of bodies, diets or knowledge - only of idiots who act like they know shit, but in fact are ignorant fools. i.e. idiots who advice people to go on diets, or otherwise treat their nutrition irresponsibly.

also, this is not a ”how to get skinny”-post. this is merely a post to inform about a topic that so many people is dangerously off on. my own personal goal is to lose weight, because my BMI is too high. if you think that you need to lose weight, consult a doctor who can help you figure out if you actually need to lose weight, or if you maybe have an unhealthy relationship with food and/or your body, and that is the issue you need help with.

disclaimer: i am not a licensed nutritionist or health professional. all of my knowledge comes from: me loving to read, me recovering from eating disorders which have prompted me to research on my own plus talk to professionals, me having worked with a nutritionist for over a year where i got to regular updates and have mealplan created specifically for me. also, my mom being a licensed fitness trainer where she also had courses on nutrition.

so, this post came to be because i saw a long post about people being shamed for eating fruit, because some assholes tried to tell them that “fruit is almost pure sugar and bad for you”, or something to that effect, so i will definitely touch on that as well.

the thing is that nutrition is complex and one of the biggest issues in the way our society sees health and nutrition is that it takes a starting point in “one size fits all”, which it most certainly does not. the details of what diet your body needs is unique to you, and magazines/celebrities/blogs/etc. who tries to tell you otherwise either don’t know what they’re talking about, or are feeding you lies on purpose. usually with the goal of money.

as mentioned above; nutrition is damn complex. one diet does not fit all bodies, because our genetic makeup is different. for example, all my three sisters has been diagnosed with PCOS, and i have not. this means that my body can handle carbs better than theirs, because of cysts on their ovaries that overproduce a hormone that makes it harder for their bodies to break down carbs. (feel free to correct me on this one, because i have not researched this condition in details so i may be off on this. i just know people with this diagnosis usually require a low carb diet, the whys and hows are more iffy to me, but this was how i understood it when it was quickly explained to me.) so it is so unique that even four women who share both mother and father doesn’t even match when it comes to dietary needs. it also changes for every person depending on age, so the diet i need now is most likely not the diet i needed as a teenager, or in ten years, and definitely not after menopause because of the hormonal changes.

every single person needs all three macronutrients in their diet, in order to assure the proper function of their body; carbs, protein and fats - yes, fats! as a general rule, it goes most carbs, medium protein and then a healthy, but not too much, amount of fats. but then there are different examples where one needs more or less of one of these because of for example a diagnosis of PCOS. i am not a doctor, so i won’t try to talk about these, because i don’t have the correct information.

CARBS: so why do we need carbohydrates, and why are those what we (usually) need the most of? carbohydrates are what gives us our energy. carbs gets broken down into glucose before entering the bloodstream (this is why athletes love bananas, they're filled with good stuff that gives a good kick after just spending a ton of energy being overly active). this is where the the fruit and vegetables comes in – sure, fruit and some vegetables contain a lot of sugar, but this is fructose which our bodies can easier break down and use for energy rather converting it to fat depots. the sugar that our bodies have trouble breaking down, is refined (often called white, but it also pertains to brown) sugar. simplistically speaking, the sugar we add to our food ourselves.

now, this doesn't mean that you should just eat uncontrollably of fruit and vegetables. as with any other food, overindulging is too much. in denmark the government department for nutrition has for years campaigned that it is important that we get Six A Day. this means six servings of fruit and vegetables every day. due to the high levels of sugar in fruit, for most adults the reasonable choice is 250 grams of fruit, and 350 grams of vegetables every day. the best choices are high in fiber and proteins. especially green ones like apples, broccoli, spinach, peas and green beans are good. note: you also need carbs from stuff like pasta, rice, potatoes, bread, bulgur, quinoa or other in the same category.

PROTEINS: the proteins are responsible for building and maintaining our muscles. this isn't just for bodybuilders/athletes, this is for every single person out there. you need proteins to be able to move your body. protein is also what builds and maintains our hair, nails and skin. a lot of girls/women are in a protein deficit, especially if they work out, because they are afraid it will make them look masculine. this is severe misinformation. as a cisgendered girl/woman you cannot eat or train your way to the look of a stereotypical cisgendered man, you will need to take steroids for that. if you are a trans woman, i will advice you to speak to a professional about this, as i have no information about this, and considering every trans woman's situation is unique in relation to hormones.

protein is most widely known to come from meat and fish, but this can also be found in some vegetables, nuts, soy, quorn and dairy, which is a very good alternative for vegetarians/vegans.

FATS: there was a time where fat was the number one scare in health media, and it hasn't quite been let go since, which is terrible because fats are so incredibly important for our bodies to work the best they can to keep us healthy. fats are responsible for helping your body absorb vitamins, and help keep your heart and organs healthy. if you don't get enough fat, you risk severe constipation and may need surgery. healthy sources of fats are fish and nuts.

so these are the three nutrient groups that we need in order for our bodies to be at our best, but of course it isn't that simple. it also matters how many calories you get, and how you spread them out throughout the day.

as mentioned above, i have been seeing a nutritionist for over a year, and i have lost 20kg by following a mealplan that was tailored to me specifically from information about my gender, age, height, start weight and general activity level. we found that the reason i wasn't losing weight despite my high activity levels, was that i simply wasn't eating enough – yes, another thing media ignores is that eating too little can cause weight gain – and that i didn't spread my food reasonably out over the day, which caused my bloodsugar to be unbalanced.

i started out with one mealplan with x amount of calories spread out on five meals throughout the day. however, since i plateued in my weightloss i just recently got a new plan with more calories and an extra meal a day. this means that i now have three big meals + three snacks, with never more than 2-3 hours between these to keep my bloodsugar leveled all day.

but aside from this you also need to consider vitamins, fiber, minerals and omega 3s. so yeah, it really is about having a balanced diet, but it's much more than just remembering to not eat too much meat, or too much fruit.

why weightloss diets are bullshit and unhealthy: not only is a weightloss diet a waste of time, because if you eat a certain way for x amount of time, and then lose weight to reach your goal, but then go back to eating as you did before, you will just gain the weight back. if you and your doctor think that you need to lose weight, what you need is a lifestyle change. maintaining a healthy body – regardless of size – is a commitment for life. it sounds overwhelming, but breaking it down it is about creating healthy and stable habits, in the form of varied nutrition spread out over your day.

what my experience also tells me is that it is important to not be too restrictive, since this is setting yourself up for failure. if you promise yourself to not have anything unhealthy like chocolate or soda then there's a bigger chance that once you do have it you will end up overindulging. besides, what kind of life is it if you can't enjoy it? sure, healthy and balanced food can be so good and delicious, but there also needs to be space for having pizza with friends, or cake at a birthday party, or a fancy coffee because you just fucking deserve it. you will not ruin your body if you decide to have ice cream one day, or if you just feel like you can't eat anything at all; just do your best to get back to the healthy habit you have worked hard to create.

the key is to not let it be every day, but if you find the diet that fits you specifically, you shouldn't even be craving these things all the time, because all your needs will be satisfied. if you do find that you crave overindulging at all times, you may need professional help. overeating is a disorder and should be taken just as seriously as undereating – both are rooted in psychological issues, and this can't be processed just by getting a mealplan.

i feel like i have been around most of it by now, but if you have any questions (or you actually know more than me and have constructive criticism) you are more than welcome to message me. i hope this was informative and understandable. english isn't my first language, so i apologize for anything that may not make sense in terms of linguistics.

as a last note i want to stress that i am not a professional, and if you are struggling with body image or your relationship with food, please seek help from someone licensed to handle those kinds of things. never try some fad diet because a magazine or a celebrity said it helped them, because it could damage your body than it could do good.

[braveskyered]

Knights (Part 9)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Another big step for Arthur and Elaine comes up, but since they have experience, they know they'll be fine.

Part 9: No Problems Now, Just Rearranging

- - - - -

Arthur couldn't help but feel concerned for Elaine.

It's close to mid-March now, and the Spring season is just starting. Elaine had not been feeling as energetic as she usually is since the month began.

She brushed it off at first as stress from the job as a mechanic at Four of a Kind Queens or from her job as a monster hunter. She found that she didn't have a fever, but her occasional moments of nausea while working proved to be concerning. However, after eating some crackers, it was enough to cure her ailment temporarily. She only vomited once, and quickly blamed it on bad food, which made her mother Caelia mildly indignant on that her cooking only did that to Elaine and not to Caelia herself, Arthur, or the twins.

Arthur had finally convinced her to go to a doctor for a checkup, promising that if she came back with the results showing that she is healthy and stable, he would treat her to a romantic evening. Elaine immediately threw whatever weekend plans she had out the window, and on the day of the appointment, had the twins stay with Caelia for the weekend, who wanted to spend some time with her grandchildren. Sometimes Arthur forgets that Elaine really likes having some alone time with him in more ways than one, so he couldn't refuse when she asked for a romantic weekend with a big grin on her face.

He'd be lying to himself if he didn't want this.

Arthur thought about going to a movie theater on one evening, but there weren't any showings that would interest them, so he scratched that off the list. He had already booked a reservation at the Adagio Inn, a hotel and restaurant that couples are known to frequent, which was the original evening in question. He soon rose a brow at the list he was writing. What else could he add as an activity for the weekend? An impromptu trip somewhere near Cantabile? They wouldn't have to stay at a hotel if they do that.

He eventually decided to wait until Elaine came back and actually discuss it with her. It's only fair that she decides an activity, too.

…

He thinks it's kind of strange, to be honest.

Even though it's only been about thirteen years now, with him nearing the age of thirty-five, Arthur felt... free. Free and safe. Free and safe from the ones that hurt him in the past, finding a new life for himself, getting married to an amazing woman, fathering twin children, raising and loving said twins, slowly and steadily healing from his trauma, gradually becoming more brave against the paranormal, and here he is planning a weekend with just him and the woman he loved.

To think all of that happened because he decided to leave on impulse.

The only one he missed from his life in Tempo is his uncle. While Arthur still made sure to send letters to Kingsmen Mechanics, a part of him did wish he would get a reply from Uncle Lance, even though he was the one who made the system of not having a return address. Every once in a great while, he would check on the status of the repair shop by browsing the website it has, and when he checked it last week, the shop is still standing and going strong under Uncle Lance's name.

That meant Uncle Lance is doing fine without him, right?

Arthur made a note to himself to send another letter to his uncle. He still stood by the decision to never mention his marriage to Elaine or the existence of Gwen and Percy, who are now ten years old, in his letters, but he would write about how happy he is with the people he is with now. He would write at how he is fine and is still healing, and would always end the letter with the request not to look for him. He then thought about it, and figured he should leave that last part out for once.

...Did that mean that he is considering on calling his uncle?

Maybe he should, but not now, it'll have to wait. If he's going to be set up with disappointment, he'll want it after his weekend with Elaine, so he won't ruin the mood.

About four hours later, Elaine returned with a file folder in her hand, her expression looking conflicted while in a daze.

That quickly got Arthur's attention, “Elaine? Is everything all right?”

Elaine didn't answer at first, still staring at the file in her hand, then looked away and held it out to him, “Nothing's wrong with me.”

Arthur rose a brow in concern as he took the file and started to read the contents inside. It showed a variety of tests done to find a diagnosis, most of them being negative until he reached one line that said it was positive. His eyes widened before looking up at her, “Wait, you're really...?”

“The doctor's guess is that I'm about ten weeks pregnant,” Elaine sighed before smiling a little, her brow furrowed slightly, “I really screwed up, didn't I? Because I didn't have the typical morning sickness, and that I often have difficulty conceiving, I didn't think my symptoms were linked to pregnancy.”

He processed her words before doing a double take, then asking suspiciously as he set the file on the counter, “...What do you mean by 'screwing up'?”

Elaine winced, “I just figured you wouldn't want another-- Mmph--?!”

“Finish that sentence and I won't forgive you for assuming that,” Arthur said after kissing her, wrapping his arms around her tightly before laughing, “I'm thrilled, Elaine. I'm thrilled you're okay. I'm thrilled with this.”

“You're okay with us having another child?” she asked and hugged him back, “Even though this one isn't planned?”

Arthur chuckled, “Gwen and Percy weren't exactly planned, either, remember?”

Finally, Elaine was laughing along, “True. You're definitely taking this a lot better that I thought you would. Back then, I remember you being so unsure of yourself when we found out we were having the twins.”

He wouldn't deny that, back when he was still unsure of everything.

- - - - - - -

“...What?”

Arthur went stiff.

“The doctor said that I'm about eight weeks along, which matches up with our, uh, heh heh,” Elaine chuckled with flushed cheeks and a nervous yet excited disposition. Her hands curled into fists, rubbing against each other, a habit she has when unsure or nervous.

All thoughts went out the window, his mind became completely blank.

She smiled and scratched at her cheek with a finger, “I-I seriously didn't think it would be possible, since, well, I've been told by other doctors that I wouldn't be able to have children.”

Arthur was fortunate that he was already sitting down with Elaine when she told him the news.

Elaine discovered that she is pregnant.

He never thought he would feel such terror compared to what the wraith had put him through. Him? A father? How would he be able to raise a child? He hardly knew how to take care of himself!

What... What had he done?

“Arthur? Are you... not happy with this?”

“N-No! I...!” he ran his fingers through his hair, “I-I-I just...! I just...” he let out a deep breath he didn't realize he had, “I need time to wrap my head around this. Please.”

Elaine looked conflicted, her brow furrowed with sadness before putting up a slight smile despite the uneasiness, “All right. We'll talk about this later. I'll go call Mom and Dad to tell them about the baby. Okay?”

Arthur noticed that she took his initial reaction pretty hard.

Under any other circumstance, while the thought of having a child would've excited him, he remembered Lewis wanting to have a family. But with him dead by his hand – demon or not – that wish became impossible to achieve. The wraith hated Arthur for taking away his life, his wishes, his future. That the wraith had made clear to him. And now, Arthur will have something the wraith will want for himself.

And if the wraith or the Mystery Skulls or anyone from Tempo were to find him after this...

He couldn't finish the thought as he stood up and went into the workshop near his room. He could've sworn he heard Elaine cry a little, which only made him feel worse than he already is.

When he approached the work desk, Arthur started to add modifications to the next model of his prosthetic arm in an attempt to take his mind off the fact that Elaine is pregnant, with his child no less, but his mind kept drifting back to the subject, and then to the night that led to this in the first place. He and Elaine have only been married for five months now. Even before that, Arthur always felt reluctant to even lay a hand on her, knowing that he doesn't deserve it. She gradually coaxed him into believing he did.

He remembered her placing a skeletal hand over his cheek as she asked him the same question, a reluctant smile framing her fully fleshed face.

“You're not scared of me, are you?”

“N-No, I'm not,” he muttered to himself when he recalled that night, “Because it's you.”

His own parents had failed him, and he never had any good memories to say about them even before their divorce due to the neglect. He feared that he wouldn't be a good father. Even though he loved Elaine, he knew that he wouldn't be a good husband for her in the long run. And yet here he is, married, and a father to be? Elaine, carrying a child sired by him?

...What would their child be like?

Arthur smacked his flesh hand against his head to stop that thought. He knew that the child has nothing to do with his internal debate and tried to shove the thought aside. He soon resumed work and kept adding modifications on the next arm model until he heard a knock on the door.

“Arthur? It's Caelia. May I come in?”

He looked at the clock on the desk. It's been four hours? Elaine must be really upset if she hadn't come to talk to him after revealing the news. If her mother is here, he didn't doubt that she will heavily scold him for his reaction. With a breath of resignation, he gave Caelia permission to open the door before picking up from where he left off on the arm. He heard Caelia opening the door and closing it behind her, but didn't hear her say anything. At this point, Arthur knew she was staring at him with disapproval.

He wouldn't blame her it, since even he felt that his reaction to the news was a bad response. He didn't dare look, instead keeping his back turned to her.

“Well?” He gave a small huff of resignation, a smile that did not show a hint of happiness forming, “Are you here to tell me that I'm pathetic?”

“What? Arthur, what on Earth are you talking about?” Caelia sounded offended, “I didn't come here to talk down on you, I'm only here because I need your help at Queens.”

Confusion reached into Arthur's features. Did she not know? He recalled Elaine saying that she would tell her parents about her pregnancy, unless her being upset prevented that? He thought about telling her himself, but he didn't want to rob Elaine of that.

Still... it didn't change the fact that he felt horrible.

He agreed to go with Caelia so he can help her on whatever it is she needed. As far as he knew, it's probably an obscure car part or even the machines in the shop itself that needed repair. She's asked him for his help on those before, even though he's pretty sure she's capable of doing them by herself most of the time.

He isn't sure what to feel worse about.

When the two of them reached Four of a Kind Queens, Caelia guided Arthur to her office, full of organized paperwork and two computers on an L-shaped desk tucked against a corner. She pulled out a file and laid out the contents for him to see. He rose a brow as he read the top page that was marked with red ink. The really old van that belonged to that PE teacher that teaches at the nearby middle school is done and ready to be crunched, for there is no salvaging it this time after so many half-successful attempts. Arthur knew for a fact that Caelia didn't need his help on this. Which meant that what Caelia is really doing is that she wanted to talk to him privately about something else.

“By the way, I heard the news from Elaine. Congratulations,” Caelia smiled and made a welcoming gesture at the chair for guests in front of her desk, which Arthur followed, “You really have no idea how much I'm looking forward to being a grandmother.”

Him? Fathering a child? What was he thinking?! He thought they were careful... He has no right to be a father! He has no right to be married! He has no right to be hap--

“You seem unhappy about it, though. Is something on your mind?”

He didn't try to make a rebuttal against that. He is unhappy, but it's more directed at himself and not to Elaine or the child she now carries. After Lewis's death at his hand, possessed or not, Arthur knew that the hatred and punishments he received from the wraith were well deserved. He doesn't deserve this life with the Knights family. He didn't deserve loving and marrying Elaine. He didn't deserve having a family bearing his bloodline. Despite this, Arthur still craved for the kindness Elaine, and her immediate family, had given him. He craved for love and companionship, for kindness and for family.

I don't deserve this...

“What do you mean when you say you don't deserve it?” Caelia placed her hands against her hips and rose a brow at him in disbelief.

Arthur's throat constricted when he realized that he had said it out loud enough for his mother-in-law to hear. He huddled closer to himself, his hands shaking. His prosthetic hand gripping at his shoulder, the shoulder where the wraith would placed a burning hand whenever he thought Arthur would “misbehave.”

“Wait, this isn't from the time you were abused, is it?”

Arthur twitched before he could stop himself, which gave Caelia the answer she needed. Like Elaine and her mother Vivienne, she also knew about the injuries he received back in Tempo. The cuts, the bruises, the burns. He hated seeing the look of pity from her. He knew he didn't deserve anything from her or Elaine, yet...

“I see,” she walked over to him with a smile, and to his surprise, held him close, like a mother would to her child, “I could say so many things to you, but you would probably think that they're not true. I will say this: We love you, Arthur. We know there are so many things about your past that you haven't told us about, and you probably never will, and that's fine. You've already proven to us that you're a good person, enough that even my mother has grown to love you as a grandson before even marrying into our family. That is an achievement I have never seen anyone else do, not even Tom was able to accomplish that.”

Arthur isn't sure what to think of this. Yes, he knows that he loves Elaine, and that he came to care for her immediate relatives. Caelia and her husband Thomas (or Tom, as he's commonly called) were skeptical of Arthur at first, but soon they came to care about him as a friend until he became their son-in-law by marrying their daughter. Besides his uncle, Elaine's parents gave him what could be parental affection, the closest he could get after leaving Tempo.

“I never did get along with my parents when I was growing up. They usually fought, so I often had to go to my uncle whenever I needed support,” Arthur suddenly confessed, holding up his good arm to grasp at Caelia's arm while still in her hold, “Before I became a teen, they went through a really nasty divorce. It got so bad that I went to live with my uncle. I never looked back since.”

Caelia slowly let him go, giving him space. When Arthur looked up, she gave him a nod to let him continue.

“I'm just afraid that I might do the same thing my parents did,” he looked away from Caelia and found a certificate on the wall that suddenly seemed interesting, “I don't even know how to be a father. What if I screw up? What if I fail Elaine? What if I--”

“The fact that you're conscious about it means that you're already on the path of being a good father, Arthur,” Caelia cut him off as she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, “I won't ask how exactly your parents raised you, but regardless, you turned out well despite it. As for all the crap your parents did? Well, then use that as an example of what not to do as a parent. And regarding your abuser? If they said that you don't deserve to be happy, or you don't deserve to have a family? Then they can go fuck themselves."

Arthur did a double take with a raised brow. Caelia isn't exactly one to cuss, that's usually more of Morgan's thing.

"They're not in your life anymore, so whatever lies they told you isn't worth your time. I say you deserve happiness, and so will the rest of my family. And besides, back on topic, you're not raising your child all by yourself. You have my daughter helping you, and of course me, and the rest of the family,” she placed a hand on his shoulder, “If it makes you feel better, Tom was exactly like you when I was pregnant with Elaine, and he turned out to be a great daddy for her despite his fears at first. Just do the best you can, and if you ever need help, you call me. It's my role as your mother-in-law, and as a grandmother for your and Elaine's child.”

“But if I make a mistake--”

“Of course you're going to make mistakes, Arthur,” Caelia gave him a look that told him it was obvious, “This is your first child, and the same will apply to Elaine. She'll be making mistakes herself since this is her first, too. You don't become super parents at day one, you'll learn in due time. Again, that's what I'm here for, and as hot-headed as my sister can be, Morgan can also give you some tips when I'm not available. You'll make a great dad for them, I'm sure of it.”

“How do you know if I'll be a good father for them?”

“You don't, Arthur. But wanting to be one is a good start.”

For some reason, Arthur felt a weight fall off from his shoulders. Not all of the weight, of course, but he did feel a little more at ease. He is still nervous about being a father, being a person that may or not deserve to live, but Caelia's words made him realize that maybe he isn't a massive screw up. That he actually deserves to have a family of his own. That what the wraith had told him is not true.

He isn't completely sure, but he does know that he wants this family.

He needed to talk to Elaine.

- - - - - - -

“Well, I think the kids have accepted it, Elaine. Sometime in October, there will be a new member of the family.”

“That's because we gave them the whole weekend for them to freak out about it,” Elaine deadpanned before sipping her water, “It's a good thing I left them to Mom, I don't know how she does it.”

Sure, Elaine's surprise pregnancy did throw a wrench into some of their plans, but Arthur knew not to let it ruin everything. He still took her to the Adagio, although he had to exclude the wine list. He doesn't really care for alcoholic drinks, but he sometimes samples them with Elaine, who does enjoy a good drink every now and then. With her being pregnant, though, they had to remove that from the table.

A week later, Elaine had to leave any monster hunting to her mother, aunt, and cousin. It bothered her that she wouldn't be able to do her family's legacy for the time being, but working at Four of a Kind Queens gave her something to do. Although she will have to stop doing that as well once she's far enough in her condition.

As the weeks gradually passed, Arthur and Elaine started to move some things around in their bedroom to make room for a crib. They decided to use the same system they did when raising the twins, which also relieved Gwen and Percy any possible worries that the upcoming baby would be rooming with one of them for the time being. More weeks passed, and soon Elaine's parents and aunt were helping with the preparation for the upcoming child.

“Daddy?” Arthur looked up from his work bench at the private fifth garage at Four of a Kind Queens, and saw his daughter Gwen standing near him while gently clinging to his sleeve, looking unsure of herself, “When will the new baby be here?”

“Some time in October, Gwen,” Arthur turned away from the new crib he was constructing to properly face her, and noticed that some frost was beginning to form around her fingers, “So what brings you here? Are you having trouble with your ice power again?”

“New babies are really tiny, aren't they?” He noticed that Gwen ignored his last statement, “I heard during Health that they'll need lots of attention.”

“That they do, they can't do much on their own.”

Gwen suddenly came up and hugged him, catching him off guard. Even though her hands were icy cold, Arthur didn't feel the chill due to the moon pin's protective properties, letting him hold his daughter even when she has trouble controlling her power. If she's exhibiting this much ice, then Arthur knew that she's feeling down. But why?

“Daddy, when the new baby comes, will you still love me?”

Arthur smiled, holding her closer.

“Of course, both your mother and I will keep loving you and Percy even after the baby is born,” he said, rubbing his hand across Gwen's back, “We'll have to give the baby a lot of attention, but we won't ever abandon you two. Are you looking forward to being a big sister?”

Gwen nodded against his shoulder, the frost slowly melting from her fingers.

A few more weeks passed, and his and Elaine's bedroom already has the items needed to prepare for the new family member. Elaine had reached the stage where she started having her strange cravings at five months, and to his surprise, actually had a craving for Surf's Up Surprise pizza. Under normal circumstances, ordering it would be impossible since the pizza in question is a local specialty in Tempo. Thankfully, Caelia somehow learned how to make her own version of the pizza years ago when Arthur told her about it, and soon the dish became a family favorite despite the infamous smell.

“Hey, Dad?”

Arthur looked up from the car he was working on to see his son nearby.

“Mom's wanting another pizza again.”

“Seriously? It hasn't even been two days since your grandmother banned it for a month.”

“I know, it's getting a little ridiculous,” Percy laughed in exasperation as a few flames flicked and popped around his fingers, “I can't even use my fire to bake things properly anymore for today. I am so tired.”

“Then go take a nap,” Arthur snickered, “I'm sure your mother can find something else to satisfy her.”

“She woke me up half an hour ago to make her pudding. They were terrible.”

“...You might want to go to your grandmother's place to sleep, then.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Percy rolled his eyes, “Hey, Dad? Do you think I'll be a good brother to the baby?”

Oh, Arthur remembers this kind of conversation all too well. He stood up and held Percy close to him.

“Maybe not at first, but wanting to be a good brother is a start. I know you and your sister will do just fine. If you ever need help, there's your mother and me, and your grandparents, too. We're all in this together, okay?”

Percy gave a toothy grin.

- - - - - - -

Normally, Arthur tries not to believe in most superstitions, but if there is one that seems to be consistent, it would be Friday the 13th. With October being considered “the spooky” month, the day and date itself would be considered cursed to some. Ever since his children were born on that day and date, though, he never believed it to be unlucky or cursed anymore.

This time, Arthur finds it to be the lucky date for his family. On the early hours of October, Friday the 13th, just past four in the morning, their third child was born in the Cantabile Crescendo University Hospital.

A nurse handed a small cherubic baby girl with black hair to Elaine resting in the hospital bed, with Arthur by her side.

It was unsurprising, considering the family bloodline's history of only having daughters, but after having Percy, Elaine told Arthur that she isn't so sure of it anymore. Arthur isn't sure whether she was a little disappointed at not having another son, but as far as he knew, a healthy child is all the both of them wanted.

“Do you have a name for her yet?” The nurse asked.

“Well, my star?” Elaine looked up at him.

“Why are you asking me?” Arthur rose a brow in amusement, “We've already picked some names, haven't we?”

“You came up with Gwen and Percy's names. I feel it's fitting that you name her, too.”

Arthur thought about it. Back when they were expecting the twins, Arthur wasn't completely convinced about the family having only daughters despite Elaine telling him that, so he came up with four different names for every possible outcome. Percy and Wayne if they were boys, and Gwen and Vivian if they were girls. Because it was a boy and girl pair, he just simply picked out the names that rolled off the tongue best when spoken together, which happened to be Gwen and Percy. With their third child being a girl, and Gwen's name is already used...

“...Vivian. Vivian Lulu.”

“Vivian Lulu?”

He spelled out the name to her, “It would be her own name, and honor your grandmother at the same time.”

“And where did the Lulu come from?”

“I thought it rolled off the tongue pretty well.”

“Vivian...” Elaine experimented, “Vivian Knights... Vivian Lulu Knights... Vivian L. Knights... Yeah... That fits. That will be her name. Oh, Vivian... As soon as we get out of here, the first one who gets to meet you outside of our family will be Mama Vivienne, your namesake.”

Arthur looked down at his newborn daughter, holding out a finger from his prosthetic hand near the baby's own tiny hand. As the newborn started to grasp his finger on instinct, he narrowed his eyes at the thought of him having nightmares again.

Well, he started having the nightmares of the wraith and the kitsune wanting to take his family ever since Gwen and Percy were born. While he still fears them, the protections he received from Elaine and her family, along with the various counseling sessions from a therapist the family trusts, he started to slowly move on from them. Ever since Vivian was conceived, however, the nightmares returned with a vengeance, but Arthur knew not to let it conquer him.

Like with Gwen and Percy, who were left to stay with Morgan for the time being, Arthur swore to himself to protect Vivian from the ghosts of his past, and to love her until the end of time even after her power emerges, should she have them.

As the nurse decided to leave the parents alone for a while to bond with their newborn daughter, Elaine held Vivian out to him, “Would you like to hold her? I think she should get to know you.”

Arthur nodded and took the bundle in his hold, allowing him to see her up close for the first time. She looked just her mother, although he could see that she has his nose. Her hair is completely black like her mother and sister, her skin looking pale yet healthy. He noticed that she is starting to wake up with a whimper, so he held her close to let her hear his heartbeat.

He smiled slightly, remembering that he did the exact same thing to the twins back when they were newborns. He recalled being scared to hold them, afraid that he might hurt them, afraid that he would fail them. But after being with them for exactly eleven years, he knew that he defied those fears thanks to the help of Elaine and her family. Because of them, he can hold Vivian without any fear or concern of his own insecurities.

Even though the Mystery Skulls never found him, Arthur didn't want to take any chances, so he held off on making that call to his uncle ever since he learned that Elaine was pregnant with Vivian. He didn't want to risk Vivian's safety if calling his uncle potentially meant letting the Mystery Skulls on finding him.

Even though he denied it, Arthur knew the real reason why he ran away.

He started humming the lullaby to her, the song that always opened the wound in his heart, yet it is the only one he is willing to play for his family. His voice cracked midway, and he shed a tear before he could stop himself.

...Even after all this time, he can't let go.

“My knight?”

Arthur looked up at Elaine, who looked back with concern on her face.

“My star,” she held out her left hand to him, “Is there something on your mind?”

He took her hand with his prosthetic, “No, I'm just thinking about how happy I am to have met you and our family.”

Elaine gave him a knowing smile, and he knew very well that she isn't fooled by his words.

- - - - - - -

…

…

…

Why?

Why did this have to happen to us?

I never wanted to hurt you...

…

...

…

No! This is... What have I...?

I didn't want this!

I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

…

…

…

Why won't you pick up?

Please... pick up.

I'm begging you.

* - * - * - * - *

...?

Although the year as a number doesn't really count for much since I didn't really establish a time of year here, the ages of Gwen, Percy, and Vivian are based off actual time. Ghost was released on October 2014, where Arthur is 22 according to his profile. Friday, October 13th occurred in 2017, which coincides with it being three years later when Gwen and Percy were born while Arthur is 25. The next time Friday the 13th occurs on an October is during the year 2023 while Arthur is 31, and again on 2028, the latter time being when Vivian was born while Arthur is 36. In short, Gwen and Percy are exactly eleven years older than Vivian due to all three sharing the same birthday, October 13th.

Fun fact: The drawing with Arthur and Gwen is the first illustration I made outside of Arthur’s hand with the moon pin in Part 4. It looks more sketchy here because I was trying out different styles at the time.

Part 10: Live Forever Lyrics