#as if there wasnt a bad enough stigma already

[redheadedfailgirl]

At some point the internet decided to make a 1:1 conflation between certain personality disorders and abuse, and it must feel wild, and probably quite dehumanizing, to be a person with one of those disorders who's just regular living. Even if they ARE abusive, it's still wack because it tells them they're always going to be that way, that it's not their choices that make them shitty but this disorder that's just permanently a part of them, and they have an excuse never to improve. It's not them, it's the disorder.

And watching this, it seems to have started with people who are abuse victims looking for a reason they were abused. When you can't make sense of a person's shitty choices, a mental disorder they may or may not have becomes as good a reason as any. And then people starting gathering on places like r/raisedbynarcissists and it becomes more of a place to tell stories about 'that crazy bitch' in your life, and any bad behavior becomes criteria for diagnosis.

Now narcissists take on these larger than life characteristics and apparently supernatural powers, and it seems like there's no interest in understanding why people are this is way, what they're experiencing, and how we can develop an empathetic approach that will actually help people cope and change instead of shaming them and leading them to double down on bad behavior.

None of this is to say that the folks experiencing abuse from a person they suspect to have bpd should put up with that or are obligated to try to fix them. Get out of abusive situations however you can and keep yourself safe. But maybe pathologizing abuse as personality disorders does more to hurt folks than it does to prevent abuse. We can, and do, have support groups similar to the ones mentioned above that discuss abuse as such, without diagnosis as destiny.

HELP THE TIKTOK ABLEISTS ARE SAYING NARCS EYES CAN STRAIGHT UP GO BLACK⁉️⁉️⁉️

bro they think we're mythical fucking demons im done😭😭😭

[willoftrees]

love how my doc says my insurance might not cover the dna tests for acute intermittent porphyria because i have not been exhibiting symptons in years-

you could say i am in an intermittent period!

but also- i have been having symptoms i just have had much more manageable porphyria attacks ever since learning about the disease and tailoring my diet to it to the best of my ability. i still have to cheat on my diet and sometimes eat foods or have drinks that hurt me.

i juat make sure to never eat enough things to hurt me bad enough that i need to go to the hospital becaus eit is traumatizing for me to go and life threatening to put my body through that.

the fact that my doctor seems so dismissive over this whole thing because he wasnt the one who witnessed these attacks, is rly pissing me off.

he is the third doctor i have had with my current provider and the other two left because they moved but they were always on top of things and fully supportive in pursuit of a final diagnosis.

current doc even asked me basically what getting a final porphyria diagnosis would even do for me and i had to explain that it will help me know safe foods for sure, and help stop the stigma and nefatice treatment i get when i go to ER for porphyria attacks if i have an official diagnosis to show them- maybe rhey won't treat me like a drug addict seeking painkiller.

my current doc seems to also be pressuring me to get a new gastroenterologist, as my original literally fucking vanished and i had to dig up old paperwork she wrote for me with my differnential diagnosis to even prove to my current doctor that i didnt come up with the porphyria thing, my medical team did after many tests already. we literally narrowed it down from GERD, ulcers, cancer, acid reflux, h. pylori- we ruled out everything we can think of and arrived at porphyria by sheer chanxe during one of my ER admissions and the doc on charge heard me complaining about how confusing it was how my body seemed toctoleraye foods rhat made no sense but reject ones that should be healthy.

i really feel like my current doc thinks i made all this up.

[custom-emojis]

hiyo, i keep feeling bad because i had a very toxic friend, and i'm fairly sure she had bpd and it was influencing how she treated me, but i've seen so many people with bpd say how people leaving them can be really hurtful, and i feel bad. i understand supporting people with bpd, but i feel like if someone is really putting someone else through shit, asking them to suffer through that just because the person had bpd would be wrong, right?

like, ofc bpd isn't evil, and neither are people who have it, but if someone is dealing with their illness by hurting others instead of focusing on their own healing, that's their fault and i feel like no one should have to stay with a toxic friend just for fear that if they don't they're being ableist because their toxic friend has a mental illness.

i'm not saying this is your belief, but it's the sentiment i've received heavily from a lot of the posts i've seen about people breaking off friendships with people who have bpd, and it made me feel bad for doing that to my friend because i start to think i should've tolerated her toxicity because she was struggling with her mental health, and i don't want to feel like a bad person for prioritizing my own. so... it wasn't wrong of me to do that, right? i know she was struggling and couldn't control what she was struggling with, but i'm not a bad person for not excusing that or forgiving her, am i? sorry, i know this is super random and if it makes you uncomfy i'm very sorry, i just thought since you have bpd, if you give an answer to it i would trust you, idk.

Anon. First off im going to tell you off the bat this was a very fucking shitty ask to send me. and as a warning for my followers: I WILL be unapologetically angry over this.

First off, anon, lets get the elephant in the room out of the way: anybody can leave any kind of relationship they want, for any reason. even if its NOT toxic or abusive, if you want to leave someone and they happen to have bpd. you're in your full right to do that.

now. with that out of the way: you say

"i'm fairly sure she had bpd and it was influencing how she treated me"

Now, 'fairly sure' isn't the same as 'she has bpd'. DOES she have bpd? or are you just ASSIGNING her bpd because she was abusive and controlling?

"like, ofc bpd isn't evil, and neither are people who have it, but if someone is dealing with their illness by hurting others instead of focusing on their own healing, that's their fault and i feel like no one should have to stay with a toxic friend just for fear that if they don't they're being ableist because their toxic friend has a mental illness."

first off, if your sentence starts with 'bpd isnt evil and neither are the people who have it, BUT" then thats probably not a good start. secondly, yeah. obviously. no fucking shit. if someone is being, you know. ABUSIVE. then they're abusive, regardless of their mental illness. and nobody should have to stay with them.

"i'm not saying this is your belief, but it's the sentiment i've received heavily from a lot of the posts i've seen about people breaking off friendships with people who have bpd, and it made me feel bad for doing that to my friend because i start to think i should've tolerated her toxicity because she was struggling with her mental health, and i don't want to feel like a bad person for prioritizing my own"

You sure as fuck made it seem like you think thats my belief. Heres a little tidbit for you: "Anybody can leave anybody they want, for any reason, regardless of anything" and "people who have BPD do find abandonment to be extremely upsetting and sometimes downright traumatizing" are sentances that can and do co-exist. Even so. Even if some weird ass people WERE ever actually implying that: that is ENTIRELY not my fucking problem. Literally. I do not know you. We are strangers. I am a stranger to you.

so... it wasn't wrong of me to do that, right? i know she was struggling and couldn't control what she was struggling with, but i'm not a bad person for not excusing that or forgiving her, am i? sorry, i know this is super random and if it makes you uncomfy i'm very sorry, i just thought since you have bpd, if you give an answer to it i would trust you, idk.

No! it wasnt! and also, I'm not your fucking therapist! Me off handedly mentioning i have bpd and that my fp left me is NOT me opening the doors to you traumadumping on me and asking invasive and uncomfortable things about my complex trauma disorder!

people fucking demonize cluster-Bs enough as it is, why the fuck should i have to essentially coddle you and take the fall as someone with bpd just because your abuser had it.

you didnt deserve your abuse, nobody does! but its not my fucking job as a random stranger running an EMOJI BLOG who just so happened to offhandedly mention my bpd due to the relevance to a video game, to be a monolith for all those with bpd and try to convince people who already hate us due to stigma the very basic concept of 'we can be hurt by things, and our pain can be extremely irrational. and thats kind of the entire fucking point of the disorder, the fact that its irrational and a whole Problem. but we are not inherently abusive because of this, and evenif our pain is irrational or unfair we are still allowed to feel that pain as long as we understand where its coming from and how to deal with it. and we're allowed to express that pain'

and then, even further ontop of that. I literally said said fp was bad. they hurt me in other ways.

this is all in all, one of the most frustrating asks i think ive ever gotten.

you're not ableist for leaving them but you sure as fuck are by sending me this ask

[zekhromss]

its introspective monday so here we go.

obviously i think ive unintentionally talked my parents to death on this blog because i have Thoughts and Opinions on them but it’s extremely evident that hasnt been enough.  like i know my issues are set in them being just extreme opposites of one another and being used for their Schemes and then i was just incapable of receiving actual help as a kid because everything was a plot to get my dad arrested like that was the entire actual purpose of my therapy as a kid.

it was never like “oh well do you think these things had an affect on you” it was always like “so you feel like shit.  thats because of your dad, right?  can you tell me precisely what he did because this is actually a serious ongoing investigation.”  it was like my existence was a stain on society because i had the audacity to be born to someone who was literally just the worst.

and then when id shut down it wasnt “oh maybe this isnt working because why would you put a kid in the middle of something thats allegedly a multi-state investigation” it was “oh hes just like his dad hes definitely hiding something to keep him safe” and its just bizarre its really just extremely bizarre to presume that of someone because they had the audacity to be alive and think their other parent was still nurturing and loving in some way.  like even when he wasnt its not like you can put that on a child who had no real knowledge of what was happening because then it just got twisted into this whole conspiracy.

and i suffered for it horribly my entire adolescent life like there was this stigma on me because i wasnt open and accusatory and didnt know any better.  like every secret was because of someones influence, every bit of privacy was withheld because i just had to be hiding something.

it just makes me mad because now im incapable of holding anything out in the open or creating boundaries because i still feel like i shouldnt have it, like im irredeemable even though i spit some Siccccck Fire at my dad the last time i saw him even though im not even sure if i believed it myself.  like im so torn between getting to know him and reaching out and trying to get any kind of closure and holding onto “no hes a bad person why would you ever want to get to know someone like that”.  and it sucks it really sucks because nobody i know in real life or online has had my Very Specific set of circumstances that led me to this point and it feels like im just supposed to follow my gut but i dont know if this is still a defiance of my upbringing or if its a very real thing i want despite everything my dad did do to other people related to me.  like i was never affected, i was never harmed, but other people were and it feels like a betrayal to them to want to get to know him even if those other people have already made their peace with him.

it fucking sucks, man.  i wish i had an alert letting me know if this was the right thing to do or not.

[nietr]

so in a few days i will have 90 0.5 xanax pills in my hand and im really hoping switching from clonazepam to xanax is enough and i dont have to bug my doctor about upping my dose because ive had a couple of bad experiences with doctors when i mention increasing my dose at all. the last time i did was like a  year and a half ago and the expletive redacted lady wrote me a grace script then banned me from the psych office for whatever reason and i was forced to find a new doctor and basically had to doctor shop for almost 6 months because of the stigma that exists with benzos right now. that wasnt the first time i had to cold turkey benzos but i stand by what ive always said, id rather withdrawal from opiates. bar none. no pun intended. 

i hate/love being prescribed this shit and increasing my dose just feels like digging a deeper hole for myself but fuck it if i need to up myself, which i kind of already know i do, i’ll bide my time and wait until the time is right to ask for an up. 

either way, this is my first time having an alprazolam script in my own name and im pretty happy about that.

[bma-2020]

Do not r/eb/log.

before we even get started. Nobody I follow at this time, as far as I’m aware, has exhibited this behavior. This is not a vague, this is information. This is behaviours i have witnessed and dealt with on multiple occasions since, technically 2011 when i started writing on tumbs vaguely, but more specifically from 2015-2018 online. All my life Offline. These are behaviors i have witnessed, been victim to, etc. I have most likely not witnessed any of it from whoever is reading this if i follow you. Again, not a vague, not to start ‘drama.’ not a callout. Its the time of year this relates to, and i think its important for people to be aware.

I’m probably gonna delete this later bc i already know some dick is gonna start yelling at me for it later but honestly like, it’s april, yall know what the douchebags state it is for a/ustistics, you know what we prefer it’s called, honestly when are people, including self hating a/utistics, gonna stop insulting and villifying every single au/tistic who points out character traits in popular characters that are very much so our traits? Like, I’ve seen all the excuses like “theyre a mutant its offensive’ ‘theyre an alien its the wrong genetics’ ‘theyre not fucked up enough’ which is one of the most insulting ones ive seen and like??? the people are pointing out similar traits and characteristics, theyre pointing out things they see in themselves in their favorite characters and youre sat there telling them so and so cant be a/utistic because this character, in fiction, is not a ‘proper human?’ like, yall have no problems imagining a proper human boinking a fucking fish and a whole lot of people love doing extremely gross crap while using the guise of ‘its fiction i can do whatever i want’ but that only seems to apply to shitty things and almost never important things? like for fucks sake almost every piece of media ive ever had that represents my a/utism has either actively removed it because of the fanbase, villified the character eventually until they ‘cure’ them (again, fucking offensive), been canceled because viewers love everything but the a/utism, and fuck neu/rotypicals and even non-autistic n/eurodivergents just, ive seen people make up false accusations and defame actors for stating they portray a character as a/utistic when it wasnt confirmed because they did the research and believe the traits coincide. because they want to give that representation. And god this website loves taking part in b/iphobia and l/esbephobia, they erase poc from a narrative to force a believe that a bi char is strictly h/omosexual or h/eterosexual, they erase me tal disorders and disabilities to ‘relate better’, but for goddess sake there are so few a/utistic characters. there are so few. most of the time they make them villains. its the same w b/ipolar and m/pd they villify us ad when we place similar traits with characters to what we have and what we experience firsthand, we’re villified and insulted and ignored and goddess it is just, its offensive and its rude and im tired of all of it, ive been tired of lying about my a/utism to people because theyd fire me if they knew or they’d purpose treat me badly trying to make me quit, of people saying bullshit like ‘well a/utistics are prone to violence so obviously everyone who is one is a bad person’ because its not true, and especially of people who still go off on how wonderful and great organizations set on ‘curing’ us are when they think we’re a god damn disease just like the rest of the world apparently and treat us like shit. like this didnt happen today, but it happens a lot. the amount of times i used to reblog posts about characters w a/utistic traits went to the negative because of people bitching and moaning at me for reblogging it, vaguely at the dash for ‘daring to assume shit’ all of it just, im not supposed to experience stress right now because my histamine levels are actually physically attacking and killing me but goddess its hard not to get stressed out when everywhere, online and offline, people just talk out of their ass on shit and act like we should bow to their feet for actively trying to erase us from existence and take us out of the narrative, because ‘its not possible thats not how it works’. maybe get more educated than one to three psych classes before opening your mouth cause all youre doing when basically telling us we shouldnt exist is increasing the stigma against us thats getting most of us killed.

[we-will-all-be-stories]

weli have like three followers and like i dont actually expect anyone to see this i just want to rant and since i dont really have many friends i dont realy know who to tell. 

my mothers really pissing me off for reasons that honestly i shouldnt have to be dealing with. 

a few weeks ago my parents finally took me to a real psychiatrist, after 2 years of therapy and month in a mental hospital. it was set to be a three hour appointment for an official evaluation and diagnosis of my anxiety and depression and whatever the fuck else is wrong with me (which i dont understand since ive already been diagnosed by two prior therapists, the ER psych ward psychiatrist, and my psychiatrist at the mental hospital i was at, i dont see the need for anouther diagnosis of the same issues). okay, cool, whatever, obviously i’m panicking, not from the actual topic but just talking to someone in general (also my parents never leave the room b/c they think that i’ll just sit there and go non verbal, or as they believe, choose not to talk despite the fact that i have s.a.d. and was selectively mute growing up - i have non verbal episodes, it happens). well, essentially, i actually have no clue what happened in the room b/c after five minutes, the psychiatrist decided that i wasnt useful and i was too anxious to be productive and was sent out of the room. i sat in the waiting room for two hours continuosly calling and texting my mom to let me back on the room while i had a panic attack in the waiting room and slowly fell into a sensory overload from all the noises because the office is in a child pediatrics building and children are fucking loud. after two hours i’m left back into the room where the doctor tells me my diagnosis, my parents pay, and we leave.

i wasnt even present for my own evaluation. i get that he’s trained, but my parents no shit about how i feel, theres no way they can tell him. and furthermore, yeah, i’m anxious, but thats not the only thing i live with, yet its the only thing anyone will offer me help for. 

im used to being sent out of rooms. people dont have enough pacience and ust assume i can control this. i was sent out of the room during my 504 accomadation meeting at school too, you know, the “you’re child tried to kill themself, heres an extra day for classwork hope it helps” meeting. 

but heres the problem now. i have sensory issues to the point that putting on a pair of socks sends me into a panic b.c of the seams - a “bad touch” makes me break down crying - a flickering light burns my eyes - someone coughing feels like someone sceaming in my ear drums. and no matter what i tell my parentsm they dont understand how bad it is. 

apparently they mentioned it to the doctor, whose response was to get me an asd evaluation. okay, sure. its not like my old therapist hadnt been telling my mom to get my evaluated for asd and sesory proccessing dosorder, its not like my father works with psychiatrists who work with autistic kids everyday who has been telling my dad to get me evaluated. 

so finally my mom emailed my school counsler about the evaluation. she said that the school doesnt have the resources to do so. 

okay

i went to my moms office to print out my essay, and she had her email open to my section. (she organizes her email by topic, she has a group of emails under my name). im a bitch and decided to look at the emails. she emailed my school saying that she is “sure i dont have autsim” but that my doctor is making her ask about an evauation. 

the school wrote back saying that refuse to test me because that would require an iep rather than just a 504. the school psychiatrist essentially refuses to test students “simply for a diagnosis” and that my education and grades must be severely impacted by my issues. listen, no one gets a psych evaluation simply for a diagnosis. you literally cannot get the help you need w/out a diagnosis. mental health affects you in all aspects of your life, not just school. so many students cannot go to therapists or psychiatrists and rely on school resources. furthermore, my education is impacted by my issues - how can i get work done when the loud classroom make me want to scream? but the school and my parents dont know this, yet refuse to let me advocate for myself. 

no one wants to have a certain diagnosis, you need it to get help. my psychiatrist has said he is 99% i have asd, however he cannot give me a diagnosis, and my school refuses to test me because i’m “too good a student” and i’m slowly dying. 

also im not a good student. i have an e in math, a d in government, i failed engineering bc the class was so god damn loud and anxiety creating. my education is impaacted.

when it comes down to it, to be honest, so much of this has to do with the stigma regarding mental health in general, and especially regarding autism. people are so scared to have an autsitic kid - i’m 15 years old, if you can love me w/out the diagnosis, you can love me with it. i’m the same kid. My mother grew up with an autistic brother yet she still wouldnt want an autistic child. schools assume that an autistic student cant be functioning without special classes and a helper and a bunch of accomadations - some people need that, others don’t. it doesnt matter b/c everyone is entitled to the resources neccessary to thrive, and everyine should be treated fairly. 

im a kid who grew up non verbal, ive had social skills drilled into my head by therapists bc i apparently “didnt have them”. up until this year i had good grades, i flew under the radar and suffered, and when i finally reach out for help, everyone is refusing it because they think i’ve already gotten enough. 

[hermannsgayhands]

i was talking abt this w my mom a few days ago and like im sure it wasnt an active, conscious decision like “hey lets take this incredibly rare physically disabled scifi action hero and this other guy (who he is definitely gay with) who is pretty undoubtedly ND and uh.......completely ruin their lives" but thats kind of. also the problem

im sure it wasnt an active conscious decision when the only disabled characters in anything ever at all were the cheesy villains in wheelchairs, but it was still a decision and these decisions have a real world impact. (if they didnt then we could basically just completely scrap the concept of representation in general, and also apparently the movie jaws never happened.) these decisions also show a lot of implicit bias, like, theres a reason that for a while (and still now to an extent) the only disabled characters in anything were evil, and it was because the people creating those characters couldnt envision a disabled character who was good and heroic or a protagonist or even just Not Evil, because they see disability as a bad thing, and it ends up being used as a shorthand to be like “this character is disabled, which is bad, so THEYRE ALSO bad.” subconscious decisions are still decisions and its important to examine and be critical of the decisions we make and why, especially when its wrt a marginalized group like this. implicit bias is a thing.

so i dont think it was conscious, but that also means that they werent considering the fact that disabled people are watching these movies too, which means theyre not considering what disabled people got out of the first one. hermann is so, so important to me as a disabled character. hermann in the first movie was and still is really special, because hes there, hes a SCIFI ACTION HERO, hes OUT THERE, hes not just behind the scenes, he can be kind of a dick (which is itself pretty refreshing when u take into account the angelic disabled person trope), he has a close relationship (literally however you want to look at it) with someone who doesnt coddle or baby him or act Uncomfortably Nice the way abled people do a lot of the time, because you know its a fake nice, and then hes ALIVE at the end, hes with his friend who he just saved the world with, and hes HAPPY

even now, when we are Starting to move past when the only disabled characters in anything are caricatures and villains, you also gotta look at the kinda thing we gotta deal with even in content ABOUT disabled characters thats marketed (for some godforsaken reason) to us: in me before you, a disabled person killing himself is framed as a romantic gesture. they want you to think its a good thing, and people did. in everything everything, the “””chronically ill””” character can only end up pursuing a relationship or feeling like her life is worth living when it turns out she was never chronically ill to begin with and it was actually just another case of munchausen by proxy (which is ~the big twist~ in SO MUCH SHIT LIKE THIS). so many movies with characters w chronic pain have them as addicts, when 1-people w chronic pain taking painkillers isnt addiction, even if they end up with a tolerance or having to adjust their doses, because that can happen with almost any medication, and 2-this is harmful both for people dealing with addiction and for people w chronic pain, because misinformation is never good for anyone, including 3-leading people to being denied treatment, INCLUDING 4-ive been told by TWO different nurse practitioners that i NEED to LIE if im ever in the ER, and say that i dont have one of my conditions because even if im there for something completely unrelated to pain, i will likely end up being denied treatment entirely because of how much stigma there is around chronic pain in general and around this specific diagnosis. basically: Shits Not Great and the media we consume has a huge impact on that.

pacific rim doesnt make hermann not disabled or try to sugarcoat it. theres no cure. theres no looking for a cure. hes treated like a real, full character the same as all the other characters. hes given fleshed-out relationships and he gets to be a hero. hes alive at the end. hes alive and hes happy and these things are so fucking small but even that is COMPLETELY beyond anything we can reasonably expect from like......anything. even stuff thats supposed to be about us. hermann is like if youve been trying to eat drawings of food for years and then suddenly someone throws you a multi-course meal just for funsies and youre like “Holy Shit This Is What Food Tastes Like, You Guys, Are You Aware Of This?? oh you are because youve already been eating this whole time BUT GUYS HOLY SHIT”

pacrim ended with a disabled action hero alive and happy with his friend, and since there was no guarantee or expectation of a sequel, that was just. how it ended. it ended and he was happy. but pr:u did a complete 180 and basically this is why im literally just making my own shit with my own disabled characters because it is genuinely exhausting having to deal with this even in a series where i thought i could expect Something, even if it was just for hermann to not be completely miserable and alone and deceived the entire movie. there is probably not going to be a third one, so we go from pacrim ending with a happy, alive disabled character to pacrim ending with a disabled character going through so much shit only to end up alone with basically no chance of any resolution, and not even bothering to show how hes reacting to everyone else being like “woo yay we stopped newt from killing everyone.” like their relationship can be important enough for the Drama but not enough for the followup to show how this is actually affecting the people involved.

basically pr:u treated the disabled character(s) the way i can expect everything else to treat disabled characters which was really disappointing and emotionally exhausting after what the first one gave us.

[deuce-duce]

I enjoy writing this because I mean we can't read eachothers minds... right?! I wish I could sure would make things helluva lot easier...! I want you to consider something and then were going to discuss a few hypotheticals... first, knowing what I have explained previously you might realize I never asked to be who I am... or to rise to the level things have gotten to. I guess sometimes you just don't get a choice as to what piece you are in the game of chess... unless you choose to be a pawn that position is always chosen! But pawns can chose who they want to be when they make it to the other side... That being said the only reason things have reached the level that they have which im sure you might not agree with, but I believe its primarily because of a broken society... and an unreliable 🍇. I mean since when has gossip ever been true?? My experience starting in grade school, gossip was always used as a way to discredit someone or make them look like a fool. Not only that but the amount of inconsistencies and nonsense associated with this situation should have raised some red flags... lets say those flags were raised and a lot of you were thinking hmmm something just isn't right here it doesn't make sense, things just don't add up! Were half way there, in what world/society do you get these red flags and choose to not even ask or say anything to the person involved... Really?! Especially when your told not to tell me that you know who I am... Idk about you but I'd like to live in a place where things like this don't happen at all... but thats simply not reality. But when something of this magnitude is occurring there shouldn't be some type of uncomfortable stigma surrounding the person in question... i think you catch my drift.

Hypothetical time... please appease for a moment. lets just say hypothetically that everything i have told you is true. If thats the case I'd say that whats occurring and those that are involved are wrong and is really fucked up! Right?! The crazy part is what I have laid out for you is only the half of it!.

What do we do?! Turn a blind eye and just hope we are more diligent next time? Thats a viable outlook and requires the minimum amount of effort and individual consequence... so i get it... i can't take it anymore personally but all I can do is my best. Not that there weren't people trying to help which I appreciate but sometimes "we become the cancer that were trying to remove"

a common theme that people like to promote is one life one world one opportunity!! Even one of my my favorite artists Eminem, (got me through my childhood) specifies you only get one shot!! "If you could cease everything you ever wanted in one moment would you capture it!?? Or just let it Slip!!??: I couldnt agree more!! The controversial side of this is that your thoughts on what shot i should be taking and the actual shot I'm taking are very different! A big influencer in my decisions is the craft created by NF "I wanna look at my kids in the face when I'm older

And say I've been something admirable

Fast checks, fast women, that don't inspire me, no!

You don't wanna know what's goin' on inside my personal life?

Then get out my diary" I just don't understand why no one else sees it! I dont think anyone in history or anyone ever again will have the opportunity i have! Or that we all have as a collective. Do we harness it or just let it slip?? To be perfectly honest it is more meaningful and more challenging then anything any of us will ever face again! If I fail then I guess we will all have something in common in the fact of... at least i tried.

Last night was interesting i wont go into details but this dude was trying to tear me apart by talking about me inadvertently to a friend of his... saying oh I wish i was that smart... but i go to such and such college... I tried to make small talk becayse although I knew he was talking about me he couldnt say anything to me directly. Shooting the shit atarted out ok... but I don't think my mind is geared that way... it wasnt long before i was talking about running for president for 2020 my slogan being Enough is Enough. He said that was somewhat abrasive and wished me luck! It wasn't long before i realized he really couldn't stand me and was there to belittle me and well lets just say if theirnot with ya, then their against ya. Definitely in my situation. But I told him oh I see what your side your on... he said what side is that...? It doesn't matter well if your just going to judge me and create a bias then this conversation doesn't mean shit... i said thanks for saying it for me... he didn't like that! But realized I had made the right decision. So I feel better about how things went after that. Becuase all he was trying to do from that point forward was make me jealous... too bad he's actually queer!! And for some reason is either jealous or threatened by a homeless bum...So i don't even know why i let it bother me.

Cool thing though we talked about society and how most eat whatever their fed. now i could into some long winded analogy explaining how this takes place with not only the food we need to nourish our bodies but also the food needed to nourish our mind and soul. And because we dont bother to do the research or find out the truth we continually pollute our minds bodies and souls... After I told him that the conversation was pretty much over I could tell he was mad and talking to myself loud enough for anyone around me to 👂 I said dude I'm fucking brilliant and I'm going to win... this is when he thought it clever to go buy the women that i complimented drinks... oh well!

Another person I met was cool finance major had something eating him up and he asked me what my advice was on the matter. I told him what I thought, which I think was good advice then changed it a little bit because bearing your soul isn't easy! Which is what would have been happening. I told him how much i wanted to conform and be just like the rest of the population here but for some reason my mind literally puts up blocks... he said thats because your not supposed to get the easy road... but i want to yelling at this point and he said nope you gotta take your cards and flip em!! He said that because i told him about eminems song beautiful and he knew exactly what album it came from which was impressive but Em says no one asks to get the bullshit hands were dealt we have to take the cards and flip em ourselves and not to expect any help! Gave him my card which is the only one without a # !?!?!?!?!? Ikr cray!

This really pretty girl I talked to for about a total of thirty seconds complimented her hair and made a couple wise funny comments/questions... then said have a good night and fled... like always.... ugh...

Haha other then that i was trying to find a place to sleep which was difficult but finally found a place. And what do you think i did??? I'm sure you already know so ill spare you!!

Good night

P.s. had another conversation with a psych major. After discussing Maslow's hierarchy I was curious to know how one knows when they have reached the summit of the pyramid?! She didn't know either. Told her it would be a good question to ask her professor and went to catch my bus. After boarding I looked it up there are 9 principals or characteristics that will be prevelant once acquiring self actualization. Thats it just thought it was a cool discovery ✔ it out!!

[thegurlbehindthesmile]

I Wonder....

Hologram- The Technicolors plays in the background.

What race did i think i was in all this time? It was like this perpetual reminder constantly nagging me in my head...

what your 18 better not be singe for long-

 better go to college and forget about boys

- better get a degree and make lots of money

...married at 22 no degree - 

better excel in your career and climb the corporate ladder. 

hours of work and devotion 

BUT wait, dont work too hard you gotta have kids before your 30

what about an apartment- 

how about a trailer- 

how about a HOUSE. 

.. First son at 27- 

turning 30 at the end of this year. where did the time go?

...together for 11 years, married for 7 years, a 2 year old , a house, a dog, two cars.

i did exactly what i wanted to do in life.   i suppose.

don’t get me wrong i probably would seem obnoxiously ungrateful if i didn’t just stop there and say THANKS.

beautiful son. gorgeous husband.

the list goes on-  everything ive set my mind to in the past decade i have made come true.

NOW WHAT

i had this alarm in my head that i had to do “all this before 30″ why?? health reasons? statistic reasons? rumors? stories, why?

i feel like im rounding the last bend to a marathon i didnt even ask to be in? (or did i??!)

i think throughout my hussle and bussle (although i DID have SOME fun) i got lost in it all. I quickly entered the world of being 18 shattered battered and...engaged? positive that the love i was about to receive would catapult me into everything id ever needed.  (i guess it sorta did.)   career driven. beautiful. man on my side. ring on my hand “livin life” literally just climbing any career ladder i could- i had my “husband” as my cheerleader at my side. HUSBAND guys would say- “you’re to young”. yeah i got that ALOT. going to 21st birthday parties as the only married girl there. WHO WAS I.  we took married and young by the horns. i was so driven. you get over whelmed by the freedom. naturally you fall into some sort of rhythm because nice things cost money, and time just passes as you work and watch your work pay off. you feel accomplished. i was sure i saw my career in site and one would assume this WAS IT. this was the magic they talked about- enjoying your 20s- having a career u love- being MARRIED and secure. perfect...................

we were... the first couple to have an apartment. (so; big parties- no rules *rolls eyes)  we had a”wedding” so we had all these lovely gifts and things to lavish ourselves with in our first apartment. THE DREAM right?  just working and living and having fun. we traveled alot,, camped- we had big dreams to always be “like this” forever. in a moment (5 years into the beautiful maddness actually) we were sure we needed to materialize this power we had. this “love” we had needed to be a thing, a thing we wanted to nurture and bless and carry with us on our adventures. we had so much love we were ready to see what we could grow. (and grow it did- we had JP) 

the first year was hard- a new dynamic...we werent 2 anymore we were 3. and all of our decisions had a larger precaution. we wanted different things. rooted things. more stability. more direction. the air was different.

i was different.

i had put my career aside in my mind to concentrate on.on being something that something ELSE would flourish and grow beautifully in (um literally?) KIDS. i will be the first to tell you, kids were not on my radar (i just never saw myself as a kid person, i never understood the look parents give their little humans time after time- it confused me- it scared me i guess. it was just foreign.) till... i put allllll other thoughts aside. most definetly my first act of unconditional unselfish love. “hey self, we are about to give up our entire self to producing another human being” everything you smell eat touch. EVERYTHING. its like...well its like nothing youve ever gone through before until youve gone through it. we are fuckin amazing..the body can do some fuckin shit. COMPLETELY change in order to make this THING ... HUMANS and yeah. real hearts and lungs and little legs (oh and the hiccups, the awesome hiccups)

PHysically and mentally you go through some shit and although that may have been obvious to some- most??? it was not for me.

Mount Everest- Labrinth.

its just alot. im already not the best mentally- so to add this new function. emotional bandwith overload papi.

first its like 2,000 percent mom over load. YOU ARE A MOM and this teeny tiny creature needs you. NEEDS you. a need you thought you knew BUT YOU DO NOT. its this overwhelming warming beautiful amazing thing, the need a kid has for their parents. (i was IN IT- DEEP in IT)   IN love wasnt even the world. i do not loveeeee my son. my son IS LOVE. i can not explain it. but you get mentally rewired. i am not the girl i was before, im just not. 

i no longer wanted the career i had before. i no longer even wanted the LIFE i had before. i wanted more of this drug my son was giving me. this surreal daydream of laughs and kisses and just moments. time literally passes differently now. i see things differently now,  i feel things differently now. things have so much different meaning. i swear its as if im stuck in some molly, acid, shroom trip.

i feel like someone lit a fire to my soul and everything i touch now is illuminated differently.  when a person is growing inside you you can feel their heartbeat. you can feel the brush of their leg as they roll over to get comfortable. life has different meaning. LOVE has different meaning. love darling is caring you for 9 months and waiting with baited breathe for a stranger youve created. its a smell youve never smelled before and instantly is your favorite. its like you were never comfortable before they fell asleep in your arms, youve never known true peace until their skin was comfortable by yours. ITS PURE MAGIC .  i was different.  

some of the things i loved before, i- was confused about now. 

Love was different for me now,

how i wanted to give love.

how i wanted to receive love.

like a perpetual darkness was lifted from my eyes.

Wash.-Bon Iver

Im sorry i didnt know it would change ME. (im sorry about how cliche that sounds..)

from the moment i was little. it was go to school. get good grades. to go college. find a nice boy. get married. move in together, start a family- live happily ever after

but they leave out the nitty griddies. (even my own parents were divorced. who was anyone kidding) the years following our marriage all we heard about was how divorce was at its all time high. we vowed (among other things) that , that wouldnt be us. we both came from homes and divorce and we didnt want that for us. 

i think it was then that divorce became this ugly word. scary word. bad word.  i mean it is though..right?...

verb

1.legally dissolve one's marriage with (someone)

2.separate or dissociate (something) from something else.

we got married because. well im sure for different reasons?

i got married because,( it was what i was suppose to do?). you find someone you love and are attracted to and if your lucky enough to have them feel the same way- you... marry them. and thats that.you cant have kids or live with someone who you arent married too (said the stigma of my parents and those around me)  i mean i know theres more to it then that but a brief outline? leaving out all the mooshy stuff. you make this feeling legal, you change some names and now your not only emotionally reliant on this person but basically reliant on them for every fuckin single thing else too (basically).

marriage is beautiful.  if your lucky enough to find your soul mate in this world. someone who just gets you and enjoys your company and wierdness then your blessed and you would probably want to spend the rest of your existence with this person.  i mean it makes sense. 

its just as i’ve developed into this next stage of myself, ive made each of my actions have more purpose (i do this because everthing i do my son now sees and its just different now) howww i do something- what i say. i just think about it all and that includes the things i was naturally doing before that i never thought of.

marriage.  do i love my sons father yes. hes attractive and im attratced to him. hes funny and knows just how to make me laugh. its the little things. how he makes JP laugh or when their doing snuggles in his bed. how my son says Dada when hes upset or how he looks just like him. before my love for my husband was an array of things from love to lust- obsession. all the best and worse of love. we were inseparable. engulfed in each other in EVERY way, i knew we were in love and so did everyone around us. 

and then my son was born.

JP....i dont think you have to marry someone to show them how much you love them. i think true devotion starts with intention and your soul mate will know by your actions where your true feelings are.always be true. always be kind. i think if you want to love someone- love them fully, respectfully and unconditionally. learn and grow with them and from them and continue to make each other better people. and in that time you find your spark ignites another i employ you to indulge in meeting new people and new interactions. Make your heart full if you feel it hurting.  not bonded by anything physical but truly understanding that you were meant to love. REALLY LOVE. and maybe thats with one person forever, or a series of different people through out your life time in so many different and amazing ways. boys, girls.. just loving people and sparking the light in them only YOU can ignite. and becoming your best self.  only to continue to become your best self with that same intention for others. 

and thats my truth.   i look into your eyes and just want the best for you.knowing that’s different for you as it is me. but realizing i want to live by the example i want you to live by.

.... im not her anymore.

the day you were born i became someone new. 

[deadmantalking117]

MY WORST MISTAKE

you've heard this story before... some. When i was in my mid twenties.. an expert on the subject..Dr. Handsome dude. told me that I was going die.. probably in the next 15 years or less. I would spend those 15 years getting weaker and sicker. I would spend those 15 years in almost complete and total never ending pain. My wife would spend those 15 years ( if she stayed around, cuz many don't) changing the sheets for her husband / pet rock. Sex was out the window probably.. he'll be too weak and sick to do his husbandly duties. Plus you're really going to not like him a lot of the time! You might wanna look into dating again! Just saying. So there it is. I got 15 probably crappy years left. But I'm like 28... 40 is a looong time away! Besides.. just because this guy is an expert... doesnt mean he knows me ! I've done my research... Crohns disease has a very wide spectrum of symptoms. At a Crohns disease lecture.. I met a 16 year old girl who was hooked in and out to feeding tubes... she'd already lost all her intestines. At 16. But there was also the 75 year old man.. was diagnosed at 50.. but had small issues for 20 years before. He was looking at possibly his first bowel resection. After 50 years with it. I'm saying.. this disease is like no other. But anyhow... even though I've had a significant bowel resection.. a fistula and that repair.. plus a couple odd extra "procedures" . I'm going to be like the old guy... it wont really effect MY life like that! Doctors... what do they know ? Am I right!? Am I right? Anybody? Turns out. He's pretty accurate! Actually for the next 8 or 10 years.. I was mostly ok. Our sex life was always awesome.. maybe not as frequent as either of us wanted.. but always good. And she didn't even dump me... hooray for love. But after 35 or 36.. I got the full Crohns experience. I remembered the words of doctor Handsome dude... you're going to get very sick and die before 40. I was late 30s now. "Dying time is here" -- Mad Max- beyond thunderdome. I was about to enter the Thunder Dome of the United States healthcare system . One man enters.. no man leaves ! Until now I have been more of a frequent visitor. I worked full time since I was 16. I always had insurance.. because back then.. every semi decent job offered insurance. But things change. After my first surgery.. because now I have a very serious "pre exsisting condition " . Insurance was a little trickier. When I started getting really sick. Insurance wasnt possible anymore. But I had a great Dr. He came up with the plan that I should retire on disability. It was time. I'm probably dying next week anyways.. and when you're on disability.. you're covered by Medicare.. so insurance isn't the problem. That honestly took some convincing for me. I put off filing for quite a while. I couldn't deal with the stigma of being one of "those" people. I'll do a different post on that whole nightmare.. but it's a long story. Suffice it to say that by now I'm 37ish.. maybe 38.. I'm on disability now after a 2 year struggle. But all my ducks are as in the row as possible. And I'm sick all the time now. For 4 years or so now... I'm constantly in and out of the hospital. An endless carosel of hospital.. to home.. to my now very part time job... to the hospital.. to home.. round and round. You can actually work a little while you're on disability. But I was driven to force myself to get right back to work.. I was already mooching off society enough! Plus I was by now fully terrified of really dying! This is actually happening to me. Just like Dr Handsome dude told me all those years ago! Weaker.. sicker.. deader.. but there's a small problem. Not really dying here.. Why is this taking so long? Weaker ? Check Sicker ? Double check Dead ? It's been 5 years of this shit.. tick tock God! My first mistake... I believed all the Drs. As smart.. well informed and brilliant as my Drs were and are. They were then and are today. Amazing people. But the human body is a funky thing. It's going to do, what it's going to do. All that even the greatest doctor in the world can give you is probabilities.. what's probably going to happen to you.. that's it. Cuz here's what happened next.... I'm about 40.. for the past few years.. I'm in and out of hospitals on an almost monthly basis. I know every nurse there by name.. they know me! I've had so many flares and attacks and really odd shit happen to me. I had to have 5 litres of blood transfused into me.. because now I have 2 different bleeding ulcers.. one duodenal.. one peptic.. both bleeding buckets. Tons of drugs to MAYBE avoid surgeries. A blur of pain and seriously bloody stools. Eventually we get the combination of meds for all these issues sorted out.. but still.. over and over we go. No life.. just hospital. Or home in bed. I know I'm supposed to be dying here.. but this isn't really working for me. So I asked my doctors to cut out the bad part.. there's definitely a bad part. For me its the same bad part. That pesky Terminal Illeum. With a lot of Crohns people.. the disease comes back to the same place that you've previously had removed. Thats where my blockages were ( still are ). After years of different drug treatments.. most only minimally effective.. I needed to do something completely different. So bowel resection number 2. I recovered after a few weeks. And actually was almost myself again.. but more changes were needed. I was taking fistfulls of pills everyday. My wonderful doctor was doing everything humanly possible to help me. But again.. thats a whole other story to tell. So with my health slightly restored.. Kat and I packed up our lives and our family.. and moved far away from our crappy life. For the next 3 years I never saw a Dr.. didn't take so much as an aspirin. I needed to know how I really felt. The problem with drugs is that they might work on one problem.. but cause 2 brand new problems. Lots more on that later. So... my post death life has officially begun.. I'm mid 40's.. I'm weaker.. sick on and off. But I'm alive.. and still moving. So lots more to come.. stay tuned! I told you that my one mistake was taking all my doctors literally.. I believed I would die. I kinda built my life around being dead at 40. Then at 40.. I had to make a whole new life for us. My point? Always plan for the future no matter what an expert tells you. Its always coming for you. What was my worst mistake? I got a deadly disease in the greatest country in the world. I've had to adapt over and over to constantly changing circumstances. I should only ever have had to worry about my health.. it's the way it works in every other country. Here.. everything's a daunting process .. and I promise I'll tell it all... but you have to go through it all while you're at deaths door. Its a cruel system. If you're lucky.. you meet some government employee who actually knows something. Help is almost non exsistant. All that hospital drama I just told you about? That was just so I could tell you this. Kat and I spent years during this time. Begging for help. You can't imagine the volumes of paperwork.. I had 3 big file boxes full of my files that I seemed to have to take to every government agency in the world. Its soul crushing at a time when you're barely holding on to yours. I promise I'll tell you that whole story.. but its late and I'm tired.. and even remembering this is seriously depressing me. But hey.. I'm a dead man who's still talking. Be well my friends

[outerspaceman]

What is your opinion on the manga Ten Count?

im assuming im being asked this because i have ocd?? most likely

uhhh lets see, I’m not completely sure tbh. i didnt read enough of it to really get a feel on whether or not it harms the stigma people already have about ocd. from what i do remember tho it wasnt viewed as a bad thing?? i think his boss was very accommodating and accepting with it????? and they dont treat the main character as just a “neat freak” or look down on him??? they even /technically/ did exposure therapy which is what professionals use so idk

i know damn well its a stereotypical yaoi manga so of course theres problems in the idea like... wtf is going on why is this happening but i remember liking her other work so idk if she would do ocd that much injustice outside of the typical yaoi tropes 

i am also ALWAYS for the idea of media with accurate and positive portrayal of ocd and mental illnesses in general

[harryisntstraight]

Medication anon is back- I was just wondering what made you want to take them (that you feel like death can't come soon enough is given but why that over anything else? assuming you don't do therapy too, idk?) and if you can feel any change at all? I'm terrified of giving it a go because I feel like I'm making up the shit in my head despite the fact that I would literally rather drill a hole through my brain than participate in society so I don't deserve to try but also, 1

I’m afraid that it’ll cause some weird ass reactions and take a while to settle which would impede my ability to take exams in a couple of months? (As though I’m in any state to take them now, lmao) Am I just crazy? So yeah, I feel like I’m making things up so maybe I should just suck it and make Lifestyle Changes but also… I’m glued to my bed so idk. I’m sorry I’m rambling, it doesn’t make much sense but I’m just a messy ball of hyper/ sad feelz and I want the world to stop so I can get off 

hiiii! tbh a lot of what youre saying i can really relate to. i spent a loooong time thinking i was faking or being overdramatic or just lazy and just trying to cope by myself and pretend that it wasnt really happening. as for deciding to take medication its kind of a long story, i first starting going to therapy when i was 18 because my mum kind of picked up that something wasnt right and that i needed help and booked me a doctors appointment where they offered me medication but i didnt want to take it basically for all the reasons you’ve explained in this ask. so eventually my mum decided to pay for me to get private therapy bc the waiting list to get it on the nhs was a year and a half long. so i went to therapy for like ?? 3 or 4 months before i moved to london for uni and then i stopped going bc i couldnt afford to pay for it anymore and i was like. u know what. i’m fine!!! i dont need therapy!! i’m an adult!! (spoiler: i was not fine) long story short a couple months ago i decided that i was really struggling and that i needed to see a doctor and get my shit together and i was honestly really up for taking medication seeing as therapy alone honestly just didn’t feel it had helped me at all. like to me my illness is so physical? so even though i had learnt all these coping mechanisms at therapy i just felt like my brain was physically incapable of performing them. like idk the only way i can explain it is that its like i had a broken leg and my therapist was telling me i needed to get from a to b but nobody had given me crutches or a wheelchair.

 but anyway YEAH this is such a ramble but i just felt like therapy alone wasnt enough and that i needed a physical aid, which i guess i saw as medication. my doctor has me on a waiting list to start therapy again and my first session is next week and i think pretty much any doctor will recommend that if ur going to take medication, that you do therapy as well so you can tackle ur symptoms from all angles. honestly i feel like theres such a stigma around taking medication for mental health issues that really shouldnt be there, in my experience its nowhere near as scary or life altering as people assume that it is. obviously it depends on what specific medication u take, but most antidepressants take 6 weeks minimum to have a proper affect, so its not like u take one and theres this huge reaction and u become a different person or an emotionless zombie, yknow? for me i did have some initial side effects, but they were pretty minor. stuff like feeling a bit sick, a bit jittery, and ironically having heightened anxiety. but that all went away after a week maximum. 

i think medication is different for everyone and although not everyone will benefit from it, i feel like if you think its a possibility for you, you should definitely ask your doctor about it and decide together whether its a good choice or not. they can start you out on a low dosage and if you have bad side effects or just change your mind about taking it then your doctor can help u to come off it safely. like, i have weekly doctors appointments to talk about my progress and my meds, its not like they just give u some tablets and throw you in at the deep end yknow? honestly, theres no shame in taking meds and mental health is just as important as physical health and everyone deserves a chance to get better and not suffer in silence and just ‘suck it up.’ meds are there to help you, theyre arent this yknow, super scary pill thats gonna turn u crazier than you already feel. from what youve said i’d really advise you to just make an appointment with ur doctor and tell them how ur feeling and that youve thought about medication and see where it goes from there. sorry this is so long and rambly omg but like.. i care a lot asjfhsdhf. i hope this helped a lil bit and feel free to ask if ur curious about anything else xxx 

[tumblunni]

OKAY JUST TO GIVE ERROL AS AN EXAMPLE

His story just...?? Does not have?? "The call"?? At all??

Ive really tried stretching but just no, sorry.

The plot starts with our duo already off on the quest to climb the mountain, and figuring out why they wanna do it and what happened to them in the past is a gradual mystery that gets unwravelled throughout the story. So if you interpret "the call" as just "the start to the adventure" then already we dont really have that.

Tho again cos of anxiety about being weird i did end up writing a potential more call-ish intro scene but seriously its just like five seconds of "hmm i will try to cilmbe dis mountaine" "BUFF FRIEND WILL HELP U"

Like there was really no damn thing that "forced" either of them to "take up the hero's mantle" and they dont even really do anything "heroic". There's no destiny reason, its just a dude making a kind of dumb decision to risk his life on an adventure to try and settle some personal anxieties he has about something he hates about his personality. And his good friend coming along to protect him, and try and help heal the hurt. Theres really no damn reason why they had to start their adventure on that day as opposed to any other, it was just coincidence that this was the one time in a million that his "god i am filled with self hate and i have this stupid idea that The Magical Local Legend can solve my problems" anxiety attacks actually won out and he decided to really do it.

Also LOL in retrospect he's flipping the cliche even more?? Cos i was just thinking "well i guess the only reason he picked now is because he's had years of practise and planning for this thing." Like seriously he not only isnt "thrust into adventure" but he's already gone through a training montage before it even started!

And like i suppose i GUESS you could say that the stuff that happened to him years ago was an "inciting incident" but it really wasnt a "refusal of the call". It was a tragic backstory event that led to our duo becoming friends and also becoming hella depressed, but it really isnt the reason why they do this adventure. Errol's idea that he was "cursed" on that day and has to do this dangerous quest to "break the curse" is supposed to be a complete misinterpretation due to his trauma. the whole point of this story is that sometimes bad stuff happens to you and its not "for a reason" or "part of god's great plan" or "you can make it go away if you just try hard enough". He doesnt really discover that his destined enemy is at the top of the mountain and they caused everything wrong in his life. He just discovers that the guy who was right next to him wants to help him through these tough times and together they can cope with the darkness, even if there's no easy solution to banish it forever.

So yeah you'd think "sad thing happens in the backstory and then over a decade later he does this thing" would be a "refusal od the call" but really the sad thing was just a sad thing and it was never calling him anywhere. Less "refusal of the call" and more "doing the rational thing and not giving in to paranoia and self doubt", with honestly the start of the story being a BAD THING for him! Like at the start you think that Beau forcing himself into Errol's "quest" is just "lol funny comic relief man" but really its a guy seeing his best friend make a potentially self destructive choice and being REALLY WORRIED so he has to come along. And just putting on this funny comic reliefy persona extra hard because he's trying to keep his buddy's spirits up, while also hiding that he also has his own personal anxieties that are a reason for him to wanna climb the mountain too. I hope i have the writing skill necessary to pull off that foreshadowing, haha...

Oh and also lol there IS technically a real curse just cos i felt like itd be lame to tease people with the idea of the supernatural and have literally none of it. But also its not a "curse" as in how Errol sees it, with a culprit and a journey and a solution.

SO

Going into spoilers a bit when discussing this

Woop woop

Spoilers incoming

Okay...

I haven't exactly decided yet but Errol is either a vampire or a ghost, depending on whichever i can create a cooler design for. He actually didnt survive the accident in his childhood, and this whole time he's been some sort of supernatural creature trying his best to hide the signs he isnt human anymore. He thinks that there must be some sort of greater plot behind all this because he's desperate to find any way he can cure it. But really there isn't a cure, and there wasnt an evil cause for it, it was actually kind of a good stroke of luck that saved his life! So its all kinda more of a metaphor for how its easy to feel "broken" or "not human anymore" when you suffer a great trauma, or become mentally or physically disabled. And how thats not really true, you're still you and its just that society exerts stigma upon people who "can't ever be fixed" into being "normal". The message is kinda gonna be that even if you have something in your life that left its scars on you, even if it'll never go away, it doesnt make you any less of yourself and any less deserving of love. So this would be shown by Errol fearing that he'll become a mindless beast while showing no signs of it being true, getting obssessed with finding this "cure" even when it'll hurt himself in the process, and trying to find some sort of villain or cause or way to personify the illness as separate from himself as something evil. (I.e those "i am autism i will make it impossible to talk to your child, uwu u can defeat me by feeding your child bleach" ableist commercials...) And then in the end his worst fears are realized, there is no magical solution at the top of the mountain and the person he cares about the most has found out about his secret. But really none of his fears came true, because Beau accepts him, confesses his feelings and the two of them start piecing their life back together again and finding new hope for the future. Even if that future still happens to contain things like having secret bat wings!

(Oh and also Beau isnt completely a sattelite character he has his own different traumas and life problems and ways they get brought out into the open and counteracted by the power of love and acceptance. Its just that since errol's side of the thing is slightly supernatural it was easier to talk about in the hero's journey framework)

(Oh and also at some point they adopt a talking crow)

[themoneybuff-blog]

Thinking in bets: How to make smarter decisions

I read a lot of books. Nearly every book has some nugget of wisdom I can take from it, but its rare indeed when I read a book and feel like Ive hit the mother lode. In 2018, Ive been fortunate enough to read two books that Ill be mining for years to come. The first was Sapiens, the 2015 brief history of mankind from Yuval Noah Harari. I finished the second book yesterday: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Duke is a professional poker player; Thinking in Bets is her attempt to take lessons from the world of poker and apply them to making smarter decisions in all aspects of life. Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out, Duke writes in the books introduction. Those two things? The quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about. We have complete control over the quality of our decisions but we have little (or no) control over luck. The Quality of Our Decisions The first (and greatest) variable in how our lives turn out is the quality of our decisions. People have a natural tendency to conflate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Theyre not the same thing. You can make a smart, rational choice but still get poor results. That doesnt mean you should have made a different choice; it simply means that other factors (such as luck) influenced the results. Driving home drunk, for instance, is a poor decision. Just because you make arrive home without killing yourself or anyone else does not mean you made a good choice. It merely means you got a good result. Duke gives an example from professional football. At the end of Super Bowl XLIX, the Seattle Seahawks were down by four points with 26 seconds left in the game. They had the ball with second down at the New England Patriots one-yard line. While everbody expected them to run the ball, they threw a pass. That pass was intercepted and the Seawhawks lost the game. [embedded content] Armchair quarterbacks around the world complained that this was the worst play-call in NFL history. (Ive linked to just four stories there. Theyre all brutal. You can find many more online.) Duke argues, though, that the call was fine. In fact, she believes it was a smart call. It was a quality decision. There was only a 2% chance that the ball would be intercepted. There was a high percentage chance of winning the game with a touchdown. Most importantly, if the pass was incomplete, the Seahawks would have two more plays to try again. But if the team opted to run instead? Because they only had one time-out remaining, theyd only get one more chance to score if they failed. The call wasnt bad. The result was bad. Theres a big difference between these two things, but humans generally fail to differentiate between actions and results. Duke says that poker players have a term for this logical fallacy: resulting. Resulting is assuming your decision-making is good or bad based on a small set of outcomes. If you play your cards correctly but still lose a hand, youre resulting when you focus on the outcome instead of the quality of your decisions. You cannot control outcomes; you can only control your actions. Note: As long-time readers know, I grew up Mormon. One of the songs we were taught as children has this terrific lyric: Do what is right, let the consequence follow. This has become something of a mantra for me as an adult. If I do the right thing whatever that might be in a given context then I cannot feel guilty if I get a poor result. Its my job to do my best. Beyond that, I cannot control what happens. Luck and Incomplete Information Why dont smart decisions always lead to good results? Because we dont have complete control over our lives and we dont have all of the information. Fundamentally, Duke says, results are influenced by luck. Randomness. Chance. Happenstance. She writes: We are uncomfortable with the idea that luck plays a significant role in our lives. We recognize the existence of luck, but we resist the idea that, despite our best efforts, things might not work out the way we want. It feels better to imagine the world as an orderly place, where randomness does not wreak havoc and things are perfectly predictable. Duke contrasts poker (and life) with chess. Chess is a game of complete information, a game of pure skill. Theres no luck involved. At all times, all of the pieces are available for both players to see. There are no dice rolls, nothing to randomize the game. As a result, the better player almost always wins. (When the better player doesnt win, its because of easily identifiable mistakes.) Because chess is a game of complete information, luck isnt a factor the outcome is only a matter of the quality of your decisions. In poker, however, theres a lot you dont know. What cards do your opponents hold? What cards remain in the deck? How likely are your opponents to bluff? And so on. Experienced poker players learn to think in terms of odds. With this hand, I have a 74% chance of winning. I should fold. These cards only give me a 18% chance of coming out ahead. Its because our decisions are made with incomplete information that life sometimes seems so difficult. You can do the right thing and still get poor results. You can opt not to drink on New Years Eve, for instance, but still get blindsided by somebody who did to drink and drive. You made a quality decision, but happenstance hit you upside the head anyhow. Duke cites a scene from The Princess Bride as an example of how incomplete information affects the outcomes of our decisions. Criminal mastermind Vizzini and the Dread Pirate Roberts engage in a battle of wits: [embedded content] Vizzini pours two goblets of wine, then Roberts (actually our hero, Westley, in disguise) poisons one of them with deadly ioacane powder. The challenge is for Vizzini to choose the non-poisoned goblet. Vizzini cackles with glee when Roberts/Westley downs the poison but then falls dead after drinking his own goblet. It turns out both goblets had been poisoned, but Roberts had spent the previous few years building an immunity to iocane powder. Vizzini made a quality decision based on the information he had, but he didnt have all of the information: both goblets were poisoned, and his opponent in this battle of wits was immune to the poison in the first place! Thinking in Bets Duke argues that in order to make smarter decisions, we have to embrace both the idea that theres a lot of luck in life and the reality that were swimming in uncertainty. Theres a stigma in our culture about appearing ignorant, about being unsure. Duke says that becoming comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing is a vital step to becoming a better decision-maker. Admitting that we dont know has an undeservedly bad reputation, she writes. What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of Im not sure. Duke suggests that by moving to a framework of Im not sure, were far less likely to fall into the trap of black and white thinking, of false certainty. She cites Stuart Firesteins TED talk about the pursuit of ignorance: [embedded content] We should be pursuing high-quality ignorance. Based on all of this, how then can we make smarter decisions? Duke says that we should stop thinking in terms of right and wrong. Few things are ever 0% or 100% likely to occur. Few people are ever 0% or 100% right about what they know or believe. Instead, we should think in bets. Decisions are bets on the future, Duke writes, and they arent right or wrong based on whether they turn out well on any particular iteration. An unwanted decision doesnt make our decision wrong if we thought about the alternatives and probabilities in advance and allocated our resources accordingly. Duke says that because pro poker players learn to think in terms of odds during their games, they transfer this way of thinking to everyday life. Job and relocation decisions are bets, she writes. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet. Just as each poker bet carries a different chance of success (based on the quality of the hand, the hands of the other players, etc.), so too the bets we make in life carry different chances of success. And our personal beliefs have (or should have) varying degrees of certainty. Duke wants readers to begin thinking about their beliefs and decisions in terms of probabilities rather than in terms of black and white. Turns out I already do this to a small degree but usually for minor stuff. In fact, Ive done it several times in the past week. A few days ago, I was listening to a Big Band station on Pandora. The song Green Eyes came on. I wonder what year this is from? I thought. I listened to the vocals, to the band, to the recording quality. I think theres an 80% chance this song is from 1939 give or take two years, I thought. I looked it up. The song was released in 1941. (I listen to a lot of older music, and I play this game often.)Because its been hot in Portland lately, folks in my neighborhood have all been taking early morning walks. We all tend to follow the same two-mile loop because its easy. Ive started playing a game when I pass somebody. Okay, the dog and I passed David Hedges at the llama farm. Where will we encounter him on the top side of the loop? Ill be its between Roys house and the bottom of the hill. Its fun for me to see how accurate my guesses are. Duke believes that we should each do this sort of thing whenever we make a decision. Before we commit to a course of action, we should think about possible outcomes and how likely each of those outcomes is to occur. Lets say youve only got $200 in the bank and its a week from payday. Should you join your friends for that weekend motorcycle trip? Or should you save that cash in case something goes wrong? Or, thinking farther in the future, what outcomes are you seeking in life? What decision will improve the odds of achieving those outcomes? Or, imagine that youre trying to decide whether or not to buy a home. As you consider the possibilities, think about the probability that each possible future will occur. Dont simply cling to the outcome youre hoping for. Be objective. If the odds of success seem reasonable, then pursue your desired course of action. But if they dont, then pull the plug. Duke writes: In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. We are constantly deciding among alternative futures: one where we go to the movies, one where we go bowling, one where we stay home. Or futures where we take a job in Des Moines, stay at our current job, or take some time away from work. Whenever we make a choice, we are betting on a potential future. Every choice carries an opportunity cost. When you choose to save for the future, for instance, youre giving up pleasure in the present. Or, if you choose to spend in the present, youre giving up future financial freedom. Final Thoughts

For a long time, Ive argued that the best books about money are often not about money at all. Thinking in Bets is another example of this. While Duke uses plenty of personal finance examples, the book itself is about self-improvement. Its not a money manual. Yet the info here could have a profound impact on your financial future. Theres a lot more in this book that I havent covered in my review. (Ive really only touched on the first third of the material!) For me, the biggest takeaway comes early: Its vital to separate decision quality from results. The rest of the book explores how to improve the quality of your decisions. Among the strategies Duke advocates are these: Learn to examine your own beliefs. Be your own devils advocate. If youre certain about something, explore the opposing viewpoint. (If youre liberal, seek conservative opinions. If youre conservative, look for liberal voices.) Be skeptical of yourself and others.Build a network of trusted advisors, people who can give you feedback on your beliefs and decisions. But dont make these support groups homogeneous. Draw on people from a variety of backgrounds and belief systems. If you only associate with people who think the same way you do, you never give yourself a chance to grow, and youll never spot possible errors in your thinking. (This is like the current problems Facebook is facing with its deliberately-created echo chambers, which only serve to reinforce the way people think instead of challenging them.)When you make decisions, think of the future. Use barriers and pre-commitment to do the right thing automatically. Practice backcasting, a visualization method in which you define a desired outcome then figure out how you might get there. The book is dense dense! with ideas and information. When I finished it, I wanted to go back and read it again. Plus, I wanted to plow through the nearly 200 other works that Duke lists in her bibliography. I feel like I could spend an entire year diving deeper into this book and its related reading. But, as much as I wish it were, Thinking in Bets isnt perfect. A strong argument could be made that this material would work better as a TED talk or a 5000-word essay in The Atlantic (or on Get Rich Slowly!). The book is so packed with info that it sometimes loses its way. Theres also a lot of repetition too much repetition. Plus, it seems to lack a clear sense of organization. These quibbles aside, Thinking in Bets has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf. If I ever get around to putting together a Get Rich Slowly library (a project Ive been planning for years!), this book will be in it. I got a lot out of it. And I bet you will too. https://www.getrichslowly.org/smarter-decisions/

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Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: AIDS

' acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Acquired repellent Deficiency Syndrome) is a kind born(p) dis ensn ar that was prime(prenominal) recognized in America in the early 1980s, round the era rock-and-roll Hudson passed a centering. It is believed that it was sesscelledshoot passed thru to domain by monkeys in Africa. The employment surrounded by amusings and affection was turn upright present much bitterly fought than here in the nasty equatorial climate, where hop up and humidity give nonice the generation of newfound brio forms. nonp aril historian has suggested that humans, who first evolved in Africa eons ag champion migrated north to Asia and europium simple to ram to climates that were less hospi confuse to the deadly microbes the tropical zone so expeditiously spread. (Shilts, 5)\n human immunodeficiency virus whitethorn already corrupt one to devil million Ameri fags and spreads to forty thousand more concourse separately year. (Klitz man, 7) This affection wreaks howeverchery in places same Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, and the coupled States, as healthy as unnumerable opposite places roughly the world. With Modern roads and jet travel, no corner of the primer coat was very out ramp(a) whatevermore; neer again could diseases bulk large undetected for centuries among a distant hoi polloi without ruleing round route to raw sienna out across the planet. (Shilts, 5)\n acquired immune deficiency syndrome is in general a sexu alto fixatehery transmitted disease, statistically attri neverthelessed to the homo sexual community, that is transferred by muckle who atomic number 18 insensible they ar infect. It croup besides be transferred amidst wad through with(predicate) and through tainted blood transfusions as sanitary as the manduction of infected needles among users. acquired immune deficiency syndrome is a deso tardily and debilitating disease that may non show up for a intent of ten days or big- conducter after the airplane pilot contact. By this succession it capacity be too late to do anything around it , although, thither are various cocktails of drugs that could get word care the disease and hunt downward(a) life for a considerable continuance of time.\n Western hunting lodge has been able to adjudge the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome with sexual command and early scrutiny but where the disease first started, in Africa, near one third of the population is without delay struck with the disease. In exhibition to combat this trouble in Africa, the goernments of the western sandwich world urinate shown a voiceless effort by sending billions of dollars in aid to civilize and treat the great unwashed who are infected with this disease.\n aid has reached legion(predicate) race from all different cultures, cultural backgrounds, and areas around the world. This is a scary military position cons idering many another(prenominal) of those pile could be insensible they are infected with human immunodeficiency virus. This lack of awareness, which could be averted with early testing, in spades heightens the possibility of round anybody acquire human immunodeficiency virus and transferring it to soul else. An modelling of this lack of awareness, where a man unaware he had religious service had given it to his wife, comes from aid Memoir, diary of an HIV- commanding generate by Catherine Wyatt-Morley. In this part of her journal, Catherine who was to take over a map hysterectomy was diagnosed with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) The virus that causes aid. Catherine told her doctors and doctor, at that place strike been no signs, no symptoms, no warning. Im married and commit been faithful to Tim, I express, as I looked at my husband, whose gorgeous brown look were filling with tears, I kick in not shot any drugs. I fag outt understand. I dont know an ything intimately HIV. (Catherine Wyatt-Morley, 5)\n one time whatsoeverone finds out he or she has support they do not and have to roll over and wait to devolve. nigh people accept the other route, to get help and raise up to stay alive as a functional human creation. There world power be a lot of strive in your life due to the back up virus but thither are definitely ship air to contend with this and thither are many people and groups which you can turn to for emotional, physical, and apparitional help.\n If your way to cope with help is ghostlike you might motivation to turn to the Catholic Church for help. devotion could be the redemption someone needs in high society to cope with the melody that AIDS brings. However, this way to cope may not be the right way. HIV is to a fault intemperately nockd and raises a serial publication of moral issues in patients and others eyes. The Catholic perform, governmental conservatives, and others have long censured homosexuality and sexual freedom, and drug pace is considered a penalise by al near all of American society. As a result, many HIV-infected individuals find oneself they have do something wrong by beingness human being, or too promiscuous, or using drugs in the first place. (Klitzman, 8) \n When set around with the prospect of stopping point religion seems to take the burden and the strain off of the infected persons shoulders. A exculpation by a prison gyp in creation Positive, The Lives of Men and Women with AIDS shows how he coped with being in gaol and having AIDS, a definite stressor, by tour to religion. alone of a sudden, though, I started getting very religious. I started really believe in matinee idol and the Bible. I wasnt religious when I was young. I was embossed in the pentecostal church. On Sundays my catch would drag me to church with her. I now said to God, Please, I dont indispensability to discover in jail. All I wanted to do wa s be able to die on the outside. Ive done more or less seventeen years in prison, by the way, in and out all my life for drugs. All I kept mentation now was, damn, Im discharge to die in jail! Didnt I do abounding time already? (Klitzman, 95)\n commonwealth infected with AIDS go through stressful shoess general not but because of how they feel, but largely because of how other people treat them and their disease. AIDS patients go to health care institutions and disgorge to health care workers in drift to let out their lives and find alternative approaches that they might not be doing already, in set up to better themselves. These institutions and workers spurt their patients approaches on HIV but in the process they can also stigmatize patients. This stigmatization was experience by Wilma metalworker and says it hurts the most. They of all people should know better. one(a) roentgenogram technician, as soon as he cut HIV on my chart, put on dickens masks, two g owns, and three pairs of gloves. He took one x-ray film and and so had to do another. So he helped me onto the tablewith two gloves onand then took those off and put on two other pairs. It upset me. Arent these people cognizant?\n Stigma can also hoist from twain the gay and straight communities. In order to derogate this stigma there are veritable genial groups to help. wholeness such social group is a Body Positive social for HIV-positive people. Todd Crenshaw explains Once I got there it was like a gay bar. Everyone was standing(a) and modeling, which I never was really into anyway. Everybody also denied having ARC (AIDS link Complex), and said they were just HIV-Positive. In the gay community there are positives and negatives. (He degage the two with both hands in the air.) When Ive met and told some people Im positive, a mist comes down in trend of their face. I had a assignment with a guy I met in the lyceum who had expressed a lot of arouse in me. But when I said I was positive, the date just end right there. He never called me again.\n The most stressful plaza facing people infected with AIDS has to be relation back their children eventually their passing game to die. To me, being on the other side of the AIDS epidemic, this positioning is viewed very delicately and is seen in this way through Catherine Wyatt-Morleys journal. Catherine, being HIV-Positive, was faced with having to itemize her children that she had HIV. She described how it felt, Oh, how I wish I could put forward them, but I have no linguistic communication to explain this animateness nightmare, this invasion of the enemy. Its bad enough for Catherine that she was infected and now her stressful situation has led her to overhear the decision whether or not to tell her children. She ultimately decides to predicate her children about her situation because her family are the ones who are going to be there to help her through her ordeal.\n In reading bei ng Positive, The Lives of Men and Women with AIDS, AIDS Memoir, Journal of an HIV-Positive Mother, and a few chapters of And The solidification Played On I wise(p) a enormous amount about how AIDS personal effects the personal lives of people it encounters. Knowing about their personal lives and battle with AIDS helped me to better understand what stressors they go through, how they cope with the stressors cerebrate to the disease, and who they turn to for help.If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Cheap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '