#because my memory sucks ass cause of mental illness and trauma

[censorship]

Kind of weird how i'm not white

[tonya-the-chicken]

I’m not going to change your views but it does feel a bit dismissive when you say it wasn’t that bad because he had rich parents who neglected him but hey they got a maid for him and he probably wasn’t outcasted or bullied so hey it’s not that bad right 🤷‍♀️! I don’t know he definitely didn’t have the worse out of the villains but I don’t know it felt a bit dismissive is all. Although we need to all remember these are fictional characters so have no idea why the other anon needed to get so aggressive! Also the person in the notes I don’t know how to say it but uh the whole the Todoroki’s had a rich father they didn’t have to work a day in their life take is not a good look. Just because someone has parents with money it doesn’t derail the fact that neglect can cause trauma.

Anyways for the real reason I sent this, you wonder why Dabi is so insane. Well take into account the neglect alongside the fact that he burnt to near death up on that hill alone at the age of what 13? That’s got to be extra traumatising, especially for a child that was already not mentally ok. We also don’t know what his circumstances were like after that fire, like was he homeless? Or picked up by someone nefarious? Kind of like AFO(not him exactly but someone nasty) who maybe fed on his brewing anger and hate instead of positive healing. I’m sure we will find out at some point? I don’t think it was just what happened in the Todoroki household or the fire that broke his mind? There had to be other factors after the fire after his “death”!

[[WARNING!!! I love Dabi as a character but I am not a woobifier so if you are too much into him don't read!!!! No complaints taken, y'all will be blocked for being rude I am too old to deal with people unable to interact with me in good faith (anon it's not for you, you are good and I can't understand your point of view I am just not as good as a person and too old for that shit)]]

I don't think I will change my mind either but I feel like the belief that every trauma is equally bad is just... Simply wrong. Like, we can legit compare this stuff and how badly it affects our brain, what do y'all think psychologists research 🤷‍♀️ Like, your therapist won't tell you this because it's not their job to make you understand you not the centre of the Earth (and it won't help because it is a legit trauma response that is very valid but is annoying you're fucking 25 yo). And to say that, neglectful parenthood is probably the worst parenthood style, as far as I know XD I wrote coursework about this (neglectful bitches are having a lot of need to make us the biggest victims (the bitches is me))... It also feels really American to me? Like, are we going to pretend people who got to live in a nice house and were neglect somehow got it as bad as people living in poverty or warzones? Hello? Imagine telling some orphan "I know you have no parents but actually, my trauma of my father not spending enough time with me is just as severe as yours". Bruh couldn't be me sorry... Like, even taking into account the fact that we can have weaker or stronger nervous systems or be more prone to depressive episodes *looks in the mirror and cries* I simply wouldn't find the guts to say my trauma is as severe as idk people who had physically abusive parents or no parents at all or who were disowned for being gay

And like **again** I am not saying that neglect is not traumatic I WAS NEGLECTED THIS IS TRAUMATIZING AS FUCK. I just am living in a country at war and with lots of discrimination problems and I like... Can't say I am the biggest victim. Sorry I can't though there were times when I was a lot more bitchy especially before being in therapy so I understand where you are coming from and I know what I am saying won't resonate with everyone (it's ok go on your own healing journey I believe in you) but this doesn't mean it is garbage and won't help me or someone else... I've already talked once about it but as a person, I am very easily irritated and envious and really not your local Jesus and partially my trauma turned me like this so being more humble about my sufferings helps me not be a complete bitch (believe me or not but people with traumas and mental illnesses are often insufferable *looks in the mirror* not me though I am perfect... BUT IT IS OK TO BE INSUFFERABLE OK??? like, bitch, that's normal. That's normal to stink when you are depressed it's ok to be a bitch when you are hurting. Forgive yourself because I forgive you (when you are not being an abusive asshole but if you apologize and explain yourself I will forgive that too)

The reason why I talk about the fact he is rich is that I've got a disease called leftism and I am a person of several marginalized identities and since this fandom LOVES looking at characters like real humans, I looked at Dabi this way. And if Dabi was a real human, I wouldn't sympathize with him one bit. I would fucking hate him for being the biggest entitled asshole who commits crimes for the reason his Daddy didn't give him attention. Bitch, my Dad didn't give me attention either! But somehow I don't kill people! And I don't even have money!!!! But like... I am not denying that neglectful parents are not a problem. It is. But he is overreacting, bro. He needs to humble down and recognize the fact he is a fucking idiot (he is). He has inherently so much more resources to recover and heal himself than I had... Yes, I am just being jealous at this point but honestly. Making an entire country suffer for you is not a good thing and y'all need to stop using trauma and mental illness as an excuse for people. No! Being abusive to people because of neglect is not valid, is overreacting and you had no reason to do that. I am dismissing your trauma because you are exaggerating it to make me sympathize with your asshole behaviour. I won't judge people with different sets of standards as I judge myself

I bet it would be dismissive and bad if I said it in conversation with someone who is currently struggling with mental health and is not a murderer. But guess what! I don't talk with humans and my friends the same way I talk on my Tumblr about fictional characters 🤷‍♀️ Not to mention I don't have rich friends akabsksbxm

I think with Dabi there's this whole thing where we saw him at 14 (poor baby boy) and 24 (a grown-ass boy) and... Like, I am so sorry for 14 years old Touya not receiving the help he needs (bruh so relatable) but I am not gonna act like 24 years old bitch can't get his ass to a psychiatrist (extremely unrelatable and infuriating). We shouldn't apply the same standards to kids and adults. We can talk all day long about how society is bad and how our parents ruined us but at some points, you gotta take your life into your own hands and do something and be an adult. And it's fucking hard when you're born with a shitty brain that was fucked up by your parents even more in a society where no one gives a fuck but I sincerely don't know another way to live. You will feel bad and want to die but you either keep on recovering or keep on getting worse and at this point getting worse is Dabi's *choice* That's how I live, that's my framework and I am, of course, extremely fortunate in a lot of ways but I just don't know how are you supposed to survive without the notion that grown people are responsible for themselves and their mental health. We can't act like adults are babies

But as a character, Dabi is fucking hot ngl. Like, do I sometimes want to murder my entire family, make them suffer AND commit terrorist attacks? We all do. Dabi is the dark fantasy of us neglectful bitches craving some attention. Gotta kill the president and tell everyone that my Dad sucks. Imagine the entire country hearing your Dad sucks? That's the juice, that's the dream. Trauma makes you vicious. I get the sentiment. Imagine all those fuckers who made you feel like shit pissing their pants and crying? Imagine your Mom being afraid of you the way you used to be afraid of her? People do have the desire for some violent justice but like... Think of bullied kids committing school shootings. But instead of a kid, it's a grown man who graduated school and who also have a rich father

Ok too much about irl stuff and philosophy shit. I know my way of talking is kinda brute so just know the way I treat people is different from that I treat fictional characters, in particular, I don't call real-life humans submissive and breedable... And stuff...

Damn Dabi is kinda good to project your hatred of your parents in bruh, I should write a fanfic about that (would be cathartic)

To the plotline, I am also very interested in what the hell happened with him after burning because... How the hell he wasn't found? I kind of DON'T want him to be groomed at this point because I feel like it won't be as cool as him just more naturally evolving into what he became. Like, surely, he is an asshole but consider this: as a villain, he is morally obligated to be an asshole

I feel like someone hiding him and Touya overstating the gruesomeness of his living conditions to the dude so he feels *bad* for him and hides him and feels sympathy and Touya gets attention but also begins to reassure himself in the fact his Dad needs to be punished... Idk it's a lot of mystery but I feel like more suffering won't deliver the point the way I want it... I mean it CAN be handled this way and initially I thought a lot about Dabi being brainwashed a bit or having his memories altered so it seems worse to him or even him being groomed or lied too but nowadays I am not into it. I mean I believe in Horikoshi and that he will handle him well 🛐

I talk a lot so I will summarize

If we judge him as a real human

14 yo Touya - DID NOTHING WRONG IN HIS LIFE PROTECT HIM

24 yo Dabi - go fuck yourself bitch you older than me and act like a child and kill people, I couldn't care less about your trauma rich boy

If you want me to talk as his psychologist

Yeah, it is painful and sad, I understand him so much and surely, his trauma is valid as is his hatred but probably revenge won't bring him what he wants. And what he wants is love and attention. But he gotta make choices that will lead to his healing. He needs to *want* to heal. And we will step by step go to the healing because it is possible. He is loved and he is enough. AND YOU ALL MOTHERFUCKERS WILL HEAL I BELIEVE IN YOU BESTIES

Also his therapist (behind his back)

You won't believe it but my client is the most infantile attention whore I've ever met

But if we talk about him as a character... Very delicious soup

If you talk with your friends

Please, if your friends are being abusive to you or someone else don't even LET them say how their trauma made them this way. No. Nothing allows you to be an abuser. Call them out and stop them and make them talk to the therapist. Like, surely, there are extreme situations like severe mental illnesses or extreme neglect where we should be more forgiving but babying adults won't do you any good and won't make them recover

Yeah, I guess this is what I forgot to say. When I say "it wasn't that bad" what I mean is that I would be more forgiving to people who had it worse. It's more of a personal measure where I can tolerate stuff from people who had particular traumas or from those who suffered greatly (it's not my place to be a bitch here). I can forgive 14 years old or a poor person for stealing stuff but not the 25-year-old man who got no need for money and is not a kleptomaniac. I would be more forgiving to Shigaraki than to Dabi because Shigaraki was groomed a whole lot. Same for Toga, who is not even an adult or Twice who is a poor orphan. But that doesn't mean I would forgive them completely. All of them are shitty people. It's just that they had fewer resources and possibilities to not be what they became while Dabi had more but he acts like he is extremely hurt and the biggest victim which is like... There will be people like this in your life, please, don't make friends with them, they WILL abuse you

I talked a lot damn. It's adhd I can't shut up

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #433

“i really wish that you could help, but my head is like a carousel: i’m going ‘round in circles”

Would you rather visit Rome or Spain? Rome. Do you really care what’s going on in celebrities' lives? Depends on the person. If I have a big interest in them, like Mark, then yes, because I care about that person and want to know they're well. Have you ever broke a plate/bowl? Accidentally. Has anyone ever drunk called/texted you? I don't think so. Can you do a backwards London bridges? Hell no, I'd bust my ass and spine. Are any of your pets “overweight”? Why the quotations? But anyway, no. Has anyone ever bought you a ring? Yeah. What has been the most traumatic experience of your life? Does it still bother you? The breakup with my first real bf. And well yeah, it resulted in PTSD. It sounds so overdramatic, I know, but I'm not even remotely exaggerating. Live a day in my head and tell me it's not actual trauma. If you knew you had the right person, would you marry them today? God no, not right now. I am not in a position to be married right now. Think back to your most important relationship, was it all your fault it’s over? My damaged side wants to say yes, but I know to be realistic, we both failed in unique areas. He didn't communicate, and I just put too much weight on him. What was your first alcoholic drink? A Mike's Hard Lemonade. What were the first lessons you ever took? Ummm I want to say choir? Did you ever go to a mental hospital? Multiple times. Do you believe that weed should be legalized? Yes. Have you ever had a significant other with a mental disorder? Yes. If you could transform into something, what would that something be? Uhhh idk. Maybe a cat? Out of 10, (10 being really shy) how shy are you? Oh, easily a 10. When was the first moment you discovered love? I actually don't really know the moment I realized I was in love w/ Jason. It was a gradual thing, so no one occasion stands out. What’s the best mistake you’ve ever made? Well, I suppose accepting Jason's Facebook friend request because I thought he was a different Jason. I can't think of many good mistakes I've made... Even the one I mentioned, it's debatable how good that one was. I really do wonder how different my life would be if I declined it. What do you think of frogs? I love frogs! They're so cute and derpy. :') Who did you last worry about and why? My cat, because he was apparently hiding somewhere and Mom couldn't find him. Who did you last feel sorry for and why? Sara, because of health stuff she's dealing with. Is there a name that you can’t stand but it’s the name of a loved one? It sucks, I feel like this burning in my stomach a lot of the time when I hear "Ashley" because that was Jason's girlfriend after me. But I have a sister with the same name. Are you currently looking for a new place to live? I'm not, and I don't think Mom actively is, though we both want to move. When did you last make up a baby’s bottle? I don't think I ever have. Well... maybe once? idr Do you believe there’s a devil? No. Have you ever felt an earthquake? No. Have you ever been on an island? Yes, actually. Did you watch the last presidential inauguration? I've never watched one. Have you ever been a fan of The Killers? I don't consider myself a true "fan," no. I only like two songs that I know. Do you have your own lighter (why or why not)? No, because I don't need one? Do you believe in miracles (why or why not)? No. I just don't. Everything has the have a cause and reason. How often do you sleep naked? Never. Are you looking forward to your prom? If you already went, how was it? I went twice, and it was fun. I especially loved having the pictures taken that I regret wiping from the face of the earth. Prom itself was pretty bland each time, like you can't hear shit and they just play awful music, but still. I was a teenager with a very fairytale outlook on love and wanted to just feel like I was in one I guess. Do you prefer Quizno's or Subway and why? I don't think I've ever tried Quizno's, actually. What’s one of your best memories from during a rain storm? I don't know. Why did you need your most recent x-ray and what were the results? It was to see if I broke my foot, I think? If that's the one, then no. I also had my legs x-rayed at some point to see if they could find any damage there because of my extreme weakness in them, but there wasn't. Do people more often mistake you as being younger or older than you are? I actually don't know. Have you ever made out with someone you weren’t dating? No. Do you know anybody who was abused? Yes. Have you ever touched an elephant? No. How many siblings do you have? I have five I "count," but I do have another half-sister on my dad's side that I don't know. I want to, but yeah... it just hasn't happened. Do you get bored of your girlfriend/boyfriend easily? I've never gotten bored of any s/o I've had. Who do you want for president? I voted for Biden. Do you think abortions are horrible? No. Forcing someone to undergo what can easily be considered a traumatic experience is horrible. Do you enjoy drama? Ugh, no. Have you ever had a guinea pig for a pet? I've had a few. Were you/are you popular in school? No. I was very much under the radar and mostly stuck to myself and a small group of friends. What brand clothing do you wear the most? No clue. Have you ever studied any new age or occult religions such as Wicca? Yes, actually, when I was leaning towards Neo-Paganism. I did research into some of its branches, such as Wicca. Are you a wrestling fan? Not at all. I honestly think it's dumb. What’s the longest movie you’ve ever watched? I want to say Troy? It never felt THAT long to me though because I love it. Have you ever been on a subway? No. Do you think spending a ridiculously large amount of money on one designer item is stupid? It sure as hell isn't for me; I lean towards people can spend their hard-earned money on whatever they want, BUT I do feel that they could still spend their money on more important things. Do you find baths relaxing? No, they gross me out. Do you have any hats? I probably still have the hat Dad got me at a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game somewhere, but idk where. Has any part of your house ever been flooded? Not on the interior, no. Have you ever been interested in learning about murderers or murder cases? Not especially. Is there anyone that you’re worried about right now? Who and why? I'm just about praying Sara's new med for her POTS helps. I think me worrying how Jason is doing after his mother's death is gonna be a permanent fixture in the back of my head... If you won a lot of money, would you donate any of it? To what organization would you donate it? Oh, absolutely. I'd have to do some research first, but the Trevor Project comes to mind immediately, as well as ones that protect wildlife, help the mentally ill, fight cancer... Are you a competitive person? What are you most competitive about? Not really, no. I have my areas where I'm more likely to feel it than others, but it's generally mild. I'm not too sure what I'm most competitive about, but maybe outdoing other hunters in WoW since that's my main class that I've played religiously for years. Have you ever adopted a stray animal? Yes. What do you appreciate most about your parent(s)? The fact they somehow still support me even though I'm like... this. I feel like I should've exhausted their faith by now. Do you believe America should legalize drugs? If you think they should legalize only some drugs, which drugs do you think they should legalize? I only support the legalization of weed. What is your biggest turn-off of a person (besides physically)? Arrogance, probably. Or being aggressive/explosive. What song cover do you like better than the original? "Sound of Silence" by Disturbed, for one. That one's easy. If you could find one long-lost friend of the past, who would it be? Megan. I want her to know I forgive her and miss her friendship. What holiday do you enjoy the most? Christmas. (: Were you born in the state you live in? Yep. Have you ever lived in a house that has been broken into? No, but almost. Who do you know that watches the most sports? Probably my dad? Idk. Do you like South Park? Not really. Are you good at bowling? No. Made out for more than 3 minutes? Three minutes is nothin' lmao. Have you ever gone snorkeling or scuba diving? If yes, what’s the coolest thing you’ve seen? No, but I'd love to. What’s your favorite filling in chocolates? Caramel. What do you remember from sex ed class when you were younger? Abstinence was the only option. Heteronormativity. What’s the first instrument you ever played? Ha, a recorder back in elementary school. Have you ever had a friend break up with a bf/gf for you? Essentially. We didn't date, but that's why he broke up with her, because he wanted me instead. Do you see a bright light at the end of your tunnel? I don't like thinking about this. I can only hope there is, but I doubt it a lot. Have you ever waited in line overnight for something? No. Is there such a thing as being too rich or too poor? "Too poor" is very obviously a thing??? "Too rich" is more complicated to me, as I can see both sides to it. Like it's your hard-earned money, but at the same time, is it really necessary at a certain point? Like start donating regularly or something. Do something good. Do you think having an expensive phone is a good investment? Depends on how expensive, I suppose, and what you use it for. What’s your largest bill? Electric, gas, phone, etc. I don't have any of my own bills. It's embarrassing by this age. Do you like your job? I'd like to even have a job... What is your favorite song and why? "False Flags" by Massive Attack, because it's so poetically haunting in its message of how fucked up politics are. Its monotonous tone also adds another layer of sadness to it, like a reminder of how "normal" and bland and unsurprising everything is, no matter how horrible... I could honestly probably write an essay on how I interpret the song, especially if you add in the incredible symbolism of such a simplistic music video. Are you introverted or extroverted? I am very introverted. If you’re married and your spouse cheated on you, would you forgive them? Nope, byeeeee~ Who knows the real you the most? Sara, really. How old is the oldest person you’ve had sexual relations with? He'd be 27 now. Have you been upset the past few days? My PTSD has been kinda vicious the past couple days, especially today. Then earlier at my nephew's b-day party I had to nearly bite my fucking tongue off with that family's political bullshit. My anger really flared up a few times hearing despicable shit, but I think I concealed it fine by just not saying a word. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever thought of doing for a job? Nothing "crazy," really... Who was your first celebrity crush? Jesse McCartney had my young heart, ha ha. When did you last see or speak to someone you dislike? Why do you dislike this person? Today, at my nephew's aforementioned b-day party. I in specific don't like my sister's husband because he's sexist, racist, homophobic, bigoted... I could go on and on. We don't just have "different opinions," we have different morals entirely. When you listen to music, do you generally sing along, or just listen? I almost always just listen. I don't sing a lot. Can you remember the last time you felt emotional? What was the reason? Today. PTSD is a bitch. What if you were told that your life has to stay exactly as it is right now, and nothing will ever change? How would you feel about that? Quite honestly, I don't think I would want to live anymore. Have you ever been to the hospital for something really serious? I'd consider an OD on cold medicine to be serious, but then again, I experienced almost no effects from it. Idk if I just got fluids fast enough or what, but whatever it was, I'm thankful for. Are you excited for winter? UGGGHHHH BRING IT ONNNNNNN. Have you ever had a moment with someone you like that seemed like a movie moment? Many. What are you listening to right now? "Down In The Park" by Marilyn Manson. What’s your favourite flavour of iced tea? Tea is gross. Have you ever been to a casino? If so, which one(s)? No. Have you ever visited a sex shop? I haven't. Have you ever ridden a bicycle through a busy city? NOOOOOOOO. I could never do that. What’s your favourite place to get pizza? Literally Domino's, lmao. I am so basic. Do you have a lock number or pattern for your phone? No. There sure isn't anything important on it. What’s the most number of people you’ve ever lived with? Five.

[misinformedgenic]

The last post on this god awful blog

Hello, I ask everyone who see’s this to unfollow this blog, if you are following me. I can’t look at the reblogs and posts I posted anymore, without feeling incredibly embarassed and I know that I am being aggressive to the people who gave me notes but you know what I don’t care.

(Overall trigger warning: trauma,syscourse,swearing and apologies.)

My message for those who are anti-endogenic:

(tw: abelism,mental ilness)

The truth is, whether all systems are formed by trauma or some can be born that way or it can be formed by something else, it really doesn’t matter. All endogenic systems are just trying to exist and communicate their experiences, and instead of listening and supporting those who might experience their plurality differently from you, you just villanize them and insult them and do the exact same thing that neurotypicals have been doing to us for YEARS. Calling us fake, saying we are trying to get attention, saying we should be ashamed of ourselves for “appropriaiting” from people who had a more severe form of an illness or was priveliged enough to get a diagnosis . If you are traumagenic and you haven’t had that kind of experience, I genuinely envy you. That shit was done to me and it really hurt me. People called me attention seeking for saying I was depressed,or had social anxiety or that I was transgender, or that I was traumatised or plural when all I was trying to do was be myself openly and to accept myself. Why is it that when someone who experiences some sort of plurality and they don’t feel comfortable assosciating their system with trauma, you jump straight to accusing them of something as awful as FAKING or BEING A THIEF!

And yes I know being endogenic means it’s not an illness, but being called a fake for expressing who you truly are when you’ve been forced to hide who you are is such a awful experience. How could you be so callous and careless to even risk that happening to someone else, even once more, in this cruel world. Even if every single endogenic system, who says I can’t help being a plural, was trauma genic, they still associate themselves with that word, endogenic. When you say something horrible about endogenic systems, you are doing so much damage to those people. I mean, to assume without a shadow of a doubt that every single “veritable” endogenic system is actually traumagenic with the limited amount of understanding of DID/OSDD IN ITSELF, as opposed to how this phenomenon could work outside of a disordered framework, really shows you have your head far up your ass. But even then, it doesn’t matter because whether they ended up being traumagenic or not, according to science, no one deserves that treatment.

Even then,in regards to the post on this blog that got the most notes, we need to understand that people with plurality are forced to label their pluraility as a symptom of a disorder. Many systems who needed psychiatry and systems who didn’t and just masked themselves mingled, and they shared terms. This is still happening today, more then ever.

(Just in case you want to know, fictive is not a term used in psychology or psychiatry. It literally came from the soul bonding community, and people who are anti endogenic are still using it. If you don’t believe me use a web browser, and provide some sources to prove otherwise. I didn’t know this, and I’m not going to tag the OP who told me this,because I’m not sure whether they want to be tagged, but thank you. I felt pretty humiliated but it helped to come to realize what I was doing was wrong and that my opinions were wrong, and it helped me to become a kinder and more understanding individual.)

And we need to understand that systems shouldn’t be forced to be involved in exploring their plurality through a lense of trauma, because for many it doesn’t make sense because thats not how they experience it. Even if it is repressed memories ,sometimes or always, systems need a space to be systems without talking about trauma or applying trauma to it. DID and OSDD spaces are not providing that and in those spaces trauma is going to be talked about. Systems shouldn’t have to force themselves to think about trauma and go through pain, just to be able to call themselves a plural and have people acknowledge and accept them.

My message for any endogenic systems and their supporters:

I apologize for everything that you had to go through, from me and my behaviour. My behaviour was terrible and none of you deserved it at all. You deserve so much more than what you get from the anti-endogenic crowd, and you are absolutely valid, and I hope that in the future things will be easier all of you. You deserve love, acceptance and support, and I hope that nobody will ever be able to take that reality from you. You are doing nothing wrong by just being a plural, and it’s really sad that people were and still are fighting about this. Fuck anyone who says otherwise. 

Conclusion:

(tw: s***** abuse,ableism,self hatred)

I know I was guilty of what I criticized, and that is really embarassing, but I’m glad I realize that now. I admit I was angry because I was jealous and bitter and I didn’t understand the history properly around this community or how it formed. I went through a lot of online g******g and s***al abuse and my experience with being a system was horrible, I had to deal with alters who had horrible del****ns and wanted to incite gruesome s*** h*** and wanted to k*** me. My system has introjects of my a****rs and random men I see on the streets making pe****ted comments at me pretty much all the time, and I was really jealous of systems who could experience the joys of being a system while avoiding the horrible parts. It made me feel worthless and inferior, because all the interesting and fun parts of being a system could be paraded on TikTok or whether and displayed by people who weren’t f***ed *p and dis*****ng like I was. I am not saying that’s the only basis as to why anti-endogenics hold their opinions, but I am saying this because if you ever see those anti-endogenic posts of mine somewhere and I am very passive agressive or vicious, that’s where it comes from and it isn’t objective or fair.

end of abuse trigger warning.

I decided that I am going to delete all the mean comments I made on other people’s posts that didn’t get any response, so that not another person has to see it again, and for which did get a response I am going to apologize to all those I harmed. If you want to respond to my argument, I can’t stop you from reblogging and making a comment, and that’s your freedom on this website, but I am not going to be replying because discourse on here is so nasty and I’m just done with that. I would rather help contribute to a community of people who feel isolated and who will be empowered by building a culture around plurality, whether that be around trauma or not. I’m tired of focusing on my trauma, it’s in the past and I don’t give a shit about it. It just sucks and I hate it and I am done with it. I will need therapy for it of course,yadi ya, but in terms of my limited free time on this earth I would rather contribute to making people feel happy and supported then argue and be angry about something that is kind of pointless anyway.

So bye, I would like to make a normal system blog in the future and we’ll be using the same names but for now I need to shut the fuck up and reflect. 

- Luca

Also hey, on a additional note, my name is Milo and I allowed my name to be associated with this blog and it was irresponsible and unkind for me to do promote this kind of thinking. I am really sorry for any harm I caused by being a part of this blog. Additionally Stanley understands that his post on pride flags was inaccurate and he made some very nasty comments/did some nasty stuff to, he is very sorry to all those he harmed with his previous posts. He is in a really bad situation at the moment, which has gotten worse over time, he is a trauma holder and he is in a lot of emotional turmoil,so neither me or Luca wanted him to be involved in writing this specific post, but that doesn’t mean what he did was okay and all three of us recognize this now.

Best regards,

Milo.

[isa-ly]

I’M GETTING A DIVORCE

TW: eating disorders, body image, weight, mental illness, depression, anxiety

Yesterday evening was rough. Completely out of the blue, getting-hit-by-a-freight-train type of rough. Usually, when these evening or days occur, I just kind of tend to start fresh the next day and pretend they never happened. Because everyone has bad days, even if you’ve worked hard to restore your general mental health, and it’s okay to just let those days pass and work on being kinder to yourself once the sun rises again.

However, I also want to actively work on not simply ignoring them all together, because while it’s a good thing not to dwell on bad days for too long, it’s also a good thing to not just repress them. And as we all know, I’m quite guilty of doing the latter and labeling it as “fine” when, in fact, it is everything but fine. Keeping a positive spirit is admirable but shutting out everything that cracks the surface of your facade is just not gonna work in the long run. Every emotion is valid and if I can acknowledge feeling happy and comfortable, I can just as well acknowledge feeling sad and shitty.

So, I’m making a compromise. While I don’t really want to talk about how and why yesterday evening was rough, I am still going to talk about something else that sometimes feels equally as hard and difficult to me. As already mentioned in the trigger warnings, there’s going to be talk about eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa, as well as body image and weight again. So, if that is in any way harmful to you and you own journey, feel free to just drop this post like a hot potato. (I think this actually is a German proverb, but it sounds so funny in English, so I’m just going for it.)

Now, what I’m about to say might sound somewhat controversial or really, really fucked up but I’ve found that when it comes to eating disorders (and any other mental illness, really), the darkest parts are often the ones you have to really take a good look at, even if it hurts and sounds shocking. And calling them out, dragging them into the open to point at them with your finger, is the only thing that will make them palpable enough to get rid of them. Once again, the Harry-Potter-boggart analogy works quite well here.

Shame and fear fester comfortably in the darkest corners of your brain, like a disgusting mold that slowly takes over. And I don’t really want a moldy brain, so I once again want to use this blog openly talk about something that is nothing short of crappy and awful, in order to take some of its power away. And also just to be honest, with myself and everyone else who happens to read this.

There’s a lot of reasons why it’s incredibly hard to recover from an eating disorder. Of course nothing is impossible, least of all recovery, but I still struggle almost every single day to keep pushing forward. Sometimes that struggle is close to nothing, sometimes it’s manageable and sometimes it seems like the end of the world. And one of the many reasons why it can feel like that last one, is what I and many others who have suffered from this illness like to call “nostalgia for your eating disorder”.

I think we can all agree that regardless of whether you have one or not: Eating disorders are shit. They really suck ass, to no one’s surprise. If I had one wish and one wish only to make, I wouldn’t even have to hesitate a single second: It would be for my ED to vanish forever and never return. Easy. So, then why in the living hell would I feel nostalgic for it? Why would I be hesitant to call my ED out for the life-ruining piece of shit it is? Why do I sometimes catch myself wishing back the times where I would go to bed hungry, where I would feel so in control despite never really having it? Where I would lie and deceive and watch my life slowly fall apart? What idiot would miss something like that?

Well ... an idiot with an eating disorder. 

Alright, I’m not an idiot. And neither is anyone else who feels nostalgia towards this illness. Because even if it sounds ridiculous and outrageous: It’s in fact completely normal to have these thoughts and feelings.

I’ve mentioned before how, when I first crashed into the world of anorexia, it felt like I had completely lost myself and what I had considered to be my personality to this new, foreign entity that had taken over my life in a matter of days. Because actually, for a lot of people – myself included – that is exactly what eating disorders are: A filler for a gap that you don’t know how to close yourself. Like a plug to a tub that has been running out, or a bandaid to a wound that won’t stop bleeding. It’s an emergency solution to a problem that threatens to swallow you. And often times, emergency solutions can’t be analyzed or fact-checked for risk and danger because, well, it’s an emergency. And you’ll accept anything you can get to rescue yourself in that moment.

Back when I developed anorexia, I was completely lost in life. I didn’t know who I was or who I wanted to be and trying to answer that question overwhelmed me so much, that the only way to cope was to let someone, something else, fill the big black hole that was ripping itself through my chest. Coping comes in all shapes and forms. And mine had the form of a sneaky and cunning eating disorder. 

Often, that is why personality and eating disorders go hand in hand. Because it’s so much more than just an illness that fucks up the way you eat and live. It’s a whole new face you get to put on. It’s terrifying, but that terror is exciting and new because it’s an opportunity. It makes you miserable but at least it makes you something. It fills that void, that fear of being lost. It gives you purpose, and it gave me purpose too when I was at my very lowest. I didn’t know who I was or what to do and anorexia gave me a set of rules, a daily schedule and Do’s and Dont’s that I had to follow, as it watched over me like a hawk. 

Sometimes I see it almost like a parasite, like that weird alien from The Thing that takes on the form of a person to trick you into thinking it’s your friend. Anorexia is very, very skilled at that. And because it’s so skilled at it, it manages to completely convince you of the fact that it is now a crucial part of you that you will never, ever be able to let go again. It’s almost like a personality substitution and that’s exactly why it gets so hard to see it as something entirely foreign that you need to get rid of instead of clinging onto it.

And here’s the thing: As I started recovery and as I started fighting against everything anorexia told me to do, I realized that this fight also meant going back to my very old problem of not knowing who I was. In all the time of being sick and starving, I was at least “relieved” of the burden of having to question what I wanted from life. Not a very balanced deal, I know, but again: emergency solution. 

However, now that I was finally trying to get better and heal, that age old question came back again: What the fuck am I doing? And I could hear my eating disorder chuckling at the back of my mind:

That’s right. I might be ruining your life but who are you without me? No one. You have no idea what to do or where to go. You have no idea who you even are. That’s why I’m here. And besides: Nobody knows you like I do.

And that’s another part of the reason for nostalgia. Please forgive the poor comparison but the closest I can get to making an analogy to it, is to compare it to the principle of Stockholm Syndrom. Just so maybe the notion of it can be understood easier. Because anorexia is abusive and horrible, it literally made me starve myself, made me depressed and hate everything about life. It caged me in and held me captive to the point where I had no freedom, no choice, no joy or happiness left. It ruined everything. 

And all the while it caused me all of that horror, it’s also the only other thing, the only other “person”, voice, existence in my head that shares those memories with me. That knows exactly what I went through. Because we went through it together. It caused me all this pain and trauma – but it also shared it with me. I was never alone, not really, because even when I felt like there was no one or nothing left: Anorexia was always there. Every second of the day and every step of the way. I, it, both of us, know things that to this day, are unspeakable to me. That to this day, I haven’t told anyone because the fact that I was capable of doing such things, still scares me every time I think about them.

We share what are undoubtedly the worst and most painful memories of my entire life and as much as I fucking hate it, I cannot undo this connection. It’s a fucked up bond that I will always have with my eating disorder, even if it makes me angry and frustrated. It’s a connection I never asked for or wanted, but it’s still there and all I can do is learn how to process it in a way where it no longer holds me back and defines me.

Which is the reason for today’s blog title, by the way.

Actually, I got that analogy from a documentary about, you guessed it, eating disorders. In it, one of the counselors at an inpatient clinic compared recovery to the process of divorce. An eating disordered person might very well be aware that they’re in a bad, almost abusive relationship with themselves, or in this case: with their eating disorder. And they might very well be aware that the only way to get better is to let go and move on. But just like in so many divorce situations or break ups, this is way easier said than done. Because there is heaps of memories and emotions connected to this disorder that make you feel close to it, in a way. Feelings of accomplishment, of ambition, of thrill and yes, sometimes even feelings of happiness. False happiness, of course. But even the illusion of a false sense of joy is something that can be very powerful when you’re already beaten down. 

When you’re in such a dark place and your disorder takes over your life, it takes on almost human-like properties. It’s like a friend or a partner, it’s the only relationship you’re still able to have, the only one you are “true” to because everyone else you care about, you lie to. Anorexia isolates, just like any other mental illness tends to do, and it isolated me too. I tried my best to keep face but truthfully, when I was at my lowest, it felt like my eating disorder had managed to break into places of me that had never seen the light of day before. And it had built itself its own little nest there and gotten so comfortable and settled, that the thought of ever kicking it out, terrified my just as much as the thought of continuing to live with it.

I mentioned before that I sometimes avoid talking about anorexia like a separate entity that has its own mind, just so it doesn’t seem like it’s bigger than me. Clearly, I’m not doing that now. Because if I’m fully honest, to me, it’s kind of both and also neither. One one hand, I can feel it as something that sits at the back of my brain, at the back of my neck, at the back of my every thought. It’s something I can visualize, hear, feel with every move I make. And on the other hand, it’s not an actual person. Because it’s still just me, it’s how I think and do things, it’s an extension of my need for control. I can’t just separate it into its own realm of existence because we both live in my own brain. We share that space and sometimes anorexia and its opinions and leverage are bigger, sometimes they’re smaller – but for over a year now, they have always been there, one way or another.

So, letting go of it, bidding it goodbye and trying to claim back the space my anorexia has been taking up for so long now, is hard. Because it’s like letting go of a part of myself. A part that causes me pain and suffering, yes. But a part of me nevertheless. And anorexia is a very hot-headed tenant, let me tell you that much. It does not like to be evicted, at all. But it’s not about what my disorder wants, it’s about what I want. And what I need. And that is to live a life free of the boundaries of my eating disorder. Even if it means not fully knowing who I am.

In my last therapy session that I went to, I talked about all of this to Kerstin. About feeling nostalgic and catching myself dwelling in memories that others would probably gasp at in shock. Gladly, Kerstin didn’t gasp because, well, she’d be a crap therapist if she did. But she’s a good one, lucky me. Anyway, in that last session I had, I then tried to come to a conclusion to this whole nostalgia thing, that wasn’t as depressing as the notion of it all. And what I came to was this:

I will never be able to undo what I did. What me and my anorexia did and what it made me do will never be un-lived or forgotten. It is and always will be a part of me. So, actually, trying to ���get rid” of it and “kicking it out”, is not really the solution here. Sure, I’d love to flick a switch and have it all be gone in a second. But that’s never going to happen.

What I can do, however, is learn how to live with it in a way where those memories still get their proper place – without defining me anymore. And without dictating my every move and day. I’ve compared my eating disorder to a stubborn child a few times, too. One that throws massive tantrums when you tell it “no”. Because that’s what it does, mostly. However, another thing that it has in common with a child, maybe even with the child inside of me, is that it’s so, so scared of being left behind. Of being abandoned and forgotten. In a way, it’s exactly that. My anorexia is pieced together by so many of my insecurities and just like me, it doesn’t want to be abandoned. In fact, it’s so scared of it, that it fights back with teeth and claws and with all its might, to stay safe and comfortable where it is. It throws tantrums and breaks out into screaming fits because it’s terrified that once it goes silent, it will be forgotten.

So, actually, instead of treating it like some sort of external force, like a gnarly stomach ulcer (good one, Isa) or like a parasite, I have actually started to treat it more like a scared kid or a wounded animal. With patience and gentle words. With understanding but also with a certain sternness. Literally like a parent that is trying to calm down their raging child. Reassuring it that I have no intentions of cutting it out or pushing it away, but actually to let it stay under the condition that it remains a quiet and passive part of me. Until eventually, it accepts the silence I ask of it and, indeed, fades into something that doesn’t take up most of my living hours anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, 90% of the time my anorexia and me are still in a silent screaming fight over whether or not I can have a chocolate bar. Theory and practice often lie very, very far apart from each other. But the other 10%, the ones where I actually manage to practice what I preach – those are the ones that, to me, matter the most.

Because those are the ones where I can almost feel me and my eating disorder staring each other down from across the room in silence. The ones where I can tell that both of us are scared. Both of us are hurting. Both of us are smart. Both of us are strong.

But only one of us is right.

[brinesystem]

man

lifes bittersweet

and im gonna go on a rant? but like, a happy one???? idk man

ill put it under a cut or somethin

uh warning for like trauma mentions, if you skip the first half which is all like solid paragraphs you should be able to move right over it.

okay, so for a summary of my life real quick, and this will be p quick...

born, had no dad, lived in DC when 9/11 hit (like, walking distance to everything, IN the city DC), gained a marine dad, moved around on bases a lot, found out that im autistic and have adhd, bullied a lot in school, moved around more, got two sisters, bullied OUT of middle school, re entered a new school, bullied there too, and tHEN my memory actually starts, cause i started existing in hs?

hs also sucked though? and i was abused and became a csa/grooming victim but only online so i feel weird even taking that label, but i AM one in the end? and was so young somehow??? tbh its worse than im putting it but this is the quick version. was abused more emotionally/verbally, physically threatened at home and bullied in school right? almost lost our house too cause we were MAJORLY BROKE. Like, SUPER badly broke.

We get out of there, my mum actually gets our dad to knock it off, i fail out of hs because they changed the grading rules MID-YEAR and didnt tell me until it was too late to fix my grades for it.

cue mental breakdown, which included losing the ability to read for years, and trauma processing, etc etc. this also includes me becoming disabled, because prior to that, i actually wasnt???? i had some issues, but i wasnt disabled. now i am.

got a service dog, the dad ruined that too because he scared him a lot as a puppy and when we finally got to get him to Stop Doing That, it was too late. then the dog gets attacked twice. in home service dog only i guess now.

and then i realise, “oh fuck wait i have did”

forget about it for a year, realised/remembered it like last year and finally start doing some work with the system, finds out ive basically been fronting for like, 10 years straight at this point. only this year managed to let alters other than Fae front more, because i knew about Fae for years? but i didnt know he was an alter?????? look im dumb okay its fine.

anyways.

point is that like, i dont REMEMBER most of this? this summary type shit is what i remember, and then everything else is either a blackout, or just... blurry.

like theres some details and whatever but its mostly just snapshots, and then before hs theres even less blurry and less snapshots and its mostly just black space.

but.

im here?

like, were all here.

my system, we made it. and were alive?

like, none of us thought wed live to 20 but here i am at 24 and im actually usually happy????

its not been EASY at all, but like... i dont know?

my systems my family and i adore them more than i can put into words. the ‘scary’ ones? love them. im not afraid of them because theyre here and in our system with me and are here to help. ones been helping for longer than ive existed, like??? thats amazing? good job???? fuck.

anyways.

we werent doing okay for a long time, and then we split a lot during trauma processing pt.1 because like. no therapist. i dont recommend doing that btw dont trauma process without a therapist its not worth it.

but like.

a lot changed and i know i split shit and lost some of the memories i used to have. i KNOW that happened, because i remember remembering things that i cant recall now.

which is a weird feeling but im sure you get it.

but like.

im glad we did? like i get it. and i know that some of those alters dont front much/at all/ever anymore, but i think theyre still in there somewhere... and i love them?

theyre great. and they helped us a ton.

and two of the alters that split from that (or the trauma before maybe? idk) integrated and the result is another alter (and a completed fragment) and theyre both amazing too???

i know a lot of people complain about getting more alters or splitting or fragments and such but i just...

i dont know. maybe im just really fucking lucky... and i wouldnt put that past this tbh. but i dont mind it? we function a ton better like this, and its... so nice to see them be able to interact with people?

also theyre both introjects who LOVE interacting with others alters from their source and like

its so nice to know theyre here and happy and found the people they love again?

and i have feelings on introjects and i know theres a lot of drama going on for some reason but like. a part of did is that your relationships from the beginning of your life arent stable, right? and these introjects, they not only have those relationships in theory, but they managed to find them again?? here and now?

they have what we werent able to before, and im so happy for them and theyre delighted about it and its just...

idk.

im really happy sappy and emotional and i just am kind of writing a love letter to my system right now i guess.

cause we made it. were here and tbh this year? sucks ass. the past four years have sucked ass. a LOT of shit sucks ass. but we’re still here. were standing and fighting and enjoying life and just...

one of the alters who integrated is the one who managed to stop us from being suicidal, because he convinced me that like... “if you hate your life, that means youre not enjoying it. so, if youre not having fun, its not a life worth living to you. so have fun.”

and that was life changing for us?????

for ME?

and hes Honey now and honey is joyous and enjoys life to the fullest

but the other alter who made up honey wasnt able to do that.

and now they both are? as honey?

and thats fucking amazing????????? like????

i dont feel like i lost either of them. theyre just Honey now. and hes loving life???

i mean yeah hes got a full range of emotions now which means he can feel sad and angry while the others has more limited but like... isnt that better?

isnt it so much better to feel those?

it feels so much less shallow when youre overjoyed when you know what sorrow feels like. its so much deeper because theres that bittersweet tinge of “it wasnt always like this”

and i think thats what im getting at.

it wasnt always like this.

and it wont always be like this.

but we made it this far...

so i want to keep going.

[master-sass-blast]

Henlo, it's me, your local trash monster here to say I love Hannah and I can't wait to hear more about her?? That being said, GIMME ALL THE SAD GOODS ABOUT HER. But also add in something happy about her in the end! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ ((Also sending hugs! I know things have been stressful the last few days so just know I'm rooting for you !!))

Holy fuck I think this is the first time someone’s ever told me to cut loose and just SAY ALL THE THINGS AND I’M SO EXCITED!!!! :D

(Answers under the cut because I just went with the entire list. I have no self control.

And thank you for the hugs and encouragement!)

1. What is one word to shut them up: Okay, for some context, Hannah is a lawyer. She has a thick skin (unlike me, heyoooo). It takes a lot to shut her up; she’s an HBIC and she owns it.

But if someone starts talking about her scars (she’s struggled/struggles with self-harm), she shuts down. It’s a part of her she’s still self-conscious about, and if someone mentions it she’ll literally stop mid-sentence and mentally exit the conversation.

2. What is the thing they feel the most guilty about: Again, she’s got a pretty thick skin, so she doesn’t hold onto too much. Life happens, you make mistakes, and it’s better to learn from them rather than beat yourself over the head for something you can’t change anyway.

If there’s something she’s going to feel guilty about, though, it’s fights or incidents she’s had with family members/close friends where she’s hurt them with something she’s said or done. She holds herself in high accountability to ensure that she doesn’t step all over people, and when she does she fails not only them but her expectations for herself, so yeah. Guilt.

3. What is the worst pain they’ve ever experienced: Physical pain? Probably different injuries from her career in martial arts. She’s a tough cookie, but some of that stuff just hurts.

Emotional pain? Anytime she fails her expectations for herself. She has very high standards for herself, and when she can’t reach them she becomes very depressed (more so than usual).

4. Describe their worst nightmare: Actual dream? Anything where she’s drowning or running out of air. She almost drowned a couple times as a child/preteen, and the trauma still emerges in her adult life from time to time.

Real life “this is a nightmare” scenario? Any point where her depression gets so bad that she stops being functional. Things just start piling up and get overwhelming very quickly.

5. List 3 fears; one “surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear: 1.) Drowning, which runs pretty deep but it’s an obvious one that she’s done a lot of therapy work for, and she doesn’t mind talking about it with other people. 2.) Wasps. She accidentally got locked into a shed with an active wasp nest in it as a child. She made it out alright, but the sheer terror of the situation made her repress the memory. She’s heard the story from friends and family, and “gets” why she’s scared of the fuckers, but can’t actually recall the incident itself. 3.) The dark. A side effect of depression is paranoia, and when she’s alone, in the dark, she can’t shake the feeling that there’s some sort of creature watching/following her. When her depression gets really bad, she has to sleep with a light on to keep from flipping out.

6. What is something that never fails to make them feel sick: She’s not naturally squeamish, but the sounds of belching (ala college frat boys, y’all know what I mean) make her stomach churn.

7. What feature (physical or otherwise) do they hate most about themselves: Her scars. She’s very ashamed of them, and goes out of her way to wear long sleeved shirts so she can hide them.

8. Do they have anything that triggers them: Feeling like she’s failed her own expectations/expectations others have of her, accidentally inhaling water, the ‘buzzing’ sound bees/wasps make.

9. What is their greatest physical weakness: Her height. She might be a kickass lawyer and an even kick-assier martial artist, but she barely clears five feet.

10. What is their greatest mental weakness: Her struggles with self-hatred. She’s her own worst enemy a lot of the time.

11. Do they have any vices: Not really. Not as far as serious vices go. She’s pretty grounded.

12. Have they ever done something illegal? What was it: Nope. She knew she wanted to be a lawyer from day one and made sure her record was spotless.

13. Which of the 7 Deadly Sins best describes them: Pride? I think that one comes closest? Again, since she really doesn’t have a vice or a thorn in her side, it’s hard to pick something for her.

I think Pride comes closest because she spirals when she fails to live up to her own expectations, which I think often comes with a bit of ego (at least in my experience with that sort of thing). She’s also got a lot to be proud of (lawyer, martial artist, financially independent), but she’s not a walking ego either?

Idk. This is a weird question, lol.

14. Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… ): Not really. Don’t get me wrong, she can get there, but it takes a lot. She’s very collected (and usually swings the opposite way; she’s more likely to cold shoulder you if she’s mad).

She does threaten to shove her Prada stiletto sideways up Hank Pym’s ass, though. So there’s that.

15. Who do they hate the most: Guys who use her height against her by cornering her into spots while they try to ask her out/talk to her about something. It’s the fastest way to wind up on her shit list.

16. Is there anyone who makes them feel inferior: Herself. She’s her own worst enemy.

17. What sound always gives them a headache: Her coworker Tracey’s text/notification sound. Which is always going off because Tracey’s always talking to someone.

18. Is there a certain flavor that disgusts them: Not really. She’s half Japanese, half ethnic Jew, and a practicing Jew to boot, so she grew up on a pretty broad flavor palette.

She’s tried a bacon cheeseburger once on a dare, though, and she hated it.

19. Do they consider themselves ugly: Not really (outside of her scars). She’s pretty confident in her appearance.

20. Do they consider themselves unloveable: Again, not really. She’s spent a lot of time in therapy, which helps, but she’s always had her feet pretty well on the ground.

21. What is something that causes them great anxiety: The prospect of losing. She’s very competitive.

22. Do they have any mental illnesses: Depression.

23. Have they ever been assaulted/abused/raped: She’s run into the usual guys that like to try and use her size against her, but they usually wind up worse for wear than she does.

24. Do they fear the possibility of being assaulted/abused/raped: Yes. She’s five feet tall and doesn’t clear 110 lbs. She’s very aware that she’s got “TARGET” written across her back.

25. Have they ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust: Fortunately, no. Most of her close relationships come from communities she knows well (school, work, the temple she attends in LA), so she hasn’t had to deal with too much betrayal.

26. Have they ever been seriously injured: Yes. Even outside of her struggles with self-harm, she’s a martial artist. She’s broken a few bones over the years from that.

27. How many times have they been in the hospital: Five. Three for some pretty drastic self harm incidents, and two from sparring injuries.

28. Is there a certain type of person that disgusts them: Obviously, she has frustrations with asshole guys, racists/anti-Semites, but she cannot stand people who work in organizations that prey on the disenfranchised (ala military recruiters going to schools in impoverished areas to fill their quota because they know how to trick the kids into trying out and all that). It gets her blood boiling fast.

29. Does what they cannot see scare them: Yes. Again, this shows perfectly with her fear of the dark.

30. Have they ever been bullied: Yupp. For her heritage, her beliefs, her mental health struggles, her size... High school sucks.

31. Do they have self-confidence or self-image issues: Yes and no. Again, she’s pretty confident about most things in life, but she does have certain weak points (her scars, living up to her own expectations, her height).

32. Do they have a bad relationship with their parents: Actually, no! She has a good relationship with both her parents and her extended family!

33. Have they ever been in a relationship that didn’t work out so well: Not in the drastic sense of things. She’s been through a few break ups, sure, but nothing that was abusive or crazy.

34. Have they ever self harmed: Yes. It’s something she still struggles with as an adult.

35. If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be: Her scars. She’d make them disappear.

36. Are they in control of their emotions, or are their emotions in control of them: She’s pretty well in control of her emotions.

37. Have they ever had their freedom taken away: Not really, no.

38. Have they ever been imprisoned: Nope.

39. Have they ever been accused of something they didn’t do: Not in any serious sense. Her reputation for toeing the line was too well known for her to be accused of something she didn’t do.

40. Do they often blame themselves for other people’s problems: She did as a teenager, but dutiful therapy and self-care has helped her outgrow that habit.

41. Do they get sick often: Nope! She’s pretty healthy.

42. Are they comfortable with where they are in life: She’s content, but not complacent.

43. Do they wish that they could change their pasts: Yes. Again, she doesn’t like her history with self-harm. If she could erase that, she would.

44. What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t: Travel. Her job’s pretty demanding as far as hours go.

45. What is the emotion they most commonly experience: Melancholy. No matter what she’s doing, it’s sort of always hanging around her, like a tiny cloud.

46. Have they ever contemplated suicide: Yes. Unfortunately, it’s a side effect of the depression.

47. Have they ever gone so far as to attempt suicide: A couple of times, when she was teenager.

48. Is there anyone that they would willingly kill: Outside of self-defense/the defense of others? No.

49. If [name] was put into ______ situation, they’d rather die than live to see it through: Being forced to reject her identities as a Jew/person of Japanese heritage. Her families have made it through so much (internment camps, persecution, the Holocaust), and she’d rather die than erase her own identity.

50. Create your own: Alright, I’m gonna put the happy one here so we end on a high note!

She’s a firm believer in the need for “mah” (the Japanese word for “emptiness), or a moment to pause and do nothing. It’s easy to see that reflected in how she practices meditation, follows Shabbat, or takes time each day to simply be.

However, she also believes that the principle of “mah” is what makes her and Luis work so well as a couple. She is the silence to his constant chatter and helps him keep his feet on the ground. Likewise, he keeps her from living inside her head and helps her connect to the world.

They’re just such opposites attract. Ugh, I love them so much!

[theramblingonesie]

No More, Mr. “Nice Guy”.

My heart breaks and goes out to all of the women who have had the courage to come forward recently in the media about men in power who have violated them.  I refuse to compare traumas, and some could make the ignorant argument that what I’m about to say “DOESN’T EVEN COMPARE” to other more violent acts in Hollywood, but this particular story about Aziz hits very close to home and has left me slightly undone.

Yesterday, my little sister bravely put a post up on her social media that I hope contributes to changing the minds and hearts of Aziz’s defenders.  Years ago, she had an encounter with him that leaves no doubt in my mind that this man is a serial predator, and is in fact very aware of his behavior.  When I started seeing posts going up about him not knowing any better, it being a one-time accident, give him a chance, etc, my blood boiled over.  Because for every one story that receives light, there is almost always a painful trail of those that don’t.  We, the general public, have absolutely zero knowledge or qualification to conclude this man’s innocence.  But I’ve heard enough true stories that absolutely confirm that he is guilty, and NOT a “nice guy”.

When I first heard this news story, I became very upset about how this brave woman, Grace, is being torn apart by the media.  The criticism, the atrocious “open letter” by another woman, was deplorable enough being directed at her.  But these attacks go further than Grace.  Just like we’re unqualified to say that Aziz is innocent, criticizing and destroying Grace’s character is also insane, because nobody making these comments actually knows her.  Therefor, these words are attacks on every woman, every person, who has ever suffered at the hands of sexual assault, violation, and manipulation.  I moved through the phases of generalized rage, to rage over my sister being targeted, and eventually right over to my own miserable encounter with a different celebrity who is widely known to be a “nice guy”.

What happened between this “nice guy” celebrity and I could also be judged as just a really, really bad date.  Okay. Hm. Here are some examples of dates I’ve been on that qualify as really bad, in my opinion:

1.       Met up with a dude on OkCupid around the corner from my apartment.  He was totally different online versus in person.  He didn’t pick up on any social cues, spoke about himself the entire time without asking me any questions, begged for a kiss at the end of the night, and then attempted to make plans to see me again. It was so gross that I desperately texted another OkCupid match immediately after in an attempt to brain-bleach the experience away.  Dude #2 picked me up around midnight and took me to a diner. He was super nice, but I didn’t feel any chemistry. All in all, the night left me feeling gross, sad, lonely and exhausted.  I deleted my profile shortly thereafter.

2.       Went out with a guy who claimed that he was such a powerful wizard that he could turn invisible, and had me “watch” him do it (I…still saw him).  Later that night he somehow convinced me to go back to his place, where he proceeded to makeout with me under a crystal pyramid.  I still laugh about that one.

3.       My first super-serious boyfriend didn’t know I was 20 when he asked me on our first date. I got kinda lost and was late to meet him in Revere, realized I had forgotten my wallet with all of my money back in Rhode Island, got in the car with him while I was still on the phone with another friend, and then when I asked what we’d be doing that night, he responded that there was a bar he’d like to take me to. I had to give him the news that I was underage. I was absolutely the cause of this horrible date. We ended up being together for five years after that, but good lord was that awful. Forever in my shame file….(side note: the night ended really well, fortunately, and has remained a very sweet memory)

Those are what “bad dates” look like.  There is no sexual assault or emotional manipulation in those stories.  There was no fear for my safety, no violation, no feeling of absolute filth or the kind of humiliation that makes you completely question yourself and turn to ice, drawing up traumas from the past or activating mental illness.  As soon as those qualities enter the picture, one is no longer on a “bad date”.  It becomes a different entity; a bastard child of rape culture.

My “bad date” with this “nice guy” celebrity still haunts me to this day.  He had met me a year or so prior during a big performance I was in, and pursued me to varying degrees over time.  I was completely star-struck.  I had been a fan of this guy’s music since forever, and couldn’t believe that he was paying so much attention to me.   My friends made fun of me because he was a bit older, or at least had aged poorly from years of heavy drug use, but that didn’t matter me. He was sober now, and so devoted to his art, and so smart and funny, and sooooo nice.  After months of more intense flirtation and a solid makeout session after one of his shows, he became insistent on spending more time with me, wanting to treat me like someone he was actually seeing, rather than a casual long-distance flirtation. He begged me to come stay with him in New York for a couple weeks, telling me about all the places he would take me, the fancy dinners, and so on.  I agreed to make it happen, but shortly after saying yes, he began getting a little cold.  Energetically, I knew something was off.  I backed off of the plans, confused, and made up an excuse that I would have to check with my work to see how much time I could take off.  Ultimately I gave in and decided to go down for two nights.  That weekend ended with me going hungry and thirsty, abandoned in a hotel room, fucked twice and then completely snubbed. I felt awful.  I felt used, manipulated and lied to.  I felt cheap, pathetic and outrageously humiliated.  I hated how his coldness made me shut down, and that I felt unsafe being myself. I hated what an idiot I sounded like around him, because my brain was so dissociated from confusion and fear around not understanding the extreme shift that was occurring with him.  I hated how ugly I felt, and how stupid.  I hated that I was treated like a nameless sex worker, and STILL didn’t get paid.  At 1 or 2am on the last night, I sent a frantic text to one of my sister-wives who supported me in an incredible way, offering to buy me a different room so I could sleep before getting back on the road to Boston.  Talking to her gave me the strength to leave there and tell him to fuck off forever.  I wrote him an email while his “sober” ass was drugged up and unconscious on pills next to me, and hit send as soon as I left the hotel, because I had no desire to look at his face or hear his excuses in person.  I told him how horrible his behavior was, to which I didn’t receive any kind of response for hours.  No, the first thing I saw from him was a video on Instagram of him in the back of a cab, just staring into a camera with tears in his eyes so all of his followers could see what a sweet, sensitive man he was in that tender moment of pain.

BARF.

He finally made contact, with his first text saying “well that fucking sucked.”  I tried asking him why he did what he did, to just give me some hint or clue or anything that would help me stop feeling so awful and insane. The last text I remember receiving was, “I said I’m sorry.  I don’t owe you any explanations.”

Outside of work, I spent the next couple days in bed, mourning the experience.  There weren’t enough showers.  I exhausted my tears.  I felt such a depression that I stopped feeling anything at all.  This man continued to follow my friends online, liking their sexy pictures and making fun and flirty comments, as if there were zero consequences to his actions.  Not a drop of guilt or self-awareness.  A few months later, a song of his came on, and like women are conditioned to do, I questioned if the badness of the interaction was all my fault; that my being a desperate loser made him rightfully neglect and mistreat me; that my sensitivity and awkwardness caused me to lose a lover and friend.

SO I SENT HIM AN APOLOGY TEXT AND TOLD HIM I MISSED HIM.

He responded simply that he was glad to hear that.  And we never spoke again.

I dare you to ask me why I didn’t just leave.

I dare you to call that a “bad date”.

I dare you to bring up my age, my fragility, my anxiety or history of depression.

I dare you to ask me why I don’t just say his name, or why I haven’t spoken up sooner (one reason: he already has one autobiography out in which he shares graphic and personal details about the women he’s hooked up with, often through the lens of him being some kind of savior, unless he’s looking for sympathy because he was on drugs. On our “really bad date”, he informed me that he has a deal with a publisher and was in the middle of writing his second autobiography.  I would like to not end up in that book for the rest of time.  If I’m already in that book, I would like it if nobody bought it, so I’m not about to call attention to him. Please thank you amen).

I dare you to tell me that I put myself in that situation.

I dare you to tell me this whole thing is fake because I tried to resume contact.

I dare you to tell me to toughen up and just get over it, that I should be grateful that I don’t live in a part of the world where acid could be thrown in my face.

I dare you to tell me that I asked for it.

I dare you to tell me that it wasn’t technically rape, and that this is just how men are and it’s not his fault.

I dare you to bring up my entire history of sexual assault and dysfunctional relationships, and make an argument that I’m either lying, that I’m a magnet for this, or that I’m just attention seeking.

I dare you to tell me what a fan you are, and that he’s such a nice guy.

Just try me.

These days, I feel mostly healed from this interaction.  I’ll occasionally have a dream about it, or snarl a bit if his name or music come up. Sometimes I try to change the story in an attempt to reclaim any power from the situation, bragging to folks who aren’t close to me that I had the chance to bone a rockstar.  It’s super rare that I feel angry about this anymore. To be honest, my anger about it only flairs up when I hear other women getting trashed for having the courage to come forward about rape culture.  Which, these days, is more and more frequent.  But I think 90% of that anger is that of a collective rage for having to ask/answer these questions, doubt our worth and authenticity in the face of those who hurt us, and lay ourselves out to be slaughtered in the name of “justice”.  5% of it is still being angry at him.  The last 5% is being mad at myself for not acknowledging the red flags for what a loser he is.

While I do believe that there are people who do nice things in the world, I’m all set with “nice guys”.  Or just, “nice people” in general.  More and more, I find that many people who identify as “nice” or are described as “nice”, are simply performing niceness.  I, as with most women on the planet, have had more than my fair share of “nice guys” getting angry with me for not giving them my pussy in exchange for all of the “nice” things they’ve done for me (most of which I never asked for, I just say “oh wow, that’s nice, okay” when it’s presented).  There are countless “nice guys” out there who were my dear friends, who have miserably rejected and abandoned me now that they know I’m not going to fuck or date them. If you ask them, they’ll probably tell you a version where I was so mean or ungrateful, whatever. Find Jesus and call me in the morning.

I’ve had “nice” friends of all genders who use “niceness” like some sort of currency, that when they’re being absolute douchebags, they like to avoid personal responsibility and remind you about how you can’t be upset with them because they’ve done so many “nice” things.  Or they use “niceness” as a way to create co-dependency.  There are a lot of “nice” people in power—cops, celebrities, clergy members, girl scout leaders, teachers, family members, etc. who have done some really nasty things.  A lot of classist racists give to charity.  This is not to say that the rest of us are infallible, no no.  I by no means will try to make you think I’m any kind of angel. But there’s something manipulative and deceptive about the performance of “niceness”.  These people in power who would “never hurt a fly!” have raped, stolen, been abusive, lied, exploited, and hell—even been serial killers!

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY “NICE GUYS” WHO ARE ACTIVE IN CHURCH AND ARE COMMUNITY LEADERS AND HAVE BEAUTIFUL FAMILIES ARE ALSO MURDERERS??????

SO I DON’T EVEN WITH ME.

Sorry, I don’t mean to contribute to mass hysteria.  No, I truly don’t believe that the average nice person is a murderer.  My point is, “nice” is not an argument toward someone’s innocence.  Nice can be a defense mechanism, like animals who pretend they’re dead so they won’t get eaten.  Underneath that is a world of emotions, thoughts, fears, motivations, experiences, and so on.  I know very, very few people who can be defined with niceness being their authentic, primary trait.  I know infinite humans who are awesome, who are incredibly kind and loving, and do very nice things.  But they also get angry.  They also tell people the truth and say no, which can be met with a lot of resistance and backlash.  They also have moments of being bitchy, and owning that bitchiness.  They can be sad, really really sad.  They can be jealous, cold, selfish, and really a vast array of things, BECAUSE THEY ARE WHOLE HUMAN BEINGS AND THAT IS REAL.

When a person tries to push their niceness on me, or insist that I see them as nice, or others argue with me “but they’re so nice” as a largely defining quality, I am immediately suspicious.  I don’t care if you’re nice.  I care about whether or not you’re mature, and if you have boundaries and empathy.  I care about your actions matching your words, and if what you do behind closed doors matches who you are on Facebook (I mean like, it’s none of my business how much you pick your nose or how many days you go without bathing, but don’t let me find out that your yogi feminist-posting ass abuses women).  I care about whether or not you have genuine love in your heart, and pure intentions. I care about your ability to be kind, and your honesty about when you’re not.  I care about whether or not you have integrity, and if you’re willing to be authentic.  I’m not interested in Nice People.  I’m interested in good people.  Just like self-deprecation is an easy go-to in comedy, how being “pretty” and “cute” are the easiest approaches to burlesque, and how using auto tuning can turn anyone’s voice to gold, the performance of “niceness” is the easiest and most classic manipulation tactic in the book.  I’m not asking you not to be nice.  I’m asking you to be real.  And if being nice in this moment for you is real, then I accept.  But if your “niceness” pushes past my wellbeing, then you are not nice, and your actions are null and void.  Please understand this point.

I am very tired of being fed “truths” based on superficial assessments.  None of you truly know Aziz Ansari.  None of you truly know this celebrity I had a negative experience with. Enjoying a person’s product or public persona is not the same as knowing them.  Destroying a vulnerable person who is suffering at the hands of the strangers you call heroes is unacceptable.  Do not create more wounds and more victims because you can’t hold the hard moral dilemma of enjoying the work or benefits of knowing a person who does bad things.  That is your own cross to bear, not theirs.  They already have enough to deal with.

Next time you say “oh but he’s really a nice guy”, you’d best be able to back that up with extensive, concrete evidence.

Next time you catch yourself huffing and crying, justifying your actions with, “hey, I’m a really nice guy”, check yo’self, because you’re probably about to wreck yo’self.

So what am I really aiming for here, in yet another rambling blog?  My hope and prayer is, whether it’s rape culture, deceptive behavior, or our society trivializing stories that make them question themselves and feel uncomfortable/inconvenienced, that I’ll be able to see a day when this bullshit doesn’t rule our lives.  We need to stop waiting for it to magically appear for us, too.  Each woman who comes out and speaks her truth is doing her part. Each person who is directly acknowledging bad behavior and holding their friends and family accountable is doing their part.  Don’t wait for change to fall in your lap.  Examine the role you play in all of this, and adjust yourself accordingly. You can drag along behind, crying and trying to stop this boat by kicking the waves, or you can jump on board and help us sail collectively to shore.  Either way, this baby is moving forward.  You decide how you want that experience to go for you.

Link here for an amazing article by Lindy West, dismantling the argument that boys and men don’t know any better, and the toxic nuances of rape culture:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/opinion/aziz-ansari-metoo-sex.html

[deuce-duce]

Hmmm where should I begin I think ill start with explaining a little bit about why I initially started writing this thing. Primarily because I was tired of being silenced while essentially people destroy my identity and character. But not in my local town or where I work... but the entire nation. Thats fucked up! No matter how you want to look at it. Its crazy that in todays society its OK to spew hate lies and deceit and everybody goes with flow... but the moment you start saying listen Idk what you have been told or what the latest gossip is but I can assure you its probably not what you think it is. As soon as that happens the whole world loses their minds...

The other reason I started writing is because although I don't necessarily want to put myself on a pedestal I think I might be a pretty rare individual. Over the course of the last four years with the show in full effect and the constant psychological and sexual abuse im put through is in full swing I haven't suffered from a TBI making it possible for me to figure this whole thing out without having my conscience memories taken from me to. That being said this is journey for me as well learning about myself and what this has done to me... whether you believe me or not that really is unimportant to me I just think that this story documented. Along with societal constructs and the amount of fuckery we actually involve ourselves in, without ever doing any research! And blaming the individual for telling the truth asking you to stop helping because your just making things worse. I'll explain further down what I mean.

Now I don't think im all that brilliant really i mean I think I am but in reality what you think of yourself is important but really doesn't mean shit if your told how dumb you are everyday or treated like shit because there's things you just can't do. Not that your incapable of doing them or don't know how to do them but because you literally suffer from multiple mental health conditions the primary condition being a dissociative identity. That being said, there is no medication no cure or any type of hope to ever not have to be worried about dissociating. The fucked up part about it is... is that my dissociative state isn't like normal dissociative states. Most dissociations can happen at anytime during the day or anytime the environmental triggers come into play and so its easier to diagnose and get the help one needs. Mine unfortunately from the hypnosis event that I explained to you is literally during the most vulnerable moments in anyone's life the one place your supposed to feel safe or at least do everything you can to keep yourself safe. But in no way am I able to do that... mine is triggered while I'm sleeping and its not just any trigger but is a trigger that another human being has to consciously do in a certain way to get me to dissociate.

I know for a fact that I don't dissociate on my own or sleep walk or anything like that because I lived with brittany for 4 years and would constantly ask her if I did anything out of the ordinary while I was sleeping. She would yell at me and tell me no &^%$# you barely move in your sleep! And so I would believe her because im sure she was telling the truth... later she would use this as a reason to start her plotting saying I didn't trust her and I would blame her for things like not keeping me safe... and i don't know what else but I'm sure it wasnt good. You don't create this type of carnage in someone's life because you have good memories with that person... or maybe she just didn't realize what exactly it was I was running from to begin with...

What I've just explained to you is to help you understand how fucked up I really am... even after being with someone for at least a couple years nothing going on... I still found myself doubting and worrying about not being safe. And thinking that I had been betrayed yet again. Even though nothing had happened... its fucking crazy... crazy sad. I guess at this point I really had no idea how it all worked.. so you can understand my speculation. But now that I know it makes things different at this point though I don't trust a soul probably never will again.

Another good example of this was I was jn a state where I was still well known...! But didn't have to deal with the sexual and physical abuse just the nental... and ill tell you it literally took me a month to successfully hit on a woman and get her number and read signs properly her friend was telling us we needed to get married and that we were perfect for eachother... I thought so too! We got along really well and damn she was sexy! Whew!! Unfortunately I was running out of money I was staying at an air bnb and needed a job... out of all the places I applied to the only place u heard back from was the place I never wanted to return to... I just thought that maybe things would be different this time... unfortunately they werent... did my best to meet a woman and start dating but she knew who I was and the people who fucked with me and so she started playing games... instead of supporting me and doing with me what I needed to keep myself safe she started saying well were not having sex evertime we hang out setting expectations of us forming a relationship... and not just something casual. The only way I'm ever going to be in a relationship again is by that person who won't play silly games like I mentioned earlier... the last time we hung out she was dressed in a tight leather outfit makeup done and kept turning me down and saying I couldn't touch her after we had already had sex on our first date... but she wanted me for herself and was playing games although she was turning me down... she was like im just going to go to the bar after I drop you off and find something to do... im assuming somebody was more of the case... after that I didn't talk to her again.

So I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with addiction and what happens to a person psychologically during the event of getting intoxicated... I'll elaborate a little bit. It is documented that when an addict is getting high that their adrenaline and endorphins are higher while seeking out and preparing the drugs then when they actually get high. i think this is because of the chasing the first time paradigm. where one continues to get high because they are chasing the feeling they got when they did it for the first time... which never happens so they continue doing more and more until they either die or throw their lives away. this led me to think hmm if that's how the brain works I think it might be the same way for those experiencing pts. stemming from a lifetime of trauma. so if you believe....!!! what i have said already which i doubt but its really of no concern to me but just know i tried to tell you and explain knowing i did all i could is all i can do... back to what i was saying... if the brain works this way when it comes to addiction then id have to tell you that it is the same when it comes to pts.. So listen to this, the other side thinking to themselves.. although they probably wont admit it to the general public but this is their logic, ok...? well we know what we have done to him... and... yea... it is pretty messed up... but if he would just try... then it might be different and we would stop... haha well that's like saying the addict chasing their first time is actually going to achieve it even though its impossible because of all the damage they have already done to their minds and bodies... the only way one can get as close as possible to achieving that first high again is to abstain for a long enough time to establish and restore the chemicals that have been depleted over the course of the addicts drug use history. just like you cant expect me to do something that has caused me severe consequences, even though what I did was right... and acceptable and essentially the keys i need to free myself from the cage that i find myself in... today. that wasn't the case then. and with everything else being the same as then all i can do is associate the two and not screw myself over again and face the possibility of getting my head kicked in. as delusional as that might be its the truth. and with everything being the same as it was then I'm supposed believe that the things that's supposed to set me free isn't a trap haha good luck but if you want to know my criteria it would be doing the right thing!! lets see if you can figure it out!! oh and this doesn't only go for the woman ill be with but also for anyone trying to help me in any way shape or form.... sorry but its the only way i can be certain your not part of the machine!

not only that but people keep on keeping on with inflicting the psychological trauma on me getting me written up at work for harmless comments but as an employee at this business I can not give anyone a compliment while in uniform so please refrain from hoping ill make an effort at my job. I got in trouble for telling a girl she was gorgeous I didn't know she was only 16 but its not like i was asking her to fuck or coming at her in any type of sexual manner but she is friends with the woman causing all of this... saying I need to stop running my mouth. she even went as far as to say to me man that customer has a nice ass and me saying it doesn't compare to your yours and her saying my ass is flawless... then telling on me saying I kept telling her she had an ass of a goddess.. GTFO HAHA my boss started laughing like so you didn't say that... fuck no! I said what I told you I said. she's like alright oh and then apparently you cant tell another employee that they have pretty eyes either just a heads up! but its cool I'm over it I just cant believe I bring out the evil in so many people like man WHO AM I?? WHAT AM I NOT BEING TOLD?!?! I could care less honestly but I'm glad you go to such lengths to try and make my life miserable... i could only imagine what it must be like to actually be miserable... UGH... that would...suck.... i think a lot of this stems from my supervisor giving me three flat tires in one night and then acting like oh... did i give you a flat tire...??? then telling me your not that smart.... never said i was bro but instead turned it around on him telling him dude... don't downplay yourself... your smart!! over and over again. i told one of the other supervisors that i didnt think the guy that had been training me liked me and these were the reasons why but she is also a distraction. and told him exactly what i had said.

just so you guys know anytime that there is someone who likes me and i actually have a chance with. they have someone that is hotter then me maybe smarter or appeals more to the persons wants and desires through manipulation simply to keep them occupied while im in the area and then after i leave and then the person that would have been perfect for me gets dumped and is left all alone again... kind of like whe. Brian started dating brittany after we broke up...

another thing i should put into perspective is that what's wrong with me is a byproduct of child molestation and abuse that being said its ok to prey on something that was created to protect myself because now I'm an adult and i hold the keys... too bad my hands are missing!! since i was 6 when i started dissociating that means every time I'm in that state i go back to being a 6 year old boy... making those who take advantage of my split essentially child molesters... no matter how old i am!!

So how do you diffentiate the good from the bad...?? The bad people are the ones proclaiming and contantly trying to make others believe im gay. I mean i could really care less and tell you myself I'm gay but primarily because of the reasons I mentioned above. The funny thing is the bad people will be the first to be like we should help him... just so that they can be like see he's gay!! Wtf cares... the fact that they go out of their way to prove something that people have all ready seen with their eyes... is a little bit over kill don't you think?? J.s. be vigilant!

The funny thing about all of this is that the same process ensues from community to community and so for you to be led like sheep and ignore the guy going through it all is sorry for saying fucking Stupid!! But hey its cool

The other thing I can't understand is how you can walk by drive by and go out of your way to tell me how dumb or stupid or gay I am but not one person can be like yo whats up im such and such did you write this or that...? Really! But I'm supposed to do what none of you do!? Really cool keep going with that ill be thee idiot! The gay idiot! Thanks for reminding me though!! Maybe one day you'll be as gay as me!!

[fatphobiabusters]

Mod Ade can you please share your experiences of being fat and intersex? Any challenges with family, healthcare, academia, peers, work etc...

If you loves are okay with me making long posts, absolutely. I don’t know if you already saw my previous answer, but I touched on the topic a bit here: http://fatphobiabusters.tumblr.com/post/162494359738/question-for-mod-ade-you-said-you-are-intersex It’s more about my experience in general being intersex, so I’ll try and correlate also being fat in this answer.

**TRIGGER WARNINGS- child abuse, fatphobia, fat shaming, trauma, menstruation, self-harm, homophobia, intersex erasure

I’ll start with family since it’s the biggest topic for me. I’ll try and keep this short as possible because I could write an entire novel here, but I’ll focus on the major points. Having my intersex birth covered up and force raised as cisgender female was already hell and has left me with a lot of emotional damage. Being fat on top of it only added to the mess. My father did not want another child, but my mom did (he had children with another woman, so I have a half brother and sister both 15 years older than me who he thought were perfect since they’re both cisgender and skinny). Much less did he want one that was so “imperfect”, the complete opposite of my older siblings. I come from a white, southern, Christian family, so you can fill in the gaps there of the standards that were expected of me if you know anything about the disturbing culture of the deep south. Long story short, I had one parent who told me I was everything, and one parent who made me believe I was nothing. My father would harass and shame me to the point that I was too afraid to eat much or anything in front of him. Sometimes he would threaten to do things to my mother and even physically abuse her if I didn’t do what he wanted. My mother felt sorry for me, but wouldn’t go against him because of it, and would feed me extra portions in secret. Basically, it messed my metabolism all to shit and I could never keep my weight down, no matter how much I was made to exercise, starved, or put on diets. Growing up I was constantly put on crash diet after crash dietbecause my father was never satisfied with my weight (or my appearance in general). I was never good enough for him, even though I look just like him. To this day, even though he says he loves me and misses me over the phone, he still harps on me about my weight/appearance and refuses to accept me as his son. My mom loves and supports me though and if it wasn’t for her I would just completely cut ties with my entire blood family. Most of my immediate family refuses to also accept that I’m intersex, much less a man, and are disgusted about my weight. And they wonder why I never come home to visit anymore. It contributed a lot to my development of DID and later self harm.

Healthcare has been a nightmare. I’ve had a bit better experience since I’ve been in California, but even then it’s still not been the best. At age 9, I had my first puberty, and with it my first period. I don’t remember much (I have a lot of amnesia among my childhood memories from my DID that I'm currently working through in therapy) but I do remember crying and just feeling wrong. As I got older, it got worse and worse. But because I was labeled cisgender female on all my papers and my family constantly reinforced that I was, I was simply told to “suck it up” and that it was “normal”. I never had a regular cycle, it came and went whenever. Sometimes 2 weeks, sometimes 4-5 and every now and then up to 6 or more. Every time it registered 8-10 on those pain scale charts you see at the doctors, but I had to endure and ignore it because I only got reprimanded when I complained. I dealt with this all the way until nearly turning 30, which at that point I was bleeding black and had large clots that were full of decayed tissue more than blood. Last year I was finally able to get everything checked out and it turns out I had an abnormally formed uterus. Because of my second puberty, it was almost working against itself and practically a “dying” organ. I was able to be evaluated and approved for a hysterectomy, and I’ve never felt better. Back to weight though, in NC whenever I was taken to the doctor they always recommended to my mom anything to make me lose weight because I was “too obese” for a child (especially a “girl”), even though I had no problem carrying my weight. As I got older the same story. I’ve been seen about the sciatica on my right side, and my messed up back in general from carrying heavy art portfolios and working warehouse/builder jobs for many years. Every time my weight has been brought up, especially when I popped out my knee cap due to twisting the wrong way because someone parked like an asshole and I couldn’t get in. I’ve found some healthcare in the past year that has been more fat friendly, but every time I have to go somewhere new or for something new I get nervous that they’re just solely going to make it about my weight and not address the actual problem, or give me a proper diagnosis because they’re too hung up on my size. Perfect health record as far as blood pressure, diseases, tests, etc. go, but let’s ignore all that and point out I’m fat and “do something about it.”

Academic wise was no better. Children can be cruel, especially to those seen as abnormal or different than them. Sex Ed was a joke and I didn’t get a proper lesson on it till college, where I leaned that it was okay not to “fit the box” and that gender and sexuality were not black and white. Until then I felt very out of place and not belonging to either gender because neither of them really fit what all I was experiencing. Because I was forced to identify as cisgender female, being fat and “unattractive” got me a lot of unwanted attention. My size kept me out of most physical fights though, as I’ve always been big at a young age. And when I hit my second puberty, started putting on even more muscle mass along with the fat. I was constantly teased and ousted though for being so “weird” looking. My fellow classmates absolutely could not accept the fact that I didn’t look like (according to backward standards) one specific gender or the other. It just got worse as I got older and my body physically started shifting more masculine. I was seen as a freak, showered in my clothes when we had to take group showers for band trips or gym class (which eventually caused such a ruckus they had to separate me entirely), and taunted constantly to see how far they could push a rise out of me. Cisgender boys were curious about, but also downright cruel to me. Cisgender girls were disgusted by and afraid of me. It eventually got to a point where everyone just wanted to know what was in my pants or what was wrong with me. Homophobic remarks started going hand in hand with insults about my weight and appearance. I became more and more numb and reclusive and my mental illness worsened. Still, I maintained good school work at least, spending a lot of time alone. Graduated Valedictorian in middle school, Salutatorian in high school, and completed a Bachelor’s degree at a 4 year liberal arts college.

Among my peers now, I feel that I’m seen most often in a positive light as I’ve changed a lot from my days spent back home and have built an entirely new life out here in California. I still sometimes get confusion upon meeting new people and at times have a negative experience in public with strangers who don’t know me regarding my weight and looks. But overall the experience is good and I am often well received when I come out as intersex or share parts of my expansive history. I believe mostly due to surrounding myself with safe and understanding people, while cutting out a lot of toxicity (as well as unlearning that same toxicity) from my life.

Work has been about the same as academics, except not quite as explicit since I was a young adult when I started working. At college and coming back home I had issues with gender, especially when I had to use the bathroom. I always had to go into the women’s, and it was never a pleasant experience. I was also made fun of a lot for being the youngest (and one of the biggest) on shift. When I went to work for Amazon in TN, it was the first time I consistently went to the men’s bathroom (I had done so out in public places where I knew no one knew me, but not frequently). When I got promoted and transferred out to Cali, I continued the tradition. I would be lying though if said that there weren’t times I was very nervous about going in there alone because I did get some rude remarks at times, but thankfully no one was willing to lose their job over starting a fight because they didn’t like me being in there. As an assistant manager, most of my associates liked me as a supervisor and were favorable in working with me because I was a fair and helpful, but no nonsense leader. I got misgendered often due to my androgynous appearance and the high turnover in the line of work, but I enforced the idea that I was very much a man and would not tolerate any phobic remarks otherwise. I did have some who did not like the idea of having a younger, fat, questionable gendered person running the department and managing them. But at the end of the day, what I said went so they either had to deal with it or go find their bigoted ass another job.

Thank you loves for reading up to this point if you have, and I’ll end on this. If no one else has ever told you or made you feel that way, you are beautiful and so important. You are valid, you are loved, you are somebody, and someone cares very much about you. Never let anyone take your self worth away and deny your existence.

Apologies again for the lengthy post. Thank you for the ask!

-Mod Ade

[silentfcknhill]

hey I've seen you reblog stuff about drugs and stuff and I just wanted to ask what narcatics were you into? random and blunt question but just curous. I'm having a hard time lately... drinking but I'm trying to quit with with it now and just started weed. I just feel like it's neve gonna be better, you know? shit I so okay for so long and then it all goes to fucking hell again. I'm sorry for unloading like this....

It’s okay, I hope you don’t mind if I ramble a long-ass answer. I was mainly addicted to drugs that were not traditionally considered addictive physically, just psychologically. My main drugs of choice were weed, acid, mushrooms and occasionally molly. I never had a huge problem with alcohol, as in I didn’t drink often but when I did I went way overboard and would often mix drugs that would make me very ill. Weed was okay for me at first before I went overboard and was spending hundreds a month, and I am not completely anti-weed like some people in NA, but I think there are people who can and can’t handle it mentally. I can’t. If you have mental health issues, especially anxiety (though I’ve seen some people it can help their anxiety), paranoia, dissociation, derealization or hallucinations/problems with reality to begin with, it is like playing with fire. I’m not saying you should panic, everyone has different reactions, but I could never smoke again after the bad acid trips and ego deaths I’ve had. Too many flashbacks. And I got serotonin syndrome a lot. I quit using 17 months ago and I’m still dealing with effects like visual fractals, a new worldview and mood problems. 

For about a year I was suicidal and having panic attacks every day, and I had to work double shifts while crying and vomiting (quiting was not an option because we are too poor and I did not want to be homeless again, especially in that condition). It takes a while for your brain to recover and learn to produce it’s own serotonin after smoking weed every day for two years, so there is a major depression that occurs when you get clean. I lost my appetite for a couple months, and also couldn’t sleep on my own. Drugs were basically my go-to for every minor inconvenience, so learning to be a person again and deal with problems directly was difficult. I became extremely paranoid while detoxing. I also lost all interest in everything, I experienced no joy and only dread, terror and depression. My obsessions such as movies and music were no longer enough to enjoy, I needed to experience them on absurd amounts of psychedelics and meditate on them and see them from weird perspectives to appreciate them. I have started gaining back my appreciation for the little things in life again by now. 

The hardest part for me was coming to terms with the fact that I will never be the same as I was before ever again, and now I just have to adjust. It sucks that I was a teenager while this was happening, and my brain was still developing, so now it became a part of my youth and shaped my personality a lot. But I try to think of it positively, because now I have a new chance to become a better person, I have a fresh start and not many people can have a second chance after fucking up and having no common sense. I am lucky to have not gotten into any legal trouble, though a lot of relationships were destroyed, I really deserved it. I am not trying to self-pity, but it is a fact that I have suffered beyond words and been to hell (I’m not religious but to me hell is a psychological state of torment and existential darkness and lack of reality), but I have also grown as a person and become exponentially more self-aware, empathetic, introspective and accepting of my defects. 

I know exactly what you mean when you say you feel it will never get better. When you’re in darkness it effects your whole perception and sense of reality and colors every area of life. We lose our memory of anything good ever. Kind of like a Dementor from harry Potter has sucked out our soul, which Dementors incidentally were written by JK Rowling as an analogy of her depression (Sorry for random reference, I am a fan of Harry Potter). But we are both still young, well I am and I assume you are as well as I don’t know many elderly people on Tumblr, and time changes things. Time doesn’t heal, but it does give you the opportunity to heal and grow. Nothing will ever magically heal, we will always be addicts, but you will have good days, and some very good days and memories, and those are worth riding through the bad to get to. It is very difficult to keep perspective, but I spent a couple years of my life on drugs. I have 70 years left ahead of me, best case scenario. This is not the end at all. 

I have seen people successfully drink and smoke and not become upset or addicted, but I have Asperger’s and BPD and I was foolish to ignore the sensitivities and chances I was taking and I put my trust into the wrong influences and people. I have developed my own coping mechanisms throughout my life, because addiction was obviously not the first and only trauma I’ve been through, I’ve been having issues since being a toddler basically including emotional violent abuse from the time I was born, sexual assault, personal deaths, bullying, self-harm and mental illness, having parents who are mentally ill and unstable and dealing with their suicide threats as a child, divorce, homelessness, murderers in the family, robbery, knife attacks, being a therapist to my mother, trying to stay objective as she described to me her post-partum depression involving demons telling her to throw me off a balcony and molest me, multiple suicide attempts of my own including a horrendous overdose, multiple hospitalizations, medications, dating a man in his 40’s as a young teen, being cheated on twice, coming to grips with my LGBT identity, and much more. I grew up in a fantasy world, always acting and playing pretend even to this day, I live my life through the eyes of my favorite characters, even while alone. AT this point it is very easy for me to detach from my emotions and reality and observe my own suffering as though I was a character in a movie or something. This is also why I have a decent tolerance to pain. I just view it as an experience, a memory. Time is really an illusion, so when I am hurt, I just remember that in a few hours it will be like nothing ever happened. 

Also, the one most important message I took from NA is probably the simplest, and most people don’t give it a second thought because it’s just a cliche to them, but when you really meditate on it and practice it, you realize how incredibly true and helpful it is: “One day at a time.” And that motto is a principle, not have to take it literally. I know for a lot of people, myself included, it can be more like one minute at a time, but you really gotta try to keep priorities in sight and self-care when need be. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to help yourself but go to sleep all day. It is fine to do that. I have trained myself to fall asleep relatively quickly using deep, controlled stomach breathing and and stims and mental focus patterns such as waterfalls, space travel, etc, movement that stays constant and is relaxing. Music helps too, but only without lyrics. There are a lot of sound pieces on youtube and stuff made for relaxing, like the sound of rain, or nature like the ocean or amazon. Whatever suits you. It is handy to have an off button like a computer sometimes. You just shut down and reboot. 

I’m not saying it is healthy to be avoidant, and I definitely have shut down and become very robotic as of late, but it is highly preferable to the alternative for me until when/if I learn better skills. You will hopefully feel better when you wake up, whether it was physical anxiety or mental or both. Plus, scientifically, sleep and dreaming is when our brains process information and memories, so we may come to familiarize ourselves with unknown fears or stresses while we sleep and wake up more able to deal with them rationally without the fight or flight. One day at a time ties in to a concept we call “the triangle of self-obsession”, and it relates to how living in the past causes resentments, focusing on negatives in the present causes anger, and fear stems from living in the future. One day at a time, take shit as it comes and don’t cross bridges before you get to them. of course, planning still is good but we must be flexible and not place our whole mental state on something that hasn’t happened yet. Anger roots back to fear, fear roots back to lack of control, and once we accept that we really cannot control everything and be omnipresent and all-knowing puppetmasters, we become more humble. 

I myself have come to terms with the fact that I am very narcissistic. I never thought I was, due to low self-esteem, but it only recently occurred to me that being narcissism is usually just a symptom of low self-esteem anyways, and it is just expressed differently. Some people build massive egos and brag. For me, my narcissism forms through being self-centered and selfishly focused on my own problems. Some people focus daily on distinguishing whether they are living and acting on their own will or their higher power’s will, and adjusting their behavior accordingly, because living on our own will is what got us in this position in the first place. I don’t really have a higher power in the traditional sense at this point, but it is still good to be mindful that I am not the center of everything, and that even though I claim to be open-minded, I am still just as judgmental and hypocritical as anyone else, I just express and experience it in different ways. Anyways, long tangent, no one cares, I will shut up now. I am kind of a basketcase, but if you need to talk, you can message or dm me anytime.

[thezoequinn]

“Triggered”

Today I heard the last shitty joke in passing I can handle about my mental illness without speaking up. Not about the people making the joke, or even the joke itself, but about the illness - it’s extremely poorly understood, partially due to media presentation of it, and partly thanks to the internet hijacking the terminology of one of the symptoms and extrapolating it so far from it’s original, highly specific meaning that most people have no idea what they’re referencing. 

I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t know the first thing about PTSD, because I didn’t know what PTSD was until I was diagnosed with it. Not really, anyway. I had the same pop culture version of the illness most people have - it was something soldiers had, and flashbacks were hallucinatory caricatures about as accurate as most portrayals of what taking LSD is like in pop culture - with the character and the writer equally divorced from reality.

When my doctor handed me the preliminary screening inventory sheet to fill out while I was mid-sentence during our first meeting, it seemed so obvious. So many things that I’d chocked up to having depression and going through a… significant amount of stress, but that weren’t getting better and seemed to just kind of linger unwanted in my head, ready to flare up and shit all over whatever I was doing made sense. He explained to me what flashbacks actually are, that it wasn’t simply a hallucination and more a spiral down a memory well of horrible shit you’ve gone through, of feeling like you’re mentally and emotionally “unplugging” in response to something bringing all that up, and the feeling that everything is just as fragile and fight-or-flight as it was when you were actually in danger. He explained that the most common sufferers of PTSD aren’t soldiers, but survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, and were more often women than men. He even explained the changes to my body that had occurred, that the acrid, metallic taste that would pop up in the back of my throat was *adrenaline* - that I was physically tasting the flood of “oh shit” that my brain was producing because parts of my body had a hair trigger for locking into survival mode.

I scored a 73 out of 100 on the inventory, and later my doctor would categorize my ptsd as “severe”, but told me with trauma-specific treatment I could hope to see that number lower into the teens. It’s been over a year since then and it’s taken *so much work*, but he was right. I’m a lot better than I was several years ago, especially before I knew what the hell was going on with me.

I’m a comedian and can find so much to joke about in my mental illness. When my doctor added a C for “complex” onto the PTSD I felt that combined with my ADHD, I had started collecting an alphabet. My doctor laughed when he prescribed me the medication that would take my extremely vivid, constant nightmares away and told me that it would also take my regular dreams with it, and I responded with “I’m sorry doctor I’m an artist you can’t just phrase things that way without spawning a million insufferable conceptual pieces”. Anything can be joked about - being a dick about it is more related to how you do it.

I make jokes because comedy can take the sting out of having a nasty knot of pain lodged inside my skull that my ex planted there when I took away his ability to hurt me himself. If I didn’t have the jokes, all I’d have is the anger and violation I feel at being someone who can go from joking with friends in a UPS store to a crying mess because someone grabbed my arm and spoke to me in the same place, the same way, as that ex the last time I saw him, before I had a friend stay with me for a while because I was so afraid he’d come back. I hate that I’m like this, and that even with all the work I put in and the therapy I do, there are still these little, extremely specific things that cause that familiar ember in my brain to ignite and immediately need to be dealt with. It’s a nightmare to feel like there’s any part of you that seems so frail where it was once strong, to be someone who has to be tough enough to put up with an enormous amount of shit but still have these things out there that can immediately pierce any armor you have, like the shittiest version of magic words. The sheer irrationality and the sense of lost control is such a deep and frustrating violation, it’s hard to write about without seeming too melodramatic.

There aren’t many things that will send me down that rabbit hole anymore, or make me taste adrenaline and feel the same fear that everything I have is about to be destroyed again. But they exist. They’re extremely specific, innocuous to everyone else but poison to my peace of mind. I’ve calloused over a lot of the minor ones, but there are two or three big ones that feel like a crack across my skull and immediately knock me on my ass seemingly no matter what I do.

You’d think the specificity of these things would make them easy to avoid or to tell people in my life about, but it’s kind of the opposite. I largely don’t bother, because the language around it has been so completely and utterly demolished and politicized in a way that makes it nearly impossible for me to use in a productive way without having to take on the additional, exhausting work of explaining my illness to people.

I’m talking about “triggers”. It used to be that only anime nazi assholes used it as a joke, but then “trigger warnings” became a cultural battlefield over imaginary “political correctness” and a ton of other shit I don’t remotely want to get into. I don’t want to talk about other peoples’ experiences when it comes to triggers, and I know triggers aren’t limited to PTSD - but speaking for myself, as the Discourse evolved, I felt completely left behind. My mental illness doesn’t have any political affiliation, it just exists. Now I see obnoxious “trigger” jokes just about everywhere, even people who are just parroting a “meme” 20 steps removed from the anime nazi assholes who send me the corresponding Junkrat UI image along with their misguided efforts to actually trigger me. It’s to the point where even nice people say shitty things without realizing it.

And that fucking sucks, man. Having a very real aspect of your mental health made into a meme and a joke that has seemingly worked its way into nerd culture at large helps make it feel impossible to actually talk about my mental health, especially when it’s an illness that pop culture constantly misrepresents. The last thing anyone needs when they’re trying to speak up and identify something to someone as being bad for them is to be made fun of. It’s like showing someone a knife in your back and asking them to pull it out for you, only to have them kick it a little to see if it’s real or not first.

Hearing “triggered” jokes is grating and tiresome, especially since bringing up what being triggered actually feels like makes you a huge no-fun killjoy (not to mention the inevitable backlash of people with underdeveloped empathy glands actively trying to trigger me after saying this), but here we are all the same. If it sounds annoying, trust me, I am *way* more annoyed that I have a mental illness than you are. I’m tired. I want to be able to explain to people what is going on with me without the baggage of other people misusing a word for cheap jokes with hidden costs, simply so I don’t have to do all the heavy lifting of educating people just so I can get them to understand that a specific thing messes with me. I’m not about to tell anyone what to say, and I largely feel that plenty of otherwise well-meaning people legitimately just don’t know any better (I know the people who want to continue being little shits will continue to be little shits, water is wet, don’t @ me about it). I want you, dear reader, to know all this so you know what you’re actually making fun of.

I want you to know all this so you know why I’m not laughing with you - it’s because you’re laughing at me.

(in b4 bland peepants hacks respond with lazy “triggered” jokes)

[winterbuckytho]

THY BODY IN REMEMBREANCE OF YOU PT.2  JIM II

That annoying thing is digging at him again. Father Jim's eyes shoot open and he lays in bed feeling echoes of the pain. There is an enormous and deep throb of an aching pain from his hip shooting upward then sharp pains that rediate out from a place close to his spine on the left side in what feels like jagged streaks of raw electricity cutting through his flesh. They spread through the upper portion of his back, the two sensations alternating for hours and hours. When it's cold like this he feels every inch of the metal inside him. The alloy which contains componants of adamantium coats half of his ribs and much of his spine. The cold gets in the metal. He takes more baths than showers to ward off the old pain but until the temp goes above 34, he is forced to look at this ugly reminder of his trauma. Day in, day out, worse, all night, every night, the pain is unrelenting. It puts him on edge and makes him irritable.

It's been creeping for weeks, 0 '...a silent stalker just like I was.' he thinks. He's slowly fraying at his mental and emotional edges. As the days grow longer and colder he grows more isolated, paranoid, pessimistic and more depressed. The loneliness he often feels deepens further and further all winter until spring when it lets up and he comes crashing forward through it all, clawing his way to the sun and a positive outlook as if being held down under the weight of the sea. But until then his very spirit feel as if it is drowning in the darkened days, cold cold nights & the horrible seering pain.

Sitting in the bathroom at 1:39 in the morning, staring into the wall across from the toilet, eyes wide and unblinking, none of the thoughts in his head can connect to the end or point of themselves. Time after time he tries to think of something to help him out of this trail of nothing.

"Can't stand i-"

"...a shower-"

"You're a murd-"

All day he had been fighting the sensation of not being able to land his mind on any subject or task. Restlessly he went from one activity to the next feeling exhausted & weak but driven to move, go, do. He tried writing sermons. He tried doing the dishes. He tried eating. Then sleeping. Then going for a walk. He didn't get past his mailbox before the urge to do something else came back. Finally lying down to go to bed had apparently been the wrongest thing he could do because the feeling grew so fast in intensity he felt physical vertigo from the sensation of his mind trying to sift through thoughts so fast. He had gotten out of bed and gone to the bathroom turned on the light and just sat on the closed lid of the toilet unsure if he was going to be ill or pass out. Meanwhile, terrible thoughts and self loathing dialog drowned out all reason.

He's frozen there because his mind really wants to go somewhere and because he won't let it, so he can't focus on anything. He doesn't want to feel anymore, doesn't want to look down that dark hole again. He doesn't want to think about it any more.

"Waste of lif-"

"Let me-"

"Help! I ca-"

"...my sins, so man-"

Unable to stand it much more begining to feel he can not breath, he begins to try the only thing he can think of.

"Shane-!"

"Just monster in huma-"

"-has to know I'm he-"

"Shaaane!!"

"I deserve all the pain-"

"SHANE!!"

"- breath I can not-"

"Buck...?" an echoing voice chimes in the bathroom. The echo multiplies and expands and contracts; the sound waves contorting and uncoiling. It is the auditory equivelant of a kaleidescopic image. It travels far through the spirit realm to reach him quickly.

The medicine cabinet mirror grows dim as if someone has turned down the lights in a room behind it. Jim's eyes snap to it and he fights to keep them trained there.

"Shane I-"

"-heart attack-"

A plume of a smoking melty substance the color of Shane's true self pours out of the surface of the mirror. It pools in the sink then pours to the floor where in a thick runnel, it slides across the floor stopping at Jim's bare feet where Shane starting head first is beginning to materialize. He leans back from the waist as if under the ectoplasm he had been kneeling in child's pose. He rests each of his hands on Jim's knees. "What's happened, are you all right?"

Seeing the insanity of Shane entering the room through a dimentional rift brings Jim back to the here and now. The cord to the racing thoughts has been cut, freeing his mind once more.

Suddenly gasping like a drowning man, Jim tilts his head back pushing his hair from his tired stinging eyes. " Uh-huh...I'm f- I'm fine."

"Jim, no you are not! This is the third time this week! I think you need one of your humans, not me..."

"I'll be ok, it's just this is a bad time of year for me. I can't ask anyone else to go through this for me." After a silence of several seconds continuing "You said you wanted... I... I don't want to be alone and awake all night. It feels like everyone is gone... like the only thing left is what's in my head. Can you stay with me?"

"Of course. Come on." Shane stands up and offers Jim his hand. He is completely nude and smells as if he has just had a fragrant bath.

Jim takes it and Shane leads him to the bedroom.

At the side of the bed Shane pushes him to sit down. He then leans in and says "Will you let me take your mind off it for a while?"

Jim, who had begun in the last weeks of September to need to masturbate to fall asleep, feels it may be the only thing that can help. The last two months have been so much harder. Jim is so mentally drained he can't focus on his fantasies and finish once he starts jerking off. His mind drifts off topic usually to stressful daily tasks or to very quickly changing and sometimes negative thoughts. He still checks in with Chantoya before bed, but is very good at sounding cheery over the phone. Then he lays in the dark trying not to but staring into the place where his memories should be. The longer nights feel miles longer, leagues deep. He wishes he couldn't remember everything now as much as he can't remember what he was doing for 30 years.

Something starts seeping out of there every year at this time. Like the smell of rotting corpses, a trail of them he left in his wake. A feeling that leaves him terrified to be alone with himself invades his life. There are no pictures or thoughts just feelings, awful awful feelings. Sometimes he's so angry & bitter, others so defeated & lost. There's despair in there, an ocean of it. There are times where he thinks all the good things around him are just too good and will self-destruct at any moment. He has a paranoid idea that he is still somewhere horrible doing horrible things and having horrible things done to him with the only reminder of reality being the insidious cold pain, the rest of what he thinks is his life is just a dream or delusion that may end any moment. Other times he feels almost hostile in his desire for the mental strain to end. He wants to claw out the pain, tear it out like one could tear out their hair. These fellings emanate from that hole,that empty looking place that feels full of foulness and the dark starts to leech the light out of his daily life.

Then as his other battle fatigue symptoms get stronger every other area of his life suffers. He becomes wary, sensitive others negativity and isolates himself even as he is internally begging not to be left alone. He loses interest in things he enjoys like writing sermons and keeping after the church and rectory. His appetite wanes no matter the meal and eventually he ends up forcing himself to find and eat anything at least once a day because he loses the desire to even eat. Sleep when it comes is shallow and though he can't remember, full of unpleasantness caused by nightmares. He feels sex is antidotal to the thing keeping him awake, keeping him alone, keeping him cold. It too can be made of only feelings, no images nor words can be articulated but you feel the stimulation and you feel the bliss it causes. It's an undeniable, a force of nature; love is the cure for pain.

"Be my guest, I'm so tired of being crazy. Give me something else to think about." Jim sighs. He was trying to sound sarcastic and jaded, but he is just so weary. Already Jim's mind is quite ready to retreat into the safety of Shane's embrace.

Shane kisses him on the lips; no tongue, just a sweet tender soft sensations like a hug, a gentle caress. He pushes Jim back and down onto the mattress then climbs onto his lap. He leans down again kissing Father Jim. He brushes Jim's hair away from his eyes and cups his hands around Jim's face. He kisses him again and again, sucking his lips, tasting Jim's last cigarette. They kiss like this for nearly thirty seconds by which time Jim is wholly invested, sighing "Uuuhmph...aaah!" as Shane slips along Jim's lips with the tip of his tongue.

He grinds his ass on Jim's lap. With his left he holds a hand to Jim's cheek. In the dark room, a tear rolls into the line between his thumb and Jim's cheek. "You crying, babyboy? Should I stop?"

"No, don't. I'm j-please," he sobs quietly, "... Jus' make me feel good, okay? My mind... I.. wh-..."

"What? You can tell me."

0 'Is there such a thing as mental pain??? I feel as if my thoughts are wounds that are festering...' he thinks in a quiet voice.

"Forget it..." he says thinking 0 'I wish...it would all go away.' "Can you make it feel better, Shane?" His voice is small like a child's for a moment. Shane now understands another truth of how Jim's mind works. The road to damnation for this one is not that of entitled lust but of terror & desperation. Without the structure of his current lifestyle he would be but a lost abandoned & abused child.

"Yes. All right, Father."

Shane leans down kissing him again. His lips drift down his chin and along his jawline kissing away cool salty tears. He kisses a line down Jim's neck and onto his left shoulder. Jim can feel the soft kisses there like butterflies landing on him. He wants to say "No not there, I hate it, I hate them, hate what I was, hate what I did, never there, it doesn't deserve..." but knows that's just a knee jerk reaction he's having because of what time of year it is. It's his time of year. The time where everything appears to have died and feels like it may never come back to life. The time of year where he hurts like the old man he really is. The time where things inside he wasn't born with feel cold and heartless, the way Father Jim perceives his alter ego the Winter Soldier to be.

Shane lifts Jim's arm and begins kissing a line down the inside of his arm to his elbow where he lingers, licking and kissing the cold metal, feeling its smooth cool surface on his tongue and lips. Jim's eyes drift close and he lets the sensation surround his mind a blessed cocoon of soft tender sweet feathers. "O-oooh...ooh!" He moans rolling his hips under Shane, pressing his dick harder into Shane's. At the apex of the thrust he holds his hips still, thighs shaking as erotic thrill travels down both of his legs and up into his belly.

Jim closes the door on his painful thoughts and sensations a little, shutting out as much as he can. He focuses on Shane, on how his body is interpreting the signals Shane's velvet tongue gives him. 0 '...sooth me like a child...just for a little while...' a broken part of Father Jim begs, quivering under the pleasant sexual energy building within. Shane's mouth travels further down his inner arm down to his hand where he places Jim's middle finger slowly in his mouth. Sucking it, tongue massaging, the heat of his mouth melting down Jim's arm for his brain to accept and define sensation to his nervous system.

From this he moves back down to Jim's chest sucking each of his nipples in turn, trying to make it last by giving very thoughtful foreplay. It feels so good Jim lifts boh arms and hugs Shane about the head pressing his pec harder into Shane's mouth.'Yes...help me...help me get away. I'm so afraid... the pain...so afraid of...'

In response Shane sucks harder on the nipple, pressing the tip of his tongue into the spongy flesh of it. Once in a while he gently rakes his teeth over it taking soft nips at Jim's chest. It goes on and on this way until Jim, thoroughly teased, begs panting and whimpering "Mmm...more! More more!"

Shane then moves to the next stage of their coupling. He crawls downward kissing, kissing, always kissing, a butterfly wing soft trail down Jim's body, trying to make Jim feel all the things Shane can not say. He wants Jim to focus his attention on the moment which will indeed get his mind off his troubles. Shane knows he'll never be human so this may never be love but Jim doesn't need to feel like it isn't. After all, in his way, Shane cares for Jim. Shane wants Jim to feel strong and happy, to feel safe and loved, to feel human even with a creature such as Shane holding his hand. He will do anything to make it so. He defies his very nature for this cause.

He skips over Jim's cock, he has sucked and will suck it another time. He pushes Jim's legs up until Jim's lower back rests on his knees and thighs as he kneels on Jim's bed. He spreads Jim's ass cheeks away from his anus and lowers his head to it. He licks using his whole tongue, moaning, for Jim's body is delicious all over and he couldn't care less about doing something mortals call dirty. His wriggling spiraling tongue elicits louder and louder moaning from Jim.

"Haaahn! Haa...UHN!" groans Jim more than happy to leave words behind. He uses his right foot whose toes touch the bed beside his pillow to push and pump his upward tilted hips rubbing his hole all over Shane's eager accepting mouth."Uuuuuhnph...aah...fuuuagh! HUHN!"

Shane wets the fore finger of his right hand with saliva and begins probing Jim's ass with his index finger. Even with his finger inside he licks at Jim's hole, flitting the tip of his tongue around the tightened muscle. In response, Jim relaxes more and his anus loosens around Shane's finger. Happy with how things are coming along, Shane kisses Jim's asshole one last time before sitting up and reaching out for the bottle of baby oil Jim keeps for varies reasons, lubricating the smaller plates of his left hand, softening dry patches on his arm and legs he gets from the dry warm air in the house and yes, sexual purposes.

Shanes coats his penis liberally with the oil rubbing it on twice to create a thicker layer on his skin. He scoots back on his knees and let's Jim lower his legs a bit more. Then slowly he begins feeding his cock into Jim's soft hot asshole. Pressing gently but persistently he goes forward a few millimeters at a time stopping when Jim tightens up again waiting until Jim is comfortable again and continuing on a little at a time. When he is fully inserted, he lays on top of Jim again kissing him this time on the right side of his neck and collarbone. His vessle being easily changed like forms made of clay, Shane uses the oppurtunity to make his cock swell thicker in it's girth, stretching Jim open more so he will be quite relaxed once Shane begins to move at his ordinary size. "Is this ok, hunny?" He whispers. He has a particular way of saying the word in which Jim can hear him saying it the way it's spelled in the Winnie The Pooh books.

Father Jim nods against him, eager & ready for what comes next, but still Shane takes it slow kissing Jim and gyrating his hips in tiny circles more to massage Jim's cock under his lower abdomen than to thrust into his asshole. He wants to be sure Jim is entirely turned on and focused on what he is doing. If Jim expends a lot of energy right now he may sleep better and longer. Shane sits up again and focuses his energy then actively pours on his sexually charged aura and Jim, sucking air in through his teeth hissing, moans "haaaAAAH!! HAAAHN! HAA!"

Jim can feel his heart rate speeding up and his limbs grow cool. He wants this so bad, needs it like a parched plant needs water. The anticipation is an incredible act of sexuality itself. His dick bounces against Shane's belly as his pc muscles flex involuntarily. Clear fluid runs in small slow drips from the tip of his cock down on to his lower abdomen. His dick radiates with pleasing pulses each time Shane rubs gently against it. His nipples harden and lips tingle. He feels Shane inside of him, his thick shaft stretching Jim's ass, it's weight heavy and satisfying. All the horror of the world has been covered and hidden, making it easier for Jim to see, feel, smell & hear their lovemaking in a stark intense manner. Jim is aroused beyond the measure and would do anything for Shane to continue on.

Shane pulls back, his own cock shriking back down to it's starting size. Then slow and steady he thrusts forward. As he does he pours more oil over Jim's penis and takes it into his hand, stroking him in time with his thrusts. Using his thumb he rubs over the meatus of Jim's glans at the top of each stroke. Once he has established Jim to be comfortable he picks up his pace to a moderate speed. Under him Jim moans enraptured by the stimuli. Shane watches Jim feeling him, his eyes plead with Shane, his eyebrows drawn together, mouth open in a grimace like expression of pleasure.

Jim feels each stroke of both types with singular focus. Each thrust of Shane's hips presses upon his swelled pulsing prostate washing wave after wave of warm energy from his pelvis throughout his body. He can feel Shane's shaft enter him again and reminding him of how his fingers felt with Shane's mouth wrapped around them, it arouses him further thinking about Shane feeling a similar sensation on his wide long penis. Each stroke of Shane's hand and thumb on his shaft and glans drawing him further and further toward orgasm. His moans quicken and get louder. In response Shane slows his movements, and begins to cycle from a slow pace to a moderate one working back up once more then repeating this a third time.

When Jim is close to his orgasm again Shane releases Jim's cock and leans down on top of him. He wraps his arms around Jim cradling the base of Jim's neck and head with his right hand, bracing his forehead against Jim's. Jim hugs back holding on as if he is drowning, vocalizing and groaning in low and high pitches by turns. Shane gives him one more kiss and sits up once more. He slips his cock out of Jim and places his own penis on top of Jim's. Using one hand he strokes both their dicks off. The image of it sends Jim over the edge of ecstasy. He watches Shane's eyes feeling his hand working up & down. Shane releases the embrace and when thick glistening semen splashes forth from Shane's urethra Jim cums as well the sensation hitting hard and knocking the breath from him. He makes several choked sounds as he watches his own cum streak across his abdomen mixing with Shane's. Now finished Shane crawls back a bit and settles between Jim's legs to lap up the spent ejaculate.

When finished he spoons with Jim letting him rest his head on Shane's arm while he hugs him about the midsection. Drowsy Jim says "I didn't think you came last time. Was I so greedy I didn't even do anything for you?"

"No," Shane murmurs quietly in his ear "I don't cum the way you do. My vessel, this body needs to do most bodily functions but because of what I am, I only experience some pleasant feelings form sex in my body. It's a surface thing not a soul deep one like it is for you. Now, shhh...try to sleep, Bucky."

Tired but annoyed Jim grumbles without words.

"Oh, right sorry...Jim."

With this Jim drops off to sleep.