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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years ago

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Survey #424

“got no superspeed, but i’m running this town”

What is the first line in the song you are currently listening to/last listened to? "I’m running out of time; I hope that I can save you somehow.” Are you an easy lay? Not in the slightest. What was the last reason you cried? Life and how inexplicably I'm failing at it. What’s hurting you right now? More like what isn't. Do you remember important dates? Only some. I'm awful with numbers. Do you own anything with the Playboy Bunny on it? No. Do you own a bean bag chair? No. Have you ever played Gamecube? At a friend's house. Have you ever played with toy cars before? Yeah, with my nephew. He LOVES monster trucks. Have you ever touched a caterpillar? Oh, definitely. I loved picking them up as a kid. What is your favorite kind of salad? Just plain 'ole iceberg lettuce with ranch, really. Are you any good at Ping-Pong? Holy hell no, I SUCK. What was/is your high school mascot? A firebird. Can you make cute little animals by folding paper? God no, I'm awful at origami. Like, I have zero concept of how to do it. What kind of music do you like? Various types of metal and rock. Do you like apple juice? Yeah. Do you like to draw? It's funny, like I do love it, but I barely ever do it because I get frustrated when I can't get what's in my head onto paper. What do you put on your french fries? Generally ketchup. How many people can comfortably sleep in your bed? Two. Do you want to have a big family in the future? I don't want kids, just pets. Probably a lot of pets. Is Vegas one of your must-see places? No. Pet rat: yay or nay? I've had multiple pet rats and I adore them. I've come to find I'm not the best at keeping rodents because changing the bedding so much sucks ass, but nevertheless they are fantastic pets for people who don't mind the maintenance. Would you call yourself a writer? Written any stories lately? Yes. I haven't written in a while, though. I just have absolutely zero motivation to RP. Are you good at reading people's body language? I probably overanalyze it, really. Ever threatened somebody and actually went through with it? I don’t threaten people. Does holding newborn babies scare you? Extremely. I feel like they're made of thin glass. Piercings: yay or nay? I LOVE piercings. They add an interesting touch to your appearance and to me just (usually) look super cool. There are very few piercings I don't like. Do you have a collage of pictures in your bedroom? No, but I want to make a motivation board very badly. Favorite Nicholas Cage movie? Ghost Rider. Were video games better in the 1980s, 1990s, or the 2000s? Why? '80s games bore me honestly, but I love some '90s and many 2000s games. I've got to say ultimately newer games win, because of graphics increasing immersion (no, I do not whatsoever believe graphics are everything or always make a better experience), voice acting improving immensely, etc. Have you ever watched The Beverly Hillbillies? Yes! Mom loves it so I used to watch it a lot with her as a kid. I'd still watch it. Did your mother ever sing lullabies to you when you were younger? Yes. Are you ready to get out of this town? I HATE THIS TOOOWN, IT'S SO WASHED UUU-UP, AND ALL MY FRIENDS DON'T GIVE A FUUU-UUUUUCK god hell yes get me the fuck out. Do you know anybody that is pregnant right now? Quite a few. What are you listening to? "Superluv” by Shane Dawson. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket? No. Does your father have any facial hair? Yes. Did your grandparents teach you anything? My maternal grandmother, the only one I really ever knew, taught me I'm a disappointment, pretty much. And a bitch. Do you want/have a Bachelor’s degree? It'd be nice to have one, but I don't, and I'm not pursuing it again. I've wasted enough of my parents' money. Are you into superheroes? Who’s your favourite? Not seriously, but I enjoy them well enough. I like Spider-Man. What did you have for dinner last night? Mom ordered Mexican. I had two shrimp and cheese quesadillas and rice with cheese. Do you think you look similar to your siblings? No. Have you ever played Cards Against Humanity? Did you like it? Yeah, it's fun. Do you know your best friend’s middle name? Yes. Are you close to your father? I am. Have you ever had a serious conversation with your dad? Yeah. Would you rather have long or short hair? I enjoy having short hair way more. Who did you go/plan on going with to prom? I went with Jason twice. Have you ever been to a debate and speech tournament? Hell no, and I never would. Arguing makes me cry lmao. Are you someone who enjoys stand-up comedy? Yep. What’s one thing that scares you about living alone and being independent? A lot of things do, but one thing in specific that I fear is that I let the house become cluttered and messy. I'm so shit at cleaning, especially when I'm depressed. It's why my own bedroom isn't even fully decorated, and we've lived here since I wanna say last November. If someone offered you an all-expenses paid trip to one European country, where would you go and why? Germany, 'cuz I enjoy the culture and would love to try some foods and visit places. Have you ever won anything on the lottery? No. Are you interested in the World Cup? I couldn't possibly care less. What’s the longest time you’ve ever been on a plane for? Idk. Do you let your hair dry naturally or do you towel-dry it or blow dry it? I use a towel to dry it some, then let it really get the job done naturally. How many of the Harry Potter books have you read? None. Who last gave you their number? When I posted on Facebook about going on a mental health hiatus, my good friend Alon messaged me her number if I ever needed to talk. I was really thankful. Are you often the last one to understand a joke? Honestly yeah. I'm slow to grasp a lot of things. Your first black eye: Did you give it or get it? Never gotten or given one. Have you ever slept in a tent, indoors or out? Yes to both. Are you mad right now? I'm annoyed, but not mad. Are you allergic to nuts or dairy products? No. Has anyone ever called the cops on you? No. Do you ever actually drink milk alone? Yeah, I love milk. Do you have a sensitive gag reflex? It is EXTREMELY sensitive. What was the last situation to upset you? I'd rather not talk about it. Have you ever had an online argument? I have been heavily active on the Internet since I was like, 11. Maybe younger. I have been in plenty. Are you at risk for any medical issues? A lot of heart problems run in my family. I'm also suspicious I may develop diabetes, which also runs very heavily in my family. What were you doing at 7:00 a.m.? Surprisingly, I was asleep. Do you own a robe? No. What would you consider your life to be? A wreck. What is your favorite mark of punctuation? I like question marks. Who knows your biggest secret? Nobody. Do you think anyone has feelings for you? Probably not. How do you know? I just doubt it. I'm so unlikable right now. Could you go a day without eating? I don't think I could. I do not react to stomach pain well, and that includes when I'm hungry. How many bracelets do you have on your wrists right now? None. What’s your favorite drink? Strawberry Sunkist, but I don't allow myself to have it. I will DESTROY a can or five of it. Who was the last person that texted you? My mom. What are you craving? Nothing really right now. What was the first thing you ate today? An everything bagel. What was the last type of meat you ate? Pork. Have you taken any medication today? Yeah, I take some prescription meds in the morning and at night. Have you ever been to Hawaii? No, but that'd be cool. Do you know anyone who has diabetes? My mom, for one. Have you ever made a boy cry? Sadly. Who are you talking to? Nobody. Do you think you’ve ruined your chances with someone? Absolutely. Your parents split; would you want to live with your mom or dad? My parents are divorced, and I stayed with Mom. Would you strongly prefer to go out with someone of your own skin color/racial background? I couldn't care less. For you personally, is abortion an option in case of an accidental pregnancy? For others, absolutely. It's your right. For me myself, it's possible, idk. If I was God forbid raped, I probably would have an abortion. If I accidentally got pregnant in a healthy relationship, I'd probably have a "too bad, so sad" outlook where I'd suck it up and go through with the gestation because having sex and risking pregnancy was my own decision. Even if I'm pro-choice, I think I'd feel too guilty aborting, especially with the child being someone's I love. Is it a requirement that you communicate every day with your significant other (via phone, text, in person, whatever)? IF I had an s/o, no. I like to, but sometimes you just want space. Are you fetish-friendly? I'm not gonna lie, some fetishes are just too fucking weird for me. I TRY not to judge, because I doubt you can actually help fetishes, but I inevitably do sometimes. If you're asking would I engage in fetishes because my s/o liked them, possibly, but it would really depend on what it is. Have you ever cosplayed? No. I think cosplay is really cool, though. Do you support the exploration of outer space? If yes, would you consider taking a trip into space, or even to another planet? As creatures who crave knowledge and understanding of our universe, I do support space exploration, but I do NOT believe we should be spending as much money as we do on it. Taking care of the planet we're actually on is far more important imo. I wouldn't personally go to outer space. Is it okay for men to wear makeup? What’s your opinion of male crossdressers? It's totally okay! Guys with makeup can be super attractive. Crossdressers, too. Go for it. You’re in a new relationship and your partner admits that they have had 14 sexual partners. Does that sound like a lot to you? For me personally, yes. I don't even know if I'd date someone with 14 past sexual partners, honestly. I would admittedly question their loyalty. Would you let your children under 13 watch movies with full nudity? No. If someone asked you, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” would you know the answer right away? I would. What is your opinion concerning strip clubs? Not my scene at all, but so long as you respect the dancers, whatever. You do you.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''superluv'' by shane dawson

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zelvyth · 4 years ago

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From a very young age it was reinforced that my ADHD was a disability I was meant to overcome rather than a tool I could use to better myself. I didn’t even know that I had been diagnosed, and that my mother had chosen not to medicate me, until I was partway through highschool. By that point I had already begun to give up on ever truly “making it” in life. The hurdles I needed to overcome had demoralized me to the point of near total apathy. Between my sexuality and early coming out in a small town highschool, and my various mental health problems, I felt like no one in the world saw things from my point of view. The last blow to my self esteem came when my grade 12 english teacher, the true decider of fate to any young person, told me my final thesis on Lady Macbeth being one of the greatest example of the flaws in Machiavelli’s “The Prince” was brilliant, but due to formatting and scattered grammar issues, she could give me no higher than a 60%. After years of getting consistent high 90’s in my english classes as well as other subjects, I had failed this extremely crucial essay due to the idiosyncrasies of the most frustrating language known to humankind. I passed that class with a 68, and felt like my fate was sealed. No chance at getting into any University in the country without redoing 5 months of work because one person believed that following the rules was a more important indication of intelligence than original ideas and the ability to make an argument. It crushed me. I admit that I didn’t put in the effort, but I had spent my entire life being told I was incredibly intelligent. It was the one thing I held onto. I felt betrayed by the education system. Though it was also due to many other factors at the time, this contributed to the second of my four suicide attempts. Today, I reject that philosophy.

When a person with ADHD is thinking, they connect ideas in their heads much faster than the average person. It can be confusing and disorienting to the people around them. I constantly have to explain how I got from point A to point B because the points connect automatically in my head. It’s exhausting, so I frequently do not bother to try. It’s extremely helpful when crafting an argument, however it can be debilitating in many aspects of modern life. Things the average person doesn’t think about, can be crippling for me. Without a true passion towards something, my ability to focus becomes hazy and my thoughts become scattered. I spend the majority of the day stuck in my head having conversations with myself instead of doing “normal” things with my time. I have spent my life being told that ADHD is my weakness, today I can tell you with the utmost certainty that it is my greatest strength.

When the international pandemic of the respiratory disease “Covid-19” truly began and the world went into full nationwide lockdown, the bistro that I had, for the most part, happily been employed at shut down. After 8 years of honing my culinary craft certain that my skills, though undervalued, would always be needed somewhere, I was out of a job. Indefinitely. So was most of the country that worked with their hands or, in some capacity, physically with other people. Unless you were able to conduct business through zoom conferences or were a suddenly “essential” employee like a fast food worker, you were left with little to do but sit and think or try desperately to distract yourself from the increasingly troubling world around you. Luckily, to my surprise, the conservative government had pledged to keep us all fed and watered as best they could. What deeply worried me was the knowledge that my friends south of the border, through no fault of their own, and already mostly furious with their government, were not being treated with the same bare minimum of respect. I knew it was a recipe for true disaster and widespread civil unrest as early as march.

I watched while the culture of social media, at least from my own lgbt bias, slowly started to shift and I picked up a lot of the big picture through memes and personally shared anecdotes. Celebrities were being ripped apart as they tried to get our attention again from their huge mansions while people sat at home worried about how to feed their children. Using insensitive phrasing like “we’re all in this together” when they undeniably weren’t. It quickly became a social caste system. The desperately poor trying to creatively make money any way they could. The often needlessly endangered. And the upper class for whom, little had changed besides the inability to do whatever they want at any given time. The lines were very clearly drawn. While the rich bemoaned their accessibility to haircuts, the poor argued with landlords about rent. All the while another group was frequently paid minimum wage to work on the proverbial front lines; flipping hamburgers, being yelled at by the rich because you were out of everything with the supply chain so damaged, or literally saving peoples lives. The anger and frustration quickly took over nearly every form of social media. Subtly, but day by day it grew. There was only so much one could do from inside their apartments, and globally, the havenots found solace and comfort with one another. The narratives of meme culture, which had matured and specialized far beyond the early days of “lolcats” and “trollface” comics, became almost exclusively about mocking the rich and their inability to deal with slight inconveniences.

Nearly every month of 2020 was a new major nationwide crisis and people had little else to do but talk about it or ignore it. The year kicked off with serious threat of a third world war because Donald Trump was tweeting intentionally inflammatory remarks towards the fascist leader of North Korea. All while nearly the entire country of Australia was ravaged by forest/bush fire. January saw a clearly corrupt president unbelievably not be impeached. Sparking outrage among, in my humble opinion, any sane individual. This also exposed, to anyone who knew all the facts, that the systems to hold those in power accountable was clearly broken and corruptible. Towards the end of January, beloved basketball player Kobe Bryant died in a horrible helicopter accident involving his daughter. Late February leading into early March was when global fears over Coronavirus began to be taken extremely seriously by every government in the world, the exception being the United States and the Trump administration. By late April, the country had over a hundred thousand dead, and nearly a quarter of its population out of a job. The irony of this, is that the calls to reopen the country didn’t come from those that had lost their jobs, but the upper class that had grown restless deprived from their usual comforts. Meanwhile we openly mocked them on instagram, tumblr, and twitter. Trying desperately to make light of a horrible situation and bring at least a little levity to their lives. News that a new breed of dangerously fatal hornets had migrated to North America was derided as a filler episode. One of my personal favourite takes on the year as a whole so far was a comparison to the four horseman of the apocalypse. January representing War, February representing Pestilence, March representing Famine, and April representing Death. In fact a lot of meme culture started to take on an extremely apocalyptic vibe. The message for many was clear, and depressing.

Then things started to happen really fast, so fast that for many it would make your head spin looking at it from the outside. It began with a video featuring a white Canadian woman from Waterloo named Amy Cooper that went viral across the globe. In the Ramble area of Central Park in NYC, this woman was filmed by a clearly peaceful, yet insistent, black man named Christian Cooper, no relation, asking her to leash her dog. This is a bylaw of the area. The woman refused and began to become very distressed, roughly handling her dog by the collar. She started dailing 911 and accused the man of assaulting her to the dispatcher. What many understood about this act, and rightfully called her out in outrage over, is that she was using her knowledge of how police handle black people in America to threaten this mans life over leashing her dog. She has been fired, and the shelter has taken her dog back.

Two days later, as I was travelling to my family’s cottage to “get away from it all and unplug”, a friend sent me a snapchat video from Minneapolis. It was on fire. I immediately did everything I could to try to find out what had happened. That, is when I saw the video of 8 minutes and 46 seconds of a police officer with his knee on the neck of another human being. This did not shock, nor suprise me. I had followed the many accounts of police killing people on video since 2014 when I was 16. When the Ferguson protests over Michael Brown’s killing by police officers were broadcast over most of the developed world. I had seen little change, despite Barrack Obama being President. This continued to happen for the next 6 years, though there were no more protests. Some of the people of those original protests that started the Black Lives Matter Movement, went missing over the next several years. Mainly those that had been photographed.

George Floyd’s death, I feel, was the straw that broke the camels’ back. Which is how anyone who has personally experienced police mistreatment and injustice would understand watching that video. A societal contract had been broken. And Minneapolis started to burn down the city that would let this happen to their friend, their neighbour, their father, their brother, and most importantly, their son. The words that chilled me to my very core… And continue to make me cry when I think about. Continue to make me want to punch every cop I run into.The words that have caused me to continue having this argument every day with everyone I know. The words that make me want to scream and rage and burn that country to the ground…. “Mama”

In his dying breaths this man called out to his mother. Who had died 2 years earlier. Who could not come save him. The police officer casually, with his hands in his pockets, knowing he could get away with it, murdered that man while he called out for his dead mother. Suffocated him to death in the middle of a global pandemic driven by respiratory disease. If I had been in Minneapolis that night, I would have helped burn it to the ground.

Something I didn’t expect happened then. Something I didn’t expect when I saw the fires and the rage from mostly black citizens of the city. As I watched Fox News try to turn the story into a conversation about rioting and looting rather than Police accountability. Other peaceful protests started up in other cities. My entire social media feed from multiple sources was filled with people discussing their anger and vowing to protest it. I don’t like to admit that I didn’t see this coming. But on May 26th, as I ravenously tried to keep up from the comfort of a cottage on Crystal Lake Ontario, a spark of hope for humanity that I had lost a long time ago started to ignite.

Something interesting happens when you get most of your information from social media. It either makes you hyper critical of everything you’re told and willing to research anything important, or it makes you willing to believe anything your friends tell you. As the protests kicked off in major cities across America, after months of inactivity, my ADHD kicked into high gear. I used every neuron of my brain power to follow the protests from as many different angles as I could. Most importantly, I followed the story from the people who were at them. That’s what growing up in modern society makes you do. After months if not years if not decades of being lied to for personal gain constantly. It makes you pay attention to the people who have nothing to gain.

I got back to my appartment from my cottage a day later, still glued to my phone. Barely talking, barely eating, barely sleeping. I watched police officers in riot gear throw tear gas into peaceful protests in every city in America. Tear gas, by the way, is an international war crime in combat situations. I watched media with an implicitly right wing bias condemn the protests. Convincing people that looting was worth a war crime. I watched it work. It worked with my own father. It did not work for me. I watched the news from political biases of both sides but took most of it with a grain of salt. That’s what I had been taught to do from as young as 14 by the world I grew up in. The news could give me general information. However, the story was on the ground and I knew from experience that people would try to bury it so I had to watch it as quickly as possible. I watched friends of mine in the states get tear gassed and beaten while exercising their first amendment rights. I watched the news condemn the protests. I was horrified. I watched the peaceful protesters of police brutality in New York get beaten and gassed from a minimum of 30 different perspectives of the people I knew and trusted, and those I didn’t. I watched the peaceful protestors in LA get beaten and gassed from the same amount of perspectives. I watched them throw flash bombs and shoot rubber coated bullets into the faces of my friends in every city in America. I watched the President of the United States order the peaceful protestors in front of the White House to be beaten and gassed so he could have an awkward photo-op with a fucking bible. I watched this for a week straight from every angle available. Day in and day out. Every hour I was conscious, I watched fascism try to grab power in in every city in America. I watched people in powerful positions deny it.

It wasn’t just paying attention to the protests and the news of them explicitly. I wasn’t just filled with horror. I was also watching something wonderfully unexpected happen. I watched my black friends, my gay friends, my asain friends, and my intelligent friends, begin to weaponize social media. I watched them beg all of their friends to do the same. So did I, even though I felt like there wasn’t anything I could really do from cozy liberal Waterloo. I watched us all turn the algorithms against the people who made them. I did everything I could to make sure you couldn’t turn away. I told my gay white friends condemning the actions of protestors that his rights came from a riot. I watched them shrink in fear of my voice. My father told me I was getting caught up in left wing rhetoric. I tore his arguments to shreds. He told me broad angry statements don’t do anything. I told him broad angry statements create the conversation we’re having. Resistance is a highway with many lanes, and I knew my lane.

You grow up, especially in my age, especially when you’re gay, especially when you are exposed to a lifetime of stories of rebellion against tyranny, hearing about the power of resistance. As I marched in Waterloo with over thirty thousand people I didn’t know, I realized that I have never truly understood that power. How it surges through your body like electricity as you scream until your voice is hoarse. It’s a high better than any drug known to man, than any pride parade where I was pandered to by corporations for hours. It took my fear, and my anger, and my helplessness and turned it into raw power exploding from my body. I continued to watch people I knew deny reality.

The protests grew. They spread across the world like wildfire. I went to facebook, a place I avoid because I don’t agree with the majority of people on it, and told anyone who would listen to me that this is what Pride means. What it truly means to be proud of your community. Not a rainbow flag in a store window, not a corporation asking you to buy it’s rainbow backpack. But turning apathy in face of evil into raw unbridled electricity. I watched the protests spread to Montreal and Toronto, I watched the police mishandle things there too. I watched violence perpetuated by the state against my friends, people I’ve known for years. The power I felt merely grew. It grew with every flash grenade and bullet and tear gas canister shot at my friends. It will not subside till this is over or until I die. I’m going to spend the next decade giving up the comfortable life of good food, great drinks, and fantastic company that I found in the restaurant industry. I’m going to spend a decade getting my Law degree to fight for every last one of us in the courtroom because that is a place I can make it count.

Today is June 8th of the year 2020 and I began writing this piece at Noon, it is now 4:11 P.M. I have done zero editing and I refuse to. I submit this as my revised final essay. I want to know when you got behind the protests. Because if it was as you were reading this, I deem you unworthy to judge my critical thinking skills. If it was yesterday I think you should be ashamed of yourself. I was with them from hour one. You should have been too. How dare you spend years teaching children about racism and oppression. How dare you tell me that I’m not worthy of higher education in any form. Telling children that wikipedia is unreliable as a source is idiotic, it’s one of the most peer reviewed encyclopedia’s to ever exist. How dare you tell me and the young adults you teach that you don’t give out scores higher than ninety percent. What is the point of forcing teenagers to write in cursive. Why must I live the experiences you write about in your precious properly formatted essays. In this country a 68 is two percent shy of getting into any University. It’s sentencing an intelligent person with an array of disabilities a life of believing they have no power. Despite my own mistakes at the time and the amount I have grown as a person since, I will hold you personally accountable for that.

As a closing statement, to every English teacher in this province, no, to every English teacher in the great country of Canada. Think very hard about when exactly you put your full support behind this movement. Because your curriculum is outdated, and absolutely useless in the real world. And your racism is showing.

Post Script.

There is no bibliography of unbiased sources because all sources are biased. You have a supercomputer in your pocket and this should all be public information. Look it up.

#blm #nojusticenopeace #adhd #adhd brain #protests #canada #manic

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vael · 5 years ago

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2019 Annual Review

Each year, I look back at the previous year’s annual review and note that things didn’t go as planned. For some reason I am always surprised, but this time it’s a little painful, too. From 2018′s Annual Review:

“2019 outlook? Sunny! I hope it will be my best year yet.“

Oh, Vael. You built your house, you moved to the promised land. But your year did not go as planned. You are not even close to the zen you craved.

It has been a wild year. This will run long. All I can do is stick to the format and hope my memory and average writing skill will do the year justice. So, as usual, we start with the positive.

What went well this year?

We like our house. We do. The builder was no good, resulting in some warped walls and a lot of headache getting them to finish everything properly, but the layout is very suitable for us. My office is exactly what I needed, our TV room has just the right space for us. We finally have a respectable kitchen. Since I’m living and working in the house 24 hours a day, it’s important to have a comfortable space.

Game development. For the past five years, I’ve put in some serious work. A lot of it was within my game engine, GAM3, and tinydark’s gaming network, The Orbium. While I put in a lot of work, not much came in the way of actual games produced. I finally rallied in 2018 and put out Bean Grower. It was designed to be a supplemental game, not a main driver, so it will not bring in sustainable income. I went on to think that I should open GAM3 up to other developers, license the engine out and collect a share of what they make.

I resolved to refactor GAM3: a word which means to rewrite and modernize many parts of it so that it’s easier to work in, and for it to present better. I would come to realize this desire to share GAM3 was due to a lack of confidence in myself to produce something great, and financially sustainable. Around the time I was realizing that multiplayer was the answer, I discovered Marosia.

Then we moved, I took on contract work, and things generally slowed for me for a few months, eking out what development I could. I played Marosia throughout and in August, it died. I wrote a teardown for it. The stars had aligned: though I had a lot of prelim work to be done, I would make a successor to Marosia. I managed to hype a few people in the community with a demo of GAM3 and I spent the next few months coding a chat prototype and generally organizing myself, and finally mid-November began the refactoring. It would end there, but just this morning (seriously) we learned Marosia was coming back. I had a momentary freakout but it’s ultimately a good thing for my own game.

I haven’t been more excited for a project in a long time. I never thought I’d be so excited to create a standard fantasy world, but it’s a ton of fun, with intricacies I never considered. The game’s design lends itself to a sustainable monetization model: I’m thinking $3/mo for quality-of-life upgrades, with a discount for buying in bulk. I would have paid double for Marosia, so I think this is fair. (6 months of die2nite is currently priced at $69, 6 months of Hattrick is $90!) And most important of all, I can do it ethically, with a game that truly means something to people.

Web development. I’ve learned quite a bit this year! I am so grateful for svelte. I liked but never loved React.js. It always felt ponderous to me. I have no doubt The Orbium’s refactoring would have taken me half the time it did if I were learning svelte vs. React, simply because React is so much more convoluted than svelte, and all in the name of uglier syntax. Svelte seamlessly integrates style and functionality into UI components, which means that if I’m working with a button that clicks to open a modal, everything I need for that button is in that one file.

Due to my contract work (with Harley Davidson, I can reveal) I also got some experience with Symfony and other modern development practices in PHP. PHP doesn’t really excite me these days, loathing having to produce views with it, but it is at least comfy.

My job. “Yeah, yeah.” I got a raise, most of which was contributed to getting Eve and my son onto my badass healthcare plan. We’re developing like it’s 2012, which is frustrating and makes even simple tasks take forever, but I can’t complain about the pay nor the stability of the company and my position there. I also work mostly remotely.

What didn’t go so well?

2019 was dominated by the bad. Eve’s not putting out an Annual Review, but our pain is shared.

The move. 11 months after the contract was signed, our builder was finally ready to let us move in. The house was not finished, just livable. So we rushed out of Rhode Island. We packed my car with everything we could fit, even removing the spare tire, but we got almost all of it. Me, Eve, our son, and our two cats.

At around 7:30 PM, we were driving on a dark highway when we were struck by a muffler that had fallen out from the truck in front of us. It destroyed the front-end, spilling radiator fluid onto the road. I had no idea what was going on, but it so happened that a mechanic had broken down right near us and was able to help. The engine barely carried us to the nearest motel, and I was in shock. I carried all our stuff to our second-floor room, it was even lightly raining. And I was defeated. Eve reports she had never seen me so bad. I had no idea how long we’d be in this ghetto-ass motel, what it would cost us during this time of great financial need, and mostly: I was just miserable. We could have died. If it had hit one of our tires, we could have spun out at 70+ MPH. All I wanted to do was get to our house the next day, and here we were.

I won’t detail the rest here, but I do want to thank my friends for their support and appreciate the good fortune that we got through this time.

We got to the house at 11PM on a Sunday; I still appreciate our builder taking the time to show us around so late. And... it was not at all what we were expecting. We had no driveway, and it had rained. We were tracking in some mud but that didn’t even matter because the entire house had to be cleaned. There was dirt all over the floors, they’d forgotten I didn’t want a chandelier over the dining room table, and the feeling was that we’d gone through Hell (and austure financial practices) to get here and this was it. So much wasn’t done. We knew that, but we didn’t think we’d be sweeping and wetting the floor with paper towel just to have a place to put our stuff. Shoutout to my friend Cody for setting us up with a supply drop.

We spent a lot of time buying furniture, aided by our rental SUV, all the while worrying about our newly purchased things sitting around the house without our protection as workers came in and out. I had to go back to Virginia to pick up the car and through exhaustion, caffeine, stupidity, and anxiety, managed to go 88 MPH and get myself a ticket: a misdemeanor, even. I spent the entire day picking up that damn car (5 hours up and down) and returned home in the worse state I’d ever felt. I was emotionally, mentally, and physically depleted.

But there was no stopping for me: I took on contract work and I had to get it done just to stay afloat. And then we got a fucking dog.

The dog. At some point in 2018 we determined that our son could use a companion and that a dog really completes the family. Leading up to the move, we put a down payment on a rough collie: the “Lassie” breed. They usually run around $800 and we got her for $500. I was a fan of the breed and Eve had done research that proves it’s a great breed. (it is) Even after the accident, we thought we should pay the rest for her and bring some joy into our life.

We named her Esme, and getting a dog was definitely one of the worst macro decisions I’ve made for the family yet. I couldn’t last more than a month with her. It was my decision to get rid of her, which made my wife and son sad but we were getting so little out of the experience. The cats beat her up, she was afraid of everything, and all she wanted to do was run around but we kept her cooped up in the house because we had no fence. I hated that there was still a dog smell, and I hated that it farted during Game of Thrones. It was over when we went grocery shopping and came back to a poop-filled crate, which the circumstances of the night dictated I must clean.

Young Living. Eve was supposed to sell essential oils for some side money. We knew it wasn’t going to be big money, unless she got lucky or turned out to be a natural-born saleswoman, but it was something to do and we believe in the products. I really trust in Young Living and I personally have seen the benefits of their oils and products.

So she went to the YL convention in Utah to learn to sell and, hey, have some fun. She returned feeling even less confident: they’d changed some numbers, and the truth that we always knew was that the market’s highly saturated. There are memes trivializing the effects of oils and there’s no denying the company’s an MLM. A lot of the big earners made their sales early on. Coinciding with the bad feels of Autumn, we decided to put the oil dream aside and focus on mental and physical health.

Eve mental/physical health. The muffler changed a lot for us. It morphed what should have been a very happy time in our lives into a very stressful one. Eve felt fatigued and broken down, and I wasn’t much better off. One day before her planned back-to-action, pick ourselves up and get ready to enjoy Summer, she sprained and tore a ligament in her ankle while coming down the stairs. We hoped it was just a sprain and did everything we could to avoid going to the doctor, but a week later she hadn’t gotten better and so began the PT and bullshit regimen. Our plans of hiking the blue ridge mountains were crushed.

But she recovered, and I shit you not, the very day before she planned to return to action, it was Father’s Day. She was making me my special breakfast and was using a hand-blender to blend pumpkin french toast mix when she went to clean some gunk out of the blender with her finger. It was a split-second decision to help make breakfast faster. Her finger twitched, caught the irresponsibly sensitive power button and tore her finger up. Immediately took her to Urgent Care and then the Emergency Room. $3,000 and some luck later, she kept her finger, but has permanently lost some feeling in it.

That was a bad time for us. I was overworked, she was miserable, and yet she still managed to get to Utah to learn how to sell. To salvage our year. In Autumn, all the anxiety, stress, and the damage from her upbringing finally culminated and she broke.

Her physical health tanked in tandem with her mental. She suffered frequent menstrual issues and her EDS (a joint disorder) flaring up. It is hard to detail all the pain and frustration, and it really is beyond the scope of what needs to be said. My wife is depressed, prone to feeling overwhelmed, and I’m happy to say that we are getting her professional help soon.

What’s remarkable is that I can’t recall a period of time that she didn’t try her best to recover. Every month, most weeks, she would constantly express that the next day or month was her time. She’s done it for this month and 2020 as well. And I don’t think she’s lazy or unmotivated. She is just defeated and I am a poor comforter. Honestly, I am just shit at helping people if the solution isn’t “well just force yourself to do the thing.” That’s how I get through my problems and it doesn’t work for everyone, not even always myself. Still she is strong. I think writing this out has helped me remember that.

Relationship with my son. I had hoped my increased efficiency and happiness would improve our relationship. I planned for more structure: things like “once we’re upstairs for bedtime rituals, no going back down.” Each night I make a point to spend a minimum of 30 focused minutes with him. But I have only succeeded in making our relationship worse. I don’t think he needs professional help, but there is something within him, from when he was three years old, that just prevents him from being a hard worker. Respect is important to me and I don’t respect him. He is a frustrated child, often not understanding the world, often forgetting things he was supposed to do. I’m not doing a good job of helping.

I think I could have done better, but there were simply too many fronts to fight.

Mental performance. I haven’t gotten any better from last year. I am still not as sharp as 2017-Vael. It is a matter of stress and lifestyle.

What did I learn?

How to be a homeowner! Generally how to manage a home. I got my tools, all cute with my little leaf blower.

SLOWWWW DOWWWWN. The outside of the house needs some work. We need to extend our driveway, clear an acre, and put up a fence. I could take a loan out to do this and be fine, but I could also just slow down. Take a deep breath. Enjoy what we have for the Summer. It sucks I won’t be able to use that acre for farming, but I think I have a good place to plant a single apple tree this year. And hey, less mowing.

A shit ton of web development.

Probably became more cynical. But I think The Good Place has helped remind me to be a good person.

To just accept Eve needs help. And that I really suck at helping her.

Future Outlook

All that bad stuff that happened? Pfft. Shitty year. 2020′s here, it’s a brand new decade. I’ve got a cool game I want to make, we’re gonna get Eve some help, and...

Get pregnant! Yeah! Right now we definitely aren’t ready for kids. We need to use our new health insurance to make a bunch of appointments, recover financially, mentally, physically. But we very badly want more children. I feel it all the time. I have begun to suspect that genetics do matter, and I wonder if Abel’s laziness mirrors his biological father’s laziness. My dad loved to work and I do too. It might be possible to pass these traits on.

Better office. I need to get some furniture and improve my work environment.

Vacation! We desperately need a vacation. We’re going to Disney this year, either May or June.

Zen Vael. I will attempt to be “the person I want to be” as detailed last year. My soft goal for this is March 15th, as I set last year. I will undoubtedly fail that date. There is no way I’m wrangling my sleep and attitude in the next two months, but surely by the end of the year?

Thanks for reading.

Vael

#annual review

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sambart93 · 6 years ago

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Final 31 [2018 Edition] Day 31: 2018 Resolutions Wrap Up

Here we are! We are on the final day and it’s now time to see how well I did over the year! My 2018 Resolutions are here, so without further ado...

1. 20 Doramas/SPs - (PASS) I succeeded this one!! I was very happy to finally get back into the world of doramas and such. While the beginning of the year was strong, I started watching doramas just because my friend wanted me to watch along with her and unfortunately, all her choices were absolute rubbish. So hopefully next year I can watch just as many, but watch much better ones.

2. 20 Movies - (PASS) I marathoned whole series of movies this year which felt so great! I managed to watch about catch up with Jinro Game, and watch almost all the Yamikin Dogs movies too! I also got to watch some long overdue stuff like Tomodachi Game and Survival Family which were so good! I am happy with the movies I saw this year. Next year looks even more promising though!

3. 12 Books - (PASS) I don’t think I could’ve done this if I hadn’t gotten behind and then marathoned about 2 years worth of Shingeki no Kyojin manga. That alone was about 6 or 7 volumes of content xD I had either really good or really shit books this year. Of course my main man Sanderson never failed me once! And this year I started to read all his work from the beginning which has been fun! Also finally read some LONG overdue books: Frankenstein, Dracula, Leviathan Wakes, Ready Player One, Alice in Wonderland, A Torch Against the Night. SO MANY GOOD BOOKS! I already have lists of the top 5 and top 36 books that are my utmost priority for this next coming year. 36 isn’t entirely impossible but it’s definitely a challenge for me, but I am excited!

4. Keep Up with Reviews - (FAIL) I’m going to be honest, reviews take a LOT of time, and I can’t exactly concentrate all that well when I’m at home. One review takes at least 4 hours, and when I have events every week, it really cuts down how much time I have to get these things out. I still have reports/review from JUNE that I still haven’t even started! I am seriously cutting down on outside events next year so hopefully I can catch up and keep up. I do love writing reviews but I just wish I had a better environment and more time to get through them all. Also me marathoning whole Korean Variety shows the last 6 months of this year have NOT helped. One episode is always about 90 minutes and I watch like 2 to 3 episodes every day so.... yeah that really sucked up a lot of the time I could’ve spent writing. I’ll sort it out, I promise!

5. Oshi Stages/Events Only - (PASS) I feel like I ONLY went to Oshi stuff this entire year... I’m trying to think of one play that didn’t have an oshi in it... even Tenimyu technically counts cos FUCKING HIGA, AM I RIGHT?! ... and I really thought it’d be saving me money; turns out NO! Because instead of going to seven DIFFERENT plays, I’ve just been going to the same oshi play 2, 3, 4 times instead! That is not productive Alex! So while I got very picky and more focused on my plays, I didn’t exactly save much money. BUT this year (especially towards the end of the year) I definitely didn’t feel like I had no money - unlike this time last year where I was in serious poverty and was scraping the barrel of all my bank accounts just to get by (yes I am shameless, and yes I really should admit the severity of my money spending), which means my money handling definitely got better which is good, but it’s still not at the level I want it at - we’re a LONG way off that. Luckily, I found more plays and production companies that I didn’t like this year (I’m looking right at you MARV!), and a lot of my favourite series either finished or no longer feature my oshis (TouStage, HakuMyu, K Stage, EnStage (for now) etc.) which means I should have more money staying in my bank account next year as well as more fucking time to sort out my mental health (it’s been very very bad the last 3 - 4 months, and money worries definitely don’t help)! PHEW!

6. Keep Complaints to Self and Be Positive on the Outside - (FAIL) I feel this hasn’t improved at all, especially at work. I know I shouldn’t be this vocal and this negative but my stupid brain works too fast for my common sense to kick in, and I end up complaining before my brain can say ‘hang on a minute bitch’ and then I feel like the worst fucking person afterwards. And, as mentioned above, my mental health has really been struggling since November so that’s not helped my negativity at all (one day I’ll probably open up about how bad it’s been but not right now, because I’m still dealing with it). But at least I am always trying to better myself on this one.

7. Travel Twice - (PASS) I definitely did this! I went to Sendai TWICE, I went to Nagoya, Osaka, Hakone, I finally went to Odawara (and Odawara Castle), I went to new places in Tokyo: Kichijoji, Nakameguro, Yomiura Land, Asakusa, Ikebukuro Aquarium. While it was all internal in Japan, I still managed some new places which makes me happy! But hopefully next year I have at least one external travel!

8. Save Money! - (MORE FAIL THAN PASS) I did manage to save some money: I started saving ALL my coins that weren’t 100 yen and that managed to total about 30,000yen by the end of the year which is great! But I am still very much financially unstable. And yes it is completely and entirely my fault. But at least I’m no where near as unstable and poor as this time last year! I’m not spending whole nights lying awake hungry and worrying about the fact I can’t afford food for the next 2 - 3 days unlike last year which is amazing progress (not really but...). While I did find out that saving coins is a great way for me to save up money, I am still not saving decent amounts every month. Hopefully next year is that year! This year I’ve managed to sort out some priorities and find out ways of cutting down on my spending, and I feel like next year I’ll be able to really hold my control on it, moreso than the last 2 years.

9. JLPT - (FAIL) HA let’s not talk about this one. I had every intention of doing the JLPT in December and I did seriously studying in July, August and beginning-September, but then SuJu came along and decided to do concerts the weekend of the exam so my brain went ‘fuck it! Not like you’re ever gunna pass anyway’, so I never applied and I stopped studying all together xD I haven’t picked up a book since September. I really have zero motivation to study Japanese anymore. And I’m going to be honest, the main reason I’ve lost all my motivation to study is because I have no fucking place TO study. I can’t study at work because people keep coming to my desk and my anxiety finds that extremely humiliating, embarrassing, and distracting to be discovered studying; I don’t have a spare desk in my room so I don’t want to study there; I don’t want to study in the living room because my roommates could come in at any moment which is again embarrassing, distracting and worrying; I can’t study at a restaurant or cafe because the air-con is fucking freezing and it’s just a different way of wasting and spending more money than necessary. I have NO place to study, so how can you (I’m speaking to the universe) expect me to take a fucking JLPT exam when I can’t even find a fucking place to study?! You see the pickle I’m in?

10. No Clearfiles, No Non-Fav Fandom TShirts or Bags - (PASS) I did it! And to be honest, I completely forgot I wasn’t buying these things anymore, I just naturally DIDN’T! Which is great! I am definitely stretching this buying ban far next year (you’ll see in tomorrow’s post), but I am excited and happy at how easy this has been!

11. Keep up with Dancing and Stretches - (PASS) I have whole weeks where I exercise ridiculously every day/night, and then some weeks where I’m doing the bare minimum, but at least I’m always conscious of how much I’m exercising and I’m always trying to keep myself in check when it comes to exercise. So I’d say this one is a success. I’m still enjoying stretching, I’m still enjoying my dancing, I enjoy walking so much. This is going well!

12. Spend Spare Time Studying - (FAIL) We already went through this; I stopped studying; K-Variety has taken over my life. No time or motivation to do such things!

TOTAL: 7/12 PASSED! - A little over 50% which is not that great but I personally feel like I made progress even in some of the failed sections which is great! I hope I can be more successful next year! But I think we can all agree that my mental health is definitely the biggest thing ruining my motivation and goals right now. So let’s get that sorted first!

What were your goals this year? Did you succeed? How did you do? Let me know below!

My 2019 Resolutions are all set and ready to be posted tomorrow morning! Thank you for sticking around the entire 31 days even though my fandoms stretch far and wide, I hope at least some of the posts you could relate to.

#final 31 days of the year #final 31 days of the year 2018 edition #2018 wrap up

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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When your own family is racist toward you A close relative nicknamed her “jungle bunny,” she said. Another relative once turned her framed photo so her face wasn’t visible. And she wasn’t allowed to play with some White cousins — an insult that added to the discrimination she received from strangers. “I heard from a relative in my house that she (my mother) never should have had me because you’re supposed to stick with your own kind,” says Anderson, now 46. “I was never taught how to take care of my hair, so it was always a mess.” Like virtually all people of color, these multiracial people have encountered racism in their lives. And, as Meghan Markle alleged in Sunday’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, prejudicial comments or attitudes can even come from the people closest to them — their own families. Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry whose mother is Black and father is White, says there were “concerns and conversations” within the royal family about how dark their unborn son Archie’s skin would be. Buckingham Palace later issued a statement saying Meghan’s allegations were being “taken very seriously,” while Prince William, Meghan’s brother-in-law, told a reporter, “We’re very much not a racist family.” But Meghan’s remarks have been followed with interest by multiracial people, some of whom told CNN they have endured similar comments from relatives. Racial prejudice between family members is not uncommon Family relationships across races can add another layer of complication for people who are already straddling two or more worlds. In the US, a vast majority of multiracial people — roughly 90% — say they have not been mistreated by a relative or extended family member because of their mixed-race background, according to a 2015 Pew study. But it does happen, and to some racial groups more than others. For example, the Pew study found that 21% biracial adults who are White and Black say they have been treated badly by a relative because of their racial background. And when the day after Meghan’s interview with Oprah one London woman tweeted, “I don’t think the racism mixed race kids face from their own families is discussed enough,” it sparked more than 137,000 likes and a long thread of comments by mixed-race people sharing hurtful experiences. The woman, Kemah Bob, tells CNN she sent that tweet after talking to friends who have parents from different backgrounds. “I’ve heard stories about the ways they’ve been hurt or cast out by their families,” she says. “I can’t imagine experiencing racism from within my own home — from people who say they love me.” CNN also spoke to half a dozen multiracial people who said they’ve been mistreated by their own family members. Some did not want to be identified for fear of straining family relationships, but described hostile upbringings that included their parents being ostracized by other relatives for having children with someone outside their race. One man said his grandparent would call his phone to hurl expletives at him, bringing him to tears. Anderson, the mixed-race Maine woman, was raised by her mother and grandmother in Milo, a town that hosted a Ku Klux Klan parade in the 1920s. Some of her White family members disowned her mother because of “race mixing,” she says. Another relative called her father the “Black bastard.” “Racism lets you know right away that you are not White,” she says. “My Blackness stood out and was rare where I grew up, so it has always been a big part of my identity.” Multiracial people can struggle to fit in on both sides of their family Sharon Metzger, 28, was raised by a White father and a Zambian mother. Her parents met after her father’s Peace Corps stint in the southern African country of Lesotho. They later moved to Arizona and Maryland before setting in Fishers, Indiana, where she lives. Her biggest challenge was trying to fit in both her parents’ worlds, she said. Her Zambian family described her as a “Point Five,” a term implying you’re 0.5, or a half of one race, and commonly used to refer to biracial people in Africa. Trying to determine her identity as a child without making either of her parents feel left out added to the confusion. “As a teenager I felt like ‘the other,’ ‘ she says. “I’ve gotten so tired of answering the ‘so you’re Black and … ?’ So now I state ‘I’m Black’ and I do so proudly.” While she was growing up, Metzger says a relative from her White side would openly lament why her father went to Africa. Metzger has two younger half-brothers whose mother is from Senegal. “She would say, ‘I wish you never went to Africa. You should have stayed in the states,’ ” Metzger says. “If he didn’t (go) the three of us wouldn’t exist.” She says other family members used to describe her hair as too wild and constantly asked her to apply relaxer on it. “I was hurt, annoyed and frustrated,” she says. “It’s almost as if you’re at fault for being biracial. I didn’t like my hair for a long time, especially during childhood and adolescence.” Over time, Metzger says she’s learned to accept herself but steers clear of some family members on both sides. “I usually just kinda keep to myself. I’m at the point where if they’re not over it, it’s their loss,” she says. “It’s better for my mental health, plus I’m figuring out who I am as a person and trying to make my own meaning of what a Black woman is.” Racism can be difficult for families to talk about Joy Hepp is White and the mother of a 3-year-old girl. The Los Angeles woman is expecting a second child with her Haitian partner, who is Black. As the daughter of a half-Mexican mother, Hepp grew up surrounded by a rich mix of Latin culture. She also knows the power of representation after growing up with a sister who had blonde hair and blue eyes. Hepp is preparing to help her children navigate a multiracial world, one that she believes will be complicated by racism. That’s one of the reasons she paid close attention to Meghan’s interview. And she took notes on the subsequent conversations. “I know at the end of the day, my kids will be seen as Black,” Hepp says. “You have to open your eyes to what factors are in place. Their father and I, and the community around them, we’re working to raise them into strong productive and confident individuals.” Hepp says one of her biggest challenges has been convincing her White relatives that her daughter and unborn child will face challenges due to their racial background. “There’s a lot of disbelief, like, ‘oh no,’ like, ‘that can’t be true.’ Just being in denial about systemic racism that exists,” she says. “How do we move forward as a country if people — even family — don’t acknowledge it?” Cassi Moghan can relate. Her birth mother was White and father was Black, and she was adopted into a White family at age 2. Her racial background was a taboo that her family refused to talk about, she says. While she was not called names because of her race, she says the silence around her heritage was just as painful. “I didn’t really grow up discussing racism very much as it all seemed too complicated and painful for everyone,” says Moghan, 56, who was born in England and now lives in Athens, Greece. Moghan believes confronting White family members about their racism can be harder than calling out a friend or colleague. But she hopes conversations such as Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah will help push issues of race within families more into the open. “Hearing more experiences from people like ourselves can only help others not feel as lonely as I felt,” she says. It’s one reason multiracial people around the world are following Meghan’s clash with her royal in-laws. If she can bare her pain and emerge stronger, maybe they can, too. Source link Orbem News #Family #Multiracialpeopleoftenfaceracismwithintheirownfamilies-CNN #racist #us

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

Text

When your own family is racist toward you

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/when-your-own-family-is-racist-toward-you/

When your own family is racist toward you

A close relative nicknamed her “jungle bunny,” she said. Another relative once turned her framed photo so her face wasn’t visible. And she wasn’t allowed to play with some White cousins — an insult that added to the discrimination she received from strangers.

“I heard from a relative in my house that she (my mother) never should have had me because you’re supposed to stick with your own kind,” says Anderson, now 46. “I was never taught how to take care of my hair, so it was always a mess.”

Like virtually all people of color, these multiracial people have encountered racism in their lives. And, as Meghan Markle alleged in Sunday’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, prejudicial comments or attitudes can even come from the people closest to them — their own families.

Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry whose mother is Black and father is White, says there were “concerns and conversations” within the royal family about how dark their unborn son Archie’s skin would be. Buckingham Palace later issued a statement saying Meghan’s allegations were being “taken very seriously,” while Prince William, Meghan’s brother-in-law, told a reporter, “We’re very much not a racist family.”

But Meghan’s remarks have been followed with interest by multiracial people, some of whom told Appradab they have endured similar comments from relatives.

Racial prejudice between family members is not uncommon

Family relationships across races can add another layer of complication for people who are already straddling two or more worlds.

In the US, a vast majority of multiracial people — roughly 90% — say they have not been mistreated by a relative or extended family member because of their mixed-race background, according to a 2015 Pew study.

But it does happen, and to some racial groups more than others. For example, the Pew study found that 21% biracial adults who are White and Black say they have been treated badly by a relative because of their racial background.

And when the day after Meghan’s interview with Oprah one London woman tweeted, “I don’t think the racism mixed race kids face from their own families is discussed enough,” it sparked more than 137,000 likes and a long thread of comments by mixed-race people sharing hurtful experiences.

The woman, Kemah Bob, tells Appradab she sent that tweet after talking to friends who have parents from different backgrounds.

“I’ve heard stories about the ways they’ve been hurt or cast out by their families,” she says. “I can’t imagine experiencing racism from within my own home — from people who say they love me.”

Appradab also spoke to half a dozen multiracial people who said they’ve been mistreated by their own family members.

Some did not want to be identified for fear of straining family relationships, but described hostile upbringings that included their parents being ostracized by other relatives for having children with someone outside their race. One man said his grandparent would call his phone to hurl expletives at him, bringing him to tears.

Anderson, the mixed-race Maine woman, was raised by her mother and grandmother in Milo, a town that hosted a Ku Klux Klan parade in the 1920s.

Some of her White family members disowned her mother because of “race mixing,” she says. Another relative called her father the “Black bastard.”

“Racism lets you know right away that you are not White,” she says. “My Blackness stood out and was rare where I grew up, so it has always been a big part of my identity.”

Multiracial people can struggle to fit in on both sides of their family

Sharon Metzger, 28, was raised by a White father and a Zambian mother. Her parents met after her father’s Peace Corps stint in the southern African country of Lesotho.

They later moved to Arizona and Maryland before setting in Fishers, Indiana, where she lives. Her biggest challenge was trying to fit in both her parents’ worlds, she said.

Her Zambian family described her as a “Point Five,” a term implying you’re 0.5, or a half of one race, and commonly used to refer to biracial people in Africa.

Trying to determine her identity as a child without making either of her parents feel left out added to the confusion.

“As a teenager I felt like ‘the other,’ ‘ she says. “I’ve gotten so tired of answering the ‘so you’re Black and … ?’ So now I state ‘I’m Black’ and I do so proudly.”

While she was growing up, Metzger says a relative from her White side would openly lament why her father went to Africa. Metzger has two younger half-brothers whose mother is from Senegal.

“She would say, ‘I wish you never went to Africa. You should have stayed in the states,’ ” Metzger says. “If he didn’t (go) the three of us wouldn’t exist.”

She says other family members used to describe her hair as too wild and constantly asked her to apply relaxer on it.

“I was hurt, annoyed and frustrated,” she says. “It’s almost as if you’re at fault for being biracial. I didn’t like my hair for a long time, especially during childhood and adolescence.”

Over time, Metzger says she’s learned to accept herself but steers clear of some family members on both sides.

“I usually just kinda keep to myself. I’m at the point where if they’re not over it, it’s their loss,” she says. “It’s better for my mental health, plus I’m figuring out who I am as a person and trying to make my own meaning of what a Black woman is.”

Racism can be difficult for families to talk about

Joy Hepp is White and the mother of a 3-year-old girl. The Los Angeles woman is expecting a second child with her Haitian partner, who is Black.

As the daughter of a half-Mexican mother, Hepp grew up surrounded by a rich mix of Latin culture. She also knows the power of representation after growing up with a sister who had blonde hair and blue eyes.

Hepp is preparing to help her children navigate a multiracial world, one that she believes will be complicated by racism. That’s one of the reasons she paid close attention to Meghan’s interview.

And she took notes on the subsequent conversations.

“I know at the end of the day, my kids will be seen as Black,” Hepp says. “You have to open your eyes to what factors are in place. Their father and I, and the community around them, we’re working to raise them into strong productive and confident individuals.”

Hepp says one of her biggest challenges has been convincing her White relatives that her daughter and unborn child will face challenges due to their racial background.

“There’s a lot of disbelief, like, ‘oh no,’ like, ‘that can’t be true.’ Just being in denial about systemic racism that exists,” she says. “How do we move forward as a country if people — even family — don’t acknowledge it?”

Cassi Moghan can relate. Her birth mother was White and father was Black, and she was adopted into a White family at age 2.

Her racial background was a taboo that her family refused to talk about, she says. While she was not called names because of her race, she says the silence around her heritage was just as painful.

“I didn’t really grow up discussing racism very much as it all seemed too complicated and painful for everyone,” says Moghan, 56, who was born in England and now lives in Athens, Greece.

Moghan believes confronting White family members about their racism can be harder than calling out a friend or colleague. But she hopes conversations such as Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah will help push issues of race within families more into the open.

“Hearing more experiences from people like ourselves can only help others not feel as lonely as I felt,” she says.

It’s one reason multiracial people around the world are following Meghan’s clash with her royal in-laws. If she can bare her pain and emerge stronger, maybe they can, too.

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picardonhealth · 4 years ago

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How will the pandemic end? Not with a moment of triumph we’ll all remember, but with a slow whimper we’ll soon forget

Don’t expect civilization to return to normal in 2021 with a V-Day-like emotional catharsis. Focus on the small signs of hope – and the things we can do to prevent anything like this from happening again

André Picard, The Globe and Mail

Tuesday, January 05, 2021

André Picard is a health columnist for The Globe and Mail. His new book Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic will be published in March.

This is the way the pandemic ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Apologies to T.S. Eliot aside, the most likely scenario in the coming months is not world-ending catastrophe, but something more banal: More and more people getting vaccinated, followed by a gradual easing of public health restrictions, a rising tide of indifference and a petering out of one of the worst threats to global health the world has seen in a century.

“There won’t be a V-day where everyone runs into the streets and hugs,” said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health of the University of Toronto. “Just a gradual return to normal, but not normal-normal.”

Casual hugs, public celebrations and other indiscriminate mingling are still a long ways off. Masks, physical distancing, limits on gatherings and travel restrictions will be with us for the foreseeable future.

History tells us that pandemics don’t have Hollywood endings. The denouement tends to be slow and messy and COVID-19 will certainly be no exception.

The two big unknowns are the willingness of the public to get their shots, and the durability of immunity.

A lot will depend on how quickly we can get vaccines into people’s arms – and Canada doesn’t appear to be acting with much urgency on that count. Some provinces, such as Ontario, stopped or slowed the vaccine rollout during the holiday period, and some also held back stock to save it for second doses. Both policies have been reversed.

“The vaccine has given people a lot of hope,” Dr. Tuite said. “But whether we will reach herd immunity is still an open question. And if there’s a hiccup with the vaccines, all bets are off.”

Initially, it was estimated that 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the population would need to be vaccinated to make it difficult for the coronavirus to continue spreading – that elusive target called herd immunity. Now, because of more infectious variants, scientists are saying the target needs to be in the 80 per cent to 90 per cent range – which would be unprecedented with an adult vaccine.

Despite their loud, social-media-amplified voices, few people are actually anti-vaccination, and those who have doubts tend to become less hesitant as they see their peers roll up their sleeves. But there are many structural hurdles.

“The systems we have are designed to vaccinate kids. Getting beyond 50 to 60 per cent of adults will be really, really hard,” said Noni MacDonald, a professor of pediatrics at Dalhousie University in Halifax and vaccinologist who has worked for decades in global health.

The numerous challenges, she said, include vaccine hesitancy, hard-to-reach populations, weak public health infrastructure and the fact that, so far, the vaccines approved in Canada require ultracold storage (the Pfizer vaccine is stored at minus 70 C and the Moderna one at minus 20 C, and both must be used quickly after being thawed). Each of the existing vaccines also requires two shots to be fully effective. The third coronavirus vaccine to hit the market could resolve some of the daunting logistics problems as it can be stored in refrigerators already used for vaccines and may even require only one shot. Canada has ordered 20 million doses from AstraZeneca, but the vaccine has not yet received regulatory approval in Canada.

“We’ve only just begun to vaccinate and it will just get harder,” Dr. MacDonald said. “And, of course, the last mile will be the hardest mile.”

That’s just distribution. The immunology part of the puzzle is just as rife with potential complications.

Among those who are inoculated, the big question is: Will they be protected from infection for life – or at least for a few years? Similarly, are those who were infected by coronavirus at risk of reinfection? No one knows, and the only way to really answer those questions is with time and surveillance. It doesn’t feel like we have a lot of the former, and we’ve not done particularly well at the latter.

We’re all anxious to put 2020, the annus horribilis supremus, behind us. But the reality is that we’ve reached, at best, the halfway point of the pandemic. Not to mention that the collateral damage – everything from lingering mental-health wounds to staggering public debt – will be felt for years to come.

“In my experience with regional epidemics, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is they always last longer than we think,” said Joanne Liu, a Canadian pediatric emergency physician and former international president of Médecins sans frontières.

“Infectious diseases are humbling at the best of times but what really matters in epidemics, or a pandemic, is the human factor, and no one can predict how people will behave in the coming months,” Dr. Liu said.

We can model different scenarios – how infections, hospitalizations and deaths will evolve over time. But we can’t model human behaviour. It’s the wild card in every prediction and plan.

What we do know is that a good chunk of the public seems to be getting sick and tired of restrictions – eager to return to work in the office, to go to the movies and to resume Tinder dating, while others want stricter rules, at least in the short term. Perhaps “more divided about the necessity of lockdowns” is a better way to put it.

Yet, when it comes to COVID-19, the lessons delivered time and time again have been: Impatience can be deadly. So, too, can hesitating to act.

To date, there have been more than 82 million infections in the world, and roughly 1.8 million deaths.

Canada is closing in on 600,000 cases and COVID-19 has claimed more than 15,000 lives here, making it the third leading cause of death in 2020.

By all appearances, the carnage is going to continue through the winter, whether vaccines are effective or not.

In fact, based on the trend lines of infections, hospitalizations and deaths, there is every reason to believe that the coming months will be the darkest yet – especially if we see a spike in new cases related to holiday gatherings, as occurred after Thanksgiving.

“I hate to say it, but this is far from over,” Dr. MacDonald said. “Many people have fallen ill and died, and many more are going to fall ill and die.”

But if the vaccination rollout goes smoothly, and the vaccine works relatively well, we should be able to breathe a bit by summer – maybe even dream of barbecues and baseball again.

Still, vaccinating 37 million people in Canada will take time, never mind seven billion around the globe.

As vaccination numbers rise, the way coronavirus spreads will also be altered. We can expect fewer large waves of illness, but more sporadic ripples concentrated in unvaccinated populations. Infectious disease experts predict the coronavirus is likely to become endemic, lurking about for years, maybe even sparking seasonal spikes of illness, much like the flu.

Global disparities will become more glaring. Countries with 13 per cent of the world’s population have already gobbled up more than half of all the vaccines available. (Canada alone has purchased 429 million doses of seven vaccines, enough to vaccinate our population six times over, and it isn’t clear how it will distribute the excess.)

“It’s like being invited to a feast but the LMIC [low- and middle-income countries] are at the kids’ table, waiting to get the leftovers,” Dr. Liu said.

She also warned that this “me first” attitude is counterproductive – that until coronavirus spread is tamped down everywhere, the threat remains for everyone.

As much as anything, the pandemic has laid bare disparities in society, even in wealthy countries.

In Canada, the most glaring failure has been in eldercare. More than 10,000 of the 15,000 deaths across the country have been in retirement homes and long-term care facilities, and the way others have been locked away is a testament to the ageism ingrained in social policies.

The pandemic has also hit women – especially working moms – particularly hard, setting back progress against gender inequality by years, if not decades. Correcting this requires, among other things, making accessible, affordable child care a public-policy priority.

COVID-19 has also forced us to recognize the importance of low-paid workers to a functioning society. If we don’t hike wages for essential workers (and not just temporarily), make benefits such as paid sick days mandatory, find ways to extend employment insurance benefits to the gig workers and the self-employed, and improve the work environment more generally, we will have workplace issues that extend well beyond the pandemic.

The Canada Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB), one of the most important initiatives taken by government during this public health crisis, brought some financial relief to 4.7 million workers, making it probably the world’s biggest pilot project on basic income. If it doesn’t spark a serious conversation about reforming social welfare, we will have missed an important opportunity.

The postpandemic period will also seriously test the resiliency of the health system. Surgeries are backed-up, patients with chronic illnesses are feeling ignored and front-line workers are burned out. No one knows what impact COVID-19 stress and trauma will have on the population’s mental health or how our medicare system, which has long neglected mental health, will cope.

“When there is a public health crisis, there is always a huge hangover, especially on health systems,” Dr. Liu said.

Going forward, the biggest political challenge will be addressing the many social and economic wounds that have been exposed.

There is much talk of silver linings, but those will only come to fruition if governments, businesses and individuals act on the lessons learned.

“Hopefully the vaccine will not be an excuse to not do all the things that need doing,” Dr. Tuite said.

Meanwhile, she said, the challenge of coronavirus will remain, maybe for many years. Eradication is unlikely, even with the best vaccines. Let’s not forget that only one human disease, smallpox, has been eradicated, and that happened more than 200 years after a vaccine. (Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox inoculation in 1796, and it was declared eradicated, thanks to vaccination, in 1980.)

The push to eradicate polio has not stalled for lack of vaccines, but because of complex geopolitics and socio-economic realities.

The best-case scenario is that SARS-CoV-2 becomes another seasonal coronavirus (there are seven known to infect humans) that causes only limited illness. A worst-case scenario is that it continues to mutate and returns every fall in different strains, similar to influenza, but more deadly. We’ve not been great in dealing with the coronavirus as an acute illness; would we do any better if it were a chronic problem?

At a certain point the world will also decide, through its actions, what level of death is “acceptable.” Tuberculosis still kills 1.5 million people a year, AIDS 700,000, malaria 400,000, and so on, and we barely bat an eye. When COVID-19 stops being a threat to wealthy countries, will it stop being a public health priority, as is the case with so many other infectious diseases?

As the immediate danger fades, we need to have a national plan beyond “reopen quickly.” It is not sufficient to have a schedule for vaccinating the population; we need to articulate a clear end game and how exactly we are going to “build back better,” as the political rhetoric goes.

When the epidemiological end of the pandemic occurs, likely not until 2022 at the earliest, we will only be starting to deal in earnest with the fallout.

A significant aspect of the recovery needs to include preparing for the next pandemic, which will no doubt pose new challenges. As the World Health Organization cautioned in its year-end briefing: This pandemic is “not necessarily the big one.”

Dr. MacDonald said we’ve learned a lot from COVID-19, but we have to be ready and willing to apply those lessons. “There will be other pandemic threats so we can’t afford to forget too quickly, as we have done in the past.”

The biggest challenge will be our short memories.

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spiritualesoterichighlevel · 5 years ago

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Enlightenment Issues

In 1974 Hans Burgschmidt was sixteen years old, living in the Canadian Prairies, working in a photography studio darkroom, elbow-deep in chemicals all day long. "Is this what life is about?" he asked a high school friend. "You need to meditate," was the reply.

Not long after, Hans attended a lecture at the local library, where a man in a suit spoke about the scientific benefits of relaxation. He pressed Play on the industrial-sized U-Matic video player and there was Maharishi Mahesh, the Indian yogi who initiated the Beatles into the mysteries of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and launched the meditation careers of thousands of Western devotees.

"An infinite ocean of peace and love and happiness awaits you," said the radiant Maharishi, with his flowing hair and his garland of flowers. "What's not to like?" Hans thought, and got in touch with a local TM chapter.

Soon after he began his meditation practice, exactly as advertised, he found himself transported from his parent's basement into a shimmering inner space of light and colour and bliss. "Eventually you get so expanded and the mantra becomes so refined that you are taken to the silent source of thought – it was wonderful."

Hans was hooked. Next, he enrolled himself in advanced courses and in the late 70s he left for Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, hoping to become a teacher.

But somewhere along the line Hans became disenchanted. Maybe it was the dubious "levitation" training, or the dogmatism of his fellow teachers, or the "almost abusive" way the school administrator overworked their staff. "The discrepancies between what was promised and what was really happening kept growing," Hans told me. "Eventually I had to move on."

Thus began Hans' long career as an itinerant spiritual seeker. He hit all the New Age mainstays: Osho and then Da Free John in the 80's, trance channeling and primal scream therapy and past life regression in the 90's.

But the same pattern of finding the limits of the guru or the practices kept repeating itself. Finally in 2006 he met a teacher he could trust – one of my own teachers, in fact – the Buddhist scholar and future neuroscience-consultant Shinzen Young. "No BS, real down to earth, just an ordinary guy teaching a well-crafted version of techniques that have been tested by Buddhists for thousands of years."

The technique was vipassana, one important – and increasingly popular – aspect of which is known as "mindfulness."

"I found it invigorating," says Hans. "It was much more active than other techniques I had learned, I could feel the power of it."

The Shadow Side of Meditation

Everything was fine, until three weeks after his first retreat, when, in Hans' words, "something changed." My sense," says Hans, "is the technique precipitated something that was already there. I mean I had done a lot of meditating in other traditions by then. They softened me up. Whatever the case, I don't think it could have turned out any other way."

Hans was at home making his bed, when the room suddenly appeared "very far away." But the room hadn't changed; he had. The part of Hans that had once looked out at the world, the core we take for granted as the "self", had without any warning disappeared.

To understand what happened to Hans, you need to understand something about how meditation works in general, and vipassana in particular. Most meditation techniques are designed to shift a person's orientation from a limited personal identity to the broader ground of their experience.

Vipassana does this by deliberately and systematically untangling the different strands that make up our sense of self and world; in the Pali language (the ancient Indian scriptural dialect of Buddhism) the word "vipassana" means "seeing into" or "seeing through."

Practicing vipassana, you have more space to make appropriate responses, and more space, too, around your looping thought-track, which can dramatically reduce stress and anxiety as well as raise a person's baseline levels of happiness and fulfillment.

This is one reason why mindfulness has become the technique of choice for thousands of clinicians and psychotherapists, and there is now a considerable body of scientific research demonstrating these and other benefits.

Yet most of the clinicians who so enthusiastically endorse mindfulness do not have a proper understanding of where it can lead. The fact is that mindfulness in large doses can penetrate more than just your thoughts and sensations; it can see right through to the very pith of who you are – or rather, of who you are not.

Because, as Buddhist teachers and teachers from many other contemplative traditions have long argued, on close investigation there doesn't appear to be any deeper "you" in there running the show. "You" are just a flimsy identification process, built on the fly by your grasping mind — a common revelation in meditation that happens to be compatible with the views of many contemporary neuroscientists.

In fact, the classic result of a successful vipassana practice is to permanently recognize the impermanence (anicca), the selflessness (anatta), and the dualistic tension or suffering (dukkha) of all experience, which may sound like an Ibsen play, but this is the clear empirical understanding that many otherwise sensible practitioners report.

For most people this shift is the most profoundly positive experience of their lives. In the words of Shinzen Young, "it allows a person to live ten times the size they would have lived otherwise, it frees them from most worries and concerns, it gives them a quality of absolute freedom and repose."

But once in a while, something goes wrong. In Buddhism this is known as falling into "the pit of the void." Young is more modern: "Psychiatrists call it Depersonalization and De-realization Disorder, or DP/DR. I call it 'Enlightenment's evil twin'."

For Hans, what began as confusion and disorientation led within a few hours to extreme panic. The emptiness was ominous – in his words, a "deficient void." One moment the world seemed far away, the next it was too present, a "barrage" of overwhelming sensations. "It was like I had no protective filter or skin – sounds and sights became incredibly abrasive.

Hearing the phone ring was like someone running a thousand volts of electricity through me. I also had feelings of being stretched and twisted inside out, like I was morphing into some kind of animal. I had no idea what was happening – I thought maybe I was getting premature Alzheimer's."

Over the next few months Hans spent hours with Young on the phone, but despite the counseling, none of his symptoms went away – if anything, he says, the selflessness, the rawness of sensations and the associated fears became even more disconcerting. One by one, all the meaningful parts of Hans' life dropped away: his love of photography, of art, even his sex drive.

"I lost my will to do anything – none if it had any meaning. You could say that I no longer understood existence. I would wake up in the morning and go 'OK, this is my body, this is me, and I guess I'm doing this but I no longer understood it. I no longer understood agency, what makes other bodies move, what animates life.

Sometimes there was a wondrous quality to this bafflement – I felt the awe and the mystery – but most of the time it was aimless and tormenting."

Was Hans experiencing a slow-motion nervous breakdown unrelated to his meditation practice? Or was the experience of depersonalization triggered by meditation?

He was able, just barely, to keep working, although he says he has no idea how he was able to do this since, in his words, "I often couldn't understand what people were saying – all I would hear is the weird texture of their speech patterns, there was no meaning to any of it."

His own responses, too, came as a surprise. "At times I would hear myself speaking and I had no idea where the words were coming from or what they meant. I felt like an imposter."

The Dark Night of the Soul

Hans is not alone. If the very real benefits of mindfulness add up to the good-news mental health story of our time, then, like so many good things, there is also a shadowy seam, an experience known popularly as the Dark Night, after the writings of the famous Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross.

More meditators and practitioners are beginning to speak openly about the challenges associated with practice. The importance of this cannot be overstated, for there are those in the scientific community who believe that taking these reports seriously may one day provide key insights into both mental illness, and the mystery of contemplative transformation. They may in fact be very different expressions of a single underlying dynamic.

Some researchers are already studying this. Willoughby Britton is a meditator and a clinical psychologist at Brown University. After encountering some of this difficult territory herself, she began an ambitious research project to document the full range of phenomena that can happen as a result of practice. The initiative is called "The Varieties of Contemplative Experience".

Over the past three years, Britton and her colleagues have conducted detailed interviews with over forty senior Buddhist (and some non-Buddhist) teachers and another forty or so practitioners about challenges they've either experienced themselves, or, in the case of teachers, seen in their students.

The study's current research design cannot answer the question of what percentage of practitioners run into problems, although Britton did tell me that serious complications that require inpatient psychiatric hospitalization probably affect less than one percent of meditators. "Milder, more chronic symptoms," she says, "will be higher – but no one knows how high."

The full range of symptoms, from mild to intense, include headaches, panic, mania, confusion, hallucinations, body pain and pressure, involuntary movements, the de-repression of emotionally-charged psychological material, extreme fear and – perhaps the central feature – the dissolution of the sense of self.

But, as she reports in a recent interview, the most surprising finding for Britton has been the duration of impairment, which she defines as the inability of an adult to work or take care of children.

"We've been deliberately looking for worst-case scenarios, so I expect this number will go down as we get more data, but right now we are finding that people in these experiences are affected for an average of three years, with a range of six months to twelve years."

Britton has found that two demographics seem to be affected more than other: young men aged eighteen to thirty, who, in the way of young men, go for months-long retreats in Asia and pursue hardcore practice and log ten to twenty hours of meditation a day. "We had to create a "Zealotry Scale" says Britton, dryly, "it was such a major predictor."

The other large group, she says, is middle-aged women. "These ladies have been going to, say, Spirit Rock Meditation Centre for last ten to twenty years, have a nice hour-a-day practice, and then seven or ten years into it something happens."

The situation is complicated by the fact that a period of difficulty is actually a perfectly normal part of many meditation practices. A well-meaning therapist might label this pathological, when what might be more helpful to the "patient" is guidance from an experienced meditation teacher.

Within vipassana traditions, some classic texts talk about the "dukkha ñanas" – challenging stages that are actually a sign of progress. These are a natural response to the layer of mind being exposed; with a teacher's help, the student can move through their Dark Night in a matter of days or hours. Indeed, some teachers argue that the skills practitioners acquire in coping with these passages are often the very ones that allow them to progress to more liberating stages of the path.

Shinzen Young writes, "It is certainly the case that almost everyone who gets anywhere with meditation will pass through periods of negative emotion, confusion, disorientation, and heightened sensitivity to internal and external arisings. The same thing can happen in psychotherapy and other growth modalities. For the great majority of people, the nature, intensity, and duration of these kinds of challenges is quite manageable."

According to Young, the real Dark Night occurs when, as in Hans' case, a practitioner has difficulty integrating insight into selflessness. This is something he says he has only ever seen a few times in his four decades of teaching.

Perhaps surprisingly, Britton's research has so far not revealed any clear associations between meditation-related difficulties and prior psychiatric or trauma history. Problems can occur in individuals with no identifiable red flags; conversely, individuals with multiple red flags (bipolar disorder, trauma history, and so on) can do intensive retreats without any difficulties whatsoever.

"We have to be careful," Britton told me, "about jumping to conclusions and excluding people prematurely from meditation's possible benefits. My personal opinion is that the place where we need most help is not in identifying at-risk people so much as improving support systems."

Britton gets two to three emails a week from people looking for help, so this is something she thinks a lot about. "Just talking about the experience with someone and hearing that none of it is new … this has a hugely positive effect on people.

That's eighty percent of what needs to happen. Just normalizing the experience." To that end, she has already founded both a space and a website to provide resources for practitioners in need, and also to educate teachers and clinician about the full range of meditation' effects.

"Length of impairment is directly related to how much access the student has to a good teacher. Many of the people I've spoken to have been through dozens of therapists and meditation instructors and most have no idea what to do."

Young has his own techniques for helping meditators work with Dark Night phenomena. Hans adds one more: serious fitness. "Pilates, weight-training, yoga – I now do it all. For me, I finally figured out that I needed to integrate these changes into my physical body. Ultimately this is what turned the corner for me."

Seven years after his drop into the pit of the void, Hans is arriving at a better place. Not a normal place, mind you – and here his laugh is a bit hysterical: "What's normal? I still live in emptiness and wake up every morning with no idea who I am."

But he no longer gets panic attacks, or feels ten thousand volts of electricity irradiate his senses every time the phone rings. His sex drive has returned, and with it a new longing for a relationship. He also has a strong interest in helping others manage similar problems.

"So much of it is about patience," he says. Over the past seven years, the words of one teacher kept circling around in his head: "If life gives you nothing you want and is not on your own terms, would you still have the generosity to show up for it?" There's no easy "yes" to that question.

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grayembers · 8 years ago

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I keep meaning to make a life update post for old friends here, but I wanted to wait until it was all good news instead of mixed, but I’m just gonna accept that won’t happen and update people anyway!

tl;dr I’m graduating with a master’s in computer science soon, job hunting sucks, theses suck don’t do grad school, I play a disgusting amount of Overwatch, and my cat is still super fluffy and great

Still together with Austin, and maybe going to visit him after I graduate. ouo He’s a constant good presence in my life, and it’s really made me realize what healthy relationships are like lmao. Hindsight is 20/20. But yee he humors all my OT3 plotting and I get to listen to him geek out about musicals recently, it’s very cute. C:

I also have a great set of local friends here, although now I’m worried what’ll happen when I move away for a job. And one of them has been studying abroad this semester so I’ve barely seen her. But they’re all A+ people and we like to play board games and I’ve even dabbled in DnD with them.

We had a stray cat in the house for a few months last semester/into winter, but we finally found a foster group willing to take him in and look for a home even though he had FIV and is kinda old. He was definitely going to die if we hadn’t taken him in, even continued vet care and being indoors only couldn’t really cure his upper respiratory infection. My friend/housemate Michelle was pretty sad to see him go, he was kinda hers even though she knew she couldn’t realistically keep a cat right now. ;o;

I waste a lot of time playing games. Overwatch is my coping mechanism for depression, I hit level 600+ recently it’s pretty pathetic. I do some comp in mid plat, and I’ve actually made a nice set of friends to play with as well. One who happens to go to this same school (I guess we started playing together through friends of friends, but those middle links don’t play anymore) and some elsewhere. So I’m actually on Discord a lot for game reasons! And GrayEmbers#1544, happy to play with friends.

Ooh, I also bought Oxygen Not Included (and convinced Austin to) the other week, which is Klei’s new game - the company that did Don’t Starve. It’s in super early alpha so tons of bugs, but I’m excited to see it grow just like I did with Don’t Starve. So much future content, and I already like it as it is.

I’m trying to shift some of my time-wasting activities to drawing and writing instead of Overwatch. Especially when I find I’m just playing and not having fun. Drew a few things recently, and have had Ryker/Veronica/Christine AU fic in the works since February (and post shit regularly on the side blog), and I’ve really been enjoying renewed character activity with Austin’s newer courier and a friend of Silt’s! Nyl/Red Lucy is the real OTP. Also, I’ve almost convinced two irl friends to play FNV, they’re probly sick of hearing me talk about it lmfao. It’ll always have a special place in my heart.

School happens. Somehow I’m going to be allowed to graduate in a few months without contributing anything useful to the world. I feel like the only thing I really learned in grad school was how academia works, so as far as Computer Science goes, I wouldn’t recommend it unless your endgoal is research or academia. Don’t get me wrong, I took some neat classes and read some really cool research, but I’d already learned most of my hard skills from undergrad so. shrugs. My research I’m being paid to do this academic year involves taking technology into hiking or outdoor settings, and I’m focusing especially on the cultural aspects of it. For example, people react very differently to a person reading a book in nature versus looking at a phone screen in nature when in reality that person could be reading an e-book, they have no idea.

Things are kind of rough again mental health wise, but I dug this hole myself by procrastinating on my thesis which I now have to write in 1.5 months, so. I want to die a lot of the time but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. But if anyone is up for ramming me with their car going 60, hmu literally.

Jobs will probably happen?? I don’t have anything lined up yet and my interests pull me in like 10 directions, but I’m looking pretty seriously into UX design stuff and possibly contracting work in tech. Dream job is still to work with virtual reality and/or gesture interfaces, but that didn’t happen in grad school (partially my own fault partially shitty circumstances) so I don’t know if I have the right qualifications.

Can’t wait to move somewhere and have a job with set hours and get more pets and build a new computer because I can. ;~; (No idea where yet, I just know I don’t want to go any farther south because summer is the worst.)

My older brother is getting married in November, which’ll be my third wedding of the year lol. And my Dad and stepmom moved back to the states from China! They’re in Baltimore, I’ve gone to see them once already and probably will again on the tail end of a friend’s wedding. Their dog is super cute holy shit.

Okay now that I’ve lost 90% of readers, I also lowkey wanted to mention I had top surgery over winter break, which you might be able to tell from the two selfies above. If you happen to know me irl but hadn’t heard yet, please keep it to yourself. I still identify as female and use female pronouns, but I’m absolutely loving my new chest and so happy that I saved up for it. ;u; If you’re a mutual and wanna ask particulars or about the process or anything, feel free to message me privately.

Actually, I’ve been meaning to start exercising or something because there’s actually a chance now I can completely like my body shape lmfao. Stress eating is too real though

#these are actually old Fletch pics but I don't believe I've posted them so #Fletcher #me I guess #I feel like there's a dozen paragraphs without any real substance #how does one summarize a year in one post

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neuroma-neuroses · 8 years ago

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Repeat this three times fast: translabyrinthine resection for an acoustic neuroma

Here’s the bit of this whole brain tumour adventure I was really dreading: actually getting the bloody thing out.

Reuben and I got married two weeks after I was told my tumour wasn’t malignant, an emotional feat in itself. The statistical improbability of a tumour I’d had for at least ten years becoming symptomatic during my wedding is mind-boggling. The neurosurgeons had given me hardcore steroids to reduce the swelling on my brain, but I delayed taking them before the wedding as they could have nasty side-effects. Gargantuan, messy, vain mistake. I spent my wedding night in the emergency room, vomiting up champagne and hors d'oeuvre due to brain swelling. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to change out of my wedding dress before this adventure.

After a flurry of CT scans and terse conversations with my neurosurgical team, they confirmed my swelling had gotten worse and were unsure about signing me off to travel for my honeymoon. An agreement was eventually reached, whereby I acknowledged the danger of travelling to a far-distant land cast back many decades in medical technology known as ‘New Zealand’. I spent much of my honeymoon guzzling anti-nausea medication, unable to sleep due to the steroids and dreaded the ending of the trip. I knew that as soon as I got back, the cogs would begin to turn and the surgery would be close at hand.

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During our honeymoon, we went to Wanaka’s Puzzling World, which had its own tilted room. As a preface to the room, they had a huge sign saying IF YOU HAVE BALANCE ISSUES, DO NOT ATTEMPT THE TILTED ROOM. Well, I had a tumour on my balance nerve. What transpired was one of the weirdest sensations of my life. It felt like my head was on backwards. Reuben had the foresight to film it.

My mum called me the minute we landed, exalting that we were on Australian, tumour-eradicating soil once more. I steeled myself for the frantic phone call, telling me my surgery date.

Then...nothing.

The insurmountable wait before this huge surgery was harrowing from a mental health perspective, but not for the reason you’d expect. I was told my surgery was category one as the tumour had gotten so big it was pressing on my brainstem, but then faced a solid month with no contact from my medical team. I had cancelled all jobs, so I had nothing to distract me. The wait was excruciating.

I tried to keep myself busy, but by this point my tumour was interfering with my everyday life: I could barely walk, was constantly nauseated and dizzy so was mostly bed bound. As though my physical state wasn’t enough, my anxiety disorder decided life could get a bit spicier too. Anxiety is a physical manifestation of the fear that something bad is lurking off in the distance: sweaty palms, racing heart, shortness of breath, a dark shape moving in the water on the horizon. I knew something bad was around the corner, I just didn’t know when it would strike.

I called the hospital everyday; the admin people got sick of me pretty quickly. ‘No, we’ve not assigned your case yet. WE’LL contact YOU when it happens.’

I just sat at home all day, every day, too sick to move around much, willing that phone to ring with every cell in my body. I just wanted the surgery done and dusted, not as a looming spectral presence on the horizon. The pain of the wait seemed so much more intolerable than what I was about to go through.

Being creative seemed to take all my strength and happiness and I didn’t have any left. My picture book ideas were left half-finished, illustrations half-done. I cried to Reuben every day. I was unsure if the surgery was happening in months or a few short days. The cherry on top was the medication cocktail I had to take. The anti-inflammatory drug I was on, dexamethasone, increases cortisol in the body, so I was in perpetual fight or flight mode, one long, excruciating panic attack.

All of my medications for the acoustic neuroma, artfully placed. I call this piece ‘Having a Brain Tumour: My Pharmacist Now Knows Me By Sight’.

Finally, FINALLY, I got a call to meet the ENT team involved in the procedure.

The consultant was brusque and efficient in the way that people whose time is highly compensated seem to be. ‘Your chance of dying or stroke is 1 in 100,’ he told me point blank.

I had a big, gulpy cry in corridor outside his office, which he happened to walk in on. Reuben later told me that was good, ‘You convinced him you were taking it all seriously’. He was full of these inner workings of the mechanisms of the hospital, which were all highly political and cutthroat.

The cogs were finally in motion. Over next two weeks, I was at the hospital nearly everyday after a month of no contact: MRIs, CT scans, neuro meetings, MDT follow ups, clinic meetings, pre-admission clinic...it was never-ending. I sat in waiting rooms for over 30 hours. Finally, I got given a date: 17th of February.

That morning, I was oddly tranquil. I made a plant watering schedule for Reuben. I dressed in my favourite Gorman dress. My parents met me at the hospital at 6am, having gotten up at 4am to make it from their country house. My dad had died of a head-related cause ten years ago in the same hospital. I had to walk the same steps I had taken then through the hospital atrium, when the doctors had told us he could die at any time and I hadn’t wanted to be in the room for it.

In a waiting room, after barely a minute together with my family, I was saying goodbye to them. I had to change into a hospital gown. My rings were sticky-taped to my fingers. I was calm, joking with the nurse about how I didn’t drink or smoke. The bruque consultant appeared again and drew a big arrow on the right side of my neck, marking out the tumour.

It was only as I was wheeled into a small anteroom and the nurses began to congregate and talk to each other instead of me and I knew it was on. My breathing hitched up. The anesthesiologist misjudged his cannula. My blood was everywhere. He cast about wildly for a common topic to discuss as this all got mopped up.

‘Do you like dogs?’

I felt myself laugh-crying.

The hubbub around me ceased and I realised I was alone in the anteroom. If I were to be praying to a god to spare my life, this is when I’d do it, I thought. But I was too scared even for that.

The anesthesiologists returned and wheeled me into the surgical theatre, chatting about ice-bars. I tried to tell them about the amazing one in Queenstown. The next thing I remember is clasping each of my sisters’ hands as I lay in bed, then being very grumpy that someone had the audacity to take me from my comfy bed into a CT scan. I opened my eyes: everything was skewed 90 degrees anti-clockwise. I slept solidly for two days, finally awakening to be told it took 13 hours, had all gone okay but I’d lost my hearing.

I can barely remember the first fews days after surgery. I recall my mum being by my side always, I recall vomiting a lot (a cut balance nerve will do that to you). On the third day after the surgery, I was sitting up in bed and joking about the hospital food. I was discharged after five days.

Post op two days. So much blood and iodine!

I recuperated remarkably fast. I didn’t have any CSF leaks or major complications apart from them having to leave a portion of the tumour behind. I was particularly worried about the pain associated with the procedure and how wretched I would feel afterwards. Honestly, it was bearable and a lot less horrific than I expected. The wound on my stomach from the fat transfer used to patch the tumour resection has been the most painful surgical site!

My tummy post op week two. SO FLIPPING PAINFUL.

The after effects of the surgery have been more or less what I expected: my dizziness is still persistent like before the operation, but I’ve noticed that I’m not falling over every two steps anymore. Hopefully the dizziness will improve; I’m certainly doing enough physiotherapy! I’m adjusting to the hearing loss slowly, which isn’t helped by the fact that I have raging tinnitus in my dead ear.

I’ve observed the surgical after effects with the detached curiosity of a kid with a science experiment. Oh, I can only taste bitter things on my right side now? Weird! Only the right side of my face is aching like it has been bruised? Strange! I can only cry from one eye now? Cool!

One week post op

Two weeks

Three weeks feat. cat

One month

Five weeks

Apart from intermittent aching which is usually dulled by the painkillers I’m still on, the operation site itself has been numb for five weeks now, which feels very odd. It also feels strangely tight, like they didn’t spare me enough skin when they were stitching me up. I had trouble lifting and lowering my head and mentioned so to one of the ENT surgeons, who cheerfully rejoined that that specific muscle had to be cut the restitched during the surgery. I’d found this to be the most annoying surgical after effect; it feels like I have a painful neck crick if I engage that muscle in the slightest.

The brace that held my head in place for the 13 hours of the operation left painful indentations on my forehead which I’d read about in others’ accounts. In the first few days after the surgery, their pain annoyed me more than anything else. It looks like they may scar now.

One of the brace wounds. Annoying bugger.

I sustained a second degree facial paralysis during the surgery as the tumour was wrapped so tightly around my facial nerve they ended up leaving a bit in there to preserve it. The paralysis has nearly resolved itself! For a few weeks after the operation, my smile was very wonky. Now it’s only noticeable if I’m tired or putting lipstick.

Two weeks post op, wonky smile!

Five weeks post op, somewhat straight smile! Now, I need my dexamethasone chipmunk cheeks to deflate please.

The slow pace of recovery is also very boring to me. I thrive on stress, with a million plates in the air at all times, so having no purpose but to heal has been a very strange experience.Mostly I just feel like I’m recovering from a nasty flu; all wibbly and wonky and fatigued. I’m slowly picking up work again in my fifth week post op, but I’m being kind to myself and not adding too much pressure to get better right away.

#Acoustic Neuroma #Acoustic Schwannoma

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feralfens · 7 years ago

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students are nihilists and joke about wanting death here’s why

Considering the fact that it’s mental health week at HHS, it seems appropriate to draw attention to the blatant lack of dialogue about mental health happening. As someone who deals with a form of anxiety, possibly a form of depression and ADHD (type three) everyday, this is exasperating and expected. At some point in one’s school life the conclusion is met that no one actually cares if you okay or not; as long as you’re coming to school and showing up to class, no one cares. That's how it can be interpreted, anyways. The teachers won't notice anything until you say something.

Last week I emailed a teacher about something, and at the top, where you put the subject of the email, I had typed, “sorry if the spelling is off kinda having a panic attack”. This was because I was, in fact, coming down from having a panic attack, involving that teachers class. When I came to school the next day, the teacher asked about it and that was that. Unless something is pointed out, most people won’t notice it for themselves. Schools reward ignorance and conformity and punish knowledge and self awareness, as a sheep dog would a sheep. When a school feigns acknowledgement of a problem and so obviously doesn’t actual do so, it comes off as disrespectful and disheartening and can make a student feel as if they cannot speak to someone and get help for something as simple as stress.

Yeah, sure, they’ll have suicide prevention week, and even that’s an overproduction of things (made in the late 90s early 2000s, so it’s just terrible all together), but they barely touch on ways to help students not reach that tipping point of being so desperate for relief that self destructive habits aren’t enough and death seems like the best escape. They barely touch on how depression and anxiety works or that there’s more complicated version than those two caused by stress and the like. We are not taught symptoms of anxiety. The counselors are not here for our well being. We are cattle for which low profit is made off of; we’re not worth much in the eyes of our government.

(its a "but i digress, as usual" meme)

So much is expected and wanted from students: and because we live in an ableist society, the best way to learn about mental illness and healthy ways to cope (because honestly, getting help is a long shot) with such thing is from tumblr (no offense meant, but a tiny bit offense is meant). While it’s great to be able to talk and relate to people from so many different backgrounds, just coping isn’t always the best way of surviving. Everything could seem fine and be alright in ones life but it takes only one little thing to trigger (shut up) a panic attack or for someone to shut down. Many times I’ve found myself having to put earbuds in and turn up whatever music is playing (food and music are two things that I have few boundaries in taste) because my senses were being overloaded and if i didnt i would have lashed out from agitation (violently, with all probability). Come to find out sensory overload is a symptom of anxiety. Go figure.

In the eighth grade I learned that I had ADHD for my whole life and no one had thought to tell me this when I was younger when I had to take medication that induced an almost anorexic state on me because it apparently was the best way to keep me “focused” and “calm”. Really though, the meds, as I and my parents called the pills, mostly caused me to seem more like a wraith, less flesh eating and more wrathful corpse, in elementary school. So the decision was made that I needed to be pull off the meds. I’ve met plenty other students with ADHD and ADD, and some of them are or have been put on the medication. Most of them are unhealthily skinny. Anyways, I bring up this point because while they are not mental illnesses, they still affect mental health and are taken as seriously as a child telling an adult of something they love or something they find interesting.

What commonly is observed is someone seeing someone who has depression, anxiety, or something, and then they try to talk about it and are then told the usual “oh, then just do this!!” or “stop being so lazy” or “there’s nothing to worry about!!” or something like that. Let me tell you from experience, it sucks apples to hear these things, especially when you're aware that crying over something so simple is dumb and that it's not something to be shivering like a hypothermic from. Hearing someone tell you that they think they know you better and that “if you just do this you'll feel better!!”, “stop trying to get attention, you're okay”. Because no Helen, I’m not fine, someone with a giant gash on their thigh isn't fine and neither is someone with anxiety so bad that they rely on fingerless gloves or baggy long sleeve shirts and hoodies to keep from having panic attacks every other day.

While, yes, the school supports clubs and organizations such as JTD (journey to dream), those kinds of support systems, while working for some, can only work for so long for others, without accounting for the students who are too anxious to attend said organizations. Just surviving isn’t a permanent solution just as much as swimming to the surface and trying to stay afloat in the middle of the ocean. At some point professional help is the best option but, of course, it can be extremely difficult to get the help one needs. The behavior of schools promote students to not seek professional help, become asocial, have harder times forming relationships with others and such.

To pick back up on the topic of school counselors not being here for students well being and more just to advice and recommend which classes would be a good fit. Which doesn’t really qualify them as counselors, if we’re actually going by the definition of what a counselor is, (look at the definition),

and better qualify them as advisers; but of course why would we call it how it is, this is the public education system of the United States and sixteen territories of america, we don’t correctly call something by its name all the time.

Continuing on, its highly probable to say that there are barely, if any, core classes teaching about actual mental well being and disabilities that can develop in students. Heck, even some adults don’t know that anyone can have PTSD, not just veterans and soldiers. The stereotypes about these things, such as depression, anxiety, and their like, are damaging for the less informed, neurotypical and otherwise. Saying that a stereotype exists for a reason is assuming that an assumption isn’t dangerous, which is wrong, considering that most assumptions are the reason the USASTA began occupying middle eastern countries, among others.

For example, the stereotypes and assumptions of schizophrenia are, generally speaking, disgustingly wrong, myths one could even say. Which shouldn’t exist, since some students have knowledge that there is a high chance that they’ll develop schizophrenia and those myths do not help their situation. The stigmas are damaging and of course, like most stigmas, a

(credit to @asofterfan!!i hope its alright that put your art in here, i couldnt reallly find a picture of logan screaming falsehood so yours was the best option!!!)

And the same things that are observed in reactions to mental illnesses by the ableist neurotypical are also observed in people with physical problems as well. Whether it be pitying, condescending, or just plain disrespectful, it’s painfully obvious when these things happen. And we hate it. We see what's happening and it bugs us to no end.

Following up on the “being so desperate for relief that self destructive habits aren’t enough” comment i made, i’d like to clarify that i don’t just mean self harm. Im also referring to substance abuse since its not at all unlikely for someone who cannot get help to turn to abusing drugs and alcohol or something much more inappropriate that i’d get in trouble for mentioning.. Those are things that happen all the time. Literally, all. The time. Probably 3 or 4 people in here who do at least one of the aforementioned.

Oh, and of course, without fail, shall we not forget, yogurt apparently helps depression, as mentioned by the student council students in charge of announcing stuff….. This was announced the next week, after mental “health week”. Wow. just, wow, slow calm that one out with the sarcastic air of a very annoyed and caffeine deprived high school teacher fresh out of college. They’re probably not wrong, sometimes vitamin d is very helpful in getting out of one’s pit of depressive emotions; but, to quote my english one teacher from his farewell letter’s P.S quoting another dude, “the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing” -Joshua Harris. Someone should have told them that before they said it.

I don’t really know how to tie this all together, but because anymore of this rantish paper would probably be an abomination, to summarize in some sense: whether it is be because of district policy and curriculum, the general ignorance of the majority, or because humans are just that stupid, there’s an uncomforting amount of stigmas and stereotypes about mental health and mental disorders and illnesses that make trying to live and keep in check such things harder than being forced to roll a boulder up a hill for the rest of eternity, not to mention the biases and denial of the existence said disorders and illnesses because “oh, i’ve never dealt with it so it must be a made up thing!!!!” or “oh just stop being sad, think happy,” “you can cure it by thinking happy thought!!” or the ever famous, “but your life is so perfect!! You have nothing to be sad about!!!”. Shut up, helen, feeling like trash isn't just restricted to people of color and those in poverty and 3rd world countries.

I haven’t even touched base with all the others on the list of mental “disorders” and illnesses, but let me tell you that if i did this thing would be a book. To paraphrase aaron burr from lin manuel miranda’s hamilton “[insert depression, anxiety and the like that best works for you] doesn’t discriminate, between the sinners and the saints, it exhibits no restraint, it takes and it takes”. Waiting for the change of minds is not worth it, so i’m not throwing away my shot to point out these flaws, throwing verbal rocks at these mediocrities. Anyways, the education system of the USASTA is trash and has a crap ton of problems, but currently it concerns me that all except a few schools barely take any notice, if even care about the mental state of their student populous, but that's the kind of country this is and i dislike it. This problem needs to be addressed and solved. (Also to heck with Bush for creating “no child left behind” because standardized testing doesn't work.)

sorry for the 1845 word essay on why im angry most of the time. feel free to correct and/add on. also sorry if i got anything wrong.

#writing #mental health #fight me

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thewordonmainstreet · 6 years ago

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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: I Tried To Work Again And Then They Ended Me

Another retail job, another experience of being ended by my co-workers. You know it’s not so much the customers that cause trouble in retail jobs, it’s the people you work with. Well it happened again and it was a manager that led the campaign to take me out. You know, I’m so tired of the game. Just so tired of working with babies who are mentally still in high school.

I landed a job at the end of April after a grueling one year of persistent searching. Bullied out of jobs 4 times before, I was felled by the millenial rule in this one on the day of my birth. I’m shaken to the core and once again and just as I had made myself vulnerable again, I was swiftly rejected by a world that once again didn’t understand me and never made the effort to. I gave this job my all and I considered it a gift. Even at just 17 hours a week, I took pride in going in and working hard every minute. I never stopped cleaning or tasking. I loved learning about the different meats and some of the textures of them were so satisfying to the touch. I dreamed of making my own expansive charcuterie board as I learned about the array of salamis. I loved the prepared salad and cheese selection for it placed me in a world of something high on my list of faves: cheese and so much of it. I was so relieved to be working. I was given closing shifts and made sure I cleaned like it was opening day. I desperately wanted to make my manager proud of me and my customers to love me. I loved those customers, not one of them was rude to me. It was like I had won the retail job lottery. The moment I felt safe, it began. A manager took great offense to me telling her she had a healthy lunch, stomped out of the room and began talking about me. She would ignore me from then forward or seem very hurt when replying as I greeted her. A very slight “hi” or “I’m fine, I guess”. It was obvious we had bad blood but what did I ever do? I guess I triggered this obvious millenial manager. She just chose not to like me even though I tried to get to know her. Whispers, giggles and private conversations took place that I knew were about me. She began to turn people against me as she talked to them and never let me into the conversation but just moved away when I approached. She even participated in the bullying, yes, she did. She laughed and was a fool just like her younger staff were when they would mob bully me. Yes, Cheryl Abbott you led and conspired to take me out. YOU need to be ousted for ruining my reputation and ending my job. Everything came undone just like my emotions on the day I decided that I’ve been had. The whole bakery department was bullying me led by one person who I said something to to just converse with her about and it triggered her I guess. Oh these millenials and their getting triggered at damn near anything. I wonder how they will ever survive. They must have gotten deeply offended by my friendly, gentle nature that didn’t have a hint of rebel or smartass to me. I tried so hard to fit in with my millenial counterparts, I gave it my all but they collectively downvoted me in a showdown of young vs.old. I guess I’m doing something right if I have so my haters. This bakery assistant manager got her younger staff to bully me as well most likely led by Cheryl. They were all mimicking me and saying they would take me down GI Jane or Britney style. That they would end me. I was given nasty looks by the bakery assistant manager whenever I would happen to look at her. She also tried so hard to get under my skin by saying things that would mimic me and were about me but couldn’t be proven were about me. Oh the games that children in retail play to pass the day. It’s so tiring, you know. Other staff began to withhold conversation from me. I guess it’s because I’ve got age on them so no fucks are given.

Things got worse when my colleagues began to ignore me, sparsely talk to me and say things in an attempt to make me angry. It’s all a game of push her out, psychological terrorism if you will. It starts slowly and then increases, these mind games as they called them in the 90′s. I’m always the victim. I guess they choose me to end because I’m polite, nice and just everything else that people now aren’t. I should be honored that I’m chosen. Things came to a head on Sunday, July 8th when my colleague was barely talking to me and was only talking to my co-worker. I asked him questions and he didn’t answer or was a smart-ass. He knew better. The tension just filled the air and I told him to talk to me now or I’ll call a manager. I was absolutely fed up with this disgusting behaviour. I went up to the staff room, started to cry and threw things around. Two other millenials in there didn’t say a word. They were so millenial, just staring into their phones, unable to deal with the situation. They never learned empathy, never learned how to respond to a person in distress. God did their parents ever fuck up. I went outside, saw Cheryl and implored her to listen to me. She told me to talk to my manager or the store manager. She refused to help me!!! That was part of her job to help team members do their’s! Well, I told her that I don’t know where the store manager is and my manager is on holidays until mid-July. They hired a new girl under me when I was only getting a maximum of three shifts a week so I was sure that I was being ousted. I then told her fine, that my mental health wasn’t worth $14.00 an hour and she had lost me for the night. She didn’t care.

I went in the next day to plead my case about workplace harassment with the store manager and I was let go. The dick of a manager used my probationary period as his right to let me go. I was 2 weeks shy of being there 90 days. He said that we’re not here to make friends and I argued that hey, we’re not here to make friends but I expect to not be ignored and that I never mentioned workplace bullying to him before and that if it happened 4 times before, it had to be my fault. I was utterly incensed. What a bastard, letting his own bakery manager lead the plot to destroy me. I had been taken down and betrayed by my own staff. My hard work was never mentioned and my adamant labelling of the situation as workplace bullying were dismissed and I was told that that manager is a lovely person. This was the 5th time I had been chewed up and spit out by bullies. No one on the Internet believes me when I tell them this is my 5th time being the victim, they all blame me. It can’t happen 5 times, they assert, it must be you. It has to be you. I’m wrong for being myself? It’s wrong not to be an asshole like everyone else? Since when is it my fault for wanting to be nice, polite and positive? My bullies were all millenials. No wonder I hate them, I sure have a good reason to! The hate they give has given me a reason to hate them. All I ever wanted was to work in peace and get by. It’s getting even hard for that because people suck. I get a job and take one step forward and I’m quickly two steps behind. There was once a day when I enjoyed working but now it’s just a huge stressor. A small paycheque is not worth the ulcer that working with bullies that aren’t deal with is goign to give you.

Now I’m out on my ass, I can’t afford a lawyer and I’ll get no EI to replace my lost income. Managers now just fire the complainer and don’t want to deal with the troublemakers. Last in is first out. You’re just a body in these low-wage jobs and they couldn’t care less. Yet you fuck up in the job and they’re on you like white on rice. I am so fed up and I feel like I’ve been kicked and that’s because I have. Kicked were they know it counts - in the self-esteem. It’s hard to get out of bed. I keep sighing and I feel empty and numb. My anti-depressants don’t cure being taken out by millenials that can’t play well with others. How can I ever have good mental health when the workplace just makes me sicker? It’s me that pays a high price for all their foolish fun and games. I could be out 6, 9 months, who knows how long. I have no one to talk to as counselling services are usually all full now and I’ll end up going to crisis counselling only to re-hash my story time and time again and that’s just exhausting. I don’t wear eye makeup for fear of when I’ll cry next. Anything can trigger me. I now have to rely on money from my own inheritance to get by, money that was supposed to be for when I retire. I feel horrible knowing that I could be without work for many months and likely won’t ever have justice for justice is only a thing for the affluent, not those who toil under them. I’ll never see a cent in compensation but I’ll bear the mental and financial scars for months and months. I know that the effects on my self-esteem will be seen in the interviews that I go on, if I even get interviews. HR sees right through a person when they grill them in interviews and I’ll be out longer because of it. I’m just trying to do the right thing and work so the taxpayers pay less to support me on ODSP but I end up far worse off than before. It’s over before it begins in more and more jobs now. I’m a person with mental illness just wanting to work, just wanting to find my place in this world but I keep getting shut down the moment I start to trust and feel safe. Just what’s the point in letting myself continue to get destroyed for minimum wage? There really is none. I’d make more money getting fucked by strangers than fucked over by colleagues.

I’m seriously considering just panhandling or selling my body instead. I feel that’s where I belong and the world has told me that. I will find my people there, all the other ones who have lived their own story of rejection. It’s the only way I can keep myself safe is to go somewhere where they’ll keep me safe. A street fam never lets you down. I’m ready for the streets for my fear of ending up on them is flashing before my eyes ever the more clearly so I might as well go there. On the day I got let go, I let my pain from the past 4 harassment incidents rise to the surface and I sobbed loudly through the store. Sobey’s made me sob!!! Customers all wondered if I was okay. Yes, she’s fine, the staff assured them. She’s wailing her face off but she’s fine. The world doesn’t deserve me and I don’t deserve the world. The only was to be fearless is to fear less and get to know the life I am so close to on the streets.

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nicks11thgradeblog · 7 years ago

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Something that happened to me

Disclaimer: This post may be very sad, and may not be easy to read, I don’t know because I haven’t written it yet, but be warned.

A few days ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine in their car, and it caused me to pause, and really think things through; this conversation gave me a different viewpoint on beliefs that I once held as truths to myself, and it shed light on many topics that I knew very little about.

As you may know, one of my core beliefs is to live life in a way where I can best help improve other people’s lives. As of now, I happen to be doing this in high school, and as I’ve mentioned before, high school is a really tough time for everyone- the stress of school, having to be “cool”, having to “fit in” and dealing with peer pressure. I have never talked about the worse parts of high school, which I've noticed to be the problems that people are having inside of themselves, the internal conflicts that they are fighting where the battlefield is their own mind, consciousness and body. These most include things that vary from the mental effects of bullying and self doubt, to addiction, to dyslexia, to anxiety, and all the way up to depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, extreme addiction, and others.

Before, I never gave my opinion or thoughts on this topic because I had never experienced anything like it. I believed that it was not my place to pass judgement on something I had no personal experience with. To add onto that, I didn’t know enough about these things to be able to give an educated opinion that wasn’t just my reaction to it. If I’m going to give an opinion on something important, it had better be worth the time for the people hearing it. After this conversation, however, I feel like I have to talk about it, because not enough is being done. This post is not going to be me guilting you into having to do something, or having to go out and do X, Y, and Z- I just want to talk about this and spread awareness about these things. As I said before, I do not know enough about these problems to have full-blown solutions to them, I do what I can do, and if there’s nothing more I can do then I find a professional.

I have always wanted to help people, and before I thought I could help anybody with just about anything, and while I still do believe that anyone can help anyone else; I now know that people should also be careful when giving help, because sometimes even the best intentions can go wrong. Mental struggles, like depression and suicidal or self-harming behaviors, are not to be taken lightly, and one thing I learned from this conversation is that if someone is struggling from a large-scale mental issue, the best thing you can do is to call a professional and get that person professional help.

Before I went to high school, I thought that depression was something rare, that people rarely got depressed because there was little to be depressed about. Things like anxiety attacks, self-harm, purposeful drug abuse and extreme addictions were things that I’d barely even heard of. I believed them to be rare, and that people only had when they were incredibly unfortunate. Unfortunately, I found out I was wrong.

When I got into high school, when I was trying to help people I started realizing that there were many people around me who were suffering from mental disorders. The cliché of being happy on the outside and dying on the inside became increasingly more apparent, and the more I realized it the more I saw of it. To go along with that, there began to appear this sort of self-detrimental humor, and this very dark humor that everyone started using. They would say things like that they were depressed, or that they wanted to kill themselves- which was crazy for me, because I couldn’t tell if someone was telling these jokes because they were actually suffering and needed a way to cope, or if people were just making inappropriate jokes.

This entire conversation started when I asked my friend what they thought about the fact that the rate at which people are being diagnosed with mental disorders were rising, and this sparked the train of thought down the idea that more and more people are being diagnosed with these mental disorders, at the same time that yes, more and more people are developing these disorders, however, these two groups don’t always overlap completely.

There are many, many people suffering from depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders, and many of them are diagnosed, put on medication, and set free, which isn’t great, but it’s better than nothing. However, other people are being over-diagnosed, people who may just be going through a rough spot and may just be temporarily sad, are sometimes being diagnosed with mental disorders that they don’t have, which I believe can be extremely detrimental to a person, because of the Placebo effect. And worst of all, are the people who never get help, and this is what kills me, some people never get the help they need when they need it most, and sometimes, the fact that more and more people are developing these disorders, some people slip under the radar, or aren’t getting the help they need, for multiple reasons including the fact that people don’t believe them, they don’t want to talk about it/can’t talk about it, or they don’t want help.

Other smaller mental issues can actually amplify the effects of depression as well. Sometimes anxiety or dyslexia can cause people to feel like they’re dumb, or slow, or they can’t handle everything, or whatever it may be, and this may make them even more depressed.

On top of all of this, if these disorders aren’t dealt with properly, they can oftentimes lead to self-harm, and even suicide. According to websites such as healthychildren.org show that about 24% of all high school students seriously contemplate suicide, and 90% of the people who do commit suicide have mental disorders. In school, there are numerous influences in young people’s lives that make them feel unwanted or like they’re not worth it, from bullying, drugs, mental disorders, or any other number of factors, and there is not enough being done to prevent it.

And even people who are hospitalized, or who get treatment aren’t always cured. Some people’s disorders only get worse over time, and sometimes get worse when they are given the help they need, it isn’t always instantaneous. However, I do believe that mental health professionals are the best sources of help for anyone suffering from these disorders, even if it isn’t an instant fix, even if the medications they give people don’t work immediately, it is the best solution that we have.

Because of this, and because of the rate at which people are contemplating suicide, or becoming depressed, there are sites such as 7cups, where teenagers can anonymously talk to people who have been trained to help people suffering from mental disorders, and are encouraged to try therapy. Because this is such a terrible problem, people are becoming more and more aware of the roles that mental disorders play in many teens lives, and many people are doing what they can to help others who may be suffering from them. It may not be quick help, it may take months, or years to get over certain obstacles, but we cannot keep ignoring this issue that we are faced with. Something more needs to be done.

If you are depressed, or have mental issues, please seek professional help. I say this from the bottom of my heart, it breaks my heart to know that there are people who aren’t getting enough help with these things, and I just want to tell people that it will help, I’ve been told by people that even if you hate it, even if you don’t want to do it, it will help.

Before I end this, I just want to say that if you are having any difficulties in life at all, and you want to talk about it, and you know who I am, then please tell me. I know I was told to only help people to the length of my arm, but I’ve got very long arms. I am willing to talk with anyone about anything, even if you just want to talk, and want someone to listen to you, I will do it. However, I will say this: If you are going through something that I am not capable of properly helping you with, I will attempt to help you get professional help. I believe that everyone should have someone to talk to, and that someone can be me, but it may sometimes have to be a mental health professional. I am just doing my best to help people in the best way I can, and I apologize if this doesn’t help you. I hope I this has been helpful to someone, if it is then it will have been worth it.

Written by Nicholas Dibello-Hitta and my Friend, may we have more meaningful conversations yet to come.

“If someone is contemplating suicide, you need to tell someone who can help them. They may hate you for it, but that’s probably the best thing you can do for them” - Friend

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ongames · 8 years ago

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'13 Reasons Why' Promised To Raise Awareness About Teen Mental Health. That Backfired.

The Netflix breakout show “13 Reasons Why” has been praised for its binge-worthy, dramatic storytelling. But mental health experts warn that its thrilling narrative devices also make it problematic.

The story, which is adapted from Jay Asher’s best-selling novel of the same title, follows high school student Hannah Baker as she posthumously narrates the months leading up to her death by suicide. Hannah leaves behind tapes for people in her life that detail how their nefarious actions ultimately led to her decision. The 13-episode drama also vividly depicts the method Hannah used to end her life.

Mental health advocates say the show should not have shown Hannah’s suicide and have spoken out about the potentially harmful nature of the show.

“I have watched the show and was horrified at the graphic, sensational ways in which they depicted Hannah’s life,” Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, told The Huffington Post. “Viewers can understand someone who dies, even by suicide, without having to be so graphic.”

A Netflix representative has addressed the criticism, telling The Washington Post that four mental health professionals consulted on the show’s material. And the episode involving detailed scenes related to suicide comes with a warning.

The writer of that episode, Nic Sheff, wrote in Vanity Fair that he was “surprised” by the backlash. He said the show’s staff attempted to handle suicide sensitively, pointing to his own suicide attempt as inspiration for his writing.

Netflix also produced a bonus episode titled “13 Reasons Why: Beyond The Reasons,” which includes information on mental health and ways to get help. But the narrative episodes themselves, which arguably have a much larger audience, don’t offer resources or ways to reach out for help.

And, unfortunately, the problems don’t end there. Here are some other ways mental health advocates say the series could be damaging.

The show’s target demographic has a growing suicide risk.

The series does a disservice to its main audience: young women.

Suicide is a growing issue among adolescents, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published last year that measured suicide rates from 1999 to 2014. Girls between the ages of 10 and 14 saw the greatest rise in suicide rates during this time period ― a staggering 200 percent.

Vulnerable people who are in this age range may see themselves in Hannah, Reidenberg said. Teenagers with mental health disorders may struggle to be taken seriously. They could be seen as “dramatic,” or their behavior could just be attributed to their life stage. But mental health is a real issue, and the way suicide is portrayed in “13 Reasons Why” may trivialize that fact.

Hannah’s death scene could inspire copycat acts.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has ethical guidelines that warn against this type of storytelling. These rules are specifically geared toward journalists, but anyone who produces content for a wide audience should take them to heart because copycat acts can ― and do ― happen.

Mental health experts fear the show could inspire such actions.

��This scene does not help public awareness about the topic,” Reidenberg said of the depiction of Hannah’s suicide. “It is not educational or informational.” Instead of dispelling myths about suicide, he said, the show could lead people to replicate similar acts.

Research supports this claim: National Institute of Mental Health studies have found that the risk of suicide increases when specific details of the method are divulged publicly. They essentially give vulnerable, at-risk consumers a “how-to” guide.

Suicide is painted as an act of revenge.

The show barely even mentions Hannah’s potential mental health issues related to her horrifying experiences with sexual assault and bullying. Instead, the way Hannah’s death and the subsequent tapes are shown makes it seem like her suicide was a tool for revenge on the people who wronged her.

More than 90 percent of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Ignoring that fact and sensationalizing death by suicide can lead to major misconceptions, Reidenberg said.

“Suicide is the terrible end to suffering with a mental illness, hopelessness and despair,” he explained. “Suicide is not about getting your locker to become a permanent memorial where people will take selfies in front of it ― that isn’t real.”

It relies on the narrative that young women overly care about reputation.

Not addressing the main character’s potential mental health complications could send the message that concerns about social status were the catalyst for her death.

Reidenberg points out that more adolescent males die by suicide than females, but attempted suicide is more prevalent in females. And given that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among young people, it’s important to spread accurate information about the issue and highlight examples of recovery from mental health issues, he said.

And that’s exactly what the critiques of “13 Reasons Why” boil down to: Although the creators made a concerted effort to bring awareness to an important issue, the portrayal was questionable.

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HELLO to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the Crisis Text Line. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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