#early teens and then got depressed in cycles so I’d be like the best most beautiful perfectly composed notes and slideshows at the beginning

[milo-is-rambling]

Oh my GOD does it feel good to be taking notes in a notebook again fucking hell a old good journal or some school notes or reading notes just gets my dick hard I’m sorry I can’t help it bro

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

My personal connection with Taylor’s discography, part five: Marjorie

Basically this is just a series I’m doing where I write down my feelings on what each of the Taylor songs means to me personally on a line to line basis both for my own sake to have it somewhere and for anyone who wants to know anything further about me. So with that in mind, let’s get started.

Marjorie

This song is a little weird for me because as a whole, it’s about losing the almost romanticised view I had of my family. Like most of the people I think of when it comes to this song are still very much alive, but our relationship reached a point where I will never speak to them again. But despite our relationship being like that now, much like most kids, I grew up thinking these people were near perfect and those memories don’t go away just because I’m not on good terms with them now. Because of that, this song has been a very bittersweet song for me and one of the harder Taylor songs to listen to.

Never be so kind, you forget to be clever

When I was younger, I was one of those kids who never wanted to see anyone hurt and would give up if it meant someone else was happy. And that cost me a lot of opportunities. And a remember each time I’d do it, my mother and paternal grandparents would sit me down and remind me that I am a female and that the world is harsh and doesn’t give us as a gender many chances, so I shouldn’t be throwing away chances like that, especially to people who were more likely to achieve those goals through different means. I particularly remember having one of these talks in the third grade when I asked the teacher to allow my competitor in a maths competition to have a second try when he got an answer wrong only for him to quickly declare victory when I messed up a question later. Let it be known that I will never again forget that 7x8 is 56 and that even if I still have issues with it, I do not need to make things harder for myself by giving a leg up to people who would keep me down given the chance.

Never be so clever, you forget to be kind

As much as I tried to be nice as a kid, I definitely grew up with some privileges and a bit of a god complex when it came to my academic skill. Cringily, up until like 9th grade I was that kid that gloated about their grades and was like “well if you just tried harder, you’d get these grades too!”. I was particularly like this with my sister given my parents spent our childhood pinning us against each other and that was the only “win” I could take, especially in terms of my mother. Except it really wasn’t because my mother was also someone who hated school and didn’t do well through no fault of her own. As a result, “You’re smart Jessica, but there’s always going to be someone smarter and nobody is going to care how good you are if you can’t be nice” was a common phrase I heard as a kid. Whether or not it’s true is yet to be seen given some of the biggest names in the world are assholes, but I’ve definitely come to a place where kindness will always outclass cleverness in my life.

And if I didn't know better, I'd think you were talking to me now

When I have a hard decision to make or I feel like I’m making the wrong choice, I still imagine these idealised versions of my family were still in my life and talk myself into what I think is the next right move. Is talking to yourself still counted as being crazy? Perhaps, but it works and is weirdly comforting given everything that’s happened.

If I didn't know better, I'd think you were still around. What died didn't stay dead. You're alive, you're alive in my head, so alive

Despite everything that happened, my anger towards it, and the way I’ve tried to put it out of mine, I still look back fondly on these memories with these people before they showed who they actually were.

Never be so polite, you forget your power

Like I said, as a kid I hated inconveniencing anyone. This meant I ate a bunch of food I hated, did activities I didn’t want to and even went out while sick because I didn’t want to ruin the day for anyone else. In particular, I remember getting a big stomach ache while on holiday at my paternal grandparents’ house but still trying to get ready and go out to the beach for the day. When he immediately realised something was wrong was told that I hadn’t said anything because I didn’t want to ruin the day, he sat me down and reminded me that it was my holiday too and that was my body so I could and should take control of that and say no sometimes, even if it is just because I don’t want to do something.

Never wield such power, you forget to be polite

For all their flaws, my mother’s side of the family did teach one one thing. I came from nothing, and even if someday I broke the poverty cycle, I was not above anyone else. A lot of conversations with that side of the family was about how oftentimes it was “higher class” people who refused to tip or use manners and felt above it all. Also, when I was a smartass about my grades and jobs I wanted to get, I was reminded that even if I had the best paying job in the world, I would still need the “lesser” workers in order for my life to run smoothly. While the words “class struggle” never came into play, these conversations very much helped to form a lot of my beliefs and remind me to stay humble.

And if I didn't know better, I'd think you were listening to me now

When someone dies, a lot of people believe they send signs from beyond the grave. Sometimes these happen in the form of seeing associated animals on a bad day, sometimes it’s a random thing coming to you and pushing in a certain direction when needing to make a choice. And there are days when it feels the same with my family even though most of them are still alive. 

But most of all, I think about this line in reference to my uncle who passed when I was 12 who always had mine and my mother’s backs. I remember driving home from my partner’s place during a depressive episode a few years back thinking about how my grandparents live in the same suburb and considering dropping past even though I had cut them off years before to have not only roadworks happen to be happening in a way to make me go past their street, but also their light being off implying they weren’t there. And despite not being a spiritual/religious person anymore, something about that felt very much like my uncle had heard me and was making it clear that his parents were out living their lives and I was making the right choice by doing the same.

The autumn chill that wakes me up. You loved the amber skies so much. Long limbs and frozen swims. You'd always go past where our feet could touch

This line screams my sister to me. The best thing about my sister and the thing that I will spend forever missing is how she got so excited about the little things in life. Doing her makeup or wearing nice clothes was exciting, listening to music was exciting, getting up early on special days to open gifts was exciting, hell even going to a concert for an artist she hated was exciting for her. She was also the biggest risk taker of the family. And given her auburn hair, the autumn/amber visuals just caps the whole thing off.

And I complained the whole way there; the car ride back and up the stairs

I was a whiny and impatient kid (who somehow turned into a more impatient adult, yikes). Looking back, I spent so many occasions with my family whining about little things or asking how long it’s going to take instead of just enjoying the moment. And ultimately, I think that’s one of my biggest regrets in life so far.

I should've asked you questions. I should've asked you how to be, asked you to write it down for me

Like most people, I really underestimated how much time I was going to have with my family and I took for granted the notion that there was always going to be a time that they’d be around to help and get advice from. So I never asked. And now I’m here, 25 and feeling incredibly unequipped for handling the world around me like I should and wishing I had taken those opportunities to ask for more advice. Likewise, while people make jokes that white people have no culture, I genuinely really feel like I don’t (and as a result struggle with my place in the world) because I didn’t bother asking about our history or the family members I never met or any of that and don’t have anything in my possession to give me that information.

Should've kept every grocery store receipt 'cause every scrap of you would be taken from me

Kinda continuing from above, I hated taking photos and really didn’t keep much that my family gave me growing up. Like realistically when it comes to the extended family, I have a few really low quality photos, a piece of art my paternal grandfather gave me before moving to the UK because I loved it as a kid and my memories. And even with my sister and father, I have a single box of things my sister left behind and one Taylor Swift fan book and a necklace my father gave me. That’s it. 

I don’t have any family heirlooms, I don’t even think I have one picture of me with most the members of the family and I don’t even have the loving perception of them because that was taken from me in the fallout of the family. And despite everything that happened, that upsets me whenever I think about it.

Watched as you signed your name Marjorie. All your closets of backlogged dreams and how you left them all to me

To be honest, this line just reminds me of the women in my family and how much they sacrificed in order for me to get where I am today. Like both my grandmothers never finished school (with my maternal grandmother being unable to read) in order to get jobs to look after their families after both fathers abandoned them before marrying into abusive relationships. My mother quit her higher paying job to raise me and my siblings full time because my father had epilepsy and couldn’t. And my mother started working again in my teens in the form of cleaning the dirtiest of houses so I could go to Japan which was one of the happiest memories of my life. She also mentioned she wished I could have been a performer because she had always wanted to be. None of these women got to experience their dreams or even the lives they should have had all to make sure I had the best chance of living mine and again, no matter what happens, that will always be something I remember.

And if I didn't know better, I'd think you were singing to me now

Again, this line just screams my sister. Any time I hear one of her old favourite songs or a top ten hit I think she’d like, especially if it comes on shuffle or out in public, I think of her.

I know better, but I still feel you all around. I know better, but you're still around

Obviously I know these people are not talking to me. They’ve moved on with their lives and outside the moments where they feel the need to try PR the situation to keep me quiet, I imagine they don’t really think of me at all. Additionally, it’s hard to say that the idealistic versions of them I created in my head even existed to be around in the first place. And yet, I still feel their influence on me in my day to day life.

[eleventybiillion]

Dating

Remember when I said I was gonna get real personal? Yeah, it's happening right the fuck now. I signed up for a dating site. A few weeks ago. I may have been really drunk when I did it and my status with my ex was, uh. Questionable. I also may be really drunk right now as I write this. Which just means no filter, so have fun.

So now I'm dating. For real. That kind of dating you're supposed to do in your early 20s when you're not still dating that One Guy you've had an on-and-off thing with since your freshman year of high school. And I wish I could say I'm enjoying it, but the truth is, it's flaring up some of the worst anxieties I have about myself and the pain I've experienced from past relationships.

Since I was maybe 12, I've been putting myself down, relying on self-deprecating humor to brand myself as "the funny one" in all my friend groups because I felt that was the only thing I had to offer. And even then, I often felt so painfully unfunny that I just wanted to remove myself from everyone around me because I had no redeemable qualities.

This view of myself carried over into every aspect of my life. Especially relationships. It was a big deal when I decided to open up and be vulnerable to someone. Because I'd carried this notion that I wasn't worthy of anyone's time, affection, attention, or love for a significant chunk of my life.

The first person I ever opened up to completely was my ex, Duncan. We met in middle school, started dating in high school, and ended up in an on-and-off thing for almost ten years. He was (and still is) my best friend. But things happened, we broke up, and he ended up killing my trust in him by sleeping with someone shortly after we broke up. Mind you, we had broken up with the notion we might get back together in the future, once we learned to better ourselves to better our relationship. We had also been together for a seven-year stretch. He insisted we stay apart but kept me close as an emotional crutch. Maybe I'm crazy for getting so upset, but I was. I was devastated. This was the guy I fell in love with in high school and stayed with through my mid-20s. We went through so much together and all of that felt absolutely negated the second I got the text saying "yes, I'm fucking her, is that what you want to hear?" I don't remember ever saying this, but he told me that I said, "As long as she's in your life, I won't be."

Then there was Josh. I met him online and I developed feelings that I hadn't felt for a long time. It was one of those friendships that was easy and fun. I was into him. And, surprising to me, he was into me. We'd flirted with the idea of meeting in person. I naively thought that this might be a real thing. But later on, after receiving some upsetting news, he began to spiral downwards into alcohol and apathy. I tried to be there for him, but was always met with hostility. Finally, after months of a painful balancing act of offering support and giving him space, I asked if he wanted me to leave him alone. The response I got was, "Bye." I haven't spoken to him since. I don't know where or how he is, but he often crosses my mind and I worry. I cared so much for him and I worry that he's no longer here, and that I may have been able to prevent that if I had just handled things differently.

The last person I tried to be as real as possible with was Brooke. Again, another person I met online. I'm not afraid to say that I honestly fell in love with her. She was my best friend and we shared everything with each other. I felt comfortable enough with her to detail some of the worst parts of myself. My struggles with bipolar disorder and depression, my suicidal thoughts, my horrific bouts of self-harm. She listened with sympathy, and I had that same recurring thought that I now despise. "This might be a real thing." When I confessed my feelings for her, I was met with silence. Months later (I'm not even kidding. It was fucking months later), she acknowledged these feelings, and made sure to drill into me that she valued our friendship. But she did so in a way that made me hopeful that it might become something more. Like she was perpetually on that cusp of something more.

But later on, she made sure to tell me all about her new best friend. And how they just clicked and everything was perfect and she was so much fun and they had so much fun together. I'm not ashamed to admit that this ignited some jealous feelings in me. What did this new girl have that I didn't? Why was she dropping me in favor of someone else? Several times, she often called me by this new girl's name. And when I would get upset, she made me feel guilty. Like I was overreacting. And for a long time, I believed I was.

It wasn't until I showed some of our conversations to my two best friends, just to get their advice on what the fuck I was supposed to say to her, that they simply said, "Yeah, she's literally emotionally abusing you." I was completely blind to it. Here I was, totally in love with this girl, willing to put up with everything she said and did to me, simply because there was always this glimmer of hope that we might get together and we might be happy.

It took those two friends (Quinn and Charlie, I credit y'all for getting me out of this toxic relationship) to make me realize all the little things she did to keep me on her hook. Acknowledging my feelings but refusing to give a definitive answer about her own. Making me feel guilty about getting upset about her treatment of me. Getting mad at me for having sex with men (even though she never mentioned this when I told her about said men) and saying she was in agony hearing me talk about them. Ignoring me for days or even weeks when I called her out on the things she did that hurt me, then coming back to our conversations like nothing ever happened. Buying me gifts to "make amends" and repair the damages she caused.

Finally, I cut ties. I couldn't deal with her anymore. A year and a half later, having no contact with her, I found out that she began spreading rumors that I would threaten to hurt and/or kill myself if I felt I wasn't getting enough attention from her. Anyone who knows me knows I would never do that. And here she was, using such an intimate and secret piece of myself to paint me as this kind of person. I had let her in to some of the most painful and vulnerable parts of myself and she used it against me. I refuse to ever forgive her for that.

Remember that thing I told Duncan? About me not being in his life as long as that other girl was? Well. Three years after we had been broken up, that other girl was no longer in his life. He called me up out of the blue, and said he was sorry for everything he had done. I was still his best friend, I always had been and I always would be. So he was back in my life. And we were friends. Until we had crossed that threshold into more than friends. Whenever we would visit each other, we would end up sleeping together. It was safe, comfortable, familiar. But there was always that gnawing in the back of my brain that told me what we were doing was wrong. We weren't together, but we were acting like we were. I'd never felt so conflicted in my life, and haven't since.

Finally, I had to have the difficult discussion about our boundaries. I'll never deny that he is probably the person that knows me better than anyone. He is my best friend. But the romantic feelings? They were gone. When I told him, he said he felt relieved. And I was relieved to be able to keep him in my life while simultaneously moving on.

And so now I'm dating. After a few mediocre dates, I found a guy that I'm afraid to admit I actually really like. But those self-defense mechanisms I established in my early teen years stayed strong. Why would anyone actually be interested in me? I better put myself down before he notices these flaws himself.

And worse, those scars from my past relationships seemed to bleed all over again. Who else is he talking to? (Thanks, Duncan.) Is everything going to change overnight? (Thanks, Josh.) What deep, intimate personal detail is he going to take advantage of? (Thanks, Brooke.)

I don't want to be that person. Jealous and anxious and guarded. What's worse, I don't want to get hurt again, which means I feel I can't actually open myself up to the good things that could come from this relationship. He's so thoughtful and sweet and considerate, and yet here I am, wondering what's really going on in his head. Like I can't take anything at face value. There has to be more.

I'd like to break out of this cycle. Where my lack of self worth feeds into these distrustful and suspicious feelings that cause me to put up walls to the point that people feel the need to give up on me because I won't let them get close which directly reinforces my low self worth. I'm terrified to let him in because I'd been so badly burned in the past.

I'm not sure how to end this (extremely long) post other than to say that I'm cautiously optimistic that maybe I can let him in. That I can let him get past the barriers I built around my heart because of those that hurt me in the past. I feel like it's going to take a lot of work on my part, but I'm afraid to admit that it might actually be worth all the effort. As if I didn't learn anything from the past, or maybe I want to believe that this time will be different, but I think this could be a real thing.

[alwaystimefortea]

Let me introduce myself - 27th October 2019

I want to keep myself anonymous so I’m going to use a fake name. Let’s call me Olivia. So, a little about myself *TRIGGER WARNING*- since about the age of 9 I’ve been very aware of my body image but I hid how I felt so that my family wouldn’t think I was vain. At the age of 11 I found out what an eating disorder was and became fascinated by the idea. By age 12 I thought I should be trying to lose weight and look sexy, I thought I had to be the most beautiful person in school - but that never happened because I wasn’t confident enough to be myself at home, I was too self conscious of everything I did outside of my home, and I would eat to console myself, all the while forgetting myself and my earlier feelings of needing to be perfect. I know, conflicting behaviours. So I bottled everything up throughout my early teens, became seriously anxious and depressed, and got chubby.

When I was 15 something changed. I can’t remember what triggered it but I decided to induce vomiting. The next day I skipped breakfast. The following day I skipped breakfast and lunch. A week or so later I was still starving myself throughout the day, and I started cutting down my evening meal portion size. After a couple of months, my best friend found out what I’d been doing and convinced me to stop. That didn’t last long. A few weeks later I was back at it, and I was making myself puke up almost anything that wasn’t fruit or veg. I was living on coffee, celery and apples. This became a cycle. I would live like that for about a week, then have a binge, eat normally for a while, then repeat. I did lose about 30lbs but I never became unhealthily underweight or anything. By the time I was 17, the cycles became fewer and far between and by the time I was 18 I had basically stopped and considered myself miraculously recovered.

Now, at 22, I’ve realised that my relationship with food never became healthy. Particularly within the last year or two, I’ve been bingeing, eating junk food more and more regularly, eating without thinking, eating when I don’t want to, eating when my feelings get too overwhelming, and gradually feeling more and more guilty about it. I have the occasional week where I’ll get my healthy head on and think “yes it’s time to lose some weight and get healthy” but it doesn’t last more than a few days. I’m always looking up new fad diets, fat burning pills and quick weight loss tricks. I used to enjoy exercise (around the age of 19) but now I don’t want to do the work - I’m just obsessed with losing weight but the idea of doing anything about it just makes me binge. I am typing this through tears because I’m finding it hard to face the truth - I have a problem that is bigger than I ever thought, and I want it gone.

[nothingneverforever]

Never Have I Ever (2020)

Hey, I think this is my first TV series ‘review’ ever! Well I did do a basically empty post on Unforgotten (season 1) back in Feb 2017, promising to write properly my full feelings down, but that was something I never got back to. It’s still one of the best TV shows ever in the whole world, so hopefully I have time for it some day.

Anyway, meanwhile Never Have I Ever (NHIE), is… absolutely not good. At all….

I’d decided to watch it after seeing Mindy Kaling’s Late Night (2019), which was surprisingly enjoyable and moving even, and not just because Emma Thomson is one of my favourite celebrities in this world. It was a fun movie, and it felt different (from other similar films) ! I say it was surprising because I guess due to misogyny or something, I never thought I had reason to take Mindy Kaling seriously. And I am so sorry for it! There were parts of the script (Late Night) that worked out so, so well.

Back to NHIE! First, here are some synopses I’ve found online of the series:

-        The complicated life of a modern-day first generation Indian American teenage girl, inspired by Mindy Kaling's own childhood.

-        After a traumatic year, an Indian-American teen just wants to spruce up her social status - but friends, family and feelings won't make it easy on her

-        Episode 1: After recent trauma, Devi starts her first day as a high school sophomore determined to shake off old labels and finally become cool.

So I guess my first complaint about NHIE is a bone I could pick with just about any American production from the last, idk, 8 years. You know how when (for whatever reason) every single character is ‘awkward’ or ‘weird’ or sooo idiosyncratic in general, they just end up all being… almost exactly the same? Where all the over-used tropes, every character’s too-loud too-colourful unique defining traits just end up reading the same way, to me at least.  

Need all characters be so strong, really? Strong as in, overly sapid, full-bodied, clearly defined, distinct in a way that actually isn’t unique at all… I mean I’m not asking for more Jack Maliks (from Yesterday, as reviewed here by me) cos fuk dat guy omfg hate him and his dull ass lol but … do you know what I mean? When every character has traits that are so instantly recognizable, so clear to the plain eye without need for any nuanced observation or interpretation that you can almost like .. see the literal line of text in Courier font for the character description in the screenplay flashing before your eyes? Like of course as viewers we do want to feel like we have some grasp of the characters we’re investing in and relating to but I think if traits and personalities and mannerisms are so simplistic (even if they are diverse) that the characters themselves can ve perfectly summed up in a nutshell then that’s not a good thing at all.. I don’t know, it just seems a very American thing that I’m tired of, where there’s just a complete dearth of authenticity and complexity. Because no one in real life is ever sooooo distinctly themselves 100% of the time you know? Sure, I haven’t seen something specifically catered for teens in a while so maybe it’s just genre-specific thing but I do think there was so much more room for more realistic characters here.

Okay but still, 90% of all comments I have trawled through (facebook, Instagram, youtube) seem to be from American teens, talking about how relatable the show is so I guess high school teachers really be out there acting like caricatures of their TV trope selves and friends are all awkward af among each other and quirky at home and quirky on the streets walking home and quirky in the corridors of their school and exaggerate every reaction in every ordinary situation. But here’s the thing, I don’t think people are actually this way. I think many of them pretend that they are, act like they are. I think here lies the danger: where the more media we have portraying this kind of intensely saturated characters and personalities, the more young people will think that to be ‘themselves’, they have to raise the decibels of each and every trait of their own… I dunno if you understand me?  I think it’s an insidious feedback cycle not dissimilar to the manic pixie dreamgirl effect, not in how women’s quirkiness serves to bring out dormant sides of men but just in how people (especially girls because due to society-enforced insecurities are more susceptible to taking influence from popular role models) have to BE SO *INSERT ANY ADJECTIVE HERE* … I don’t know… it’s just inauthentic and tiring. So NHIE is okay, as long as it is makes clear that it’s caricaturizing different examples of how some people may act in different circumstances… but it doesn’t do this. Aiyah I know I’m making a huge deal out of what some people will obviously just take as entertainment and gags for laughs etc but… it’s annoying to me…

Okay

Next

So I’m not sure if you got this from the synopses I’d copied above, so, again: NHIE revolves around a nice girl, Devi (15), who lost her father (heart attack, in the middle of the school hall where he was watching Devi perform at her school orchestra concert) last year and is now starting a new year of school, coping with the incident by stifling every single traumatic memory. Also there are some random throwaways here and there about her having literally become physically disabled for 3 months after her father’s death where Devi lost the ability to use her legs (psychosomatic reaction to her loss) but it’s only ever joked at in insignificant ways so I guess… we shall never know that side of her grief? But all this (grieving over dead father, impersonal relationship with stern mother etc) is mere backdrop, joining other backdrop themes like being a shitty friend from start to end in unbelievably shitty ways etc – the main ‘plot’ instead is made up of Devi’s desperate quest to have sex with Paxton, a 16 year-old ‘hottie’ from school who she likes, erm, because, hot.

Yea that’s it…… that’s the critique. She’s a 15 year old girl whose everyday actions (for the most part) are calculated to lead up to her deflowering by her crush. Not to be a prude but… is this an okay storyline? Like are 15 year-olds legally allowed to have sex? Lol… Am I under any misconception about what teens all over the world get up to? No. Do I think that the law plays any useful role in preventing young girls and boys from sexualizing themselves and wasting their time on sexual pursuits when they can and should be developing literally any other interest and skill? No. Am I still unhappy that this was the main motivating factor for Devi to get up and out of her home each day, unhappy that for this reason (her goal of sleeping with Paxton), unhappy that because of this she morphed into the worst, most unreliable and unrelatable friend ever to her besties who needed her badly??? Yes!

Look, I’ve covered relevant topics in my 4 years of social work education to understand Devi’s actions as unhealthy, maladaptive coping behaviours – we see Devi exhibit behaviours / thoughts etc evocative of basically all 4 stages of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle, besides the final stage of acceptance: denial, anger, bargaining, depression. If we look at Virginia Satir’s coping stances instead, (different types of behaviours people exhibit when under stress), Devi again displays all 4 stances: super reasonable (i.e. over-rationalizing something so as to avoid confronting/acknowledging the emotional truth), irrelevant (distracting, changing the topic, inappropriate jokes), placating (self-explanatory)  and blaming (again, obvious). So basically, Devi does, says and feels anything and everything besides maturely coping with the loss of her father. Is this realistic? Yes! Does everyone work within their own timelines before finally coming to that final Kubler-Ross stage of acceptance? Absolutely! And I am not at all rushing Devi to act ‘normal’ or to display healthier coping mechanisms. I just wish the grief was handled so so so much better by Mindy Kaling and whoever else was involved in developing this story - this story that is honestly full of promise. In other words, how Devi fails to handle her grief could have been written so much better, so much deeper instead of her failings itself being the central form of entertainment for much of the 10 episodes.

Anyway, also, besides it being morally not okay for a 15 year-old’s thirst for sex to be an accepted plot point (accepted on- and off-screen I mean), the actors playing Devi and Paxton are 10 years apart in age. Devi (reminder: age 15 on-screen) is played by a lovely actress who is currently 18, and Paxton is played by someone who is currently 29. So like….. she would likely have been 17 at the time of shooting? That’s just not okay and I don’t think I need say more lol. Shit like this, miscasting your key heartthrob, is just so… cheapo and so late 90s/early 2000s you know where the actors are so so clearly adults playing high schoolers, it’s just… cheapo af and absolutely inexcusable now.

Okay, everything up to this point in my ‘review’ has just been small here-and-there thoughts I had while watching it, and I’ve dedicated fluffy paragraph after paragraph on them so as to delay speaking about my main issue with the series: how the central trauma is dealt with... insomuch as it isn’t, at all.

And I’m not just saying this as someone who’s fresh off having just re-watched A Single Man, because they are obviously intended as very different works and intentionally made of (made with?) very different calibers but there are, surely, much much better ways to handle grief than what we are given with NHIE where Devi tries her darnest to have sex with her dreamboat bae. Okay so early in the series (second episode), Devi actually does get with Paxton in his garage after propositioning him (by ambushing him outside school after he finished swim practice or something), but when he takes off her shirt she’s like ok nvm I cant have sex now bye. So yea, it doesn’t happen. But it continues to be her main source of distraction from her grief, so it does remain a central plot point. Anyway the therapist character in NHIE is a joke, full of age-old TV-therapist lines like “So how do you feel about that?” etc, other platitudes and hollow-isms. She does try to tell Devi that it is not in her interest to be putting her sense of self worth on being “bangable” (I do believe this was the exact word used, cant be bothered to find the exact minute in the speicifc episode but yea trust that Devi and her therapist are candid with speaking about her plans for deflowering and Devi is never willing to talk about anything else but), but … I don’t know, Devi’s schtick gets tiresome, not because I’m neuronormative and want to see more normal behavior from the dear girl or because I’m annoyed with how badly she’s handling her grief, but more because of how badly they (writers, producers whoever etc) are handling it.

Like, up till the very end, we see her irrelevant stances or proof of her denial as fodder for lame jokes and utterly cliché dialogue, in what should be a genuine and ‘real’ scene. It’s annoying!! See below for screencaps from slightly over halfway through the FINAL episode of the series - in other words, way, way too late for a joke to be made out of how Devi resorts to the same poor coping mechanisms in distracting from her grief. I’ve screenshotted only parts of the convo, leaving out the parts where this serious convo turns into a joke about Eleanor, that itself pretends to be deep and serious but it isn’t at all...?

Devi’s friends confront her about the most serious thing in the entire series (her needing to go down to her beach to meet her mom to scatter her dad’s ashes, something she hitherto has rejected as she is unable to face this final step in accepting his death but masks with more irrelevant excuses), and she’s still coping poorly by ‘deflecting’, as her friend rightly says. I don’t know about you, but this was not a scene I needed jokes in at all.

But then, like… suddenly…. Immediately after this she starts crying and everything is good for the first time and there is acceptance within her and some semblances of healing of the fractures in her relationship with her mom etc… I dunno, it’s just not cathartic at all, because Devi hasn’t been given enough of a journey at all. The 0 to 100 thing doesn’t work here because it’s not satisfying (for us) or realistic (for Devi) at all.

Re: the grief, I dunno, if we look at another, equally popular Netflix production, The Haunting of Hill House comes to mind. Yes, obviously not at all a meaningful or fair comparison to make but again, if it’s about a family dealing with grief and loss, why can’t we expect that NHIE carry the same gravitas? In Hill House, we see our characters fumble and lash out and ‘pop off’ (a term used in NHIE which I found strangely out of place) at one another, often, but never are manifestations of their grief, never are clear mishandlings of their grief on display for our entertainment in the form of laughs or ‘cringe’ purposes. It’s just...not everything has to be funny you know? Even if it’s a teen show. I think there are ways, subtle ways, expert ways for something to be serious without at all needing to be heavy.

Again, like my gripe with the childish and/or cheap caricatures of human personalities which would be okay if this series was clearly presented as light entertainment to fill gaps in one’s day, not handling the trauma and grief could (perhaps) be overlooked if it didn’t pretend that it would in fact handle it. But everyone’s discussing the show as if it genuinely was an incredible take on dealing with loss and trauma, as if it’s contributed significantly to understandings of how a young, beautiful lovely ‘normal’ schoolgirl can live and learn through extreme trauma… BUT THE SHOW DOESN’T DO THIS LIKE IT LITERALLY DOESN’T AT ALL I FUCKING SWEAR…. Please watch all 10 episodes and show me even just ONE minute where we come full circle from anything, where Devi grows through her pain and where her journey is developed over more than just literally the last 7 minutes of screentime in the very last episode of the entire series. And I’m also seeing soooooo many comments from people who have enjoyed the series mention how fun and lighthearted it was, how comfortable they are to categorize the series as comedy and how great a time they had binge-watching it. But… it’s not funny? Like it’s really not lol… Devi is dealing with a most painful, urgent grief, having lost her father tragically a year before (and having to see him go before her very eyes). Her denial, her various-aforementioned-unhealthy-coping-mechanisms-and-maladaptive-behaviours made for painful watching for me. It shouldn’t be funny for us to see her abandon her friends when they most needed her; it shouldn’t be fun to see her lash out at her mom and dream of Paxton shirtless, these shouldn’t be comedic externalities of her situation at all. Does this mean I want an utterly dour, extremely humourless NHIE instead? Not at all! I just wish scenes / examples of her mishandling her grief were not the same ones that are supposed to make us laugh and think that everything is light and fun. Like, we can have other funny scenes featuring Devi instead you know? Things that aren’t actually incredibly harmful to her psyche.

ANYWAY

Some positives, cos I did enjoy this stupid series lollll and I did cry and I did laugh and I did look forward to watching it every evening while I exercised, okie? :)

There is one honestly genius thing that I like, where the genius lies in its utter randomness. The series (save for one episode which I will not talk about cos I don’t really give a shit about Andy Samberg and whoever his inclusion was pandering to) was narrated by John McEnroe, who, er, apparently is a well-known American tennis player. The only tennis player I know is Andre Agassi because for some reason in 2016 I borrowed from the library and read cover-to-cover his autobiography omg actually why on earth did I even do that lol I must have read somewhere that it was good perhaps? Anyway it is still recognized as one of the most ‘interesting’ or iconic sports autobiographies of all time so. But yea John McEnroe who?? He (John) is mentioned here and there as having been Devi’s late father’s favourite tennis player – which still does nothing to explain how and why he is narrating the whole series, which is great! I do enjoy the no-attempt-made to connect the fact of his narration to anything in the plot. But it’s not done in an annoyingly absurdist way either, you know? It just it what it is. I mean I guess if I’d written the screenplay which was in part autobiographical, I’d too love to have LeBron James or Megan Rapinoe narrating it, just because!

Ultimately, I think we must all acknowledge how fucking epic it is for Mindy Kaling to be where she is today. That Netflix approached her and asked for a story from her heart, drawing from her own life, and gave her the boundary-less freedom to write what she wanted is cool. She may not be the voice I think teens (or any audience really) may most need but they certainly do want this voice – NHIE is so so so loved and appreciate across the board – by adults, kids, diasporic Indian girls, normal non-minority-race girls etc, with everyone calling (begging) for another season, and anyway Mindy Kaling is probably about 1000000x better anyway than others who have been granted the same stage and presence as her before, like, I dunno, Michael fucking Bay or fucking James Cameron so yay her !!! For the sake of us all!

--------

update, a few hours later:

so since forcing Jade to read my post the second it went up, i have learnt that:

So there goes the one singular uniquely cute thing I did appreciate about NHIE then i guess, seeing as his random feature throughout the series isn’t unique at all... seeing as unexpectedness makes for a predictable part of his record, it is no longer charming to me.  lol bye!

[eeveelutionsforequality]

I don't know if this is pessimistic of me, but I find the rallying against "your teens are the best years of your life" to sometimes come across as overly optimistic. Your teens can absolutely suck - but adulthood isn't any better, it can be better for some people, worse for others, not change, be bad in different ways. The thing is, whatever situation makes your teens suck - whether it's a poor family, a shitty school, a mental health issue, whatever - it doesn't just magically disappear unless you do something about it or get lucky, and even that sometimes doesn't work. You're still gonna be low on money unless you get lucky on the career ladder, that shitty education is still gonna affect your prospects unless you work your ass off, that mental illness isn't going to cure itself. I used to think that things couldn't get worse when I was a teen, but boy howdy was I wrong - mental illnesses worsened, responsibility like I didn't imagine existed was piled upon me, college was more stressful than school and leaving it left me with no prospects, the memories and strains of earlier life not only weighed on me but limited my future, and any money I did get had to be calculated and budgeted and given to companies that didn't care how many times they screwed me over to take more and more. All of the intricacies of the stress of having to manage a household, of buying food, of not only realizing that your life is going nowhere but feeling the impact of that happening every day, the lack of money, the lack of purpose, the lack of prospects, the lack of people there to pick you up. When you're struggling as a teen it's because bullies are assholes, the school system is shit, the adults in your life aren't earning enough money or supporting you enough - when you're struggling as an adult, as far as anyone else is concerned, it's your fault, you didn't put the work in, you're just a benefits scrounger, you're just too childish to manage the real world. And I'm not someone who was naive or threw away my teen years or was stereotypically unprepared - I was abused, ridiculously poor, horribly bullied, I managed my own money, I cooked and cleaned, I got spectacular grades, I'd planned my career - I knew the "real world" could be a horrible place, I knew how to budget, I thought I knew what I wanted in life, and I still got knocked on my ass.

What I'm saying here isn't "life is going to suck no matter what, don't be hopeful", but that we need to prepare teens better for the "real world", we need to ease them into it better, we need to fix the job market and the economy, we need to fix the education system, we need to have more sympathy for young adults - especially those hit by disabilities or unfortunate circumstances that threw them off course when they were trying so hard to actually make something of life, instead of just assuming them complacent. Your teens shouldn't be the best years of your life, neither should your adulthood - in an ideal world, all the segments of your life would be great. Your teens are the years when you've got the most options available to you though, and I know you're sitting there going "Umm, I have no options" - to that I say, exactly. The couple of options and paths and protections that you have in front of you, the idealism and hope that hasn't been crushed yet, those aren't enough, but it's going to hit you hard when even those disappear. Some people get lucky in their teens and have parties and friends and excitement and gigs, and those are seen to them as the best years of their life after they get hit by adulthood and live vicariously through nostalgia; some people have awful teens but get lucky and work hard in adulthood, they manage to get a good job and good friends and a dog, and those are the best years of their life; for others, they get lucky in both or they get unlucky in both. It's a roll of the dice.

When people say "your teens are the best years of your life", I think they mean that they know from experience how quickly everything can tumble downhill, and that they want you to see and value what you have while you have it because adulthood could very well snatch it away, and they want you to take advantage of those things and fill your days with experiences, because they don't want you to hit adulthood and get knocked down in the same way that they did, without even having some happy memories in your pocket. There's a lot of "no, it gets better, people mature, you have more freedom!" in argument to it, but I think that's as poorly worded and unhelpful as the initial statement - it doesn't apply across the board, not even in the majority of cases in my experience - people are just dicks in different ways now, different things limit your freedom now, different things cause your stress now. What people mean is that it can get better, that just because your teens are bad that doesn't mean that you should lose all hope in the world, because the bad things can be repaired, because adulthood might open the door for you, because there's not some intrinsic law of physics that says that with the progression of time life gets exponentially more miserable and the teenage years are the sweet spot where you have the most potential enjoyment available to you - that your teens sucking doesn't mean it's going to get worse. But in both cases, it's important to remember that "can" doesn't mean "will" - your teenage years can be the best years of your life, but it doesn't mean that they will be; things can get better, but it doesn't mean that they will do.

The world isn't suddenly going to become kind to you, especially not if it wasn't already - you have to get tougher than it, get really lucky, work your ass off, and even then you might not make it. The shitty people from school? They go to college too, as do the shitty kids from other schools - some of you will get unlucky and go to the college with twice the shitty kids, and some of you will get lucky and go to the one where most of the people are mature. The flaws in how they teach and grade, in the syllabus? Yeah, plenty of that seeps through into college too. The early mornings? College can be earlier and can run later, also you'll have a three hour break in the middle of one random day where you have absurdly early and late classes, but not enough time (or not enough money) to go home between them, and none of your friends will have the same break, and you'll end up sat in Gregg's, groggy, exhausted, and completely unable to focus your blurry vision on the textbook that's a huge leap harder than your school one was. You know how you had £2.50 and you couldn't afford Maccies because you had to get the bus? Well now you have £2.50 and you can't afford the heating bill that inexplicably doubled this month... you also can't afford the money that the bank is charging you for not having enough money to pay the direct debit for the heating bill; the good news is that now you actually can get Maccies and walk home because you live above a chip shop down the road and everything you own smells like grease. All that free time you expected to get? You tried going to the pub and discovered how much a Jack and Coke costs now, so instead you went to the corner shop and bought a whole bottle of each, then you drank it while watching cooking videos for things you'll never be able to afford to make, and now you're inexplicably laying in the bath, still clothed, crying because everybody told you that if you worked hard this wouldn't happen, and you did, and it happened anyway, and now the news calls you a benefits scrounger, and your friends got jobs and don't invite you out because they know you can't afford it, and your family keeps sending you clippings for jobs you can't get, and it's been so long since you had a healthy meal that you can't tell whether the exhaustion is depression or a nutrient deficiency... so you call an ambulance and go to the hospital to treat your alcohol poisoning, and at 4am they tell you that they won't be providing you with transport home, and you spent that £2.50 on Maccies so now you can't get a taxi back, and it's a hungover, six mile trek back to your greasy flat.

There's a lot wrong with the world, but it really strikes me as strange that this issue isn't at the forefront - people would rather debate how oppressive covering a bra strap is than how teens are suffering at the hands of a flawed education system, hoping that all of their hard work will eventually pay off, only to find that everything has gone to absolute shit. Until we start educating kids better, until we start preparing teens better for what's coming, until we start improving the safety net for those struggling in our society, until we start acknowledging that suffering like this is a vicious cycle and not something that a "little bit o' elbow grease and positivity" is going to inherently always pull you out of, until we start acknowledging that this hell isn't some deserved punishment for not working hard enough as a kid, then everything else is just turd sprinkles atop the turd cake, sprinkles that we're trying to sweep off instead of cleaning up the giant steaming shit. People aren't pointing fingers at migrants or corporations or the patriarchy because they're xenophobic or a Marxist or misandrist, you've got the order of events entirely wrong - they realized everything sucked, and they wanted to fix it, and they found people who told them "This thing is to blame!" and so they were like "Stopping that thing will fix it!" - there isn't some inherent bias or hatred in most of these people, there isn't some giant conspiracy at work, it's people who are desperate to fix what's crushing them.

I don't have answers or some magical plan on how to fix the myriad of flaws and circumstances and trends that resulted in all of this - I just wanted to vent about how adulthood and teenage years and the world as a whole can really fuckin' suck, and I feel like everyone would rather win an online fight and call people names these days, like, just look at the number of people on talk shows who get close to the answer, get to "They're poor people, in dead-end jobs, with no prospects, miserable..." and instead of carrying it through to the logical conclusion of helping them, they swing it around to "They're deplorable, they're pathetic, they're bitter because they didn't get what they want". Wouldn't you be bitter? If someone ripped away your comfy journalism job, threw you into a hot grimey factory for ten hours a day, then demanded money you didn't have while you struggled to afford food or medical care, would you not be a little pissed at that person? Well they don't have a person to be pissed at, it's the whole situation, it's partially themselves, it's partially the world for not judging their best efforts as good enough and screwing them over, and they're hurting. It seems like everybody wants to fight an enemy, but what if there isn't an enemy - it's not a boss fight against some evil system or group, it's a bunch of shitty circumstances and chances in the form of ten thousand level one rats, and unfortunately you didn't have enough mana for an area of effect spell so they ate you.

[bethgreeneishopeunseen]

My Heroine’s Journey: a personal essay

Trigger warning: abuse, mental illness, stalking.

Hey everyone. As most of you know, I took an extended break after the season finale because of school. I just finished my second year of college, and at the time, I had homework, finals, two part-time jobs, and an internship. I had to step back for personal reasons too. The spring semester and now this summer, and ultimately the whole school year, have been one of the darkest periods in my life. 

I have returned to Team Delusional, but I will be doing so in a limited capacity. I have a full-time job this summer, and other projects I would like to work on. Time is precious. With the show also on hiatus, there is also no new material to go through and I won’t be keeping up with filming spoilers at all. Most of all though, I no longer have my old stamina on day-to-day basis, so I have to cut back.

(Apologies in advance for any typos or awkward sentences. I edit as I write, and this is not the kind of piece that I could back and reread.)

I didn't have the... healthiest of upbringings. As I discussed in the past, my father emotionally abuses my family, especially my mother. I first contextualized my father’s anger as “abuse” when I was about twelve, but I never got far into processing what that meant for years. I wasn’t in the place to do so, physically and mentally. Processing my abuse took off when I started college, as the distance from my entire family for extended periods of time allowed me to question “normal”. My life in Delaware revolves around my family, and even most of my “home” friends are friends with my brother too and know my parents. My family touches my entire social network here. It is hard to think of “abuse” when others who know the perpetrator think “what a nice guy”. In college though, I made friends who knew no one in my family. Friends who would say point blank “You had a shitty childhood” or “That’s horrible” when I mentioned something my father did. Bethyl helped me with this, as Bethyl spits in the face of the cycle of abuse, Daryl and Beth’s fight representing what my parents should have been. Comfort and catharsis, leaving shitty pasts behind.

I fell in love with Bethyl and Beth three years ago, after Still and Alone aired. I made their relationship the center of my semester-long research paper, Sophomore Essay, and I concluded it by relating myself to the subject. For my Sophomore Essay, I focused on Beauty and the Beast adaptations, and Beauty and the Beast has become such an important story to me. The promise of love after ugliness, that you can change into someone better than you once were. Writing that paper started to open doors with rusty hinges, and I had small revelations about my mother and brother after he called me to borrow some money. I began to see how much my mother was complicit in my father’s abuse of my brother and me, as well as my brother’s selfish, manipulative behavior. Everything though unraveled in February. That’s where the sky went from cloudy to full on dark.

Right before Valentine’s Day a casual friend over Facebook asked me out to dinner at a restaurant. I’d never been asked out, and I didn’t want to be alone on Valentine’s Day, so I said yes, even though I wasn’t interested in him. But for some reason my anxiety never shut off, and I barely ate that weekend, avoiding the few open food places where I knew he would be. Because he said that if he saw me beforehand he would ask me out in person. When the night came, he kept making me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t understand why. I blamed myself, for being socially awkward and anxious. I was the one who talked on the date. I described my high school, gave little anecdotes, and just made conversation. He mostly asked me questions, especially during dinner. I stayed guarded, and thank God I did. At one point he noted that my family was really important to me, as I talked about them a lot, and I just felt myself break inside. It was like I was only my abuse. The rest of the night, after he dropped me off at my dorm, my depression suffocated me. I couldn’t shake it, even when my friend, M, invited me to McDonald’s for milkshakes.

The following day, I was working on a project in the library basement, when M texted me to not go near the guy. She eventually told me that she had talked with his ex-girlfriend that morning and found out that he was incredibly psychologically and verbally abusive, and this before he walked into M’s suite, without a warning or permission, looking for me. I... broke down a little. It seemed like I was cursed to encounter abuse. I flinched anytime I heard a door open, expecting him to be there. Thankfully another friend, @angelofdirewolves, was there with me. She, and M, and @bethgreenewarriorprincess and @allatariel got me through that night. Because it didn’t end at the library. Angel walked me back to my dorm right before 10, and within a few minutes of me being back, he was there, knocking at my door, asking if we could talk.

I froze. He was calling my name, and I couldn’t say anything at first. It was like my voice ran away. When you’ve been abused, the greatest fear is that they find you. That they take up your world until there’s nowhere left to run. College was my safe space, and he violated that.

Somehow, I found my voice, and I told him that I had to go to bed. That it was late, and had been a long day. He left, and the next morning I messaged him, telling him that I thought it best if we just stayed friends. I hoped it would end after that, as he agreed with me. It didn’t though. There was another incident in public that Friday. (Think of Trump walking back and forth behind Hillary at the debates, and you get the idea.) M had to chase him off, but he made sure to snag a good look at my face as he left the lounge we were in. 

You must understand: I go to a small school in the middle of nowhere, without any sort of transportation at my disposal. I was trapped. Thankfully M and I already had plans to spend the weekend at her parents’ a few hours away, so I had a two-day reprieve. That following Monday, she then pulled him aside before a class they shared and told him to stay away from me, indirectly threatening him. She was my knight in shining armor. While I still had to see him on campus, he never spoke a word to me. I might as well as have not existed to him. I kind of threw myself into TD at this point, as the show had come back too, and I needed a place to run to. 

In hindsight, I realized that I was so scared was because the warning bells were going off - I just didn’t know what they were at the time. I had subconsciously picked up on red flags even before the date. (This is called thin-slicing, and it evolved as survival mechanism: X.) I shut down, as M described it, because I had been triggered. The few incidents probably don’t qualify as stalking legally. But it felt like I had been that week. On a few occasions, I’ve seen his face in my dreams. I avoid references to dates or Valentine’s Day sometimes because it triggers my anxiety so much, in the form of nausea. Throughout the rest of the semester, he was a walking trigger for me.

At the same time, I learned that my mother is psychologically and emotionally abusive as well. I found old poetry from when I was in my early teens, and I was detailed. My episodic memory is shit, but there was a record, and thirteen-year-old me thinking that my parents hated me wasn’t that far off. She took her anger from my father’s abuse out on me. There was one particularly verbally violent altercation, where my father screamed at me and threw an empty milk jug across the counter and over the phone threatened to break my mother’s legs. After she got home, she shook me while I pretended to sleep. She then gaslit me, explaining it as her “wanting to give me a hug”. Since puberty, she’s cut me down with her sideways comments about my body. Like how I should cut back on certain foods - ones that she coincidentally don’t eat. The older I get, the more womanly I become, the more she resents me. I can feel it when she glances her eyes - my eyes, really - across my figure. She’s on the spectrum for shy narcissism, likely stemming from her own childhood trauma.

I met with my new counselor that week, and boy did I have a shit load for her. I thought I could forgive my mother, that if she got away from my father, then she’d be okay. My mother fixed that for me. The week after the stalking incident, I started seeing the school psychiatrist as well. I told my parents that it was to see if I had A.D.H.D.. I was also fighting a bad cold - my immune system shut down for obvious reasons. The day after I saw my psychiatrist, and spoke briefly about her on the phone, I saw that she had shared an article which explained how ADHD was “made up”. She gaslit me, and she did it out of spite, not out of pain from abuse. Somehow I got myself through a French quiz that afternoon, sneezing and sniffling the whole time and hazy with a fever, but I did. 

 Sunday nights were a bright point. I could see broken, traumatized people like me on TV, and they were fighting against a man a little like my father. I could laugh with them and mourn with them, because I was mourning too, and I’m still mourning. I’ve been researching abuse and abusers, reading what I can. Now I know that some of my father’s abuse could be considered physical. On the fourth, I fully accepted that my brother is abusive too. He’s becoming narcissistic like our mother - doesn’t matter how much he hates our father or how of a social justice warrior he is. He feels entitled to control me and tell me how to live my life, manipulative and coercive. He’s even tried to manipulate me through alcohol. And our two remaining friends from high school support him. Like my mother, he crossed a line that I understood as abuse, and I couldn’t stop running from the truth. So, I experienced the death of my entire family, and my childhood, and my perception of the world, in a matter of months.

Nothing is real for me anymore. I’ve had to question everything in my life and everyone around me. I can’t trust people easily, and I understand that I never could. How could I? The people meant to protect me just hurt me, and brainwashed me. They didn’t love me, not really. They “loved” the idea of me, whatever that was. The good, obedient daughter, I guess. The submissive sister. I no longer have a mom, just a mother. I never had one in the first place, really. They took my twin brother from me, the sweet boy I knew as a child, and twisted him into a monster.

But I understand where I fit here. In narcissistic families, I am the scapegoat. I am the black sheep. Which means that I’m the strongest, because I’m the one they keep trying to tear down. 

It still isn’t over.  And it won’t be over, not for a long time. But like I said, I research and teach myself. I can better fight against my family’s abuse if I know how they do it. I also better understand myself. My counselor and psychiatrist both diagnosed me with P.T.S.D., though more accurately I have C.P.T.S.D. or Complex P.T.S.D.. (I have depression and anxiety too, but they are more symptoms of the C.P.T.S.D..) It is a stress disorder where the survivor’s identity is woven from long-term trauma, one in which they had little hope for escape. Most survivors of childhood abuse probably have C.P.T.S.D., rather than P.T.S.D., and just don’t know it. It has all the symptoms of P.T.S.D., such as hyper vigilance, but the problems run deeper. One psychologist described it as being in a car accident once a week on average for ten years. There is no before for me - my abuse goes all the way back to when I was born. It affected me to the point that my brain did not develop properly: I have a shitty memory, as my brain learned to not remember. I essentially have childhood amnesia, except for certain flashes of memory. My trauma didn’t change me; it built me.

This summer is hard. I started antidepressants in April, but I am at the lowest possible dosage. They do nothing for me now, and I can’t get the dosage increased until I go back to school. I know that the medication isn’t working because this is my first summer where I am wide awake and processing my abuse, knowingly living with my abusers. One of the reasons it took me so long to come back to Team Delusional was because I just spent May and June on the couch, too tired and too depressed to do anything. I never cried before all of this, or even teared up. I just went numb, felt nothing, because I couldn’t feel. I wasn’t allowed to feel growing up. Now, I cry everyday, even when I’m at work. I have daily headaches and often nausea. I hate it when people criticize how Maggie grieves because we grieve the same way. I too throw myself into work, I push myself and push the pain out of my mind. I keep going because the second I have a moment to myself, I’m drowning. 

In new ways, everyday, I feel twenty years worth of trauma and abuse. Sometimes when I think about it all, it feels like my brain will crack. I can’t keep living with these people, and I won’t. I will find a way to get out. But it also means cutting out my entire extended family, because abuse and neglect and trauma connect us all. We keep each other secrets, and we tell each other that this is normal, but it’s not. It’s bullshit. The impending loneliness though, that gets me. I started crying in a Target because my friend bought her mom a birthday card, and that’s something I will never have. I'll even have to leave my fucking pets behind.

On top of all that, the stalking incident came back recently. My school sends out updates on its graduates, and the guy gradated in May. Just last week I received an email that mentioned how he got in a big city. And it hit me that he can still come back into my life, even by proxy. I never reported him to Public Safety because I knew they wouldn’t do anything as his attempted psychological abuse of me wasn’t “severe” enough. He was never punished. So he can still hurt other girls. Just like how my brother will probably hurt any boyfriends and children he’d have. Probably like how my dad abused his ex-girlfriends, since my mom couldn’t have been the first.

But in one of my first sessions with my counselor, she said something profound. She said something along the lines of, “They took your childhood, but they don’t get your adulthood.” I typed up the quote on my blog, and it has grown into one of my most popular posts (X). Almost everyday I see strangers liking or reblogging it, people who don’t even follow me or would have interest in this blog’s main content. I probably tell myself that quote several times a day now. So I can’t give up. I can’t let my abusers win. During my research, I learned that most survivors heal by finding meaning in what happened. It’s not easy to write about this. Writing about these experiences make them real and forces me to feel them up close. But my stories, my mistakes and lessons, they can help others. We can’t get rid of these problems in our homes and in our cultures if we stay silent. The more I speak up, the more I can save the little girls out there. The little girl I never could be.

And I am sorry for all the sadness in this mini personal essay. It’s just my life at the moment. But if I learned anything from Beth’s story, it’s that there is light on the other side. This year, I also discovered that unconditional love is a key ingredient to personal growth.  I became closer with college friendships, such as M and Angel. I grew closer with Christy. I started talking to allatariel in September. I cobbled together a family. While I may be an emotional orphan, I still have people I can run to. At nineteen, I finally learned what it feels like to be truly loved.

And that’s why I’m thankful for Team Delusional and the Greene Effect, and the Beth Greene/Bethyl community at large. This community gives me purpose and a place to escape mentally. It led me to some of the most supportive friendships in my life, people who could counsel through my lowest moments and validate the aftermath of my traumas. And it led them to me, so I could do the same. 

I would not wish my experiences and pain onto anyone, not even my own abusers. Abuse did not make me a better person. With that being said, I am thankful for the difficult recovery process, because it has showed me the power of kindness. It unlocked the empathy I had to bury in order to survive. It better prepared me to help others.

Today, Kesha released her new song, Praying. Usually I am not a fan of her music, but it feels like this song was meant for me, right now.

In November, I had Taylor Swift’s song, Better Man, to help me get through the first bitter taste of realizing how abusive my family is. It is only fitting that another song would be there for me at the end of one stage of processing. Because I buried my family in my heart this week. 

I’m going to survive. This is my Slabtown, and I know there’s an elevator. It’ll be a hard descent into darkness, but like Beth, I will keep going until I find the exit. For all of my followers who have been abused and are still being abused, you can make it too. We aren’t dead girls. We are ballerinas hiding in music boxes until it’s safe to dance, and as you all know, the music box will play again one day. That is my faith, that is my hope. What is yours?

[brownandebony]

FAÇADE

(Hello! Before you read it, you should know this is my first ever story I’ve ever written and am still working on it. You can find it on my page in my bio under the link writings. You can also find this story on wattpad. This is a teen fiction, so idk if this will be your thing. Anyways, this story is about all the bullshit in the world, from depression, anxiety, sexual assault, bullying, body shaming, slut shaming, family issues, religion related issues, homophobia, to everything that’s wrong in the world. I was just done with all the negativity and this came up. The only motives of this story is to promote love, humanity, friendship and to help people and tell then there’s someone who understands and is there for them. Reviews are very much appreciated.)

                                                Chapter 1

                                     "Not happy, Not sad. But Empty"

Cold breeze, dark sky, illuminating moon & rooftop. My contents of peace. Sitting there, looking all over the quiet neighborhood, I was thinking about nothing & everything. I wasn't alone. I had the company I've learnt to love the most. Silence. In all honesty, I forgot what my voice sounded like. During this long summer, I barely muttered a word. My mind wasn't quite though. It never is. In fact, sometimes it speaks so much, I think I'd explode. I'd love to actually. To end this whole cycle of silence, unnecessary breathing & heartbeats. But I won't. I won't give them the satisfaction.

Tomorrow marks the end of this peace. The silence will be forced to be broken. I'd have to walk those corridors and bare the harsh gazes & whispers. I'd have to sit in a room full of people, yet be alone. I'd have to defeat them in their own game & not be that person again. I'd never be that person again. Truth is, I don't want to be that person again.

The only satisfying thing about it all is that, everything would just last the duration of a year. After that, I'd leave everything that my life now composes of and never turn back.

I'm not sad. No. But I'm not happy either. Neither excited nor afraid. It feels like I'm numb. Devoid of any emotion in existence. Empty.

From about two years, I've been dreaming to runaway. I've fooled myself into believing that as soon as this last year of high school ends and I'm eighteen, I'd leave it all and never look back. But sometimes I think, how dare I? I may be able to leave behind these people and the surroundings, but how dare I even think I can run away from the memories? The haunting nightmares or the demons that chase me, when I know it's not possible? There will always be the marks.

The night air became unbearably chilling and it was getting late. Tomorrow was the first day of school, so I'd have to wake up early. Not that I sleep anyway. So I decided to call it a day. I stood up from my positions on the tiles and began walking over to my bedroom window, but something halted my feet. My demons. "What if I jump from this roof? Everything will be over for good. I wouldn't have to run away or wait for a year to do it. I'll finally be at peace". As tempting as that sounded, I forced myself to decide against it. During this summer of unendurably long days and thoughtful nights, I decided I will give everything a new chance. I will pull myself together and not let them win. I won't lose this time.

I climbed through my window to my bed. Sleep wasn't as easy to drown in though. I kept floating all night, swaying with my thoughts, watching the neon purple lights from the shop on the opposite side of the street casting mesmerizing shadows in my otherwise dark room. But it just wasn't the captivating lights or thoughts that kept me awake. It was the fear that if I sleep, the nightmares would come back and I'll be left out of breath and hopeless. So hopeless that every positive thought I mustered would scatter again & I'd be left alone to re-collect those pieces and re-build my already fragile hope.

I think I've heard this song already. I was laying on my bed, with my hair falling off the edges and headphones on, waiting for my cousin Cassandra to pick me up since twenty minutes. School is at a well off distance from my house but I didn't mind walking, rather I preferred it. But since I wasn't one to make my own decisions, I had the liberty to complain. To myself only of course.

Walking to school didn't seem appealing even when I dread riding in her car. I don't want to face her, nicely putting my real thought of not wanting to see her face. Yes, walking would give me time to myself but that's the least of my needs, when I have it all the time. I actually wanted to have my own car, but my salary from being an assistant in a music/book store mocked at my desire.

This is my last year with my mom, so I want it to be as less rocky as possible. Reason why, I didn't argue over her decision of Cassie picking me up. Also, arguing would honestly feel strange, when from the past few years, all I've done is either a bare nod when she talks or ignore her. Talking would feel really foreign.

As soon as I heard the horn, I scurried down the stairs and left the house. My mother was home, but I won't inform her about my departure, nor would she wave me goodbye, kiss my forehead, or wish me luck. It's just the way my life goes, and I've come at peace with it.

I could tell I was just as unwanted for Cassie as she was for me, so there wasn't a question of greetings. I was about to sit at the passenger seat, but something caught my eye and my empty senses felt something. That feeling which is the most prominent to me whenever I come across people. Anger. The person seated there was the one that made me loathe the ride in Cassie's car which I already hated. There seated was Logan. Cassie's boyfriend. I had to compose myself for the sake of Cassie, because no matter how complicated situations had become between us, I knew I didn't have the guts to hurt her. Maybe because she still mattered to me? I cursed myself to let me feel this way for her, but that's the way it is. At the same time, I'm determined to see that one day, when everything about this bastard would disclose.

I flattened my fisted palms and calmed my ragged breathing and took my seat in the backseat and we were off to school.

"BEAR!" Cass yelled in excitement as soon as she saw me come outside the door. She was the only one who could make me smile this big. "Bear" was her nickname for me, which only she called me with.

It was the first day of our 9th grade and we decided we'd walk to school together.

As soon as I saw her, we both clashed & crushed each other in a heart-warming hug.

"Cass! We met just yesterday but I really missed you. I guess the hug makes up for it." I loved her hugs, I loved her cheerful voice, I loved her in general. She was the only tie who was keeping me up with the world. She was the reason why I had friends despite being so lost & haunted every time. She was my strength & my motivation to live. Let's just say, she was more than just a cousin.

"Well, Hugs are the best way to greet. Without it, the start won't be good enough." Cass smiled all teeth. She clang our arms together and we headed to school.

I shake my head at the memory. I couldn't help but think about those times even when we came so far from it. From each other. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss her, and it wasn't about pride either. She hurt me, and that more than anybody could ever do. Even more than him.

We soon reached the campus, and I got off the car the soonest I could. The air was suffocating inside. But instead of going into the building, I took my place at the grass below a tree with my sketchbook and began looking around for inspiration.

I love people. Not in a socializing sort of way, but because of these little things they possess that makes them 'them'. All those things that are oddly beautiful. That are the most intriguing. Those small things that they fail to learn the worth of. For example, that skinny blond sitting on the front steps of the school, looking at the clear sky which made the blue in her eyes shine in the most magnificent manner. Or that girl standing in the middle on the school fore-ground with an over enthusiastic but a genuine smile, straight black hair and heavy positive ambience. Even this well built guy leaning against his car, trying so hard to look cool, when his cute freckles make him 'him'.

My gaze constantly fell back on the raven hair and I just couldn't help it. She had a pull in her. A magnetic aura, warm & welcoming. She was just looking around and observing everything with what I can identify as pure excitement. She looked gorgeous, a little restless and clumsy by bumping on every passing person, but very charismatic at all. What actually knocked the breadth out of my lungs were her forest green orbs that were literally glowing. Those were hands down the most gorgeous pair of eyes I'd ever seem.

I decided on her and began sketching her as best as I could. I looked up from my sketchbook and down again with my hands constantly working, but the third time I did it, she was nowhere in sight. The only part of her that I couldn't get right were her eyes. Disappointment settled in me with the thought of this sketch never being able to be complete. But it wasn't my lack of artistic abilities that I didn't get her eyes right. In all honesty, I'm an artist of quite a caliber, because of having a habit to do it all the time. It was my escape from everything life threw at me. But it were her eyes. They held so much more than green to them.

I was having the urge to find her, look closely into her eyes and get it right. But she'd think I'm a creep. She won't understand the frustration of unaccomplishment that I was feeling. She'd think I'm some random lesbian girl throwing herself at her or as they say- A slut, a whore. If that would affect me is the question. I have become thick skinned to profanities as such. That's what happens to you when you get used to it. So used to it, because every single person you cross paths with, has at least once used it on you, maybe not at your face, but they did. Besides, I’m not a lesbian.

So, better late than never, let me introduce myself. I'm Barrett Gerber. A seventeen year old artist and the school slut.

I packed all my stuff and finally forced myself to get started with the day. As I entered, I took my time-table and stuff from the office and headed towards the locker assigned to me. I couldn't though. There were these people, seeming like the whole school population cheering, whistling and yelling 'fight-fight'. I only had one wish- to come across as less people as possible but life smashes this in face as if saying 'bitch, you thought'.

As I was tearing my way through the crowd, I was grabbed at several inappropriate places, much to my displeasure but a usual occurrence. I pried their hands off me kicking and punching my way through that crowd and was fully exposed to the scene in front of me. As soon as I realized what was happening, it didn't surprise me to a bit. There was this school jock Dave, holding a girl, maybe a nerd against the lockers, who, as far as I could see was a newbie, had black hair in a mess with her lips busted, and an all over pretty messed up attire. It soon hit. It was the green eyes.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make peace with a few things though I convinced myself that I did. Like being called the profanities because the words still stung, being touched and toyed disgustingly and bullying. I lied to myself because I don't want to be vulnerable again besides just because I'm used to it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt anymore. Even though, I wanted to stay invisible to bare this last year before leaving everything behind, I was not letting this happen in front of my eyes. It wasn't going to be pretty, but I was ready to take it.

"Dave" As soon as the words left my lips, there was eerie silence. Whenever I wasn't alone in this school, there always happened to be quite a scene. I would be the center of attention much to my hatred and that's what's happening now. Loud murmurs occupied the silence and all eyes were on me. I hated it, but my mind was occupied with two very distinct things. First, how strange it felt to hear my own voice after so long. It was like I forgot how to speak before this moment. My voice is nothing like I remember. It contains no emotion now, nothing like a year ago. I sounded calm. Frighteningly calm.

Second- I won't let Dave hurt anyone even if it means I have to do something that most displeases me. To be the center of attention. To have all eyes on me. I am a confident person, trust me, but those eyes were cruel and judgmental. Some so ruthless that they undressed me with it every single day without a shame in the world.

"You have a pretty messed up idea of fun. Let the girl go." My tone was very calm, too calm to be normal but at the same time very threatening. It wasn't intentional though. Maybe all my thoughts were forming its own structure, because I sure wasn't trying anything. I held his eye contact and looked him dead in it. I could swear he seemed uneasy for a split second, but in the other, he laughed on my face.

"Why would she try to save this bitch's ass?" Dave mused to his friends pointing at me whilst laughing.

"Ah! Maybe now she’s a bi. Must wanna have the best of both worlds." As soon as Patrick, one of Dave's poesy member said, the whole crowd burst out laughing. I couldn't take this anymore. If I stayed, my control that's already wearing thin would die. I grabbed the girl's wrist, ignoring the whistling and hooting and began dragging her out of the circle we were in. There were many remarks made but a certain one made me halt my steps and tighten my grip on her hand.

"Once a whore, always a whore, yeah?" My blood was boiling. They were being successful in what they wanted to do. Hurting me. But I decided against showing that they had an effect on me. I was about to walk again, but the words reached my ears first.

"Don't have to comprise with that blackie, you can always fuck me." Dave's voice felt like I was lashed then salted all over my body. This was too much. The control I was having on myself was long gone. I turned around as swiftly as I could and gave Dave an uppercut punch and kicked him in the groin. He fell to the ground hissing coherent words while grabbing his area.

"You seem pretty fucked now. I hope you're satisfied." I gave him a tight-lipped sarcastic smile. I was walking off when he muttered "bitch" in a venom laced tone, so I decided bitch it is and gave him another kick at his spot. It wasn't like I was a trained martial arts ninja or something. I just took him off guard and was fairly angry and the combination worked for me.

"You can get your asses to work. Hate to say this, but show is over assholes." I spat at the respective audience with a very sweet tone and an even sweeter over-the-top smile. I felt a tiny hint of life with the confidence that I displayed. It felt good to take out some load of your mind. Maybe it really isn't Barrett like to hide in a corner just to escape everything with safety. I felt more me now. It felt good. I should've known better that I wouldn't be able to take whatever thrown at me. This felt so right but not enough to actually make me happy. Apparently, I was far from it. But I felt better.

The hallway was now clear except for me and the girl. When I turned, she had her jaw practically hitting the floor and was staring at me with wide eyes. She was constantly gazing at me and finally muttered a silent ‘whoa’.

"Barrett, Barrett Gerber." I broke the silence and let forward my hand for a shake. She looked down at my hand, closed her hanging jaw and shook my hand frantically and with the energy like she fed on electricity. I gave her a raised questioning brow. When she realized what I asked for, the bulb over her head lighted and an ‘oh’ left her lips.

"You, my friend are the real bond. Look at that style! Hyora, Hyora Gerard. That son of a bitch, anonymous bullying cunt. First commented filthy things about me but when he couldn’t take my sass, flipped on me. That bastard. I mean just suck it up I’m not interested in you, my standards are bloody high. I would’ve taken him down on my own, no biggie, but thank you for saving my ass" She rambled it all in one breath whilst shaking my hand.

"Nice too meet you Hyora." I said it as a well known fake courtesy. It wasn’t nice to meet her. She is of the worst kind. The over-enthusiastic, overly-happy, too nice friendly people who end up back-stabbing you. She reminds me of the last one I encountered of her sort.

"Thank you a million times. That, what you just did was SICK! Weird, isn’t it? My name? It means the fresh one, the one envied by everyone. It rare." She genuinely smiled at me. At this moment I envied her. How could she smile so effortlessly? Without even having to take a moment and just doing it like it's her reflex?

It was the most of an interaction I could bare. She sure seems like a nice person, all the more reason for me to stay away from her. So I just turned away & took off for my first class. I didn't even make a step properly when I froze in my track because of the girl’s voice who was now trailing behind me.

"I'm glad I made a friend on the first day. Lucky me, eh?" She said.

She may be one of those fakers or not. But if she isn’t, I wouldn't want her life to be the slightest like mine. She deserves better, better than me as a company and better situations than the aftermath of our friendship. I am no good for her and she is too good for me. Being near me will just ruin her. And even if I’d want her company, which maybe I do, she’d still eventually turn her back on me like everyone else does.

I shook my head and carried on to my destination. It may have seemed rude but in all honesty, this was the best thing I could do to her. She may start hating me or think I'm a bitch, but I don't care what it is as long she keeps her distance from me.

I'm no good.

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Oosh, where has the time gone? It’s hard to figure out whether it’s the weeks or the weekends that go by faster. Either way, they’re going nuts and I’m waaaay behind on my weekly updates. I’ve noted this for the last couple of weeks, sighed, and discovered that it’s now Thursday or something equally ridiculous. And of course, the longer this goes on, the more I have to write and the more impossible it becomes. I guess I’ll have to draw a line under it… This week you’ll only be seeing the things I gave a damn about from the last couple of weeks because otherwise I’ll never finish!

A Rare Moment of Self-Reflection

What I should do is to think a little about why I’m now struggling to do this. In part it’s because this exercise was great at the beginning of lockdown, and gave me a focus. Now, of course, I have a fucktonne of work to do and things are sort of ramping up in other areas of life, like occasionally seeing people in the flesh and stuff. A number of things have helped me keep it together for the last 129 days (I think) of working at home: work, obviously, is my primary routine and aiming to go for a cycle ride beforehand really frames my day. Every Thursday for ages (forever? Who knows) I’ve been hosting a virtual pub for our MissImp weekly regulars (and folks from further afield too, which has been amazing) which has filled my regular evening out slot nicely. Then there’s been the fortnightly We Are What We Overcome webcasts, and the quick chats we have on the off weeks. That handful of regular activity has been great.

I try to keep these posts going because of something we talked about in one of our podcasts: if I’m depressed, I can’t remember any good things I’ve ever done, and if I’m all perky and up then I don’t care about remembering what I’ve been doing. Right now I’m mostly pretty chipper, largely a consequence of being busy and having acquired lots of LEGO recently, so this doesn’t feel important in the same way it did a few months ago. That’s a tricky place for me to be in, because despite occasional dips into glum days, I think I’ve been upbeat for a while now. The longer I’m upbeat, the less likely it feels that I’ll go down, or that I’ll worry about crashing. And that’s actually a decent indicator that I’m going to have a bit of a crash. Keeping track is the whole damn point! Must make more time. 

Anyway… what have I been up to? Well, we’ve seen real live humans on both the last Saturdays, partly in attempt to normalise the new normal, or whatever the pre-second wave era is called, and partly because it turns out that folk want to see us, which is very nice and reassuring. Messing about with my sister and nieces at Highfields Park was a rather fun afternoon, as was eating and drinking at Dovecote Lane park last weekend. That bandstand is perfect, other than it’s brutish tarmac flooring. As I have alluded to earlier, I’m also quite busy at work as we race for the print deadlines for October titles, commission more and more artwork and do general bookstuff. It’s ace really, but is certainly filling my days tightly. We’re not likely to see the office for another month, and that’s OK with me.

I’ve been a rather busy LEGO person too, albeit more “busy” in the sense of “buying” than making much. I did join a LUG though, the Brick Central LEGO User Group. I’ve thought about it a lot over the last couple of years, and though I’m not sure how much time I could feasibly put into big displays and conventions, I’m interested in finding out. Also I got neat printed bricks and bits and pieces when I signed up, so I’m happy with that. I took advantage of the LEGO double VIP points last week to pick up a “few” things, from cute little LEGO Dots and baby dinosaurs to the massive Pirates of Barracuda Bay set. It is all very exciting! I’ve got some random builds I need to take some decent photos of and share them too.  

Big Stuff

Little Stuff

Big Stuff

Watching: The Order, season 2

I can’t deny that this is a low-rent Teen Wolf crossed with the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, themselves low-rent versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so many more.  I remembered nothing of the previous season, even when we saw the “last time on this thing”, and would have sworn I’d never seen it at all. Nonetheless, this proved to be effective brain chewing entertainment while eating, in the sense of it noticeably degrading one’s braincells. Daft witch academy with neighboring anti-magic werewolves (who turn out to have previously been the witches’ bodyguard or something), but the wolves have all been tricked into being witches, or something. It doesn’t really matter – the entire show is redeemed by the delightful relationship between the four werewolves, which feels very much like how I felt about my university housemates: loving, occasionally fighty and laced with sarcasm and alcohol. Shame the lady werewolf ended up in hell this season. I’m sure I won’t remember this next time either, but if I can be persuaded to watch season 3 I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. 

Reading: The Kingdom Beyond the Waves by Stephen Hunt

Continuing the really quite wacky steampunk series set in a far-future with multiple species of human (Craynarbians are splendid shelled folk, for example), steammen, and wild action adventure. I have insufficient time to summarise this one, but it covers an Atlantis-alike ancient city in the sky, infernal plots of genius industrialists to take over government, a frightening Borg-like jungle species, savage feral robots, submarine journeys, and so much more. The whole series is an absolute blast and I’m enjoying re-reading them enormously. Get on it.  

Building: LEGO Overwatch Watchpoint: Gibraltar #75975

While I still have almost no idea what Overwatch is (yeah, yeah, I know it’s a game, and my friend Sam has a nice summary on Overwatch here), but I adore the LEGO sets. I’ve had my eye on this one solely because it features a gorilla in a spacesuit. Now that it’s reaching the end of its shelf-life “Watchpoint: Gibraltar” has become more affordable, and on a midnight whim (always the best time to buy LEGO) I ordered…

The minifigs are an utter delight! Check out Pharah (in blue) with that gorgeous gold visor, and Mercy (admittedly with the usual pink-printed-on-black face which never really works that well) with a lovely hair/hat element and lovely printed torso and legs, plus the rather ominous Reaper. I’m guessing he’s the bad guy. The gorilla is apparently named “Winston”. I hadn’t noticed that he’s wearing glasses, but he’s rather charming either way.

The build is pretty straightforward: you make a spaceship, which has a couple of separating sections, and the cool but not very exciting gantry/rocket leaning post thing. The spaceship itself is a satisfyingly sleek affair, with cleverly connected sections and very neat work on making the hatch fit flush. Building it felt like a wonderful flashback to my childhood, making largely flat spaceships that feel a little like this, but much less good.

The whole thing looks very pretty, but is inconveniently tall for anywhere I want to put it…

Watching: Derry Girls, season 2

Just marvelous. I can’t recommend this show enough, and I’m thrilled that there’s a third season on the way. Set in, um, Derry, in the 90s, this teenage sitcom is pretty much perfect. In keeping with non-American TV shows about teenagers, this lot actually look like real teenagers – the scowl game is extraordinary. The relationships and dialogue are brilliant, and you can’t help but love them all a little bit. The parents are savage and equally funny (finding Bill Clinton is a particular joy). The costumes are bang-on 90s-hideous and the soundtrack makes me unusually nostalgic.  My only complaint is that there aren’t enough episodes. Not even close. Apparently Netflix screwed up and released this early, so it’s not available any more. Sorry folks!

Building: LEGO Jurassic World Dr Wu’s Lab: Baby Dinosaur Breakout #75939

Jesus Christ, baby dinosaurs! How was I ever supposed to resist? Reader, I did not. Clearly. 

Like many of the licensed sets, especially the Jurassic World theme, there isn’t a lot to this. That said, the build is drawn out by the usual agony of applying stickers to transparent elements, and my desire to get them mostly straight had me turning on extra lights and teasing them into place with a scalpel. The egg turning machine is pleasing, and although I was complaining about applying the stickers, this is a set where they really do shine. The details in them are lovely, from the laptop screen to all the heads up displays, they’re adorable, and I’ll have to find more uses for them.

The figures are reliably cool, and I really like the LEGO Friends elements such as the baby feeding bottle sneaking into the mainstream LEGO sets.  Dr Wu has the most cunning expression, just like in the movies! But none of this matters – all shall be recycled for parts except for the ADORABLE baby triceratops and even babier ankylosaur. Just so goddamn cute. I couldn’t be happier. 

Watching: What We Do in the Shadows, season 2

A show that completely revels in its own stupidity with enormous commitment, we caned this in a single sitting too. Colin, the energy vampire, continues to be my personal favourite, but they’re all pretty great idiots. I’m delighted that the main storyline has turned out to be Guillermo’s, as he learns of his vampire-hunting past and wonders about his future, killing vampires while still being a dedicated familiar. Wonderful nonsense.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome – Fortnightly Mental Health Check-In

We reflected a little on how life has changed with a whole fortnight of being allowed to go to the pub… And here’s the link for next week’s chat.

Watching: Warrior Nun

This is dreadful. OK, that’s not entirely fair, but it’s definitely mostly fair. This is the story of a bunch of nuns who are warriors (duh), fighting demons and stuff. One of the nuns always has an angel’s halo embedded in their back, which makes them a sin-fighting superhero. When a mission goes badly tits up, the warrior nuns rip the halo out of their dead leader and stick it in a recently dead girl… She comes back to life, no longer paraplegic, but certainly perplexed about why she’s alive, why she has superpowers (kinda), and why she should give a shit about the Catholic church. Sounds fun, right. The trailer looks pretty fun too, and there are about 25 minutes of great stuff spread across the entire show, with some fun fights, laughable CGI demons, the one good character (Shotgun Mary) who appears to be in another, much better, show. But the rest of it is bogged down by impossibly tedious exposition where characters literally open books and read endless passages from them, or an agonisingly dull romance, in which the most exciting bits are them sitting on a ferry. The show almost redeems itself with a final heist episode but by that point it’s so laden with cack that I couldn’t bring myself to care. You may enjoy it though.

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Drop-In – Roberto Lewis

More great and splendid video content right here, on one of my favourite topics — coming in with nothing! (I mean, favourite because I cannot plan…)

Last Week: The Order, The Kingdom Above the Waves, Warrior Nun, Derry Girls, LEGO Overwatch and Jurassic World, We Are What We Overcome and more… I’m quite behind. #books #tv #LEGO #stuff https://wp.me/pbprdx-8GV Oosh, where has the time gone? It’s hard to figure out whether it’s the weeks or the weekends that go by faster.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

I wish I'd had this illustrated guide to periods as a teenager

The internet has changed how kids learn about sex, but sex ed in the classroom still sucks. In Sex Ed 2.0, Mashable explores the state of sex ed and imagines a future where digital innovations are used to teach consent, sex positivity, respect, and responsibility.

My first period showed up out of the blue like an unwelcome guest that I was highly unprepared for. I didn't know what I was looking at, what was normal, what was safe to do, or who to talk to. 

Most of all, though, I was mortified by the very idea of having blood coming out of my private parts. Could people tell? What if I bled onto my clothes? This embarrassment prevented me from telling literally anyone — even my own mother — for the first few years of my menstruating life. This meant that I didn't have proper access to period products and had to make do with pads that I pilfered from my mum's bathroom in the hope she wouldn't notice. My teenage years were full of makeshift, creative ways of trying (and often failing) to stem the flow of menstrual blood that I was woefully ill-equipped to manage. 

SEE ALSO: No girl's period should force her to miss school, and this startup is making sure of that

Looking back, the information available to me was limited. We had one lesson in school about periods, and one book in the school library that was deeply unhelpful. I had one book about puberty in general, which told me diddly squat about what the hell I was supposed to do with this unbidden guest that popped round each month. Over time, my relationship with my period evolved, I learned through trial and error what to do and how to take care of myself. When I finally told my mum I'd started my period (three years after the fact), she talked to me and I worked hard to push away the crippling embarrassment I felt each time she mentioned what I regarded at the time as an enormous biological inconvenience. 

Image: natalie byrne

I would have given my eye teeth at the time for a way to learn about the changes my body was going through in a way that didn't require me to have a conversation with another human being. What I needed was a book that was reliable, informative, and accessible. That book has finally arrived like the most welcome of guests — its name is quite simply Period. 

Natalie Byrne is the brilliant human behind this much-needed book. She describes Period as an "illustrated and handwritten book about periods," containing "everything you need to know about periods." 

Things like: what a period is, how to use a tampon, how to deal with PMS, and how to track your cycle. But the book also delves into other things that come hand in hand with menstruating — like bloating, cramps, sore breasts, and foods to avoid.

Natalie Byrne, author of Period.

Image: natalie byrne

There are illustrated guides for using menstrual cups, tampons, period pants, and different types of pads. There are also illustrations depicting the four phases of our menstrual cycles as well as anatomical drawings of "what you can't see." 

SEE ALSO: Some transgender men need period underwear like this

One thing that this book does — that so many others do not — is use trans and non-binary-inclusive language throughout. "Anyone born with female private parts has a menstrual period. Having a period or not doesn't determine whether you're a boy or girl, man or woman," writes Byrne in the book. 

Growing up, Byrne's experience of learning about periods was similar to my own — and countless others, I'm sure. "My mum has this science body book, I still remember the illustrations today," Byrne tells me. "There was a little bit on periods in the section about reproduction, but I didn’t get it. I have dyslexia and I just really hated books because I couldn’t understand them." 

Byrne's mum would bring out the book and try to explain about periods, but she didn't understand. "I smiled and nodded like I always did when books came out, and said I understood, when I didn’t at all," she says. 

"The school had a periods assembly for the girls only when I was 15. And I started at 11, soooo I’m sad to say I didn’t really know much about periods. My mum was great with telling me everything she knew, but she grew up in Chile so there was some cultural issues," says Byrne. "She wouldn’t let me use tampons because she was told ‘virgins can’t use them’. Well, sorry mum but that was very incorrect."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Natalie Byrne (@nataliebyrne) on Oct 30, 2018 at 9:15am PDT

Like many of us who recall those early years of getting to grips with having periods, Byrne has been reflecting on her younger self while writing the book. "I wrote this book for my 11 year old self who had no idea what was going on with her body," says Byrne. "She was scared, confused and traumatised. I know this book would have completely changed the way I look at my body, treat myself and frankly it would have changed my life. I know it would have."

Byrne says she struggled with disordered eating, self harm, and depression for most of her teenage years, so she's aimed to make her book mindful of some of the other issues that menstruating teens might be facing. "In the book there is a lot of information about mental health and body positivity," she says. 

The idea for the book came when Byrne became part of a group of creatives called 'Bloody Good Period' and attended the #FreePeriods protest in November 2017, where activists united to protest period poverty. "One of the speakers on stage said 'there isn't even that much information about periods' and I thought, there must be, it's 2017!"

Image: natalie byrne

Byrne went along to her local library and found nothing — except for a few books about "growing up." "I found growing up books that just mentioned slightly that a period is a thing," she says. "One book in particular book had a quarter page for periods and the next page was a double page spread on wet dreams." She went to a bigger library and found nothing there. 

For a few weeks, Byrne says she "went around complaining" that there really needs to be a book for children about periods. "It took me a couple of days to realise, hey, am I going to just sit around and wait for someone else to make this thing I wish I had?"

"I guess I could give it my best shot, even if I just made a zine that I'd DIY print at home and sell it on Etsy. If it helps just one person, I knew it would be so worth it," she adds. Byrne began waking up at 5 a.m. and researching and writing it before her work day. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Natalie Byrne (@nataliebyrne) on Oct 18, 2018 at 10:14am PDT

While it's clear that periods are being talked about more, there's still a lot of work to be done when it comes to shattering the persistent stigma that's still having an impact on young people who menstruate. 

Research by Plan UK found that 26 percent of girls didn't know what to do when they got their period for the first time. And, one in seven girls didn't know what was happening when they had their first period.

Byrne's next goal is to get the book into schools and libraries and to ensure people from low income backgrounds get access to it. "We have just announced a pay it forward scheme, as we got so many lovely messages from people who wanted to buy a book for someone who can’t afford it," says Byrne. "I have had some interest already from schools, one school from my hometown is currently waiting to get it okayed by the PTA and they want to implement it in the school which is fantastic." She also wants to make sure the book gets into the right hands. "I want to see it in the hands of people who need it the most — schools and libraries with less resources," she says. 

"What I kept saying to myself when I was waking up at 5 a.m. last year was if it helps one person then it will all be worth it," says Byrne. 

WATCH: This robotic arm will feed you every time you smile

[cristinajourdanqp]

I Went From Having an Invisible Illness, Being Overweight, Depressed and Tired To Enjoying Robust Health!

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

Looking back, I have always had thyroid issues though I had no idea what that meant in my teens and twenties. It apparently runs in my family, though with rural Alaska medical care in the 70s, you were lucky to have a doctor available, let alone a dentist. Even as I grew older and moved to the city and then to college in Arizona and life in many other places, I was always just not well. Though I managed to live and work and play fairly normally, I would occasionally have days that I could not get out bed, so I attributed it to depression or other more readily identifiable causes like depression.

I eventually married and went through two pregnancies in my early 30s, fairly normal and with healthy babies. After my second child, my mental and physical health really started going downhill, though it wasn’t really visible other than weight gain and some fairly severe post-partum depression. With the benefit of hindsight and research, what was probably mild Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis in my youth turned into full-blown Hashimoto’s after the stress of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and raising two small children.

I was officially diagnosed in 2006 with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis after a therapist I was seeing for depression thought to order some tests. My levels weren’t that high, and I don’t even remember what the endocrinologist said to do about it, just that I had it and it had to do with my thyroid, and that someday my thyroid would fail and I’d be put on medication. He advised eating better and exercising, but with no specific plan. Ok. I just went about my life in the usual way, raising two small kids and easing my way back into the working world while doing all of the usual life things of home maintenance, the kids’ sports and school schedules, marriage, work and other family obligations. The Internet wasn’t that prevalent then, and I just accepted my diagnosis and prognosis and went about my life the best I could.

The years went by and I gained more and more weight. I would “diet” occasionally, have a little bit of success, then fall right off the wagon. I’d tried all of the fad diets, Weight Watchers, etc., and even went sugar-free and even gluten-free a few times in the past with great results, but again, fell off the diet wagon every time. I had been active most of my life with running, college intramural sports, tennis, hiking, long-distance biking, canoeing, camping—nothing ever really stopped me from being active, even being overweight or tired through most of it. I even put myself through almost three P-90X workouts in a row (shoutout to Mark Sisson for his episode – little did I know he’d be so instrumental to my life later….). My weight didn’t budge, though I got some nice muscle under my chub. I thought I was eating fairly well at that time, too, low fat, whole grains—the usual “good diet.” At the beginning of the third cycle of hard-core exercise, plus moving some furniture, I herniated a disc in my back and that put an end to P90X and extreme exercise.

In the meantime, I was getting sicker and I didn’t understand why. I was 50 pounds heavier than my normal pre-pregnancy weight. I was depressed, moody, lethargic, overweight, exhausted, and I always felt like I should just try harder to find the right medication to take care of it, or cut out the fats, or just exercise more. It seemed like each day was a monumental effort to get through, and I know I missed out on a lot of activities with my kids when they were little.

By 2013 my diagnoses were:

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. This is an auto-immune disorder where your immune system attacks the thyroid, which untreated can lead to multiple issues and eventual thyroid gland failure.

Bipolar disorder and depression/anxiety. The manic-depression was actually the hypothyroidism/hyperthyroidism that characterizes

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, but I didn’t know that at the time so I went on multiple and many medications over the years, thinking that nothing was working for me and this is how it was and would be for me forever.

Migraines and headaches. This entailed emergency room visits and even a brain MRI. I went to a neurologist and was put on a migraine medication that ultimately gave me kidney stones, two of which had to be surgically removed. The medication didn’t help at all so I eventually gave up on it and since then, no more kidney stones! An expensive experiment. Now, if I have a gluten exposure—instant migraine and the root cause of them.

GERD, bile disorder and esophagitis. I was put on a medication and at my first out-of-pocket charge of $400 for the med, I decided I’d go with the heartburn instead. I’d had bloating and discomfort for years, and did the usual OTC meds for that. An EGD thankfully showed no celiac disease but did show chronic inflammation.

Asthma and chronic bronchitis requiring an inhaler

Chronic fatigue

Restless leg syndrome

Hyperlipidemia

Osteoarthritis, joint pain and stiffness

Chronic tendinitis in wrists

Adult acne

Early menopause at age 40

Brain fog

Around this time I had also lost half of my hair—thankfully I have thick hair so it still looked ok even though it was falling out in clumps.

For seven long years I went to the endocrinologist, got my thyroid (TSH) level tested and was always told it was “normal.”

In August 2013, after my last visit to the endocrinologist who had “managed” my Hashimoto’s for seven years, I finally hit the wall with my frustration over not being able to control my own body. I had had my first full-blown panic attack around this time as well. My medical record states the doctor actually thought it “was unlikely patient has significant thyroid disorder.” My TPOAb (Hashimoto’s marker) was 629.5 IU/ml (normal is to just eat right and exercise more and wait until my thyroid failed and then be put on medication. I even begged to be put on Armour NDT or something to just try it, even though my TSH was normal. He refused. I fired him and, at the end of my rope, finally got on the internet where I found the book I felt saved my life, “Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the The Root Cause” by Dr. Izabella Wentz, which had just been published. Finally, someone who had suffered like me!

I jumped right in to the Hashimoto’s protocol—which is basically Primal, and though it was a super hard transition off the SAD and meds, I lost 20 pounds in the first 21 days and over the next three months, lost 25 more, and never looked back. I gave up gluten, grains, started eating way more fat and vegetables, minimal fruits, got off all of my medications and resolved almost all of my health problems, in particular the depression—it’s amazing to live without it! Without reading The Primal Blueprint (until a bit later), my diet and lifestyle had evolved to fit the model of ancestral health naturally.

During the initial transition, I had gathered all of my medical records, made a summary of them chronologically, made a spreadsheet of my labs and discovered by myself that while I have always had “normal” TSH levels, I don’t convert T4 into the more usable T3, and my symptoms fit that profile. I found a holistic leaning CNP that agreed with my diagnosis and was willing to prescribe the proper NDT medication to address this and literally 20 minutes after taking the first dose, my anxiety, which had reached panic attack levels, disappeared. I now know that when my anxiety creeps up, it’s time for a thyroid medication adjustment.

I eventually read Elle Russ’ Paleo Thyroid Solution, which is a great resource for thyroid sufferers and explained a lot of what I was going through. I do still have the occasional Hashimoto’s flare days, when I simply cannot get out of bed, but it’s down to 1-2 times a year—and usually after I’ve let non-Primal foods into my diet. A far cry from being how I lived my life on a daily basis. It took ten years from diagnosis and many endocrinologists, naturopaths, nurses and internists later, but I finally have found an integrative medical doctor who helps me with the right medical care for Hashimoto’s. I was gratified at our first intake appointment that she did not change one thing about my diet which was already Primal! She commented on my robust health and I was never more proud of myself for getting myself from my sickest days to the point of actual robust health!

Today, after my all time high of 213 lbs, I keep my body at a comfortable 165 lbs (I’m 5’5” and age 49). My Hashimoto’s is stable and after initially cutting my levels in half by eating primally, I go a bit up and down and now rely on my physical and mental states to determine how well I’m controlling it through my food plan. I don’t have a CrossFit-type body, but I do have a body that takes me through my days without pain or suffering, as long as I stick to the Primal way. I no longer have depression, anxiety, GERD, acne, my hair grew back, I sleep like a champ and my brain fog is better but not all gone—hey, I’ll be 50 this year, what can I say! My weight, despite four back surgeries for disc herniations, a labral tear repair in my hip, a broken ankle and a shoulder surgery (the osteoarthritis still rears its ugly head), has remained stable at 165 lbs since 2013. Even when I am unable to exercise, I maintain my weight, mood and general good health simply by eating and living Primally. Today, I enjoy riding my bike, walking my dogs, working out at my property mowing grass, hauling logs and brush and doing simple Primal workouts in my basement. I have a goal of someday being super muscle-y but since I feel so much better than I did before, I’m ok with my body now. My clothes always fit and I can live and do what I want to physically, and that’s more than enough for me.

My children are now 19 and 16, growing up and moving on with their lives, and with extra time on my hands I started looking into being a health coach. I’d followed many “diets” related to primally eating—mostly the Hashimoto’s Protocol, the Bulletproof Diet, the Whole30 plan, the Auto Immune Protocol plan and Paleo among others—but truly, the lifestyle I developed and live dovetails totally with the Primal Blueprint—I was living it before I really even knew about it! My heritage is Inuit/Alaskan Eskimo so it makes complete sense now that I live best on fats, meats and vegetables and berries! I know this lifestyle works for me and am excited to share it with others like me, who have suffered needlessly with auto-immune disorders that aren’t treated properly. I know you can take your health into your own hands and live the way nature intended – PRIMALLY! I recently became certified as Primal Health Coach and am living proof that good health can be had with minimal effort and suffering and I’m excited to begin my journey of helping others to robust health!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

[milenasanchezmk]

I Went From Having an Invisible Illness, Being Overweight, Depressed and Tired To Enjoying Robust Health!

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

Looking back, I have always had thyroid issues though I had no idea what that meant in my teens and twenties. It apparently runs in my family, though with rural Alaska medical care in the 70s, you were lucky to have a doctor available, let alone a dentist. Even as I grew older and moved to the city and then to college in Arizona and life in many other places, I was always just not well. Though I managed to live and work and play fairly normally, I would occasionally have days that I could not get out bed, so I attributed it to depression or other more readily identifiable causes like depression.

I eventually married and went through two pregnancies in my early 30s, fairly normal and with healthy babies. After my second child, my mental and physical health really started going downhill, though it wasn’t really visible other than weight gain and some fairly severe post-partum depression. With the benefit of hindsight and research, what was probably mild Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis in my youth turned into full-blown Hashimoto’s after the stress of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and raising two small children.

I was officially diagnosed in 2006 with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis after a therapist I was seeing for depression thought to order some tests. My levels weren’t that high, and I don’t even remember what the endocrinologist said to do about it, just that I had it and it had to do with my thyroid, and that someday my thyroid would fail and I’d be put on medication. He advised eating better and exercising, but with no specific plan. Ok. I just went about my life in the usual way, raising two small kids and easing my way back into the working world while doing all of the usual life things of home maintenance, the kids’ sports and school schedules, marriage, work and other family obligations. The Internet wasn’t that prevalent then, and I just accepted my diagnosis and prognosis and went about my life the best I could.

The years went by and I gained more and more weight. I would “diet” occasionally, have a little bit of success, then fall right off the wagon. I’d tried all of the fad diets, Weight Watchers, etc., and even went sugar-free and even gluten-free a few times in the past with great results, but again, fell off the diet wagon every time. I had been active most of my life with running, college intramural sports, tennis, hiking, long-distance biking, canoeing, camping—nothing ever really stopped me from being active, even being overweight or tired through most of it. I even put myself through almost three P-90X workouts in a row (shoutout to Mark Sisson for his episode – little did I know he’d be so instrumental to my life later….). My weight didn’t budge, though I got some nice muscle under my chub. I thought I was eating fairly well at that time, too, low fat, whole grains—the usual “good diet.” At the beginning of the third cycle of hard-core exercise, plus moving some furniture, I herniated a disc in my back and that put an end to P90X and extreme exercise.

In the meantime, I was getting sicker and I didn’t understand why. I was 50 pounds heavier than my normal pre-pregnancy weight. I was depressed, moody, lethargic, overweight, exhausted, and I always felt like I should just try harder to find the right medication to take care of it, or cut out the fats, or just exercise more. It seemed like each day was a monumental effort to get through, and I know I missed out on a lot of activities with my kids when they were little.

By 2013 my diagnoses were:

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. This is an auto-immune disorder where your immune system attacks the thyroid, which untreated can lead to multiple issues and eventual thyroid gland failure.

Bipolar disorder and depression/anxiety. The manic-depression was actually the hypothyroidism/hyperthyroidism that characterizes

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, but I didn’t know that at the time so I went on multiple and many medications over the years, thinking that nothing was working for me and this is how it was and would be for me forever.

Migraines and headaches. This entailed emergency room visits and even a brain MRI. I went to a neurologist and was put on a migraine medication that ultimately gave me kidney stones, two of which had to be surgically removed. The medication didn’t help at all so I eventually gave up on it and since then, no more kidney stones! An expensive experiment. Now, if I have a gluten exposure—instant migraine and the root cause of them.

GERD, bile disorder and esophagitis. I was put on a medication and at my first out-of-pocket charge of $400 for the med, I decided I’d go with the heartburn instead. I’d had bloating and discomfort for years, and did the usual OTC meds for that. An EGD thankfully showed no celiac disease but did show chronic inflammation.

Asthma and chronic bronchitis requiring an inhaler

Chronic fatigue

Restless leg syndrome

Hyperlipidemia

Osteoarthritis, joint pain and stiffness

Chronic tendinitis in wrists

Adult acne

Early menopause at age 40

Brain fog

Around this time I had also lost half of my hair—thankfully I have thick hair so it still looked ok even though it was falling out in clumps.

For seven long years I went to the endocrinologist, got my thyroid (TSH) level tested and was always told it was “normal.”

In August 2013, after my last visit to the endocrinologist who had “managed” my Hashimoto’s for seven years, I finally hit the wall with my frustration over not being able to control my own body. I had had my first full-blown panic attack around this time as well. My medical record states the doctor actually thought it “was unlikely patient has significant thyroid disorder.” My TPOAb (Hashimoto’s marker) was 629.5 IU/ml (normal is to just eat right and exercise more and wait until my thyroid failed and then be put on medication. I even begged to be put on Armour NDT or something to just try it, even though my TSH was normal. He refused. I fired him and, at the end of my rope, finally got on the internet where I found the book I felt saved my life, “Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the The Root Cause” by Dr. Izabella Wentz, which had just been published. Finally, someone who had suffered like me!

I jumped right in to the Hashimoto’s protocol—which is basically Primal, and though it was a super hard transition off the SAD and meds, I lost 20 pounds in the first 21 days and over the next three months, lost 25 more, and never looked back. I gave up gluten, grains, started eating way more fat and vegetables, minimal fruits, got off all of my medications and resolved almost all of my health problems, in particular the depression—it’s amazing to live without it! Without reading The Primal Blueprint (until a bit later), my diet and lifestyle had evolved to fit the model of ancestral health naturally.

During the initial transition, I had gathered all of my medical records, made a summary of them chronologically, made a spreadsheet of my labs and discovered by myself that while I have always had “normal” TSH levels, I don’t convert T4 into the more usable T3, and my symptoms fit that profile. I found a holistic leaning CNP that agreed with my diagnosis and was willing to prescribe the proper NDT medication to address this and literally 20 minutes after taking the first dose, my anxiety, which had reached panic attack levels, disappeared. I now know that when my anxiety creeps up, it’s time for a thyroid medication adjustment.

I eventually read Elle Russ’ Paleo Thyroid Solution, which is a great resource for thyroid sufferers and explained a lot of what I was going through. I do still have the occasional Hashimoto’s flare days, when I simply cannot get out of bed, but it’s down to 1-2 times a year—and usually after I’ve let non-Primal foods into my diet. A far cry from being how I lived my life on a daily basis. It took ten years from diagnosis and many endocrinologists, naturopaths, nurses and internists later, but I finally have found an integrative medical doctor who helps me with the right medical care for Hashimoto’s. I was gratified at our first intake appointment that she did not change one thing about my diet which was already Primal! She commented on my robust health and I was never more proud of myself for getting myself from my sickest days to the point of actual robust health!

Today, after my all time high of 213 lbs, I keep my body at a comfortable 165 lbs (I’m 5’5” and age 49). My Hashimoto’s is stable and after initially cutting my levels in half by eating primally, I go a bit up and down and now rely on my physical and mental states to determine how well I’m controlling it through my food plan. I don’t have a CrossFit-type body, but I do have a body that takes me through my days without pain or suffering, as long as I stick to the Primal way. I no longer have depression, anxiety, GERD, acne, my hair grew back, I sleep like a champ and my brain fog is better but not all gone—hey, I’ll be 50 this year, what can I say! My weight, despite four back surgeries for disc herniations, a labral tear repair in my hip, a broken ankle and a shoulder surgery (the osteoarthritis still rears its ugly head), has remained stable at 165 lbs since 2013. Even when I am unable to exercise, I maintain my weight, mood and general good health simply by eating and living Primally. Today, I enjoy riding my bike, walking my dogs, working out at my property mowing grass, hauling logs and brush and doing simple Primal workouts in my basement. I have a goal of someday being super muscle-y but since I feel so much better than I did before, I’m ok with my body now. My clothes always fit and I can live and do what I want to physically, and that’s more than enough for me.

My children are now 19 and 16, growing up and moving on with their lives, and with extra time on my hands I started looking into being a health coach. I’d followed many “diets” related to primally eating—mostly the Hashimoto’s Protocol, the Bulletproof Diet, the Whole30 plan, the Auto Immune Protocol plan and Paleo among others—but truly, the lifestyle I developed and live dovetails totally with the Primal Blueprint—I was living it before I really even knew about it! My heritage is Inuit/Alaskan Eskimo so it makes complete sense now that I live best on fats, meats and vegetables and berries! I know this lifestyle works for me and am excited to share it with others like me, who have suffered needlessly with auto-immune disorders that aren’t treated properly. I know you can take your health into your own hands and live the way nature intended – PRIMALLY! I recently became certified as Primal Health Coach and am living proof that good health can be had with minimal effort and suffering and I’m excited to begin my journey of helping others to robust health!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

[watsonrodriquezie]

I Went From Having an Invisible Illness, Being Overweight, Depressed and Tired To Enjoying Robust Health!

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

Looking back, I have always had thyroid issues though I had no idea what that meant in my teens and twenties. It apparently runs in my family, though with rural Alaska medical care in the 70s, you were lucky to have a doctor available, let alone a dentist. Even as I grew older and moved to the city and then to college in Arizona and life in many other places, I was always just not well. Though I managed to live and work and play fairly normally, I would occasionally have days that I could not get out bed, so I attributed it to depression or other more readily identifiable causes like depression.

I eventually married and went through two pregnancies in my early 30s, fairly normal and with healthy babies. After my second child, my mental and physical health really started going downhill, though it wasn’t really visible other than weight gain and some fairly severe post-partum depression. With the benefit of hindsight and research, what was probably mild Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis in my youth turned into full-blown Hashimoto’s after the stress of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and raising two small children.

I was officially diagnosed in 2006 with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis after a therapist I was seeing for depression thought to order some tests. My levels weren’t that high, and I don’t even remember what the endocrinologist said to do about it, just that I had it and it had to do with my thyroid, and that someday my thyroid would fail and I’d be put on medication. He advised eating better and exercising, but with no specific plan. Ok. I just went about my life in the usual way, raising two small kids and easing my way back into the working world while doing all of the usual life things of home maintenance, the kids’ sports and school schedules, marriage, work and other family obligations. The Internet wasn’t that prevalent then, and I just accepted my diagnosis and prognosis and went about my life the best I could.

The years went by and I gained more and more weight. I would “diet” occasionally, have a little bit of success, then fall right off the wagon. I’d tried all of the fad diets, Weight Watchers, etc., and even went sugar-free and even gluten-free a few times in the past with great results, but again, fell off the diet wagon every time. I had been active most of my life with running, college intramural sports, tennis, hiking, long-distance biking, canoeing, camping—nothing ever really stopped me from being active, even being overweight or tired through most of it. I even put myself through almost three P-90X workouts in a row (shoutout to Mark Sisson for his episode – little did I know he’d be so instrumental to my life later….). My weight didn’t budge, though I got some nice muscle under my chub. I thought I was eating fairly well at that time, too, low fat, whole grains—the usual “good diet.” At the beginning of the third cycle of hard-core exercise, plus moving some furniture, I herniated a disc in my back and that put an end to P90X and extreme exercise.

In the meantime, I was getting sicker and I didn’t understand why. I was 50 pounds heavier than my normal pre-pregnancy weight. I was depressed, moody, lethargic, overweight, exhausted, and I always felt like I should just try harder to find the right medication to take care of it, or cut out the fats, or just exercise more. It seemed like each day was a monumental effort to get through, and I know I missed out on a lot of activities with my kids when they were little.

By 2013 my diagnoses were:

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. This is an auto-immune disorder where your immune system attacks the thyroid, which untreated can lead to multiple issues and eventual thyroid gland failure.

Bipolar disorder and depression/anxiety. The manic-depression was actually the hypothyroidism/hyperthyroidism that characterizes

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, but I didn’t know that at the time so I went on multiple and many medications over the years, thinking that nothing was working for me and this is how it was and would be for me forever.

Migraines and headaches. This entailed emergency room visits and even a brain MRI. I went to a neurologist and was put on a migraine medication that ultimately gave me kidney stones, two of which had to be surgically removed. The medication didn’t help at all so I eventually gave up on it and since then, no more kidney stones! An expensive experiment. Now, if I have a gluten exposure—instant migraine and the root cause of them.

GERD, bile disorder and esophagitis. I was put on a medication and at my first out-of-pocket charge of $400 for the med, I decided I’d go with the heartburn instead. I’d had bloating and discomfort for years, and did the usual OTC meds for that. An EGD thankfully showed no celiac disease but did show chronic inflammation.

Asthma and chronic bronchitis requiring an inhaler

Chronic fatigue

Restless leg syndrome

Hyperlipidemia

Osteoarthritis, joint pain and stiffness

Chronic tendinitis in wrists

Adult acne

Early menopause at age 40

Brain fog

Around this time I had also lost half of my hair—thankfully I have thick hair so it still looked ok even though it was falling out in clumps.

For seven long years I went to the endocrinologist, got my thyroid (TSH) level tested and was always told it was “normal.”

In August 2013, after my last visit to the endocrinologist who had “managed” my Hashimoto’s for seven years, I finally hit the wall with my frustration over not being able to control my own body. I had had my first full-blown panic attack around this time as well. My medical record states the doctor actually thought it “was unlikely patient has significant thyroid disorder.” My TPOAb (Hashimoto’s marker) was 629.5 IU/ml (normal is to just eat right and exercise more and wait until my thyroid failed and then be put on medication. I even begged to be put on Armour NDT or something to just try it, even though my TSH was normal. He refused. I fired him and, at the end of my rope, finally got on the internet where I found the book I felt saved my life, “Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the The Root Cause” by Dr. Izabella Wentz, which had just been published. Finally, someone who had suffered like me!

I jumped right in to the Hashimoto’s protocol—which is basically Primal, and though it was a super hard transition off the SAD and meds, I lost 20 pounds in the first 21 days and over the next three months, lost 25 more, and never looked back. I gave up gluten, grains, started eating way more fat and vegetables, minimal fruits, got off all of my medications and resolved almost all of my health problems, in particular the depression—it’s amazing to live without it! Without reading The Primal Blueprint (until a bit later), my diet and lifestyle had evolved to fit the model of ancestral health naturally.

During the initial transition, I had gathered all of my medical records, made a summary of them chronologically, made a spreadsheet of my labs and discovered by myself that while I have always had “normal” TSH levels, I don’t convert T4 into the more usable T3, and my symptoms fit that profile. I found a holistic leaning CNP that agreed with my diagnosis and was willing to prescribe the proper NDT medication to address this and literally 20 minutes after taking the first dose, my anxiety, which had reached panic attack levels, disappeared. I now know that when my anxiety creeps up, it’s time for a thyroid medication adjustment.

I eventually read Elle Russ’ Paleo Thyroid Solution, which is a great resource for thyroid sufferers and explained a lot of what I was going through. I do still have the occasional Hashimoto’s flare days, when I simply cannot get out of bed, but it’s down to 1-2 times a year—and usually after I’ve let non-Primal foods into my diet. A far cry from being how I lived my life on a daily basis. It took ten years from diagnosis and many endocrinologists, naturopaths, nurses and internists later, but I finally have found an integrative medical doctor who helps me with the right medical care for Hashimoto’s. I was gratified at our first intake appointment that she did not change one thing about my diet which was already Primal! She commented on my robust health and I was never more proud of myself for getting myself from my sickest days to the point of actual robust health!

Today, after my all time high of 213 lbs, I keep my body at a comfortable 165 lbs (I’m 5’5” and age 49). My Hashimoto’s is stable and after initially cutting my levels in half by eating primally, I go a bit up and down and now rely on my physical and mental states to determine how well I’m controlling it through my food plan. I don’t have a CrossFit-type body, but I do have a body that takes me through my days without pain or suffering, as long as I stick to the Primal way. I no longer have depression, anxiety, GERD, acne, my hair grew back, I sleep like a champ and my brain fog is better but not all gone—hey, I’ll be 50 this year, what can I say! My weight, despite four back surgeries for disc herniations, a labral tear repair in my hip, a broken ankle and a shoulder surgery (the osteoarthritis still rears its ugly head), has remained stable at 165 lbs since 2013. Even when I am unable to exercise, I maintain my weight, mood and general good health simply by eating and living Primally. Today, I enjoy riding my bike, walking my dogs, working out at my property mowing grass, hauling logs and brush and doing simple Primal workouts in my basement. I have a goal of someday being super muscle-y but since I feel so much better than I did before, I’m ok with my body now. My clothes always fit and I can live and do what I want to physically, and that’s more than enough for me.

My children are now 19 and 16, growing up and moving on with their lives, and with extra time on my hands I started looking into being a health coach. I’d followed many “diets” related to primally eating—mostly the Hashimoto’s Protocol, the Bulletproof Diet, the Whole30 plan, the Auto Immune Protocol plan and Paleo among others—but truly, the lifestyle I developed and live dovetails totally with the Primal Blueprint—I was living it before I really even knew about it! My heritage is Inuit/Alaskan Eskimo so it makes complete sense now that I live best on fats, meats and vegetables and berries! I know this lifestyle works for me and am excited to share it with others like me, who have suffered needlessly with auto-immune disorders that aren’t treated properly. I know you can take your health into your own hands and live the way nature intended – PRIMALLY! I recently became certified as Primal Health Coach and am living proof that good health can be had with minimal effort and suffering and I’m excited to begin my journey of helping others to robust health!

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[speedilyspeedytiger]

In Which I Write About Miyazaki Movies

So, the Seattle Cinerama is going to show an anime festival. This triggered an email thread between the parents of several of my son’s friends about taking teen boys to see some of the movies. After a couple of parents expressed a desire to know more about the Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films on the program, I found myself pounding away at the keyboard. Here’s the email I sent:

Because absolutely nobody asked for a really, really long email, and because I’m waiting for more information before I can write the case studies I’m supposed to be writing, here’s my take on Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films. If, after reading this, anyone wants to borrow DVDs we might be able to make a deal.

I do think it’s possible to go wrong by just picking any one of his movies at random, especially for the adult and young adult viewer. Some of them are too lightweight and some of them are too dark and trippy. They’re all good, but if you started with the wrong one you might get the wrong impression and not go further.

Animation has a hard time with the mainstream American audience because it’s been mostly marketed as something for children here. But in Japan and other countries it is seen as a storytelling medium with its own strengths. I love Hayao Miyazaki movies like I love movies by directors like Hitchcock, Fellini, Ford, Welles, Kurosawa… They are just great storytelling and each bears the stamp of the director’s passions and personality.

Miyazaki’s great theme is reverence for the environment, and reconciling industrial human society with the need to protect our planet. This preoccupation is the essence of modern Japan, where Shinto’s old animist origins still persist alongside the country’s wholehearted embrace of technology and modernity. This theme comes through more in some of his films than others, but it informs all his stories to some degree.

His best-known stories are told from the points of view of young children, tapping into the liminal moments when we still experience many things as magic but are learning to apply logic and reasoning to the world we perceive. But that’s not the entirety of his work, and the cute factor shouldn’t be overstated.

So, here’s my recommendation for watching the ten Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films on the Cinerama program that I’ve seen in an order that I think adults and teen boys would get the most out of. This is not at all the order they are being shown, but maybe it can help people make a choice.

(There are five being shown that I haven’t seen — the extremely highly-regarded Grave of the Fireflies, Porco Rosso, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Pom Poko and The Red Turtle — I’ll touch on them after the ordered list.)

Spirited Away. A modern family stumbles into the spirit realm, where the young daughter must work for her keep while simultaneously learning how to save her parents from the consequences of their materialism. The sequence of a river spirit flying over the land is visually stunning.

Princess Mononoke. This one is dark and brooding, and very, very good. It’s set in medieval Japan, where the forest is being cleared to produce iron to make firearms to defend the humans from the forest gods who are angry about the destruction of the forest. The cycle seems an endless spiral of conflict between humans and nature, even though humans themselves are part of nature.

My Neighbor Totoro. Miyazaki’s most-loved work, but teen boys might misinterpret it as being ‘kiddie’ if they haven’t either grown up with it or seen other Miyazaki films first. In post-war Japan a father and his two young daughters move to a house in the country close to the hospital where the girls’ mother is recovering from an illness. Mei, the youngest daughter, meets a giant forest spirit who she names Totoro and he plays an important role as her childish innocence leads her into danger. (I sought out an older DVD with the original English dub. The Cinerama will show the later Disney dub with big name stars. It’s fine, but I like the first version better.)

Ponyo. This one is fantastic, but boy is it a trip. Ponyo is a little fish who is the daughter of an overly-protective sorcerer father who dresses like a ‘60s Peter Max concert poster and the spirit of the oceans. She encounters a small boy and decides that she wants to be human too. Her decision unbalances time, a magical tsunami floods the town, and much more. It’s awesome.

The Wind Rises. Miyazaki’s last film before retiring in 2013. An incredibly great film with a slow pace that might not hold the attention of a teen boy who isn’t already attuned to the medium. (We saw it at the Cinerama on first release and Asa loved it, but your mileage may vary.) It is the fictionalized story of the designer of the Mitsubishi Zero, Japan’s iconic WWII fighter plane. As you might imagine, this is problematic territory for a post-imperial filmmaker and the Koreans in particular took offense. But the tone is neither jingoistic, nor overtly anti-war, which I think is part of its brilliance as a story. This is the tale of a man who personally opposed the war but loved designing flying machines, and by humanizing him I feel Miyazaki asks us all to take a look inside ourselves and reconcile our own passions with the unintended consequences of their expression.

From Up on Poppy Hill. A sweet period piece, directed by Hayao’s son Gorō, but his dad co-wrote the script. High school students in early ‘60s Yokohama fight the head of their school who wishes to tear down the building housing student clubs and develop it as commercial property. The girl and boy at the heart of the struggle develop feelings for each other, but stumble across clues suggesting they may be connected in other ways as well. Is their love meant to be?

Kiki’s Delivery Service. A sympathetic allegory about the challenges teenaged girls face in establishing their own identities. Teen witch Kiki moves to a new town and discovers she can make a living as a broomstick-flying delivery driver. She meets a boy who likes her, but isn’t sure what to do about it. She becomes so depressed she can’t fly anymore. Will she regain her magic?

Castle in the Sky. A steampunky tale about a girl abducted by air pirates who falls from their airship and lands in a mining town. There she is befriended by a boy who helps her on her quest to find the city of Laputa, which floats high in the sky thanks to the power of special crystals. Fights and adventures ensue. It’s the first official Studio Ghibli film and is a lot of fun but in my opinion isn’t as focused and realized as their later work.

Howl’s Moving Castle. This is Miyazaki’s anti-Iraq War movie. It’s got all the right elements (primarily a magic steampunk castle with legs) and the right themes (pro-feminism, a critique of modernity, the importance of caring for each other), but didn’t click with me. I should try it again.

Arriety. This is an adaptation of the Borrowers books. I never read them, but I had friends who loved them. It’s a perfectly fine movie, but it is what it is. Best for younger kids, I’d say.

Of the ones I haven’t seen, the top of the list is Grave of the Fireflies, which is by Studio Ghibli but not directed by Miyazaki. Roger Ebert considered it one of the best war films ever made. It’s not light and fluffy. The story is about a brother and sister struggling to survive in the last months of WWII, dealing with starvation and American bombs. It’s supposed to be emotionally devastating, which is why I haven’t watched it yet. It might be best with a theater full of other people sharing the experience.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is the last film Miyazaki made before founding Studio Ghibli on the strength of his work. It’s a fantasy film that deals with the human impact on the natural world. I really should have seen it already.

Porco Rosso is supposed to be a lot of fun, and combines Miyazaki’s love of airplanes and dirigibles with a talking pig pilot. I expect cuteness.

Pom Poko wasn’t directed by Miyazaki, and it has a reputation for being so steeped in Japanese culture that it’s hard for Americans to fully follow. On the other hand, there’s certainly amusement to be had in a movie about magic raccoon dogs with prominent testicles, right?

The Red Turtle is a Ghibli co-production with a Dutch company. It’s a shipwreck story told with no words and it lost the Animated Feature Oscar to Zootopia. It’s supposed to be really good.

If you made it to this sentence I applaud you for your stamina. I did mention earlier that I’m a bit of a fanboy, right? I also used to get paid to write about entertainment and pop culture topics, and can go on and on about them, as you can plainly see.