#i’m so used to being so mentally ill and disabled and shit i forgot

[corpus-incorporated]

why the fuck is it that when i wake up in the morning easily, just like fully awake and well rested and ready to get up and face the day it’s because of a disordered regulation of mood because i’m actually supposed to feel agony every time i wake up and doing anything should be laboured apparently

[theuniverseawakens347]

Leading w your disability-

Shake we met Csun you asked me to a business breakfast ( I set CLEAR BOUNDARIES ALWAYS - Ian left me hanging for a modeling deal to fuck on Sydney and Kimora Jay when he was suppose to be my protection from going to a dinner alone w someone who wanted to sign me - Lee rapist VIVICCA scout agency*)

We met at a cafe near that airport lax in n out .. forgot the streets … but who noticing Darniece in my memory loss 🙂🖕

- we talking A PHOTOSHOOT for BACKPACKS .. who said this was Daniel for bucket hats NOPE DREAM URBAN CAME AFTER THIS AND YRS LATE MOOD CAPS .. so who’s editing that bullshit IAN AS JUSTIN OF LONDON DANIEL AS NOAH WRITE OFF .. golden track star ya all slept w and look like me two - signed “her twin” sister ocean side HI TRACK KWEEN!!!🖕🙂

Anyways .. just CHEYENE a pick me to keep her man “I support cashay” but she an organic shawty tryna have a 3 some for some healing - HE BOO GOBLIN MISSING.

.. but we talking and you ask me what’s my type shake I SAID NOT YOU. You said it was you I said no nigga I like tall muscles dark ( cause I was on Ian at the time) but you bald nigga and short.

And you said “I’m yo type trust” and I said absolutely the fuck not trust.

And then we do the shoot and now you randomly popping up on yo own texting me to hang and I’m not taking it no hard way cause you not pressing me to fuck and Marcus a good photographer krystin and the Asian ford dodge girls for my back pack and bathing suit shoot .. weird why you being 3 months late w photos you ain’t even edit - back end pimping Beyoncé naomi..

Tryna give India love INDYA Marie’s modeling material to look at. - sad. VIVICCA WHITSETT

But there was one night you came over shake after we hung at Marcus house or over in that area you dropped something off at a girls house and you telling me how you get pussy and I’m just like “okay niggas tell me shit cause I’m the homie” I’m not minding it .. but we on my porch and you got the audacity to tell me

“It’s okay if you like me even with my disability “

WHAT IN THE FUCK MAKE YOU THINK I LIKE YOU MORE THAN FRIENDS .. let me tell you .. MARCUS WHY YOU ON THE BACK EMD FAKING PROFILES OF ME OR GIRLS WHO LOOK LIKE ME TO TALK TO SHAKE .. sexting. And sending MY FUCKING NUDES FROM JUSTIN AND CHRISTOPHER WHITE .. Cameron Walker I never sent you photos .. BUT PRESTON I DID TO YOU OVER EMAIL .. so how this nigga get em ..

But also a question to you shake and anyone who fell into this bull shit if you talking to someone posing as me and know me in real life and the messages not adding up to my actions .. WHY YOU THINK YOU TALKING TO ME ON THE BACK END.. - MENTAL ILLNESS OF ATTENTION SEEKING .. bc what’s gravitating YOU to do that and not speak face to face in clear to me.

- IM ALWAYS DOWN TO TALK EVEN WHEN ITS STUPID UNCOMFORTABLE.. - the friend Yal missed out on FOR GOOD AND MISUSED ME CAUSE SOMEONE TELLING YOU “she not normal do as you please with her” .. and using Tristan face qnd fitkingg name.

- GROSS YOU SICK BITCHES. CLARITY TOO

[holidaywishes]

I Can’t Always Be Perfect

  Summary: Having a sibling with a mental disability isn’t easy and can often be taxing, especially when things start to pile up at home and at work. So when things fall apart when (Y/N) tries their best to make things as close to perfect as they can, she has a bit of a breakdown.

  Warning: angst, mild language, trigger warning for mention of anxiety and emotionally abusive parents

  Author’s Note: So, I’m going through something right now. I don’t really know why I chose Willy for this, to be honest, but I felt like he might be a good one to make you feel better after you’ve had a rough time with things. He seems like the type to be able to make you laugh when you need it. This was a fic that came about because of things that have been building up for a while now and I’m lucky enough to have a few close people in my life that I can talk about these things with but sometimes, you just don’t want to burden anyone with your shit, so I wanted to put some of my personal drama and angst into a short little fic. I also want everyone and anyone to know that if there is anything they need to talk about regarding mental illness, anxiety, stressful home situations, anything, I’m here to be an ear and a metaphorical shoulder to lean on. Always. Also, I tried to keep this non-gendered so I used they so it would feel more inclusive. I’ll try to do this more in the future or use (Y/P/P) for Your Preferred Preference as I know that, even though it’s a small thing, it’s important. I love you all and I hope you enjoy this thing I wrote. Stay golden <3

  masterlist

  the other masterlist

xx

  You considered yourself a good person. Not perfect, not even exceptional, just good. You took care of things at home when your parents were at work, you cleaned up after your brother when he made a mess out of the entire house. You tried to do the right thing and tried to give back when you could, especially to causes that hit close to home, but that didn’t mean you were exempt from sometimes missing the mark and sometimes it meant taking a lot more than you had the capacity to take.

  “(Y/N)!” your mom yelled from the kitchen and you ran to see what was wrong, “What is this?!” she asked, pointing to the mess on your carpet from your brother spilling his cereal on the carpet earlier in the day

  “Carter must have.. I forgot to clean it up, I’m sorry” you whimpered

  “I’m sick and tired of coming home to a dirty house!” she shouted

  “I’m sorry” you repeated

  “We’re at work all day, me and your father, the least you could do is make sure these things are done”

  “This is just one time..” you said before squeezing your eyes shut, knowing that the words probably wouldn’t sit right with your mom

  “ONE TIME IS ENOUGH!” she yelled, “You’re not working and you’re staying here, RENT FREE, so what the hell do you have going on that you can’t clean up a mess when it’s made?!”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” you tried, speaking softly to not upset your mom anymore than she already was, “I just meant that the house is usually clean and tidy and supper is usually made when everyone gets here. Today was... a mistake and I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say”

  “DO BETTER!” she continued, snapping at you as you quickly tried to clean up the mess under her feet, “and stop being such a god damn brat!”

  “HEY!” your dad shouted as he walked in the door, “what the fuck is going on?! I can hear you all from down the street!”

  “I didn’t clean up after Carter today”

  “And she’s been home all day, just moping around because she can’t find a job I’m sure”

  “She lost her job because of the pandemic, Susan,” your dad argued, “it’s different for us. We’re both on the front lines. We can’t lose our jobs”

  “I know!” she snapped, “and she should know how lucky she is that we’re letting her stay here without paying for anything”

  “Stop it” your dad said, trying to get your mom to calm down but it didn’t work

  “Don’t you start with me” she urged

  “Can I just vacuum this? And then I’ll make supper, okay?” you tried, wanting to get away from everything

  “Fine,” your mom yelled before stepping out of the room, “but that’s not the point! This should’ve been done before we got home!”

  “She’s trying to do it now!” your dad yelled back, “let her do it!”

  “YOU KNOW WHAT?!” your mom countered, grabbing the vacuum and pushing you aside, “I’LL DO IT MYSELF!”

  “SUSAN!” your dad yelled

  “MOM! STOP!” you shouted but she didn’t listen, tuning everyone out with the buzzing of the vacuum. You looked at your dad who only shrugged and you were forced to scoff at the reaction, walking away to your room because there was nothing more you could do, only to find your brother sitting on the couch listening to everything; you rolled your eyes at his complete lack of accountability and scoffed before shaking your head and walking to your room. Your hands were shaking and your body was buzzing, you didn’t know what to do. This had been a long time coming. The fighting, the arguing, the yelling. Everyone was stressed out and stretched thin and you were doing your best to keep yourself together so no one around you would feel like they had to take care of you on top of everything else but when a text came in, you couldn’t help but start to feel the stress build up in your chest

  “Hey!” William’s text read

  “Hey” you sent back, trying to be as casual as possible

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.. My mom’s just a little stressed out. Can I text you later?”

  “Of course but are you sure you’re alright? I can come over, help out?”

  “No!” you sent back quickly, noticing the ellipses pop up and you knew you had to back track, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to come over, I just need to sort somethings out and then I’ll text you, we’ll talk. Just... later okay?”

  “Okay.” You sighed as you pushed your phone to the side, dropping your head in your hands to rub your temples; it wasn’t long before your mom barged into your room

  “Why?” was the way she chose to start. No apology, no greeting, just straight into the same argument you had before, “why didn’t you clean it up as soon as you saw it?”

  “I thought he would do it himself” you admitted

  “You saw that he tried, you couldn’t have finished?”

  “He vacuums his mess all the time,” you argued, “I thought that he’d say something or realize... I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think”

  “You know his brain doesn’t work like ours” she said, glaring at you as she stood in the doorway

  “I know,” you sighed, “I just had some errands to run this afternoon and when I saw that he spilled something, I thought that he was embarrassed to tell me and he needed a minute before he could clean it up. So I did the dishes and left the room, forgetting about the mess. Then you came home and found it”

  “That’s not an excuse”

  “I’m not trying to make up an excuse, mom!” you yelled, just once, before you settled down and composed yourself, “I’m just trying to explain what happened.”

  “You know that your brother is different and that you need to do more to help him but you’re so concerned with yourself that you can’t manage to clean up one tiny mess!”

  “Concerned with my--” you scoffed, “I do take care of this place when you’re gone. There have been so many other messes that I’ve been forced to clean up that you have no idea about -- including the many times he’s missed the toilet and peed around the toilet -- so one day, one mess not being cleaned up, does not mean that I’m so concerned with myself. This isn’t a gigantic mess that he can’t clean up, he vacuums all the time so excuse me for thinking that he would have the ability to clean up some dry cereal on the carpet!”

  “He’s your brother!” she countered, “and he’s got mental delays so you have to be able to take care of him”

  “AND WHAT HAPPENS TO ME?!” you finally snapped, “I do my best to take care of him and you and dad and make sure no one is stressed out more than they already are but I’m not a caretaker. I’m not the older sibling. He’s 10 years older than me, Mom, and sometimes I need to be able to walk away and do things that don’t require me to act like his mother!” The tears began to fall down your heated cheeks and you looked at your moms face which only seemed to shift slightly at your words, “I’m sorry that I didn’t spend every second of my day today cleaning every inch of the house to make it look that no one lives here. I’m sorry that I took a little bit of time for myself. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  “You just have to do better” she said quietly and you shook your head, trying to hold back your tears

  “I can’t always be perfect. I can’t always do everything. I missed something today and I’m sorry that it screwed up your day. But I shouldn’t be expected to do everything!” You finally got up, grabbing your phone, and pushed passed your mom so you could escape everything

  “Don’t you dare walk away right now” she growled and you pulled your arm from her grasp, making your way to the door before finally meeting your dads stare

  “Don’t leave, (Y/N),” he pleaded, “talk to us. Talk to me.” Part of you wanted to say something, to make him feel better, but you didn’t want him to see you cry anymore than you already were, so you ignored his attempt to make you stay; grabbing your keys and jumping in the car.

xx

Willy’s P.O.V

  “Can we meet somewhere?” (Y/N) finally texted you after nearly two hours and you were quick to suggest the rink. When you got there, you found (Y/N) huddled up, head against their knees as they waited for you

  “(Y/N)?” you whispered, seeing the tears on their face when they raised their head

  “Hi...” they replied

  “What’s wrong?” you asked, rushing to their side

  “I’m just feeling like I can’t do anything right today. Like, I’m supposed to never make mistakes and I failed today”

  “Everyone makes mistakes...”

  “You don’t...” they scoffed

  “Have you kept up with my career at all?” you teased

  “Sure but,” (Y/N) faltered, “I don’t know, Willy, I just hate having this pressure on me to be perfect. Feeling like I have to be a parent to my older sibling. I know that he’s gone through a lot and that his life is hard and that it will always be harder than mine. I know that and I try, I try so hard to make his life easier and my parents lives easier. But I have given up so many opportunities to make that possible. I deferred University for two years because my parents needed me to stay home. I didn’t apply to NYU because it was too far away. I didn’t take that amazing job at Massey Hall because the hours were too flexible. I gave up my personal life, my romantic life because it was too hard to make time for my brother with all of it. I sacrificed both my High School Graduation and my University Graduation so he could feel included. I got offered an internship in London that I had to pass on because it was too far away and my family needed me here. I love him, he’s my brother and I would die before I let anything happen to him but I just get exhausted sometimes, always having to worry about him and take care of him and make things easy for everyone but me. Then, I feel bad for getting exhausted and I overcompensate and exhaust myself even further.”

  “You’re burnt out”

  “Yeah,” they sighed, “I don’t wanna be. But I can’t ask for help or get my parents to understand why, if I don’t have a job, I am so burnt out”

  “Want me to tell ‘em?” you joked

  “No.” You noticed their eyes begin to tear and you tried to be there for them as best you could, letting them rest their head on your shoulder, rubbing their hand softly, “I just... I don’t know what to do anymore. Some days everything is fine and then other days, the smallest thing sets my mom off and I feel like she hates me and that she doesn’t think I do anything or that I haven’t given up anything. Like I should always be doing more...”

  “I want to make you feel better,” you finally said, “tell me what I can do.” You waited in silence for a minute so (Y/N) could get their composure

  “This.” (Y/N) said softly, “Just be here, with me. All this stuff, it’s my problem and I have to learn how to solve it. But you being here with me right now, letting me lean on you, helps.”

  “So I have strong shoulders?” you joked and they laughed, “Is this me being your superhero?”

  “Can you not?” they said, smacking your arm before looking up at you with a smile

  “I’ll always be here to save the day” you smiled

  “Yeah, you will won’t you?” they smiled back and you kissed their forehead, staying still in the cold ice rink until both of you were ready to leave.

[newhologram]

I know only a few of you are on IG so I wanted to give an update here on the past few days. I am doing this knowing the potential risk but I need to also record where I'm at right now in case anything weird happens.

My week has been like this so far. Sunday: Family Member 1 misplaced their Xbox controller. They kept asking me if I knew where it was, each time growing more and more aggressive. I don't have an Xbox, I reminded them. I have my own controller for my PC. But they kept knocking loudly on my door. They followed me outside where I was vaping and tried to accuse me of I don't even know what. Pawning off their controller? FM1 said, "Is there something going on that you're not telling me? SOMEONE'S messing with me!" Later that night they and their gf were making dinner. FM1 suddenly knocked harshly on my door and said aggressively, "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE OVEN MITTS" in an angry voice. I was already stressed from them harassing me earlier about the controller. I came out of my room, heart racing, and told them I had not used them that day. I helped find the mitts, which had fallen behind the trash can because the hanging hook had broken. I went to bed on edge, feeling unsafe and targeted, wondering why my family member was suddenly acting so paranoid and accusing me of misplacing their things... Something they actually have done to me my whole life, denying it until the moment my item is found, when they suddenly remember they did move it there (or accidentally throw it out/destroy it). The controller ended up being some random place in the living room. Monday: I went to leave for my acupuncture appointment. My booster seat/pillow thing was missing from my car. Not in the trunk or anything. I cannot drive without it. I'm too short to see over the steering wheel. I called FM1 and they have no idea where it could be, despite the fact that they drive my car every day. FM1's gf helped find it, in the garage. But I still had an epic fucking meltdown, sobbing the whole way to and from my appointment. I just cannot handle people moving my shit and disrupting my schedule like that. And it just hurt so much more knowing that FM1 was so awful to me the day before about their stuff being misplaced. I'm always having my personal belongings, my feelings, my personhood, disrespected. It hurts deeply. When I got home I stressed to them that this is my car, and my accommodation should not ever be removed from it under any circumstances. It was after this that I decided it was time to hold a family meeting. I called Family Member 2 and 3 over to the house. I read a long letter to them in which I told them about the talks I have had with my therapist, psychiatrist, and another psychologist. Even though I cannot be formally assessed and diagnosed at this time, I am being treated for autism. I detailed to my family my entire life of trauma that is traced back directly to my autistic traits, and my needs not only not being met, but being outright denied. I was denied empathy most of my life for my sensory issues, my pain, everything. A big part of this is gaslighting. Even if it's unintentional or not malicious, gaslighting is incredibly traumatic. Especially when it comes to my sensory issues. I have had even more problems with overstimulation the past year which means I can barely sleep, so my daily naps are even more important. I try to coordinate my naps when there is less activity in my house. But if I'm in a ton of pain and extra sensitive and ask for quiet, that's when I get in trouble and a fight happens. That's when FM1 tells me I "need to be realistic" and "can't expect the whole world to shut up for you"... when I'm literally saying "I have a migraine and need to rest, can you please not play loud music or slam cupboards in the kitchen for a few hours?"

I was emotionally neglected and abused by both parents. A lot of it is just the result of their own trauma that they have not dealt with... But I have also been physically threatened and assaulted by them at different times, though it only happened those specific times. (They won't ever admit to it though.) The emotional and mental abuse still goes on in my home. I am not allowed to have emotions. I have been told "STOP. WHY ARE YOU CRYING. LIFE'S NOT FAIR. WHEN YOU GET OUT IN THE REAL WORLD YOU'LL HAVE SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT" over and over--like... in response to me crying about my pet dying, or in response to me crying bc I'm in horrible pain from my chronic illnesses, or crying after my usual yearly ER visit. I am also not allowed to have boundaries. I have tried to communicate with FM1 that these things hurt me deeply. And their response is basically, "YOU'RE SO UNGRATEFUL. I PUT A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD!" and threats such as "BETWEEN TAKING CARE OF YOU AND GRANMDA, ONE OF THESE DAYS I'M GOING TO DRIVE OFF AND YOU'LL NEVER SEE ME AGAIN!" or "I'M THE ONE WHO SHOULD KILL MYSELF BECAUSE I HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF YOU"-- y'know, in response to having a disabled child. Ouch. The message is clear: I am nothing but an inconvenience and a burden to my family. I still have nightmares about them abandoning me, or abusing me more. I think in their heads they think that they love me. But this isn't love. If I try to talk to them about how dangerous it is for them to say things like that to me, they say "I never said/did that." Which brings us back to the gaslighting: I said that every time they gaslight me and tell me that my emotions/thoughts/experiences aren't real, it triggers me so badly that I self-harm and become suicidal.

I was very clear with them: I said that I can no longer have that in my life because one day it will kill me. I don't wanna die that way. I want to live. I have very bad PTSD and it's something I have worked on for 8 years but it has been worse the past year with so many disruptions and FM1's worsening narcissistic traits. I gave the choice to them. I said if they gaslighted me again that they were making the decision to not be in my life. Because this is about preserving my life. I'm trying not to die here. I'm literally trying to save my own life, even if that means not having a relationship with my family. They accept that I am autistic... But they then took turns gaslighting me. When I pointed out, "that's gaslighting. that's exactly what I just said in my letter. What you're doing is gaslighting" they went even harder on it. They said my experience and my trauma is "not in line with reality". They also said I "need to be reasonable" with the boundary that I'm setting (meaning: they don't believe in boundaries at all). They tried to guilt trip me with, "you can't cut someone out of your life because what if they DIE and then you FEEL GUILTY??" (I mean, what if I killed myself because you keep hurting me? Wouldn't you feel guilty about that?) They also guilt tripped me with "well we TRY to invite you to family stuff, and we try to include you, but you never want to go..." um... I guess they forgot I am chronically ill? Sorry if I don't have the energy or pain tolerance to drive an hour each way to a loud family party after I've worked all week? I cried and cried, I said this is exactly what I told you that you do to me and how it endangers my life... and you're doing it... while telling me you don't do it to me... They were all weird and told me "we love you and would do anything for you!" except... I guess, not gaslight me constantly? Idk. I felt so trapped. I felt so hopeless. I was up all night crying. I wondered, "Why is the idea of me having distance from them somehow worse than me being dead? Why would they prefer that I die rather than set a boundary that will save me?" And then I remembered: I had set the terms. They broke them. You do this, you're out of my life, because me being alive is more important than us having a relationship which will eventually kill me. I'm not trapped. It doesn't matter if they think they can prevent me from setting this boundary because they can't. I'm in charge of my boundary. So I blocked them on social media, as well as their phones. I have to unfortunately keep FM1 unblocked bc I live with them, they drive my car, and they look after my cats while I am at work. If I didn't have so many great things happening behind the scenes, if I didn't have my cats, if I didn't have amazing friends and followers who are supportive and kind... I can definitely see that I would have ended my life that night in some alternate timeline. That is how much pain I was in from them doing that to me. Them literally trying to gaslight me into not setting a boundary. I mean it would've been so ridiculous on their part, can you imagine? Me: Hey family, when you gaslight me, it makes me suicidal. I don't want to die, so either you stop doing that, or we can't have a relationship. Family: UHH NO *gaslights me anyway* Me: ok *kills self* Family: *surprised Pikachu face* Like???? Would they really have been shocked because it seems like they should have known since I told them directly? And that just shows that they really don't take my pain seriously at all. They think I'm overly sensitive and that my trauma is not real. That would have been a painful wake up call for them. I told my therapist all of this. And she agrees that this is good, this is going to not only ween them off of me but also allow me to focus on all the good stuff I have going on. I have to get moving. So much stuff has been lagging because I'm constantly recovering from them triggering me. I'm going to focus, and heal, and gtfo of here. Thank you for your support and for never invalidating my pain.

[carriecutforth]

The Shit

Tumblr is telling me to go ahead, put anything...so here it goes

I haven't been public about this for reasons that will be apparent but gonna start this with all the trigger warnings. I'm writing it here cause I can't talk to the majority of people about it cause most people can't even grasp, and then questions start, putting me in the situation of feeling like my GIANT SWEATER of trauma is being unraveled answering questions that lead to more questions and gah PLEASE DO NOT RETUMBL-- I just need to scream in the void This is the shit: On the day my sister-in-law's mother died she had to call form-1 my baby brother because his psychosis (undiagnosed mental illness which I will get to) was terrorizing their family (three small kids). My mother WHO IS SCHIZOPHRENIC had him released into her and my ANTI-VAXXER ANTI-MASKER narcissist father's care, but NOT before they found out, incidentally due to the FORM 1, he is ALSO really sick with leukemia. I only found out because I decided to dip into the special folder for emails called MOM that I try to avoid reading as long as they can FOR REASONS. But I felt for some reason an urge to, and then I had to try to parse out what had happened from her ramblings that are A LOT. Then I had to confirm with my poor sil who is at her wits end and was in no position to tell me herself. My dad stopped talking to me back in November when I called him for his anti-vax rhetoric as being EUGENICS when he told me it is just the flu and only killing old people and the disabled. I reminded him I've been immuno-compromised my whole life (he KNOWS this) and got chronic fatigue after a flu in late 2016 (he knows this), and did he not care if I DIED? (apparently not) But I was like lol, fine, don't talk to me anymore. Die mad about it for all I care. A lot of people are like: 'oh, that's tough, losing a relationship with your father' and I'm like YOLO (it really isn't if you knew him). SO THEN I have to reach out to my dad: "Why isn't my brother in the hospital being treated by medical professionals for YOU KNOW, HIS LEUKEMIA." My dad responded that the doctors were JUST GOING TO PUMP HIM FULL OF DRUGS! And that HE is treating my brother's leukemia with I dunno baking soda (he told me before it is a cure for cancer). THEN HE GOES RADIO SILENT. I have no idea where my brother is cause they got him an apartment somewhere in Toronto. *though I do have a Machiavellian plan to try to find out. The reason my brother has untreated psychosis is that even though I've begged my parents since he was a TEEN to get him diagnosed, they refused. It's like they have the opposite of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy in that their ABLEISM is soooo bad they refuse to see he has been very sick, and even if he was really sick, 'doctors are stupid' <--quoting my dad. This is the backstory. My dad was always on the road for his job. My mom had my baby brother AGAINST all wishes of her doctor to ever get pregnant again. I'm not talking aborting, she got PREGNANT on purpose again to SERVE GOD'S GREATER PURPOSE even though it might kill her and said future fetus. So he was born with a lot of issues because of the very bad pregnancy's complications on TOP of the very hereditary bipolar/schizophrenia, AND everything else we got going on besides. After he was born, my mom went into a very deep depression for years and then would vacillate between that and mania. Which meant me: THE ELEVEN year old was forced to raise a baby that wasn't hers and had no ultimate authority over. I was called by everyone his *BROTHER'S NAME* SECOND MOM. *More on this later Our relationship is very strained because of this, particularly when at 17 I had enough momming a child while being constantly undermined by my parents absolute shenanigans. So there was resentment when I quit being his 'second mom' and that he equally resented for things like, trying to put him into bed, when my mom would come in and say let him stay up all night or getting him to eat something other than candy for breakfast (you can guess the dynamic with my parents here). Even if my disabled ass could sue my parents for his

care, he doesn't WANT me to be in charge of his care.

And yet still, I tried to advocate for him for years fighting my parents TOOTH and NAIL to get him on disability and out from underneath their thumb so he could have a measure of independence and autonomy. They had every excuse in the book not to get him diagnosed including expense. It was so goddamned awful fighting with them on this cause in their mind: he was going to live with either them or me forever (they decided this for me and my ex-husband and kids with no consultation), so WHY bother set up his future for him??? So when he was 20?, I hatched a Machiavellian PLAN: I got him, against my parent's wishes, into college for the sole reason of getting the resources for him to get diagnosed so that he could get on disability. AND IT WORKED! (kinda) Except my parents twisted him so much into only talking about his autism spectrum symptoms and NONE of the psychosis because their ableism is sooooo entrenched. (but I did manage to get him on ODSP). And subsequent times I forced my dad to take him to a psychiatrist, he's like: 'oh, I forgot to talk about the psychosis we just talked about the aspergers. Besides people with psychosis are untreatable, you can't convince them otherwise' (see again, my mom). Over the years, I have begged my dad to take my brother to get properly diagnosed and treated (I'm not meaning forced, my brother is also agoraphobic, and won't leave his place UNLESS he is driven by my dad and was living in a city far away from me). I said, I was very concerned for his kids but my dad always gaslights me (and tells everyone I'm crazy -- the IRONY). So now my mom is writing me emails about how this is all my sil's fault because 'she is on drugs' (she is not), 'she is sleeping around' (she is not), 'her kids are scared of her not my brother' (it's the exact opposite). WHICH IS A HUGE TRIGGER FOR ME because She did the exact same thing to ME with my other brother (a diagnosed PSYCHOPATH) who used to beat me and the rest of us mercilessly when my parents weren't around (and they never believed me, and told everyone not to believe me because I was crazy), who pulled a KNIFE on me and threw a drawer at me when I was NINE MONTHS PREGNANT, and how absolutely awful I was AS HIS SISTER to kick him out of my house with no place to live or go (cause he was living with me and my ex-husband at the time because THEY KICKED HIM OUT OF THEIR PLACE and didn't want him back.) Are you beginning to get a sense of the dynamic of my family? Soooooooo the last few weeks my brain has just been in total trauma mode going processing, processing, processing, processing as the final total realization of how absolutely awful my family is finally laid bare (I mean I knew but at least I can stop feeling guilty about cutting them out of my life). So back to the 'second mom' shit, as relevant to my trauma brain processing the last few weeks. This whole shit above is just the tip of the iceberg. I was raised as a Joho in which a lot of my trauma comes from a pedophile left loose on three generations of girls in my family over a thirty year period, and if anyone came forward they were threatened with disfellowshipment and there is SO MUCH there it would take me several Tolkien novels to get how absolutely awful, extensive it was, and how the coverup went straight to the top. ANYHOO. So who was calling me my brother's 'second mom???' Well since, I wasn't allowed to have any association with non-witnesses, it was my congregation. No one questioned that I was being parentified and it was a deeply abusive situation. NO WHAT HAPPENED instead was, this sister in the congregation told everyone (when I was fifteen and 80 pounds soaking wet at the height of 5'10 1/2) that my brother WAS REALLY MY CHILD cause it was so obvious the way that I was the one who took care of him. And the elders of our congregation MARKED me as bad association for loose morals for having a supposed child out of wedlock when I was ELEVEN YEARS OLD. AND NO ONE in my congregation would talk to me, and I had NO IDEA why, cause they never told me that I HAD BEEN

MARKED. But the caveat was I was not allowed to talk to people outside of the faith. And we only found out about this a year an a half later when she said the same shit back in my hometown where he was born to a sister who was at the hospital where my brother was born. AND NO ONE thought, hey: maybe if we think she had a baby when she was eleven we should um CALL CHILD SERVICES or some shit? So i was like 16 1/2, not allowed to have any friends OUTSIDE OF MY PARENTS, find out THIS SHIT, and then people wonder why I had my first manic episode at 17??? Yeah, so this is where my brain has been stuck the last month, complicated that I knew I would be at risk for hypomania with things opening back up, and I'm supposed to be shooting a pilot for a potential series I'm the creator/co-shorunner of, so now I've had to go BACK on seroquel and it's the worst while i try to acclimatize myself to the drugs and stave off hypomania at the same time. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

[solest]

This will be yet another mental health post, but I won't put it under a cut this time because a) I'm on mobile and don't know how to do it here and b) yes, friends might read this. I will eben tag this and try not to feel guilty for being an attention whore by doing so. This will be longer I guess, so sorry if you have to scroll through because of a).

I thought I would have stagnated. I went to a psychosomatic clinic this summer and felt like it had not helped at all. I tried to put myself out there again and had a good moment and an immediate throwback in more than one ways. But now I'm lying here, crying over videos I see or stories I read about certain mental health things and for the first time I can accept that what I read is applying to me. I knew before, but now I accept.

I have a trauma from school and bullying. It still feels weird to say it, because I always thought that Trauma had to be something big, something life threatening and not a shitty teacher and a bunch of kids you knew since you were 3, who turned on you all of a sudden. I studied social work, took child care and protection classes, but the Traumas that were discussed there were always cases of severe violence, abuse, neglect and so on. No one ever told me that things that don't seem so threatening can stick to you and change how you react for such a long time.

I've been told by three or four therapists by now that what vi experienced was trauma, but only recently therapists were using actual methods for this on me. I've been a lively and adventurous kid until second grade. I had a math teacher who was hysterical, got emotional outbursts, screamed at us and got physical. This was known, my brothers who's six years older had her as well.

I remember her screaming at us, especially me. I've never been a math genius but this woman managed that I developed a solid fear of maths. I clearly remember her pulling my hair in front of the class, because I did not know what 7x7 was. To this day, I forgot simple formulas, my mind goes blank if too much math is involved and I'm slow calculating in my head. I started to emotionally shut down and burst into tears when doing maths homework. I was 7.

When I got into third grade, we had a maths test at the very beginning of the year and I failed it miserably. I remember I was devesrated and I link the beginning of my bullying with it and just remembered why. I got an emotional outburst. I screamed, I cried I felt helpless and lost and it was too extreme a reaction to a failed test for all around me. I now know that it was a stress response to what I had experienced before and what I linked to it. I feared to get my hair pulled again, to be screamed at. But this odd behavior only made the other kids frown on me and trying to make me this upset again., which resulted in me not having friends and not understanding why people I knew since kindergarten and who were perfectly fine with me some months ago could be so cruel.

And just some weeks ago, I saw a video on how trauma comes to be. It isn't the severity, but the surprise that shake our core beliefs. I might have a genetic disposition to anxiety disorders, which might have made it "easier" to be shaken by what happened, but that's not the sole reason it affscted me like it did. Another video stated that trauma is the way we react to what happens. This firstly made me think "Oh, so you're an over dramatic bitch that was so startled by such a thing that you developed a trauma. How pathetic". How dare I think this about myself.

The way I experienced it is valid. It did what it did to me and I can't change that. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I can't go back and tell this my sobbing 7 yo self. I lost all my adventurous attitude. I cried a lot and developed a general anxiety disorder that was only diagnosed when I was 21. I was shamed and frowned upon my overly sensitive and emotional reactions, and as the manifestations of my GAD, mostly extreme nausea. All of this only made me hate myself more and more. People said I'm weird, not normal, mentally disabled and I believed them. I tried to please them all, to just not be alone and laughed at anymore. I'm well aware that there are people with far more severe and terrible stories, but this is mine and I can't change either.

My parents tried best their could, but looking back a proper therapy as a child might have helped me. Instead I wasn't doing good in school, because stress let me break down completely. I had anxiety when doing tests and exams, a high perfectionism I'm still not able to act upon though. My parents had not been the cause for all this and tried to help as best they could, but the damage was done.

And still, parts of this personality I had before the trauma was still there, though I felt like I had to hide it, otherwise people would reject me for who I am. I missed out on much, simply because I did not grève the mental strength to try, fearing my peers would not accept me.

My self esteem is pretty low most of the times still, but somehow I'm now at a point where I can look back on this stuff and say:

"This was messed up. There's nothing you could have done better or to prevent it. The teacher should not have acted like this. Adults should have protected you and take your desperation seriously. The other kids, no matter their own awful experiences were not entitled to treat you like shit. You're réactions are not over the top, they were cries for help. You did not deserve this, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And if I could turn back in time, I would come to your aid and kick their arses."

I wasted so much time hating myself. I might not be perfect, no one is, but I'm okay. I'm enough. I don't have to be outstanding at something to be worth it, I already am, by merely existing. I'm worthy of love. I'm worthy of respect. I might have had a lot of help and I might took longer than most around ne, but I accomplished things. Things people like the math Teacher or stupid parents of stupid classmates told me I never will.

I got my high-school diploma. I studied. It took me 6 instead of 3 years for a Bachelor's degree, but I was experiencing flashback anxiety because it reminded me if school and I had to stay at home for one whole year, because I was so deep into anxiety and depression. And I made it.

I'm the first one with an academic degree in my whole family. Despite feeling like shit and thinking I can do nothing, I decided to pull through. The scores I had on papers do not define how professional I am, because I had to write them with severe panic attacks and procrastination problems.

I had long and stable relationships. I learned to drive. I figured I'm Bi, came out and nothing terrible happened. I went to Japan, with my girlfriend at the time for two months, just the two of us. I moved out and lived with another person. I quit a toxic job, because I knew it was toxic. I made friends.

Writing this down does not come easy, but I'm doing it right now. Being able to admit my successes is a huge step. I'm currently experiencing something like a second adolescents, and I think that's because I finally understand that I have to learn what I really am, what I want. I might overcompensate but that's okay. After 13 years of therapy and meds, and a noch most time without much help in this regard I'm allowed to do so.

I will not be loved by everyone and that's okay, because it means I don't have to love everyone in return. People do like me for what I am, even if it's hard to grasp. I'm not too old for things with 33 and I'm allowed to like "childish" stuff and it does not make me less of an adult. I deserve happiness and to cut toxic people out of my life. I will find a new job and it's okay if I feel like I don't know anything, I'm not dumb and I can learn quick.

I'm more than my mental illness, it does not define me completely.

[artificialenvy]

CALLOUT POST

@currynahh / @currynya is a shitty person.

I am making this post because I refuse to let them throw around accusations that I'm a predator.

Reasons I believe they are shitty:

I have ADHD, but I'll try not to derail any points.

After not seeing my spouse since Highschool, they invited them to a discord server. I was brought along and given a "+1" role, as in "This person isn't one of us, just @twiranux 's +1. I wouldn't have had a problem with that if it didn't create and "In group" and "out group" where the people in the ingroup treated the +1 role as "not a friend, just a +1."

They have a room for venting in that server, as a lot of people do. I have seen people typing in there on three occasions and decided not to interrupt them for my own needs, however the time I got to start typing in there and posted a couple of messages to indicate I would be typing, someone else came in and made it about them. I doubt they meant harm by that, but I went to @currynahh and explained it hurt to be silenced like that. I wasn't looking for an apology, I was looking for a solution so other people don't get hurt. My proposed suggestion was a second vent room for if there were 2 people needing it at once on that large a server, it would be helpful, or atleast a rule about interrupting vulnerable people. They dismissed this saying "two rooms wouldn't help because what if there were THREE people" which, if there were three people at the same time one would still have to wait, but the line would be split in half and people would be able to use it if it was an emergency and the first space was already taken without interrupting.

When they dismissed this idea, I said (and I dont have the exact quote as I left the channel, something @currynahh is very particular about is exact phrasing.) "If there's no rule against interrupting I guess next time I'm in need to type and someone is already using the safe space, I'll just be That Dickhead[TM] and interrupt? Can't wait." to which they threatened me with a ban, assuming I meant I was going to actively hurt people instead of just pointing out that there being no rule meant ANYONE could be That Dickhead[TM]

I also pointed out the inconsistency of threatening me with a ban for saying I'd do what the other user actually did and cut someone off. (they never spoke to the person who interrupted me about the event, to my knowledge, and I never spoke to them or saw their name) so I referred to them as "the fucker who interrupted me." Not in a mean way, just.. Here people can be called fuckers, like calling kids brats. I apologized once they said they found that rude, but they kept bringing it up saying I was name calling.

This is Hearsay, but apparently they said the person probably interrupted me because of ADHD, they seem a bit too comfortable deciding what is a factor of someone's else disabilities without consulting them.

Them dismissing my problems and threatening me with a ban instead of trying to fix their server made me actually go to name calling, and I still feel it's fair to call them a heartless cunt. Heartless for pretending to care when really they just wanted to defend someone in the in-group, Cunt cause it's a great word and it fits. I know the word Cunt is seen more harshly in some places, again, so much here. They really take offense to regional and class based dialects. They went to a private school and were calling me mean for just calling a dude I had no name for as "a fucker" when to me, someone who's poor and went to public school in a shitty town in Ontario, it's the norm here.

Since they showed they really didn't care I told them they were fake and left their channel, my spouse chose to follow me which I didnt know about at the time.

They DMed my spouse with another person who hasn't spoken to my spouse or I in 6 years to call me toxic, abusive and a predator. My spouse said they wouldn't have that conversation without me, as its childish and unproductive to just talk behind peoples backs. When @currynahh kicked me out of the group chat, refusing to talk like adults, my spouse asked me to log into their account to participate since they didn't want to be cornered by these two people to talk shit about someone they care about.

They call me toxic and abusive because I vaguely know the passwords to @twiranux 's accounts, despite never logging in unless asked to (for example a daily event in a videogame that they won't be able to make in time but wants the rewards.) and because on one occasion while I was napping, my spouse forgot an agreement we made about watching a specific movie together and I was upset about that, as I'm sure most people would be if their partner agreed to not watch something without them. I tried to keep my cool and just stay out of the way of their enjoyment, but my spouse wanted me to join in atleast for the end so I did, still grumpy but trying to make the best of it. If they had waited an hour or chose a different movie, things would've been different but @currynahh doesn't want "excuses."

They call me a predator because the person I'm married to is 2 years younger than me. @twiranux and I have been together almost 9 years now, we started Long Distance Online Dating just playing minecraft, listening to owl city (our song's Honey and The Bee 🐝,) and making Garry's Mod youtube videos. We would've been about 13 and 15 at the time, though it is worth noting that our birthdays were less than a month away from when we started dating so 14 and 16 if you want to make that distinction, I was in class with people the same age as my spouse. They think the age is gross, but we were two neurodivergent kids who were extremely sheltered at the time (helicopter parents/physical disabilities) who could only have freedom online. We had met through liking the same movies and youtubers and knew eachother a year before, while I was asking for advice on asking someone else out, my now spouse confessed attraction to me and I suggested we try "dating" for a bit, which consisted of nothing new except drawing cute pictures and giving eachother nicknames. I dont know if I knew their age at the time, but I did think they were a boy which didn't change anything, just hopefully shows I wasn't some 30 year old neckbeard hunting for kids on the net, I was just a disabled kid who was caught off guard by a confession of attraction and rolled with it.

@currynahh says they have proof that we weren't innocent in highschool, as (they claim) we asked them to write nsfw fanfic about us, which.. we didn't? My spouse has no idea where thats coming from and neither do I so just a blatant lie. Not that it's anyone's business but my spouse and I didnt meet in person for about 4 years and anything physical took place after we were both legal adults, im not comfortable going into more detail.

After my spouse had me log onto their account to show they weren't going to be cornered by those two, I was allowed back into the group chat to try and figure out why they think im problematic, but @currynahh insists im just making excuses when I've just been saying exactly what im saying here. They say I'm sugarcoating it, I disagree. I dont have the exact words I said about everything, but admitting to calling her a Heartless Cunt isn't something I'd do if i were sugarcoating it as she suggests. This is how it played out they keep trying to shove me into this "abuser" box they framed me in without knowing me.

They would repeatedly spew paragraphs of "points" then block me and leave the group chat while I was typing up a response. They don't want excuses (read: explanations) and they don't care about facts (that they misunderstood certain things and was willing to clear up what I meant if they weren't so caught up on semantics.)

I will not go into my partners mental illnesses on this platform, but they have a psychiatrist who I've met and I have to (sometimes in a way that looks controlling to someone who doesn't know the problems) keep my spouse grounded. The Psychiatrist thought I was doing a great job at managing it, but @currynahh disagrees, saying I'm enabling (without even letting us tell them what the problem is or how im helping.)

Which brings us to the next point; they say I can't talk about the mental health of myself or my spouse because it will trigger them, meaning they block any attempt we make at explaining how it works. They treat us as a neurotypical couple and call it abusive when I'm literally just doing what's deemed best by a psychiatrist for my spouse.

For DARING to tell her to stop calling me a predator, she calls me a narcissist, which is just.. Very cool. Love me some armchair diagnosis. They also diagnosed me with anger issues (from one call in which I was grumpy and then me trying to defend myself from these accusations.) So really, I think docs are being paid too much 'cause @currynahh is doing their job for free.

Because they weren't listening to my spouse, my spouse decided to stop typing, especially since she was just going on long rants then leaving the server before we could reply. Whenever @twiranux gets a chance to speak, @currynahh would leave the server claiming it triggers their anxiety to face the consequences of what they said. Then they would tell me to quit speaking over @twiranux when I was just speaking on our behalf, while in a call with @twiranux due to these reasons.

Instead of keeping their nose out of our relationship like we were asking, they kept trying to tell my spouse (who chose to marry me and lives in another country) that im abusive because they think trusting eachother is a sign of abuse.

Instead of listening that we're fine, they throw a tantrum and tell us to go to marriage counseling (which, although I wouldn't be opposed to going, is very telling that they think people can just do things that require money on a whim.)

They say that "instead of saving up to move in together and have kids you should put money towards marriage counseling" which again, what savings do they think I have? My bank account has -$4.00 in it and my spouse can't work right now. We have nothing.

They keep bringing up kids and how would we raise them? Would they not have privacy? Its a stupid point they threw out there as currently there aren't plans to have kids and there's huuuge difference between a married couple knowing eachothers passwords and not letting your kids have privacy.

They keep bringing up the fact that we've lost friends before without knowing why. So if they want to private message me I'd be happy to tell her about how we left our last friend group after a dispute where the other people were claiming the N word was inoffensive. Or the group that actually was trying to get into my spouses pants and we weren't comfortable there. You keep making accusations then refusing to listen to facts.

Idk if I'm missing anything, if they unblock me and see this they will probably say I'm staw-manning again without actually telling me how and while having no counter arguments. They also don't accept my adhd for accidentally derailing, while using theirs to deflect any criticism.

Karina, you don't know us and you say even talking about our mental health will trigger you, so you need to accept that you're unwilling or unable to understand the dynamics of our relationship but just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's toxic. I wouldn't have made this post if you didn't keep calling me a predator, but I need to clear that accusation publicly before you keep throwing around dangerous labels.

Grow up. Get some help. Learn that your POV isn't the only one.

[shari-berri]

Let’s have a talk about human decency, respect of other people, respecting disabilities, disorders, illnesses, and overall not being a dick. Oh! And wanting answers as this person was not helpful, PLEASE ANSWER ITS URGENT!

I made a post on Yahoo Answers for an issue I have been having.

This is what my question/information was:

Our kitten who is relatively new, 1 year, keep going to the bathroom outside of the litter box. My mom keeps moving it to where she has used it but she suddenly moved it upstairs. Now, she said that there needs to be on on every level of the house, but there are a few things wrong with that. First off, our house has a half level. The only thing “upstairs” on a “second floor” is the kids rooms and a bathroom. Otherwise it is open space for the living room. Besides that, it said that a litter box shoulder be anywhere near loud areas, like children’s bedrooms. Now, I am right across from it and I already have insomnia. I’m extremely sensitive to smell, sound, all senses, probably my ADHD, and this wouldn’t help. There is also one in the bathroom. I gag/puke at anything. Every smell is amplified by 100 due to my adhd sensitivity. I know what something tastes like from smelling it. I puke almost every single time I clean the litter boxes and the smell drifts right into my room, not to mention my allergies to cats and asthma. Our cats that do this don’t even relieve themselves upstairs and I feel like this would just make them since it happened before in the bathroom but it stopped after putting the litter box downstairs. I fear for my health and that it would cause the kitten to defecate on the rugs again.

This was a person’s reply:

Let’s debunk this, shall we?

-I was accused of, lemme check, faking my MENTAL ILLNESS due to “incorrect symptoms” and such. Apparently, hypersensitivity to surroundings isn’t a symptom of ADHD, only OCD.

This person stated that ADHD only “has trouble focusing and relaxing”

If you were to look at it on the most basic and uneducated level then sure, that’s entirely what the whole fucking disorder is!

Lesser known symptoms of ADHD that as someone WITH this mental illness would know:

-(MOSTLY) transient tics

-difficulty controlling emotions

-anger

-impulsiveness

-OH WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT?! HYPERSENSITIVITY!!!

-Next: “You’re either making this shit up or you’re just a REALLY stupid complaining child” “trolling”

Social rules and norms, yeah?

Apparently they’re nonexistent to this person

Right, so NEVER, and I speak for everyone with a disorder, disability, whatever, NEVER EVER accuse them of ‘faking it’!

Oh, yes, I love pretending like I have (blank), I love the ostracization it gets me, the harassment, the bullying, it’s my FAVORITE part!

Assuming they’re talking about the topic of the question: ummmm...pets 101?

Yes, my cat has never shit on the floor, Princess ALWAYS uses her litter box.

Where the fuck did this happen?! Animals do this for different reasons, why the hell would I “make this shit up?”

You know me, joking about stepping in my cat’s shit, hilarious!

-“I bet you whined and whined for a kitten but now that you realize it includes work you don’t want it!”

At the time we got Fufu, we were in no position to adopt another cat. We already had 3 and were living in a rental house after my house had a fire. We were lucky that our three cars were ALIVE AND BREATHING, having been rescued and given tiny oxygen masks and kept in the vet’s breathing chamber. My sister’s friend had kittens and my mom brought it home to “babysit” for the day. Of course, she ended up keeping it. I was AGAINST the idea, ya hear that?! We were in no way able to take care of another creature, we were settling legalities and such. Did I mention that my mom had done the same thing with the third cat? Just showed up from work one day with a cat carrier and cat. I did NOT at all whine, I had no idea we were adopting our last 2 cats.

About work being involved and me backing out because of it:

For YEARS since I was 4 I have been going to a horse riding summer camp where in order to ride, we had to clean. I’m pretty sure that if I’m able to:

-muck out 20+ stalls

-change all of the hay

-Carry tons of hay bales

-Lead horses time pasture etc

-pick horses hooves

And all that? You think a fucking LITTER BOX is “too much work” and that I’m gonna leave because, “Oh no! Now that I know there’s work, I no longer want to do it!”

-Allergies: Again, I didn’t have a say in whether or not I got this cat

-“Tell your family you don’t deserve this kitten.”

And that helps my cats shitting on the ground, my inability to breathe from asthma, especially from the litter in my room how? Cool, I told my parents I don’t deserve Fufu, problem solved, well done Governer!

-“You’re an immature child making shit up just to shirk the responsibilities of caring for it.”

Again, seeing all of the work I did just for a summer camp, where I shouldn’t have been working in the first place in order to ride horses like I was paying to do, I don’t find this statement accurate, like at all. Not including all of the other things I do:

-Pack Away Hunger

-Summer camp counselor

-Volunteering at animal shelters

Sure dude, sure.

Again with the making shit up?! Are people not aware that animals have accidents? I had to put diapers on my elderly Yorkie! And making shit up, ah yes, I forgot nobody has ever witnessed someone with a strong gag reflex. Yeah, peacefully relaxing, something that I apparently can’t do because I have ADHD, but make me gag randomly.

Let’s also remember that due to my hypersensitivity, I know what something tastes like from smelling it. Taking “eat shit” to a whole new level!

How relaxing is it to fall asleep to the soothing sounds of cats scratching around and throwing litter everywhere, the sweet scent of cat shit lulling you to sleep.

Mmmmm peaceful!

Now: analyzing what I said

It did say that cats should have a litter box on ever floor, but what if it was a half floor? Yeah, the only second floor we have is a slight jutting platform that is enough to hold children bedrooms and a bathroom.

Again, only move the litter box if absolutely necessary

Fufu used to relieve herself on the upstairs bathroom rugs but since we put a litter box in the porch, she stopped doing that. Oh, and the porch is connected to the kitchen, no doors. It’s great trying to eat while smelling cat business wafting through the air like Eddie’s breath going back into his face, big fan!

She started recently peeing outside of the litter box in the kitchen, if we put litter boxes somewhere, wouldn’t she just shit in that area?? (Answer in comments)

Litter boxes should not be by loud areas, specifically, children’s bedrooms. And, there should be a clear escape route.

Being directly in between my youngest sisters’ room who scream loudly when watching anime and my older sister’s room who squeals, not at ALL quiet.

And escape routes??? Our cats could get stuck in so many places, that’s a no!

So, please let me know in the comments what I should do! I REALLY need answers!

[yiling]

Untamed rewatch episode 2

Already impatient for the flashback edition

-oh the evil compass!! they real are upfront with the “yiling laozu is a villain but everyone still uses his stuff” thing

-I’m always kind of not happy when mental illness/disabilities are portrayed as a consequence of like, ghost shit...I don’t know, my feelings are complicated on the subject. the show is not too awful about A-yan, this mentally disabled character, though, so that’s something I guess. but she’s mostly a plot device

-wwx is fairly compassionate to her though...he’s a good guy

-jin ling is such a little bitch I love him. him setting up all the spirit nets is actually kind of a weird echo to wwx “cheating” at the group night hunt, when you think about it? for both of them, other cultivators are mad at them for the crime of being too good at demon hunting! the difference is that with wwx it’s by his own abilities, where for jin ling it’s just that he’s spoiled and he has the money to buy all these goddamn nets

-haaaa the maternal education thing oof ouch

-the whole “Ohh I’m so scared who’s your uncle” “I’M his uncle” bit is comedy gold and it’s so sad you can’t fully appreciate it early on. My mom did recognize Jiang Cheng from the cliff scene tho!

-I like lwj’s little leitmotif they use early on

-Jiang cheng is so funny in this episode...he and lwj hate each other so deeply

-oh god the sad sibling music...the river flashback...wei wuxian’s SMILE augh 

-and then some other cultivators walk by to conveniently provide exposition lmao, just in case we don’t figure out what’s going on

-so the caretaker guy is not himself a Wen...which “master Wen” told him to keep watch there?

-WEN QING...FORGOT SHE WAS HERE. It must’ve been her then

-lol teenage atheist jin ling gets them all in trouble with his dumb wish...I love that

-super not a fan of how the statue moves...creppy

-HA IT SO COMES OFF LIKE WWX JUST WANTS TO SEE LWJ AGAIN, WHEN HE ASKS SIZHUI TO SEND UP A SIGNAL SHELL

-idk what sizhui says that Netflix translates as “gosh!” but that’s damn cute

-I love wwx using the Socratic method on the kiddos. he’s such a good teacher

-wtf is jc and lwj sitting in that like, cafe together, hating each other

-GHOST MUSIC TIME!!!!!!!!!!!

-love jingyi dragging his flute playing

-wen ning’s chains look so plastic ohh my god

-when Wen ning showed up my mom immediately asked if he was yanli. (she’s having a hard time recognizing them cause of the hair, I think.) that would actually slap, I’d read the fuck out of fierce corpse!yanli.

-oh my god wwx literally plays wuji to soothe wen ning...wen ning’s *face*, like there’s something he’s trying to remember...aa

-THE WRIST GRAB.............AAA

-aw jc calls him a-ling cause he’s worried-

OH NO THE TRANSITION TO THE FLASHBACK IM IN PAAAAAIN

-wwx immediately picks out a rabbit from the candy stall...ok gayboy

-aw jiang cheng trying so hard to represent his clan well. god they’re so fucking cute. on my first watch, I wasn’t sure how old they were supposed to be at this part, and knowing that they’re like 15ish makes everything so much rougher

-“you and father always defend him” oh man, planting those seeds already. ouch.

[tell-me-when-ur-ready]

This Thing Called Love (part seven)

Summary: When Shawn meets dancer Kellie in Toronto, he falls for her—hard. But Kellie has an invisible disability and thinks it’s impossible that someone could really love her the way she is.

Author’s note: PHEW things are getting good. The usual disclaimer: I have multiple chronic illnesses that are similar to Kellie’s, but not the exact same health conditions she has, so I apologize if I get anything wrong.

Warnings: language? just once lol

Word count: 2k

Kellie and Shawn didn’t talk to each other for two full weeks. It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part; Shawn continued texting her and calling her and trying to connect with her, but Kellie thought it was better to just make a clean break. It would be better in the long run for both of them.

Shawn had gotten Mackenzie’s number at some point during the summer (something Mackenzie had been way too excited about at the time), and he was using it now. Each evening, Mackenzie would show Kellie the latest texts.

Can you tell Kellie to call me?

Has Kellie said anything to you?

Ask Kellie what I did wrong.

“That boy’s in loooooove,” Mackenzie said, delighted, at first. But she got a little more exasperated as the days dragged by and the summer started to wane. “Kellie, this is just cruel,” she finally said. “Why won’t you date him? Because you think he’ll be scared away if he sees your health issues up close?”

Kellie shrugged uncomfortably and looked away.

“You could at least tell him that instead of just leaving him hanging. See what he says,” Mackenzie said, pursing her lips disapprovingly. But Kellie just shrugged again.

Shawn wasn’t the only one who was suffering. Stress affected chronic migraines, making them worse, and Kellie got so sick during those two weeks she almost forgot about Shawn altogether. The second week, she was only able to go to work one day; the other four days, she was at home in the darkness, lying in bed and periodically running to the bathroom to throw up.

 She’d gotten used to texting Shawn when she felt bad. But that wasn’t an option anymore. At least, that’s what Kellie kept telling herself.

 “I can’t do this,” she sobbed on the phone to her mom one Friday night. “I’m going to lose my jobs.”

 “Slow down,” her mom said. Kellie’s family lived an hour away, more north of Atlanta, so Kellie’s mom could no longer help take care of her when she flared up. Mackenzie had brought home groceries that day and Shelby had gotten Kellie’s prescriptions for her, but they were out with friends now. And Kellie didn’t want to burden them any further, anyway. She’d been upfront with them about her health issues when they decided to all move in together, but they weren’t obligated to babysit her.

 “But I am,” Kellie said. She wiped at her eyes. “Going to lose my jobs, I mean. I can’t work, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything.”

 “Is this at all related to Shawn?” her mom asked. “You haven’t mentioned him lately.”

 Kellie sighed. She’d told her mom (who had never heard of Shawn) about the music video, of course, and had vaguely said that she was staying in touch with Shawn and liked him a lot. But that was all her mother knew.

 “I mean, we haven’t talked in a couple of weeks. But it’s not a big deal.” That second part was a lie. “I’m way more worried about how I can pay rent. I can only call out of work sick so many times.” That, unfortunately, was the truth.

 But somehow, she woke up the next morning feeling better. She was able to keep breakfast down; her migraine was almost completely gone. Kellie rested all day Saturday anyway, to get her energy back up, and went into the dance studio Sunday.

 When she got home, exhausted but feeling a little happier after a few hours of teaching a lyrical workshop, she started pulling ingredients for a smoothie out of the cabinets. Someone knocked on the door, and she wiped her hands and went to get it; Mackenzie and Shelby were both at work, and she didn’t think they were expecting anybody.

 The door swung open and Shawn was standing there.

 Kellie’s first thought was that she looked awful, sweaty and tired with her hair in a messy bun (not the cute kind, but the actually-messy kind). Her second thought, which she said out loud, was, “Mackenzie.”

 Shawn shoved his hands in his pockets and smirked a little. “I like Mackenzie,” he said conversationally.

 “Well, she’s not here,” Kellie snapped, moving to shut the door. She didn’t know if she would have actually closed it in his face, but before it was halfway shut, he had reached out to stop her.

 “Can I come in?” he said, his face serious now. Reluctantly, Kellie nodded.

 Thankfully, the apartment was relatively clean at the moment. Their squishy couch was covered in pink pillows and the kitchen island held a stack of books and a pair of pointe shoes; out the window, you could see the hanging plants Shelby had installed on the balcony, green leaves swinging in the breeze.

 “Cute,” Shawn said, looking around. He slung his backpack to the ground and turned and looked at her, leaning against the counter. “Hi,” he said, his eyes going soft.

 “I’m sorry,” Kellie blurted out. But before she could get anything else out, the door opened again and Mackenzie came flying in.

 “Shit, he’s already here? I thought I was going to get home first,” she exclaimed, breathless. “I was going to prepare you—” She looked at Kellie apologetically.

 “I should have known you would do something like this,” Kellie said with a heavy sigh, glaring at her. Secretly, something inside her had lit up at the sight of Shawn’s face—but she didn’t really want him here, because now she had to face the reality of all her complicated, messy emotions and the things those emotions had made her do.

 “Sorry,” Mackenzie said, not sounding sorry at all. She held up her hand for Shawn to give her a high five.

 “Nice to finally meet you,” he said, sounding amused.

 “Go fix all of your problems,” Mackenzie said. She waved her hands at them in a shoo-ing motion.

 Kellie frowned at her. “Life is not a rom-com. It’s not always that easy.”

 Mackenzie shrugged, patted Shawn on the back, and disappeared into her bedroom with one last bright smile over her shoulder.

 There was a moment of awkward silence. Then Shawn said, “Are you feeling okay today? Do you wanna—go somewhere and talk?”

 “Yeah,” Kellie said shyly, figuring there was no way around it now. “I guess so.”

 She slid her feet into flip-flops and they went down to the parking lot of her apartment complex. On the sidewalk, Shawn rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and said, “Uh, so I might not have totally thought this through. I caught an Uber from the airport and they didn’t stay. Do you… feel well enough to drive?”

 She did giggle then, a real one, and Shawn smiled, obviously encouraged.

 “I guess so,” she said, and she was fishing out her keys when Shawn stopped her with a hand on her arm.

 “Really?” he asked seriously. “Because I don’t want you to feel like you have to say that. And I have a little self-interest here, too, since I’ll be in the car…”

 It was so different from what others said. If Kellie was starting a migraine or getting over one, she didn’t feel as if she could drive safely because of the pain and disorientation the migraines caused. Her friends didn’t always understand that. With Shawn, though, it was like he truly understood what her disability and her life were like—or at least, he was really trying. For the first time, Kellie felt like this might actually work.

 “Yeah,” she said softly, and nodded.

 She drove them to a park ten minutes away, trying not to be embarrassed about her dirty old Toyota, most of the drive spent in silence except for a few questions from Shawn about places they were passing. When they got to the park, they sat down on a picnic bench overlooking the baseball fields where teams were beginning to warm up for a late afternoon game; Shawn sat on the opposite side of the bench from Kellie and twisted the rings on his fingers.

 “So,” he said after a moment. “I want you to talk to me. Really talk to me. Mackenzie told me—some—”

 “Probably too much,” Kellie said with a rueful smile. Her voice sounded hoarse and strange and she cleared her throat. Her stomach was feeling fluttery, but for once that had nothing to do with Celiac.

 “But I want to hear it from you,” he finished. He stopped fidgeting and set his hands flat on the table, looking straight at her. His gaze was a little frantic and a little wistful, but there was a certain steadiness to it, too. “Please.”

 Above them, the wind blew through the leaves; from down the hill came faint yelling and the clang of a baseball hitting a composite bat.

 “Okay,” Kellie said slowly. She licked her lips and looked down at the rough wooden table, then looked back up, latching onto the steadiness in his eyes. “I just—okay. It’s not that I don’t want to see you. I do want to; I want to so badly. But I feel like I can’t. Because…”

 And she went on, describing how she felt as if it was unfair to the other person to try to be in a relationship, because she was constantly canceling plans and resting in bed and too busy caring for herself to think about anybody else. She talked about how she was scared to be with somebody because she thought, even if they said they didn’t care, they would see the real her—Celiac and chronic migraines included—when they started dating, realize everything that entailed, and wouldn’t stay. She explained how her life was unpredictable and how sometimes her physical problems affected her mental health and how she was so used to being alone in her pain she just didn’t know what it would look like to have someone by her side.

 When she finished, Shawn was silent for a moment. Kellie swallowed and wished she’d brought along a bottle of water for her dry throat.

 “You know the thing you left out in all that?” Shawn said softly. Kellie shook her head.

 “I love you,” Shawn said frankly. Kellie stared at him, mute, feeling her eyebrows draw together in something like shock or maybe disbelief.

 “Or, I think I would,” he added, “if I had the chance. And I think love makes all that other stuff not matter. I think, I mean I know, you can’t help that you have health problems, and I think everyone is afraid for someone to see the real them. But I think the real you is what someone should want in a real relationship. And I think… I mean, I know… if you give me a chance, I won’t leave. I’ll stay.”

 Kellie felt tears prick at the back of her eyes and turned away slightly, bringing a hand to her face.

 “Are you upset?” Shawn asked, his voice full of concern. An entire baseball team was walking by them, metal cleats crunching on the sidewalk, but Shawn never took his eyes off of her.

 “No,” she choked out. “I’m happy. I—no one’s ever said anything like that to me before. But I’m still scared.”

 He reached out and gently pried her hand away from her face, taking it in his own.

 “Do you think I’m not scared?” he said, laughing a little, almost incredulous. “Kell, I’m scared too. I’m scared for you to discover the real me. I’m scared my anxiety will get bad again and I’ll shut everyone out. I’m scared of what it might be like to have a relationship that’s inevitably going to be very public. I’m scared because you’re really pretty and I don’t want to say something stupid and sound dumb.”

 Kellie laughed through the tears that were now dropping on her face. She brought her other hand up to wipe them away and cover her eyes, but he captured that one too, not letting her hide.

 “But I think,” he said, low, “we can’t let fear dictate our lives.”

 There was a long moment of silence while all the things they’d said hung in the air.

 “Okay,” Kellie whispered finally, and Shawn looked at her steadily.

 “Okay?” he repeated, and she nodded. He smiled. And then she asked, “Do you have a tissue?”

Taglist: @rosiemercy@ @learning-howto-be-myselfx3 @evibesss @tnhmblive (let me know if you want to be added/removed)

[arielmagicesi]

tw: cheating tw: abuse tw: please somebody read this and tell me i’m not crazy, but don’t read if it upsets you hahahaha

ahahahahahaHA fuck I forgot that my piece of shit ex girlfriend used Discord all the time on my computer (bc she liked it better than her own so she used it and used my phone always and wouldn’t let me have them back without guilt tripping me about how I was “guilt tripping her” for using my stuff) and she’d stay up all night on Discord and I’d wake up the next morning before the outpatient therapy I went to (as a result of her behavior) and steal some free time on my computer and one morning I opened my computer and it went straight to a Discord chat she was having and I tried not to look but I instantly saw her reassuring some girl who had a crush on her that it was totally fine and that she found the girl super cute and ZERO mention that she had a girlfriend (me) and I just swallowed my anger because I knew if I brought it up that my gf would get pissed at me for “spying on her” and would give me the silent treatment (which she gave me most of the time anyway) and later on I found screenshots on my phone of literal proof of her cheating on me, like she STRAIGHT UP TOOK SCREENSHOTS OF HER CHATS WITH THE GUY SHE CHEATED ON ME WITH, AND LEFT THEM IN MY OWN PHOTOS FOLDER, but when I confronted her about it she in fact did get furious at me for invading her privacy and told me that it was triggering for her to be accused of cheating, and the next day she tweeted a bunch about how spying on your partner is a thousand times worse than cheating (btw like, the chats were about how she couldn’t wait to hug and kiss him and marry him, and like, I know some people talk to their friends like that, but she literally NEVER talked to me, HER GIRLFRIEND, like that??? like when I tried to kiss her she would get v. angry and if I flirted with her she would either turn it into a joke or say that she hated it). also that was the same day that I had gone through hell at NJTransit headquarters trying to get back the wallet she lost without saying her deadname at any point bc it upset me (but it was like, the name on the wallet) and I had to get in touch with her bc the bus guy told me I couldn’t get the wallet back without her calling him directly, and I knew she’d be furious if I didn’t get her wallet back, so I tried every method to contact her, and finally I @’d that very guy bc he was her best friend, and she chewed me out for contacting him bc she said she never ever wanted me to talk to her friends (she forbade me from interacting with her social media, especially mentioning that I was her gf, bc she didn’t want her friends to know she had a girlfriend- she had a lot of dating apps where she was marked “single” and got mad at me if I told her not to flirt with people on them) and apparently her best friend had never heard of me? like literally thought I was a creepy stranger/stalker? and it was my fault for talking to him... so yeah it was later that day I was going through my photos trying to find pics of good memories so that I didn’t feel like shit about my relationship, and that’s when I found the screenshots, and I remember crying and saying to myself, “of course this is the relationship I would have” and yeah fucking of course it was!!! lmao

anyway I’m setting up a Discord channel for the nonprofit organization I work for bc it’s a convenient way to host chats about writing, and seeing Discord just flooded me with this shit and I need to go to work and teach kids how to read fucking Hebrew soon and jesus christ she won’t go away! she just won’t go away from my life! and I keep thinking that she wasn’t *that* abusive bc my fucking friends are all like “you need to get over this one kinda bad relationship, OK, so you had one experience that wasn’t perfect” so I guess it was just only a little bit bad! and the fucking Internet says that it’s impossible for someone who’s more oppressed to abuse someone more privileged and that I must have been the abuser! and I’m a teacher so I hate all autistic people, right, which means that I was the one abusing her because all her behaviors are totally excused by her autism, right? and I’m just being ableist, right? and fuck my mental illness, right? and it was my fault for “spying on her” and for interacting with her friends when she told me not to? because I was a dirty secret because she didn’t want her friends to know she was dating an ugly fat bitch, right? and literally this rant might get me “cancelled” because I’m insinuating ableism doesn’t exist (WHICH IT FUCKING DOES AND I KNOW IT DOES AND I WOULD NEVER, EVER HURT ONE OF MY STUDENTS IN ANY WAY AND I LOVE ALL MY STUDENTS AND I WANT TO ACCOMMODATE THEIR DISABILITIES) but you know what? fine

[fuck-customers]

This is a bit of a long one. TLDR; fuck the rude office staff at my uni.

A bit different buuuuut deals with me in a job situ interacting w other people.

  I’m doing my Masters/possibly PHD right now. I finished my undergrad last year and went straight back into uni. I got a bit of funding but not an awful lot to cover my ass, the intense work means I can no longer fit it around my trusty retail job, meaning I’ve ended up tutoring undergrad at the uni for extra cash. It’s good cos I have an office and it’s a good refresher to keep my knowledge up to date.

  I am also volunteering at uni, in a new scheme, buddying with undergrad students within my school who are struggling bc of mental health/disability/caring/etc. A lot of this involves me acting as a buffer between them and the undergrad office so I will hand in assignments, request extensions for them, pick up their feedback forms etc. Other roles include helping them with financial aid forms, speaking to their course coordinators, whatevz. My uni is very old fashioned so things need to be submitted and picked up by hand 90% of the time. Submission is general through a box and to get your feedback you need to go on a certain day to the schools building and wait in line with a bunch of other assholes, sometimes course tutors give them back in class in a much preferable way.

    Now… my time at uni as an undergrad was filled with barriers. Both my parents died. Yup, you read that right. I had terrible depression and anxiety and was off-and-on different meds and therapy. I spent time in hospital due to health conditions. All of this whilst supporting myself and working 25hrs+ a week along with my course. I was often late handing things in, meaning instead of going to the ‘drop box’ session I’d have to go into the office and awkwardly hand my submission to the admin staff. Most were OK, some a bit snooty, but this one guy, we will call Ronnie was an asshat. Just… snide yno? He was notorious for being rude. He knew my name by the end of first year cuz I basically had ALL my assignments delayed and also did two of my exams as extended research as I was in no fit state to be examine. Going into postgrad there was a difference office to submit things to and everyone was waay more chill, I was glad to finally get away from Ronnie.

    But yeah. I didn’t. Queue going in every other week to submit a piece of work (and signing a mandate to say I didn’t diddle with the work) for other students. Ronnie became the bane of my life again. I don’t really have any good examples to express this but he’s just always…always…on at me. I had two essays to hand in (on time) on behalf of two first years last week, one was a carer for her disabled brother and lived a distance away so submission on her caring day was not an option, the other was ill. I had dealt with Ronnie’s shit, got through it all OK and left. I then remembered another person I had been in contact with needed his feedback form, I immediately ran back in without knocking and our convo went a bit like this:

    Me: ehh, sorry forgot to ask! Do you have [class name] feedback or is it with [tutor]?

R: Why would [tutor] have it? [tangent about how they should always have uncollected feedback].

Me: Okay yeah cool, thanks, can I pick up the one for [name]? I have an email from him and the tutor saying its cool.

R: OH JEE WELL IDK CAN YOU?

*spends ages fumbling about for the folder acting like this is the biggest inconvenience of this life – NOTE: they’re filed in term of year – class and then an excess folder… there’s never more than 3 in a yeargroup at once. Anytime anyone else has done this for me it takes 40 seconds tops to find the feedback*

R: You should really tell me before so I can hunt this out. We don’t get told these things. Next time, email me.

Me, annoyed cos this has NEVER been a rule unless it’s a super old feedback form: Yeah, thanks, I will. Should I email the office?

R: No email me!

Me: I don’t have your email?

R *sighs*: WELL if you don’t know it after all these years I’ll guess you’ll never learn. Send it to the office but it wont be answered with urgency.

  Honestly. Why do I bother. I’m just glad I’m not the anxious mess I used to be or I’d be crying so hard after this hostile interaction.

  [bonus round – last time I interacted with Ronnie as an UG student:

 It was my final year and first time in, like, 18 months when I needed an extension on anything. I actually was basically my assignment but, on the day before of the hand-in I ended up in hospital, I hadn’t done the references or conclusion and got a 2-week extension from my tutor. I submitted it like 2 days after I came back outta hospital and Ronnie was SO RUDE. He asked me ‘what was it this time’ in this sorta ha-ha we’re having top banter way… I know its minor but it was just….God]

[birdsy-purplefishes]

I have MANY thoughts and feelings about Midsommar.

Okay I saw Midsommar last night and it was an experience. So this post is probably going to be long and rambling and it is definitely 100% for-sure going to contain some spoilers. I’m gonna put a whole lot of it behind a Read More.

First, though, I want to say that while I thought this film was great it is definitely one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. I went into it knowing almost nothing--and honestly I wouldn’t have been prepared even if I had read spoilers--and that was the ideal way to see it for me but there are many triggering things and some very problematic things in this film. I’m gonna try to be vague as possible but you might not not to watch this one if anything from the following list is something you can’t handle. That said: I am very easily disturbed by a lot of things and I found that this film was so bizarre that I never really felt like I couldn’t finish it. It’s... kind of weirdly selective about which gruesome stuff it shows and what it doesn’t. The most terrifying things to me were implied things and I didn’t realize them until after it had ended. Somehow... miraculously... this film didn’t come across as gore/torture-p*rn to me. So Trigger Warning / Content Warnings for this movie: Violence, blood, gore, horrible suffering. Sex, nudity. Mental illness and stigmatization/perpetuation of harmful myths about mentally ill people. Suicide. Ableism. Racism. A rape scene that I think most people didn’t even realize was a rape scene because it’s bizarre and left somewhat ambiguous. Emetophobia triggers. Body horror. A whole lot of drugs. Squicky grossout stuff. Emotional, psychological, and religious abuse. 

There’s probably other stuff I forgot. Basically everything horrible is in this movie. It was definitely worth it but it’s a hard watch.

Okay, now for spoilery stuff.

The backstory shown in the first few minutes is incredibly disturbing. Dani’s bipolar sister murders their parents and kills herself. It’s graphic. It’s disturbing. It definitely portrays suicide in a negative light, which is pretty much good, but: can horror movies stop perpetuating myths about mentally ill people?! This stuff is damaging! It makes mentally ill people out to be monsters and then ignorant people treat them worse. It makes mentally ill people feel like there isn’t any hope for them! This part sucked a lot. The only interpretation of this that isn’t awful is the fan theory that there are clues in the background that suggest that the cult may have actually framed Dani’s sister but that’s kind of a stretch. None of the other foreshadowing in the film is as subtle as the supposed hints that the cult fabricated the whole thing so I doubt it.

The foreshadowing is actually super obvious. It’s the typical horror film where the characters have no idea what’s going on & you’re like “DUDE GET OUT OF THERE!” the whole time. People on the subreddit are pointing out all kinds of foreshadowing and even the tapestry at the beginning shows you who all of the characters are and like 90% of the story.

Dani’s boyfriend, Christian, sucks. His friends suck. There’s a lot of macho bullshit and they’re just cold and dismissive. And the boyfriend’s a manipulative little leech. You hate him so much! I found myself hoping that she’d kill them all except maybe the cute friendly Swede. Basically the entire movie he’s gaslighting and dismissing her and his friends talk shit about her constantly. It’s the typical “oh, women are irrational and over sensitive” macho bullshit. Like to the extent that all of them know about the murder-suicide of her entire family but none of them try to fucking shield her from seeing the suicide ritual. Not even the guys who know damn well what it is going into it!

The fact that they’re all anthropology majors and they go into it with a sense of cold detachment and an insistence on cultural relativism (or utter obliviousness) and it makes them total assholes wasn’t lost on me and I’m glad that someone went into detail: https://slate.com/culture/2019/07/midsommar-graduate-students-villains-ari-aster.html 

The bros say something about him dumping her and finding somebody who “actually likes sex” and there’s a lot of interpretations to that, none of which are less than horrible. Like does he try to pressure her into doing stuff she doesn’t want to? Probably! Like whether she has emotional or physical sexual dysfunction isn’t discussed and that’s kind of brilliant because even if she does have issues it’s not her fault at all and the dudes are g a r b a g e for even suggesting it.

The cute friendly Swedish dude (Pelle) who was the only one to be kind to Dani at all was actually the worst manipulator of all! He’s totally luring her in! He’s love-bombing and manipulating her! He literally “draws” her in. He does some forced-teaming shared-trauma bullshit. I gotta say though: I fell for it! I wanted her to dump the guy for him! I’m almost surprised that she didn’t fall for it. I think it’s more due to the fact that she’s traumatized and grieving than anything.

The most disturbing thing about the guy, though, is that I can’t decide if he does all of this because he’s evil or because he’s genuinely a true believer and believes with all his heart that he’s doing good things. That will haunt me forever tbh. Just... always watch out for guys who want to “save” you. They are the scariest fucking abusers.

The whole cult is love-bombing her, actually. The whole film is like Cult Tactics 101. They find a vulnerable young woman who’s lost everything. She doesn’t feel a sense of love and belonging anywhere. She has no support system unless you count her garbage basically-sociopathic-but-aloof boyfriend who really doesn’t count. Pelle hand-selected her because she’s the ideal cult brainwashing candidate. He’s seen firsthand just how much shit she takes from Christian and how she’s constantly falling for his gaslighting and tolerating him mistreating her. I was actually kind of disturbed at how many women I saw online reacting to the cult saying it was empowering or matriarchal. It’s not at all! The first elder we see leading things is female but the ones handling the book and enforcing the rules are men. I can only recall two women elders who do much of anything and they’re both just prominent parts of ceremonies. They’re announcers/performers. They’re definitely complicit but the men are behind the scenes controlling it. And look at the sex ritual! There’s no real emphasis on female pleasure and it’s all being a good little brood mare. It’s a performance. And small babies are kept away from their mothers to be raised communally. They send the mothers away from their babies! Even the May Queen role sucks if you think about it for even a second. The whole “we’re a family” thing is just creepy as hell. There’s even a lot of foreshadowing to it that I missed, like the guy who greets her shaking the mens’ hands but saying “welcome home” to her. Said guy also calls his traditional garb “girly” when Dani compliments it, btw! And of course the division of labor is patriarchal. The clothing is patriarchal too.

The mental health ableism stuff is bad but there’s ableism based on physical disability as well. Arguably it’s supposed to condemn the cult for fetishizing disabled people and promoting incest to deliberately create disabled people but... it still comes across as “look at this deformed kid” and it’s fucked up.

I can’t tell if the movie is trying to show us that the cult is racist or if the movie itself is racist. They kill off the three non-white outsiders pretty quick. Was that classic horror movie “the black guy dies first” bullshit or was that supposed to be like “look, these seemingly peaceful and loving people are xenophobic and racist and there’s a reason why all of them are super duper white despite bringing in outsiders”. Like I came out of the film definitely convinced that it’s no coincidence that the blue-eyed blonde chick gets singled out as special by these people.

It made me really uncomfortable to realize that the sex ritual is technically a rape scene. We get clues that Christian goes into it voluntarily to some extent, sure. When he knows that girl (and she does look like a young girl!) is trying to seduce him we don’t really see his reaction but he doesn’t seem to refuse outright. He seems ambivalent until he's offered the drugs but then he hears that they’ll make him lose his inhibitions, looks at the girl, and gulps the liquid. He saw it as an excuse to get away with cheating and he took it. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s drugged when he actually agrees to the sex. He’s tripping the whole time. He’s being pressured and prodded and even literally physically manipulated. He’s out of it. The girl seems kind of out of it too. It’s really fucked up. But like it’s so weird and you’re so mad at him for everything shitty he’s done to Dani that you’re just like what?! But when you think about the fact that he’s drugged and you see the way he’s horrified after he realizes what he’s done... it’s horrific. He was violated.

I like that we see just how viscerally traumatic it is to be cheated on. Dani vomits, collapses and wails. And our sympathies are with her.

The cultists imitation of their members’ suffering is actually deeply disturbing and a huge aspect of the love-bombing thing, especially for Dani. She goes from being barely held by her expressionless piece-of-shit boyfriend while she wails to having a whole bunch of women replicate and act out her suffering. They do this too at the botched suicide and the final scene. They even kind of do it when she fails to eat the fish. It kind of looks communal and empathetic but it’s a feigned empathy. It’s another way that people in the cult lose their own personal identities. Nothing is yours there! Not even your suffering is yours.

To be honest... I went to see this film ‘cause a lot of the reactions to it were women gleefully enjoying seeing a shitty boyfriend suffer a horrible fate. I’m always down for misandry and cinematography! BUT... this was just excessive. The boyfriend is a total bastard. He did kinda need to die tbh. But he basically gets tortured to death. It’s made pretty explicitly clear that it’s horrific. They make no effort to mercy kill him like they did to the elderly guy whose jump failed to kill him. And like... the actor even gets it. The guy’s a scumbag and he doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He even backstabs Chidi From The Good Place! But what happened to him is just awful.

The director and the lead actor actually disagree about the ending! Ari Aster says that Dani knows what she’s doing when she condemns Christian to die. Florence Pugh says she’s out of it.

I say it doesn’t actually matter whether Dani chose to kill Christian or not or what her motive was. Honestly it might have been a mercy killing given the state that he was in! Like maybe it was revenge for her and maybe the cult did it to make her feel empowered but it sucks being forced to choose who lives and dies. It sucks that some creepy cultist basically stole her man. It’s the whole “a pedestal is the same as a cage” thing for sure.

Last thing I can think of for now: I’m very surprised and more than a little distressed at all the people--especially women--who see this as a happy ending for Dani. Sure, it’s kind of a dark fairy tale revenge fantasy. But she’s objectively worse off than she is at the beginning of the film! She’s brainwashed and trapped! Like... I forgot where I read this now but basically Aster says that she goes from with one gaslighter to being with an entire cult of gaslighters! What do you think is gonna happen to her in the future?! She’s gonna have to live with her dead boyfriend’s baby that he had with some rando chick if that fertility ritual worked! She’s gonna have to live in a shitty commune. She’s gonna have PTSD 5ever from everything that happened. It’s honestly a tragic and horrible ending.

I’m... still processing this. I know I’m gonna end up adding to this. Feel free to chime in and discuss it with me! This movie was just Intense. BONUS LINKSPAM: Good Takes And Shit!

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2474518/jordan-peele-says-midsommar-has-the-most-atrociously-disturbing-imagery-hes-ever-seen

https://themuse.jezebel.com/boy-problems-whos-got-em-midsommar-does-1835878652

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alisonwillmore/midsommar-ari-aster-florence-pugh

https://www.vulture.com/2019/07/the-end-of-midsommar-ari-asters-last-minutes-explained.html

https://www.vulture.com/2019/07/the-end-of-midsommar-ari-asters-last-minutes-explained.html

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/03/738422258/midsommar-shines-a-solstice-nightmare-unfolds-in-broad-daylight

EDIT: Also!!! This film?! Somehow is a comedy! It’s funny as fuck and I’m definitely going to hell for laughing!

[thataspdfeel]

People with aspd often get accused to use their disorder as an excuse to be a bad person. But those people don’t understand the personality of someone with aspd. Like, I don’t care about other people or what happens to them, so when I’m told a tragic story I might react different that what they would expect. Maybe I just shrug my shoulders and the others automatically think I’m acting emotionless and therefore ‘edgy’, when in reality I maybe just forgot that my normal isn’t socially accepted.

ok well there’s a difference between the tragic story example you gave and being a bad person, in my opinion

i don’t care what happens to other people. genuinely. i understand there are always going to be homeless people and they’re always going to suffer. but just because i don’t personally care if someone else is starving doesn’t give me an excuse to be neutral, or god forbid, kick these people while they’re down

they’re human just as much as i am and deserving of dignity so it’s my duty to promote those donation posts, to give money where i can, to hand a homeless person some water or my own burger. i can find another meal. fuck, i can eat ramen if i absolutely have to. but there people may not be able to do that and they deserve kindness

like i may not cry or feel anything when i see human suffering or hear about tragedy, but that’s one thing. it’s not acting “edgy” at all. it’s just the reality of things. what’s “edgy” is when you turn your “i don’t care” into “it’s not my fault i’m punching you because i have a disorder” that it becomes an excuse to be a bad person. you’re not taking responsibility for your actions

frankly, so far as morality goes, personal motivation doesn’t exactly matter or at least not nearly as much as people think it does. i’m personally motiated towards neutrality in all situations because i just don’t give a shit. jontron’s a white supremacist? doesn’t affect me so who cares, right? motivationally, it doesn’t matter either way if i continue to watch him or not

but, objectively, it does matter. even if i wasn’t queer, mentally ill, disabled, etc it does matter because it does effect other people. there are consequences to mortality even if the consequences aren’t my own. it doesn’t matter how it affects me. the end result is negative even if my actions were neutral

i mean i’m not saying motivation doesn’t matter at all. after all, it is much better to do good things with good intentions than bad things with good intentions. the end doesn’t justify the means, after all. but with your intentions neutral, or even leaning towards bad (ie hurting people because their reactions are funny or it’s just downright generally entertaining) the action itself is what matters

this is what i mean when i say i don’t use my problems as excuses. i don’t force my trauma onto other people and i don’t blame my actions on my own issues. certainly they explain them but, at the end of the day, cool motive still murder

except a personality disorder isn’t even a cool fucking motive. collect your shit and don’t be an edgelord

[whatwhat--pregameup]

hi I’m still tipsy after a day of post-finals drinking and I have a lot of feelings about The Shape of Water. massive spoilers ahead.

female sexuality as opposed to sexualization: female sexuality is not presented for the viewer’s titillation. nudity is not really A Big Deal in this film (which is great because when it does come into play, it can more effectively communicate something beyond “hurr hurr naked lady”). the only time the camera really seems to linger on the female form is when Strickland’s wife (a conventionally attractive blonde ‘60s housewife) is starting foreplay, but honestly...it wasn’t even that sexy (it was kind of an awkward shot tbh)? and it struck me as very intentional.

different forms of love: platonic love, sisterly love, altruistic love, romantic/sexual love, it’s all here. it’s all valuable. it all drives the plot in some way, shape of form.

power and agency: there was a bit of a tumblr kerfluffle when the trailer came out when some people apparently lost their comprehension abilities and missed the part where they mentioned that Eliza is mute. make no mistake, she is anything but passive and the film does not imply at any point that she needs to be “saved” or “fixed”. assuming that Eliza is passive/submissive just because she can’t speak (never mind the fact that she signs throughout the movie...) is exactly what the villain does, for the record, and there’s exactly one response to that horseshit.

“beauty and the beast” tropes: I take some issue with comparisons to beauty and the beast. for one thing, it ignores the origins of the tale and the metaphor for arranged marriage (it’s a very idealistic vision of finding redeeming qualities in this partner you’re stuck with), and in those setups, the “transformation” is usually some kind of redemption or reward. the thing about this movie is that neither partner needs that. the “transformation” (beautifully foreshadowed, by the way!!) doesn’t have any morality attached to it. it’s practical. it saves Eliza’s life. it allows them to be together. their difference in form isn’t the result of a moral failing. it’s not the result of some deus ex machina. they just happen to have different forms because they come from different places. it bears on the relationship, but it doesn’t define it.

the characters don’t have to say “I love you” to have a compelling romance.

love and completeness: I’m not fond of the notion that love is supposed to “complete” people (“other half”, etc.) because, well, are you somehow not a complete person on your own otherwise???? I’m so glad that Eliza brings it up.

features, not bugs: following from the above point - the things that make us different (disability, mental illness, sexual orientation) aren’t necessarily inherently bad. society may place certain values (or a lack thereof) on those things, but they don’t make us any less whole or valuable as human beings. I’ve been on something of a journey with this particular idea for a while now due to my own struggles with mental health and this was really comforting to see on the big screen. 

“he doesn’t see me as incomplete. he sees me as I am.”

fetishization: it cuts the other way, too. the scene where Strickland tries to make a move on Eliza hit a nerve for a number of reasons, but his fetishization of her muteness really struck me. like yeah, it’s one thing to have dirty thoughts about someone (and keep them the hell to yourself at work thank you very much), but it’s entirely another to take the thing that marginalizes them and exploit it for your gratification. it’s all too familiar for anyone who’s heard “you’re cute for a ______” or people trying to rationalize that being marginalized isn’t so bad because, well, they’d fuck you (wow what a prize!!!! that makes up for all the shit I have to put up with!!!)

#MeToo: for a moment, I forgot that this was written and shot well before #MeToo took off. good lord, this film came out at just the right time

[time-2-vent]

So. This is a master post about my grandma. Some of this has already been talked about here but I posted this on my private fb and wanted to keep it here too.

.

Okay.. so. This is gonna be a long and detailed one.

Ive never had a space where I could vent about my grandma to more than just people close to me without being blamed or her finding out. The only family I have on here is my mom and im hiding this post from her for various reasons. I understand if many of you can't read all the way through this because its gonna be a lot. I just want the people around me to have a better grasp on exactly why im so depressed.

Before I start im gonna add a trigger list because there is a LOT and im probably going to be very emotional typing this. A lot of it ive never spoken about publicly.

So for a list of TW:

Emotional, physical, sexual, and animal abuse, r*pe, p*dophelia, racism, su*cide, hospitals, ableism, be******ty mention, fatshaming, weight mention, f slur.

.

.

.

.

Okay. Im going to start at when I moved in with her. She tricked my mother into signing over custody of me when I was 10. When I was 9 years old I was forced into a mental hospital after being heavily overdosed on medications meant for adults to the point I was "sitting upside down in my chairs unresponsive and talking about tranquilizers" which i have no memory of. The hospital was probably the worst experience in my entire life and I was almost murdered by one of the older kids. After getting out of there I moved in with my grandma.

Throughout my life shes said and done so many horrible things to me. She would always yell and scream about the smallest mistakes. She used to pick me up by my hair. She was just fucking horrible to me.

Around the age of 10-11 when I started going through puberty she would always make fun of the way my genitals looked. She would ask me to stretch my labia out and move it around. Specifically she would ask me to "show me your bat wings". It was fucking disgusting but as a child I thought it was just haha funny joke.

For a while I thought I just imagined that until my mom brought it up to me and how she CAUGHT HER saying that to me multiple times. So I had confirmation that I wasn't just imagining it. I once confronted her about it and she immediately started crying (ive only seen her cry 3 times in my entire life) and told me if I ever said that again she would tell everyone in my family that I was a "prostitute" and would make everyone in my family hate me, and that it was my mother who did that to me.

My mom lived with me and my grandma for a few years but eventually moved out on her own because she couldn't handle my grandmas abuse.

My grandma dated my moms r*pist, which was my moms uncle, and told my mom she never got r*ped, and said my mom only fucked him for "attention and cigarettes". My mom was 12 at the time.

My grandma told me at 15 that the "only reason you think you're trans is because you got diddled as a kid"

My grandma called me a whore when I started becoming sexually active despite her having her first child at 16.

She once told me I was "just like my father" who is a sex offender and abused me as a child. I was also forced to give my at-the-time step brothers head when I was 3-5 and was taught that it was okay.

My grandma has called me every possible name in the book. Anytime she does something wrong its automatically my fault. She told me she would believe that im trans when I showed her my dick (at 16).

Shes incredibly rude and racist, says she hates how she can't understand Asian people. She's said the n word. She's made so many "jokes" about how "aggressive" Black people are. When my cousin found out he had Black in him she said, and I quote, "I always knew he had a n***r ass" which fucking disgusted me. Shes scoffed at my mother for limping. She scoffs at anyone disabled. Always says "you wouldn't catch me looking like that in public." She would tell my mom she was faking her pain. And coincidentally of all 4 of her kids, one was born with physical deformities. she says thats not the reason why, but she gave her up for adoption. She yells at anyone standing in her way who isn't aware. She is incredibly rude when she speaks to people to the point its embarrassing.

When I hung myself earlier this year and a friend came to pick me up she was yelling at me like "Oh so you went and tattled on me didnt you? Did you say oh boo hoo shes so abusiveeee!!" As I had literally just laid passed out in the snow from hanging myself.

When she found out I hung myself she bitched about how I had her snow boots and how she would have had to climb up the hill to find my fucking body as if it were a chore. She asked me if I wanted to be cremated out of nowhere and when I said no she replied "good I didn't want to have to pick your piercings out of your dead body" when I told her she made me want to kill myself she laughed at me and said "well then you'll never survive" my first suicide attempt was at 12 years old. A few weeks ago I started carving at my throat in front of her because im so desperate for her to LISTEN to me for 5 FUCKING SECONDS. I have legitimately cried on my knees and begged her to treat me like a person time and time again. She laughs at me and turns it around to my issues. She guilt trips me and makes me think everything is my fault. She calls me disgusting for having 1 or 2 shirts on the floor. She told me to MY FACE she will never see me as trans. Misgenders me, misgenders my friends. I jokingly told her one of my cis friends was trans, and when she left she asked me "does he really have a penis?" ABOUT A WHOLE ASS CIS WOMAN. She told me she ran over and killed a dog with a broken leg to "put it out of its misery" she would always use glue traps and I told her not to tell me about it so she waits until were in public and says "yknow whenever I catch a live mouse on one of the traps I throw it into a plastic bag and then go do the litter box to suffocate it". Shes threatened to make me pay the hospital bill when I called 911 because she was unconscious. She says horrible things to me EVERY FUCKIJG DAY. She's always making everying my fault all the time and sits and smiles while I'm sobbing and pouring my heart out because im tired of the abuse. Im so fucking tired. It goes on and on and on every day of my life. I literally slit my throat in front of her and she only stopped being mean for about a week. Im so depressed and mentally ill and this is beating on me every moment of my fucking life.

In not done but im shaking and need to stop typing for now

Edit: some other notable things, when my grandpa disowned me and stopped speaking to me for over a year she told me it was probably because of how disgusting I was. And "nobody wants to be around that".

She will ask me specific random questions about specific friends and if I dont know the answer or I forgot, she goes on a tangent about how terrible of a friend I am.

When I was cutting her hair she kept telling me I was doing it wrong, so I did it her way and she hated it and told me she's glad I didn't pursue hair because im terrible at it.

When my cat was dying she originally refused to take him to the vet because he was "just gonna die anyways so I might as well let him", then gave up her cat to the vet because she was peeing but didn't wanna take responsibility for that so she lied to them and said she showed up at her door and didn't tell them her age or even her name and that was so fucking cruel.

When she starts laughing at me sometimes she'll talk to me in a whiny "baby voice" and be like awwww, waaa im so abusedddd *mocks me crying*.

And she always talks in a tone that sounds pissed off and seems confused when I feel like I'm being scolded.

She gets in my face and puts her finger in my face and backs me into corners sometimes and then when I smack her hand out of my face she says she'll put me in jail for abuse.

Oh yea and simetimes when she gets mad at me she'll be like "ok GIRL" in the middle of me talking. Like its annoying and uncalled for.

I cant believe I forgot this holy shit. Years ago (was a minor here as well) I was attacked by my neighbors dog and it knocked me down and when I got home my grandma was accusing me of be******ty and said she was "watching it fuck me" and I was so fucking disgusted and hurt.. I try to block that from my memory because it was my third dog attack and I was traumatized.

She also regularly calls her brother a F@ggot. He is the only lgbt family member (he's gay) that i have.

She regularly fatshames people while only a few feet from them. And will whisper to me about how disgusting they look.

She asks for all of my friends deadnames and gets mad when I dont answer.

"I can't be abusive because I give you a home. I could have let social services take you."

"I cant be racist because my ex husband is Black"

"You must be living in a fantasy world where you make up shit that ive done."

"Id be depressed if I stayed in bed all day too."

"I need to learn to have lower expectations for you."

"I'm starting to resent you. So ill be taking 200$ a month for rent." (She has stopped this thankfully)(edit #2, she started taking it again im gonna be here forever lmao)

When I was underweight she would say things like "you look like an aids patient." And "Are you trying to look like your mother?"

"You're a hoarder"