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lookwhatilost · 2 years ago

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i feel like the dri & booze situation is one that’s relatively unusual and is going to require a more creative solution that hasn’t been fielded with her. so, not 12 step, which complicates things it’s really hard to get streamlined information on clinical treatment that doesn’t use this model, in part because 12 step is so hegemonic. she needs something more customized than that. what i want to do when she’s calmed down a bit is have a couple options that she wouldn’t have had presented to her *checks notes* 9 year tenure in and out of 12 step programs. i don’t know why anyone is shocked that this hasn’t been helpful.

i’ve known dri for years at this point and am way more familiar with how this works than i ever wanted to be. so i’m of two minds: my less than charitable opinion, which is my broad one, and the one that’s more tailored to this and more relevant.

the mean one is more fun to type: go to an article where a conservative writer is railing against grc, toss out the bit about kiddie tiddies and just grab the ones that are pretending to be objective, that allude to rates of regret that aren’t being reported, lack of supporting evidence, that this is being pushed as the only answer when therapy is more appropriate, that it’s ideologically driven, that it’s profiting off a vulnerable group of repeat customers. perennial classics, i’ve sure we’ve all seen them. now go in and play some mad libs, replace “woke gender experimental surgeries” or whatever dogwhistle the author shit out after they drank their coffee this morning with “12 step”. and congratulations, they’re correct statements now.

i’m oversimplifying a bit here, but there are some serious issues with the all of the data, that would be present in any group that only keeps estimates of its membership – how very convenient for them. so you get wildly variant estimates about the program’s success, with figures ranging from 5% to 91%. that should make any reasonable person suspicious of them. and then orgs like AA will self-publish 75% percent success rate – broken down that’s 50% for don’t relapse after attending, and another 25% who slip then recover – but say things in weasel words “for those who seriously work the program”, which the fine print will tell you is 20-40% of attendees at the meeting. AA groups are also autonomous. the norms in one church basement aren’t going to be the same ones down the road, so what are the criteria they’re holding these people to? there’s a lot of weird shit like this, like the very fun fact that AA is 45 years older than the first substance use disorder diagnosis. and all 12 step programs are the AA formula smacked out something else. it’s a rabbit hole.

what’s relevant here is that 12 step is designed for one specific expression of alcoholism, and adrienne isn’t a patient like that.

like, someone who just got divorced, kids taken from them and their house foreclosed on, someone who’s living in their car, the kind of people who don’t have anywhere else to turn to. this program is made for. it’s the people who can’t stop no matter what and who can’t moderate no matter what, who need complete abstinence. people’ve lost real things because of this.

dri has gotten... um. she’s gotten seriously physically injured multiple times, and she’s had some very alarming experiences with other symptoms after a binge, and i know she knows it’s not a good sign that she’s getting labs all the time. but in terms of things she won’t be able to realistically bounce back from? well, the second DUI did bleed her savings, but she also scraped together the funds for a very well connected lawyer who talked it down to a first offense. so. inpatient recovery stint in december argued as time served. 6 months of probation. complete IOP. 4 months total license suspension, 12 months ignition interlock when the restricted license comes back. $5k fine. judge saying “i just hope i never see you in here again”. a lot of situations like that, where they were nowhere near as bad as they could have realistically been. and the point is more common ground with the group. she isn’t going to engage with this. when she was still in IOP, sometimes she’d come home and comment “damn, some of these people actually ruined their lives”

so, people who the program is designed for don’t really have the privilege of nitpicking it because this is pretty much it for them, and what else are they realistically are going to do? but dri is going to immediately going to look at this and think “why do i have to go on a tour of shame if this is something out of my hands?” and tear into it further like “it doesn’t matter if you change ‘god’ to ‘higher power’ if you’re still talking about an external locus of control. just because it’s woke god now doesn’t mean this isn’t spiritual”. whenever there’s a “bitch ex-wife guy” (apparently every meeting has one) she’s not going to find this relatable because this dude is 2.5 decades older than her and custody battles are something she knows nothing about, and finds the chatter depressing at best, or at worst, sort of looks at some of the more extreme cases and quietly exonerates herself. even when people are in her age group, she doesn’t seem to like them very much. her AA sponsor in 2020 told her that “this year is bad because people were chanting ‘i can’t breathe’ in the streets, which is a black magic spell”. she stopped going after that. for every encounter she had with someone there she thought was interesting, there were 10 more events she took issue with. she just doesn’t like the premise. and i’m still going back and forth on whether the health stuff is abstract to her, or she doesn’t want to think about it, or if she’s just sort of giving up on it. but she’s still shut in our room and she’s been crying on and off for most of the day, so i know she feels awful about herself.

so, i’ve just been writing this out to sort of get my ideas down and spitball what isn’t working, just based on what she’s told me about. and i want to approach her with some language i know she’s probably going to be more responsive to, and i think what i’m sticking with is “you’ve caught a lot of breaks with this, but you only need to get really unlucky with it one time”.

because that’s sort of what my concern is. this is usually the cycle with her: she relapses, and something scares her out of drinking for a while. then some time goes on, and eventually the initial shock wears off. this can be anywhere between 2 weeks to around 6 months depending on how scared she is. then she starts getting stressed, she’ll want to drink and numb it. i can reliably talk her out of it if she expresses this to me, but i also can’t babysit her all the time. this will be persistent, sometimes it goes nowhere. sometimes she’ll pop in somewhere after her shift, and... she’s chugged 8 drinks in the past hour and she can barely form a sentence and is incredibly disoriented, which means she’s liable to fall over and hurt herself, and she’ll just walk around with a gash on her face that’s gushing blood and she doesn’t seem to notice it happened. or she’s put herself in a sketchy situation with people she 100% should not trust because they’re buying her more alcohol and she’s totally lost the thread of what’s going on. already, she’s fallen through a glass door and shattered it, she’s chipped a significant portion off two of her teeth, she faceplanted directly on her glasses and broke them and she still has a scar on her nose where the frame dug into her face, she’s had her drinks drugged, twice, and there’s this story she doesn’t take seriously at all where she describes what is almost certainly an attempted sexual assault, and she’s not reading it that way because she was too zonked out to realize that, no, that stranger carrying you into your apartment when you’re inebriated and getting weird with you is trying to take advantage of you. babe, this is really bad.

her falling into traffic, or tripping into the canal and drowning, or just passing out when it’s cold out and freezing, or anything like that is very low probability, but she only needs to get unlucky once. what’s more likely is that she gets seriously injured. she breaks her jaw, or her nose, or her arm. or she pokes one of her eyes out. or one of her drinks gets drugged again, but no one intervenes this time, and god knows what follows. like, i’m not pulling this out of my ass. she’s had close calls with all of these. and she only needs to get unlucky once.

the good news in all of this is that dri has trended upwards in the sobriety periods. she could barely go a few days without drinking in 2019 and be on a bender for a week or more. now, she might not have had 9 months of consecutive sobriety, but 21 days this year, only spanning 2-3 day intervals at a time, spread out – she’s doing better. but i get worried that she could backslide, and i think she needs something more tailored to her specifically so she can learn how to get out of that thinking cycle. because she needs to do this consistently so she can get the momentum she needs to put this behind her.

so, thinking about some things that she might find appealing or that will help her. RPT seems like a good place to start that she’d benefit from the most, so i need to find a cbt practitioner who has experience with this. i could see REBT working too. i know she probably should try to get back on antidepressants, but i know she doesn’t feel they do anything, so that’s irritating. although i could see her feeling more favorably towards ketamine, because it tends to work more immediately. insurance doesn’t cover that, but we might be able to figure something out. some clinics do payment plans that are a bit more doable for us. i’m not sure how she feels about vivitrol or acamprosate, but they’re on the table too. smart is probably a better fit for her than anything 12 step, if she hasn’t given up on groups, because it’s more based in cbt principles and would be a good compliment to whatever form of talk therapy she thinks makes the most sense. or even just little things in addition to this, like giving her a day planner where she can just keep track of what’s a sober day, what’s a day where she drank, what’s a day where she binged, and just make notes about things like cravings, stressors, etc. she tends to respond better to something tangible, and being able to have a written documentation of this can give her a better handle on her patterns. or encouraging her to get the gym membership she’s been mentioning periodically since she began living here.

she’s going to figure it out. i know she will. i know she’s going to have a breakthrough with this someday. i bookmarked some stuff related to these and i’ll show it to her in the morning.

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funfickgirl22 · 4 years ago

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Diagnosis.

Henry Cavill x Single mother / Reader.

Words: 446

previous chapter: In sickness and in health.

"Ms Cavill, I have some news ..."

You smiled weakly knowing that in your man's heart you already his wife.

“It looks like someone must have made a mistake at your medical practice. Ms. Cavill, you are not going through menopause, quite opposite actually, you are 6 weeks pregnant. Congratulations. "

You still couldn’t process what the doctor said to you. You took a deep breath, blinked a few times, and look at Henry. Your partner grinned at you, having tears in his eyes, kissing your hand.

Doctor continued:

“We need to do more tests, but it looks like the baby is very strong hence extreme sickness. We will give you a vitamin drip, but I would suggest taking a break from work until you fully recover. "

Henry nodded, giving you a look to not even argue about it.

"Strong after its daddy" you thought. The realization slowly hit you - the second baby, with your beloved Henry. The doctor has left, you giving you and Henry to have a moment alone.

You sat at your man's lap, suddenly feeling much better, kissing him slowly.

"I can finally call you daddy, without feeling weird about it."

“You don’t need to be ashamed of your kinks, sweetheart. Anyway, I am so f ****** happy Y / N I love you so much. " Henry kissed you again.

“I love you to Hen. I am glad you took me to that barn in Jersey. "

“Do you think it happened in a barn?”

"I am sure, you were so horny that weekend."

Henry looked at you with lust in his eyes. When he licked his lips, he told you: "You will see how horny I can get when you will start showing"

You lay your head on his chest still blushing.

Unfortunately, you stayed at the private practice an hour longer to have your vitamin drip and then your man took you back home. Your worried father helped Henry to put you to the bed. Henry was your caregiver for the next couple of days. After hours of talking, he convinced you to resign from your job. Your job was mentally demanding therefore you agreed.

One morning when Henry took a Kal for his morning walk, you received a text from an unknown number. It says:

All I want is to tell you something, please tell me when - Andy.

You couldn’t believe that this man is back in your life. However, you had a strange thought an instinct to figure out what Andy wants from you. You felt much better and strong enough to meet him. You send him a quick text: tomorrow, Rogers café 07:00 am - y / n.

The text was sent, but you didn’t want to tell Henry yet, he doesn’t need to know ... right?

Authors note: I know the pregnancy was predictable, but who doesn't want to imagine Henry as daddy? ;)

tag: @severewobblerlightdragon

#henry cavill #henry cavill oneshot #henry cavill imagine #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x single mother #henry cavill x fanfiction #henry cavill x plus size reader #henry cavill x ofc #henry cavill x you

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medicallyinevitable · 4 years ago

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Medically Inevitable

Chapter 15:- Hopeful Happenings

Characters:- Arielle Valentine, Ethan Ramsey, Ines Delarosa, Kyra Santana

Pairing:- Ethan Ramsey x Arielle Valentine

Warnings:- Slight mentions of cancer

Word Count:- 1700+ words :)

General PoV:-

As the sun shines bright in the late morning, Arielle parks her car and heads straight towards Edenbrook’s locker room, a to-go cup in hand from Starbucks instead of Derry Roasters not wanting any chance to bump into Dr. Ramsey, despite knowing that he’s her boss. Making her way to the nurses’ station, she picks up her charts and textbooks and heads toward the cafeteria.

Arielle’s PoV:-

You keep at your textbooks, scouring the pages for anything that could explain Nigel's symptoms, and the tidal wave of self-doubt doesn’t help either. You let out a sigh, "Maybe Dr. Ramsey's right. Maybe I really don't belong here..."

"Mind if I join you?" A cheery voice snaps you back to reality.

You turn around to find Kyra. Dread fills in you as you see her. "Kyra, what are you doing here? Is your cancer back? Is something wrong?", you start asking.

"Woah! Dial down the doom and gloom there, Dr. Sob Emoji. I'm in remission." Kyra beams.

"What?! Oh my god congratulations! I’m so happy for you!" You envelope her in a warm hug which almost melts all your tension away.

"Just had another check-up. Will be coming a lot for those," she catches you up with her remission plan as you two sit. "No offense but I definitely look in better shape than you!"

"Ugh I know. I'm exhausted.” And just like that, all the tension fills your mind as you give her the details. " My shift ended like five hours ago, but instead of going home I am sitting here and reading till my eyes bleed."

"You should probably get that looked at." Kyra's face morphs into something serious but genuine as she continues.

"Look, I don't want to be that cancer survivor… but it did make me realize that life is too short." You give her a sad smile knowing how painful it must have been for her.

"We only get so many chances you know? But maybe you need that lesson more than I do," she continues after pausing for a moment.

"Is it that obvious?" You raise your brows.

"Let's chalk it up to my incredible intuition." Kyra smiles," Anyways there's an amazing ice cream shop nearby. They make an triple chocolate gelato that's literally to die for," she jokes, " You can take my word for that." "Why don't we visit that place? It'll give you a distraction and a much needed break."

You look at her and then your textbooks, not understanding what to do. All you can see is blurry lines. the words and concepts swim around in your very exhausted brain. You close the textbook with a slam after your answer is crystal clear.

"How can I say no to chocolate gelato!", you say dramatically.

"That's more like it!", Kyra beams. The two of you collect your belongings and make your way out as you tell Kyra everything about the dilemma with your latest patient.

"This place is pretty cute.", you say as you look around.

"Try nauseatingly adorable. I want to make it tiny and keep it in my bookshelf," Kyra replies. You laugh.

"You collect tiny shops?" You ask as the two of you made your way to the counter.

"I collect many sickeningly adorable things," she laughs before turning her attention to the boy behind the counter. "I’ll have the large Death by Chocolate please. And my absurdly attractive friend here will have…”, she nods for you to continue.

You roll your eyes at her before placing your order. You take a look at their menu before deciding to have the same one as Kyra as it's the most chocolatey one.

“I'll have the same.", you smile at the server.

The server scoops your gelato into two big cups and slides them across the counter while Kyra rummages through her bag for her wallet.

"I'll pay.“, you say getting your card out.

"No way!", she stops you by swiftly taking your card from you. You whine but to your dismay she doesn’t budge.

"This was my idea. Besides I didn't get out much during recovery. I've got months of dining-out budget to blow."

The next minute she's handing the cash to the server and then guiding you to a booth. As you two take your seats, Kyra hands you your card.

She takes a spoon full of her Death by Chocolate and sighs blissfully.

“Mmmmmm…”

You smile at her antics. "That good?" You ask before taking a bite.

"Orgasmic. I never used to eat junk food before my diagnosis."

She takes another bite and you take your first. You can't help but let out a moan as the chocolatey silkiness melts on your tongue. Kyra smirks and gives you a smug look.

She then continues, "I was super into exercising and calorie counting. I never did anything I wasn't supposed to." She smiles sadly. "And I still got lung cancer. At my twenties!"

"You must have been so strong!", you reply.

"Everyone keeps saying that but-", she pauses, "I don't know. I just went to the doctor to see why I was breathing weird."

She sighs. "Then suddenly I was going for all these tests, and then I had cancer."

She laughs humorlessly. "Life went from jogging and juice every morning to chemo and puking."

You can almost feel the pain as she speaks about her experiences even when you’re aware you’ll never truly understand.

"But I didn't do anything," she says, " Those things had to happen , and I had good insurance, so I did them. And it's not like I had any alternative."

"I think you should give yourself more credit.”, you reach for her hand and squeeze it in a comforting manner.

"You faced death with a smile on your face. I'll always remember you cracking jokes on the way to surgery-", you stop for a second before adding,"You are the strongest person I know Kyra."

Kyra blushes, a little embarrassed. "Well you can laugh or you can cry and I chose to laugh.”, she shrugs with a smile on her face.

"And like I said, I don't want to be that cancer survivor but it does put certain things into perspective."

"That kind of clarity must be nice.", you reply.

"Well yeah, you have to get some kind of consolation price for nearly dying, right?" She then shakes her head.

”But enough about that. If we keep talking about this you'll always see me as a girl who beat cancer."

"I'll never, Kyra." you say truthfully. "That's not how I see you."

"Oh yeah? And how do you exactly see me?" She asks playfully.

"I think you are inspiring."

A blush creeps on her face as she’s caught off guard, but quickly retaliates with a sassy reply. “If you keep giving me compliments then I’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

“We’ll see about that.” You both dissolve into fits of laughter as Kyra fills you up on the hospital gossip...

“What wait?! Seriously?! I can’t believe it!”

“Me either, but you know how gossip is!”, she replies with a shrug.

Just then your phone chimes. You pull it out to see it’s a reminder for your shift.

“Crap, I have 10 minutes till my shift.”

“Oof, you better hurry!”, she replies.

“We should do this again, this was really nice.”, you say as you gather your things.

“We should! Besides there would have to be 12 different things wrong with someone to turn down Gelato!”, she jokes.

“..12 different things wrong….. oh my god, Kyra, you’re a genius!”

You scramble to your feet and quickly throw away your cup.

“I like to think I am but what did I do?”, she asks.

“I’ll explain later!”, you yell.

“Ookay…” You rush back to the hospital, typing out a message on your pager as Kyra sits there in utter confusion.

“Well I guess I could get another scoop of gelato…”

————————————————————

An hour later, you take a deep breath before entering Nigel's room to find Ethan and Ines already inside.

“Well what are you waiting for?”, Dr. Ramsey says. Pushing back all of your invading memories of him, you continue with your explanation.

"I spent the last two days trying to figure out the one thing causing all of Mr.Platt's symptoms.”, you say as you stand beside Nigel's bedside.

"And?", he asks. For a split second, you can see a slight look of hope in his eyes, but it passes as quickly as it came, leaving you to believe it was a mere delusion of yours.

"That's when I realized nothing was causing all of them-" But before you can continue, you’re interrupted by Nigel.

"Are you calling-", he burps, “me a liar?", he asks, rude as always.

You control the urge to roll your eyes. He could've at least let you finish your sentence.

Ignoring him, you continue what you were saying," Mr.Platt has been experiencing tingling and hair loss but also cold sensitivity and some hearing problems." You pause for a second before continuing,"All of which point to hypothyroidism caused by Hashimoto's disease easily treated with levothyroxine."

"Go on." Ethan orders in his usual cold bossy tone.

"I couldn't fit in the constant burping and the chest pain… because it was completely separate." You explain. "I ordered a barium swallow X-ray and detected a hiatal hernia in the esophageal hole through the diaphragm."

"The treatment?", he asks, motioning you to continue.

"I have already booked a laparoscopic surgery to repair it.”, you answer with a touch of pride.

"Good work Dr.Valentine." Ines smiles at you.” You return it with a nod and a tentative smile.

"So ... I'll be cured?" Nigel asks.

"Yes-“, you calm yourself down before you rip him apart and then continue.

"You'll be good as new." you say instead with a forced smile.

"Good... because I don't want to spend a -" he burps, " second more in your hopeless company."

Your blood boils at this point as you bite your lip to control yourself. “The audacity! Ugh, he's a patient, Arielle. You have to be nice to him.”

"Mr. Platt, might suggest viewing this as a new lease on life. Perhaps a life where you don't make everyone around you miserable.”, Ethan's stern voice retorts, shocking you and Ines.

“No way...he did not!”

"Dr. Ramsey!" Ines exclaims with a shocked expression on her face, which you’re quite sure your face resembles.

"I'll report you! I want to talk to your manager," he says more angrily than before.

"Go ahead," Ethan says with a sarcastic smile." Maybe she can't talk to you like this but I sure as hell can."

You look at Nigel who looks like he's about to say something but just then Bryce struts in. He winks at you playfully as he passes you.

"Someone called for a laparoscopic surgery?"

"Oh great, first Barbie and now the damn Ken doll!” You don’t even attempt to hide the disgust on your face as you roll your eyes.

By the time you’ve finished your consultation with Bryce, Ines and Ethan have already left the room. Pleased with yourself, you take a left in the hallway without noticing Ethan standing leaning against the wall.

"Rookie..." His velvety baritone voice calls out, pulling you out of a haze.

Wincing, you stop dead in your tracks as the memories of the previous day replay in your mind. Still embarrassed with your encounter, you turn around but never meet his eyes. You’re sure you look like a kid, standing before him with your feet crossed, one hand fiddling with your hair as you bite your lip.

"So, you figured it out in the end. And you kept things professional.”, he nods, barely visible.

"I guess I just needed a… push.”, you reply in a timid voice laced with embarrassment.

"Maybe you aren’t so hopeless then.", he says.

Unlike yesterday, his voice isn’t filled with disappointment and malice.

So mustering up some courage, you look up to meet his eyes. Relief washes over you as you don’t detect a hint of disappointment in his eyes. He isn’t smiling but something in you tells you he isn’t angry. You don’t realise you’ve been staring into his oh-so blue eyes until his pager beeps, shaking you out of your reverie.

“..Uh- I’ll see you around, Dr. Ramsey.” You can almost swear that you see longing etched into his chiseled features as you lose yourself in his eyes once more.

“Likewise, Valentine.” With that, he turns around and stalks away.

You sigh and lean against the wall, the events since you started your residency swirl around like a hurricane filled with memories.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

******************************************

And this concludes Season 1 of Medically Inevitable!

Authors’ Note:- Hey everyone, hope y’all enjoyed this chapter! As you’ve probably seen before, this is the last chapter of Season 1! Season 2 will be out soon, as soon as we work out the kinks and pump out a few chapters with different moodboards and title themes! Season 2 will be much more eventful, more drama, angst and shocking cliffhangers mixed in with the string of festivities that Thanksgiving and Christmas bring! Stay tuned and check our blogs and Instagram’s (same handle) for more updates! And lastly thank y’all so much for all the support, we are extremely grateful.

Love,

@drariellevalentine & @mysticaurathings

#ethan ramsey #ethan x mc #open heart fanfic #ethanjonahramsey #playchoices #open heart #medically inevitable #ethan jonah ramsey #ines delarosa #harper emery #modern au #thank you for the support

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gerrydelano · 4 years ago

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sorry if this is weird but ur the only person i know of who knows a lot abt mental health stuff,,, is it possible to have a form of dissociative disorder without being a system?

not weird at all! don’t sweat it, i’ve got you.

short answer: absolutely! absolutely, without a doubt, yes. there’s a whole collection of dissociative disorders, only a few of which include systems.

so, congratulations, you’ve earned yourself a ronologue! and i really hope it helps you, as well as anyone else who might need it.

(sorry for the delay, by the way! tumblr ate my first attempt at this response, but it’s alright because this draft is way cleaner. everything happens for a reason!)

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: i am obviously not a doctor and i cannot diagnose anyone myself! but that doesn’t mean i don’t know what i’m talking about, and that insight from other people doesn’t help in the meantime between finding doctors/bringing it up to them in a way that gets your symptoms across most accurately.

so, this is ordinarily the type of thing most people might respond to with “just google it,” but even just me looking up references to give you right now was incredibly hard and so honestly, with these especially? it’s not fair to expect people to know where to look all on their own without talking to people in the community and who experience the same issues.

we are so often failed and abused by the system that we have to band together to spread accurate information and coping mechanisms, which may seem contradictory to the fact that things like DID are very hard to self diagnose/many people can’t even do that.

and i am a major advocate for well-researched self diagnosis, i did self dx it first before it was professionally confirmed, as i did with everything else i have on paper now. it’s possible, just not always, depending on what resources and correspondence someone has available.

the most accurate and reliable reference for these is often the community itself, and advocates who have spent ages fighting the system that does not always give us the resources we need to heal. that is not to say professionals are never trustworthy, or that none of them believe these disorders exist; they definitely do! it’s very documented and not at ALL as uncommon as the stigma leads us to believe. but, that still doesn’t mean finding a good doctor is easy.

but, community and solidarity have been key to many people finding peace with these disorders, including myself. i’d be nowhere without the help of people who experience these things, too. this is a lot harder to research than you’d think, sometimes, especially when you don’t have anyone you can talk to.

also OOPS. heads up, i got carried away explaining DID while i was going down the whole list, partially so that i can link this response to others in the future if they ever ask about that particular thing, too. i AM still focused on telling you what you’re asking about, don’t worry, i just wanna cover all the bases!

so, now i’ll just list all the dissociative disorders, namely the major ones but i’ll also mention the lesser acknowledged OSDDs just for the sake of being thorough. liberal spacing and dividers set between for accessibility!

i’ll also link a few things at the end, as well as just some tumblr posts that help put more informal words to personal experience that have personally helped me more than academic research a lot of the time.

EDIT 8/15/21: i want to link this one, too! just found it recently, it didn’t raise any red flags right off the bat when i looked it over. it does lean a bit towards integration as a natural progression in a way that might seem like they think it’s the Best Way to heal, but they do include other perspectives and it isn’t forceful; in fact, in many ways, i agree with it as someone who has leveled out a lot with my system over the years.

i just found this page on a website that helped me a lot ages ago, it gives a good introduction to the breakdown of dissociative disorders and their major/key components. to break it down first before i get into each disorder, they are:

+ AMNESIA

+ DEPERSONALIZATION

+ DEREALIZATION

+ IDENTITY CONFUSION (“an inner struggle about one’s sense of self/identity, which may involve uncertainty, puzzlement or conflict.”) [personally, this causes me the most distress out of literally every other symptom, like. this is no joke this sucks.]

+ IDENTITY ALTERATION (“a sense of acting like a different person some of the time.”)

+ DPDR (depersonalization/derealization; also shortened to just derealization disorder, on occasion.)

+ depersonalization is when you feel out of touch with or “cut off” from your sense of self.

+ you may feel unreal, out of body, like you’re on “auto-pilot,” like you don’t recognize your reflection or the sound of your voice, like you’re watching yourself from another vantage point across the room. you may feel floaty, foggy, “a little to the left,” like a part of your body “doesn’t belong to you,” detached from your emotions, etc.

+ derealization is when you feel out of touch with or “cut off” from your physical surroundings and sometimes the world as a whole.

+ your environment may feel warped, foggy, dim, desaturated, muted, uncomfortable, distant. things and places and other people might not look or feel real to you. it may happen during flashbacks, might even age regress.

+ you may also have a distorted sense of time! literally, the passage of time is 100% fake when you have dissociative symptoms, it’s absolutely atrocious and so hard to keep track of.

+ and you may have met dysphoria, but let’s introduce altered body perception in general! where you may literally feel like an avatar of the flesh because you’re pretty sure you have three arms all of a sudden, or you’ve lost them! i know one of my little alters describes her spontaneous leg paralysis as “my legs are being eaten” which is just so very fun.

+ and in general, yeah, a disconnect from emotions and bodily senses. delayed responses, both physical and mental. sort of a lag, a glitch, a literal numb feeling.

+ here is a link from that same site, this page is on DPDR!

+ dissociative amnesia, which is not the same as just “forgetting” something.

+ this is a lapse in memory, when you may not remember entire chunks of your life/events that happened to you. you might not remember who you are, what happened to you, or how you felt at the time of the trauma.

+ in your everyday life, you might be on “auto-pilot” and be doing things, even having conversations with people, but still black out and lose that time. you may even have dissociative fugue, and “wake up somewhere else” and have no memory of the journey there.

+ this is the type of memory loss present in DID and OSDD.

+ another from the same site, on both dissociative amnesia and dissociative fugue!

(feel free to skip this since you specified you don’t have system stuff happening, i just wanted to include it just so that i can link this response to anyone who might ask about it in the future!)

+ DID (dissociative identity disorder) the “big kahuna” to some people, often considered the furthest extreme you can get out of this cluster of disorders.

+ DID is a traumagenic condition that comes from a child experiencing severe and/or repeated trauma (often abuse) in early childhood, before the ages of 7-9. this one distinction is crucial and not up for debate.

+ a child’s personality “integrates” around the ages of 7-9, up until that point being sort of fragmented and not fully formed. when there is trauma like that, sometimes the brain will say “no way, we cannot survive if we are aware of this, nuh uh” and essentially Close A Door in between pieces of the consciousness.

+ picture the big castle gate lifting shut in shrek 2 and he has to dive into the tiny little space before it’s fully closed and slide inside by the chain. that, except somebody is very much locked out. you literally get locked out of your own brain, locked out of the full experience of your childhood.

+ once they’re separated, they’ll grow and develop differently from one another; one part, the “host” — NOT THE “ORIGINAL” — will be largely unaware that this is even a thing, because another part/eventually multiple parts are taking on the trauma, some responsibilities, overall making it so that the unaware part can continue daily life without the burden of the extreme stress the body is being put through.

+ it’s a survival mechanism. while it can be terrifying and inconvenient at times, it’s also one of the most beautiful things i think the human brain is capable of. this is the kindest thing my brain could have done for me, because no, i would not have survived otherwise. i love my system and what they’ve done to keep me safe. that sort of love is really special, and yeah, singlets really won’t ever quite get that.

+ it is a covert disorder, meaning that you are not actually supposed to know you have it, at least during the time that you are under active threat. a lot of the time, it will come out later when you are in a safer environment and you are able to let down those walls and start to cope with what happened to you. once one wall comes down, the rest will follow at its own pace. sometimes it’s very overwhelming, sometimes it takes ages, but often people can’t self dx this easily/it takes upwards of 10 years to dx it sometimes because it is specifically designed to be a secret so you can survive, and often relies on the account of other people taking note of your behaviour and things you might be forgetting.

EDIT 8/20/21: apparently there is new controversy surrounding DissociaDID on youtube and i no longer feel comfortable suggesting them as an educational resource at this time. if this changes i might put it back, but currently it would be disingenuous to link them.

there are a bunch of different OSDDs (other specified dissociative disorders) and i’ll give a brief rundown of all of them. i’m explaining these after DID because they follow the same rules/symptoms/onset, usually.

here’s another link from traumadissociation, but i’ll round it down.

+ OSDD 1 (split again into 1a and 1b) — this is the PRIMARY subsection that people on here will have, and that is spoken about more often.

+ *known as “almost DID” to some people. here is an article linking OSDD 1 to DID, and weighing them together. i’ll talk more about this in its own section soon.

+ OSDD 1-a is often simplified to “amnesia, with no distinct alters.” the thing is, there are parts, they’re just not “differentiated quite enough” to be separated as starkly. (which, frankly, is extremely subjective.)

+ OSDD 1-b is often simplified to “alters, with no amnesia.” so, parts, but you may often be co-conscious with them and not lose time when they come out to do things, you might be aware that they’re there and are taking control at certain points/you may remember what they do when they’re out as if you were watching from over their shoulder.

these next ones are rarely spoken about in my experience, and they usually involve really severe circumstances that are clearly not the type to be typically discussed on here + the sort of people who end up with these under the conditions they require might not necessarily come to vibe about it on tumblr dot fuck, y’know?

so, i’m going to just paste the definitions i found in this post. i haven’t checked through the entire blog, mind, but it seems to be a pretty solid resource!

+ OSDD 2 is “a change in identity/dissociation caused by coercion, such as a result of torture, brainwashing, thought reform, indoctrination, recruitment into cults/sects/terror organizations, etc).”

+ OSDD 3 is “typically a temporary diagnosis for a dissociative disorder brought on by recent trauma. These symptoms tend to not last longer than a month but can include intense dissociation, depersonalization, amnesia, lack of physical abilities and coordination, etc.”

+ OSDD 4 is “dissociative trances, when individuals slip into highly dissociative states and may be unconscious of events going on around them, may be confused or amnesiac afterwards, or otherwise slipping in and out of dissociative trances. This diagnosis is only given when the trances cannot be explained by something else, like seizures, drugs, religious or cultural activities, etc.”

*so, as someone who self misdiagnosed myself with OSDD 1-b way back almost 6 years ago when i was first figuring this out (because i didn’t know i had so much amnesia! shocker.) and who knows many people with that particular subset, as well as plenty of other systems on a whole, it’s? largely agreed that they are, functionally, so similar that the distinction doesn’t always matter.

we do tend to want Specific Words that feel exactly right and put ourselves in neat little boxes, but something i’ve learned over years of hyperanalyzing my dissociative symptoms is that there is NO real way to split everything into neat little categories. in the end, they often come down to so few very solid, common symptoms that the very little details are? not relevant to treatment plans, or the way that you communicate with others who are in the same boat.

because every person who has these is going to be so different anyway! i, as someone who literally has “~full blown~” DID, don’t always go into full dissociative amnesia blackouts and in fact am so often co-conscious with alters that i thought for a very long time i didn’t even have amnesia at all. (a huge mistake; i have literally no memory of most of my life. t’was the point.)

and even those with DID are going to have very indistinct parts, too! even with DID, even the “stronger” presences aren’t always going to be fully-rounded, multi-dimensional human beings with all of the pieces that you’d usually say MAKE a single person. including people like me, the “host!” we are a sum!

(one joke ren and i have is that we’re sort of like SIMS. you just get to pick 3 personality traits and that’s it, that’s your whole deal. it’s why sometimes, i have trouble talking about anything but my special interests, even beyond just the normal autistic experience; i literally have very little else making me up currently, we have limitations, we struggle with fleshing ourselves out.

we are all individual people! but we are not “conventional” people in the slightest, and there are going to be things about us that come across a little bizarre or stunted! it’s the nature of having fragmented consciousness! i so wish that singlets — and even other systems, sometimes — would be more compassionate about those limitations.

please don’t judge an alter for having a shorter range of things they can talk about on a dime. sometimes, all someone has is trauma. sometimes, it makes up so much of their life that they don’t have casual stories or fun experiences or everyday happenings to share instead. if all i can talk about is my writing, or my favourite podcast, it’s because i am not exaggerating when i say i have next to nothing else. i really mean sometimes it’s that limited, and it has to do with the fact that no, i have not lived a full life.)

treatment for this is not so much “you have to take this specific pill for this specific diagnosis and if you take the DID pill when you have OSDD-1b you will die!” as it is, “we are going to work on instilling you with some coping mechanisms to help you manage your symptoms as they come.”

those symptoms ranging from the actual experience of amnesia, to the struggles that forgetting important things can bring to your relationships and professional life, to the identity disturbance that may bring you anxiety and cause you to have a crisis over “who you are,” to actively counseling your individual alters if you have them and if they need help.

any combination of which can be found in people with DID and OSDD 1, to varying degrees, based on the individual/system. after years and years of trying to force myself into rigid structure, i and many others have seriously come to just be like “fuck it, we literally have the same shit happening. high five.”

there’s also unspecified dissociative disorder, which happens when you experience a lot of dissociation but you don’t fit the criteria for any of these above. here is another link from traumadissociation on this!

at that point, a lot of the time, it’s a byproduct of a totally different disorder, or they just may not be diagnosing you with the right dissociative disorder and it’ll take a bit more time.

because dissociation in general is also just a VERY common symptom of all sorts of other disorders! typically BPD, PTSD (big one), psychosis, even generalized anxiety. really examine yourself, and take your time.

(okay, fun fact, i’ve been reading this out loud to myself and it just hit me while adding “take your time” to that above there that delphine is probably the reason i read things aloud to myself in a very strange accent that is Not Mine when i’m checking for mistakes/trying to make sure it’s readable. like, i can sort of feel her over my shoulder and i know she’s borrowing the voicebox. that’s so cool jhdkbjh i don’t know why it never clicked until now that i’m not just being a dork, it’s just her helping me proofread. which is still dorky, but now i know i can blame her!)

so, here’s where i link a few tumblr posts with informal/simplified phrasing that have helped me! even jokes have their place in this discovery process because they definitely give a way of putting words to how this shit just feels sometimes.

this post is good, OP describes “tiers of dissociation” largely based on personal experience but i find it pretty succinct and clear. (i’m personally usually at a 1, that’s my baseline. tier 3 happens sometimes, but tbh i’d hugely prefer that to tier 2, tier 2 is absolute hell.)

sometimes shitposts like this describe it better than the entire fucking DSM

but THIS post really gets it. i personally identify so much with “floam” that i got out of bed to come back here, get my laptop, reopen this, and link it because i need you to see it.

and as i was going through my tag to find things for this, i stumbled upon this poem that i loved years ago and it made me cry so! please take this as an offering, maybe it’ll make you feel something, too.

honestly, go into the #actuallydissociative tag, look for bloggers who post about dissociation, you’ll find a WEALTH of wonderful things ranging from the tier post that helps with articulation, shitposts that are Beyond relatable, and beautiful art and poetry that just guts you.

just be careful on like... “trauma tumblr” because FUCK that noise. it helped me back in the day but it wasn’t really worth all the awful shit i exposed myself to and often triggered myself with in the process. be safe!

if you dissociate a lot overall but you don’t fit the criteria for a full out dissociative disorder, you very likely do still have something else going on and you just need to do a full examination of what your other symptoms might be.

it is largely a trauma response, the brain’s way of numbing itself to stressful stimuli. it can get really fucking annoying, too! real g-ddamn inconvenient! and it can very much impede with your functionality and quality of life.

so, if you’re experiencing this quite a lot, i really hope that you are able to do the research you need in order to clearly articulate your struggle with any professional you may have access to. and if you can’t do that, i really hope that you’re able to find resources within the community that can tide you over until you’re able to pursue other measures that will help you in the future!

and even if you do find/have a doctor, don’t limit yourself to only talking to them about it; community is always going to be my strongest and most consistent recommendation for this kind of thing. i’ve said it 50 times and i’ll say it to you now: solidarity is my medicine of choice.

maybe it’s the communism. maybe it’s the constant failings of the mental health field. maybe the latter informed my interest in the former. maybe people are just good at heart, and support systems are necessary to human survival. it’s all the things! and you can get through this.

sorry for being so long winded, i’ve just definitely been meaning to talk about this as a whole (especially DID, winks) and i figure it’d be good to have it all in one place! i really hope that something here helped you to at least narrow down what direction you might need to look in. best of luck! feel free to ask followup questions, or DM me if you ever need.

#disability gang!#ronologues #alt.txt #anon #asks

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tj-crochets · 3 years ago

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so i saw a doctor recently, and it turns out there's a high chance i have a variety of chronic illnesses, one of which is pots. and i was wondering if you had tips, i guess, for dealing with it? especially because i'm a teen and it feels weird to be Sick as a young person. (feel free to ignore this!!)

Hey! I'm not sure whether to say congratulations* or commiserations, but either way I definitely have some tips. I got sick initially when I'd just turned 18, and it was incredibly weird to be that sick and seeing all my friends on facebook out on adventures when I was basically on my mom's couch with a heart monitor for a month (I got mono and strep throat at the same time and the minor POTS turned into "this is a problem" tachycardia after it) *the congrats would be on getting the diagnosis, because that's not always easy to do and getting treatment can be a lot easier once you have it

So. most of my tips are aimed at the low blood pressure kind of POTS, because that's what I have. I also have salt wasting syndrome and some adrenal issues that mean I pretty much always have low blood pressure and don't really have to worry about high blood pressure. If you have the high blood pressure version, take all of this with a grain of salt (metaphorically). Either way, I am not a doctor and you should consult with your doctor about this. Also, despite me numbering them, these are in no particular order First off: get a blood pressure cuff if you can. I use mine all the time, and it helps me know if I need another salt pill or (rarely) another dose of my POTS medication before I get to the super dizzy stage. Having it and keeping a record can help you realize trends, and my blood pressure cuff was actually how I figured out some of my food allergies. It also helped me a LOT with some of my doctors when I was arguing for or against medications, because I was able to state specific blood pressure ranges and heart rates that I use as an indication I need another salt pill/fludrocortisone/gatorade/to sit down. Second: isometric exercises! I don't do these as much as I should but doing some isometric exercises (basically clenching and unclenching muscles) before you stand up can help a LOT. Third: again, this is at low blood pressure POTS thing so check with your doctor first, but I drink a LOT of water. Like, 3 liters a day minimum (not counting extras like gatorade or soda), more on a hot day. I always always always have a bottle of water next to me and made it a habit to take a drink pretty much whenever I notice the water bottle sitting there. My POTS definitely gets worse when I am dehydrated and I get dehydrated much easier than like anyone else I know (but that could be my salt issues, not POTS, it's hard to tell) Fourth: SALT. I have two kinds of salt pills: just salt and salt + other electrolytes (tumblr isn't letting me add a link but that's the vitassium saltstick supplements). I mostly use the just salt ones, but the kind I use have no coating and can be hard on your stomach. The electrolyte ones I use when I've been in the heat or sweating, and are easier on the stomach but have much less sodium in them. I also have saltstick electrolyte chews that absorb faster for when I overdid it and have super low blood pressure. Ask your doctor first, though, because for most people too much salt is a problem. I'm on a medication to make me retain salt better and I still had a cardiologist tell me I should be aiming for 10,000mg salt daily (as opposed to the typical 2,000 recommended) so like I suspect I might be an outlier in salt requirements. Fifth: heat is your enemy. Fans and air conditioning are your friends. Sixth: Do not be afraid to break social conventions for your health, especially when it comes to sitting down in places people usually don't sit down. Sit down in the middle of the grocery aisle if you need to. Sit down when everyone else is standing in line. One thing I've found that helps a lot is if you sit down and someone starts giving you grief about it, say something like "I'm having a flareup of my heart condition and needed to sit down before I passed out". In my experience, especially as someone who looks like a teenager (even though I'm not one), once you say the words "heart condition" people are like "oh dang don't want to make that worse" and stop bugging you. I also rent a wheelchair when I go places like the zoo or the county fair, because that much walking outside in the heat will absolutely tank my blood pressure. In terms of more general advice I wish I'd heard as a teenager, all I can say is you are not a burden. You are not lesser than anyone else for needing accommodations, and you shouldn't have to struggle through just because it's something that's easy for people without your health issues to do. You don't owe strangers explanations of your whole health history, and you don't have to feel guilty for summing it up as "heart issues" if you want to*. It sucks to be so sick, but it can help knowing you aren't alone. I'm here if you have any more questions, or if you want to vent about how much it sucks getting super dizzy when you stand up.

*that one might be me-specific, but I've had people try to guilt me for telling people I have heart problems when *technically* my heart works fine it's my circulatory system that's messed up

#ask away!#the person behind the yarn #POTS #postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome #dysautonomia #low blood pressure #some of that advice there at the end might not have been quite what you were looking for #but it's what I learned from other people with POTS as I started getting sick again #because I got better for a few years and then my health got much much worse #(for non POTS reasons that was mostly the MCAS)#and I wanted to share it. It sucks to know there are things you just can't do that you thought you'd be able to #but there is still happiness to come!#sorry I might be projecting a bit about how 18 year old me felt when I first got sick #feel free to ignore that part if it doesn't apply #anyway the short version is: I'm here if you have more questions

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memberofthejazzclub · 3 years ago

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Sometimes I find it difficult to deal with unsolicited health and diet advice from my very thin friends. I’m a grown ass woman and a damn good cook I know how to read a label and I will choose to have a cookie whenever the hell I want. Just because someone appears thin does not mean they are healthy, that diagnosis is between them, their labs, and their doctor. I’m not shocked when thin people have high cholesterol — but some thin people in my life are shocked that mine is low. That’s because you cannot tell by looking. FYI I am vegetarian, I rarely drink, don’t sweeten my coffee, I eat oatmeal regularly, and I have excellent cardio endurance and probably have some good genes in this general area. So what if I haven’t been a size 12 since I was 25 and I’ve gained a few extra pounds during the covid misery. I am not thin and yet I do not hate my body. Is that a crime? Maybe they hate theirs and have to spread it around? But I do have frikkin feelings and this feels shitty. Yo this was a good friend that low key tried to teach me how to eat healthy. She has in the past over-congratulated me when I casually mentioned that I had been out for a walk. It was stressful to cook and eat with them this week and see them push their half eaten plates away saying oh I’m so full. The well meaning of it is the problem. Really it’s an imposition of their weird food / body issues on me or a judgement or privilege or racist microaggression or maybe just plain insensitive — I honestly don’t understand how to analyze this at this precise moment but I need a clear and drama-free strategy on how to deal with this in the future — anticipate, avoid, nip in the bud or all of the above — if we are to remain friends. I’ve never felt like this around other Latinx friends of various body shapes and sizes. That could be part or it, the cultural differences, and class, etc. Man I’m bummed out.

#random #personal #advice welcome #this is why I hate the holidays #it’s a damned miracle I have such good self esteem #but this is truly exhausting #thanks for listening #might take this down in a day or two #this was a lot to say out loud so to speak

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chickenfreeblog · 4 years ago

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chicken i'm a teacher and i feel like a lot of the advice given to teachers for how best to support students with adhd comes from the neurotypical community. things like chunk information into smaller parts, give frequent breaks, use fidget toys, etc. and maybe that's all good advice (??), but is there anything you wish teachers would do differently? things that would give your brain the best chance of learning?

oh man this is such a good thoughtful question & one that i hope every teacher thinks about, but i know it’s tough so i really appreciate that you are!! i think the ones you gave are pretty good practical tips, honestly? i’m hoping other people will jump in because i just have my experience to speak from.

a couple things that i would say that are less... concrete but just stuff i wish my teachers had known:

- the formal dx isn’t everything / don’t assume that kids are neurotypical

i know there’s a lot of paperwork and stuff around these issues for you guys, so this can be a little tough to manage. one thing that happened to me though and that i hear a lot from friends is just like..... it’s hereditary, and also there’s a lot of stigma around being neurodivergent, especially in older generations? i know my mom really pushed back against anyone that suggested that i had adhd, because she has the exact same symptoms and was kind of like Why Are These Teachers Using This Parent Teacher Conference To Call Me a Big Freak. i know other parents that just think it’s too weird to have an nd kid and basically picked any possible weird workaround over getting an actual diagnosis. i think a lot of teachers kind of look at formal dx as a way to separate kids who are lazy but normal from kids who have “real problems,” and that can get really super gnarly if you’re, y’know, a ten year old whose parents just don’t believe in the idea of adhd for whatever reason.

- don’t assume that kids aren’t trying?

i know there’s totally just some kids that need more motivation for whatever reason, but...... i think the flipside is that..... you can also just put a ton of pressure on a kid who is genuinely trying super hard? i think a lot of teachers have a little bit of an idea that there’s a series of magic words that they can say to properly motivate a kid, and then presto, they’ll follow directions and be Fixed. and definitely they mean well!! but also i think you can really easily make a kid shut down if they’re trying their absolute hardest & none of the adults around them are perceiving it at all? it honestly was pretty traumatic to want to be good at school So Badly and still have every adult be constantly like okay...... we need to talk about why you’re lazy and don’t care and why you’re shitty at this, actually. i think my best teachers just really had a sense of humor about the fact that i was going to misunderstand stuff or forget deadlines and that it wasn’t a matter of them teaching it badly or me not caring to learn.

- if you figure out how to work with one kid with adhd..... congratulations you figured out how to work with one (1) kid with adhd

this is something that autistic people have talked about a lot, but i think it also really holds true for adhd? my partner and i always make each other a lil crazy because despite having Same Guy Disease we have uhhh completely opposite needs. jay’s dyslexic mcfuck and he wants verbal instructions and someone to talk to basically every waking minute or he’s like I’M BORED I NEED TASKS NOW!!! IMMEDIATELY!!! I’M POKING THE WORLD WITH A STICK. DO SOMETHING. whereas i..... cannot interpret verbal instructions worth one good goddamn and if you give me strict instructions and deadlines with no wiggle room i’ll simply get claustrophobic and die. like my ideal school situation is someone gives me a textbook full of problems and they sit in another room and never speak to me unless i have a question. genuinely. i know there’s some skepticism in ed about learning styles, but i do think for people with Sensory Stuff that just being... more thoughtful about how information is delivered and how they’re receiving it can really help? a lot of adhd people really struggle with written info or verbal info, and if you’re relying 100% on one option it’s... kind of impossible for them to Do School in any real way.

- just have a sense of humor / support kids if they figure out a way that works for them?

i kinda mentioned this earlier, but i think a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that they can motivate every kid into doing things The Right Way, and then a lot of kids just shut down instead? genuinely the teachers i got along with the best were the ones that just.... kind of sat back and accepted that like, i was not native to their environment and wasn’t going to be able engage with stuff the way they envisioned. i took the same math teacher for three years of high school because at one point i just started ignoring her lectures & doing homework during every class. instead of confronting me about it she just was kind of like “weird!!! not technically a sin though!” and we?? got along great after that? like literally better than i had ever gotten along with a teacher until then. i didn’t even know you could go to math class and not cry! amazing. i won’t say i was ever super great at math, but i went from being the kid getting Fs on every single test and never turning in homework to being a pretty reliable B+ student. she totally could’ve gotten offended in that situation since she was trying dang hard to give an interesting lecture, but having her just kind of go “weird! okay” and not be like Callout Post: This Child Is So Annoying made such a huge fucking difference for me (shoutout to ms. butler thank you for letting me graduate high school etc etc)

let kids see other life paths without judgment

kind of in line with the motivation thing, but i think like.... yes kids with ADHD can absolutely thrive in academics, but also make it clear that it’s not a catastrophe if it’s not a good environment for them? there’s so much rhetoric around “you have to do well in 1st grade so you can get into harvard and be a lawyer” or whatever, and i think kids who struggle pick up on that more than people realize. i remember really genuinely feeling like there was straight up not a future for me if i didn’t find a way to just like.... get a new brain??? and i wish i’d had positive role models for the idea that like. you can have a cool interesting life even if you’re very bad at sitting in a lecture!! it’s fine!! maybe you can’t be an astronaut or whatever but it’s still worth trying to graduate and see what’s out there

OKAY my two practical tips: let kids wander the fuck around AND also. start a knitting club

okay this is just for me but lmaoooooooo my elementary school teachers thought i was gonna SIT STILL??? and THINK???? at the SAME TIME???? i don’t even do that as a 25 year old. please. you know those bikes that like power electricity generators? that’s what a hyperactive brain is like. if they’re not moving they’re just not doing anything.

also yeah knitting club. you gotta. my 4th grade teacher sucked so bad on every single front listed above and she hated me soooooo much but she did teach me how to sit through a 30 minute meeting without crying. fucking around with string and sticks IS adhd culture probably. idk.

#sorry this is so many words but obviously i think about this Constantly hjgs #hope some of it helps!! also feel free to ask questions or wtv #anon #ask

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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1046

Does it annoy you when people make their default of them kissing someone? I don’t mind kissing photos or icons. But hmm, I can imagine being a little grossed out if it’s an image of them kissing with tongue or if it’s generally a little on the sloppy side.

Are there any names you can think of that just go well together? Well there’s...a lot of names in existence lmao, so there’s a lot of combinations out there that I like for sure. I just don’t rank them and I don’t have a name combination of choice just yet.

Do you enjoy museums? I’m obsessed with museums. In every single one of our family trips, my dad has always made sure to book at least one museum visit for me so I can return back home happy, hahaha. I also visit and revisit museums in my own time, and I’m open to going to any kind of museum whether it’s natural history, art, science, ancestral homes, etc.

Have you ever met anyone famous? One of my coworkers plays the drums for a local band that’s got a bit of a following, so it was definitely a shock when I first saw his name in our work group chat. Someone I used to be close friends with in the local wrestling community is now an actor/influencer and doing a billion gigs and photoshoots all day. We’re still mutuals so every now and then I’d comment on one of his posts and congratulate him on how far he’s come.

Describe the scariest dream you can remember? I never like it when someone I love is shot in my dreams. The scariest dream I had recently is probably the one where I watched three planes drop to the ground all at the same time and explode.

Have you ever been to a mint where they make money? Nopes. I think the BSP had been part of one of Nina’s field trips before, but my batch didn’t get to have the itinerary.

Do you ever get really, really hyper? Occasionally.

Are you left or right handed, or ambidextrous? Right-handed.

If ambidextrous, do you prefer writing with your right or left hand?

What is your favourite subject at school? Any history elective, biology, political science.

Do you ever use Yahoo! Answers? For seriousness or for trolling? I used to read both serious (when I have a legit question) and funny (when I was bored and just wanted to lurk on the site) items on it. These days, when I have a genuine question, Google usually pulls up a Quora link which I find has been more helpful than Yahoo! Answers ever was.

Have you ever stepped on a thumb tack? No, but my brother did when he was a baby and was first learning how to walk.

Do you have a username you use for everything? Or does it change each site? I use my first name + surname for more serious, professional websites. Then I have a go-to for everything else.

Are you in Miami bitch? :D No. Not really interested in going to Florida at all, to be honest.

How did you break the last bone you broke? I’ve never broken a bone.

Have you ever used Nexopia? Never used, never heard of it before.

What has been the best year of school for you so far? Junior year of both high school (2014-15) and college (2018-19) were really great for me. There was a string of good events that happened in both, and I was able to have a lot of fun, gain friends, and have a number of positive learning and growing-up experiences.

Do you have any disorders or disabilities? I’ve always worried that I have BPD, but from the time I started considering it until today I’ve only done self-diagnosis, so idk. There’s definitely a lot more to unpack when it comes to me, mentally and psychologically.

Do you ever watch How To videos? Not really. How It’s Made videos are fun to watch though.

Do you enjoy trolling? It doesn’t even sound fun.

Have you ever been to an emergency room? If so, what for? Never been.

Which emoticon face do you use most often? Things like: :) :( :D :P :L D: Most of the time I’ll use the open- and closed-mouth smileys. I use the sad face as well, and occasionally I’ll pull out the :3 and :/ emoticons.

Are you a musical sort of person? I mean, are you musically talented? Yeah, not at all. I can’t sing, read music, nor play any instrument.

How did you break the first phone you broke? So my mom hooked my first phone to a lanyard that I was made to wear as it was the surest way I wouldn’t be able to lose it (I was 7, which really should not be an age for kids to receive their first phones lol). One day I was being a little more rambunctious than usual, and while moving around the hook to the lanyard suddenly came off, and the phone crashed to the ground. It messed up the screen a bit and the hook also got a little fucked from there; eventually the phone came off during my 1st grade field trip and I never realized, and I lost the phone.

Did you have a tree house when you were a kid? If so, did you ever fall from it? We did not have a treehouse. My grandpa surely would’ve been the type to make one for his grandkids as he’s great at building stuff and working with wood, but it just wasn’t plausible considering most trees here are crawling with fire ants and other weird and potentially dangerous insects.

Have you ever been on vacation to a snow field? I don’t know what that is but I’ll go ahead and say no as I’ve never seen snow anyway.

When you go on vacation, what mode of transport do you usually use? We take road trips most of the time because my dad likes to drive. But if it’s gonna be on another island in the country, like Palawan or Batanes, then we obviously have to take a plane.

What is the worst show, in your opinion on MTV? The best? I don’t care for any shows on MTV and I typically think most of them look like they suck. The few ones I’ve seen, like Teen Wolf and Scream, certainly didn’t help.

Do you like Jason Derϋlo? Eh, some of his hit songs are catchy but I’m not a fan fan.

Are there any movies that just creep you out so much? Aside from everything about it being creepy, Eraserhead is just so depressing to watch. Midsommar is also a freaky film.

Have you ever had a close encounter with a shark? I don’t think so.

Do you have any hotties on your walls? I have a poster of Nam Joo Hyuk that Angela got me when she went to South Korea, but he’s more cute than hot to me tbh.

Do you ever wish dinosaurs came back to life and there were cute and snuggly? Not really. But it would’ve been interesting to see how they would look like in real life, and know their temperament and things like that.

How many countries have you been to? Aside from having been around my own, 6.

How many states have you been to? In all the countries you’ve been to? We stayed in one city/state for each country I’ve gone to - Bali, Singapore, Johor, Shanghai, Jeju, and Fukuoka.

What is a song you heard long before it became popular and everyone liked it? Idk about songs, but this was me with The Crown lol.

Do you enjoy designing things? Anything? Not my thing at all. This is more of Nina’s specialty. Girl can make anything look pretty.

Do you know anyone who has gotten themselves into a serious accident? Yeah. Off the top of my head, I remember my aunt getting involved in a hit-and-run with a motorcycle and needing to get a number of stitches on her head. My cousin Joelle also got into a bad car accident a few Christmases ago that totally wrecked her vehicle.

Can you play anything on the violin? Nope, I never learned how to play. It’s one of my favorite instruments though.

Do you know what a raincheck at stores is? Never heard of that. I’ve heard some people say “I’m gonna have to take a rain check” whenever they abruptly have to bail on a plan at the last minute, but I think you’re talking of a different raincheck here.

Whose funeral was the last you went to? Nacho’s wake. Never been to a funeral.

Who got married at the last funeral you went to? That’s pretty fucked up.

What do you think of excessively long names? What about their shortenings? I don’t have an opinion on either.

Do you ever get hay fever? No.

Do you know anyone with the last name Pilbeam? Never heard of that surname before.

When you were little, did you have those magnet letters on your fridge? We may have had those? I’m not sure. I haven’t seen the fridge I grew up with for a while now. I do know Athenna had those magnet poetry phases on her family’s fridge and we used to try to make poems with them.

Have you seen the Techno Jeep video on YouTube? I have not, and it doesn’t sound familiar.

Does your house have a wood fire? No.

Do you know what a Pibgorn is? I don’t think so. I can’t recognize the term.

Can you learn the lyrics of a song by ear, or do you have to search them up? It’s 50/50 for me. Sometimes it’ll be easy for me to recognize the lyrics, and other times it’s incredibly difficult.

Do you like the name Amy? It’s a pretty name. I’d consider it as a second or third name.

Have you ever got an x-ray? How about a brain scan? Just an x-ray.

#survey #surveys

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johannas-motivational-insults · 5 years ago

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HOLY SHIT guys I finally got my official ASD diagnosis today. Only been trying to get that for like 4 years. Maybe it seems like a weird thing to celebrate but honestly if someone made me a cake that said “Congratulations, you’re autistic” it would feel completely appropriate.

While I think self-diagnosis is totally valid and important, getting this on top of that is a huge relief. Not only is it validating as fuck, it means I can explain myself in an unequivocal manner and it opens the door to a bunch of possible resources. This is an exciting day, kinda want to shoot off some streamers or something. :D

#autism #asd #finally! a diagnosis!#asperger’s #(before dsm-v lol)#personal

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gvbejvmes · 4 years ago

Text

Drabble: K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Title: K-I-S-S-I-N-G Rating: R (For language mostly) Relationship: Gabriel James/Jonathan Michaels Word Count: 11,423 (Trigger) Warnings: Mpreg, referenced spousal abuse, alcohol abuse, major character death, parents have sex lives, too. Brief Summary: First comes marriage. Then comes love. Then comes a baby in a male uterus. Wait. What?

2010

Gabe was dying. That was the only explanation. Dying at thirty-six. Death after escaping a prison sentence for a crime he hadn’t committed. There was a sense of poetry to that he was sure. He just couldn’t see it in his current state of being hunched over the toilet.

“Again?” His husband asked him, standing in the doorway. And wow, was that weird. Sure, they’d been married for close to two years, but Gabe had been behind bars for half their marriage. Living together, growing their marriage into a legitimate relationship, it was a living and breathing thing they were nurturing. Gabe was still getting used to it and he was fairly certain he’d never get used to someone loving him as much as Johnny did. “That’s the third time this week.”

Groaning, he pulled away from the toilet and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He admitted, flopping pathetically onto the bathroom floor, looking at Johnny upside down. “Four times.” He corrected him, a sheepish look on his face. “I got sick when you were at work the other day. I just didn’t want to worry you.”

There was a sigh and his husband was standing next to his head. “Too late.” He murmured before squatting down to slowly roll Gabe up to his feet. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but-”

He shook his head and then immediately regretted it. “No doctors.” Pulling away from Johnny, he hunched over the sink, and when nothing happened, he rinsed his mouth out. “After I was stabbed,” And he didn’t need to look to know his husband was wincing. This was not a good memory - for either of them, but it had ultimately been the starting point for their marriage. “The doctor let me bleed for over an hour before they did anything.”

“That was prison, baby. And completely unethical.” Johnny reminded him before manhandling him into their room and back into bed. “I’m making you an appointment. What if it’s something serious?”

Gabe pulled the comforter over his head. “I’m sure it’s going to be something stupid.”

“Congratulations, Mr. James-Michaels, you’re pregnant.”

The words don’t register. They went in one ear and settled there like static. His brain just couldn’t compute the information. It doesn’t make any sense to him.

He’s laying on the exam table, staring into a monitor as the doodad for the ultrasound machine work its magic. He’d gone to all of Nancy’s doctor’s appointments with her when she’d been pregnant with the girls. Gabe knew what the mess on the monitor was: a baby. He was… He couldn’t finish the sentence, even if it was just in his head. Being pregnant wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t.

Either he said the words out loud or the doctor read the look on his face because the older man smiled warmly at him. “It’s uncommon, but there have been reported cases of dormant uteruses before. You’re not the first, which means we have past cases to help us figure out what the best path is for you.” He started explaining. There was a light in his doctor’s eyes, and his excitement at such an usual case was evident as he continued talking.

“All embryos are female in the beginning until chromosomes decide whether the embryo will remain female or continue to develop into a male. In rare instances such as yours, some parts, shall we say, get left behind. In all likelihood there could be far more men in the world with dormant uteruses, but given your sexual preference, it is highly more likely for a homosexual man to get pregnant as opposed to a heterosexual man.”

The doctor kept talking, but all Gabe could do was stare at the monitor at his child. No. At his and Johnny’s child. Shit. They were going to have a baby. How the fuck was he going to tell Jay about this when he couldn’t even wrap his brain around it? Fuck.

As soon as Gabe walked into the house, he could smell steak grilling. Usually, he would be drooling, but the smell made his stomach turn. “Why do you have terrible taste?” He asked his… god, what was he supposed to call it? His womb? That sounded bizarre. His uterus? Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Sweet Pea. Yeah, Sweet Pea.

“There you are.” His husband greeted him with a kiss. “What did the doctor say?”

Gabe swallowed, wanting to respond, but also not wanting to throw up. Before responding, he grabbed water from the fridge and took a big swig. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.” He said truthfully.

“Briel…”

He shook his head. “Later, okay? I promise.” And he gulped down more water.

His husband nodded. “Fine, okay.” He put up his hands in defeat. “Do you want to open up the Merlot?”

Immediately, Gabe tensed and his hand went to his stomach out of instinct more than anything. “I’m, uh…” How the fuck was he supposed to explain this one without telling him why? “The doctor doesn��t want me drinking right now.” And then the smell hit him again. “Fuck.” And he took off to the bathroom, barely making it in time before he emptied his stomach.

“Briel.” And Johnny was right behind him. “What the fuck did the doctor say? It’s not…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Cancer?”

Gabe shook his head.

“Oh thank God.” He trailed a hand down Gabe’s back. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were pregnant.”

He started laughing, clutching at the porcelain in the process. When he was able, he looked up at Johnny. “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I was?” And he needed to tell him the truth - that he actually was pregnant, but how was he even supposed to start that conversation? It was too bizarre.

A weird look passed over his husband’s face, but before Johnny could say anything the smoke detector went off.

“Fuck! The steaks.”

“Are you kidding me right now, Sweet Pea?” Gabe groused out as he stood in front of the mirror. It had been a month since his… diagnosis? No, that didn’t sound right. Since he found out he was pregnant. He still hadn’t told Johnny, which was mostly to do with his own cowardice. To be fair though, the other man had a new client so he was busy in the research phase, which meant Gabe had plenty of alone time to figure out what he was going to do.

Obviously he was going to keep them, but he just didn’t know how to explain what was going on with his body. His morning sickness was still pretty consistent, but he had figured out what teas helped settle his stomach. It was everything else that was an issue. Like right now.

He was supposed to be going to dinner with Johnny, but he couldn’t get his pants to zip up. Dr. Swanson had told him his uterus was further back than a woman’s so he wasn’t going to show quite as much as a woman would, but that didn’t change the fact he was four months pregnant and had no body fat while he was in prison. His body was definitely adapting and getting rounder and more feminine in some aspects, which was why his pants wouldn’t fucking close.

Staring at his reflection in the mirror, the soft, round swell of his stomach stared back at him. He looked ridiculous: barefoot and shirtless with his pants wide open. And yet, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his stomach.

“And you say I take a long time getting ready.” Johnny teased as he walked into their bedroom and then froze as he took in Gabe’s current state. “Briel?”

Sighing, he scrubbed a hand over his mouth before making eye contact with his husband. He’d made a point of not being naked around him these past couple of weeks, but Johnny had to have felt that there was… more of him now. They’d both always been clingy sleepers. They were always holding each other like they were afraid the other would disappear in the middle of the night.

“Non-prison life is agreeing with me?” He tried out, but it didn’t look the same as if he’d just gotten pudgy. There was a definite formation to his stomach. It looked soft, but it was hard to the touch. He ignored the joke that popped into his head at that comment.

“Briel, what’s going on?” And Johnny’s eyes were glued to Gabe’s stomach. It just looked… not like how his stomach usually looked.

The words wouldn’t come out. “I think you know.” And once again, there he went trying for the coward’s way out.

To be fair, Gabriel wasn’t sure if he actually knew what was going on, just that something was going on with him. He’d definitely been acting out of character - sleeping with a shirt on, turning down sex, avoiding his husband when he was home. It was more than obvious that something was going on and that Gabe just didn’t want to talk about it. But now Gabe had to talk about it. There was no way out of it now. He couldn’t put it off any longer.

“No, Briel. I really don’t know. Besides,” Johnny took a couple of large steps towards him. “I want to hear it from you.” And there was that strange look in his eyes again, and he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from his stomach.

“I’m four months pregnant.” He admitted, and once he said it out loud, it was like the floodgates had been opened. “Dr. Swanson said it happens from time to time. That some men retain their uterus from when their embryo was female. It’s just, obviously, more like to happen with gay men because, well, duh. And Dr. Swanson gave me some pamphlets and books for you to read because I told him that I didn’t know how to explain it to you, but I wound up reading them instead. And I have an appointment next week if you don’t believe me, and-”

His husband’s mouth was suddenly on his, cutting off the rest of his stream of consciousness. “I believe you.” Forehead against forehead, breathing in the same air. “I thought you were having second thoughts about us. I thought you were leaving me. You were so distant, and so sick, but this… I never would have guessed this. It makes sense. It makes so much sense.”

Gabe swallowed. “I know you said that you didn’t want kids, and I know I said that I didn’t want any more kids, but-”

Johnny’s mouth cut him off again, kissing him until he forgot what he was going to say. “This is different.” He panted out before laughing almost hysterically. “This is so different.”

Suddenly feeling shy, Gabe glanced down. Somewhere along the line, Johnny’s hands had made their way onto his stomach. “You mean it?” And he didn’t know why his voice sounded so small.

There was an almost possessive look in Johnny’s eyes as he pushed Gabe back towards their bed and dragged his gaze across his body. He had no idea what was going on in the other man’s head, but the way he was looking at him, made his mouth go dry. “I definitely mean it.”

With that, Gabe found himself being pressed onto their bed. “I don’t have any pants that fit any more.” He complained, watching as his husband pulled his jeans off him. There was energy crackling between them, and Gabe knew his accidental sex boycott had definitely been taking a toll on both of them.

“You can’t wear pants any more?” Johnny straddled his thighs and ran his hands over Gabe’s stomach again. “What a terrible shame.” And he did not sound sorry about it at all. But when Gabe made a face, he rolled his eyes. “We’ll figure it out. You might have to start dressing gay couture.”

Gabe groaned. “Great.” He said sarcastically, watching Johnny’s face as he stared at his stomach. “Are you okay with… this?”

He pressed his lips together, and Gabe knew he was processing the information still. “How can I be anything else?” He asked before leaning in and kissing him. “We’re going to be dads.”

The last time Gabe was this nervous, he was pretty sure it was Verdict Day. Laying on the exam table while Doctor Swanson smoothed gel over his stomach while Johnny sat next to him, leg shaking obnoxiously was not his idea of a good time. For reasons that he didn’t know, but that he assumed had a lot to do with his fucked up hormone levels, he had this ridiculous notion that he’d made the whole pregnancy thing up. Everything about this just seemed too weird, and too good to be true. There was no way that he was actually pregnant. And then…

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

His whole body went still as the sound of Sweet Pea’s heartbeat filled the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Johnny’s leg still. He couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t heard Sweet Pea last time. Plus, he’d been in shock, but now… there she was - loud and proud. He didn’t know why he assumed she was a girl, other than the fact that he already had two girls and knew how to raise girls.

“There’s baby.” Dr. Swanson announced happily. “That, boys, is the sound of your little miracle.”

A hand wrapped around his, but all Gabe could do was stare at the baby inside of him. He felt Johnny kiss the back of his hand, but Gabe only had eyes for Sweet Pea. He had no idea what was going through his husband’s head, but he knew what was going through his head. Sweet Pea wasn’t just this idea in his head. She was this real living thing inside of him.

“I’ll give you boys a few moments while I print out some copies of the ultrasound for you.” Dr. Swanson’s voice startled Gabe out of his thoughts. Hell, he had no idea how long he’d actually been staring at the monitor, but he figured it had been longer than he realized. As soon as the doctor was out of the room, Gabe shifted and Johnny climbed onto the exam table with him.

“That’s…”

“Yep.”

“We…”

“Mmhmm.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything else until the doctor knocked on the door to see if Gabe had redressed. He wasn’t sure there was anything else either one of them could say.

“Okay, why are you being so weird?” Dustin had decided to move to New York to be closer to family, but Gabe up until this point had refused to see him. It was like when he first got locked up all over again. He hadn’t initially wanted him to see him behind bars, and now he didn’t want him to see him all fat.

His cousin loved him unconditionally, and he knew that, but he couldn’t help but to be nervous about being pregnant. He didn’t know what the younger man’s reaction was going to be, and he was afraid it was going to be negative. It was one thing to accept his sexuality, but the fact that he was able to bear children? That was an entirely different beast.

Dustin was standing on the other side of the door, but Gabe was refusing to let him into the house. The door was slightly cracked open so Gabe could see his face, but so his cousin couldn’t see his belly. “I’m not being weird.” He lied. His hormones were steadily getting more and more out of whack, and the weirdest things set him off. The other day he’d started crying because the colors on one of his paintings didn’t look the way it had in his head.

“Yes you are! Why won’t you let me in the house?”

Before Gabe could say anything, Johnny was standing behind him. “Briel, what are you doing? Who’s at the door?” He couldn’t see who it was from his angle, but once he did, he groaned. “Jesus Christ, Gabriel. Hi, Dustin.” He shuffled Gabe away from the door before opening it all the way and ushering Dustin into the house.

“Jay, why’d you let him in?” “You haven’t told him yet?” “Gabe, what --”

The questions drowned each other out, and Dustin was staring at Gabe, his eyes dropping to his stomach. He was wearing sweatpants and a very sheer tank top that showed off the round swell of formed muscle.

“Gabe…” His cousin breathed out, and he felt like he was sixteen again and his six year old cousin walked in on him kissing another boy. Suddenly there were hands on his stomach. “Is that… are you… you’re having a baby?” And Dustin sounded so young in that moment. It reminded him of when he and Nancy told Delilah she was going to be a big sister.

Suddenly Gabe felt like an absolute idiot for not telling the one member of his family who had always been on his side no matter what. “Yeah, Bubba.” He said, voice small. “Surprise. You’re going to be an uncle.”

It was almost eight o’clock and Gabe was curled up on the couch with George. The dog had followed him home one day, and well, Gabe had talked Johnny into letting him keep him. And his husband hadn’t even raised an eyebrow when Gabe named the dog after his sister. It actually hadn’t been as difficult as he thought it would be, and George was good company on the nights Johnny worked late.

Hell, he was good company all the time. The dog followed him around everywhere, and he was obsessed with Gabe’s stomach. He was pretty sure he could smell the baby. Any time Gabe was sitting on the couch, George was there with him, head on his stomach. Right now, George was sitting next to Gabe, licking his face as Gabe openly sobbed, tears streaming down his face.

The front door opened, and he could hear his husband come in, but Gabe couldn’t bring himself to call out to him. He just clung to the dog while he continued to cry. Usually George went running to greet Johnny when he got home, and dragged him to wherever Gabe was. Tonight the dog was more concerned with getting Gabe’s face to stop leaking and was focused on licking the tears off his face.

“Briel?” Johnny called out. “You lay down already?” When there was no response, Johnny tried again. “George?”

WOOF. WOOF.

He buried his face into George’s neck, but the second Johnny was in the living room George was off the couch and behind Johnny, pushing him to the couch and to Gabe. And once he was next to him, Gabe collapsed into his husband’s arms, face buried in his shirt as he cried. George whined, likely to tell Johnny to fix it before jumping to Gabe’s other side and curling up next to him.

“Briel, what happened?” His husband’s fingers dragged slowly through his hair.

After a few minutes, Gabe’s sobs turned into pitiful sounding hiccups, and he wiped his face on Johnny’s shirt before slowly looking up at him. “She loved him so much, and she saw that Willow had given him back his soul, but it was too late. The portal was already opened and killing him was the only way to close it. And she couldn’t even tell Willow that the spell had worked because that would make it even worse and she didn’t want her best friend to share in the guilt, and-” He collapsed back onto Johnny’s chest as he started crying again.

There was confused silence, and Johnny gently stroked a hand up and down Gabe’s back. It was that very moment that George must have rolled onto the remote because suddenly the end credits to Buffy started playing.

And immediately it was like a light bulb went off. “Gabriel,” Johnny pulled him back so he could look at him. “Are you having a meltdown over an episode of a fictional television show about a teenage girl in love with an old man vampire who needs to find a girlfriend his own age?”

Gabe gave a watery laugh. “It’s your fault.” He whined out. “My hormones are out of whack. You should have seen me when Jenny Calendar died.” He complained, shifting to grab the remote from the dog and turning the DVD player off. “It was almost worse.” At the blank look on his husband’s face, he tagged on, “Another character from Buffy, baby.”

It was a struggle to get out of his husband’s arms. He was five months pregnant now, and he was definitely showing. His friend, Kale, who he’d only met about a month before realizing he was pregnant had been a life saver and had given him so many fucking tunics. It was pretty much all he wore when he had a shirt on.

He was in front of the DVD player when suddenly Johnny was next to him. “Oh, no, Briel. No more Buffy for you.” He dragged him towards the kitchen. “C’mon, you can eat ice cream while I eat dinner.”

“With whipped cream?” He sniffled out.

“With all the whipped cream you want.”

Gabe was standing in front of the mirror in the bedroom again. This time he was poking at his nipples. A frown was etched onto his features as he studied his form.

“What are you doing?” Johnny asked with an amused grin as he walked into the room. He slid behind him, and wrapped his arms around his stomach, propping his head on his shoulder to stare at their reflection.

“Men don’t have mammary glands.” He murmured out, poking his pec this time. His mind was flashing back to the anatomy classes he’d taken in college. A Fine Arts degree meant taking some weird ass science classes. He’d had to take a veterinary anatomy class, too. All of the random facts he’d learned in those classes were flashing back to him right now. “But my uterus doesn’t know that.”

There was a pause before Johnny burst into laughter. “What?” He asked as he went and sat on the edge of the bed, watching Gabe, who still stood studying his reflection.

He shot Johnny a look in the mirror, knowing he could still see him from that angle. “Just because it sounds weird doesn’t make it less true. I’m having phantom milk pains.” He replied grumpily, before cupping his pec, and inspecting his reflection. “Does it look like I have tits? It feels like I have tits.”

Johnny snorted and held out a hand for him. “C’mere, baby.” And he waited until Gabe was standing between his legs before cupping Gabe’s pec. “Hmm… Feels bigger.” He teased. “But I’m going to need to do further research.”

Before Gabe could complain, he was in his lap and his nipple was in his husband’s mouth. “You’re incorrigible.” He whined out, fingers tangling in his hair to hold him in place. “That feels so weird.” He shifted so he was more comfortable, a hand braced on the bed behind him to support some of his weight.

His husband pulled his mouth off with a wet pop. “What does it feel like?” Curiosity laced his words as he traced a finger over his nipple. “Does it hurt?”

Some days Gabe couldn’t help but to wonder if Johnny was jealous that this was something that Gabe got to experience that he didn’t, but most of the time he understood what his husband was trying to do - he wanted to share the experience with him.

Gabe shook his head. “No. There’s pressure, but there shouldn’t be pressure because I don’t have the parts that should be causing pressure.” He wrinkled his face up. “It hurts my head if I think about it for too long.”

They were both quiet for a long moment before Gabe pulled his husband’s head down to his other nipple. “Continue your research, please.”

Baking wasn’t one of Gabe’s strong suits, but there were a couple of things he was really good at making: vanilla scones and peanut butter cookies. The further along he got in his pregnancy, the more he tried to bake things he wasn’t very good at. He was in the middle of an overly ambitious apple pie when the front door opened and slammed shut.

Immediately Gabe tensed, his mind flashing back to his childhood. A door slammed like that normally meant a pissed off and drunk father.

George was suddenly standing in front of him, stance protective, teeth bared when Johnny stumbled into the kitchen. He’d seen Johnny in quite a few states of drunkenness during their marriage so far, but he’d never seen him this level of drunk. This was Francis-level drunk, the type of drunk Gabe had put up with growing up. This level of drunk meant drinking to get drunk so you forgot the love of your life died young in life.

It was also the level of drunk that made Gabe nervous. With his dad, it meant Gabe would wind up in the ER or in the bathroom with his mom administering stitches. With Johnny, he didn’t know what it meant. The dog had relaxed his stance slightly. Teeth weren’t bared, but he was sitting at Gabe’s feet. There was no way that his husband was getting anywhere near him, as far as George was concerned.

“Were you going to tell me or were you just gonna let me find out the hard way?”

Having no idea what Johnny was talking about, Gabe moved over to the coffee pot. George was hot on his heels, a growl slipping out of the dog’s mouth when he thought Johnny got too close to them. “Let’s get some coffee in you, and food. I thought you were just going to happy hour. I didn’t realize you were…” He waved a vague hand in his husband’s general direction. “Whatever this is.”

Suddenly Johnny was right in front of him, the only thing keeping him from touching Gabe was George standing on his hind legs and pushing at Johnny with his paws. “Were. You. Ever. Going. To. Tell. Me?” He didn’t push the dog away, which made Gabe relax slightly. He didn’t intend to get violent, he was just angry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, baby.” He said in a soft voice that reminded him too much of his mother.

Johnny’s shoulders slumped slightly and he took a step back. This allowed George to drop back to all fours - still posted at Gabe’s feet. “I ran into Dr. Swanson at the bar.” He said, and Gabe knew exactly what his husband was upset about. “He wanted to know how I was handling everything with how far along you were. And asked if we’d made the appointment with the counselor to prepare for the worst case scenario.” He took a breath, obviously trying to get his bearings. “When were you going to tell me there’s a 25% chance that you’re going to die in childbirth?”

Sighing, he abandoned his coffee making task, and tangled a hand in the dogs fur, tugging him to stand next to him instead of blocking him from Johnny. There was a whine, but the dog followed Gabe’s lead. “I didn’t want to taint any of this with sadness. It’s a miracle. This should be a happy time.” He looped his arms around Johnny’s neck, which earned a bark from George, but he allowed it. “Besides, you’re missing the most important thing: there’s a 75% chance I’m going to live through it.”

An anguished sound fell from his husband’s lips as he leaned his forehead against Gabe’s. He could taste the whiskey on his breath. “There’s a one in four chance that you’re going to die, and I can’t…” He hiccuped and there was a gentle hand on Gabe’s face. “I can’t do this without you, Briel.”

He could feel the dog relax next to him, but he still stayed next to Gabe’s legs just in case. “There’s a three in four chance that I’m going to live.” He volleyed back. “Whatever happens, Sweet Pea is going to get the childhood we never got. Even if I… you know.” He didn’t believe he would die in childbirth, but he still couldn’t get the words out.

“Briel…”

He shook his head and pulled back, holding his husband’s face in his hands. “Promise me, Jonathan. I need you to promise me that you won’t go off the rails if I die. I need you to promise that if something happens to me, you’ll love the baby regardless.” He searched the other man’s face. “Promise me, baby.”

It was silent in the kitchen for a long while before his husband finally managed out, “Promise.”

Gabe wasn’t sure if he believed him, but he’d take it for now. This definitely wasn’t a conversation they should be having now. They’d table it for when he was sober. “Now, let’s get some food in you and not the apple pie because I think the fire alarm is about to go off.”

He honestly wasn’t sure how time had passed so quickly. It seemed like he’d just found out he was pregnant yesterday, and now here he was - eight months pregnant and designated to the couch. His best friend was flying in from Los Angeles to spend a couple of weeks helping him get ready for the baby and he couldn’t even go to the airport to pick him up. Johnny had to go pick him up, and he wasn’t even allowed to go with him.

A part of him couldn’t help but to giggle when he thought about what the hell the two of them would talk about... His former cellmate turned best friend was... a character to say the very least. He could have a conversation with a wall, and his husband, well... he held his own. Their interactions always warmed his heart.

Somewhere along the line he must have dozed off on the couch with the dog because suddenly... “Look at your stomach, dude!”

When he opened his eyes, Cesar was in the living room and Johnny was no where to be seen. He had no idea how much time had passed between when Johnny went to the airport and now. All he knew was that Cesar looked like he had been there awhile and he just had this feeling that Johnny had his hands full.

“Fuck, are you a fucking ninja?” He whined out as he tried to sit up, but couldn’t, both due to his belly and George. “And don’t you get on my fucking case, too, about working on my swearing.”

Cesar grinned down at him, all smiles. “I’m gonna let you have that one, just because you look like you’re going to pop.” He pushed Gabe back down to laying down. “Don’t get up on account of me, man. We’re here to make your life easier.” Despite George using Gabe’s stomach as a pillow, Cesar laid a hand on his stomach, completely ignoring the warning growl from George. “Holy shit! There really is a baby in there. Your stomach is all hard and shit.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s funny how there tends to be a baby in a pregnant man’s belly.” He still shifted so he was mostly sitting up against the arm of the couch. “If you’re that slow, maybe I should pick someone else for Sweet Pea’s godfather…”

“Don’t fuck with me, James. I’m a Mexican Catholic. We take that shit seriously. There’s candles and warding off of mal de ojo. It’s serious business.” He lifted up Gabe’s legs and sat on the other end of the couch, propping his friend’s feet in his lap. “Besides, it’s too late. You already chose me. It’s a done deal.”

There was something that Cesar had told him that wasn’t sitting right with him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Then there was the fact he hadn’t seen Johnny yet. Which was strange in and of itself.

“You got the channel that plays the Dodgers?” He asked picking up the remote. And that’s when he realized what had bothered him about Cesar’s initial statement.

“Wait. What do you mean we?” His gaze narrowed. “Cesar, what do you mean we?”

His friend didn’t get a chance to answer. At that moment, his three year old godson, Junior, toddled into the room. “Uncle G!” His eyes widened when he saw the dog. “DOGGY!” George made a distressed sound a leapt off the couch in an attempt to get away from the toddler, but that didn’t deter Junior. He changed direction to chase the dog. “I be back, Uncle G.”

Okay... Cesar brought his son with him. That made sense, but that also meant he probably also brought -

“Did Junior come this way?” Maria Rodriquez asked as she skidded into the room, looking at her husband, obviously not realizing Gabe had woken up. When he’d first met his best friend’s wife, he’d told her that Maria was his mom’s name. From that moment on, she adopted him into her family. That was just how the Rodriguez family was though. They welcomed you into their family like you were always a part of it. “I told him to leave his tio alone, but you know how he gets.”

Gabe chuckled. “He followed the dog.” His gaze cut to the TV, where Cesar had found the Dodgers game, already making himself at home.

“Junior followed the... GABE!” Maria ran over to him and kissed his cheek. “You’re awake. That piece of meat you’re married to said you haven’t been sleeping well so we didn’t want to wake you up. He took them to the store, by the way.”

He blinked, trying to keep up with the direction the conversation had gone in. Johnny went to the store with... Wait. If Cesar, Maria and Junior were home with him, who did he take shopping?

The front door opened and Rocio, Cesar’s older sister, walked into the room, holding a paper bag of groceries. He’d known Rocio almost as long as he’d known Cesar. When she found out he didn’t get a lot of mail, she started writing him and visiting him. At first he thought she was sweet on him, and when he told her that, she laughed so hard she cried. When she finally stopped laughing, she told him that Cesar adopted him and what kind of sister would she be if she didn’t visit her new brother? It was in that moment Gabe decided that when he had his own family, he wanted to be just like the Rodriguez family.

“I don’t know how you live in a neighborhood so far away from a good market. We had to go to Corona to get all the stuff for a decent pozole, Gabriel.” She pressed a kiss to the top of his head before continuing on to the kitchen. “It’s better than our Corona. No horses and wannabe cowboys.”

He blinked because if Rocio was here, then so were Alejandra and Lupe. The teenagers traipsed into the living room each holding two more bags. “She made us go to three stores, Uncle Gabe. Three.” Alejandra, the older of the two, and almost twenty, complained dramatically. “We also had to get things for tamales, chilaquiles, and tacos. Mom thinks you need home-cooked meals.”

Suddenly Rocio yelled out something in Spanish and Alejandra went running into the kitchen. Lupe sighed. “Sorry, Uncle Gabe. You know how they are.” And with that she followed her sister.

When he looked up, Maria was gone, too. He wasn’t sure if it was to chase after Junior or if she’d gone into the kitchen to help Rocio.

The thing that amazed him was that no one in the Rodriguez family had ever questioned Gabe being pregnant. When he asked Cesar about it later, he told him there was a myth in the village his parents were from about how Mary originally been a man, and that it was a highest blessing a man could be given. That’s why they didn’t think it was strange he was pregnant. They were a religious family who thought it was a miracle.

“Cesar,” He flexed his bare feet in his friend’s lap, and without tearing his eyes away from the Dodger’s game, his friend began working out the kinks in Gabe’s arches. “Just how many people did you bring with you?”

Now Cesar glanced over at him. “Just the family. Well, most of the family. Juan’s wife is too pregnant to travel, she’s only seven months though, and dad’s health is crap.” The way he said it made it sound like Gabe should have known the whole family was coming.

“Wait...” If the whole family was there, then that meant... “Cesar, where’s my husband?” And he already had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly where his husband was.

His friend went back to watching the game. “With Mama.” He said like it was obvious.

Gabe groaned. “You left him alone with Mama?” He asked, giving Cesar a shove with his feet before slowly rolling himself to his feet. “I’m never going to see him again.”

He didn’t get very far before - “What part of on bed rest did you not understand?” There over his shoulder stood Johnny, Junior perched on his hip.

Immediately Gabe relaxed back onto the couch, and Cesar grabbed his legs and pulled them back up into his lap. “How many pictures of Jesus are now in our house? And candles? Did they tell you she accidentally burned down part of their house because she kept building altars to the saints?”

His godson was deposited on his lap, and Johnny leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead. “The whole family isn’t staying to whole time, are they?” There was a slightly panicked look in his husband’s eyes.

Gabe pulled him down for a kiss. “God, I hope not.” He murmured out, immediately cringing when he realized that Mama Rodriguez was standing in the living room.

As he got a barrage of Spanish he mostly didn’t understand, he looked at his husband again. “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

This was supposed to be a small baby shower, but Gabe should have known that once the Rodriguez family was involved, it was going to be a huge affair. It always was when they were involved. He was pretty sure that there were people here he didn’t even know. Junior was playing with another kid his age, but Gabe was pretty sure he didn’t invite anyone who had a toddler. Honestly though, he should have anticipated everything getting bigger than what he wanted. He didn’t know why he didn’t.

“Well, this was not what I expected a baby shower to look like.” Kaleidoscope Johnson announced as he all but sashayed into the room, a bottle of wine in one hand and a party bag in the other. “Is that a tequila bar? And here I thought I was being a bad boy bringing wine.”

Gabe rolled his eyes as he greeted his friend with a hug. “Do you think you’re the only person who brought us booze? We’re gonna need it after Sweet Pea is born.” He barely lifted a hand before Lupe was there, and took both the wine and the gift from Kale.

“Aren’t you supposed to not be on your feet, Uncle Gabe?” She threw over her shoulder before shuffling off to the present table.

For once in the time Gabe had known Kale, the other man looked totally uncomfortable. He wasn’t surprised that he was a half hour late, but Kale had been a little overly nervous about Gabe’s belly. When they had gone to lunch the week before, and Gabe got stuck in the booth because his stomach was too big, Kale had freaked out and thought something was going to happen to the baby. Seeing him now, looking uneasy as Junior and the random toddler ran around the patio, it struck him that Kale didn’t have any friends with kids. He didn’t know how he was supposed to interact at a party like this, but he’d still put himself out there and came to the party.

“You’re not actually naming the alien inside you Sweet Pea, are you?” He asked, sounding horrified.

Gabe laughed, and shook his head. “It’s a placeholder name. We don’t know what we’re having.” His gaze cut over to the gift table before looking back at his friend. “You got something off the registry right?”

His friend smiled wickedly and looked a bit more like himself. “You’re just going to have to wait and see. Now, where is that stallion of yours?” He all but purred out. “I thought you chose him because he was pretty. I didn’t realize he was all man. I should have known. You have to be all man to put a bun in your oven.”

Before Gabe could say anything Cesar was standing next to him. “You!” He wagged an accusatory finger in Kale’s direction. “Best friend thief! You are not welcome here.”

It took everything in him not to burst into laughter at how put out Cesar sounded about Kale being there. He wrapped an arm around Cesar. “Kale, Cesar’s wife, Maria wants to talk to you anyway. We went to the Collective last week and she wants to ask you questions about your style. I don’t think she’s ever seen hyper realism before.”

Thankfully Kale took the hint and left Gabe and Cesar alone. “Seriously?”

His best friend just laughed. “C’mon. If Mama sees you on your feet, she’s gonna lose her shit.”

Falling asleep at the drop of the hat was something Gabe had been doing a lot lately. Every little thing wiped him out. At least this time he’d fallen asleep while sketching in bed. It took him a minute to realize that someone was talking.

At first he thought that he must have left the TV on, but they didn’t have a TV in their bedroom so that didn’t make sense. Blinking, he slowly opened his eyes to find Johnny laying on his stomach, face next to the bump as he talked quietly to the baby. A fond smile slid onto Gabe’s face, and he slid his hand into his husband’s hair, gently scratching at his scalp.

Johnny startled, and pulled back to look at Gabe almost sheepishly. “Aw, shit. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” He looked like he got caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.

Gabe shot him a sleepy smile. “Technically you didn’t.” He continued with his head scratches. “She likes your voice. She keeps kicking my bladder.” When his husband tensed, he rolled his eyes. “It’s fine. I’m just gonna keep reminding you that you ruined my boyish figure for the rest of our lives.”

He startled a laugh out of Johnny, who gave him a slight nudge before laying back down so he could go back to talking to the baby. “Briel, we haven’t talked about-”

His hand stilled in Johnny’s hair. “I don’t want to talk about the what ifs.” He said, assuming Johnny was talking about the 25% mortality rate.

The bridge of Johnny’s nose turned an interesting shade of pink and he looked up at Gabe. “That’s actually not what I was going to say.” He admitted, face getting more and more pink.

Oh, he was embarrassed. That was interesting... He slid his hand out of Johnny’s hair, and instead tilted his chin so he could better look at his husband. “What haven’t we talked about, baby?” He asked him curiously.

“I, uh...” And why had he interrupted him? Now getting him to admit what he was going to say could be like pulling teeth. “What I was going to say before you reminded me of something I didn’t want to think about...” Okay, maybe it wasn’t going to be like pulling teeth. “Was that we haven’t discussed if we were going to have more kids after Sweet Pea or if this is it for us?”

And that was probably the last thing in the world he thought Johnny was going to say. Unable to stop himself, he started laughing. “Jay...” He made grabby hands for the other man and all but pulled him up to lay next to him. “Let’s get through this one first.” He shook his head. “Look at you, papa bear.”

He didn’t need to turn his head to know that his husband was rolling his eyes at him. “I love you, smart ass.” Johnny murmured out, his head lolling onto Gabe’s shoulder, hand absently rubbing Gabe’s stomach.

“I love you, too.”

Something was wrong. That was was the first thought in Gabe’s mind as he jolted awake. He wasn’t due for another two weeks. And when he said due, he referred to the date of his scheduled C-section. That was the only way for baby and daddy to survive the pregnancy, and Gabe was more than okay with that.

The overall concern was Gabe’s water breaking. Of the male pregnancies that had ended in death, it was due to sepsis caused by the fluid not being able to leave the body properly. His water breaking was worst case scenario.

“Jay.” He could barely sit up. “Jay.” His husband was a much lighter sleeper than he was, which worked in his favor for situations like this. “Jay, something’s wrong.”

His husband’s hair was sticking up in every direction. “What do you mean something’s wrong?” He asked, but he was already getting out of bed.

Gabe gingerly pushed himself to his feet, only to practically collapse back onto the bed. “Fuck. I was not prepared for this shit.” He clutched his husband’s shoulders. “Yeah, Sweet Pea isn’t waiting for our C-Section date.”

His husband’s eyes widened. “Briel,” And he knew that Johnny had to be thinking about what the doctor had told them about how Gabe’s chances of survival were lower if his labor began naturally.

Being the mature person he was, he ignored him. “Maria!” He called out, trying to stagger on his own to the bedroom door. “Maria, it’s time.”

Not even five seconds later, a very dazed Cesar was in their bedroom. “Like... time-time?” And the fact that he was acting like he was the one about to be a father (again), made Gabe want to laugh.

“Get out of my way, moron.” Maria pushed past her husband and into the room. “You know the drill.” She pointed at her husband. “Take his hospital bag.” She shoved it at him. “And go start the car.”

Then she spun around and looked at Johnny. “Get that look off your face, get some shoes on both your feet and get him downstairs. I’m going to tell Rocio and Mama where we’re going.” She started to leave the room before she turned back to Gabe and pressed a sloppy kiss on his forehead. “You’re doing a wonderful job, sweetie.”

Maria was almost out of the room before “Now MOVE it.”

Everything was moving so quickly. Gabe wasn’t sure if he blacked out or if he’s disassociating. All he knew was that one minute he’s in the car, and wishing that Cesar wasn’t driving (at one point he was pretty sure he was driving on the sidewalk) and the next he was in a wheelchair and being pushed down a long corridor. He no longer thought being stabbed was the worst pain in the world. Labor was definitely the most painful thing in the world.

“Mr. James-Michaels, can you hear me?”

He’s trying to focus on everything going on around him, but he’s in sensory overload.

“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to leave the room.”

What? How can he leave the room? Why are they putting him up on a table? What’s going on?

“That’s my husband. I have a right to be in here for his C-Section.”

“Sir, I understand your frustration, but we cannot have you in the room right now. We’ll send someone to collect you when you’re able to be in the room with him.”

There’s too much happening, too much going on around him, but if he can just focus on Johnny’s voice he thinks he’ll be okay. All he needs to do is focus on his husband’s voice.

“Under California state law, we are legally married. Per Governor Paterson's executive directive issued in May, all state agencies must recognize out of state same sex marriages as they would other marriages.”

“Sir, if your husband was your wife, we’d treat you the same damn way. Sit your ass down.”

And then the world went fuzzy and dark.

The original ending | The sad ending

v v The official ending v v

Exhausted. Gabe was completely and utterly exhausted. He felt like he’d been caught inside an egg beater. His body felt tore up, and he both wanted to wake up and go back to sleep all at the same time. Why was he so tired? And then he remembered -

“Baby?”

“I thought we weren’t doing pet names any more.”

A laugh was torn out of him as he realized Kale was in the room with him. “You’re an idiot.” He coughed out. “Water?”

Kale popped an ice chip into Gabe’s mouth. “I was instructed to only feed you ice chips and keep you company until Captain Gorgeous gets back.”

“Oh, God, let’s not start calling him that.” Gabe complained.

“What aren’t we calling me?”

Gabe glanced at the door to find Johnny standing behind a nurse as she rolled the clear plastic little crib into the room. He almost cried when he realized what was happening. “Is that...”

The nurse was all smiles. “It sure is. We haven’t been able to get this one away from the nursery.” She jabbed her head in Johnny’s direction before parking the crib next to the bed. “You get to hold her first though, Daddy, since you did all the work.”

The second the baby is put into Gabe’s arms he feels like his whole world was reoriented, just like it had been when the girls were born. “Oh, she’s perfect.” He breathed out, tracing a finger over the baby’s nose.

“Why is her head all pointy?”

And Gabe forgot that Kale was still in the room.

“Let’s leave the Dads to bond with Baby, okay?” The nurse said before ushering Kale out of the room.

Johnny settled onto the bed next to him. “Look at her.” He breathed out. “We made that.”

Gabe laughed softly, head tilting against his husband’s shoulder. “We did good.”

A kiss was pressed to the side of his head. “Yeah. We really did.”

#drabble #kissing universe #pairing: Gabe/Johnny

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sshannonauthor · 5 years ago

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You haven't talked a lot about anxiety and I understand if you want to keep it private. However, as someone who's recently been diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, how has anxiety affected your life and writing? I wen't through such an intense period of mental breakdown its hard to see a normal life in front of me.

Hey,

It sounds a bit weird to say ‘congratulations’ on your diagnosis, but I found mine comforting, and I hope you will as well. Before I knew I had GAD, I genuinely thought I was losing my mind. It was strangely helpful to know I was unwell, as it explained what was happening in my head. I’m also very glad to hear you’ve sought professional help. That’s such a huge step.

I’m not particularly private about my anxiety. You can see my last plummet was in October: [x] I’m fortunate that I’ve been quite steady since then, which is why I might have seemed a bit quieter on the subject, but I’m always happy to chat about it.

Anxiety has had a huge impact on my life. It came upon me suddenly after I got my book deal in 2012, and I spent a year and a half getting progressively more and more unwell. Throughout my debut experience, which should have been the best year of my life, I was racked with fear almost 24/7. I barely slept, woke up in cold sweats when I did sleep, and was exhausted from my body constantly being locked in fight-or-flight mode. This was while I was editing and publicising The Bone Season. (In hindsight, can actually see it in the writing. Compared to the other books in the series, The Bone Season is quite choppy on a sentence level, and I think that reflects my state of mind while I was working on it.)

My anxiety has ebbed and flowed since then. I had a huge nosedive while I was writing The Song Rising, then another just before Priory went to print. During those dips, I felt as if I would never be happy again. That I would always feel nauseous and breathless, always be afraid. After my dip in October, I went to a GP and got some beta blockers, and I think that’s part of why I feel stronger now. Even though I’ve never taken one yet, it comforts me to know that they’re there.

I promise you, it does get better. Think of anxiety as a storm over the sea – it’s terrifying and throws your life into turmoil, but it will always pass. The waters will calm. I’m not saying the clouds will never be there, but for me, right now, they feel much farther away. I hope that’s the same for you soon.

#sshannonauthor life asks #anxiety #mental health

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heysawbones · 6 years ago

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Congratulations, Me; You’re Slow

Surprise, me! You’re literally slow. As in, your processing speed - the rate at which your brain takes in stimuli and makes sense of it - is below average. Quantitatively. The average is 100. Yours is 94.

Three years ago, I was given a cognitive battery. I’ve had an unusually high number of these in my life. Most people will never have even one. I’ve had four; one to assess for the Gifted and Talented program in kindergarten, one to reassess for the same when I changed school districts, one to assess for ADHD, and yet another, the latest, to assess for the same, as the prior records were lost. ADHD runs in my family, but I seem to have been one of those kids who compensated really, really well. Was I organized? Not even a little. Lose things? Constantly. I procrastinated like a motherfucker, too, but it was usually easy to make up the work in class before it was due. I would drive hard to complete the GT project-based assignments at the last minute, and always did fine. Better than fine, even. Sure, I used to obsessively braid yarn or draw in class, but nobody had any reason to suspect I would have issues with things like maintaining attention or executive function later on. If they did, I never heard about it. Even today, it’s not obvious; people associate a certain flightiness with ADHD and that isn’t me. People associate a lot of things with ADHD that aren’t me. This has been so much of an issue, in fact, that despite meeting diagnostic criteria over and over, as admitted by clinicians, people have been hesitant to give me the diagnosis. The argument deployed tends to be: you have all the symptoms, but you also have chronic depression, which has the same symptoms, so we’ll just go with that one. The underlying rationale, the unspoken answer to “why can’t it be both? they often co-occur” seems to be: you are too articulate and self-aware to have ADHD. It boils down to you’re too smart to be slow.

This is unfair to me, and demonstrably untrue, besides. I recognized this long ago. I am the one who has to figure out some way to compensate for the symptoms. Yes, the symptoms of depression and ADHD overlap (especially if you are depressed for a long time), but the treatment of those symptoms is not the same. I have been in treatment for depression for over ten years. Am I better than I was? Unquestionably so.

Do I function at a level sustainable for an adult not on disability? Can I get places on time? Can I catch a plane without showing up 14 hours early, lest I show up 14 hours late, or at the wrong airport entirely, instead? Do I remember things people told me yesterday? Can I go to Target without the possibility of getting caught up in a weird cognitive trap where I want bananas, but am too guilty to buy them unless I do the rest of my grocery shopping, which I don’t have the mental energy for? Do I remember enough of my meds when I go on trips? Can I stop persistently putting things in places that make no sense, and then having no idea that I’ve done it 15 seconds later? Can I manage an adult’s schedule? Can I remember to pay bills on time? Can I remember what I’ve spent money on in the last week? Can I remember what I ate this morning? Can I hold down a job that is, honestly, below my abilities in many ways?

The answer is, of course, sometimes yes. Distressingly frequently, it is no. Where travel is concerned, it is always no, and somehow, I have managed to show up at the wrong airport entirely more than once.

Yes, I recognize that these are problems all people have, to some degree, at some time in their lives. If people are willing to act on the belief that I am too smart to be slow, why is it that when I account for my concerns and attempt to articulate the impact they have on my life, I am suddenly not self-aware anymore, and am only overreacting to what obviously MUST be the same degree of these problems that other reasonable adults experience? Why am I credible in other areas, but not this one? If I am so smart, why is it assumed that I’ve failed to account for my own emotional bias when gauging the difficulty I am experiencing? Why is it more satisfying to assume that I am not trying hard enough, then it is to accept that a smart, self-aware person may, in fact, have some kind of Brain Problem that, really, there is no logical contraindication to, and much evidence, for? When I do the responsible thing and insistently pursue all reasonable options to address my mental and neurological health, with the goal of being a functional contributor to society, why is this so persistently reduced to a fetish specifically for an ADHD diagnosis? I’m smart when it’s convenient for others, but not when it comes to the ability to draw cause and effect relationships from my own behavior, and make comparisons between those and the behavior of others? If I got treatment that worked, I wouldn’t care what the diagnosis was. Come the fuck on. I’m tired of this.

-----

Anyway. I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery. I’ve read the summary before; it’s peppered with lines like

“There is also considerable other evidence in this testing consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD”

“In my experience, some individuals who are very bright are able to compensate for some of their disability”

“this distribution of index scores is very typical of individuals with ADHD”

“Many of the behaviors she describes are certainly typical of individuals who suffer from ADHD. Unfortunately, the coexisting history of chronic major depression and PTSD make that differential diagnosis based on history alone difficult”

When I first read that last year, I was shocked because the therapist who requested the cognitive battery, only expressed surprise that I was “very smart” and said that my “scores were fine.” When I later confronted him after having read the summary myself, he merely admitted that some of my scores were “lower than others”. He never entertained the possibility that I had ADHD, which in an of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d been willing to just try the treatments for it, since clearly the two industrial-strength doses of antidepressants I was already on, were not cutting it. Alas, he was not, and it wasn’t until after he retired that the issue was addressed again.

Surprisingly, I was not the person who addressed it. When my therapist-MD retired, I needed at least a primary care provider to manage my medications. Since the appointment was for psych med management, I had to fill out a bunch of related intake forms - you likely know the kind. While looking them over, my new doctor peered up at me and asked, “Has anybody ever suggested that you might have ADHD?” I was taken aback by the question and wasn’t sure where to start. Them? Asking me? if I have ADHD? She asked me?

I told her that I’d had two full cognitive batteries done, and that both of them concluded roughly the same thing: yes, all the symptoms are there, no, we do not know if it’s ADHD because there’s too much background noise from other psych issues. Without skipping a beat, she said the most amazing thing to me:

Well, whatever it is, you have the symptoms, so let’s treat them.

God. Why didn’t someone say that years ago? Diagnoses are human constructs; we use them to group symptoms that tend to occur together, when they’re thought to have the same causes. Depression and ADHD have many (but not all) of the same symptoms, but the overlap doesn’t qualify as a diagnosis because the causes are assumed to be different. I think we often forget that diagnoses are containers for commonalities that we use to make talking about medicine easier, not necessarily biological phenomena unto themselves. If you remember that they are containers - a sort of conceptual shorthand - then it follows that if one treatment for a set of symptoms isn’t solving the problem, you ought to try a different treatment often used for the same symptoms, even if the minutiae of diagnosis means you aren’t sure you can apply the diagnosis typically associated with that second treatment*.

I am now on Vyvanse. Does it magically solve my problems? No. Does it help? Yes. I am in a much better position to actually address the bad habits and coping mechanisms someone like me builds up over the years. The notable insomnia should wear off over time, and besides, as a person with an existing sleep disorder, having fucked up sleep isn’t new. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.

-----

Anyway. So I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery, because I had to dig them up for my new therapist. Instead of reading the summary, I dug into the raw numbers: the related tests are the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV), and the Weschler Memory Scale III (WMS-III). I couldn’t find sufficient guidance on interpreting the WMS-III, so I’ll stick with the WAIS-IV scores:

At first inspection, these scores do look “fine”. Anything within 10 points of 100 in either direction qualifies as “average”, even if 100 is “the average”. But on further reading, both in the summary and out:

-Examination of these results reveals considerable significant variability between various functional capacities, with VCI of 141 a full 3 standard deviations above PSI of 94.** Problems with both working memory and processing speed impacted her overall IQ considerably, bringing her Full Scale IQ down to 120 (from 133).

-A significant difference among subtest scores can suggest a problem in the particular skill being tested; this might underlie a learning disability. A significant difference among standard Index Scores might also indicate a learning disability, ADHD

-when I see a difference in IQ scores such that the verbal and nonverbal scores are far superior to the processing speed score, I try to discern what could be causing the discrepancy.

-LD diagnoses are also reliant on score discrepancies. On the WAIS, a gifted individual with ADHD may look like this.

Verbal comprehension - 132

Perceptual Reasoning - 129

Processing Speed - 97

Working memory - 101

Absolute scores aren’t the only diagnostic tool. Relative scores are also important. For example, average scores across the board wouldn’t be indicative of a working memory or processing speed issue, whereas great discrepancies between those parameters and others, is - even if the working memory and processing speed scores themselves are the same in both examples. What I’m saying is, it’s right there. It’s in the numbers. There’s no wiggle room. My old therapist saw these numbers, and not only did he choose not to act on the information, he pointedly refused to do so. If he hadn’t retired, I’d look into suing for malpractice. It’s in the god damn numbers, my dude. I don’t care what you want to call it, the deficit is right. there.

What did I ever do to him? Did he just... not believe ADHD is real? More to the point, did he think I somehow, without knowing the ins and outs of the WAIS-IV, faked the deficits or something? Really, guy, what the hell?

-----

Do I feel bad about being slow? Honestly, no. I might have if I found this out 10 years ago, or in circumstances wherein that reality didn’t perfectly explain aspects of my experience that other people have been prone to downplay, or dismiss entirely. Instead, it’s the closest I can get to scientific verification that I’m not just losing my shit over nothing over here; that something has, in fact, gone awry, and may always have been awry. I couldn’t compensate forever (though the ways I’ve done it are many, and in retrospect, interesting) and now I’m on the other end of it, trying to rebuild. I am, as I like to say, building an exoskeleton - something that will hold me up when my brain insists on faceplanting. I’m just grateful there’s someone out there who isn’t too caught up in the semantic navel-gazing of diagnosis, to help.

*There are obvious exceptions here, such as when the two diagnoses have causes whose treatment is contraindicated in the other diagnosis. This is not the case with depression and ADHD.

** You see that Percentile Rank of 34? That means I performed better than 34 percent of people my age, at least according to the test sample. That’s. Not great.

#blah blah blah #twice exceptional #ADHD #depression #mental health

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pass-the-bechdel · 5 years ago

Text

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

41.16%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Seven, so just over half. Three of those are 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-nine. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Not nearly as good as you might expect or hope. As with previous seasons, the show’s most impressive content is not the feminist stuff at all, and on the feminist front it feels sometimes as if the show spends more time denouncing different aspects of the feminist movement as ‘the wrong kind of feminism’ than it does declaring and upholding the aspects it does approve. I tend to feel that it spends time talking the talk on women’s issues, but doesn’t often get up to walk the walk (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Easily better than the previous two seasons, despite a deflated ending. It takes a much more focused approach to its storytelling in the beginning of the season, in a manner which briskly becomes refreshingly confronting and leads in to a powerful middle. Unfortunately, it never sustains quality for very long, and overall the show still suffers for being too easily distracted. It’s not infuriating, but it can be frustrating.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Ok, let me explain something about myself first, something I’ve mentioned in other (non-Crazy Ex) posts which have gone live long before this one will, but for anyone who missed it in any of those other places, here it is: I am, right now, pregnant. In fact, I am pregnant with a child conceived non-traditionally with a gay friend of mine, and as such, Darryl’s non-traditional quest for biological parenthood in this season struck a very personal chord (though, unlike Darryl, I used the phone-a-friend option as my first choice, not a fallback. Would recommend, if it’s ever relevant to your life). I bring all of this up because I can categorically declare that there are certain plot threads that you absolutely will NOT have the same reaction to if you don’t have that very personal chord being struck, and even moreso if that chord is relevant to your life right now, rather than being something that you’ve experienced in the past but has since slipped from the forefront of your attention. Thus, when I talked about feeling like the emphasis was in all the wrong places for Darryl’s part of the narrative, and expressed irritation with Heather’s pregnancy and birth? I sure ain’t mad about it for no reason. I am extremely, extremely aware of what those processes are actually like right the heck now.

I’m not going to linger on all the details, but I am particularly annoyed at the writers for dropping the ball on the pregnancy/birth part, specifically because it’s something which is so often badly dramatised in tv and film already, and the writers not only know that, they openly reference it as if they’re somehow doing better. The same way that medical professionals sometimes find it too frustrating to watch hospital dramas because of all their inaccuracies, or someone in law enforcement might cringe their way through all the egregious breaches in procedure in a cop show, there’s always a significant risk that anything depicted in fiction will make you want to tear your hair out over the way the plot warps or disregards reality that is pertinent to your life, either through a lack of proper research or understanding of the subject matter, or a conscious choice to prioritise desired storytelling beats/developments over actual logic and realism. Suffice to say there are a LOT of concessions Crazy Ex-Girlfriend asked me to make to their storytelling with this little subplot, some of which most people who have never been pregnant wouldn’t notice, and yes, some of which I would probably dismiss if I were not in the midst of the reality right now. I’m someone who has been present at actual births before and has been raised with an above-average understanding of what’s involved, so I’m used to gritting my teeth and hoping to just not be too annoyed by the way pregnancy and birth is typically depicted on screen. The fact that I am currently immersed in the reality of preparing to give birth makes me less forgiving of fictional contrivances, yes, but in the case of this show’s approach, it’s also more than that: it’s the fact that this show actively promotes itself as a feminist text. And if you’re gonna do that, and criticise the way other things (”written by men!”) depict labour, but then you also choose not to include any education/empowerment of your pregnant character, rattle off a variety of (uneducated, disempowered) cliches anyway, and then handwave it all with ‘nevermind, she just got an epidural!’ as if that ‘solves’ the difficulties of birth (and post-birth recovery, for that matter), frankly that’s just...a really unimpressive failure of feminist storytelling. Congratulations, you neglected the subject completely, at the same time as actively claiming your intent to do better than all that written-by-men schlock out there! What a tiresome charade this turned out to be.

Setting that aside though (difficult for me, as I am...very preoccupied with it), there was actually a good lot of things to like about this season, even if I do still feel that I ultimately have more criticisms than I do praise. Having Rebecca actually reach crisis point in the form of a suicide attempt, and consequently getting a diagnosis for her mental disorder and finally being able to move forward in learning to live a balanced life with BPD? Frankly, it’s not a move that I anticipated, and if you’d asked me where I thought Rebecca’s mental health plot was heading, I probably would have just shrugged it off as an unfocused thread where the ultimate goal was just ‘figure out how to be happy on your own terms instead of defining happiness through someone else’ (which is solid advice, but generalised advice, not something that would require the show to commit to a genuine mental illness). Acknowledging that Rebecca’s behaviour comes from a more distinct source than just the nebulous idea of being ‘crazy’ is a vitally important development, and it ushered in some of the best storytelling the show has offered thus far, at least when the plot maintained steady focus and made an effort to be responsible and mature in its exploration of the issue. As ever, there were still times when the show used Rebecca’s mental state for comic relief in a manner which made me uncomfortable, and times when I couldn’t interpret the intentions of the narrative - I have come to the conclusion that this show and I are on completely different wavelengths, which makes us a bad match, regardless of any elements which I do appreciate.

On the subject of things I appreciate, I’m going to discuss the true character highlight of the show, someone I wanted to talk about after last season, not realising that if I held off until this review instead, he was gonna wind up so terribly underused in the meantime that it’s almost weird that he’s still technically part of the main cast at this point: Josh Chan. Josh Chan is...kinda the most believable part of this show, both in the bumbling good-natured balance of the character himself, and in other character’s feelings about him. Being able to buy the idea that someone would give up their whole life as they knew it to chase after this guy is kinda important to selling the concept of the show from the outset, and honestly, Josh Chan is the only time I’ve ever seen a central male love interest for whom the hype seemed to make sense. Is he perfect? Not by a long shot, but that’s fine because ‘perfection’ is as conditional as it is unattainable. The problem with male love interests, often, is that they’re written by heterosexual men who treat the character as some kind of masculine wish-fulfillment, a combination of ‘guy I wish I could be’ and ‘guy I think women should want (me)’. Josh Chan is a great example of a love interest written by women for women: he displays positive masculine-coded traits (protective, physically capable), while rejecting negative, toxic-masculine elements (aggression, possessiveness), and he embraces key ‘feminine’ traits (non-threatening, kind, soft, emotionally expressive, family-oriented), while his flaws are unobtrusive and potentially even endearing (the main one is that he’s quite stupid, which is something a lot of straight women will happily admit to liking (at least in theory), and other traits such as Josh’s childish streak can be a source of joy under some circumstances, as well as being something Josh mostly keeps a hold on so that it doesn’t become a burden to his partners). Also, it would be remiss of me to neglect to mention how refreshing and meaningful it is to have an Asian male love interest. I really enjoy not being bored to death by Josh Chan, and I am annoyed at how little of him we got this season while we wasted time with that generic slice of white bread, Nathaniel. Bring back the Chan plots, season four. Do it for me.

#Crazy Ex-Girlfriend #Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review #Crazy Exgirlfriend

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