#my chronic symptoms get worse like pain and everything anyone who says depression is all in your head is a fucking liar bc that bastard

[oozeclown]

i know its an ongoing mental health joke when your meds actually work for you but i forgot to take them consistently for a while and completely forgot on vacation and then like 3 days of taking them and im doing things and no longer miserable. thanks lexapro

[sordidmusings]

Just a life update and opening!

Brought up because of an ask wondering if I still do stuff here so I figured I'd put out some of whats goin on if anyone is interested! Also throwing it into the void of the internet feels less guilt inducing than forcing it on specific people especially after how overwhelmed folks tend to be cuz I'm bad at metering it out and not just being like 'light jokes about struggle that don't scratch the surface or say anything meaningful' and 'here is all the dark lore' 💀 It's also been a struggle because there really does sometimes feel like theres a whole ass language barrier within your own language when you're AuDHD.

I do still do headcanons and write and draw and yada yada there’s just been quite a bit happening and I’m doing poorly at keeping up with life maintenance let alone things I enjoy 🥴 with writing especially in my hobbies I find myself discouraged in what feels like poor quality of my writing and seeing that reflected back to me because I am Weak 💀 general overview of some of the bigger problems below the cut if you’re interested but I won’t bother y’all with the whole picture! Will be more a summary/overview/alluding to things over getting into gory details. Basically a lot will be covered but I won’t force anything below the broad strokes on y'all.

The end is an ask for people to please reach out if they are struggling so please take that seriously. I offer a space with me but please find wherever in this world you are at least somewhat comfortable and have someone be there with you while you process 🤍 I will have a header above that little piece just incase you'd like to skip to only reading that which is completely fine!

CW for mental health talks, allusions to family issues, references to rape and abuse, death by suicide, and suicidal ideation.

What's Up, Doc?

Between hospitalizations (old and new issues and unfortunate near misses 🤡), my couple jobs (the days my body ain’t tryin to give up and even some days it still is means back to the grindstone. Thank you capitalistic overlords 💀), money stresses (medical debt plus just like y'all know shit ain’t the best for most everyone rn), the spring struggle (nightmares + flashbacks get worse from seasonal + anniversaries of men not caring for consent amongst other things lmaoooo), the mental health slew (diagnosed with AuDHD and most of the big hitters besides a personality disorder), and a few other life happenings and old traumas I’m doing a terrible job at everything 🤡 most of it ain’t new so I know all the proper things to do to help for everything from years of therapy and managing the symptoms and all that but dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s hasn’t been offering any relief for a long while so I’m floundering and quite exhausted.

The health issues making everything difficult and painful ain’t helping but I’m also not being the best at taking care of some of them because Why Bother 💀 Many are issues I’ve had for years that ebb and flow in severity and I’m just tired of feeling them and having to manage them. I’m sure any of you with chronic issues understand the feeling well. Those with years and years of major depressive disorder probably also understand the frustration and exhaustion and guilt with knowing you should enjoy something, you WANT to enjoy it, but your body just can’t produce the reaction it should.

I tend to isolate because I’m managing it poorly enough that the topic tends to crop up with the closer few if they ask and that goes Badly cuz, even if they think they won’t, people get uncomfy with the topics which just makes me feel Worse from guilt and sometimes frustration from it being passed over for their comfort or lack of understanding. I am lucky enough to have more recently found one person who Gets It and a beloved soul from lovely old Jersey came back into my life so the bigger problem in that situation is me allowing myself to consistently receive support from them 🤡 One’s so sweet always telling me I can call any time and the other is of the same vein and my dumbass brain keeps being like “but that would bother them” or the usual “you deserve to get worse not get help” 🤡🤡🤡. Clown ass behavior.

Also some bad coping mechanisms make my typing and communication sloppy as hell and I’m quite ashamed of that so best hide that away while it’s going on 💀 due to insistence that it’s Fine I have forgone that instinct to what feels like very Poor Result 🥴 ah the eternal struggle between needing to be Seen to fight the sense of isolation and worthlessness but also being petrified of being perceived while imperfect. Not having any of the connections really be in person doesn’t help too much with feelings isolation because I don't really have anyone around me besides parents that have literally said "why are you making us deal with this" about the intentional near death miss 💀💀💀 my immediate world feels very much like it wants me gone in explicit and subtle ways but c'est la vie. Beggars can’t be choosers so at this point I’m likely just being ungrateful 🤡

One thing making it harder to keep trying is my folks’ years of insistence that I don’t understand my own experience and I’m just dramatic and make things up. It’s an echo of many painful experiences including a whole group intentionally playing games with my sense of reality to enable their friend’s abuse (they got unconsensual nudes from him out of it so that’s worth the price of treating someone like that right?). Such is life.

One of the new things I’m uncertain how to approach handling properly is the grief and such shifting back to the forefront from the first anniversary of my childhood brother figure being taken from us by his bipolar depression. I have known people taken by suicide before but not this close to home. My childhood wasn’t the happiest but he and his family were a bright place in it. His little sister was my best friend in the whole world through my childhood and their family treated me more like family than my own. He was the best mix of a good and bad influence in an older brother figure I could’ve wished for. He fought long and hard but exhaustion hits us all, sometimes even with proper help. What eternally pains me is knowing how helpless and scared he must have felt and even worse how absolutely alone he felt. That was his last feeling in this life. I can only hope that more than anything, whatever happens next is giving him relief, peace, and rest.

Talk on reaching out below!

On that note, if any of you experience suicidality too, my messages (or ask if you’re more comfy on anon) are always open. This is an issue that’s been in my life in many forms since I was 12, so I will not shy away from you or your thoughts. Even if shared with something uncomfortable or "ugly", I find the discomfort of sitting with someone’s pain negligible in comparison to being the one in pain so why not prioritize that person in their need? It’s also negligible under the importance of truly holding space to process those hurts and stresses instead of just simple little niceties.

I am not the best at being active but if I see any of these messages especially we will truly talk. I know how insanely isolating and disappointing it can feel when someone offers support to be nice and then shoves to the next topic or barely responds because it makes them uncomfortable. It is a bitter pill we must often swallow to forgive those who think they will help for making things worse because they have bit off more than they can chew. It is also a bitter feeling that that reaffirms to us that by our very nature, we are too much to handle and are too much to deal with for sharing our internal space and circumstance. But at the same time, all of us are simply human so who am I to malign someone for making mistakes or being imperfect? So long as someone truly wants to try, there is all the reason in the world to give them grace.

Qualifications kind of???

The one good thing that has come from a lot of the experiences that I’ve gone through is that it has forced perspective on me and forced me to learn skills in holding space, validating, and connecting to others in immense pain. No one is perfect in this skill (even therapists struggle - the number who have said they don’t know where to start untangling the traumas or who have cried at it and in turn needed comfort 💀 a strange experience I know my darling at least gets too lol) but I have found in both giving and receiving that honesty and openness is W A Y more important than being perfect.

This is something I’ve watched more people struggle with than not as life circumstances has not made it so that they must learn the skill at the same time that there are resources to learn it, so I may make more posts with advice for it than the bit I go through here. I’m not a licensed therapist so this isn’t going to be a clinical breakdown of how to be someone’s therapist but I would consider my experience as a confidant, consistent reading up on psychological and related sociological research, and experience going through various forms of therapy worthy of giving solid advice. Unfortunately, co-morbidities and resistant brain chemistry really make using the skills on myself Difficult 💀 but as brief examples of experience for validity speaking on this, I’ve been to a lot of group therapy where licensed therapists literally coach you on this, guided a safe space/group for SA survivors in college, coached friends who couldn’t afford therapy through suicidality or abusive situations, and coached survivors through feelings and decisions when deciding whether or not to charge or going through the process of charging their abuser. All of which is much easier to be effective to people you know irl but the support online can be nothing to snub your nose at either. None of this is to say I'm perfect or exceptional - neither is true - just that I’ve had circumstances and experiences that afford me a bit of extra knowledge in this.

In the vast majority of cases, someone who is struggling and coming to you for help wants you to be there - your thoughts, your feelings, your perspective. They don’t want someone sitting uncomfortably and saying the occasional “sorry” they want engagement because more than anything they don’t want to be alone. In a basic example, if you find yourself freezing when someone comes to you with something you don’t know how to handle, instead of saying nothing or only short cliches due to fear of making a mistake, be honest about that. “I’m not sure what to say right now to be honest because that’s so much to deal with. I can’t imagine having to live with that all the time. Is there anything in it frustrating you the most or that you’re having the most difficulty tackling?”. This is active listening and engagement. You are being honest with where you are at so they aren’t guessing what you’re thinking, you are showing that you see how overwhelming the situation is, especially for the person who has to live with it. If you can’t handle a conversation where these issues exist, how do you think it feels to live with them day in and day out, sometimes for years or the majority of a life?

Asking questions is SUPER important too. Trust the other person to only share what they are comfortable with and don’t assume all questions are bad. Asking questions is one of the truest and simplest ways to show you care because why would you want to know more if you don’t give a shit? Asking questions is also very helpful and one of the reasons talking to others about your issues is important - it gives the person struggling something to react to and give perspective. It helps them process the issue in ways they won’t be able to do by themselves. This may make the process sound slightly manufactured but I promise it’s not, especially as it becomes second nature to know what thing to use when. Communication is a skill so advice around it will inherently make it sound more clinical than the actual process is.

People are also not a monolith so while this type of being there works for the vast majority some people may not like it. That is also where communication comes in - check in with the person on if this is helping and what isn't helpful. Make sure to adjust when you make a mistake.

Conclusion

I’m happy to hold space for other issues as well. I’m no replacement for a therapist but I’ve been a helpful supplement to many people I knew struggling throughout the years so I’m at least okay at that! Since I’m doing pretty bad functionally right now the help won’t be as consistent as I wish but I will give whatever is in my power just like these things deserve. I hope to get better soon so that I can properly offer a stronger foundation of support outward again 🤍

[shego1142]

Okay so… can someone explain doctors to me like I’m a very small very scared and very hurt child?

So like… I was 11 or 12 when my family lost what I would call our “good insurance” and we had to switch to the “doctors suddenly don’t care about you” insurance due to my dad becoming disabled and us no longer having a two person income household.

We switched from me seeing a group of caring children’s doctors to me seeing an adult’s general practitioner that only saw me about once a year or less, and largely dismissed every issue I had.

I began getting migraines at 10 that increased in frequency and severity and I was told it was “because I’d start my period soon”

I had an eye test done that came back with concerning spots of missing vision in my peripheral when I was about 13 or so and I was entirely dismissed, but the doctor did ask me if I wanted to be institutionalised when I tried to quietly and privately ask about depression symptoms.

To which I began crying btw, you know, because I was a 13 year old undiagnosed autistic child.

I saw this group of doctors for things like school vaccinations, about once a year or less, ans largely I didn’t see them for anything else and I got used to hiding my symptoms and illnesses.

When I was 16 my stomach began hurting so bad in a radial pain, I went to them 3 times in the span of two weeks, telling them that I swore my stomach was hurting horribly, like real pain not just acid reflux. They prescribed omeprazole, an acid reflux medicine, and nothing else. They refused to order any tests.

I got to where I was in so much pain, crying and pulling my hair out, I felt like i couldn’t breathe and I woke my mom up and begged her to take me to the hospital because I thought I was dying at 16. And I probably would’ve, because my gallbladder would have ruptured. I ended up having to have emergency surgery, also I threw up on the hospital nurse and was so apologetic for being sick that she almost cried.

When I was 20 something I wanted to talk to those same doctors about my migraines, they’d gotten even worse than before and that is saying a lot. The same doctor who didn’t bother to check if I was having a medical emergency when my gallbladder was shutting down straight up just told me I was lying for medicine, without even looking at any of my tests prior, and yelled at me and tried to take my cane, which had become something I found really helped with all the pain I felt, away from me.

I didn’t even ask about a pain medication, I was asking about migraine preventatives.

I left that doctor’s office that I had gone to since I was 12 and never went back.

Anyway, nowadays, the closest doctor’s clinic keeps telling me that I can’t have a physical check up if there’s something specific I want the doctor to see me about?

And I have multiple chronic conditions, so there’s literally always something specific that needs to be addressed, but then it’s like they only want to focus on one thing, when it’s multiple issues that need attention?

Like… how tf do you find a doctor that can really help? How do you even start?

Also, the doctor’s office closest to me refuses to let anyone go with me, which is terrifying given that I’ve been yelled at by doctors for asking questions??

They basically always try to convince me that it’ll be just fine but then, due to my slow processing process speed because you know, autism, a day or two after the fact ill realise that them saying:

“Idk, you might have pcos, call us in four months!”

Is probably not the best way to talk to a patient…

I just… I don’t know what to do or how to get a good doctor, and I thought your general practitioner was the one who was supposed to have a general idea regarding everything that’s going on with your health, like you know, be informed of it, and then they would be able to recommend other doctors who can help you with the specific issues.

It seems to me that general practitioner means that you shouldn’t bring up anything worse than a cough or a sore throat or they get mad at you.

Idk… I just woke up today with a lot of pain and I think what is neuropathy (my arms keep going numb I’m assuming that’s what is causing it) and I just… wish I could find a doctor who actually understands what is happening and gives a damn…

I live in North Georgia, and I’m more than willing to travel… if anyone out there knows of a doctor or something… let me know

[thetravelerwrites]

Drigka (Orc)

Rating: Explicit Relationship: Male Orc/Female Human Additional Tags: Exophilia, Monster Boyfriend, Orc, Orc Boyfriend Content Warning: Psoriasis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Disabled Character, Chronic Illness, Skin Condition, Physical Illness, Depression Words: 4183

Commissioned by @acahope311​​! A young woman in college breaks up with her boyfriend after his callous attitude toward her medical condition, she suddenly reunites with him years later. Please leave feedback!

Drigka had been your highschool sweetheart. The two of you had grown up together in the same small town and started dating in eighth grade. The puppy love the two of you had fostered over the course of your childhood turned into real love as you blossomed into adults. He was everything you could have ever hoped for in a partner. He was perfect. Everything was perfect.

Then, halfway into your second year of college, you got sick. At first, it was just a case of strep throat, but it didn’t explain the sudden rashes that developed on your body a few weeks later. The doctors simply thought it was stress from college causing hives, but after a few months, the symptoms got worse, becoming more like scales rather than human flesh, making you extremely self-conscious. Before, your weight had always made you feel very self aware, but you thought you wouldn’t complain about being overweight for the rest of your life if this skin condition would just go away.

It took almost a year and several rounds of testing to be diagnosed with plaque psoriasis. Then, you began having stiffness in your joints, pain when you walked, and constant aches all over. Another battery of tests revealed that your condition had the potential to evolve into psoriatic arthritis, and there wasn’t a cure for either condition.

You started on preventative anti-inflammatory medications and considered going on immuno-suppressants as well, with talks of the possibility of joint replacements in the future if treatments didn’t work. The entire ordeal put you in a deep depression and it was all you could do to complete the semester.

Drigka tried being supportive, but it was clear he couldn’t relate to you anymore. He had never been sick nor had he ever known anyone who had been sick, and as such, had no idea how to help you or what to do about it. Well, neither did you, but you didn’t have a choice in the matter.

A few months after the diagnosis, you could feel him pulling away. He didn’t take you out on dates anymore, whereas before he had always made it a point to make time for you, regardless of how busy he might have been. He stayed at work later, and started taking more overtime. He began screening your calls and leaving you on read. It made you feel even more anxious when he made excuses not to see you, and made your depression worse.

You were pretty sure he wanted to break up, as much as the thought hurt. You were getting tired of the anxiety of wondering when he would finally drop the bomb, and of him tiptoeing around you like you were made of glass, so eventually you decided to confront him.

It was then that he broke your heart.

He hadn’t meant to say it; it slipped out of his mouth in the heat of the moment during the ensuing fight, but once he said it, there was no taking it back.

“Look, I deserve to know if you’re going to break up with me!” You told him. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you, I’ve been busy!” He retorted, though he wasn’t looking you in the eye, and instead was focused on his work. “I’m not going to break up with you, will you stop being paranoid?”

“I’m not being paranoid!” You insisted, pulling the papers he was going over from his hands, making him look up at you angrily. He tried to reach for them but you held them away. “I’ve known you my whole life, Drigka. I know when you’re losing interest in something. Maybe you don’t want to admit it to yourself, but at least be honest with me.”

“I am being honest!” He said, standing abruptly. “Look, we’ve both just been stressed out, okay? I’m not losing interest. Do you want me to break up with you?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Then why are you harping on this?” He snatched his papers back out of your hands and sat back down. “I’m trying to get my work done, my thesis paper is due. Just leave me be for a while.”

“You asked me to come over, Drigka,” You reminded him in frustration. “You told me we were going to talk about things. But you’ve been ignoring me since I got here.”

“Because you don’t want to talk, you want to fight,” Drigka said dismissively, sitting back down at his desk.

“That’s not true! I wouldn’t be fighting with you if you’d actually sit down and have a conversation with me!”

“What do you want from me?” He shouted back. “I have my own life! I have my own problems! I can’t drop everything I’ve got going on to take care of you!”

“I’m not asking you to!” You shot back. “I’m just asking you to stop pretending everything is fine and ducking around me like I’m contagious! Acting like nothing is wrong is just making the problem worse!”

“Then you’re doing that on your own, because I don’t have a problem!” Drigka said, glaring at his work.

You sighed explosively. “If I’d known you were going to behave like this, I wouldn’t have come.”

He snorted derisively without looking up.“And if I’d known you were going to get sick and make that your whole life, I wouldn’t have asked you out in the first place.”

Your mouth fell open in shock and you actually stumbled backward, feeling as if you’d been stabbed in the gut. Tears prickled your eyes and you couldn’t find your voice. In the silence, he looked up and saw your face and sighed.

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry, okay? Can we just--”

He stood up and reached for you, as if you hug you, but you darted out of his grasp. You shook your head slowly at him, the tears rolling down your face, and you backed away.

“I didn’t get sick on purpose, Drigka,” You said softly. “This isn’t something I’m doing to you.”

“No, I know that--”

“Am I inconvenient?” You asked him in a venomous undertone. “Are my health problems an inconvenience to you, Drigka? Is me being sick and sad a bother?”

“Babe, I said I was sorry--” He said impatiently. He reached again, and you ducked him.

“Don’t touch me,” You spat.

“I’m trying to apologize,” He said, folding his arms, a scowl on his face. “Calm down for a second and listen to me.”

“You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for, do you? You just want me to stop being mad at you. Let me save you the trouble and save myself from the headache of waiting for you to do it: I’m breaking up with you.”

“What?” Drigka said, scoffing. “Seriously? Just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that,” You said, folding your arms over your chest.

He looked at you incredulously. “So ten years of dating means nothing to you? Twenty years of being friends? Just because you’re mad?”

“When did I ever say it didn’t mean anything to me?!” You retorted. “The problem isn’t even that you don’t understand, it’s that you’re not even trying to understand! Maybe it’s best we don’t talk again until you do.” You turned and walked toward the door.

“So you’re shutting me out? Completely?” Drigka said in disbelief. “You’re not even giving me a chance?”

“I gave you plenty of chances, Drigka,” You said. “Every time I asked to spend time with you and you made an excuse, every time I ignored my pain to listen to all of your troubles, every time I expected a shred of concern from you but all I got was disinterest and disappointment, those were your chances. It’s not my fault you failed.” You turned back to look at his furious face for a final time. “Admit it: you’re not mad that I broke up with you. You’re mad you didn’t do it first.”

And then you left.

The first few months after the breakup were hard, especially because he kept texting and calling. He vacillated between being hostile and apologetic, insisting that you were overreacting and if you’d just listen to him, he could explain. Eventually, you blocked his number and deleted him from all your social media. It was when you made plans to transfer to another school in another state that he finally got the message.

What he’d said hadn’t just hurt you, it made you feel like a burden; like getting sick hadn’t just ruined your life, but his life as well. You felt guilty and ashamed of yourself, even though you knew it was just something that happened and wasn’t really anyone’s fault. There was no one to blame, but there was an instinct to try and blame someone, and it was easiest to blame yourself. Drigka’s words made that blame seem justified.

Six years had passed since the two of you split, and you had settled as well as you could into life after college and in a new town. You’re symptoms were well managed and you hadn’t yet developed any severe arthritis problems, and the doctors were optimistic about your long term prognosis. The new medications and therapy was working wonders. You still had flare-ups and days of fatigue, but you were doing better than you could have hoped.

You were working in a forensic accounting firm and the boss was understanding about your condition, letting you work from home on days when you felt like going into the office would be too difficult. He suffered from Crohn’s Disease himself, so he was intimately familiar with how sudden chronic illnesses could strike. You felt extremely fortunate to find this position; you’d had a few jobs before this that weren’t quite as understanding, and it was extremely disheartening to hear your boss and coworkers dismissing your condition as not a big deal.

You still thought of Drigka from time to time. He had been your best friend since you were babies and your first love. You hadn’t dated anyone since breaking up with him, partly because you’d been too busy, and partly because… well… what he’d said stuck with you. What if the next person thought your condition was a burden, too? Those words had echoed in your heart and mind ever since and it always made you feel like garbage. You didn’t know if you could handle hearing it a second time.

About a month after starting your new job, your boss called you into his office.

“Ah, I’m glad you’re here,” Mr. Bronston said, looking up. “A representative from the car dealership will be here with the internal accounts. He thinks someone in his team has been embezzling money and needs someone to do the forensics. Are you up for that?”

“Of course,” You said immediately, taking the invoice from him and scanning it. “Do they have a suspect yet?”

“No, but their books definitely aren’t adding up. There’s a deficit of about three hundred thousand.”

Your head rocked back in shock. “Whoa.”

“They’ve been taking small amounts over a long period of time, so it must be one of the senior associates.”

“So not the representative, then? Didn’t you say he was a new employee?”

“Yep, he was hired a few months ago. He’s actually the one who caught the discrepancies.” A knock on the door interrupted him. “That’s probably him now.”

Mr. Bronston walked to the door and opened it, and your heart dropped into your shoes.

He looked different than when you last saw him, but you’d have recognized him no matter what he wore or how he presented himself. The familiar orc man standing at the door was wearing a fitted grey suit rather than his normal jeans and t-shirt. His long hair, which he’d normally let fall free back in college, was pulled tight and braided elegantly behind his back. His face, which paled with shock when he saw you, was just as handsome as it had always been.

You felt as if you’d been punched in the gut. Seeing him now when you’d just found your stride was nothing short of infuriating.

“Hello, Drigka,” You said with a frustrated sigh, staring at him dryly.

“...hi,” He replied in a small, startled voice.

Mr. Bronston looked between the two of you in surprise. “Do you know each other?”

“...we dated,” You told him flatly.

“Oh,” Your boss said, frowning. “Do you need me to take you off this account?”

You sighed and contemplated saying yes, but this was the first big case you’d been assigned. This would be a perfect opportunity to show Mr. Bronston how professional you could be.

“No, it’s fine,” You said. “As long as he can keep personal matters out of it, I have no problems working on the account with him.”

“If you’re sure,” Mr. Bronston said, putting a hand on your shoulder sympathetically. “But if you change your mind, do tell me.”

“Yes, sir,” You said, smiling gratefully at him. Mr. Bronston was a fatherly type and you felt thankful for his generosity. You turned to Drigka and the smile faded. “Do you have the records with you?”

Drigka jumped as if goosed and motioned to his briefcase. “Yes, I have them here.”

“Then let’s go over them in my office,” You said, not looking forward to spending time with him alone. “If you’ll follow me.”

Drigka gulped but trailed behind you as you walked back to your office. You could feel his eyes on you, boring a hole in the back of your head. You opened the door and stepped aside to let him in.

“Now, show me the discrepancies you found and I’ll start on the framework.”

“Uh… yeah, sure,” He said, sitting on the chair across from your desk and opening his briefcase. “Several vehicles have been sold for a few hundred dollars less than the asking price, but several customers have told us that they are paying the full amount without discounts, so the money has gone somewhere and we can’t find it. The problem is we can’t pinpoint it to one individual, since the cars were all sold by different salespeople.”

“Could multiple people be at fault?”

“I certainly hope not. It would mean that everyone at the dealership is involved,” Drigka said, frowning.

“Unlikely, but it could be one or two, or possibly a team,” You said, rifling through the papers. “Did they have an internal accountant before you were hired?”

“No, one of the salespeople was handling the books.That’s part of the problem, the accounts were a mess. I had to call every single person who bought a car from that lot in the last five years to get accurate details.” He grimaced and sighed. “It was a nightmare.”

“Okay, well, I’ll start making a spreadsheet,” You said, laying the papers out in order. “It won’t take long, I’m a fast typer.”

“I remember,” He said with a slight smile.

As you worked, he sat quietly, but you couldn’t help noticing how he kept looking at you surreptitiously.

“How are you?” He asked after a few minutes.

You paused and looked at him over your glasses. “Fine,” You answered shortly.

“How’s your condition been?”

“Managed.”

“Do you--”

“Drigka,” You said curtly. “I don’t want to talk about personal matters at work.”

He nodded diffidently. “Right, of course.” He placed his elbows against the edge of your desk, clasping and unclasping his fingers. “I don’t supposed I could persuade you to have dinner with me tomorrow evening, for old time’s sake?”

“No,” You said, concentrating on your work and not looking at him. “I have a full day tomorrow and I won’t have the energy for dinner.”

“Do they pile on the workload here?” He asked, attempting a casual smile.

“No,” You replied, glancing at him. “I have physical therapy and a dermatology procedure scheduled tomorrow.”

“Oh, I see,” He replied. “Do you still not drive?”

“It’s not that I don’t drive, it’s that I don’t see the point of owning a car when I can walk to work and the grocery store just fine.”

“Isn’t it bad for you to walk with pre-arthritis?”

“It can be if I’m not careful, but I take precautions.”

“I could drive you,” He said. “To your appointments. I don’t mind.”

“I’ve already got the ride-share service booked.”

“Cancel it.”

“It’ll be all day.”

“I’m fine with that.”

Your hands stopped typing and glared at Drigka. “Why are you doing this?”

“I just… I just wanted to talk. And apologize. You said we shouldn’t talk again until I understood why I was saying sorry. I think I understand now.”

“Really?” You said, folding your arms doubtfully. “And why is that?”

He sighed heavily. “About two years after we broke up, I contracted Mono. The kissing disease, you know? I got a pretty severe case: in addition to the normal symptoms, I also got rashes and an enlarged liver. My throat hurt so bad that I didn’t eat and I lost a bunch of weight. It lasted for months. I felt like I was going to die, but everyone around me laughed at me and asked me why I was making such a big deal about such a normal illness and told me to suck it up and get over myself. My boss actually got angry and fired me because he accused me of using the illness to slack off.” He looked at you with a contrite expression. “I thought of you and I wondered, ‘Is this what I sounded like? Was I this callous? It’s no wonder she was so mad at me.’ I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t know how to get ahold of you anymore.”

“So you got something like the flu and now you think you understand?” You said brusquely.

He shook his head. “No, I know I don’t. But I do know it’s hard to live a normal life or be happy when no one is understanding to your struggles. I do get that part now. And I’m sorry for what I said. It was stupid and selfish and it never should have even crossed my mind, let alone come out of my mouth. It was a shitty thing to do to my best friend and the woman I loved. And I’m really, really sorry.”

With your arms still folded, you sat back in your chair. “Just because you apologized doesn’t mean I have to forgive you.”

“I know,” He replied.

You chewed the inside of you lip pensively. “I have to be at physical therapy at nine in the morning, and the dermatologist’s office at eleven. Is that fine with you?”

He perked up. “Yeah, sure. What procedure are you having done?”

“I’m having a pre-cancerous mole removed.”

“Ah, I see,” He replied. “Skin cancer is more likely for psoriasis sufferers because of the chronic inflammation.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read some literature about it.”

“Hmm,” You unfolded your arms and started typing again. “Can we get back to work now?”

“Yeah, of course,” He replied, seemingly more comfortable.

The next day, he arrived at your apartment with a light breakfast and a smile. It reminded you of the early days of your relationship with him and you smiled in reminiscence.

Physical therapy started with massaging lotion into your skin before doing various exercises to keep your joints loose. Drigka sat patiently in the waiting room until you were done, and then took you to the dermatology office. He went with you into the examination room and even held your hand while they numbed the affected area with a local anesthetic and removed the mold, sending it off to be biopsied. It was just after lunchtime by the time it was done.

“Are you hungry?” He asked. “You only had a small breakfast. We can drop off your prescription at the pharmacy and get some lunch, if you’d like.”

“Sure,” You said. “Although, I don’t know many places yet. I just moved here a month ago.”

“Really?” He said with a smile. “I’ve been here for about a year. It’s amazing we haven’t run into each other yet.”

You snorted. “In a city this size? I doubt we’d have run into each other if we’d lived here our whole lives.”

He laughed. “Do you still like Thai food? There’s a really good place nearby that I think you’ll like. I’m a regular there.”

Your brows furrowed. “But you don’t really like Thai food.”

He shrugged and side-smiled. “Yeah, but since it was your favorite, it reminded me of you, so I developed a taste for it.”

You smiled softly to yourself. You almost forgot how sweet he’d been to you when you were together.

Lunch was delicious, and the two of you sat there for what seemed like hours, catching up on what had been happening these last six years and reminiscing about the past. At some point you realized his hand was covering yours. He went silent and stared at the table.

“I’ve missed you,” He said softly. “I regret the way I treated you after you were diagnosed. I was an idiot and I took you for granted and I’ll never forgive myself for that.” He looked up at you. “I’m not arrogant enough to ask for your forgiveness, or even for a second chance to be with you, but… can we be friends again?”

You sighed and linked your fingers with him. “Friends sounds nice, but you’re going to have to earn it. At least another thirty lunches. Maybe even delivery on demand.”

He grinned widely. “Deal.”

He’d been incredibly supportive and caring in the weeks after you’d reconnected, buying you expensive specialty lotions and giving you massages, reigniting your desire for him. Whether he was doing it with that intent in mind, you weren’t sure, but you were enjoying the attention all the same.

It was a month later when you kissed him again. The two of you were celebrating closing the embezzlement case: it had been a team of three salespeople working together to skim money from the company, and they were all fired. You’d earned a huge commission for closing the case and you treated him to dinner for the first time. When he escorted you home, you kissed his lips, surprising him.

“Do you want to come in?” You asked him.

“Very much,” He replied, pulling off his tie as he crossed the threshold into your apartment.

The two of you shed your clothes as you made your way to the bedroom. He laughed when he looked at your bed.

“You still have that awful cheetah print comforter,” He said, grinning.

“It was a gift,” You said, pulling his hair out of it’s glossy braid. “And it’s comfy and warm. It’d be a waste to get rid of it just because it’s a little ugly.”

He snorted and kissed you again, lifting you up and wrapping your legs around his waist. He entered you while holding you up, then eased onto the bed while inside you. He lay you down on the pillows and began to thrust, moving in that circular way that he knew you liked. No one knew you like he did. You reached up and touched his nipples, circling and flicking them with your fingertips, and he groaned. You dug your heels into his ass to encourage him to speed up, and he obliged, smacking his body into yours.

“I missed you, too,” You told him. You’d been careful never to talk about your relationship in the past with him or your feelings toward him after the breakup, but it felt right to do it now. “I never forgot you. I was angry, but I still loved you. I’ll always love you.”

“Oh, honey,” He breathed against the skin of your collarbone. “I love you so much.”

He thrust hard and fast, and you could feel him pulsing inside you, close to his peak. You cried out as the wave of pleasure hit you and your body tensed all over. He grunted, thrust three times, and stopped, his hips jerking, groaning with each spasm, before growing still, perched up on his hands while still inside. Slowly, he lowered his body on top of yours.

“I love you,” He said again, though it was sleepy-sounding and slightly muffled as his mouth was squished sideways on your chest.

You laughed softly through your nose. “I love you, too, Drigka.”

He picked himself up with a grunt and looked down at your face. “Does this mean we can start over?”

You nodded. “Yeah. If you want to.”

“I want to,” He said. “All I’ve thought about for these last six years was seeing you again. I won’t make the same mistakes I made.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay. But you still have a lot of forgiveness to earn, you know.”

He smiled at you fondly. “Whatever you wish, honey. You’re stuck with me.”

Since my work is no longer searchable, please do me a favor and reblog this story if you enjoyed it. Help me reach a wider audience! To help me continue creating, please consider becoming a Patron or donating directly to my PayPal!

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My Masterlist

The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

[celeste-clearwater-06]

Hello! I was wondering if you could please write something about how the Fellowship (+ Thorin?) Would help a s/o who's Disabled and Chronically ill. Like she has a lot of symptoms like chronic pain, chronic fatigue, difficulty sleeping, difficulty breathing at times, difficulty walking at times, higher sensitivity to the cold, difficulty talking at times, and anxiety, depression and executive dysfunction?

I've been really struggling with my chronic illnesses lately, namely my Autism, Anxiety, Sleep Apnea, a really bad Overbite, Raynaud's Syndrome, Asthma, etc, so I'd really appreciate an Imagine like this. I have a really weird disorder where one of my legs is longer than the other, and it's been causing me a lot of pain and difficulty walking lately, and people have been bullying me for it a lot too, so I could really use a Comfort Imagine right now. Thanks so much hun!!

It's no problem! I'm glad I can provide some comfort!! For each character, I'll use a specific struggling area, to make it a bit easier!! I hope I got these accurate enough, and of there are any mistakes, feel free to point them out!! You are strong, beautiful and so, so amazing!! Keep being you!! ❤❤

Help (The Fellowship// Thorin x Fem!Reader)

Aragorn (Autism)

Aragorn has known you for a long time, so helping with your autism is not new for him

He's particularly experienced in reading your emotions and meeting your needs, whether it's helping you out of stressful situations or calming you down, he's there 🥺

If there are large and boisterous gatherings in Rivendell, its almost guaranteed that you can become over-stimulated quickly, and Aragorn immediately senses this (spidey senses õoõ)

He's fast to find your hand and give it a gentle squeeze of reassurance

If that doesn't seem to help, he'll instantly stop what he's doing and take you out of the room

If you're someone who prefers lots of space and little physical contact, he is 100% respectful of this and asks if you'll let him touch or hug you (very much gentleman 😌)

If ever you're confronted by someone of importance, Aragorn is right by your side to ease some of the tension

Sometimes there are things you find difficult to say or get out of your system

The king seems to know exactly what it is and will help you out by saying it or asking you simple questions that you can easily answer

And he always reminds you, no matter WHAT

YOU ARE NOT STUPID 😤😡

You may struggle with some parts of your life, but every day, he's constantly telling you that you're very intelligent and kind

His patience is unending and he'll never let you think down on yourself

Overall, Aragorn is always someone and reminding you that it's all going to be okay ❤❤

Legolas (Anxiety)

Most nights, Legolas keeps watch (since elves don't require much sleep) and notices that you jolt awake out of the random

Now, most of the Fellowship notices that you're usually awake and ready to go before anyone else

But Legolas is really the one to address you first

You were a bit nervous to explain, since you didn't want to worry him or the great of the fellowship, amount the other disadvantages you have

He gently encouraged you, and finally, you explained to him your sleep apnea

Yeah, he was very concerned

I mean, his blue eyes widened with terror when you told him that you could basically die in your sleep if you weren't attentive enough 🙃

Legolas, from now on, sleeps directly next to you, or keeps extra careful watch over you at night

Because he could NEVER see his precious mortal friend become injured... Or worse 🥺🥺❤

The other members had noticed a change in his behaviors towards you as well...

Gimli teased him whenever he caught Legolas giving you some extra lembas bread or offered to carry you 👉👈

You really tried to assure Legolas that it wasn't a big deal when you were awake, since you're aware of your breathing situation

But still 😤

Legolas will always bring you comfort and take great care of you, and that will NEVER CHANGE

Because he loves you very much ❤🦋

Frodo (Anxiety)

Frodo is familiar with the feeling of great anxiety, seeing he had a stress-free life while living in the Shire and suddenly was forced to carry a piece of jewelry all the way to giant ass volcano

It's easy for you two to comfort each other and seek refuge in thoughts and feelings ❤

He's not super comfortable with the thought of you having a panic attack though...

Only because he's never had one

It starts to give him a panic attack whenever you have one around him the first time 😳-

Any time you begin to breathe heavy or hyperventilate, halfling boy is hot at your heels, rubbing your back and reminding you to breathe gently

(So many hugs, if you're up for it)

After you calm down, he's constantly checking on you, asking if you need anything etc.

Really, he just wants to know if he can help 🥺

And even with the weight and stress of carrying the ring, Frodo manages to cheer you up somehow

Samwise (Asthma)

Sam has never had to deal with asthma once in his life

He's very nervous when the subject is brought, afraid it might trigger something inside of you 🥺👉👈

But you just chuckle, assure him that it's alright, and you have ways of keeping it under control

And now, he wants to know everything about it, just to have the awareness in case something happens

Sam just wants to protect you forever, and this was a great way for him to start

He constantly reminds Aragorn that you'll need breathing breaks and will convince Gandalf to let you ride on his horse

He'll scold Pip and Merry if they are trying to drag you around and be silly, because as he says

"You'll rouse him/her/them up! We can't have Y/N gettin injured!" 🤨😠

Sam is MOM

As always, he's very kind and always makes sure your needs are met ❤🥺

Pippin and Merry (Raynaud's Syndrome)

Very confused halfings 🤔

Also extremely concerned!

You were eating one of the lesser pleasurable nights

It was cold and rainy, and a fire couldn't be started, not to mention the quiet arguments of Aragorn and Gandalf in the nearby woods

And Pip's eyes widened when he saw the tips of your petite fingers begin to pale upon hearing Aragorn mention Orcs

"What's wrong with your hands?!" He squeaked, pointing towards your now white-colored fingertips

You hadn't even noticed, nor felt, considering they were numb anyways

Merry looked over his cousin's shoulder and his eyes also widened, not with fright, but wonder

They were both fascinated with your condition, convinced that you were casting some spell Gandalf showed you

Although you reassured them it was just an extremely frustrating inconvenience that you had, among other things

So from then on, the disastrobus duo did their best to keep you out of the cold (and stressful situations!!)

As a distraction, the pair will tell you great stories of the shire, doing little dances and skits that always cheer you up 🥴

Sometimes, they can be a little rambunctious though...

Merry will pick up on this fact quickly, and nudge Pippin to get him to calm down

Even though it may not feel the best

They find your syndrome absolutely fascinating!! 🤔🤔

All in all, these two are always up for keeping your beautiful smile on your face and your spirits high!! ❤🌺

Boromir (Depression)

Throughout the journey, Boromir has always found an easy way to make you smile

After all, he himself has a fascinating way of brightening anyone's spirits

Yours included ❤

Boromir may not have great stories from The Shire, like Pip and Merry, but he sure has a lot of positive things to say

He'll often suggest sparring with the two troublemaking halflings, just so you can see him goof up and get knocked over 🥺

If the nights become cold and weary, he'll give you a warm hug or a nudge on the shoulder

And a few words of helpful encouragement along the lines of;

"Don't fret Y/N. You have more strength than you'll ever know."

"Let our spirits never dampen! We've come this far!" 😊

He's also an incredible listener

Boromir wants to hear what you have to say if you ever need to rant or get something off of your chest

And don't think for a second that he would ever judge you 😤

Son of Gondor sees past all of your insecurities and knows you for your beautiful, amazing self ❤❤

Gimli (Walking disadvantages)

As you travel across great plains and mountains, your limp doesn't go unnoticed by Gimli

It may take him a while to open up about it, since he's afraid he might offend you in some way

And once he asks you, you inform him that it's a difficulty that unfortunately cannot be changed any time soon

And where you come from, lots of people tease and bully you about it

He did NOT handle it well 😳

"wHAT BLUBBERING DULL-MINDED PIGNUTS-" 🤬

Although this Dwarf is short and a bit slow at times

He's fascinatingly strong 😳

And so, he makes it his duty to be your designated carrier 🥺

At first, your a tad skeptical...

I mean, he's only around 4 feet tall...

BUT HAVE YOU SEEN HIM THROW THAT HUGE AX AROUND?!

Gimli will happily carry you great distances when you need a break, and even longer

(Sometimes it's just to show off around the others-)

"Gimli, are you sure you don't want a break?"

"Aye lass! The strength of Dwarves is unending!" 😌

*struggling to breathe*

11/10, fantastic dwarf, will never let you down!!

Thorin (Executive Dysfunction)

Another Dwarf??

Absolutely

Thorin himself has trouble keeping composure with his time management (and sense of direction 🙄)

This means that he'll have an undying amount of patience for you and you only

There's just something about you that he fond of, and it fills in that little sassy, brooding place in his heart

Can also relate to you whenever you grow frustrated at the setback of your journey or lack of sleep

Is 100% willing to help you find your lost belongings (and once again, ONLY YOU)

Thorin will literally make the whole traveling party stop so that you can put something in your bag and make sure that you put it somewhere you'll remember

Always happy to give you extra gentle reminders of keeping your pack closed

The company is utterly SHOCKED with how he treats you

I mean, this man has always been extremely stubborn and hard headed

But when you show up, it's another person he can easily relate and share frustrations with

Also a master at organization?!? 🤔

The one thing he could do successfully was organizing the damn journey and traveling company, so ofc he's gonna be good at that 😂

Yeah, Thorin definitely has a soft spot for you

King under the mountain will never run out of patience and kindness for you 😌💙

Sorry these took so long!! I hope you like them!! ❤❤

[furiousgoldfish]

I haven't been writing a lot lately because my recovery has been taking a wild turn and in lack of anyone to talk to or therapy, I'll be writing about it here! I'll put it under a cut. There are some descriptions of recovery going very wrong, and also explanations of things I was wrong about.

So since the pandemic started I've been deteriorating badly, first I've been processing trauma extensively, having intense breakdowns and gradually it turned into depression from lack of stimulation, I've been completely alone for months without speaking to, or seeing anyone. I thought it was the isolation getting to me, and decided I just need to endure that, indulge in whatever coping I could and wait for it to end. And then things got worse.

Even as normally I was seeing some very slow progress in recovery; now it was going backwards; I was having less and less ability to get anything done, I wasn't able to force myself to do my job for months, I kept getting stuck in bed for weeks, chronic pain got so bad I couldn't move on most days. And, it only kept going worse.

My breakdowns stared to be about the present instead of the past; I couldn't handle being in pain all the time. As in before I would recover from a breakdown within a day or two, now it took 4 days to a week, and the trauma episodes would last for hours, so intense I'd find myself hoping I would die during it.

And then, I started losing all mobility and this seriously freaked me out. Everything above I've already experienced before, without long term consequences, but now my body was losing function in a way that felt permanent; I could no longer move for more than few minutes, and without extensive pain. Sometimes I would try to get up and end up collapsing and screaming from how much it hurt, I would move my arm and my whole body would experience a shock of intense pain. I was scared, I no longer knew what was going on, I was suspecting something more than ptsd was wrong. I've forced myself into physical activity, trying to fight this, I tried stretching, exercising, running, punching, and every single one of these activities made it incredibly worse. I thought I had broken my body by laying down too much. I no longer felt anything but terror and dread, and kept spiralling into scenarios of my own death; it felt inevitable, I wasn't going to survive without ability to move, nobody would take care of me.

I tried out medicine that helps relaxing, it had minimal effect. Then, in desperation to check if this was all ptsd, I attempted self harm, to see if it erases the pain. It did. It lowered the pain significantly It was a big relief, even though I wasn't happy with resorting to that, at least I could move around for a while, and I was grateful for that. Times couldn't be more desperate, and the measure felt fitting. I was still in a very bad shape, and the pain was only somewhat lessened.

It was about that time someone sent me the Complex PTSD book; I had wanted it for a while and immediately went to read it. I felt some relief reading it, and I was struck with the realization that I have not felt any relief in more than a year. It also surprised me with some of the exact descriptions of my behaviour, that I didn't realize was a symptom. I thought it was necessary and smart of me to live in hiding, to avoid interaction and never connect to anyone; it kept me safe. It turns out it's a regular freeze response to trauma; I got very called out for it. It also explains that a freeze response is what people use when anything else doesn't work, and it's true! I had been fighting, fawning and perfecting myself desperately prior to realizing that absolutely nothing helps, and froze to survive. It also described that freeze types are capable of surviving prolonged isolation because their brains produce hormones that relax the body as if they're going thru a moment before death; also true for me, I've been aware my brain does that, only I get that way too often, and it only helps me marginally because I'm too used to it.

Another thing I was very wrong about was my concept of my inner critic; I thought I had already won that battle, because I did not allow any voice in my head to criticize me (my alters can drag me affectionately), and I generally didn't experience a lot of shame or guilt for what I was going thru. The book describes inner catastrophizer, which is an extention of the critic, and it causes you to spral into extremely negative scenarios of your own demise. Now that.. was happening to me every single day, I saw myself dead around every corner. But I always thought my fears about that were perfectly reasonable. I had been tortured into suicidal state as a kid and nobody cared, I barely escaped with my life from there, I was living illegally, in hiding, without a normal job or regular income, without close friends or any family, with ptsd i couldn't get diagnosed for, without ability to work due to ptsd, in a capitalistic society where being able to work is only thing between you and dying. I had, by that point, gained many skills of survival, but it still felt very reasonable to fear that I would die if I don't get better soon.

The book described people who had families, jobs, social circles, friends and community, who spiraled into deep fear of becoming homeless and dying on the street; somehow their spiraling was exactly the same as mine, and it made me realize that it was, in fact, a symptom, and not reflection of reality. Because I was spiraling even when laying in my bed or eating or sleeping, knowing I could still afford rent for months because I arranged my life to allow myself to lay down a lot. I kept fearing my parents were coming to end my life, even when I arranged my entire existence specifically to prevent this from happening. And even if I was sick and without a real job, I had in fact, survived for 5 years after running away, I wasn't getting worse at it. My spiraling into death scenarios was a symptom of being trapped within a flashback.

The book guided me to try to challenge these fears, I immediately went for it, had a breakdown, screamed "I can't" for like an hour, had additional few breakdowns afterwards, and miraculously, recovered from them in only few hours. And then, I woke up from my flashback.

I won't describe what the flashback was, because it's too gruesome and horiffic, but it was in fact, bad enough to warrant every single bit of that pain I was experiencing, and a very convoluted, complex trauma. I was waiting to be killed in that flashback. Whats concerning is, I've been trapped in that same flashbacks for more than a year. After I broke my way out of it, it felt like I woke up to being alive for the first time in years. I got out being frozen in bed.

For 5 amazing days, I was able to do whatever I wanted. Chronic pain? I didn't know her. It was absoluely exhilirating to get to move again, I was not getting tired either, I was out there making up for months of doing nothing and I was not collapsing at any point. I felt actual joy again, and hope, and being free from pain was so extremely good, that alone made me ecstatic. I was able to create, to be organized, to take care of myself, to follow a checklist, to focus, I was a Normal Person for those 5 days.

And then, predictably, I was getting back stuck in that flashbacks and my levels of terror and dread spiked again. I went to re-read the book, and it took me a few days to really figure it out again, I don't know exactly how the book works on me, I feel like it says just the right keywords to trigger me into realizations and causes breakdowns that set me free. I found myself able to stop some spiraling, but sometimes I can't, that flashback holds immense power over me and is actually mixed with 10 other near-death scenarios that are too extreme for me to process, so this will keep happening. I did break free again, and got to experience additional few days of movement and happiness; I also started working extensively with my child alter, who was until recently extremely suicidal and dangerous to work with.

I am still kinda lost in all of this, and unsure whats going on, but I do believe I wont get trapped in a flashback again for a whole year. I became so anxious and helpless due to isolation, I forgot how to fight trauma, I forgot I actually had to do it. I used to do it constantly in the beginning, but it had made me suicidal back then to face all this, so I tried to just let it heal naturally, which I believed would eventually happen; but it didn't, I got trapped and suffered without knowing how to get out. I also believed my own spiraling was a reflection of reality and not trauma, and that fueled it a lot.

It explains very eloqently in the book how inner catastrophizing comes from being massively neglected; children who are not looked after start to realize just how unprotected they are, so their own sense of danger becomes hypersensitive and starts to lock on possible dangers everywhere. This is then further aided by media that points out every possible bad thing that could happen to a person, and the child who isn't guided by adult who could actually make a reasonable distinction between real and unlikely danger, will clock it all as absolute possibilities and be on alert. It's also fueled by the line of disasters and dangers that happen to them in the context of their own home, and for me, the strongest factor was my parents constantly convincing me that I would die without them. Even though I proved this wrong, and understand they did it precisely because they knew there was a lot of survival ability in me and that's why they worked so hard to destroy it, the fact that it was brainwashed into me under circumstances of torture still makes it impossible for me to fight it.

Maybe one day I will be able to.

I'm writing this because writing things down helps to make sense of it all, and I need to find my way thru this. I also hope someone else will see themselves in what I'm describing and it will help them find a way forward. Complex ptsd is the only book I found that speaks from the point of view of a person who survived cptsd, healed from it, and had so much experience with other traumatized people they're able to draw parallels and create patterns and statistics out if it, it was that more than anything that convinced me of their words, and gave me hope. The book also warns many times of how essential it is to reduce inner critic and catastrophizer before getting other recovery work done, other therapy might only do further harm before this work is done. It was true for me.

If you wanna read this book, here's a post with the links!

[deadmomjokes]

Hey, anyone remember back in, like, 2017/18 how I was tentatively diagnosed with fibromyalgia because of severe debilitating pain and fatigue, among other symptoms? Didn’t trust that doctor because she really just threw the term out there as an excuse to not do any testing. She threw some pills at me, refusing to refer me to a specialist because I wasn’t showing conclusive symptoms (like, that’s a reason they have specialists, to figure out the weird cases!). I quit taking those pills after several days of terrible side effects, and finding out that the pills interact with the medicine I was already taking and could have killed me.

Needless to say, I had good reason not to trust her, so I considered myself as not officially having a diagnosis because that lady was TERRIBLE.

Things got better because ???  but got worse again after having a baby (not a big shocker there). My new PCP is, like, the best doctor on the planet, and referred me to a rheumatologist asap. Unfortunately, the rheumatologist was... less than helpful. He basically told me to just exercise and lose weight, despite those being the very things I specifically told him I was having trouble doing. Beyond that oh-so-helpful advice, he shoulder shrugged me because my blood work showed no autoimmune or rheumatoid issues, and the one set of x-rays he did on my knees (only knees cuz ???) didn’t show physical damage.

Thanks, my guy. Such a good use of everyone’s time and money.

Anyway, my PCP made the professional stank face at rheumatologist and went to work on the fatigue side of things in the meantime. Tweaked meds. Ordered a sleep study-- normal. Loads of blood work-- hey, low Vitamin D and iron storage! Did 3 months pills to correct those, and just went back for a follow up.

Iron is... still low? and the vitamin D is on the super low end of “acceptable.”

But the big thing is, guess who’s back?

My old nemesis, working-diagnosis of fibromyalgia!

Doc says that given my chronically low vitamin D, my persistent fatigue, and pain without autoimmune disease or apparent joint damage (she’s still salty he only x-rayed the knees, but can’t justify full body x-rays to the insurance’s satisfaction), as well as persistent depression/anxiety that are only marginally responsive to medication, and severe brain fog/cognitive slowing, fibromyalgia is a possibility. She did the pain points test, and, uh, yeah. Basically all of them. One of them going so far as to trigger a lasting spasmodic back ache that I’m still fighting over 24 hours later.

So new antidepressant for me, but one in the same category that’s good for treating fibro, too. We’re moving forward under the assumption that fibro is a possibility. Also continuing vitamin D and iron. (Fun fact, my doctor says that her other patients with fibro seem to use vitamin D faster? more poorly? than other people, and almost all of them need heavy supplementation during the winter. She also said they tend to be more sensitive to lower levels, so we’re aiming for me to get to the high end of normal and see if that helps.)

I just find it hilarious that two doctors arrived at the same conclusion for totally different and opposite reasons.

“I can’t be bothered to do my due diligence, so I’m going to throw around a condition I clearly don’t understand and not tell you anything about it or managing it or what to look out for. Take your dx and go away.”

vs

“I went through the process of eliminating everything else first, listened empathetically, did everything bureaucracy would allow, and I think this condition fits your symptoms. Let’s operate under that theory while not risking your health, and here’s loads of info about it and things that tend to help. In the meantime, let’s see if we can trick your insurance into paying for these other tests just to be sure it’s not something else.”

Gotta love that chronic illness life, am I right?

[calamityk8]

"My name is Barney Rolfe, and there is something wrong with my brain. I am admitting this to you with the full understanding and acknowledgement that what I am doing is absolutely not going to be fully understood; but perhaps in pieces it can reconcile the most fragmented and deranged parts of my psyche, or at least arrange them in a way that will relieve this incessant pressure that always haunts me. Whatever happens, well, at least I have tried to do something to explain this innate and incessant madness, which is more than most get a chance to do.

Okay, here goes.

Belatedly, I suppose, there were neurons misfiring to account for, some chemical mishap that perforce disengaged my social abilities to adapt and be of use to others. Panic and hysteria have ruled the contours of my experience for longer than this busted-up brain can recall. Looking back, well, I can gauge the horrific aspects of it, in the present. Of course hindsight’s a malignancy at this point. I have become this disease; it as all that I am: a sporadically hebetude-induced corollary on the razor’s edge of sanity’s rusty hook. Saying things like this doesn’t help. I know. It’s just hard to judge oneself from the outer limits of perspective’s gush and flow. Trapped in this insidious circle of discontent and maladjustment, I am oozing the sap of life’s lost lust.

I might have a way to put it, so let me.

Having severe systemic and constant depression and simply “being bummed” are two very distinct and different things. One is a disease; the other is just one of the myriad consequences of being alive. If someone has cancer you don’t tell them to, “buck up and get over it.” We don’t admonish a stroke victim to, “stop lying around, and get up and do something with yourself.” Even our advice for sufferers of the common cold is sympathetic, as cough-and-congestion victims aren’t told they are being “weak” or “soft” and should just “be happy because things could be a lot worse.” But, for some inane reason that is preconditioned into us by years of inhumane pseudoscience, diseases of the mind are linked to some weakness or lassitude of the individual, as if that person who is suffering from a disease such as depression or severe anxiety is somehow inept and is to be blamed for their troubles. As if it is within their control to get better by “just trying a bit harder at it.” It’s really a nonsensical viewpoint to take; but, alas, it is one of many such idiotic theories held by the masses.

Here — there is this too: you’ve got to fight this one alone. Other people can help you, but in the end it comes down to you fighting for your life all by your lonesome. This is a difficult thing to internalize, but once you do, in some wary way, a strand of hope will spring from this, as finagled and shoddy with trepidation as it may be. There will be a surge of selfhood guiding you, a reliance on the one person you can always count on: yourself. It is a scary thing, but like most scary things one finds as obstacles on the wayward path of one’s existence, extremely worthwhile to conquer. Just like any other terminal disease, depression kills; suicide is merely its mechanism.

This shouting in my head, it never seems to cease.

I am nervous and concise around others. I only laugh when it’s expected. Being alone has become my only comfort, though it too is getting to be unendurable. To guide me I take some small salvation in the long history of human endeavor to fight through the gnashing teeth of internal strife. According to Lecky’s History of European Morals, “A melancholy leading to desperation, and known to theologians under the name of ‘acedia,’ was not uncommon in monasteries, and most of the recorded instances of medieval suicides in Catholicism were by monks.” I dream through these trials and tribulations of ancients, attempting to stem the tide of my own demise with less troubling thoughts than the ones I’ve come to own: I am the angular distance of a star below the horizon; the dusty truth of eons of suffering through a terrible weight’s pressing down; sunken and lost; in old, forgotten times what they once called grevoushede. Grevoushede. Acedia. I breathe the words and balance the syllables on my tongue, unable to savor their taste or texture. I am a weightless pin pricked in the skein of an upside-down world I’ll never get close enough to know.

Who could ever fall in love with this raggedy bag of afflictions?

I trek through the ruins of my obsession, draped in sorrow’s mask, leaning on tiny tics and safe places to guide me. The cracking of my toes, one by one. Snapping all of my fingers back and forth. Clicking my tongue on the roof my mouth. Blinking an even number of times with one eye and then an odd number with the other. Popping my ears with my jaw. Smoothing my eyebrows down with my fingertips. An innumerable array of distractions that ease the arrhythmic pulse of thoughts that come but never go, blurring out my sight, and leaving me trembling, all filled-up with static but as empty inside as an ice cream shop in the freezing rain.

Woe is my middle name.

All of these little vacancies in my head surface and fill into the most chronic of all conditions. Possibilities go awry with suspicious and judgmental looks. Maybe I’ll put on some Dolly Parton and fall in love with a bookmark. These are thoughts that calm the deliriousness at it swarms. Exceptional circumstances to bow down to in this glut of terrors, this amassing of torturous routines: the bath mat must be lined up perfectly with the tiles, the showerhead at just the right angle, the curtain stretched just so, and the shower water, the god-damn shower water…always and forever just a touch too hot or too cold. The chores of being me, they never end.

The human senses can somehow even detect whether a television set is off or just on mute without looking. And everyone can tell the difference between boiling and room-temperature water being poured in much the same manner. But it is when these senses go astray, when they slip and frazzle and get pinched, that’s when one comes to know the real intensity of those senses’ powers. A daily trauma that haunts me wherever I go, my brain stuffed with the lint of leftover churning, dizzy and lopsided and playing alive, I ignore the impossibilities of being able to maintain a normal existence for as long as this sapped torpidity allows. The courage I need to muster just to leave my place and walk to get groceries is at most times an insurmountable obstacle, and so I stay in and worry and worry and worry about everything. Every object grows too precious to disturb as I put it on the pedestal of the postponed quenching of my desires. There is nothing I can do or think that will snap this spell of disenchantment that grips me tighter as it deepens this hole I am eternally residing in. Just making it home from the grocery store with a few shopping bags of food sometimes feels like the greatest accomplishment in the world. I should be doing other things with my time, I know: concentrating my efforts on more grand pleasures and goals. But these things of consequence, they are not for me. I lose so much more than I gain in these battles. Small, inconsequential, pyrrhic victories are the only ones I’ve known.

Hope is a bestial thing with daggers and fangs; I make up a thousand reasons to not have any of it bombard me as this disease attacks relentlessly. There are honestly times when I cannot even bring myself to lift a finger to scratch an itch. I’ve been prescribed a list of medications too long to register properly in the catacombs of my lingering doubt about the chemical cohesion of my wherewithal: Abilify, clomipramine, Lexapro, bupropion, Celexa, Cymbalta, Lithium, Xanax, Paxil, amitriptyline, Lamictal, and that grand old sturdy classic Prozac. Etcetetra. It seems that I am only etceteras: more and more of less and less. It’s all a wash. It was a messy chorus of boos from the cheap seats as I struggled through side effects and listened to the growing drone of a singularly horrible voice that wasn’t quite my own resounding in my skull: “You’re no good. You’re a lost cause. Stop whining; start winning. You’re no good. You are just no good,” over and over; nauseated at all times; woozy, delirious, insomnia-plagued and diarrhea-bound; garbling my words when forced to speak, fumbling through life like a doped-up zombie with no appetites, every little thing so impossibly far away.

The window washers will not sing for me. The faucets around here all look like dead swans. I sweep. I litter. I am unable to know for sure if anyone else ever feels the way I always do. I am ill with this ravenous beast that pesters and claws at and drapes itself over me, leaving me with the gumption of soon-to-be-roadkill sluggishly slouching across a busy highway. I yawn instead of moan. I burst into tears in the dark of crowded movie theaters just before the feature starts. I am normal. Really. I am sane — maybe even too much so. I do wish I could just go insane, but, sadly, I cannot quite contemplate how to accurately achieve this feat. My brain will not assuage nor relent with its ceaseless cracked and mangled disturbances.

The boring by-rote recitation of symptoms rattled off to every doctor who’d listen. They don’t know who I am, what I’ve suffered through, how I came to be this way that I am; and there’s no device by which I can properly explain it to them. It’s not like they can run a test, take some blood, or do a biopsy, and then figure out what’s wrong with me. It’s a hidden thing, deep within the walls of my pain, not on or off any scale they’ve ever invented. I am my own example. There are no answers to any of this. They used to take out parts of people’s brains, thinking it would relieve their suffering. But it just left folks lobotomized to a dull, vegetable state, unable to form words or dress themselves. Perhaps they were happy, though. Perhaps they were thankful for the big, empty space that now occupied what they’d formerly called living. Perhaps there was no person behind those dead eyes left to care. The disease wins yet again, as it always does.

Clinical diagnoses follow me with heavy clomps. “Heavy dysthymia with a robust anxiety level. Somatic cross-cutting, serious signs of high Altman-scale mania, repetitive and troubling thoughts bordering on multiple phobias and generalized panic. Personality Trait Facet Scores high on rigid perfectionism/grandiosity/anhedonia type, though scores lower across board than patient believes. Unusual and abnormal, but not psychotic at all.” As you can see, the weather inside my head is rather frightful, to say the least. I trudge through the murky terrain of my past with great regularity. I am muddy with it, soaked through from the storm of my memories, which are remembering themselves over and over and over again and again and again, until I do not rightly know what has happened or what is happening now. Who am I but this box of disturbing thoughts?

Madness in the family. A quirk in the genes being passed down just like Huntington’s or any other inherited affliction. This one’s just as deep in the bones, though not as noticeable, not as prominent in the makeup of one’s persona. My father was a brazen raver whose depression put the business end of a rifle under his chin to finally wreck its one final havoc on him as pulled the trigger in defeat; his father before him too came to an early funeral, though his disease’s weapons of choice were gasoline and matches, as he lay in immolation by the pumps of an empty gas station in the wee hours of his final night on earth. This dreary thing, it just goes and goes right on down the line. Shelter from it is inconstant at best. It is as if I am in hiding from my inheritance, from my own true self — a hibernation of sorts: falling in and out of a troubled sleep, groggy and drooling through another afternoon, I become obsessed with trifles. I organize the cups and plates on my shelves until they all perfectly line up. I become tempestuous at a single hair being out of place. I talk to myself constantly, mostly demeaning phrases and freshly coined derogatory slurs aimed at myself. I have been parked too long in my heart’s handicap spot. There is very little “me” left here to notice.

So, do not look at me lightly, with deferential judgement or pity’s hidden ire. My sorrows are so much smaller than you’d suppose. My shoes come untied just as much as yours do. I can be as brave and also as craven as most. I eat blackberries and put salted butter on my toast. There are no cures, only temporary stopgaps for relief of symptoms. I am not in control of the way that I feel. I will try. I do try. None of this is less than extremely difficult. I do not need nor crave your sympathy; I just want understanding. Perhaps, even after all this exegesis and other inexplicable explanatory notions are through, this is still too much to ask. In the end, casting aside whatever ideas anyone might get to having about me and my plight, I only return right back to where I began: my name is Barney Rolfe, and there is something wrong with my brain."

[thedenofravenpuff]

Them Joints Update

Yo, anyone remember my whining about my bad knees and hurty wrists and so on? And my useless doc who couldn’t figure out what was wrong and mostly would just shrug and go “I dunno”? Well, after a lot of battling with my doc to insist it’s not JUST my knees and some things might be connected so just only focusing on my knees and keep sending me back to a sports clinic who kept sending me back saying they can’t do anything, he was finally pushed to transfer me to a better suited specialist.

At an arthritis clinic.

A friend had been pushing a suggestion for a while, saying my symptoms sounded very much like something his mom was dealing with, so I dared to pass that on to the specialist during the first appointment. He immediately agreed.

Thing is it’s kinda tricky to diagnose because there is no one sure-way method. He tested my pain threshold and soreness of my body, noted my history with pain and aching joints as well as the growing bursts of fatigue slowly becoming my new daily life. Then took a whole bunch of blood samples to check to rule out anything else, to confirm his suspicion.

Went back yesterday for the followup appointment and was shown the results. I’m missing two out of three types of cells in the blood meant for immunity response, which makes me more vulnerable to infections (and explains my lifelong problems with coldsores). But he said it didn’t explain the issues, because everything was looking perfectly fine and he was honestly surprised to hear how few issues I’ve had with infections despite these numbers.

So he felt it still confirmed the original theory.

Got a chronic condition called Fibromyalgia, a disturbance in the nervous system that makes me more vulnerable to pain and fatigue because the signals going through my body is f’ed up. The past year it’s just slowly gotten worse from the usual “I’m just a lil weakling who hurts when you poke her” to full on getting in the way of my daily life and work.

So thanks to my doc for not listening those past two years.

But after getting FM explained, and doing the research homework the specialist gave me, it does make a lot of sense and explains a lot of issues I’ve had through my life and now slowly getting worse.

Problem is, it has no cure. Hope is the issue can be stopped from getting worse with the right treatment. Sadly that’s quite tricky, because just as there is no ONE sure way to diagnose it, there is no ONE sure treatment that works for everyone.

I’m mostly worried about my ability to keep my job, as I’ve already slowed down a lot and had several sickdays spread out, all due to the pain and fatigue making physical labor highly difficult. And once it starts hurting, mental tasks get difficult too. It has caused some depressive episodes and anxiety as of the last year.

Of course I’m told by the medical expert to not start despairing and expect the worst. A negative mindset only gonna make it worse. But still cause for some concern to keep in mind, as I’ll need to remind myself to not strain too much on my good days cuz that’ll come back to bite me harder on the bad days.

So, yeah, just an update on that. Both physically and mentally been a bit out of it, why I stopped commissions because I just couldn’t keep up. As long I can still do minimal effort daily doodles I’ll have something to keep me going, so there’s that.

Now onto the long road ahead to test out treatments and see if anything sticks.

[cookinguptales]

A long post about having undiagnosed ADHD as a little girl. And how we all need to talk a hell of a lot more about Reaction Sensitive Dysphoria.

(cw: mental illness, childhood punishment, discussions of childhood self-harm & suicidal ideation)

When I was a little girl, I was a crybaby. I didn’t know why I’d cry all the time. I just did. Everything always felt catastrophic, even if it was just a disagreement over what to play with my friends. People called me manipulative. I got made fun of at school. I was sent to the school therapist. Hell, the only time I ever had to go to the principal’s office, I was in kindergarten and would not. stop. crying. I was literally sent to the principal’s office for crying too much.

(Note. How did I respond to that? I cried. A lot.)

Here are a few examples of things that made me feel like the world was ending:

Once I came home sobbing and my parents asked me what was wrong. Why was I crying? Because the other kids had called me a crybaby.

Once at daycare (around age six), some older boys were making effigies of their teachers out of play-doh and then smushing them and convinced me to join in. The minute I did, they told me that they were telling my teacher, which made me about lose my damn mind.

I was a voracious reader and often ran out of reading material. Once I sneaked some of my mother’s romance novels that she’d left in the bathroom for light reading. They were Very Adult. I was so scared she’d find out and scold me for reading sexually explicit books.

Now, my parents think these are kind of funny stories. They say that I was very cute. But in truth, I was a nervous wreck. My life was pretty good in most ways, but I’d have these moments that just felt like cascading catastrophes. Anytime someone criticized me or my work or my ideas, the sky would just come crashing down. I’d cry so hard I couldn’t breathe. I’d cry so hard I threw up. I grew out of the crying by about age nine, but that sickening feeling of failure never really left.

About 8 years ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Severe ADHD. I believe the doctor’s exact words were “I don’t even know how you graduated from high school”. They tried me on ADHD medicine but it made my heart go dokidoki so I just had to live with being unmedicated. I wasn’t told a lot about ADHD at that point, or how ADHD symptoms differ for women, so I just kind of assumed that it was just focus and that’s it. Brain fog wasn’t exactly new to me, what with my other illnesses, so I figured I’d just live with it.

But about a year ago, I learned about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is a fairly common symptom of ADHD that no one ever told me about in my goddamn life! It essentially means that when you are criticized (or perceive something as criticism) by others or by yourself, your brain goes into absolute hyperdrive. You go from zero to “everyone hates me and I deserve that and probably don’t deserve to live too because I am just the worst” over like. literally nothing. And it’s not just like a mental thing you can train yourself out of. It’s characterized by actual physical pain. Y’all, I have anxiety and depression and this is not the same thing. This is your whole body seizing up and your brain going into a maelstrom that’s fairly similar to a panic attack.

Here’s the less cute side to all of those stories:

I had very few friends, and the friends I did have thought I was annoying and manipulative. The more I cried, the more kids stayed away from me.

After the Play-Doh incident, I cried for days. Days. And I was scared of my teacher for weeks. My parents laughed it off as a cute child thing, but none of it was cute for me. The older boys forgot about it by the next day, but it haunted my interactions with that teacher for weeks. It interfered with my education. I was a nervous wreck at school. I was so scared that she would hate me. That I’d be singled out in class. That I’d fail and my whole education would be upended and I’d fail out of school and my parents would hate me too and my life would be over. That’s... a lot for a six year old.

Those romance novels? That was a closely guarded secret that I kept for years. For literal years, I was afraid she’d somehow find out that I’d read those books. I would think of it when I was nine, ten, eleven years old and my whole body would stiffen up. I’d occasionally throw up. I cried about what might happen if my parents ever found out. Would they hate me forever? Yes, probably. They’d never love me again. I was a bad child. I finally told my mom about it a few months ago. I was 29. A small part of me was still scared I’d get in trouble. (My mom laughed about it; she was just like ‘wow, I should have put those books up higher’.)

When I was six, I went to an aftercare at a neighbor’s house for a while. (This predated the other daycare.) One day, one of the kids at aftercare didn’t get off the bus. The lady asked if anyone knew where he was. Trying to be helpful, I said I thought I’d seen him on the bus. (And like -- I really did think I did. But I was six and six year olds are uhhh not smart.) Surprise! He’d actually left school early for a dr’s appt. But she thought he’d missed his bus stop and spent like an hour on the phone figuring out what happened. And y’all. When she realized he hadn’t been on that bus, she was furious. When my other neighbor picked me up for my mom that evening, the lady told her that I was a bad child who’d purposefully lied to scare her. She said I wasn’t allowed to come back. And ohhh guys. I begged my neighbor not to tell my mom. (She did.) And then I begged my mom not to tell my dad. She was honestly kind of alarmed at how vehement I was about dad not knowing. (I was like a shaking, sobbing mess.) She asked me what I thought would happen. idk. Maybe he’d hit me. (My parents never hit me.) Maybe he’d throw me out of the house. Maybe he’d never talk to me again. He’d definitely stop loving me. I was so bad. So, so bad. I was a bad child. No one would ever love me. I was a worthless, bad child.

In short, I was hysterical.

When my parents finally talked to me about it, it was less of a talk about consequences and more talking me off the fucking ledge. They weren’t that concerned about the actual incident; they figured out pretty quickly that I’d just made a mistake. A temporarily scary one, but a mistake all the same. (I basically never misbehaved, so they were kind of confused by the whole situation, honestly.) But they were very concerned about my reaction to it. I knew they loved me, right? I knew that they wouldn’t hurt me, right? Why did I think that was a possibility?

I didn’t know. I still don’t know. It wasn’t rational. It was just my brain exploding into a thousand tiny pieces.

This is not a memory my mom laughs about. I think it really genuinely disturbed her. She’s still angry at that aftercare neighbor for doing that to me. As an adult, I realize that the person who actually fucked up in that scenario was the boy’s mother, who didn’t call to alert aftercare that he wouldn’t be coming. (Funnily enough, that boy’s mother was my first grade teacher -- the one I was so terrified of. Small town. I guess I was scared of her hating me, too.) But as a child, this wasn’t just bad. It was catastrophic. I genuinely considered hurting myself. I was six years old and I considered hurting myself. Suicidal ideation is often part and parcel with RSD. I’ve had to deal with that since elementary school.

RSD is real and it’s terrifying and it’s not unusual in children with ADHD. It’s still a problem that I struggle with. I’ve had friends not answer texts for a while and my brain just. assumes that I said something wrong. And now they hate me. Because I’m a bad person. And my whole body will shake. I’ll sweat. My stomach will roll. My chest will literally hurt like I’m having a heart attack. I still have to blink back those tears. Sometimes I’ll go for a walk to distract myself and burn off all that energy. Sometimes I’ll write a post like this. Sometimes I’ll just lie in bed. Shaking. Trying very hard not to think about doing Bad Things. It’s hard to say how it’ll go until it goes.

(Note: I’m okay right now! I was just talking about this with dad yesterday so I’ve been thinking about it.)

And this is not my friends’ fault! Or my family’s fault. This is no one’s fault. It’s just... mental illness, I guess. It’s hard to predict. Sometimes I can have a calm and reasonable discussion about my faults (which I fully admit exist) and sometimes someone disagrees with me on whether a tv show is good and my brain shits itself. (I’m dumb and stupid and this person probably hates me now! Because I didn’t love Avatar! Why did I open my big mouth? Now our whole relationship is ruined and I ruined it because I am a dumb relationship-ruiner!) Obviously, it gets worse when my physical and mental state is already fragile. I have a lot of chronic physical and mental illnesses, so like... it happens. But it’s very hard to predict, very hard to control, and all you can do is really talk yourself through it when it happens. Breathe. Focus on what’s real and what’s not. Distract yourself. Be as kind to your brain as you can because it will not be kind back.

Talk to people who love you. Try, whenever possible, to be one of those people.

idk. I wish I had concrete advice to finish this off. But it’s more just like... please learn to see the signs, especially in small children. I had far too many strong emotions for a child to figure out on her own. I really could have used some help. It’s too late for my childhood, but not for the other kids who are struggling with similar issues right now.

And if you read this and see yourself in it, do me a solid and talk to your doctor? Your brain might thank you one day.

[brokenfoetus]

...Real Talk for a Moment....

This is gonna be a long rant post, so by all means... quickly scroll past. Parts may even be a tad emo feels for some folks for one reason or another... There’s no shame in skipping for reals.  A lot of days I can’t bother to read anything too in depth... anyway... HERE goes.... While I absolutely love art, and performance, and surreal awkward characterization of myself I call “THE END”. I also value truth, and being understood. My blog here started more as a journal for me to vent, and place to post music and art for me to look at in order to try and just relax during a very difficult point in my life. Every now and then I like to stop and ground myself and post in a sense about the actual me.  There’s frankly not anything magical here, everyone has a story and their experiences and struggles we all do no matter who you are. I suppose like I said, I just like to be understood where I am coming from typically can only be slightly grasped like anyone.  Even if you agree with views and relate to feelings, things become clearer with details.... hence my rants. I get it out of my system and state my perspectives all at once and anyone who happens to be curious gets to read it. Maybe gets to relate and frankly that tends to help us sometimes. It helps people realize they’re not alone in their situations.  Anyway.... I was born a tiny premature gremlin on the east coast of the U.S. I was raised a devout Catholic boy. At age 11 I was diagnosed with the chronic illness Diabetes. when the symptoms started my mother called doctors concerned. We had to wait a full month for my appointment.  It was rough. Some people don’t know of the disease, but most people generally are aware. It typically doesn’t seem all too dramatic to most since people think of it as old grandma and grandpa taking their pills and measuring their food. When you’re talking juvenile onset diabetes it’s different... severity can vary. but, I caught some sort of virus, with flu like symptoms... I was very very sick for a week or two.  Once it passed, I was okay but slowly started feeling gross in other ways.  By the time we got to see Doctors it was too late, and the damage done to my pancreas made it so it created pretty much no insulin. The only theory Doctors had at the time was the virus freaked out my auto-immune system so it made my body attack itself.  It seemed that my white blood cells had attacked my pancreas. I was 11, so... I didn’t know what diabetes was. I asked my doctor if there was a cure, and he explained that there was no cure. My little boy brain after feeling so awful for a month and a half assumed I was going to die. I burst into tears as I was very very afraid. My Doctor quickly explained I wasn’t going to die like I had assumed and that it can be treated. It doesn’t seem so scary most the time when you realize it can be treated. The thing is the hormone insulin can be quite dangerous, as low blood sugars are actually very much more dangerous than high blood sugars. Insulin allows glucose in the blood to travel into cells to basically use as fuel. without it sugar levels rise in the blood stream, and the body starts rapidly breaking down fat cells to use as fuel. Now, that happens normal some anyway usually after eating. Just not rapidly.... when it does, the fuel it breaks down creates ketones which can make the blood toxic... by making it acidic.... Like I don’t really think... there’s any way I can describe what high blood sugar feels like... or what it feels like when your blood starts to become acidic.... I can’t... but... minor low blood sugar attacks can happen to anyone just by skipping lunch or forgetting to eat... and those suck... bad ones... well... they feel like you’re dying. Not to be melodramatic about it all... but that’s all I can say to explain it... it just feels like you’re dying.  Probably because you sort of are..... The brain runs on glucose so when the levels get too low... your brain panics and tries to save itself and alert you. It’s not fun. It’s been many years since I had anything dangerous or serious in terms of low blood sugars but, a couple times in my life when I wasn’t doing very well emotionally and mentally I wasn’t paying attention or being careful with my insulin dosages and how much I was eating. I’ve had 3 grand mal seizures in my life when I was younger.... it’s hard to explain the experience... in mine... I don’t know.... It was like not existing at all, there was nothing. I woke to pain, I couldn’t see or hear it just hurt. Everything hurt head to toe. Then I could hear myself saying it hurt, then I could hear the people around me, and then I could see the people around me.  Then I knew what had happened.  I felt a bit guilty for scaring my loved ones so much.  That honestly made me more upset than the pain. The reason I spell all this out... is my life has mostly been surrounded by fear. I’ve been aware of my mortality and trying to avoid dying on a daily basis since I was a very young boy. The strange thing I suppose.... is after a while... you just get sick of being afraid.... you kind of stop being scared and just get angry... I was a shy timid nervous little dude.... I’ve had long long times where... I’ve felt worthless, I’ve hated myself, felt I didn’t deserve happiness, or love. I’ve let people use me, without standing up for myself. I’ve let people be toxic and cruel, while excusing their behavior. While at the same time condemning myself for any tiny mistake I may have made in any way. I’ve made myself a martyr in personal relationships, sacrificing myself and my feelings. I’ve frankly... done a whole bunch of fucked up things turned inward. The nice thing I suppose, is I don’t do that anymore.... I still make mistakes, and I like to take responsibility for them and make amends or fix them. You can get used to some really fucked up things. Especially when struggling with self worth. I used to think I was useless and undeserving. Today... I’m well aware I’m a PRETTEH PRETTEH GOFF BOI.... I have long time close friends who love me just as much as I do them. I have a wonderful beautiful lovely lady who has my heart and soul whom I want to spend every moment I possibly can with until my bones are dust.  Who helped me a great deal over the past couple years or so.  Helped me with myself and helped me believe in myself again. Just by being my friend and supporting me while I continue to be the eccentric artist asshole I am. and I have Scrambles... THE MOST CUTEST BLACK KITTEH KAT EVAR. I feel rather lucky to have all I do. I appreciate what I have very very much. I’ve been dealing with Diabetes since I was 11... and had been dealing with Severe Major Depression symptoms since my early 20s. over the past five years I finally started getting help, Turns out I don’t just have diabetes.... I have adhd and some kind of sleep disorder. we’ve been calling it narcolepsy but it’s hard to say exactly, it could be hypersomnia which is a super fancy way of saying I’m fucking always exhausted 24/7 which is pretty accurate.  That is usually caused by narcolepsy or something else but... who knows... still trying to figure that part out. I have discovered though that, being fucking exhausted non stop for 20 years will make you very depressed.  Sometimes depression makes you tired, and sometimes being tired makes you depressed. When I was a young lad, I gave myself one single life goal.... That was to finish an electro industrial album and play some live shows. I dunno, to some that might not be a big deal.... I never said it had to be “good” after all. But, when I was at a low point dealing with my stuffs, trying to take care of myself... I honestly spent most my days sleeping. I was awake maybe 4 hours a day.  Things felt very hopeless, that learned hopelessness made me believe things were pretty much pointless.  I would shrug... and talk to my psychiatrist about my suffering in a manner that people talk about the weather.  I didn’t even care anymore it was happening.  It was “oh well... is what it is.” Until I got angry, it was a good thing I was so frustrated.... because it meant I finally gave a shit again. I wanted to get better and I wanted it to hurry the fuck up. Anyway... I’m just rambling and ranting because I was thinking back a lot after doing a sleep study... probably the first in a series of them. I don’t have apnea so I mean... that’s good. I also got to see what some of my brainwaves look like... I also apparently wake up after dreaming some a lot... I also apparently yelled in the middle of the night hahaha. So back to the whole life goal thing.....my long time friend, who introduced me to shitloads of music and bands and has always been close through good and bad times.  Was saying how he knew it was something I’ve always wanted to do, so he wants to help me.  He’s starting to help me plan the performance and then later will help me setup my shows and come with me to what will be really awkward and silly first couple gigs I play.  An open mic night will be particularly hilarious to me, since instead of hearing shitty rock song covers, it will be an insane goth punk dude screaming distorted vocals to weird electro noises haha.  It’s taken a long time to get shit finally going... but... it’s getting there... it’s still going to take a lot more work... on both me and the music.  I have countless things I have to do, but I’m just happy I finally got angry enough to scream fuck it... and go for it... I love a lot of various kinds of work. I don’t really fit there very well though.  Now that the sleep disorder stuff has become worse over time... it’s not really possible anyway.  That’s okay though, since now I’m just doing what I’m actually good at.  Eccentric artist asshole has always been my key features.  xD So, here’s some photos of me before and during my sleep lab and random enjoyable crap I suppose... and my general mood.  It’s been a while....                                                  -The End-

[modern-oedipus]

Update: I vented (both to my journal and a trusted friend), made a therapist appointment (I can get one per month but the time has come), cleaned my room and came up with some useful ideas to help me on the following semester. The recent days have been tough for me but I am overcoming slowly. I’m grateful for everyone who respected this and helped me the best they could.  Tomorrow I’m leaving for a (delayed) vacation. I’ll watch out for social distancing and hygiene as always. I have been worried and nearly depressed at the thought of online-college even though I am fully aware of the risks in-person education would bring. I’m not one to decide what my university is going to do, but I will get precautions to protect my mental and physical health. Of course there are things I can’t control, things unfortunate and horrifying and perhaps inevitable, like catching the virus and/or losing someone I love, dying, or being given permanent damage. This reminds me of the times when I was around 17 and there’d be attacks on Paris and I’d freak out. Anyway, this is a different threat, but it still leaves a trace even if I am not directly facing it.  But... There are things I can and cannot control. It’s important to focus on the parts I can control, right? So that I can be the most ready for the worst case without constantly worrying over it. Overdosed anxiety is really useless. (Fun fact: I never thought I had chronic anxiety, but my therapist low-key called me out once saying that I tend to have anxiety, even though she cannot fully diagnose me with it since my “symptoms” are not severe enough, but that they could become a problem if I didn’t keep them in check.)  But well, how can’t you be anxious in this time and age?  I think it’s humanly to be anxious, just... It’s just as humanly as being angry or bitter or salty. What matters is to acknowledge that anxiety and process it healthily without making it toxic for me or people around me.  So let me just vent this: THIS IS SO FUCKED UP. I fucking hate this, I’m so tired of always trying to “protect” my mental health, like, the moment I got my personal problems together, covid19 started. My precious college experience, of whom I lost 1.5 years due depression, got cancelled. Outdoors got cancelled. We don’t know what this virus is or how long I can’t go to the events (congresses, stage plays, concerts, protests, everything... that makes me feel alive and connected and happy and hype) or whether this covid leaves a permanent damage. My parents fucking divorced, and even though the divorce itself hasn’t been traumatic for me I still... switch houses... it’s just... weird. I miss having my family together. I miss doing the things I love, going out, laying on the grasses in front of the faculty with my Starbucks cup and chatting to my two best friends about anything and everything, going to classes, leaving classes, my best friend dragging me to the music faculty so I can listen and record him playing piano, or that we can go out for partying, or we can hit to gym, or we can stay for a coffee chat with everyone, or go to our cheesy dining hall lunches, join to 6 pm events, stay in library to rush a homework together, run to the classroom as we repeat out the enzyme names loud because we just have a quiz, wearing our lab coats and taking silly pics, pretending we get the next Nobel prize as we go to lab, visiting the student’s office in my newspaper, standing on the line of orientation and welcoming the freshmen with giant pics and convincing them to join our club, dancing, petting campus dogs, buying even more Starbucks, I just... I miss everything so much. This is my final year and what if I can never get to experience such a beautiful experience again? What if it is ruthlessly stripped from me despite the crazy tuition fee I pay for online fucking classes? Who on their right mind wants to do online college? It’s the best college here too, like... It ain’t even a bad college, so I can confidently say that I’m missing out A LOT. I know it is like this worldwide but... It doesn’t make my pain any less. And I know this is not a “big” problem compared to getting the virus, but this is severely impacting my mental health so even if this is not a “big” problem, this is valid and serious enough to drive me miserable, which means I need to talk about it.  I miss everything so much. It’s just.  JUST when I’m out of depression and feeling alive...  That I’m homestuck.

I had so many chances that I wasted half of it in my freshman year because I was suicidal. Now I am full of life, but home stuck, and it just hurts, okay? It fucking hurts. Even if I go study another major after this (I considered this since I studied a stem major but I really want some psychology/philosophy/media related things additionally) I will be, idk, 22? It won’t feel the same as being 21. No one can give me the 2020 back. I’m honestly just... so, so, so, so, SO sad. This is overwhelming. This much of online education is too much. And I know that even if we go to campus it’s not the same because we have to wear masks and stay split and cancel big events (which, believe me, I most religiously follow, the virus is no joke and I never let my guard down even for a second) so it won’t be the same. Just... why... why... why... If this virus really came because some guy ate a rat in China, then... 

On the other side, as sad and horrified as I feel, I don’t want to “waste” my time just because it’s “online”. I want to make the most of my time. I want to enjoy whatever I have, I just need to stop obsessing over “why...” and “what if...”s. I need to accept... that life is like this. But god, I guess that’s something for therapy because I’m honestly bad at accepting things which are genuinely unfair to me. Worse since this unfairness is not something that can be just “solved”. It’s not like a friendship conflict. It’s a bloody pandemic, what can I do?  Oh, right, speaking of what I can do, I’ve actually come up with a few solutions. They don’t “solve” the issue but they can decrease the damage enough that I can go on my day to day life at peace. 

But I’ll not talk about the solutions here, I just wanted to vent. I normally don’t post this type of vent here (the miserable ones) but since I refuse to write anyone in dm-s right now, I thought you could read it if you’re worried. I’m sorry but I still don’t want to talk to anyone (except those who are excluded), so.  Anyway, take care! 2020 is crazy but if we can get through this year we can probably get through many other challenges like they’re little snacks! Love you all!

[askbloatedbellyblog]

Update: AKA wtf did you go AB3

Alright everyone, now that my birthday is over, I thought I should give everyone an update on why I’ve sorta disappeared. 

Well first off, life and work got extremely busy. I’m been trying to accomplish some real life goals and have made some success, got super stressed out with too many things to do and even quit a place I’ve worked at for nearly 6 years for mental health reasons even though I then worked there for another 6 months after. yeah it was super weird.

I’ve had anxiety for a while and some of the stuff I was doing was trying to get over it by confrontation, lessen some by getting out of situations, and pursuing dreams.

Now that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten bellies or anything else either, just been stretched thin. Or so I thought.

So what I chalked up to getting old I’m not really old just thought “aging” and apparently this is fairly common with what I will lay out and anxiety sometimes to an extreme with more panic attacks and depression which I’ve always dealt with and have been going to therapy for, which I suggest for anyone, lack of focus, ADHD, muscle aches, tiredness (which I thought was from bad sleep habits), etc; weren’t exactly what I thought they were.

I’m a fairly fit person. I workout or had but again motivation was waning or being busy but also gets to this in a second nearly every day, I don’t eat TOO badly, I sleep way worse than I should but okay, take vitamins etc. Recently leaned on energy drinks too much but oh well. But I’ve had some bad foot pain and other ailments for a while. I’ve not had a ton of money, thought part of it was from tile floors or planter fasciitis (basically a tendon injury that can be caused by over use and flat feet, which guilty). 

So after finally reaching deductible for the year, I finally went to the doctor and discovered that somehow I have peripheral neuropathy. Meaning somehow my nerves are messed up. I can move fine, but I was told my “sensory nerves were worse than an 80 year old” and that why my leg/feet were on fire. Usually this happens with advanced diabetes which I don’t have (as far as they can tell and said I’d know it by the time this would have happened). 

It’s really great to hear that your nervous system is all jacked up and you didn’t know it. I’m still trying to figure out a legit diagnosis with a few of the blood tests I’ve had be fairly normal. It still could be something with my thyroid, maybe cancer, MS, who knows. I’m still trying to get in to see other doctors to try to see what is going on, though I have a sneaking suspicion and so far way less serious than all that.

At the casual suggestion of the doctor who did my nerve test because it “helps the nerves”, I took vitamin b12. I’ve taken some before and its in BASICALLY everything as far as anything fortified, the multivitamin I take, energy drinks, cereal, you name it. It’s in there to SOME degree. Well I’ve been having digestion issues as of late (wondering if I really had like IBS or Celiac etc) so I thought “You know what, I’ll buy one of those gummy versions so I can chew it up better and see what happens.” Well boy howdy, did that affect things and not necessarily for the better at first. I had bought both a b12 gummy and a b complex and the complex happened to have a different form of b12 than is usually in all those shelf stable fortified version of food. It was the “active” version of the vitamin (because apparently there are 4 different types, who knew).

Have you ever wanted to know what it’s like to feel like you’re on fire? Or to have your whole body be electrically charged? Well basically that’s what happened. Still happening to a degree. Still trying to find out for sure (which apparently is very hard to find doctors well versed in it because it does have symptoms similar to other diseases and not always present in the blood) but it looking pretty likely I have pernicious anemia. SUPER fun let me tell you. Not sure if it’s going to be a forever thing or just somehow got a b12 deficiency but I’m really starting to suspect actually a family history with it and not having things connected together.

Normal people don’t react to vitamin B12, even if they take too much, they just pee it out. But when I’ve taken it especially at first (it’s a known issue that it can have worse symptoms when you first start getting B12 again because your system finally is screaming GIVE ME ALL THE THINGS) I’ve gotten worse symptoms of pain, migraines, spreading nerve pain, lung, heart issues, breathing, stamina, everything out the window for a little bit. Being on fire but knowing you have to deal with it as best you can is super fun let me tell you. In  a perfect world, I’d actually get shots for it but that requires finding a doctor who believes it. The big problem is that some people don’t find out they have it for YEARS and by then nerve damage is permanent. If you act fast it can be reversed. I don’t want to ruin my shot at getting better while I can. 

Now the good news is so far, I have been getting better! It’s early days but nerves are less on fire. I’ve been getting energy up, libido is better, mood is better, breathing is getting better, heck even my digestion and heartburn have been getting much better. Not perfect but improving. Hell I didn’t even realize it was an issue but I had a night a bit ago where I was tingling all over in my legs and feet and suddenly could move my pinkie toes more than I ever remember being able to. So things are communicating and trying to recalibrate. 

Fun fact: did you know lack of B12 can cause anxiety, panic attacks, depression, insomnia, sleepiness, dementia, lack of focus, bowel issues, nerve damage and more? So my anxiety and depression (not saying I’m fixed or that it will go away by any means) could be linked to chronic lack of b12? That lack of being able to concentrate and focus could also be symptoms? Did you know that if you have absorption problems (bingo from intestinal issue) and taking heart burn medication (also a check mark because have fought it for years) can cause b12 deficiency? Because you need the stomach acid to digest it and have it in your colon? WELL I KNOW NOW LET ME TELL YOU WHAT. Did you know that working out burns more B12 and so does stress and anxiety? So its very possible that because I have been working out and super stressed that I actually made the problem worse by using up what little stores of B12 I had? SUPER GREAT let me tell you. 

So while I’m still trying to get to a doctor and hopefully don’t have something more serious, it seems likely that I’ve had a chronic B12 deficiency for years and it may have just not been in the right form for me to use despite ingesting a ton and then the cycle just made it worse. It could be a long road with maybe some permanent issues but I’m hopeful things are looking up even though it seems like it’s kind of a two steps forward, one step back kind of process with some relapses even though there’s progress. I still get worried and stressed about my condition and hate being in pain and weak and probably over research on whats going on (also still hoping that it’s not something more serious) but considering I’m making improvements and doing so fairly quickly all things considered makes me okay and hopeful I’ll be better than ever and able to accomplish more and not worry that I’m “getting old” when I’m pretty young.

Where does this leave me and this blog? Well it’s not going anywhere. I still exist, I’m still pining for bellies or muscle in my own way, and while it’s been slow thanks to health, lack of time, and lack of motivation; I do have some stories I’ve been working on and hopefully can get back to more canons. I do like being creative and trying to think of new things, even if I do tend to reuse a lot of ideas sometimes. Hopefully everyone will still stick around to support me even if I’m absent for a bit either on Tumblr, Twitter, or wherever else. I’m sorry for sometimes dropping conversations from being busy or procrastinating or social anxiety. Maybe that will get fixed with this. I’m honestly horrible at being the first one to start a conversation or pick it up again, so bug me first please.

Congrats if you’ve made it this far in my big life update/rant/manifesto? Thank you those who gave me birthday wishes. I luckily was healthy enough to go out and have some fun and I think I’m well enough to rejoin society again though there may be some pain. Thanks everyone for sticking with me over the years in all the places I’ve been and for enjoying all the weird ideas and writing that I’ve done to torture various characters. I hope to continue to do so for years to come. 

Laters!

AB3

[pisati]

had another therapy appointment tonight and I knew I was going to cry over something stupid

it’s honestly embarrassing talking about shit that I know I can talk about openly and suddenly I’m tearing up like it’s super painful for me

involuntary embarrassing reactions aside I have a good bit to think on for the next week

primarily that I likely do have exceedingly high expectations of myself, and while that may have been started by other people having high expectations of me, it’s really impacted my mental state bc I do feel like I’ve failed in many ways despite knowing I’ve been very successful overall

I take things way too hard and I’m way harder on myself than I should be. I know that my fuck-ups at work were brought to my attention so I could be aware and could fix them. that’s it. I wasn’t being reprimanded, I wasn’t being put on probation; if it were something that serious they would’ve said so. it was something to take seriously, of course, but it wasn’t that serious. and here I am literally getting chest pains stressing about watching myself like a hawk all day at work so I don’t fuck up again bc I’m scared it’ll keep happening and some ind of reprimanding will happen. I don’t think I catastrophize but I do worry a lot, and probably a lot more than I’m aware of.

it’s possible that my depression is more impactful than I thought. I guess we’ll be getting more into that next week but despite being high-functioning my therapist thinks it’s impacting my physical health. I know it’s not helping, but I don’t think it’s impacting me that much. I don’t know. 

I know a lot of my past is going to start coming up and I’m going to have to unpack a lot of the shit that’s been a strain on my relationship with my mom. I’m not looking forward to being told I should probably talk to my mom about it. I don’t want to. but the way she’s been towards me my whole life... that’s probably why I have such ridiculous expectations of myself. her punishing me and blowing up on me disproportionately for the stupidest shit when I was younger is probably why I’m always bracing for the worst over tiny fuck ups and taking it all out on myself. her taking out her stress on me when I was younger and invading my privacy and being so flip-floppy was so confusing and stressful and I just feel like I can’t be close to her. there’s so much I don’t feel like I can trust her with and it’s hard for me to feel like I can’t even have that maternal support in my life. I’m going to start crying talking about this shit too.

I was trying to explain how I felt like I could have done better in school. like I generally knew what I was doing, but I felt like my abilities were cut short by my own brain function. I know I could have done better if my brain could’ve just gotten its shit together. but it’s so hard to explain that. everyone thinks they can do better. she asked if it was possible that that was the best I could do, and I just... I really don’t think so. but I have to wonder. what if it was? what if I just can’t deal with the idea that I’m not smart enough and I’m just not cut out for academia? I tried to explain that I did do a PhD course at the start of my 3rd year in my major, and I did a lot more advanced shit than anyone else in my year; I did way more than I even thought I would, what with research and scholarships and whatever else I did. I did a lot, and don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of myself. but I just couldn’t meet my own expectations. I didn’t think they were that far out of reach. I really do feel like I could have gotten things better if my brain would just fucking work. but was that my limit?  maybe I was a little jealous of the people in my year that couldn’t come up with good answers in class graduating summa cum laude when I got one C in semantics and that seriously impacted my GPA. I thought I wanted to go to grad school, and actually what had me crying this time was telling my therapist that I’m seeing people in my department going on to do really cool things and going to grad school and being celebrated by the department and I feel like that could’ve been me too. I don’t like the idea that maybe I really wasn’t good enough. who would? but am I trying to deflect blame by saying I could’ve done better if it weren’t for my health? or was I actually limited by my health? I keep trying to emphasize that I’m not saying I can’t do things because I’m trying to limit myself. it’s that I know my limits and graduate school right now is just beyond that. I got a taste of what that entails and I know I can’t do it right now, and I’m scared I won’t ever be able to. it’s so hard to explain how it feels beyond “trying to get my brain together”. it felt like it took so much effort to read even simple experimental papers for class; to make the words make sense together and make the sentences form a context and extract understanding from there. “but is it possible those papers were just difficult?” I mean, yeah. it is possible. but I really do feel like I could have gotten it. I don’t think it would’ve been beyond me if I didn’t get exhausted after reading a few sentences. it’s so hard to explain brain fog and slowed cognitive function to someone who’s probably never dealt with it. I was told this therapist had experience with chronic illness, but it’s almost starting to feel like she doesn’t really believe me either. 

we also went over my eating and sleeping habits. like I have many, many times with many other people. I can explain to hell and back how it doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, I’m always exhausted. my diet isn’t great, sometimes I am lacking in vitamins, but supplements don’t help. this isn’t because my diet isn’t great. there are people that I KNOW eat worse than me, and drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and weed and drink coffee, and they’re in better physical shape than I am. how my crashes are unpredictable and sometimes I can push through them, and I don’t need to nap to recover from a crash. I just roll with everything as it comes and deal best I can. no doctors have been able to help me at this point. I’m not a typical case of anything, and because of that people always try to fit me into a box. I want a word for it too, but I really don’t think that word is depression. I was depressed long before this started, but even before my depression became obvious and my health started going all fucky I was a bubbly, vibrant kid. maybe I am high-functioning, but I don’t think the price I’m paying for that is all these crashes. and it’s not just the crashes. it’s restless sleep for 8 years. it’s alcohol and medication intolerance. it’s pain and brain fog and... I can’t even think of what else. “those are also symptoms of depression” like I know that but I just.... I really don’t think that’s it. I’m on meds for my depression and they’ve helped my moods but guess who’s still physically declining? 

much to think about. I guess. I don’t really know what to make of it right now. what I do know is that I’ve been the same amount of tired all day from the minute I woke up til now, despite taking two crash naps today. I have to be up semi early for my telepsychiatry appointment in the morning. going to the pain doctor again for my shots. tomorrow’s mom’s birthday, so I need to do something for that too I guess. mom’s boyfriend invited us out for dinner at the barn in mom’s neighborhood, or if it’s raining maybe we can do dinner there. ~socially distanced~. maybe while I’m out for my doctor’s I can pick her up something. I fucked up and only planned her mother’s day gift, didn’t think to make a birthday one, despite knowing her birthday is like 2 weeks after mother’s day. every year, man. she did ask me to make 3 more masks for her and I did. took way longer than it should have though, my machine’s fucking up and I’m seriously tempted to buy myself a cheap singer one just to do my little projects. I know mine needs a tune-up, it’s a really nice, expensive machine, and I don’t want to wreck it by pushing it. there’s so much I don’t know about sewing and machines.

anyway. blah blah. bedtime I guess

[xtcpanda]

Seriously, is playing Video Games as BAD as mom says?

If you grew up playing video games like I did … you’ve probably heard lots of conflicting information about games from your parents and people. Some say too much gaming will ruin your vision or rot your brain … While others claim it improves your hand-eye coordination, response time and can even make you smarter so what exactly does gaming do to our brain and body?

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with video games.

  I would stay awake for more than 48h till I wake up with keyboard marks on my face, red eyes and my body is so tired to even get up and drink some water... trust me I am not exaggerating. After all that I would go to sleep only to dream about the perfect headshot with that “AWM”.

  But there were physical effects, too. My thumbs turned into machines, quick and precise. During especially difficult levels of play, my palms would sweat. My heart would race. I’d have knots in my stomach from anxiety. It was the same feeling I’d sometimes get from watching scary movies or suspenseful TV shows.

These days the gaming industry is booming and becoming more like sports with fans, medals and everything! and thanks to smartphones and free games like fortnight and League of Legends … Gamers are increasing more than ever before. So, given that we can play virtually anywhere at any time How is all this gaming changing us physically?

Scientists are discovering that playing video games can change the way we act, think, and feel. Whether these changes are good or bad has become a subject of intense debate.

  Action games like counter-strike, overwatch and PUBG are some of the most popular with gamers these days and probably you’ve heard once or twice your grandmother says “these games will make you more violent from all the blood you see!”

Whenever a wave of teenage violence strikes, movies, TV, or video games often take the heat. Some adults assume that movies, TV, and video games are a bad influence on kids, and they blame these media for causing various problems.

  But media don’t necessarily cause violence, says James Gee. Gee is an education professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“You get a group of teenage boys who shoot up a school—of course they’ve played video games,” Gee says. “Everyone does. It’s like blaming food because we have obese people.”

  Video games are innocent of most of the charges against them, Gee says…

  Well, based on 15 years’ worth of study researchers have found that action games biggest positive effects were on perception: how our senses interpret external stimuli like sights and sounds, spatial cognition: which helps you orient yourself in navigating 3d environments and top-down attention: the ability to focus on one object while ignoring distractions.

  A good video game is challenging, entertaining, and complicated. It usually takes 50 to 60 hours of intense concentration to finish one. Even kids who can’t sit still in school can spend hours trying to solve a video or computer game.

“Kids diagnosed with ADHD because they can’t pay attention will play games for 9 straight hours on the computer”, Gee says. “The game focuses attention in a way that school doesn’t.”

The captivating power of video games might lie in their interactive nature. Players don’t just sit and watch. They get to participate in the action and solve problems. Some games even allow players to make changes in the game, allowing new possibilities.

  Different games have different impacts on the brain and that has to do with what you’re asked to do … just like food it doesn’t have the same vitamins after all, does it?

   “Failure is key to success”.

Ask anyone who has ever had any success in anything if they have ever failed. You will get a big clear “Yes!” because everyone has failed at something. Most people probably know about Thomas Edison and his spectacular failure rate but here are a few other examples:

J.K. Rowling -known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series- was rejected by 12 publishers

Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4 and didn’t read until he was 7

Van Gogh only sold 1 painting in his lifetime

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

In games you get 1000 lives and more! We don’t stop playing till the game says “Game Over” but then we click on “New Game” or new try.

  “Gaming could be good for pain relief”.

a 2012 literature review published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that in the 38 studies examined, video games improved the health outcomes of 195 patients on every front, including psychological and physical therapy.

Plus, in 2010, scientists presented research at the American Pain Society's conference, which found evidence that playing video games, especially virtual reality games, are effective at reducing anxiety or pain caused by chronic illness or medical procedures.

"The focus is drawn to the game not the pain or the medical procedure, while the virtual reality experience engages visual and other senses," said Jeffrey Gold from the University of Southern California.

  “Better Decision Making”.

Shawn Green from the University of Rochester wanted to see how games affect our ability to make decisions.

The study had a group of young adults with no gaming experience play an action game for 50 hours.

A second group of the same age played a slow-paced strategy game instead.

  After the study, Green had nothing but good things to say:

“Action video games are fast-paced, and there are peripheral images and events popping up, and disappearing. These video games are teaching people to become better at taking sensory data in, and translating it into correct decisions.”

A colleague of his even went on to say that shooters can change the brain by dramatically enhancing many of our low-level perceptual functions. Definitely good news for all the Halo and Call of Duty fans out there.

  “Games Can Help (Not Hurt!) Your Eyesight”.

Who grew up without ever hearing their parents say “you’re going to go blind watching that screen all day”.

  For a while, it did seem like they had a point since we tend to blink much less frequently while playing a game.

This can cause serious problems like eyestrain and dry eye syndrome.

  Another team of researchers from the University of Rochester sought to prove if games really worsen our vision.

The 2009 study involved having a group of experienced first-person shooter gamers plays Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament 2004 while more casual gamers played slow games like The Sims 2.

  After testing, those who played the first-person shooters showed signs of having a better vision than the others.

Daphne Bavelier, the leader of the study, discovered that playing action games improves an ability called contrast sensitivity function.

This ability helps us discern between changes in shades of gray against a colored backdrop, which is very beneficial while driving at night.

“Video Games May Help Treat Depression”.

A few years back researchers in New Zealand sought to find out if video games can be used to treat mental disorders like depression.

This was done with SPARX, a game specifically designed to provide therapy to teenagers in a way that’s more active and enjoyable than regular counseling.

Over 168 teens with an average age of 15 participated, with all of them having shown previous signs of depression.

  While half of the group received traditional counseling, the other group got to play SPARX.

The game involves creating avatars to rid the virtual world of enemies representing gloomy, negative thoughts.

Every stage also introduced general facts about depression, including ways to relax and deal with negative emotions.

Here’s their conclusion after discovering that SPARX players did better at recovering from depression than the other group:

  “SPARX is a potential alternative to usual care for adolescents presenting with depressive symptoms in primary care settings and could be used to address some of the unmet demand for treatment.”

  “Games has a purpose, meaning and can actually help!”.

Darfur is Dying is a video game made in 2006 by Students at the University of Southern California that provides a window into the experience of the 2.5 million refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan. It is designed to raise awareness of the genocide taking place in Darfur and empower college students to help stop the crisis. The game was developed in cooperation with humanitarian aid workers with extensive experience in Darfur.

First, you choose a Darfurian character to represent your camp. Next, you are instructed to go out and get water, which is the goal of the game. You are warned about the implications of some of the game's rules,

In the game, the user chooses a Darfurian character out of 7: a guy at the age of 30, a 26 years old woman, 5 kids from 10 to 14 years old from both genders to find some water... but watch out hide yourself from the Janjaweed militia! Upon success or failure, they learn that their chances of succeeding were predetermined by their gender and age if they are still young the militia takes them, if they are adults they get killed or raped. The navigation system in the game enables the player to learn about the situation in Darfur, get involved with stopping the crisis.

  As we saw no one plays a game and doesn’t gain something ... either you get a positive impact or a null impact. We haven’t seen any area that has been damaged where there is worse performance.

  Playing video games can be very high speed, can create a lot of chaos, create a lot of multiple environments where you have to make decisions, and all of these are forming skills in brain so … No, I think games really help improve our cognition and awareness training our brains making us better Human beings.

But of course, too much of anything is going to be bad after all.

You will get more learning gained from smaller sessions spread out over time than one BIG block.

  When it comes to my own experience, I’ve played games for more than 13 years never suffered any gaming related injuries. While may I never know if gaming helped my brain, I do know it didn’t destroy it … so take that mom!

  —   Moaaz Akram

[heatherwitch]

Sorry if you would rather not talk about it, but I was curious about your story of Lyme disease? If you would rather not talk about just ignore me please.

Hi! I don’t mind at all! It’s hard to share just a bit, andI’m hoping that sharing it all I may help others, so here’s a massive worddump (adding a read-more):

This spans from when I was a young teen (12 or 13) to now (I’m in my 20’s):

It started with migraines when I was a young teen. They wereawful, but I didn’t think much of it since many teen aged girls are prone to migraines.They were pretty consistent though and built up to the amount where they couldbe considered chronic. I told myself to suck it up, and tried to move on withmy life.

About 6 months I started gettingintense stomach pains. They made it hard to eat, but I still forced myself to.Even with eating a healthy amount, I was losing a lot of weight - which wasconcerning. Stomach pain became a constant in my life, and I started to loseenergy.

I went to probably 5 or 6 General Practitioners. They gaveme questionnaires obviously meant to see if I had anxiety, depression, or aneating disorder. I saw a nutritionist who told me I ate healthier than mostadults and I needed to find someone who could tell me what was wrong – because itwasn’t my eating habits. I saw a GI specialist who did an endoscopy and said “yepthere’s some irritation, I have no clue what’s causing it, goodbye!”.

I was tested for food allergens and restricted my diet evenmore, ensuring I was doing everything possible to help my stomach be happy.

On of the GPs slapped the diagnosis of abdominal migraineson me and told me that “a lot of teenagers hold anxiety in their tummies”. Iwas a content, homeschooled teen who spent my days running around the woods (orat least I had, before I started to feel awful). We didn’t see that doctor again.

Every doctor I went to, my mom requested they test for Lymedisease, just to rule it out. They all refused, because I never presented an EMrash. 

I was starting to present other symptoms. I was getting amaximum of 4 hours of sleep per night. My joints hurt a lot, and I had backpain. I often had unpleasant sensations on my skin (crawling, burning, etc.). Iwas exhausted, to the point that most people in my life were saying “please findsomeone who will help you, I know you and you are not okay”.

Finally found a doctor who ran the right tests andwent “oh FUCK you have a lot of infections and some of them will kill youif we don’t get you on antibiotics”. So began my 3 years of being on 1-3antibiotics at a time and an antiviral. Sadly, this doctor didn’t tell me abouthow long-term antibiotics can mess up my system and I had no clue I should’vebeen taking probiotics. Again, I was a younger teen who had always been tolddoctors know best.

Nothing seemed to be working. Doctors had tried multiplediagnoses and given me medications for them, but they did nothing. The antibioticsseemed to be helping, but whenever I went off them I felt way worse. And theside effects from them were making me feel terrible (for THREE YEARS).

I went to a naturopath who tested me for a lot of things,including Lyme (test came back negative) and she found a lot of imbalances and deficiencies.I was put on supplements, hormones and probiotics. She started to help me feel better,and she was convinced everything was from some tick-borne illness. She disappearedsuddenly. I have no clue what happened to her, but I had to find a new doc(AGAIN).

This turned out to be a blessing, because I found an amazingLyme literate naturopath in Seattle (who I have now been seeing for a couple ofyears). He’s helped my body recover from those many years of antibiotics,helped me get many of my co-infections to manageable levels and most of all, hetrusts me. He realized early on that I know my shit. I’ve done my research. I’mcritical and want to know the reason behind his choices and treatment plans -and he respects that. He treats me like an equal and understand that I know mybody and its illnesses better than anyone else ever could.

I finally tested positive for Lyme disease almost exactly ayear ago, although I knew I had it for a couple years before then. It’s onehell of a process to get a diagnosis. I feel VERY lucky to have finallyfound some doctors that believed me and ran the right tests. A lot of peoplehave to travel (perhaps even fly) to find a doctor who will believe them, butthe Seattle area has quite a few Lyme literate doctors – if you’re able to payout of pocket, cause many are at private practices and insurance doesn’t coverchronic Lyme treatment.

I never found a tick on me before the age of 14 (again, I started presenting symptoms around two years before then). I never got a rash, and probably chalked up the initial symptoms as the flu or a weird bug. I had absolutely no clue what was going on. It started with two, main symptoms and over the years my body began failing me. I was terrified and very few people believed me. I was accused of being a mentally ill, attention-seeking teenager.