#that reminds me of a time on the internet where if you were chronically ill and wanted a cure you were considered ableist against yourself

[wolveria]

Would… since 049 or Valens touched us and cured us of our cancer and pestilence, what about us with something like Diabetes? Would that also cure us or would he get my wonderful low blood sugar episodes lol.

I don't know, he hasn't tried yet 😂 I sure hope so, I would love him to cure all my autoimmune issues

[onlyangel4]

pushed too hard. mv1. SMAU + written.

max verstappen x chronically ill! reader

in which max's girlfriend has a very valid reason for not attending the races but the public doesn't know. and when the hate gets too much she pushes herself too hard.

author's note: so i have written this completely from experience, so the reader has elhers danlos syndrome (which i also have) but if you suffer from a different chronic illness please do imagine it as that.

warnings: chronic illness. hate. hospitalisation. injury.

face claim: katie douglas

y/ninsta posted a story tagging maxverstappen

written: y/sister managed to get a picture of me as soon as i woke up to find out that max won the bahrain gp with a twenty second lead. i am such a proud girlfriend rn.

maxverstappen replied to your story: good you are awake i'll facetime you rn. i miss you and the cats.

user1 replied to your story: if you really were a good girlfriend you would have been there supporting him

maxfan: you are such a bad wag you didn't even stay up to watch the race.

you had woken up on a high. you had turned your phone on to see all the messages informing you of your boyfriend's impressive win and you had even managed to facetime max before he went to bed. it felt like a good day. but then you made the mistake of opening social media. people on twitter were doing what people on twitter do best, talk shit. your eyes scanned over the screen as for the millionth time people picked apart your relationship and called you every name under the sun. they saw you as a villain that just did not support her boyfriend and that could not be further from the truth.

if you could attend every race you would but that just was not plausible. you suffered from elhers danlos syndrome and on top of that you had chronic fatigue. the elhers danlos effected your joints making every day painful to some degree. yes there were good and bad days but there were never pain free days. both of your knees had been operated on and you were awaiting surgery on your ankle due to frequent dislocations. the simple description of elhers danlos is that you had fault collagen, this collagen is what makes your connective tissue so your connective tissue was faulty and therefore your joints had a habit of dislocating and causing you a hell of a lot of pain. it was a domino effect the constant pain that you were in made you incredibly tired and that is where the chronic fatigue came in. max often called you his sleepy girl because you needed at least one nap per day to function properly.

you knew the problems you were having with max's fans could be solved by you telling them what you suffered with medically but they did not deserve an explanation from you. you should be allowed to live your life how you want to without thousands of strangers telling you that you were doing it wrong or that you were a bad girlfriend. you wanted to keep your medical issues private and max completely understood and supported your decision to do so. so instead you had to deal with all the hate. you just had to remind yourself that these people did not know the real you and if they did they, hopefully, would not treat you like this.

y/sister posted a story tagging y/ninsta

written: y/n finally left the house for the first time in five days and it was just for a snack run.

maxverstappen replied: is she having a bad week, she only eats reese's when she is a lot of pain

y/sister: i didn't tell you this but she is not doing well at all, she slept all of yesterday and then today the internet hates her because she wasn't at the race.

as the saudi arabian gp came and went max was busy with stragety meetings and such this meant that instead of coming home for a few days like he had previously planned he stayed out there and was going to go straight from there to australia and at this point you were really missing your boyfriend. the hate had not subsided either. it was just a very difficult time for you. one night where you had just been scrolling through twitter reading through the cruel things that people had been saying about you, you hit your limit. there was no way that you could deal with this for the rest of the season. so insteadyou decided to do something about it.

the morning you needed to fly to australia was when you realised that this was a bad idea. you had woken up in enough pain to down a horse, joints aching and head spinning. but danny had pulled strings for you. he had arranged everything just so that you could surprise your boyfriend and there was no way you were going to cancel when the plan was already in motion. so instead you just grinned and bared it. the flight was okay, luckily daniel had booked you a first class seat.. but sleep was hard to come by due to your body not being used to sleeping while being in flight. you were already tired when you landed in australia. due to the lack of notice the only flight daniel could arrange got in late on the saturday night. so you had booked a hotel next to the airport and arranged for a car to pick you up in the morning.

it had been so fucking hot in your hotel room and that meant that sleep was incredibly difficult to find. you tossed and turned all night only getting five hours of low quality sleep. in the morning you had pulled on a comfortable outfit and made your way out to the car that daniel had arranged for you.

y/ninsta posted a story

written: fit check

f1wags

liked by user30, user31, user32 and 89,172 others

f1wags: y/n y/ln has arrived to her first ever grand prix. y/n has been dating max verstappen for 18 months and had never been to a race before. but today that changes. she is not dressed in usual wag attire instead in an oversized shirt and bike shorts with a red bull cap. she may not be dressed like the others but we are happy to see her in the paddock

view all 628 comments

user30: we wait for her to show up and she comes wearing that. what an awful wag

user31: go on girl. give us nothing.

user32: i'm actually so happy she is here. i love y/n and have never understood the hate i think she is the cutest

the red bull garage was incredibly easy to spot. your eyes found danny loitering outside having a meaningless conversation with your boyfriend, "i got you a present mate. as it is my home gp i decided to spoil you", danny spoke and max raised an eyebrow.

"whatever it is i am sure that i don't want it", max responded

"i wouldn't be so sure", you cut in and max turned around instantly at the sound of your voice a wide smile gracing his features.

"oh my god, y/n", he spoke as his arms engulfed you in a tight hug. "what are you doing here love?"

"i wanted to surprise you"

"well consider me surprised"

you laughed softly as you followed your boyfriend into the red bull garage he gave you a tour of the garage and you followed him clinging onto his arm. he was used to having to hold you up so leaning on him did relieve your aching joints. max knew all about your medical issues he had helped you with them for over a year. he knew that coming to australia was pushing your body past its limits so every so often he made sure to check in on you. make sure that you sat for a little bit before interacting with the rest of the team. however when he left to go and race there was no longer anyone in the garage that knew about your medical issues. and this is what led to you being stood all of the race. stragestists and other people who you gathered were important to the team took the seats, while you stood towards the back of the garage.

it was around lap twenty when your left ankle began to properly hurt and your eyes felt heavy. a clear indicator of fatigue and your body telling you that you needed to rest. but your boyfriend was racing so well and you wanted to be able to watch him. the race continued for a few more laps however just as max started the thirty first lap your ankle gave way, dislocating from the strain of you being stood on it when it was already under pressure. you crumpled onto the floor a yelp leaving your lips as you fell but you were unable to put your hands out to soften your fall so you ended up hitting your head on the hard ground. this was enough to knock you out. first aiders ran over and called the ambulance into the paddock but you next regained consciousness inside the ambulance, on the way to hospital. alone.

f1updates

liked by user35, user36, user37 and 54,092 others

f1updates: as the drivers go into the 4oth lap of the australian gp an ambulance was spotted leaving the paddock with full lights. sources say the ambulance was parked outside of the red bull garage, but no one knows who was inside of it when it left the paddock

view all 554 comments

user35: the stress finally got to horner

user36: shit i hope whoever it is is okay

user37: the red bull garage do look rather stressed

"well done max you have just won the australian grand prix", christian had called over the radio. he felt guilt twinge at him. his girlfriend had been rushed to the hospital thirty laps ago but christian had made the decision to not tell max until the end of the race. he knew that the dutch driver was going to be mad when he heard the news. christian decided he needed someone else to tell max what had happened. "daniel can you come find me as soon as you are out of the car", he had intercepted the racing bulls radio just to give daniel the message, christian knew it would be better to have bad news coming from him rather than himself.

"thirty fucking laps ago", max spoke pacing back and forth in front of one of his closest friends. "you are trying to tell me my girlfriend had an ambulance called on her thirty laps ago and no one told me. she is in a foreign hospital. alone and probably scared shitless", max ranted to danny.

"i know man, christian just asked me to tell you. we can go to the hospital after the podium ceremony"

"oh fuck that i'm going now"

"you aren't driving", daniel knew better than to argue with max in that moment. yes christian would be pissed to find out that max was skipping the podium ceremony but daniel was not going to stop him from leaving. instead the two man snuck out the back of the paddock and to danny's car. the two racecar drivers got to the hospital in record speed with max running up to the front desk asking the nurse where he could find you. he was ushered through the hospital to a ward.

you were sat in a private ward you ankle elevated, an ice pack on your head and fluid iv in your arm. "max. you won.", you spoke softly. you had the television on and the grand prix on, you had just watched footage of a frantic christian looking for the driver that was now in your room.

"that does no matter my love, what happened?"

"i just pushed myself too far max. i forced myself to stand the whole time and my ankle dislocated, the doctors want to operate on it soon. and when i fell i gave myself a nasty concussion", you explained and the look on max's face could only be described as broken.

"oh my love", he spoke softly pressing a kiss to your forehead.

"i just didn't want the fans to think i was a bad girlfriend. that you deserve more than me", you spoke quietly, "they all hate me because i can't go to races", you spoke tears forming in your eyes but max's thumb quickly wiped them away.

"they don't hate you. they just don't know you honey."

"we should put out a statement, tell them what has been going on with me"

"you just read my mind my love"

maxverstappen posted a story tagging y/ninsta

y/ninsta

liked by maxverstappen, landonorris, daniel ricciardo and 830,121 others

tagged maxverstappen

y/ninsta: a long awaited health update. after a week in hospital i am now finally back home from australia. i am expected to have surgery on my ankle in the next couple of weeks. and i am on a strict diet of hourly lollipops because my blood sugar was low. i just wanted to say a massive thank you to max who literally ditched his own podium ceremony (sorry christian) to be with me. i am so incredibly lucky to have you and i love you with all of my heart, even if i am pissing you off while i'm on bedrest.

view all 28,001 comments

maxverstappen: you could never annoy me

y/ninsta: even when i try to walk when i'm not supposed to

maxverstappen: y/n sit tf down

danielricciardo: so glad to hear you are doing better

y/insta: thank you for bringing me take out every day i was in australia

user40: the world owes this girl an apology. you all bitching and moaning about her not being present just to find out that she has a chronic illness. some of you should be really embarrassed rn

[starlightkun]

27JSC ❧ teaser [sungchan]

❧ teaser word count: 768 | full fic: 21.3k ❧ warnings: once again everything i know about hockey is from the internet and only for this fic i’m sorry, blood/injury mention ❧ genre: fluff, sooo much fluff they’re sooo in love tbh, quite a bit of hurt/comfort sprinkled in, established relationship, college au, hockey captain sungchan, chronically ill reader (chronic migraines), christmas-y for a couple scenes in the middle, sequel to buzzer beater ❧ extra info: this is the sequel to buzzer beater, which you should definitely read before this one so you know what’s going on! the reader in this has chronic migraines, which i have. when the reader’s migraines, experiences as a chronically ill person, and thoughts about being chronically ill are described, that is me writing directly from my own life. i am not generalizing the lives of all people with chronic migraines/chronic illnesses, but i am sending all my love to any readers out there living with a chronic illness, and here’s a reminder to go take your meds! ❧ estimated release: saturday, december 16, 2023 2:00 p.m. eastern time

“My head hurts,” he announced, sounding downright pitiful.

“Really? Your head hurts?” You pouted at him, getting on your tiptoes to pull down your massive first aid kit from your cabinet.

“Uh-huh.”

“Aw, my poor Sungchannie,” you cooed, setting the huge first aid kit down on the coffee table and popping it open.

The apartment heating had kicked on, so you finally took off your heavy parka and overcoat as well, leaving you just in the base lounge clothes you’d been in before you’d hurried to get dressed with the urgent texts from Sicheng.

First, you tipped a couple of over-the-counter painkillers into his waiting hand, and he knocked them back with a sip from his water bottle.

Grabbing a couple alcohol swabs and boxes of bandages, you asked, “Okay, Hello Kitty, spaceships, or Pokémon?”

“Mm… What kind of Pokémon?”

“First gen. I think it’s mostly Gengars and Psyducks left in there.”

“A Gengar please,” he requested sweetly.

You fished a bandage out, pre-ripping the end of the packaging before setting it on the arm of the couch. Standing in between Sungchan’s legs as he was reclined back on your couch, you leaned over him, very gingerly brushing his hair back from his forehead so you could see the injury better. Thankfully, the bleeding had stopped between the rink and your place, all clotted blood and the start of scabs. Less thankfully for him, you were about to sanitize all of that. Gently turning his head so you could get better light, you tore open the first alcohol wipe and lightly touched it to the very edge of where you thought the wound started. Sungchan’s forehead wrinkled, but he didn’t make a sound. You continued at your task for another second before he finally spoke up.

“Y/N.”

“Sorry, I know it stings, but I’m almost done.” You promised. “I’d go faster but the lighting isn’t great in here, and some of it goes into your hair.”

“Don’t you think you’d be able to see better…” A pair of hands grabbed your hips, encouraging you closer, closer, down, down, until you were straddling Sungchan's lap, a knee on either side of him. “Like this?”

You were about to make a retort, except this tragically did get your own head out of the way enough to stop casting a shadow where you needed. So instead, you looked down at him with an eyebrow raised.

“How injured are you, really?” You questioned, pink-tinged alcohol wipe still in hand.

“So injured,” he fake-whined, settling his hands on your thighs.

“I’m sure.” But you made no move to leave, instead leaning in and getting back to work cleaning up the area.

Sungchan provided no more obvious distraction to you as you did so, seeming content to just smooth his thumbs over your clothed thighs and trace shapes there with his fingers. When you were finally able to see where the skin was split, you frowned, using your fingers to part his hair and inspect how far back it went.

“How long do I have, Doc?” He joked.

“You’ll live, but the bandages aren’t going to help the part that’s in your hair,” you forewarned. “That means be gentle when shampooing while its healing.”

“Sounds complicated. What if I mess it up? I think you should do it for me,” he suggested with a smirk, fingertips playing with the hem of your sweatshirt— well, really it was his sweatshirt, but he’d forfeited it to you some time ago.

“Is there something about getting injured that just turns you into a horndog?” You scoffed. For emphasis, you pinched the sliver of skin on his stomach that was exposed where his own t-shirt had ridden up above the hem of his pants and boxers.

He sat up then, forcing you to lean back to avoid smacking faces, but he just chased you forward until you were nearly nose-to-nose.

“No, there’s something about you being so worried and taking such good care of me that makes me want to show you how much I adore… you… back...” He punctuated the last three words with kisses that went up your neck to your jaw.

You looked up at the ceiling, as if pretending to consider this reason. But the happy smile that was working its way across your lips clearly gave away the fact that your mind was already made up. You snaked a hand between the two of you to push him back against the couch by the chest and hold him there. “Alright, but at least let me put this Gengar bandage on you first, hm?”

⤷ blog masterlist

[nootqueen404]

Eddie Munson HC: Having a Chronically Ill Partner

Yes this is purely self-indulgent, leave me be okay?! Bare in mind that much of this is based on my own experience as someone with multiple chronic illnesses. I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Chronic Anemia, Small Fiber Neuropathy, and Pre-Load Failure.

Even though you knew Eddie was the non-judgmental type, you were still scares to tell him about being disabled. Obviously he wasn't phased.

But on the inside all he can think about is “what can I do? What can I do to help y/n? How can I make their life easier? How can I let them know how much I love them?”

Eddie is best friends with Dustin, so he has a little experience with medical stuff. Part of the reason they are friends is because Jason Carver tripped the freshman on his first day and Eddie seriously though Dustin broke something. Eddie wound up in detention for fighting, but he still snuck out to check on Dustin and leaned about his CCD. The rest is history.

But yeah, Eddie tried to ask Dustin for advice. Dustin just acts like a smart ass and roasts him for assuming he knows anything because you and him are disabled and "must know each other." Eddie panicked and apologized profusely (we know how much he HATES confrontation,) but after he realized they Dustin was fucking with him Ed gives him a massive wedgie.

The internet didn't exist yet, so research is hard to come by. So Eddie does the next best thing - ask his Uncle Wayne for advice (he just reminds his nephew that the library is a thing.)

He probably asks Nancy too because "Hey she's pretty smart." She does help a lot actually, mostly by being the voice of reason and encouraging Eddie to learn from you.

Eddie asks A LOT of questions at first, enough to where he learns about one of the most common symptoms - brainfog and cognitive fatigue. Now he just asks the doctors you see.

Speaking of doctors he acts as your personal chauffeur to all of your appointments, even if you have a drivers license and a car. He knows you're more than capable of driving yourself, he just doesn't want you to put more stress on your body then you need to.

He's also not afraid to speak up on your behalf if a doctor or nurse tries to gaslight you. He remembers early on in your relationship of you coming home an appointment, just sobbing your eyes out about "no one believing you." That lit a fire under his ass.

He's threaten to throw hands with said doctors. But most of the time he just passive aggressive.

You've tried to explain Spoon Theory to him ("Why the fuck is it spoons?!?") So he changed it to a Health Bar, Hit Points, and Mana because he's a giant fucking nerd like that. Honestly it made more sense to both of you.

He's a lot more cautious now when it comes to his dealing, either cutting back on making deals to keep both of you safe, or triple checking the quality of his product. If what he deals could help someone, someone like you, then he knows it needs to be perfect.

When you tell him that some of the stuff he sells can help with your symptoms he makes sure he keeps the really good stuff in a safe place for you. Only the best weed for his baby.

Eddie stocks his kitchen with all of your favorite snacks and drinks, much to the annoyance of his uncle. Wayne bought him a mini fridge just so Eddie wouldn't overstock the main one with nothing but Gatorade.

Eddie is always worried if you're too hot/cold (In my personal case I'm always cold).

Too hot during those grueling summers in Hawkins? BOOM! Kiddie pool! BOOM! Pedialyte popsicles! BOOM! Umbrella!

Too cold? He keeps a bunch of regular and electric blankets in his closet.

You almost never use them because Eddie is a human space heater.

He keeps extra clothes and extra bottles of your meds for you if you don't have the Spoons/HP to drive home.

Could he drive you home? Yeah, but taking care of others is his love language.

You've made fun of him for this, but he keeps a mini cooler in his van filled with water and Gatorade because "you never know."

The pharmacists use to hate Eddie (cuz ya know) and were a little afraid of him with all of the rumors going. But after you two start dating they LOVE him! Whenever either of you need to get medical supplies the old ladies gush about how sweet Eddie is and the old guys try to hire him because he "knows so much" about different prescription medication.

They also give you and Eddie deals on supplies because they know you're both struggling financially.

After a while Wayne let's you sit in his recliner to help with your circulation.

Speaking of which, Wayne also loves you! He's skeptical at first, but all of that goes away after he sees how happy you make Eddie. Plus, he loves that Eddie is now using his dealer status to help people.

Eddie broke his own personal rule: the only people allowed to sit in his throne at Hellfire Club is him...and now you. The others did complain a little, but after Eddie explained your situation they backed down. When you need to shit you’re going to go sit wherever you can.

For your One Year anniversary Eddie gives you your own throne. The other members helped brainstorm and decorate it.

When you start needing a ramp Eddie enlists the help of all of your friends to help build it all. Everyone got a kick out of painting the ramp, but it caused a lot of in-fighting over how it would look. This is another way you bond with Eddie’s Uncle.

Eddie and the others helped you raise money for a motorized wheelchair and/or service animal by doing car washes and Corroded Coffin doing charity gigs.

You thought the crew fighting over the ramp was bad, wait until they get the idea to customize your mobility aid!

Team Eddie's Hot rod flames and skulls vs. Team Erica's Glitter and rainbow stickers.

Whenever you go to concerts with Eddie he makes sure you can have somewhere to sit away from the pit.

If its one of his shows he has you seated right off stage and with one of your friends - usually Steve and Robin. The best seat in the house!

Eddie LOVES bridal carrying you everywhere (Even though it isn't always needed.)

And giving you baths! Some times he’ll even join you! He will sit behind you and wash your hair while you cuddle up against his chest. One word: HEAVEN!

Not a day goes by where Eddie doesn't tell you he loves you for who you are - in sickness and in health.

(NSFW)

Eddie is super cautious during sex now after you passed out one time (I had this happen to be irl. It terrified my boyfriend, but I thought it was hilarious!)

You use the Stop Light Method to check in on each other. Green = keep going, Yellow = slow down, Red = Stop

"Who needs lingerie when you have compression socks?" is a running gag for you two.

Repeats after Eddie: “Hydrate or die-drate!”

Aftercare gets an upgrade in the form of baths together, “post-coitus” salty snacks, and snuggling while watching TV.

[animerunner]

?;:,,:&((? people with adhd are allowed to be in relationships what the hell are you going on about



Anon love.

One: I HAVE DIAGNOSED ADHD. 

Two: I have absolute not the faintest idea where you got that from my post.

You completely missed the point of that post so spetacularly. And I am being reminded of why people on this site have to say reading comprehension is important.

Because at no point in that post did I say one I did not want Lumity. I find the idea cute.

However what I did say was that Luz needs time to process her feelings. And the fandom needs time to let it happen.

You want to know why we know she hasn’t done this.

This answer from Dana’s AMA in September:

Three:...you DO know these two aren’t in an actual relationship in canon right? This, this right here

Is the closest thing we have to them doing something relationship-y

Four: me not wanting them to kiss when Luz hasn’t acknowledged the feelings. And this happens three episodes prior:

And is bound to cause problems between the two.

Also y'al really, really don't know what its like to have everyone your age consider yourself a 'werido'. Strange. Someone not worthy of being friends with.

Which is great that you have never experienced that pain.

But that also means you don't know what that's like for Luz. You can speculate. You can conjecture. But you have no idea of how lonely and painful that is. Even if you learn to mask it like both myself and Luz did.

You want to know why I know what its like? My school was so bad that at one point it was featured on a documentary tor bullying. Yes it was that bad.

My entire female half of the class was bullying me. And mind you in a class of 30 something there were only five guys. So I had 20 odd girls picking on me at once. Among other things I dealt with: 1. Having my clothes thrown out during gym.

2. Getting called names.

3. Having a guy physically jump over me in said gym class.

4. No teacher to turn too. No safe space.

5. Having a mental break down when having to deal with going back because me, the kid who loved school, didn't want to go back.

6. Getting teased over my haircut.

And this happened over three months. THREE MONTHS. Before the advent of the internet. Social media. etc. So I was alone.

It got so bad that for years I hated when people called me Sophie instead of Sophia. Since Sophie was the ringleader.

Luz has most certainly had some sort of impact on dealing with that for years. And y'all need to get your heads out of the sand and acknowledge that there are bullying victims on this show.

Finally: Luz is not the only one to sort through issues. Amity's parents have been showing to be controlling. And while my rents have gotten as they got older. And are not on Amity's level.

That kind of shit has an impact on your relationships.

Amity has to make the decision to actively step out of her parents shadow before anything can happen between the two of them. Yes she's made stride in the right direction thanks to Willow and the grudgby match.

But most likely at this point she hasn't made a stand against them yet.

To wrap it all up: Let Luz and Amity grow into their relationship. And stop conflating me wanting this with 'blah blah your saying mental illness'. WHEN ITS NOT. Yes her ADHD will have an impact and this needs to be acknowledged. ESPECIALLY WITH THE OWL HOUSE.

Since again y'all like to ignore this but there are a lot of chronic illness/disabiltiy parallel. And having ADHD will have an impact.

But maybe we should be talking about the fact that you looked at my post and decided that addressing ADHD means no relationship. Because that is not a healthy attitude and extremely black and white ALSO STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH I NEVER SAID.

[thegirlwhowritesfics]

Laying in bed on our phones but kinda cuddling.

Boyfriend reading over my shoulder “you know I’m your fiancé now, you can call me that instead of referring to me as boyfriend” (I call him boyfriend when I’m talking to internet friends even though some of them do know his name).

Me: “we’ve been together for 13 years, it’s going to take me more than a week to break that habit. But also, we could be married and I’d probably still refer to you as my boyfriend.”

He’s not very happy with me 🤣

Also a very lovely friend kindly reminded us that I’ve said multiple times that boyfriend probably wouldn’t propose or me agree to marry him until we had been together for 13 years. Goes to show how good my intuition is.

Some of you may remember we was suppose to elope in 2019 but ✨covid✨ kinda ruined that. And yes we had planned a wedding without actually being engaged. I was very against marriage when boyfriend and I started dating, he was very traditional in the sense of a nuclear family. He’s also an incredibly private person and neither of us like being the centre of attention.

His mother is intense and my family is a special kind of hell. So I told him around the 2 year mark that the only way he would get me to marry him if we got married by Elvis in Vegas and he agreed.

Over the past many years we’ve had a lot of setbacks, I’ve gained multiple new chronic illnesses and am a broke bitch. We’ve had some really shitty, horrible health issues in our families and we were both raised dirt poor and had terrible money management skills which have taken us years to fix. But we finally got to a point where we said fuck it, we are turning 30 let’s just go. The plan was he was going to propose at Disneyland so we could say we were engaged for 3 days before we got married.

Now, I have no fucking idea what we’re going to do. I still don’t want a “wedding” in the traditional sense, but I also don’t feel comfortable travelling, especially not to the US.

Maybe everything will have settled down in another 13 years 🤣.

If you’re married/engaged/have a vivid idea of what you want to do for your wedding share your stories with me please!!

Also we can’t go to the courthouse, that’s not a thing here in Australia and I have a wedding dress I would like to wear.

[goosegoblin]

I promise I’m not a creep! Lol. I was looking through your Reddit account because I remembered you have one and I like the sorts of posts you make on Tumblr, so I got curious and looked through. I saw you made some comments on r/illnessfakers. What do you think of that subreddit? I have such mixed feelings about it. I honestly don’t think the majority of people on it are malicious, but I worry that all it accomplishes is making disabled people insecure about whether their illnesses seem legitimate enough. At the same time, I’m guilty of browsing it regularly because I find some of the posts fascinating

ha, i've been wondering if someone would notice that and pull me on it. it's an odd place, isn't it? rest is below a read more for length.

i genuinely feel... very similarly. i absolutely don't buy the explanations that it's a noble, useful service that bravely calls out fakers or whatever. for me it's just... internet gossip. it's not a good thing. i don't think it adds anything to the world. i do guilt-browse it on occasion, though i refrain from commenting unless i think i have something useful to say/ a correction to make on something. at the same time, they do have a point that some people are indeed very clearly faking certain things for internet clout or- more concerningly- money and donations, often from young, ill fans in a parasocial relationship with them. and like, two women connected with this have now died! pseudoscientific explanations and cures are being pushed on thousands of young vulnerable ill kids by what essentially boil down to influencers, and that's fucking terrifying! honestly, the similarities between the a lot of what's covered and pro ana culture are kind of scary.

that being said, it's a reddit offshoot of a kiwifarms offshoot which is a 4chan offshoot (i think??? that's right?), so it's. not full of my normal type of people! and i unironically find the community themselves fascinating? not the casual browsers, but the die-hard obsessives who spend hours and hours collecting and presenting info on internet strangers they'll never meet. it reminds me of the sheer amount of information that exists on christine chandler, and the relationships people have with her (i guess they have their origins in the same website).

one thing i definitely find interesting is just how many of the users on IF are chronically ill themselves. there's something to be said there about respectability politics for sure, and in some ways it almost reminds me of people who are extremely into transmedicalist viewpoints: 'this is how to have our condition Correctly. please stop having it incorrectly; you are why people do not take us seriously'. people on the subreddit are not allowed to talk about their own illnesses or situations, and that's enforced really strongly (a 'no blogging' rule), which leads to bizarre situations where people are speaking with full confidence about exactly how getting a port fitted would feel and nobody can really call them out or ask them any details. it encourages this way of speaking that's like, completely disconnected from a personal perspective, and instead things are stated as just objective truths about the situation/ universe: EDS doesn't work like that, that would not hurt, all people who take [X] are addicts, etc, etc.

people there also operate with a very black-and-white view on how medicine works- this is how things Should Work and what you said goes against it and therefore it Isn't True. one key example i remember is someone expressing intense disbelief that endometriosis would be missed for 5+ years, because 'it's so common, it would be one of the first things doctors test for with heavy, painful periods'. like. that sentence is absolutely fully disconnected from the reality of how women and AFAB ppl are treated in medicine. it exists in a vacuum.

i don't know. i honestly have spent a lot of time being morally conflicted about that subreddit. i think it's one of the less bad variants, as it only allows posts on certain approved 'subjects' who are over eighteen with public accounts, and i've seen it remove people from that list if they were deemed too negatively affected by the attention. at the same time, though, that often just feels like window dressing, or attempts to claim morality. like, you are not actually doing a moral crusade here: you're just making fun of grifters.

additional note: i've spent a lot of time thinking about kelly this past week or so. i sincerely wish her the best and hope she is getting the physical and psychological treatment she needs to be healthy and happy.

[pitiless-achilles-wept]

2020 Can Take My Hair, But Not My Hope

My hair started falling out on election night.

I thought at first it might be the anxiety, that I was literally pulling my hair out with worry over numbers I already knew were not going to be definitive before the night wore into morning but which I stayed up until 3:30am watching anyway. I tweeted rapidly, reassuring my jittery timeline that not only had we all known that the night would bring no results but that we had even expected Trump to lead in key states because of the greater number of mail-in ballots from urban areas that would largely count for Biden. We knew. We all knew. But we were all terrified, flashing back to 2016 and already dreading another four years of living life on high alert, in constant survival mode.

I posted a selfie with a tweet that read, "Could be the last presidential election I vote in (blah blah stage 4 cancer blah blah) and I wish it were better and clearer than this but it's a crucial privilege to have voted. Remember, whatever the outcome, the last thing they can take from you is your hope."

To me that last sentence has been a mantra for these years and for my treatment. I have consistently refused, despite overwhelmingly terrible odds, to lose hope. The story of Pandora's Box tells us that the very last thing left inside was Hope--that even once all the demons were out in the world there was that tiny, feathered creature left to hang on to. It hasn't been easy, but I am one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet (and if you doubt this just ask anyone who's ever fought me on anything!) and it has turned out to be a saving grace rather than an irritating personality trait. Feeling like the world was trying to take my hope away made me angry. And when I get angry I will fight back.

I know I'm not alone in feeling like we entered some kind of alternate nightmare timeline on election night 2016. To that point, despite periods of immense personal difficulty, nothing truly terrible had happened to me. Then, in short order, my marriage ended and I was diagnosed with and began being treated for a terminal illness, all against the backdrop of a regime so deliberately hateful that it was truly incomprehensible to me. Then, a global pandemic and national crisis swept away the small consolations I'd found in my new life with cancer. The temptation to feel hopeless was strong and I struggled with it, particularly in the isolation of quarantine. I'm struggling with it now, facing a winter of further lockdowns, social isolation, continued chemo, and the added indignity (and chilliness!) of not having any hair. But somehow the coincidence of my hair loss with election night seemed like a good omen for the future, if a sad thing for the present.

I heard the news that they had called Pennsylvania for Biden at a peaceful Airbnb in the Catskills after stepping out of a shower where lost hair in handfuls. It felt oddly like a sacrifice I had made personally. I joked about this with friends on the text chains that lit up and that (despite my promise to myself and my writing partner that we'd "go off the grid") I responded to immediately. Instant replies, with emojis and GIFs, participated in the fiction: "Thank you for your service!!!"; "We ALL appreciate your sacrifice!"; "Who among us would NOT give up their hair for no more Trump?". The feeling was real for me, though. It was as though the good news demanded some kind of karmic offering. You never get something for nothing, I thought, and really it was a small price to pay.

The rest of the weekend passed too quickly, with absorption in the novel I plan (madly, given that I also work full-time) to work on for "National Novel Writing Month" (NaNoWriMo), walks in the unseasonably warm woods, and nighttime drinks on the back deck under the stars, watching my hair blow off in fine strands and drift through the sodium porch light. My friend and I read tarot and both our layouts contained The Tower, the card for new beginnings from total annihilation, the moment of destruction in which (as the novel's title says) everything is illuminated. "This might sound dumb," he said, "but maybe yours is about your hair." It did not sound dumb.

[shaved heads, the 2020 election, and a couple pics under the cut]

There is probably no more iconic visual shorthand for cancer than hair loss. It happens because chemo agents target fast-proliferating cells, which tend to inhabit things that grow rapidly by nature (hair, fingernails), or that we need to replenish often (cells in the gut), as well as out-of-control cancer cells. But not all cancer treatments, not even all chemotherapies, cause hair loss. In my 20 months of being treated for cancer and my three previous treatments (four, if you count the surgery I had) nothing had yet affected my hair beyond a bit of thinning. This despite the fact that my first-ever treatment (Taxol) was widely known to cause hair loss for "everyone." I had been fortunate with this particular side effect in a narrow way that I have absolutely not been on a broader scale. "Maybe," I had let myself think, "I can have this one thing." The odds were in my favor too; only 38% of people in clinical trials being treated with Saci lost their hair. I liked the odds of being in the 62% who didn't. But--as we all felt deep in our gut while they counted votes in battleground states--odds aren't everything.

I had come to treat the "strength" of my hair as a kind of relative consolation (though as with everything cancer "strength," "weakness," and the rhetoric of battle have nothing to do with outcomes). I treasured still having it, not just out of vanity (though I have always loved my hair whatever length, style, or color it has been) but because it allowed me to pass among regular people as one of them. I had no visible markers of the illness that is killing me, concealed as first the tumor and then the scars were by my clothing. "You look wonderful," people would tell me, even when I suffered from stress fractures from nothing more than running or sneezing; muscle spasms in my shoulder and nerve death in my fingertips; nausea that I swallowed with swigs from my water bottle that just made me look all the more like a hydration-conscious athlete; and profound, constant, and debilitating fatigue. Invisible illness had its own perils but I would take them--take all of them at once if necessary!--if only I could keep my hair and look normal.

It was not to be. A part of me had known this, since a lifetime with metastatic cancer means a lifetime of treatments a solid proportion of which result in hair loss. But I had hoped. And I had liked the odds.

The hardest thing for me is having to give up this particular consolation before knowing whether or not my new treatment is also working on my cancer. Unfortunately, there really isn't a correlation between side effects like hair loss and effectiveness of treatment. If it is working then I will feel that--like the election to which I felt I had karmically contributed--it was all completely worth it. Yet, even in this best case scenario, there's a new reality for me which is that while I am on this treatment I will stay bald. When you are a chronic patient you hope for a treatment that will work well with manageable side effects. And if this treatment works--and if the other side effects are as ok-ish as they are now--then I will remain on it.

It's that future that I am furious about more than anything else. I want to continue to live my life, of course, but I don't want to have to do it bald! In part that is because I don't want to register to people constantly as an archetypal "cancer patient" when I know that I am so much more. It is also in part because I don't want to think of myself as being ill, and living every day having to disguise my absent hair will make that all the tougher. I have already noticed that I feel, physically, as though I am sicker because of my constantly shedding hair. How could I not, in some ways, when every move I make and every glance at myself (including in endless Zoom windows) shows me this highly visible change?

For that reason, I'm shaving my remaining hair tomorrow (Wednesday). It's a way to feel less disempowered--less like hair loss is happening to me--and wrest control of the situation back. I will try to find agreeable things about it: wigs, scarves, cozy caps, bright lipstick, statement earrings, and a general punk/Mad Max vibe that is appropriate to 2020. But I don't want anyone to think for a second that I find this agreeable, or even acceptable, or that I don't mind. I mind a whole hell of a lot. My hair was my consolation prize, my camouflage, my vanity, my folly, and my battle cry.

I dyed it purple when I was first diagnosed because I knew (or thought I knew) that I would be losing it soon. I didn't, and I came to cherish it as a symbol of my boldness in the face of circumstances trying to oppress me, to make me shrink, to tempt me to become invisible. I refused and used it to "shout" all the louder in response. Because of what it came to mean to me, I'm nearly as sad about losing the purple as I am about losing the hair itself. It both symbolized the weight I was carrying and also that I would not let that weight grind me down. It was my act of resistance and my sign resilience all at once.

I sent a text to my friends, explaining this and offering, as an idea, that I could "pass the purple" to them in some way, small or large. It would feel more like handing off a torch or a weight (or the One Ring) than anyone shaving their head in solidarity. (After all, if they did that it would just remind me as I watched theirs grow back that, in fact, our positions were very different.) You're welcome to do it if you'd like too, internet friends, with temporary or permanent dye or a wig or a headband or one of those terrible 90s hairwraps or whatever. But I don't require that anyone do it because I feel support from you all in myriad ways, all the time. (But if you do, please send me pictures!)

It's November 2020. The election is over and Joe Biden has won. I still have cancer and I'll be bald tomorrow. I hope it's a turning point, both personal and global, because it feels like one. We've given up a lot in the last four years and I cannot say that I feel in any way peaceful or accepting about having to give up yet one more thing. But in losing my hair I absolutely refuse to also give up my hope.

(On our walk we did also seem to find a version of The Tower, all that was left of an abandoned house)

[anxietycalling]

how i spent my summer vacation

Or, where the fuck have I been these literal years? (I can’t believe it’s been years.)

I feel like I need to, at some point, talk about everything that happened between now and the point where I dropped off the face of the earth. And, like, actually talk, not that thing I do where I make a joke out of everything. So... I’m doing this up front, so if anyone actually still follows my shitshow of a life, you know what you’re getting yourself into before it’s too late.

Okay. Where to start.

Um, obviously, after the 2016 election I gtfo’d the US. Because I couldn’t legally work in the US at that point, I had pretty much no savings and no money because every dollar I did get went to supporting me and Dash because of the absolute nightmare that happened there. I’m not... mad at her anymore, not quite - I recognize that a lot of actions on both sides were the result of severe, untreated trauma and mental illness, so it’s hard to look at either of us and say that someone was the villain there. It’s hard to recognize when you’re in survival mode that your actions are self-destructive. But, anyway, because of that, I had no choice other than to move in with my parents. Which many of you are aware is not the healthiest choice for me mentally or physically.

And, again, it’s not that my parents are bad people. They’re good people who are trying their best, but there are two factors that lead to me living with them being a terrible idea. 1) My mother has a lot of unprocessed intergenerational trauma due to mental illness that she is still dealing with, and 2) Neither of my parents have ever lived in an urban center, which lends itself to a specific mindset when it comes to dealing with mental illness and LGBTQ+ issues. Which is to say, it’s hard to have a regular dating or sex life when everyone knows your business while your parents are simultaneously trying to pretend you don’t have genitals that they’re uncomfortable with. Also, I didn’t have my license at the time because I let it expire before getting my permanent one, so I was pretty much at the mercy of whoever could drive me places. (I lived in cities before that, so not driving was never much of an issue. I am highly proficient in public transit.)

So living with my parents was this precarious balancing act of trying to do everything they wanted me to do, because they were letting me live there for free, and meeting the demands of my bosses (who immediately demoted me once they found out I wasn’t planning on living there forever), and trying to have a social life outside of my family. And, like, I had just come out of the closet, so I was also trying to date without my parents finding out, because, like? It gets exhausting trying to explain why you have a right to exist and love who you want to love and I tend to get defensive when I feel like I have to justify myself. But all that secrecy really wears on you. I think in the worst of it I was probably sleeping 3-5 hours a night between the anxiety, having to walk or wait for rides everywhere, and staying up late enough after my parents went to sleep to try to meet guys on dating apps. 

Dating apps when you live in a rural area are the worst. Not only is there a limited dating pool to begin with, it sucks when someone ghosts you and then re-signs up for the same dating app using a fake name and you catch them at it. I get it to some extent; people are afraid of being outed, even if on paper we’re one of the premier retirement destination for gay couples near Toronto. (Read: affluent, white, cis gay men.) It’s gotten better in the last couple of years, but... Yeah, there just was nothing for me there. 

Obviously I had to widen my perimeter for who I was willing to date, and that’s how I met Husband. Completely by accident. My phone provider was out one day, so I didn’t get any messages from anyone for almost 24 hours while I was figuring that out. His message to me was one of the ones that got pushed through when my phone service restored itself. (I still, to this day, don’t know why or how this happened.) And there was nothing there that was inherently like, “Hey, you’re going to date and then marry this guy,” other than the fact that he actually put effort into his message instead of sending “hey” over and over again to get a response. But he was funny, and he was charming, and we fell for each other really quickly. Pretty soon all my money (which, again, limited, because the awful ladies I worked for decided I wasn’t leadership material even though they gave me no training or direction, ever) was going to taking the train here pretty much every time I had a day off from work. And I was lying to my parents about it, because they decidedly do not like or approve of dating apps or internet friendships in general.

Something happens in relationships where one or both of you are chronically ill. There comes a sink-or-swim moment in the relationship where you either step up and deal with the shit that happens, or you realize you can’t handle the intensity or uncertainty of it, and you gtfo. And... obviously, I chose the first option. Pretty much immediately after my first visit (as in, I was still on the train) Husband calls me, because his doctors are afraid that he has cancer. I go home, work exactly one day and turn the fuck around and go back so we can meet with the hematologist and find out whether he has bone cancer, Jesus fuck. Thankfully, it turned out that he didn’t; it’s something that comes up a lot because he doesn’t have a spleen and that, apparently, makes it look like you’re dying a whole lot. We ended up moving in together a month later because living at my parents was making me suicidal, which isn’t the greatest love story of all time, I know, but I had wanted to move out anyway and living with him was a much better option than random roommates.

I didn’t talk to my mother for... a month and a half, after I moved out. She kept trying to contact my friends on Facebook one day and I was ready to freak out on her for being controlling or something. Turns out, my biological father died. At the time, I was calm. Like, I wasn’t surprised - he had nearly died of alcohol-induced cardiac failure before I moved to the US, and it’s not like he had done anything to make his situation better - but it turns out I was actually in shock, I guess. The whole situation was fucking terrible; not because he died but because it kind of cemented that my only value to his side of the family was being “the only granddaughter” and not that they gave a shit about me as a person. They misgendered me in his obituary; they spelled my brother’s girlfriend’s name wrong.

I think the worst part is that they tried to make his celebration of life thing about how great he was as a person, though. And, like, I’m sorry, but great people don’t molest their children, or their children’s girlfriend. They don’t have sex in front of their children with their children’s physical abuser. They don’t make their teenage child in charge of being the sober adult when they want to go drinking. They don’t let their partner physically abuse their child when that child tries to get them both help for their drinking. They don’t trap their kid on a boat for a week with a creepy adult male stranger and freak the fuck out when that child has their first anaphylactic reaction to a novel food 20 kilometers from land or the nearest hospital. They don’t call that child on their birthday every year to remind them what a woman they are and always will be when they were the first fucking parent I came out to. 

Actually, no - the worst part of him dying was that I had to deal with his hellbeast girlfriend afterward, because apparently there was money for me in an RESP that he had never cashed, but all that got me was a shady financial representative who repeatedly wanted my mother and me to break the law over it. Like, my mom got her lawyer involved and everything, and once the legal letterhead came out the financial dude dropped off the face of the earth, stopped answering my calls and I never got my thousand pity dollars. 

And, like, things were okay for a little while after that because Husband and I were close with our roommates up until the point where it became clear that one of them had severe, untreated borderline personality disorder. I’ve lived with someone with BPD before; I’ve lived with a hoarder before. I was not prepared for the level of hoarding that this woman could produce. Or just, like, generally weird and shitty behavior and refusal to seek treatment for her condition. We tried everything we could think of, but ultimately we had to have secret meetings outside our house with our other roommate (who was dating her at the time) to figure out what to do with her. The things we found out... I’ve never wanted to genuinely harm a person before. Because she had been r*ping our roommate for months, and convincing them we didn’t want to be their friend, and using all their money because she wouldn’t go to work or apply for welfare or do the bare minimum required to be a human being. We had to get her removed by the police (who I do not advise contacting unless there is genuinely no other options) and the police acted like it was a typical roommate squabble even though we had fucking proof. So, anyway, we had to contact hell roommate’s parents and sister, and do all the packing to get her shit out of our house.

I will add that there were a few golden months right after hell roommate moved out. We got very close with remaining roommate, and it was nice, but then they started dating their current boyfriend and it just got... uncomfy for everyone somehow? They never outright said they were dating him, it was weird, one day they were like “Hey, I have a friend coming over!” and then he was just... there all the time? And they never told us they were dating? And, like, I’m happy for them, they’re great together and genuinely like each other, but it was weird. It was uncomfortable when we had to have the “We want to move out” conversation, too, because originally we had wanted to move to a bigger place with all of us, but ultimately we ended up keeping the apartment.

So that should have been fine, right? Especially since they moved in with one of Husband’s friends. Except that that friend turned out to be secretly awful and took advantage of everyone around them, and accused good roommate of being secretly racist and a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t true. (Trust me, good roommate would rather sever their left leg than do something that would hurt someone’s feelings.) And, like, I’m sorry, but you can’t use your master’s degree in social work to push around people who you know freeze during confrontations and have memory issues due to trauma, and then turn around and lead healing from trauma workshops. No. You’re a garbage human being who deserves to step on a thousand Lego. (Legos? Anyway.)

OH. Right. Before that, I had surgery. I had surgery and then pretty much the day we got home from that, the pandemic happened. At the beginning of it, good roommate and a woman who would later become one of our best friends came to stay with us because, again, horrific garbage pile of a human being in their house. Recovering from surgery took forever - I still don’t have feeling back 100% in my chest - but thankfully I was better enough by the time they moved to be somewhat helpful there. (They were incredibly smart and hired movers. We were pretty much there because we had just bought a car and could move breakable stuff.) 

Ugh. God. Sorry, I have to jump back to 2018 for a second, which is when I was diagnosed with OCD. Like, officially, I mean. It was probably pretty obvious to everyone who wasn’t me, but I always kind of thought that since I wasn’t on My Mom-level germophobic, there was no way I could have it. Uh! Turns out! Normal people don’t cry when a garbage bag that is clearly about to be taken outside touches the floor while they are putting their shoes on to take said garbage bag outside. So... I take pills now. And go to therapy. Which is very expensive. But, yeah, my symptoms were pretty fuckin’ bad then. And continued to be bad - like, bad enough that I had to quit my job in 2019 because my bosses weren’t taking it seriously enough or even listening to me. (It’s Mcdonald’s, it’s chill, they ruin or fire all their best employees.) 

Okay. Back to now. Pandemic! School! Suffering through all my pre-requisites so I can take actual interesting classes! Somewhere in there we started watching Twitch streams - I think it was because Husband found out Felicia Day streamed, and he loves her, and it kind of spiraled from there? But anyway, I somehow ended up part of this weird, delightful community that’s genuinely nice and non-trollish, and now I stream sometimes. Or attempt to stream. Or attempt to keep a regular schedule. It’s nice, though, to feel like there’s someone to hang out with when you pretty much can’t leave your house. There’s a sense of normality to being in a place at a specific time and seeing specific people. And Twitch has given me a lot of ideas on research topics I’d like to pursue in grad school. 

Like I said, it’s been a pretty mixed bag. There have been some really bad parts, but there’s a lot of good stuff that happened too. I just. I miss Old Me a lot, lately. I miss who I was before all the trauma. (I mean, obviously not all the trauma, because I don’t miss being a literal child, but like... 18-23 or so.) 

I think this might be the most I’ve written outside of a school context in actual years. Part of me keeps thinking about adding in APA formatting, but uh. You can’t really cite something when it’s just memories inside your own head. Anyway. I need to work on liking myself more, and working through some of the baggage that goes with trauma, and... I don’t know. It’s nice to have an outlet that’s not my husband or my cats. (Again, Husband is awesome, Husband is amazing, but we’re around each other 24/7 right now. I think he deserves a break sometimes.) 

So... Yep. Thanks, if you made it this far. I promise not all my posts are going to be like this. I just figured, if you were going to stick around, you probably deserved to know what happened while I was gone. 

[pinehutch]

(Thoughts about living in a body, some things are tagged but also, content warning for like, extreme self-indulgence and a whole lot of words.)

Pull up a chair (god knows I have), and let me tell you about living in my body. 

Something always hurts. You are 38 years old;  of course something always hurts, but sometimes what hurts is the reassuring prick and hot-cold lance of the Sunday evening injection site. Prick of the upper thigh, show some leg, know that your fingers will unfurl in the morning in a way that’s pulled along by your intent. 

You look younger than you are, if you are not too tired, if you have dyed your hair to hide the silver that started coming in at 22, if you’re performing the right kind of agelessness. The skin on your face has faint freckles and very rarely any blemishes, faint lines on your forehead since your mid-teens. One slightly dark spot that you’re keeping an eye on, that you remember to keep an eye on only for 2 minutes every day, while you’re brushing your teeth. You resolve to keep an eye on it. You forget by morning. 

It is a good face. It has nice eyes, and a rosy mouth, and a pleasant structure. You’re not exactly proud of it, or your hair, but you’re on decent, civil terms with the above-the-bust zones. You know that not wearing makeup is a privilege you have, that other people spend money and time and energy on makeup to appear to have it as good as you do. People will say kind things, and strangers may smile when they see you. 

You still wish you knew what to do with makeup. You still wish you could signal, here I am, look at me, I am trying to tell you something with this face. You are not in control of what your face is saying to people. The consequences of this lack of control are presenting an appearance unrelenting openness. Strangers may talk to you when they see you. 

Strangers! They have so many opinions! They will see you walking to and fro, and they will say to themselves, I believe that is a woman, and they will say to themselves, I have an opinion about this womanish person, this body, and they will say to you you gorgeous and you fat slut and you stuckup and you freak and you tits, you red hair, you hips. They will offer you a ride in their van (oh my god, their van), and will follow you for three blocks to ask if you have a husband, and they will shyly approach you in the produce section, and they tell you about their friend who is A Big Girl, Too, and they will throw pornographic comments at you on your second meeting, they will insist you do not need that size jean, and they will spit in front of you as you try to keep your head down, to keep moving. 

They have watched you at the gym, and they have laughed at you. (They don’t matter, and they are few and far between.)

(Every now and then they will give you thoughtful compliments sometimes, on the things that you’ve chosen. You should always give thoughtful and appropriate compliments to people, when you can.) 

Your body does not feel like it is yours alone. It is you, but it is not yours alone. It is a public and a private, personal nuisance. A man on the subway bumps against your ass four times in two stops. A woman on an airplane looks grim when that ass means you wrap an extender around your hips, pushed up up out of the seat. (Ha, seat.) Your shoulders are broad and you go to a show in a lovely old theatre and the whole time, you are curling, curling, curling inwards. You are muscle and bone, and you are trying to be a flower, folding petal-soft and unobtrusive. 

You cannot be unobtrusive. You simply do not fit. You have clothing in a range of 8 different sizes and you could wear all of it on the same day. Every dress is too short. 

Your body can be useful. Yes, it hurts, and it’s tired, and sometimes even the gentle push of your hands through the water for thirty minutes means your fingers will ache for a day and a half. You can’t always open a jar without a knife, but you can lift a heavy object onto a high shelf. Can anybody reach that? You can. You can walk for miles in the city dragging fifty pounds of luggage and you will even recover.  You can, on a good day, manage a seven-k trail, or ramble in the woods for some hours. You can carry the potting soil up to the third floor deck and fill the planters. You cannot climb out of the pool without a ladder, or you will limp for the rest of the week, and wear wrist braces. 

You can manage. You can live in your too-tall, too-broad, too-strong, too-fragile body, and you can live well in it, when it is only one part of you. 

You live in the world. You live in the world and so much of it is spurred by hatred and money and the money you spend to stop hating yourself. When you are 20-something, you start looking for alternatives. (You think you are looking for cute clothes; you find new ways of thinking, about your body, about all bodies, about bodies which are people. You find some cute clothes, too. Seeing the forest doesn’t take you out of it.) You learn that there are people who have functionally stopped hating themselves. You stop, functionally, hating yourself for being the body that you are. 

It gets easier, for a while. It never goes away, but it does get easier, and you learn so much about how you can be a person, a person who is and who has and who lives in a body, and never only any one thing. You practice telling yourself that every body is a good body, even while you read deeper and wider and realize that not everyone can feel that their body is a good body. Even if all of those systems and people and rules that say this body is good but this body is not good were not in place, not everyone can feel that their body is a good body. Some bodies aren’t even very successful at their primary function (i.e. being alive). Some bodies hurt all of the time. 

Ten years later, and your body becomes one of the kinds of bodies with above-average premature mortality rates. It becomes one of the kinds of bodies where something hurts, all of the time. For a time, you cannot manage very well at all. You cry a lot, because you are in pain, and you are frightened, and nothing works, and you lose a year of your life to hands locked in fists and panic attacks and vomiting up different combinations of meds. The (terrible) social worker will tell you that heels are not a part of anyone’s identity, and ask if you’ve tried eating kale. Your mother will say that you should lose weight; you do not walk on your hands, though. Your father will tell you that the same disease is in his wife’s lungs. Your boss will tell you, with kind eyes, about the long-term disability accommodations available to you (it’s only a forty per cent salary cut). The pamphlet will tell you that statistically, you will not be able to work for more than 10 years from this point. People who love you will kindly remind you that you had been working too much, volunteering too much, and that stress is probably a triggering cause. 

You will leave that year behind. You will leave it, walking and swimming and carrying on. You will dance in the shower again. You will learn to speak up when you are in crisis. You will never wholly stop feeling betrayed, and it is impossible to tell where the betrayal came from: did your body betray the you-of-your-mind, by detonating the sleeping danger in your genetics? Or did your mind betray that you-of-your-body, by pressing too hard on the seal holding back that self-immolating flame? It’s a never-ending, tedious dialogue. (Is it my fault? It is my fault. Is it my fault it is my fault is it my fault it is.) 

You will learn to smile at your reflection again. People will say, you are beautiful, and you will know it is true for them, and that if you are beautiful like a whale, like an iceberg, like a thornbush, like a moonroad, like a forest, like anything lovely and grand and untouchable and inhuman - at least you can take comfort in good company. You try to turn that misty gaze upon yourself. 

You would like to look at yourself in the mirror and see only a person. You would like to look in the mirror and see only a you-who-is-whole. You will, you resolve. One day you will. 

*** 

So, I’ve been tired beyond tired this week. I’m sleep-deprived and not clear-headed, and this was terrifying to write, but it comes from a place that is as honest as I can make it. In frank terms, I’m 178 cm tall, and right now my every piece of clothing I’m wearing is a ‘straight size’ XXL and made of super soft jersey, because I’m in my pyjamas. My wardrobe ranges from a regular XL to “I got this wool coat made-to-measure because nothing else would cover my hips without falling off my shoulders.” 

The thing is: I started consciously and deliberately seeking out information on body positivity and on fat acceptance in, I dunno, 2002? 2003? I learned so much from intersectional feminists on the internet who were having complicated and often very personal conversations about bodies in general, and about ‘fat’ bodies in particular (what’s a fat body, anyway? what’s a tall one?), and then about the ways fatness intersects with race, gender, class, and ability besides. By the time I got to thirty, I was genuinely relieved to not be wasting energy hating myself on a daily basis. 

And I mostly don’t, still, most of the time. I’ve never quite ‘gotten over’ the sense of bruised identity that comes with a chronic illness, and the way that having a body that is physically more vulnerable has made me feel more mentally and emotionally vulnerable to the kind of social weapons that we/they use against our/each other’s bodies. I continue to do the work of trying to be neutral-to-positive about my body (it’s just me! it has no more or less moral weight than any other body! neat!), but when I feel generally worn-down and otherwise a bit hyper-aware of bodies, it’s really, really hard. 

At least once a day for the last several weeks I have had to stop whatever I’ve been doing when, unprompted, a thought like “it is impossible for someone to want you” or “you are, objectively, disgusting” crosses my mind. (I don’t know why my inner critic is so formal! Just a super-big jerk, really.) I think in words, so it comes just like that, in clear and precise words, and I have to stop and interrupt myself. Usually this is just a pause, and a shake of my head, and a breath, and I throw myself back into whatever has been otherwise occupying me. 

It’s fine - it’s mostly fine. Maybe this is normal, maybe this is how everyone experiences their physicality and their subjectivity. And it will be better in the morning, so now I’ll stretch my hands and fingers, and rest. 

[justjessame]

Babysitting Butcher Chapter 33

I talked my options over with the medical professionals that seemed to come and go like waves. The bulking machine that was being used to clean my blood of the impurity of whatever variation was added to me without my permission wasn’t something I planned on installing in my house, or any home I ended up in. Since my specialty wasn’t in physical medicine, I asked, hoping against hope that there was a portable option. One that would allow me to have a life, maybe not the one I’d gotten used to, but one that I could settle into and live a life that was my own, at least until the inevitable.

Billy had gone, once he realized that I was certain of the outcome and of my answer to it. It hurt worse to see the pain on his face, than it did to know that I was right about what I told him. To see how hard he took the idea that I knew how he felt about supes, regardless of their origin, wasn’t something I took pleasure in. I wished- No, I couldn’t do that, dwell on what could have been.

Instead, I spoke to the doctors and lab rats. How could I get back to the real world, but keep the possible fallout of my new additions at bay? They tossed out ideas, having tried a few times to see how long I could go without my blood being cleansed on a constant loop. The longest, and it was touch and go, was twenty-four hours. Then the fever hit hard and fast, the vertigo came rushing over me, and the spots in my vision made me almost wish for blindness. I even began bleeding again, but not from the same place that erupted in my former office. Knowing this particular weakness, and the possibility that it wouldn’t end well for me or anyone near me, they discussed it for days and then came back with an option, but one I would have to test in the clinic first.

There were two forms of more portable, so to speak, dialysis. Both meant that I would have to learn to be hands on, literally, in my own treatment and both used my own body as part of it. They warned that given how my body reacted to attempts to neutralize the foreign agent that had been introduced either could be a long shot. After all, one of them reminded me, my own body seemed focused on destroying itself.

Both utilized a catheter, much like one that I already had, but while one necessitated me using gravity to push a fluid that would do basically the same work as the huge machine that I was rarely allowed a break from, the other was a machine version, smaller but same principal. Both were contingent on my participation and both required me being on a strict schedule, stricter than a usual patient of either form.

I agreed to try both, but there was another issue. Even with the pull of being home, they wanted me to understand that I’d still need to come into one of the Vought labs for treatment. The goal remained to neutralize if not remove the dangerous mixture from me, and that wouldn’t change when I left. Telling them I understood had two doctors exchanging a look which I asked about.

“Do you know how far this clinic is from your home?” I shook my head, feeling a wave of nerves. When they told me I nearly fell over to cry, too far of a commute, especially if I had to keep the blood cleanse going on such a strict schedule. “It’s the closest, but there is another option.” They told me about a community, NOT the same as where Becca had raised Ryan, but an actual regular community that happened to be close. I nodded, it was another thing to consider. “Let’s do this a step at a time. We’ll schedule a test for each of the portable dialysis options, then we’ll discuss the next step if it’s something viable.” Another nod from me and they offered one more thing to think about, “there are medical detection dogs, with the signs that occur before you become less stable, that might me something we’ll have to discuss further as well.”

 With food for thought, I sat down with a book instead of my laptop. While I tried to get comfortable and push the idea that I was planning on leaving the care of round the clock health professionals and worse turn my back on everything I’d worked so hard for, it wasn’t nearly as simple as when Sherlock Holmes worked through a mystery.

What would anyone else do if they were sure that they were looking at limited time, not only because of a condition that didn’t seem to be fixable, but because they weren’t completely sure that they could trust the person they loved to NOT help the end along?

 Billy came back the next day, and I felt my heart skip a beat when he ignored the doctors and rushed to me to kiss me completely senseless. “You listen to me, Veronica Taylor,” his breath was hot against my damp lips. “I fucking love you and I could give a shit what’s swimming around in your fucking bloodstream. I could give a fuck if you develop laser eyes and can lift my fucking car with your pinkie.” I swallowed at how fierce he sounded. “I told you before, Ronnie, I CAN’T lose you and I fucking won’t.” And then his lips met mine again, and instead of the hot hunger he started with, this time it was such a slow sweet kiss that I felt like my heart stopped, and when the beeping of the machine took a pause I realized it had, but then the beep returned, strong and steady, just like Billy fucking Butcher.

 He held me, fully clothed of course, in my hospital bed and we talked about the options I’d discussed with the doctors. He listened, his fingers idly stroking my arms while his arms were cradling me to his chest.

“I want to be here when you try it,” I started to remind him of work, but he shushed me. “If one works, Ronnie, I want to know how to do it too, that way I can pick up the slack and it won’t all be on you.” I smiled, feeling a peace that hadn’t come for too long. “And a dog?” I nodded and could tell he was excited, since he had his own dog out there somewhere. “What kind?”

We got my laptop out, and unlike the hopelessness I’d given in to the day before, we searched the internet for more information on dogs who were medically trained to detect chronic illness symptoms, nipping the likelihood of further trauma or worse case scenario in the bud with their ability to alert patient or caretaker to a problem before it got out of hand.

“They’re a bit bigger than Terror,” his dog, I remembered him telling me about him. His lips pressed against my temple as he reached down and used the touchpad to scroll down. “If they can help me keep you healthy, Ronnie, I think we should put in a request.” I smiled, his fingers hitting the contact button on the site we’d found for a group closeby. “Give ‘em a bit of time to make sure they can train it up for your particular needs.”

I put in the information requested and hit send, while reminding Billy that it was all contingent on the treatment from home option working. And he smiled and turned me carefully so our faces were close enough for our noses to touch.

“You are one of the strongest women I’ve EVER met, Veronica,” his hands cupped my face so carefully that I felt more fragile than the thinnest glass. “If anyone can make this work, it’s you.”

 The doctors scheduled my next experiment with Billy’s request to be present in mind. Over the weekend, with a cot in my room just for the man who kept surprising me to use while he both learned along with me and watched me like a hawk to be sure I was alright, we began. I held his hand while they walked us through the first option. The non-machine one, since it was the lowest tech version, and smiled when I saw how intensely he was watching them walk us through the steps.

“The three step process,” our instructor explained, “ takes around thirty to thirty-five minutes total and you’ll have to do it throughout the day. If this option is viable for you, then you’ll also have to wake up to perform it, or it can be paired with the second treatment. How long between treatments will be something we have to work on as well, but first let’s see if it works?”

Billy stopped the doctor before we could get started by asking questions I forgot or missed in my yearning to go home. How would the supplies need to be kept? What were the worst case scenarios if something went wrong while we were home? How long did he have to get me help if the treatment stopped working? Would it be more dangerous for me, to my health, to do this rather than keep coming in for the treatment that I was doing now?

Once his concerns were addressed, in complete detail, the doctor then took me off the whirling machine that I only had minimal breaks from, telling me that unlike someone on dialysis for kidney issues or failure, since mine was simply to circulate and cleanse the blood to keep the foreign bodies at bay and ineffective, that made my complete focus necessary. He didn’t just mean that he wanted to me to learn the steps, he meant that I had to focus on precisely how my body felt. All those questions I hated to answer daily? Those were my gauge for how I was supposed to determine if the treatment was working or not. Whether I felt my temperature going up, the spots returned to my vision, or the vertigo hit me at the wrong moment, it would be up to me to know whether this was still working or not. And it was paramount, given how my body could go supernova and kill not just myself, but who knew how many others, since the range of my area of destruction couldn’t be measured without it happening.

Taking a deep breath and nodding, we got to take a break before the first round of my possible path to escaping the room I’d spent far more time in than I cared to think about. While we waited, Billy asked me if I thought my mom should learn how to perform the treatment too, and like she’d been conjured, she was in the doorway smiling at the two of us.

“You’re not hooked up to that dreadful machine,” her eyes widened with hope, but I shook my head causing her smile to drop and fear to replace her joy. “It’s not-”

Billy told her to take a seat and explained that I hadn’t been cured, but that we were trying something new to see if I could go home. He didn’t mention, and neither did I, that home might be further from the city, and closer to the clinic. One thing at a time.

“Of course I want to learn,” she set her purse down and folded her hands in her lap before she seemed to remember something. “Your father is parking the car,” she sighed, knowing that it was already hard for him to see me sick, but she took a deep breath and straightened her spine and I knew she was about to assert her will. “He should learn too, just in case.”

“And what am I learning, precisely?” My father walked into the room and this time, instead of Billy, Mom explained what was coming.

 My parents and Billy watched as the doctor, hours later when I felt the first twinge that my body was rebelling against me, walked me through the first trial. The bag of fluid, the connection to the accessory that Billy’s agreement during my unconsciousness had given me, and the power of gravity while my family watched and took notes, both mental and physical.

The first trial, actually walking me through it and showing me how to hold the bag up and wait while it utilized gravity to work its medical magic, took longer than it would if it became the option that I’d use at home the doctor promised.

“First time is always longer,” she smiled, reassuring me as the fluid dripped into me. “We chose the lighter, more flexible catheter hoping it wouldn’t be permanent, which makes this transition easier.” My mom and dad asked their own questions, knowing that Billy wouldn’t be available constantly, even if he wanted to since I would push him back to work. As the doctor answered, showing them step by step again, while Billy took the bag from my hand to give my arm a rest.

“You’re doing great, Ronnie,” he whispered, giving me a soft kiss. “Just think, this could be our new foreplay.” He was teasing and I knew it.

“Gotta say, Butcher, this is a very fucked up way to get me wet.” I winked at him as he chuckled quietly. “I love you, and I’m sorry about-”

“Nothing to be sorry for, love.” Our eyes met and everyone heard the change in my heart rhythm. We ignored the soft laughter of our audience, so focused on our little bubble. “You wrote the book on me, Ronnie, but you missed a chapter.” I raised my eyebrow, knowing I was wrong, so wrong about his love for me, but I was curious as to what I’d missed. “You missed the part where I am single fucking minded in my love for you. Not a moment goes by that I want whatever that caped cunt forced into your body purged, but never a thought of destroying YOU or your body.” He sounded as fierce as I knew he was and I felt far more confident in him and us. “Until you get sick of me.”

“Never,” I promised, and we kissed again, less soft and sweet and more hungry that we’d allowed ourselves since I woke up from the first hit of the second phase of Homelander’s interference.

 It turned out, after two weekends of further trial and error, that I would be doing a combined effort with peritoneal dialysis. Both the manual and the machine, and as an added bonus I’d get to make at least two trips to the clinic a week for further testing and at least one date with my favorite machine. My parents had come to every single training exercise, shocking me with their commitment to keeping me healthy and when Billy and I, more certain that going home was possible told them that we’d have to move, they took that in stride as well.

“I can hire movers and have them pack up the house,” Mom offered, knowing that Billy would rather be at my side than dealing with those details. “And, if you’d like, I could take a look at that community they told you about-”

The uncertainty in her voice made me realize how much our relationship had changed. Before, she would have gone and chosen the house, put the down payment down and had the paperwork ready before I’d fully made the choice to move. Now she was asking permission. Wow.

“What if we went together?” I think I surprised her as much as she did me. “The doctors have been talking to me about more trials, shorter but to make sure that I can handle it on my own, why not a trip out to have a look? It would make me feel more productive-” I sighed, and Billy’s fingers linked with mine.

 “You are productive,” his lips were against my temple in the soothing gesture that he knew helped me the most. “Told you that the others have nearly cleared the list of unknowns. Done more sit downs with supes than I ever wanted to contend with, and you were there virtually for most of them.”

I’d started, once I was feeling more hopeful about getting released back to some normalcy, joining Billy during his meetings with supes via video chat. While the supes didn’t see me, I didn’t feel up to fixing myself up to that point while wearing my attractive nightgowns, Billy could and I kept him even keeled and soothed the more frazzled nerves of some of those supes that hadn’t wanted to be found. And I’d gone back to researching both Homelander’s misdeeds, and the mysterious head popper’s true identity.

“Of course you are,” my dad kicked in. “You’re still the head of that office, Veronica, this is all just a little hiccup.” His reassurance was welcome and just as shocking as my mom’s uncertainty in helping us relocate. Who knew it would take the possibility of dying to bring us all together?

[thisclockworkheart]

My therapist asked me an excellent question today: What do I wish someone had told me when I was first being diagnosed that would help me come through things with a positive attitude?

It's en excellent question, and one that I think bares some thinking about. I've been dealing with this for close to 10 years now. I've learned a lot over the years, and I'm still learning. But here are a few things that I would have loved to have someone tell me all those years ago. (and some things I need to remind myself of a little more often)

You will get through this. It won't be easy. There will be days that you want to give up. More than give up- you just want it all to stop. But each morning you open your eyes is another day you've survived.

There will be days, weeks- even longer sometimes when all you do is survive. And that's okay. More than okay, it may be absolutely necessary. You are not being lazy. You are doing what you need to do to take care of yourself. This is wise, not selfish in any way at all.

You may never get back to where you were before you got sick, and that's okay. You will find a new normal. You will learn tricks  to deal with pretty much any symptom that comes your way. That may seem impossible now, but after you've dealt with something for long enough, it becomes second nature. Humans are amazingly adaptable that way.  That being said...

People who have never been through this kind of thing have no idea just how much energy it takes to take basic care of yourself, let alone how draining it can be to try to function like a somewhat normal human being in society. It's frustrating to no end, but try to forgive them. They're doing the best they can with the information that they have.

You may find yourself needing to forgive a lot of people along the way. Family, friends, doctors, medical staff, even yourself. Remember that this forgiveness is mostly for you and you alone.

Repeat after me: I am allowed to grieve for what I have lost. Feel it, experience it, but don't get trapped in it. You can spend your entire life wondering what may have happened if you never got sick, but since we haven't invented time machines quite yet, all we can do is move forward. Time will pass whether you like it or not, so you might as well reach for the future along the way.

You may need to reset your big life goals. One of the many problems we have as a society is that we teach our children to reach for these grandiose goals, which in turn makes them feel like failures if they don't achieve them. That's not to say we shouldn't try to reach those goals, but life may necessitate that we change them along the way. These new goals  are no less valid than the original journey we set out on, but we're taught that anything less than perfection on that original goal is failure. That just isn't true! As they say, life is what happens when you're making plans. Your journey evolves as you go along, and any new goals that present themselves may be the best place for you to go in the here and now.

Your innate value as a human being is NOT based on your health, or how productive you are. Fist off, health looks different for each and every one of us. No matter what some stranger on the internet (or anyone else!) has to say, your health is between you and your doctors. No one else has the right to judge. Recovery is also different for everyone, even between the same condition. I know it's hard, but try not to compare yourself to someone that's doing extremely well when you can hardly get out of bed, and find yourself wanting.  It's unsatisfying at best, and soul crushing at worse.

You are valuable as you are now. You are worth sticking it out until tomorrow. No matter what happens, you always deserve help. Don't allow anyone to make you feel otherwise. You deserve any help you need- mental, physical, or otherwise. PLEASE listen to me on this: Anyone who makes you feel otherwise is WRONG.

It's not an easy road, and it's certainly not a fair hand that we've been dealt. But you aren't alone, and if you can do any of the above, you'd find yourself ahead of a lot of people already. It may never be sunshine and roses, but at the risk of sounding like a facebook mom, life's handed me limes and I'm about to make some mojitos.

So that's my novel on that. Anyone else, please feel free to add. What do you wish someone had told you when you were first dealing with chronic illness that may have made the path a little easier?

[thewayiremember]

EPISODE 1

July 5, 7:20 PM – 4 DAYS AFTER THE INCIDENT

Nathaniel Blake is lying across from me. He’s 16 years old, 5.9, 154 lbs, has no allergies, and no chronic illnesses. At least that’s what his medical chart says. How I got access to that is not important. I don’t actually know the guy, but we’ve been practically inseparable for the last couple of days. Plus, even though he hasn’t regained his consciousness yet, I’m sure he complains as much as I do about being here. He just cannot express his frustration. I have it easy. I can roll my eyes and sigh as loud as I want to. But there’s no one to see it, so, what’s the point?

Nathaniel Blake was supposed to travel across the Pacific in a couple of days for his dream vacation in Australia. He has been preparing for that trip since last summer and it was kind of a big deal because that would be his first totally independent adventure. I know that because his grandparents lament about it every time they visit. He can probably hear you. It won’t make him feel better if you keep reminding him how sad it is he won’t be able to go. His left arm is encased with a cast. Luckily, the doctors said it should heal very nicely, and that he shouldn’t have any movement difficulties afterward.

I always pretend to be asleep when he has visitors, so I have a little trouble forming opinions about his friends. He has too many. They seem like good fellas, though. The guests usually come in the mornings, which works for me cause it’s easier to play dead when you’re still tired. I know they would feel a lot less comfortable talking to him if they knew I’m awake. Plus, I wouldn’t feel comfortable looking at their sad faces, either.

I talk to Nathaniel a lot. I feel a little guilty because I can’t know for sure he even wants me to talk to him, but the silence of this place really gets to me. So I made him my friend in spite of him being unconscious. He knows me really well. He can’t tell me to shut up, so, I never do. I try not to whine too much and keep it positive to cheer him up after all that sobbing he’s forced to listen to, but I can’t always help myself. My buttcheeks hurt from not really changing this half-seated position and the wi-fi dies on me every five seconds. I have plenty to complain about.

But he’s alive. And I’m alive. So, there’s that.

It’s nice to have a friend who listens so well, but I do hope he wakes up eventually. Keeping my fingers crossed.

There’s a TV hanging from the ceiling but I don’t know how desperate I’d have to get to turn it on. The ads play every ten minutes and they’re so loud it makes me even more hyper and annoying. We don’t want that. At least I have plenty of time to meditate. No… I don’t meditate, I just watch Netflix. Though I never realized staring at the screen all day could be so exhausting. Headaches are no fun. So I have to take brakes, and then I’m left with me, myself, and this beautiful ward.

And that is not sarcasm. It’s actually really pretty. Minimalistic, by budget, or design, who cares? We can see only whites, blues, and some pink-ish whites. And the light wooden window frames on the tilted wall complement those colors very nicely. There’s not a lot of space in this room, but in my opinion, it makes it cozier. We have our own bathroom that seems clean and doesn’t give you chills when you walk in. Not that we use it much, especially not Nathaniel. And for me getting out of bed is still very challenging so I try not to drink too much so I won’t have to go to the toilet too often. I have the smallest bladder on Earth.

The sun is setting and the whole mood starts shifting. I have a wide view of the lake when I look outside the window. The water reflects all the colors of the sky. A gradient of perfectly aligned hues is breaking through the clouds. It’s insane how sexy the sky can be. Lots of blues, yellows, and purples. Do you know what else has lots of blues, yellows, and purples? My chest. Not as sexy, though.

It’s been five days since I was brought to the hospital. I can’t tell if it’s a long time or not, but I feel like the recovery isn’t gonna be as difficult as I thought it would be at the beginning. When I first woke up in this bed I could barely breathe. It felt like my ribs were all shattered into pieces and my face was so swollen I couldn’t open my left eye. The bruises aren’t really fading away just yet, but I’d say half of the pain is gone. At least I can breathe, see and eat normally.

I used to be obsessed with watching medical programs. Plastic surgeries, body transformations, treating horrifying skin conditions, but they tend to be very repetitive and predictable, so I especially liked the ones when something went wrong along the way. Like that one time, the doctors were stitching up the patient’s toes and they couldn’t bring back the blood flow. And of course, it’s probably a little scripted for the sake of the show, but they did look genuinely terrified that the toes would turn black and fall out. That was exciting. Luckily, I didn’t need any surgeries. I’m pretty much just bruised up, I think. No internal bleeding, no broken bones, but they wanted to do some more tests on me and asked me to stay for a couple more days.

My parents come to visit once a day, but somehow they manage to make this place even gloomier than when I’m alone. I’m surprised they even care. Or maybe they just feel obligated to come. Like, we barely even talk. Why are you here? I mean, I DO get it. Not everybody has to like each other, not even people blood-related. And it’s fine. We’re just very different people. And if it makes them feel better when they come to check on me, that’s cool. I feel like I am understanding, but still, I’m not gonna lie, this whole situation is very frustrating.

I am aware that the problem is more on my side, cause most of the things they say wouldn’t bother me if they were said by somebody else. Today (like every day since I’ve been here) they asked me how I was feeling. Now, if any of my friends or nurses asked about it, I’d take it as an act of caring. But when the same question is asked by my parents, in my mind I go berserk. And how do you think I’m feeling? Have you looked at my face? Even though in reality I don’t feel that bad. I don’t know where that anger comes from. Maybe because they never cared before. Why now? But I just reply, as politely as I can, that I feel OK.

10:30 PM

I wear earplugs when it’s bedtime because once it gets dark and the rest of the hospital’s asleep, the heart rate monitor that Nathaniel’s still attached to, I swear, levels up in volume. I need something to occupy my mind. I just read 100 random facts on some website and did you know that by taking just one step you use over 200 muscles in your body? That means that today I used the same 200 muscles at least 20 times in three series while I had to use the bathroom. That’s a legit workout if you ask me.

There’s a group of friends skinny-dipping in the lake. I wonder how much time it will take for them to get in trouble. They are far away from any buildings, I can barely see them myself, and there’s a pretty dense forest spreading behind the lake, but that’s no less than half a mile away. Other than that, the space is quite open.

10:45 PM

I can hear dr. Gramm talking on the phone behind the door. I swear she doesn’t sleep. Or even go home, like, ever. She’s the one who takes care of me and Nathaniel. She and the whole staff… they really seem to care. It’s nice to see them coming in here so often to make sure that we’re doing OK. And here’s the thing, Nathaniel can’t complain, and every time they check on us, they make sure to adjust his body so that he’s comfortable. Sweet.

Since I can’t actually remember what happened to me and why I’m here, after long conversations and many check-ups on me to make sure there’s no any brain damage, dr. Gramm told me that thinking out loud makes your brain work more… efficiently. She must have read those 100 random facts on the internet as well. I’m pretty sure it was a fact nr. 48.

Well, I don’t know about thinking out loud. She probably wouldn’t be happy to hear that I traveled back in time. I think I’d be put in a different kind of hospital. So, I hope keeping a journal will do just fine.

[huphilpuffs]

flares

chapter: 28/? summary: Dan’s body has been broken for as long as he can remember, and he’s long since learned to deal with it. Sort of. But when his symptoms force him to leave uni and move into a new flat with a stranger named Phil, he finds that ignoring the pain isn’t the way to make himself happy. word count: 3232 rating: mature warnings: chronic illness, chronic pain, medicine a/n: My apologies for any inaccuracies in the MRI scene. It is, despite my best efforts, one of the tests I’ve never had done and the research I did varied a lot by hospital. Huge thanks to @obsessivelymoody for beta’ing!

Ao3 link || read from beginning

Taylor comes to pick him up early.

She has a red flannel wrapped around her waist and her hair in a bun and he feels like a right mess standing in front of her in his joggers and old t-shirt. It was the most hospital appropriate outfit he could think of. The internet says you need to wear a gown for an MRI and Dan’s not particularly interested interested in changing in and out of skinny jeans today.

He’s not particularly interested in much today. His mum would call it depression. Dan’s pretty sure it has more to do with the sleepless night full of bad memories echoing in the back of his brain.

“Wanna stop somewhere for lunch before we head over?” asks Taylor. She’s leaning against the door frame now, staring up at him like she can tell his mind is elsewhere.

Dan’s never been that great at hiding it from her.

“Can’t,” he says. “I need to be fasting for blood work.”

“Damn,” says Taylor. “Guess we’ll have to gorge on gross hospital cafeteria food between tests then, huh?”

The reminder that he has more than one test to get through makes Dan’s stomach go tight. His whole morning has been a mantra of just get to blood work, over and over again. He’s had blood work before. He can handle blood work. It’s what comes after that has nausea erasing whatever hunger he might feel from fasting.

He doesn’t think he’d be particularly inclined to eat, hospital cafeteria food or not. 

“Guess so,” he says. “Sucks to be us.”

The corner of Taylor’s mouth quirks up in a bitter sort of smile. She steps back, motioning out the door with one arm. “Sucks to be us, indeed.”

---

The blood work clinic is a small room in the far corner of the hospital. There’s a bunch of plastic chairs pressed too close together and partitions made of cloth that look entirely too cheap. 

Dan’s sitting between a mum with a baby and an older lady who’s been tapping her cane against the floor since before he arrived. He can’t complain, though. His leg has been bouncing frantically since the moment he sat down. 

Taylor’s standing by the door, leaning against the wall with her phone in one hand and gaze locked on him instead of the screen. He wishes she was sitting next to him. Her presence would probably be more calming than the wriggling baby that keeps accidentally kicking him in the leg.

Really, he wishes Phil were here. Phil would hold his hand, press their feet together, whisper–

“Daniel Howell?”

He looks up. A nurse in red scrubs is standing at the desk with a clipboard in her hand, smiling. 

His knees wobble when he pushes himself to stand. All the leg vibrating has left his one foot feeling vaguely numb. He takes a stumbly step forward. He’s not sure if the shakiness is because his body is broken, or because his brain is yelling at him that he doesn’t want to be doing this. 

The woman who was sitting next to him knocks her cane against the floor. 

“Excuse me,” she says, voice too loud and shrill. “I’ve been waiting longer than him. A young healthy lad like him can certainly handle the wait.”

Dan swallows. His chest has gone even tighter. Part of him wants to yell at her that he’s by no means healthy and maybe she should stop assuming things just because he’s young. Mostly, though, he wants to curl in on himself, sink into his chair and tell her to just fucking go first, it’s not like he cares.

He almost does, but then the nurse is saying, “His appointment was just booked earlier, ma’am. I’m sure it won’t be long before you’re called in.”

The old lady huffs. The nurse smiles sympathetically. Taylor calls out to tell him she’ll be waiting in the hall.

Dan just trudges forward, and slips into cubicle number three when the nurse tells him too.

---

She arranges her colour coded vials on the table as she says, “I’m sorry about that.”

Dan shrugs, just the arm that isn’t laid out, waiting for her to do whatever she has to. “I’m used to it,” he says. The corner of her mouth quirks up like she has no doubt that it’s true.

He watches her pull an elastic from a box on the desk. She tugs it between her gloved hands before slipping it around his arm, tying it far too tightly for Dan’s nerves to handle. It snaps against his skin, squeezing his arm painfully, and he has to dig his teeth into his lip to keep from making a sound.

“Have you had blood work done before?” she asks.

He hums. It sounds strained. “A time or twenty.”

Her response is a laugh. She tugs an alcohol swab from another box and tears the top of it open. It’s cold and wet against his inner arm. It fades to lukewarm pretty quickly.

“Okay, then you know it’s going to pinch a bit.” She grabs the needle this time. “You’ll probably want to look away.”

Dan doesn’t. He watches her press her finger against the bubble of his vein. Watches her press the tip of the needle against where his skin’s a sickly shade of white. 

It stings. Dan’s long since learned how not to wince through this kind of pain.

“You good?” says the nurse.

He nods. There’s a click as she presses the test tube into place. Dan watches his blood bubble up into the clear plastic.

He wonders if there’s actually something wrong with it this time.

---

“You should at least have a cookie,” says Taylor.

She’s gotten a disgusting looking sandwich from the hospital cafeteria and has a bottle of orange juice clutched in one hand. They’re standing in line to pay now, in front of a cash manned by a woman with a hair net who looks like she’s been mindlessly scanning things for hours. 

In front of them, there’s a couple holding each other close who look terribly worried. Then, a man in a suit who looks like he would rather be literally anywhere else.

“I’m not hungry,” mumbles Dan.

“Yeah, well, you should still eat,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to after you get blood drawn?”

“That’s after you donate blood. They take more,” he says. It’s barely a whisper.

He snags a double chocolate chip cookie off the shelf next to them anyway. And then a second one, because double chocolate chip sounds like a flavour Phil would like, even if it is atrocious hospital food.

Taylor just smiles. 

---

The nurse in diagnostic imaging hands him a clipboard full of paperwork and a pen. 

He sits down on another uncomfortable plastic chair to fill it out. There’s no baby next to him this time, no grumpy old lady to get mad at him for needing care, just Taylor and the near silent tap of her finger against the screen of her phone.

All the paperwork is about various types of metal that might be implanted in his body. He checks no for all of it and hopes his mum never forgot to tell him about a bone he needed set as a toddler or anything. 

With his luck, she probably did and the MRI is going to go horribly wrong and–

“Stop shaking so much,” whispers Taylor. “It doesn’t actually help, you know.”

“I know.”

His leg keeps bouncing anyway, just a little slower.

Taylor nudges her elbow against his. “Go hand in your paperwork. It’ll occupy your mind for, like, at least thirty seconds,” she says.

Dan does, still unsteady and shaky. He’s decided it’s probably the anxiety by now, the bitter clutch of fear that always comes when he steps into buildings full of doctors. He almost drops the pen as he hands it over. The lady just smiles at him and tells him the MRI tech should be here to get him shortly.

When he sits back down, his legs starts bouncing again.

Taylor looks up at him, offering a sad smile. “Play some Angry Birds?” she offers, like she’s decided it’s hopeless to distract him.

Dan tries anyway.

---

He’s about to lose this level for the sixth time in a row when his phone starts vibrating.

Dan almost drops it in surprise, but the screen lights up with Phil’s contact photo and the ache between his ribs fades just a bit. He flashes the screen at Taylor quickly before standing, rushing off to an emptier corner of the hospital as he swipes his thumb across the screen to answer.

“Hi?” he says. It’s a whisper, wavering. 

Phil’s response sounds like a relieved sigh, just a quiet breath of, “Dan.”

It makes him smile. He was asleep when Phil left for work this morning. This is the first time he’s heard his voice today.

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to catch you before your MRI,”says Phil. “I was all worried I’d gotten the wrong time and you’d already be in the test and I wouldn’t get to talk to you.”

He’s rambling. That makes Dan breathe easier, too.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” he says.

Phil chuckles. “I’m hiding in the loo.”

“Oh,” says Dan, because, well, that’s quite sweet. It’s quite Phil. “You’re hiding in the loo just to talk to me?”

“I know you’re anxious,” says Phil. “And I know Taylor’s there but this feels, like, big? And I wish I could be. There. With you.”

Dan almost says I wish you could be, too, but he doesn’t want to make Phil feel bad. He hopes it can go unspoken. Or maybe he’ll tell Phil later, when he won’t need to spend the rest of the day feeling guilty that he can’t leave.

Right now he just says: “I got you a gross hospital cookie.”

Phil laughs again, happy and surprised. “You did?”

Dan hums. “It has two whole types of chocolate,” he says. And then, quieter, “It made me think of you.”

Phil doesn’t respond to that. He stays quiet. Only his breathing can be heard over the line and it’s probably stupid that Dan finds that comforting, but he does. He leans against the white wall in the far corner of diagnostic imaging, staring at where Taylor’s looking back at him, and tries to make his own breaths match Phil’s.

He imagines Phil counting for him, like he used to do when Dan’s chest spasmed and his breathing stopped. It helps.

Even when he’s not here, Phil manages to help.

Dan’s trying to come up with some way to tell him that when Phil whispers, “How are you holding up?” His voice cracks halfway through, goes as soft as it was when he’d count.

It makes Dan’s eyes sting. “I’m trying,” he says.

“You can do this,” says Phil. “We’ll order pizza when I get home and pretend this never happened, okay?”

Dan smiles. “Okay.”

And he stands there, listening to the steadiness of Phil’s breathing, until Phil decides he’s been in the loo a suspiciously long time and has to say goodbye.

When Dan sits down again, his leg isn’t bouncing.

---

The MRI tech is a man who hands Dan a gown and tells him in no uncertain terms to take every piece of metal off his body or else he might die.

Well, he’s kinder about it than that, but that’s the gist of it and the morbid part of Dan’s brain finds it oddly funny.

It takes him way too long to put the gown on. His limbs feel awkward. He almost steps out of the room with his ass fully out until he realizes it’s meant to loop around him a second time. It’s just enough to have a laugh bubbling out of his chest, past the angry bubble of anxiety. 

The MRI tech is standing in the hall when Dan steps out. “I’m Alex, by the way,” he says. “I’m gonna explain the test to you before we begin, if that’s okay?”

Dan nods, even though he’s not sure he wants to know.

Alex leads him into the room. It’s almost empty, save for the giant tube and bed in the center of it. There’s a pillow on the bed, and a weird stand looking thing right at the head. That’s it. It looks horribly uncomfortable. Dan’s back already aches at the thought.

Alex starts explaining everything. Dan tunes him out halfway through.

---

The MRI bed is in fact uncomfortable.

Dan’s shoulder blades feel pointy against it, despite the pillow wedged beneath them. His head is resting in the stand, not quite at an awkward angle, but not exactly natural either. He stares up at the ceiling as Alex wedges a second pillow under his legs. It takes some of the pressure of his hips, but just barely.

Still, when Alex asks if he’s comfortable enough to stay still for the whole examination, Dan nods.

A set of foam earbuds is pressed into his hand. Alex just watches him as he clumsily shoves them into his ears.

Then the bed is moving upwards and back just a little. Alex reaches for something behind Dan’s head. It’s a giant thing that looks sort of like a cage and makes Dan’s chest go tight, an exhale getting stuck there as Alex situates the stupid thing right over his head.

“I know it looks scary. I promise it just sits here, though,” says Alex, his voice muffled by the ear plugs.

Dan nods. He’s pretty sure he’s still not breathing. Suddenly, all he can see is Alex’s scrubs and white walls and giant white bars obstructing his vision and he kind of wants to just get up and run.

“You’re gonna be okay,” says Alex. He presses something else into Dan’s hand. “This button will call me if you need anything, okay?”

He nods again. The lump in his throat is too big to speak.

His eyes feel wide as he watches Alex reach over to the machine, pressing a button that makes the bed move backwards until Dan’s in the middle of a dark tunnel, surrounded by metal on every side. He never thought he was claustrophobic but maybe it’s the fact that the MRI machine looks like it belongs perfectly in a hospital.

Dan’s never been good with hospitals. 

He doesn’t hear Alex say anything before he walks away, doesn’t hear any footsteps or anything else until the exam room door is slamming shut.

The next time he hears Alex speak, his voice is scratchy over the intercom.

“Are you ready to begin the test?” he says. “Remember, once it starts, you can request to take a break at any time. I need you to stay as still as possible while the test is progress. The machine will make loud noises. That’s normal. The ear plugs should help.”

Dan swallows. He stares up at the two bars of metal hanging right above his face and says, “I’m ready.”

“Okay,” says Alex. “If you get nervous, just close your eyes and think of somewhere you feel safe.”

---

Dan spends the entire MRI thinking of Phil.

He imagines the drape of Phil’s arm over his shoulders, the press his lips to Dan’s hair. He pretends it’s the soft blanket Phil bought him pressed against his skin, instead of whatever itchy thing the hospital gave him. He tries to convince himself all the noises the MRI makes are just sound effects in a movie.

He thinks of how soft Phil’s voice was when he first found out Dan was sick.

Of how gentle Phil’s touch is when he knows Dan’s sore.

It helps. The pressure in his chest eases and it takes less effort to keep his eyes closed and when Alex steps back into the room, Dan’s surprised a whole forty-five minutes has passed.

His chest feels achy for a whole new reason afterwards, a strange sort of empty he hasn’t felt in a while. He changes out of the gown and into his clothes while staring blankly at a spot of grey on the hospital’s white walls. When Taylor asks how the test went, he just shrugs and tells her it was as expected.

Not that he really had any expectations.

She drives him home in silence and offers to stay until Phil gets home, but Dan tells her he’s fine, just a little tired. The anxiety and anticipation kept him up last night and he could really use a nap, is what he tells her.

After she leaves, Dan settles on the sofa. 

He runs his hand over the softness of the blanket for a while, letting his brain get lost in the memories of the day Phil got it for him. After a moment, he gives in and tugs it tight around his shoulders, wrapping it over his chest like he used to do with his duvet when he was little.

The fabric smells like him and—faintly—of Phil.

Dan sits there, enjoying it, and tries to figure out what the warm feeling in his chest really means. 

What he told Taylor must have been true, because he’s still sitting like that when he falls asleep.

---

Phil wakes him up by running his fingers through Dan’s hair.

There’s a smile on his face when Dan blinks his eyes open, a softness in his eyes that makes Dan smile back. The blanket is still wrapped tight around him. He’s too warm and the heat makes a dull ache throb under his skin but part of him doesn’t want to untangle himself from it. 

“Smells like pizza,” he mumbles.

The corner of Phil’s mouth quirks up, amused. “That’s ‘cause I got pizza,” he says. “And some of those cookies you like but never want me to order.”

Dan pouts. Phil just runs his fingers through his hair again, so very gentle, before pulling away.

He sets up the box of pizza on the coffee table, and brings Dan a plate so he can eat without leaning forward too much. Dan unravels himself from the blanket just so Phil can sit next to him properly, their legs pressed together without the thick fabric between them.

Normally, they’d watch TV while eating.

Today, Phil asks, “How were the tests?”

Dan shrugs. He knows Phil can probably tell it’s a lie when he says, “Fine.”

They eat in silence after that. Phil lets Dan have both the Domino’s cookies in favour of eating the shitty one Dan brought him from the hospital. It should make him happy. It does, except the quiet gives his brain space to process the day and suddenly his whole body feels heavy again.

It feels like after his doctor’s appointment. Dan feels, stupidly, like he could cry.

There’s a bruise blooming on his arm, and his bones ache from the harsh press of the MRI bed against his body and the lingering tightness of anxiety in his chest. Phil just snags his plate from between his weak fingers, sets it on the table, and settles back onto the sofa next to him. He drapes his arm around Dan’s shoulders, just as Dan had imagined earlier, and pulls him closer.

“Is it dumb that I missed you today?” he murmurs.

Maybe it should be, but Dan missed him, too. 

[myyeslifeofficial]

The Top Mindset Lessons I Learned as a Military Spouse

:…..

The Top Mindset Lessons I Learned as a Military Spouse

I became a military spouse at 24.

When I married my husband I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.

I wasn’t raised around the military.

I had no idea what to expect from the lifestyle.

I just knew that I loved him and saw an incredible future with him by my side. 

My Unexpected Military Life…

But military life is hard.

Being a military spouse is hard.

Deployments, long work hours, weekend duty and all the stinking moves to new places far away from family and friends.

I could very easily get caught up on all of these challenges, the uncertainty…

…and wondering what the hell happened to to box with all the furniture hardware after the last move. (For real though, we really needed that box to reassemble everything!)

But I have learned not to.

I would say the first nine years and four duty stations as a military spouse were the most challenging. 

I created a lot of suffering for myself and my husband by fighting against the uncertainty, arguing with reality, giving my emotional power to external circumstances and refusing to ask for help.

(I’m not trying to say that the challenges I experienced as a military spouse are unique. It just seems that military life amplifies the challenge and uncertainties, often making them more frequent than civilian life).

Gave Me Unexpected Gifts.

Little did I know that through the greatest of struggles, I would also be blessed with the greatest of gifts.

Because I was open to learning, exploration, and growth through the challenge, I was able to learn these four mindset lessons as a military spouse: 

Surrender

Accepting What Is / Presence

How You Feel is a Choice

Asking For + Accepting Help

I realized that military spouse life gave me a crash course in figuring them out, long before many of my peers, and tons of opportunities to practice them along the way. 

Surrender

We trick ourselves into thinking that we control our lives.

We avoid uncertainty at all costs.

We think that if we can just plan for every detail, pick the safest and most secure option that we are in control and the outcome will be certain.

Thankfully, military life taught me that certainty and control are all but an illusion.

We never know when we are going to move next, let alone where it will be.

We rarely know with much advance notice when he will be deployed or on temporary duty, gone for months at a time.

So many aspects of family planning that most people take for granted are big, huge uncertainties in our lives.

Which makes planning more than a few months in advance a challenge. (We wanted to take a trip for our 15 year wedding anniversary but didn’t even feel secure enough for that…which is good because it fell during an international move!).

Which always makes you wonder if the couch you want to buy now will fit in the next place.

Which makes you question keeping the extra jackets or if you only be wearing flip flops at the next duty station. (No joke, we moved from Alaska to Arizona, thanks Air Force!).

We have always had to actively manage the uncertainty, or at least our emotions in reaction to not knowing or being in control of so many of the variables of our lives.

Even after 15 years my family still asks me if we know when we are going to move next, where we are moving, when he will be promoted to the next rank… and I always have to remind them that we just don’t know and won’t know until it happens.

But it’s from this place surrendering to radical uncertainty that I have realized just how much certainty is an illusion in life.

That secure job that you were downsized from?

That perfectly planned out career path that you ended up hating?

That perfectly healthy person who found out they have inoperable cancer?

That young mother who died in a car accident on her way home from the grocery store? 

There’s so many things in our lives that we take for granted that aren’t promised and are far from certain, no matter how much our brain tries to lie to us otherwise.

The best practice is to decide WHAT you want in life, WHY you want it and surrender the HOW.

Rarely does anything go according to plan, in the exact sequence you dream up.

But if you know what you want and why you want it you can start moving toward it and be flexible and adaptable along the way. 

Accepting What Is / Presence.

Byron Katie teaches “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time.”

There’s so many parts to military life that I could argue with (and did in the beginning!) only to create a ton of suffering in my mental and emotional space.

And it kept me from truly living in the present moment – I was arguing with the past and the future and all the ways I thought things should be.

We shouldn’t have to spend our first year of marriage in different countries.

Well, we did.

He was in Korea on an unaccompanied short tour and I was in the US.

We were honeymooners with a 17 hour time difference before there were so many free video and voice communication options on the internet.

It was hard, and I spent a lot of time arguing with how hard it was and how unfair it was when I saw other couples spending time together.

How dare he leave me, again, in a different continent than all my friends and family.

Well, he did, and not by choice, but because he was told to.

I was lonely. 

Yet I made it worse by resisting feeling sad and alone. 

I choose indignation and anger instead.

I was blaming him when he had absolutely no say in the decision. 

It’s not fair that I always have to give up my career aspirations to be the trailing spouse.

It seemed like every time I had a good thing going, making progress, we would get notice of another move.

Which often meant more than six months of lost wages and me feeling like an absolute loser because I wasn’t contributing and I had too much of my self-worth wrapped up in my career and job title. 

We spend so much time arguing with what is rather than accepting it.

It creates so much extra mental chaos and emotional drama.

Rarely do we argue with things that we can change or control, when the solution is to choose and control the thoughts and story we create about the circumstance.

Instead we play the victim and give away our emotional power, expecting everyone and everything outside of us to make us feel better. 

How You Feel is a Choice.

How we feel is a state of mind, not a destination.

So often I hear people say things like “I’ll be happy when…” followed by new cars, homes, jobs, relationships, income, and a whole mess of other external measures. 

Being stationed in Italy helped me realize that our emotional space has nothing to do with external circumstances.

Here we were in Europe, in the Italian countryside, where so many Americans save up often for their whole lives to visit, and fellow service members and their families were miserable.

Many of our friends we were stationed with still found plenty to complain about, would stay close to base and not adventure around Europe.

Here we were, given this incredible opportunity to see the world, and some people couldn’t even see what was right in front of them because they decided to be miserable instead.

Our emotions don’t happen to us, we choose them with the thoughts we think.

Happiness is an inside job.

This is replicated in so many research studies, where happiness isn’t correlated with income after basic subsistence level is reached.

Once people reach poverty level, happiness is no longer correlated with income.

It doesn’t matter what you achieve, what you earn, what you experience. It matters what you think and believe about those things, and the stories you make them mean.

A moment I felt the most achievement was when someone said to me “It doesn’t seem to matter where you and Jason live, you always find a way to have fun.”

I joke that if we get stationed in a few places he can have fun there without me. (I’ll leave them unnamed so as to not get hate mail from the locals LOL).

But in all reality I would follow him and we WOULD have fun.

We would be happy.

We would have a good time.

Because that’s what is important to us and we know that it’s an inside job and not contingent upon what our zip code happens to be. 

Asking For AND Accepting Help.

This was probably the hardest for me to learn…I am such an independent person.

I pride myself on being able to take care of myself.

To be the person who always gives and cares for others.

Until I found myself struggling with a once-debilitating chronic illness, my husband deployed, and being new to the base without any close friends to rely on.

I was accustomed to getting frequent headaches.

But one day I had the worst I had ever experienced, a migraine to end all migraines.

I left work after only an hour, went home and spent the next 8 hours on the bathroom floor.

Nauseated, confused, and completely disoriented.

I was too weak to know what was happening, let alone pick myself off the floor.

Luckily I had my cell phone with me.

The doggy day care place was about to close. My puppy needed to be picked up. And I was in no condition to drive.

I knew the only option I had was to ask for help. I called my neighbor, a new acquaintance, in a moment of complete vulnerability and weakness.

I told her I didn’t know what was wrong with me (because honestly in that moment I didn’t know).

She came over, picked me off the floor, got me to bed, and made sure I had what I needed before she left.

She picked my dog up, got him home, fed, and taken care of.

She checked in on me multiple times (and make sure that I didn’t need the hospital and to let the dog out).

I was embarrassed to ask, to be seen in that condition, to be perceived as weak or incapable.

But if anyone else had been in that situation I’d be the first to rush in.

I’d be happy to provide assistance and give comfort – without judgment.

To truly be good at giving, we must also be good at receiving.

To know and recognize that we all have hard moments.

To be grateful for those in the military community who are willing to help perfect strangers… 

Willing to pick us up in our most painful and weakest moments…

Knowing full well that they might need the same kindness in the future.

I will always be grateful to my neighbor, and now one of my closest friends.

She answered my call and graciously offered more help than I requested.

I now know there’s no shame in asking and receiving help, because giving is one of the very best experiences we can have.

If I fail to ask for help when I truly need it then I rob someone from being able to give with an open heart. 

Grateful for the Challenges

Now I’d even say that I’m grateful for our military life because of who I have become because of it.

I welcome each new move, each new deployment and all the uncertainty in between…

Because I know that these are the circumstances that help me grow mental excellence.

It’s not the circumstances that are the problem.

It’s my thoughts and beliefs about them, which create my emotional experience.

Now I know to check my thoughts about my circumstances.

Because that is what helps me surrender…

To accept what is…

To ask for help…

And choose how I want to feel. 

Being a military spouse isn’t easy, but I know I’m up for the challenge now.

  The post The Top Mindset Lessons I Learned as a Military Spouse appeared first on life coaching for mental excellence, mindset, accountability .

from life coaching for mental excellence, mindset, accountability https://myyeslife.com/military-spouse-mindset-lessons/

[beccaislearning]

Self isolating: A guide for the bewildered.

It seems that we’re now at that awful point where we’re having to balance utter panic with pragmatism: not to take the Corona outbreak so seriously that we oscillate between being immobilised and panic buying, but yet also to be pragmatic about what we can do. To crack on with a real and difficult situation, where the stakes are potentially very high for us and those we love, and even for those we don’t love so much.

Self isolating scares me. The cut off from productivity and agency I think are my two biggest fears. Of course there’s being cut off from people, but for me I know that I worry more about the dependency that self-isolation conversely requires, especially in a new city. 

For me, it’s hard not to wrestle with all these ideas in light of ME. Lately I’ve been feeling like an 83 year old in a 33 year old’s body. Viruses are scary for the already chronically ill, because they represent a great shove down the mountain we’ve been working so hard at dragging ourselves up for years. And yet, as I wrestle, as I start talking to friends who are already self-isolating, it strikes me that I may also have some tools stored up for times such as these. I am, in fact, an expert at being housebound. This should go on my CV.

So here, is some public service blogging. Some tips for those who are novice at being ill and endlessly in the company of one.

Tip 1: Embrace it, don’t fight it. 

You get to choose your attitude. There is a lot to resist or fear, and yet this will not change the situation, nor will it make any self isolation go quicker.  So much of solitude and illness is a mental battle alongside a physical one, and so in grace and zen-like peaceability welcome this time with kindness. See what you might learn from it. Accept the unwanted gift of slowing down. Recognise that is will be tough, but know that it might also be rich. 

Tip 2: Podcasts and audiobooks.

Sometimes our minds are just too busy fighting their anxious battles to get them to be reasonable. In these times, and in times that I’ve found myself too poorly to watch TV or read, a gentle listen to something provides enough distraction for your busy tired brain whilst still allowing you to be horizontal with closed eyes.

My recommendations? Audiobooks-wise, I’ve loved listening to some classic literature that would take me a lot longer to get around to reading otherwise: the rather apt ‘100 Years of Solitude’ and ‘Love in a Time of Cholera’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez have been highlights! More contemporary novels I’ve enjoyed lately are Ann Patchett’s ‘The Dutch House’ (read by Tom Hanks), Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s ‘Fleishman is in Trouble’, or good non-fiction by David Sedaris or Michelle Obama’s ‘Becoming’ which are all the more brilliant for being read by the authors themselves.

My podcasts recommendations are thus: 

Everyone, start with the ‘Fortunately’ podcast with Fi Glover and Jane Garvey. Two brilliant friends having meandering and intellectually subversive conversation. It will be a good substitute for going for a coffee with your own besties.

For those who are especially anxious: listen to the Robcast (Rob Bell’s podcast). He will refocus you on things above and draw you closer to God. I binge listen to this in my own times of illness and crisis, and never get left in that same place by the end of a podcast. Similarly with Krista Tippett’s ‘On Being’ podcast, which not about overtly Christian spirituality for those who prefer that! (Though many Christians may claim that about Rob Bell).

Elizabeth Day’s ‘How to Fail’ for some gentle wisdom, ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd for some positive political commentary, ‘Literary Fiction’ for book lovers, and ‘The Guilty Feminist’ for feminism with a good range of comedic voices.  Also worth listening to Dolly Alderton’s ‘Love Stories’ podcast which isn’t current, but has the most beautiful back catalogue of interviews about love. 

For foodies: ‘Out to Lunch’ with Jay Rayner, ‘The Kitchen Cabinet’ and the ‘Off Menu’ podcast with Ed Gamble James Acaster (the Victoria Coren-Mitchell episode is one of my most re-listened to).

For those with an ‘offbeat’ sense of humour I liberally recommend the ‘Beef and Dairy Network Podcast’ and suggest that you start with episodes that feature the Beef Poet Laureate, Michael Banyan.

Also, binge watching TV helps, but in my experience it is good to make sure you have time away from screens. It somehow lifts you to look away a bit.

Tip 3: TREATS 

Surround yourself with gentle things that make you smile. For me? Lovely moisturisers, great smelling candles, poached eggs on toast, clean bedsheets, animals on the internet, good pyjamas, beautiful mugs, chocolate Brazil nuts, and overflowing bowls of satsumas. 

Tip 4: This too shall pass.

When you’re ill and isolated, you can lose all sense of time and perspective. There will be times when everything feels endlessly awful. In these times, remind yourself that this too will pass. This isn’t forever, summer is coming, and at some point Corona virus will feel as historic as swine flu. And hopefully that will fortify you.

The spiritual stuff:

Finally a word from wisdom in the Christian tradition. Feel free to stop reading. here, if this isn’t for you.

I am learning, slowly, and at times reluctantly, that the greatest gift throughout suffering is to worship. I think of Paul and Silas, unfairly imprisoned and worshiping in their cell, not knowing when or if they will be released from the futility and fear of it all. As they worship, the walls come down, and yet the stay where they are for the sake of the safety of their prison guard. It turns out that even though they were imprisoned, they were truly free with or without the walls.

Or as Anne Lamott puts it: “Look up! My pastor says you can trap bees on floor of jars without lids because they don't look up. They just walk around  and bump into glass. So look up. We're free”

I do not share this tritely, though there will have been times where people who dared tell me to worship in my greatest suffering would have been at huge risk of thumping (had I the strength). Worship refocuses our whole selves on where it is we put our hope, and that changes everything.