#there’s too much going on all at once and I am overwhelmed

[sqbr]

I have known a lot of people with psychosis over the years, and had a brief but intense run-in myself, and in my experience:

the more obviously incorrect a delusion is, the more pointless it is to try and argue with someone about it. They see all the evidence against it too, so the fact they believe it anyway just shows how intense and overwhelming the THIS IS TRUE message from their brain is. All you can both do is work around it.

The way I see and explain it is that even if my experience with psychosis was brief, I constantly have my perception of reality more subtly warped by both my mental health problems and the sort of biases and mental blind spots all humans experience. I am still a person worthy of respect and empathy for my experiences, and so are they. I won't dismiss the pain their delusion cases them because it's 'obviously false' any more than I'd want someone to dismiss the pain I experience from my anxiety making me panic when I'm objectively safe etc. And I won't dismiss them as Crazy and Always Wrong About Everything any more than I'd want someone to do that to me.

Having unshakeable false beliefs doesn't make the person otherwise unable to reason, think, and observe. I once made someone feel much better by going "yes, I do agree with other people that your delusion is false, but I still agree with you that they are being condescending and callous about it, just based on your testimony, partly because that's just how people are to those they consider mentally ill, but also because I trust your judgement".

if you're not in the position of the nurses etc above where helping with their distress is part of your job, and talking about the delusion makes you distressed for whatever reason, it is ok to go "I am not going to argue with you about this, and I don't want to talk about it. Just as I respect that I can't convince you to change your mind, please respect that you can't change mine."

No doctor will ever get my respect like the woman in the ER who checked me for claws and fangs because I told her I was turning into a werewolf and could feel it and let me know gently that she couldn't find any but that didnt make it feel any less real, like THATS how you do it, other doctors who just flat out told me I was wrong take notes

[ganondoodle]

i have seen people talk about how hard it is to draw anything if you have aphantasia (which is good to talk about and true and valid and also intersting to read and this post isnt to devalue that, two things can coexist etc etc)

i personally struggle with the opposite; i have incredible imagination, i'd say it's my best and only "inate talent", (this is not a brag ..) all stories i think about are movies, i can stop them, change camera angle and poses, rotate ever object however i want, place lighting sound and voices, even styles, i switch from ghibli to botw to fortiches style, even into the style of a comic i recently read which wasnt even animated, the only thing that only works half the time is music-

and that all might sound fantastic, but its a mess, it goes too fast and too quickly, things never play out one way, theres interruption, involuntarily sudden changes to other subjects, i feel like struggling to keep an angry horse on one path, it makes me waste HOURS each day just reversing and redoing a scene like im a movie director wizard in my head, theres no ONE finished version, it changes everytime yet i go back over and over again to make it better, i forget most of it within a few hours anyway; even IRL when someone tells me about a memory and they are not sure if i was with them during it once they start to explain trying to make me remember it instead i will imagine it, in the end i wont be sure if i actually remembered or if i just imagined it too real, it scares me how much i forget and cant remember only for my mind to make shit up, makign me doubt my own memory (its weird how it works, i have horrible geographical memory, when i drive somwhere i have known my entire life i need to remember the path to it by imagining driving it, i remember significant things but not the path to them or how they connect or in what order, i have to go through it in my head every single time)

by far the worst part though is that extreme disconnect between whats in my mind and what i can do, just because i can imagine things like that doesnt mean i can draw it (god i WISH), nothing i have ever drawn is how it was in my head, the few things you get to see are the ones i won the fight against myself with to keep going and say 'good enough' at some point the speed is a problem too, the things playing in my head, sometimes even multiple at the same time, play like, again, a movie, whatever im trying to draw is rarely ONE thing, its a whole scene that plays over and over, i want to draw it all but it wont work bc my mind is too fast and i am too slow, it makes me try to skip ahead and get things done as fast as possible, it NEVER works (also too much, theres so many things in my head, i have almost the entirety of the totk rewrite in my head already, novels worth of lore and story for my other projects, its overwhelming how much is in there that i cannot get out and on paper)

its why comics take me so long to make, why detailed paintings are so rare, its the rare times i can force myself to try and tune out my mind and just work on what is in front of me, usually works for a few hours .. if i can manage to reach that sort of focus at all, its why basic sketches of characters are so much easier to do bc i dont have to fight as hard to just draw a character doing nothing- as soon as i want to make it a sketch page of things and scenes the movies are back and are there to haunt me until i cry and give up after hours of trying to keep up with my mind that i will never be able to catch up to (and this is only about drawing .. )

i know skill and speed increase over time, but i wont ever get to where my mind is, its always ahead and trying to skip and jump towards it only makes me stumble and fall flat on my face- maybe its ADHD, maybe its the autism, maybe its the depression, maybe its just me, maybe its just all of that

what im trying to say is, head full, too much thought, too fast, never able to translate it into viewable things in the way and speed as my head works, i explode

[desertdollranch]

What a week it's been. Woke up to horrible political news on Wednesday, and had to take a social media blackout for a few days just to stop being sick to my stomach and reminded of what a nightmare we're all facing here in the USA. Then more than a foot of snow fell, and my electricity kept flickering on and off all night. So I'm trying to focus on the positive things in my life as best as I can and try not to let the stress overwhelm me.

So let's talk dolls.

Last weekend I attended the Albuquerque doll show not as a buyer, but for the first time as a vendor.

My mom came over with a huge carload of things to sell. We had two tables and still didn't have enough room for everything! Most of what we sold came from her and her sister's collections, since both of them are clearing out all their 18 inch doll stuff. They are only interested in Barbie these days and so everything else had to go. I don't share their interest in Barbie and am still thoroughly enjoying my 18 inch dolls, so I did get to have first dibs on their merchandise. I didn't end up picking anything besides a couple of American Girl books.

I actually didn't sell very much, but truly I didn't bring a whole lot of things to sell anyway. Mostly some extra wigs of various sizes, off-brand doll clothing that I priced at $1 per outfit, and a few thrift store dolls (of various brands) I bought and then decided not to keep. Now I have to list my leftovers for sale online, which is overwhelming to think about, considering how hard I worked to get everything ready before the show only to have to put in even MORE time and effort to get anything sold.

Overall, selling at the show was a tremendous amount of labor for not much financial reward, so my mom and I agreed that we're never doing this again. It's so much more fun just attending the show as a buyer. And selling online is by far easier and more profitable.

But I did meet a lot of very nice customers, and that was the best part. That's something that doesn't often happen online! Everyone I sold to was wonderful. Not one person I encountered was rude or unpleasant. The other vendors I talked to were lovely as well. There were a few sellers who make/buy/sell dolls and toys year-round and do it for a living, but a lot were collectors like me who were just selling parts of their collections to make room for new additions.

Speaking of new additions. The only thing I bought at the show was a Gotz doll.

She's an 18 inch Hannah doll from 2008. She was unbelievably inexpensive (they're around $100 or more brand new), so I was pretty surprised to see her and many other Gotz dolls at her vendor's table still for sale after closing time when I swung by. Her vendor was delighted to see Hannah go to a happy home.

I may or may not make a post advertising the stuff I'm selling. I usually do okay by just listing on Mercari and letting buyers come to me. I'll decide once I'm ready whether it's worth the extra effort posting them here too.

[highly-flammable]

I still have so many thoughts about this scene.

It’s very interesting how regardless of what you think of Sauron’s motivations here, his emotions are completely genuine. Galadriel is someone who has believed in him, who has pushed him and revitalized him, and that feeling, that high he could chase forever. We see how lonely Sauron as a character is in S2, how he has felt betrayed at the hand of Adar, and how normal people (like Diarmid) don’t do anything for him. It takes someone like Galadriel with her level of power and wisdom, and that hint of darkness, to finally feel like he is not alone. That he has somehow been made better.

At the same time, you have to wonder why this is the moment that he chose to open up to Galadriel like this. In the scene right before, he seemed almost calculating as he called her name and stopped her from killing Adar. I, for one, am averse to having too much of a charitable opinion of this guy. To me, part of the beauty of this character in TROP is that he says and does many things that come from an emotionally honest place, but they end up serving his goals in little ways.

As I see it, both things are true: he could genuinely feel a connection to her and felt like communicating it (you can almost feel the words spilling out of him), and he also saw how this moment was absolutely ripe for Galadriel to know they were firm friends and therefore get bound to him. Their fight was seemingly over and he knew she was going to have to leave soon. He had to give her a reason to still have him around, and here he tries to do that. Galadriel is someone who has spent centuries looking for him so that she could destroy him, and this is when he sees that opening where he could get through to her and somehow make her feel that they did not have to be enemies. Sauron’s good at choosing the moments for planting seeds which will bear fruit later, and we will indeed see him referring to this interaction multiple times in the future.

Sidenote: Charlie Vickers has very soulful, expressive eyes.

Moving on to what I personally find even more interesting: Galadriel’s feelings. Morfydd once mentioned in an interview that when Galadriel meets Halbrand, she is desperate to feel anything other than grief. She has been drowning in it for centuries, and when Sauron pulls her out of the ocean in the middle of the tempest, their resurfacing is symbolic of a rebirth. As brash and headstrong and disrespectful as she finds Halbrand, she enjoys his audacity and his wit. She admires that he feels alive and seems to grasp at opportunities. He wakes her up, as much as she does it for him.

But between the two of them, Galadriel is the one still dealing with overwhelming loss. She is mourning so many of her kinsmen, particularly Finrod, who was clearly her guiding light, and also Celeborn. Different shipper camps will have their interpretations of Galadriel and Celeborn’s relationship, but I don’t think it’s up for debate that she had been quietly grieving him. It wasn’t enough to divert her from hunting down Sauron, but the grief itself is clear in 1x07 when she mentions him. Galadriel’s story has been a tapestry of different kinds of loss - the ones that are unexpected and come as a heavy blow like Finrod’s, and the ones where the realization slowly seeps in like poison and eats away at you.

It’s downright painful for her to admit here that she felt something poignant with regard to Halbrand, perhaps simply because she is so afraid of loss again. It must have been ages since she last let someone new in, and this person has rescued her and stood by her (aside from all the playing hard to get) when she was utterly alone. This is the moment where it truly hits her how much he has begun to mean to her, and having gone through what she has, you have to assume she is downright terrified of it, particularly because as per her knowledge, this is a mortal man, with no enhanced lifespan even, his time on middle-earth a mere blink against the ages she has endured and will continue to.

Their relationship has been coded as romantic from the very beginning (I would say right from the moment Sauron first tries to separate from the rest of the castaways in 1x02 and clearly plans to join her). But I don’t believe Galadriel in this scene would ever admit to herself if she felt anything romantic. It would be too much for her, and I don’t believe she is even in the headspace to think about these things . I have to say Morfydd and Charlie are right about one thing: romance alone doesn’t cover whatever they were trying to sell here. For both characters, this is a moment of a tremendous wall breaking down emotionally, and both of them realizing they have met their kindreds. This is the moment that understandably keeps haunting both of them, and I suppose will continue to for multiple reasons.

Sidenote 2: Galadriel’s little shaky breaths and subtly pained expressions are so masterfully done here by Morfydd. You almost feel like you are watching someone’s wounds being slowly, excruciatingly cut open again.

[theother456-stories]

“Closing Shift”

Elliot stared at the clipboard his boss, Mr. Jenkins, had handed him. His eyes scanned the long list of items marked “overstocked.” Rows of bread loaves, crates of vegetables, stacks of meat patties, and mountains of cheese blocks—all crammed into the kitchen’s already packed walk-in fridge.

“I need you to take care of this tonight, Elliot,” Mr. Jenkins said, patting him on the back. “Can’t afford to let all this go to waste. Figure it out, and don’t forget to lock up.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Elliot replied, feeling a knot tighten in his stomach. He’d only been working at the diner for a month. It was supposed to be a simple job—a way to make some cash while finishing his degree. But now, staring at the overflowing fridge, he felt overwhelmed. How could one guy manage all this?

The restaurant closed at 10 PM. By then, the kitchen was empty, and the place had a lonely hum as the neon lights flickered above the counter. Elliot walked back to the kitchen, the overwhelming smell of fresh bread and sizzling meat still lingering. He opened the fridge, the cold air blasting his face, and sighed.

The stacks of food stared back at him, a reminder of the impossible task. His stomach growled. It was late, and he hadn’t had dinner. Maybe if he sampled a few things, it’d help clear his mind. The temptation was too strong to resist.

He grabbed a burger patty and tossed it on the grill, watching it sizzle as the aroma filled the air. Before he knew it, he had added a slice of cheese, a bun, and a mountain of fries. He bit into it, the flavors exploding in his mouth. One bite became two, then three, until the whole burger was gone.

“Okay, just one more,” he muttered to himself, trying to justify it. There was so much food, and no one would notice if he took a bit more.

As he ate, he wandered through the kitchen, trying to figure out how to tackle the stock problem. That’s when he noticed the scale in the corner—a large, industrial one they used for weighing bulk deliveries. It had been moved there temporarily because of a recent delivery mistake that overloaded their storage shelves. Elliot had used it earlier that day to verify weights on incoming shipments, making sure they matched the invoices.

The thought crossed his mind briefly: This is way more food than we can store, even after tonight’s shipment. Maybe I could… But he brushed it off, telling himself he’d focus on eating just enough to clear his head.

The second burger went down faster than the first. Then a third. Elliot felt an energy surge through him, like a rush he hadn’t expected. He wasn’t just eating—he was devouring. The smell, the taste, the way it filled the emptiness in his stomach—all of it was intoxicating.

Before he knew it, he was reaching for the mashed potatoes, pies, and fried chicken. He hadn’t planned to eat everything; it just happened, one plate after another. He’d move on to the next thing before he even realized he had finished the last. His hands moved on their own, and as the food disappeared, his belly began to expand.

His thin frame swelled, his uniform tightening as his belly pressed against the fabric. He didn’t notice the seams stretching as he dug into yet another tray of food. The clock ticked past midnight, but he was lost in the indulgence. Plates piled up around him, and his belly, once flat and lean, bulged outwards, wobbling as he reached for the next plate.

By 2 AM, he was leaning back against the counter, feeling the weight of his own body more than ever. He glanced down, seeing how his belly had pushed out far beyond what he thought possible. His shirt buttons had popped off one by one, and his pants split down the sides, leaving his swollen middle exposed.

He felt a brief moment of panic. What have I done? The thought barely settled in before he glanced at the scale. It was right there. He hesitated, his face flushed, then gave in to curiosity. He needed to know. Awkwardly, he rolled himself onto the platform, feeling the cold metal beneath his feet.

When he looked down, the digital screen flashed a number that made his eyes widen: 1,200 pounds.

Elliot stared, both fascinated and stunned at the sight of himself. His belly hung in front of him like a swollen beach ball, nearly touching the floor. His arms were thick and heavy, his thighs were wide enough to strain against his stretched-out pants, and his cheeks were puffed out, giving his face a round, jolly look.

The next morning, the jingling of keys echoed in the front of the diner. Mr. Jenkins walked in, his usual grumpy demeanor softened by the early hour. As he turned the corner into the kitchen, he stopped in his tracks.

Elliot, now a massive figure weighing in at over half a ton, sat slumped against the counter, his enormous belly sprawled across his lap and nearly touching the floor. The fabric of his uniform hung in tatters, and his cheeks were flushed with a mix of embarrassment and fullness.

“Elliot… what in the world happened here?” Mr. Jenkins asked, his eyes wide as he took in the sight.

Elliot gave a sheepish grin, rubbing the vast expanse of his bloated stomach. “Uh, well… I figured I’d take care of the stock the best way I knew how.”

Mr. Jenkins stared for a moment, then, surprisingly, laughed. “Well, you sure did that, kid. We’ll need to work on a new solution, though—one that doesn’t involve eating the entire kitchen.”

Elliot chuckled, feeling a strange sense of pride mixed with his embarrassment. “Guess I got carried away.”

Mr. Jenkins shook his head, still laughing. “Guess so. Now let’s see if we can find a forklift to get you out of here.”

[a-promise-is-a-lie]

What if I just yknow dived straight into the void never to be seen again

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[penisbilt]

the bittersweet but absolute flood of relief that comes from admitting defeat at living independently, to have to move back in with parents. we tried! we gave it our best shot for almost 3 years! but living like this (being on our own) is just not possible for us at this time of our lives. we've finally proved it to ourselves that we can't do it. it'll be okay to let ourselves rest now

[disdaidal]

I'm already starting to regret that I joined yet another Discord server.

[phagodyke]

was gonna say smth else but this turned into a vent sorry everyone just ignore. typical weekend post on this blog u know how it is here we go👍

[doctorweebmd]

okay i really AM working on the path to paradise. if all goes according to plan i'll have chapter 15 this weekend AHHHHHH

[novadreii]

I honestly don't think there is greater shonen anime in existence than My Hero Academia seasons 1 & 2. The breakneck speed of the pacing, the MUSIC, the animation, the pure unbridled excitement, the realistic development of everyone's powers especially Izuku's, the emotionality. Shonen is not even my genre typically, but when I think of an anime that captures everything that I think the genre is supposed be I can't think of anything that does it better.

[curiouselleth]

.

[be-gay-do-crime-ahaha]

Holy fucking shit the dysphoria is dysphoria-ing right now. I feel physically nauseous oh my fucking god. I’m gonna fucking kill someone maybe myself rn I’m gonna lose my shit holy hell.

Doesn’t help that I’ve been incredibly overstimulated the past few days every sound is like a fucking cheese grater in my ears oh my god.

[bloodbankzz]

books i want to read / try out this year:

1. im glad my mom died (currently listening to, want to finish)

2. howls moving castle (checked out, read soon)

3. dune

4. the little prince (keep promising to finish it, really need to just do it, stop promising to do things that make you feel uncomfortable)

5. gideon the ninth

6. why does he do that?

7. listen to another shakespeare performance for the dopamine chefs choice

8. the jungle

9. eve and adam

10. mexican gothic

11. under the whispering door

see from there ? order doesnt actually matter i just wanted to see how many my list was

[skyeateyourdonuts]

beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeeeeeeeeep. beepbeeeeeeeep beepbeeeeeeeep