#tw: mention of mental illness

[emotionaleating]

pls don’t flirt with me i want to be nonchalant so bad but i unfortunately crave connection so intensely that i will give you my entire soul and forgive you over and over until i’ve lost myself completely and feel like i’m drowning

[gor3sigil]

I’m Trans and Insane and I’m doing fine.

[TW Psychosis, transphobia, psychophobia, medication, psych ward]

“Are you sure ?” she asked.

I remember looking back at her in disbelief, because that was certainly a question I never asked her when she came out.

“Why do you ask ?” I say.

“Dude, I’ve seen you go into depersonalization so hard you even thought you were a human soul in a robot vessel and now, you want me to trust you when you say that you, too, are trans ?”

That’s the memory that comes back to me as I fold and put in my bag my psychiatrist’s note attesting that I suffer from gender dysphoria, NOT LINKED to any psychotic symptoms. Here it goes in my folder with my prescription note, an increase - again - of my anti depressants and Xan, and my endocrinologist’s HRT prescription, increased too - finally.

I go to two separate pharmacies to pick up each prescription for two reasons:

There is only one in this godforsaken town that always had testosterone in stock.

I can’t explain to you with words the look you can get when you give back to back, to someone who, despite not being a doctor, works in healthcare, a note for trans HRT and then a note for psychiatric meds.

And I’m lucky, because I’m not taking antipsychotics anymore. Contrarily to what you could think, it doesn’t magically makes the voices and the shadowy people disappear, but it can make a mess of your head pretty bad and my doctor and I both agreed that I didn’t need more damage up here than what I already had. And no, it doesn’t make your delusions vanish magically too: in fact, I was still pretty certain that I was talking to my soul family out here in Argentine telepathically about my mission on Earth, the meds just made it more difficult to understand their voices, but the belief was still solid.

Anyways, I’m back home with the Hoy Grail I fought tooth and nails to get: a letter from the Sacred Council of Mental Sanity also known as Psychiatry that I was, indeed, a bit delulu, but also trans, and that both things didn’t play into each other. My transness wasn’t a delusion, my delusions didn’t have anything to do with being trans.

Or did it ?

Chicken or egg, you know the drill. Did I have my selves fractured before and one of the piece that shattered my brain happened to make me trans or was I just trans with a shitload of traumas in the back that made me insane ?

But don’t worry, at least, trans people when we’re together, we have each other’s back ! Right ?

“Transidentity ISN’T a mental illness !! We don’t DESERVE to be FORCIBLY LOCKED UP and MEDICATED and MADE TO CONFORM FOR OTHER’S SENSE OF SECURITY !!”

Neither do I, RIGHT ?

Oh

Or do I ?

Remember what she said, my girlfriend, right at the beginning ?

How I can’t be trusted about myself when sometimes I don’t even have a sense of self anymore or I have too much selves who fight against each other ?

And what do we say to that ?

Get treatment. Get in-patient. Take medication. And for the love of God, shut the fuck up about it, you’re giving us a bad name.

Because being trans and crazy can’t exist. It’s absurd. You have to fix one of these two things. Choose which jacket I’ll wear, and they call it a straitjacket for a reason it seems, so am I queer or am I insane ?

All I know today is there isn’t a universe in which I’m a trans without any mental illnesses, or mentally ill without being trans. And yet, I can’t tell you how many time I got asked “do you think you’d be trans if you never got through [x trauma] ?”. I. Don’t. Know. I’ll never know. And I deserve just as much agency as you get despite being mentally ill. If you don’t believe in that, don’t come yapping about “liberation for all of us”, but “if one of us is crazy they’ll all think I am too and that can’t happen”.

No LGBTQIAA+ person deserves to be told they need to be put away, to be cured, to be allowed out in the open only if they’re deemed “acceptable” by society’s standards. And no mentally ill people deserve to either.

No trans person should be going through years of counseling to have the access to HRT.

And I shouldn’t have had to threaten my own mother’s life to avoid being locked in an adult psych ward at 14.

If you ever think, for one second, that these two things have nothing to do with one another, you are far removed from history.

To hear queer people say “yeah but some mentally ill people are dangerous !” feels like you don’t even know where you come from.

And if I want to say, that me being trans is linked to me being mentally ill, or at least, that both are connected in a way, all hell breaks fucking loose.

So I’ll explain very carefully.

See, when I was young, my mind got shattered into a thousand of pieces I had to try to glue back on. All these pieces of myself broke further more down the line because I couldn’t catch a fucking break. And now, it happens that the final puzzle does not have the same face it had before. It happens that its shape changed over time, for reasons over the control of all of us who tried to build ourselves back. Now there’s a bigger picture, less pieces, a few other shadows, and me. Built from the shatters. With my own needs and afflictions.

And whoever you are, whatever your agenda might be, I will not let anyone take any agency away from me under the false pretext that I can’t know anything for myself. They say that about children, they say that about minorities, about physically disabled people, about the people they want OUT. And my trans siblings, you know that.

I came out for the first time 7 years ago, to my then girlfriend, who was the one asking the question that is the first sentence of this text. I came out a second time 3 years ago. Been on HRT, had top surgery, had psychotic breaks, got my meds changed, switch therapist.

Because I am trans and crazy. And yet, all these choices I made, I made myself. It didn’t have to be that hard to get the basic care I needed. It didn’t need to be. But it WAS. And I’m part of the lucky crowd of people who had access to out-patient treatment, who never have been locked up in ward, who managed to stay alive through meds withdrawals without medical assistance when I had no therapist.

Be very careful of when you start to put conditions on the rights you think you deserve. Be very, very careful about your definition of sanity and of how it warps the way you see people. When you start to say “I have access to that, but there’s people like X or Y who shouldn’t BECAUSE”, pause and ask yourself what led you to think this way. More often than not, you’ll find yourself playing the same mind games as the ones you swore to fight against, and when it gives them the upper hand, they won’t hesitate to come for you after that.

[the-stars-are-crying-again]

how to k1ll yourself without disappointing anyone no borax no glue

[fatphobiabusters]

As unhealthy as you perceive any food to be, it is much more unhealthy to be scared of the act of eating.

-Mod Worthy

[betterluckthenexttime]

[honeypleasejustkillme]

date idea: take me to the closest lake and drown me

[endedbyisiaha]

Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough?Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough? Why can’t I be good enough?

[orphancoded]

[merakiione]

soap scum

(ione meraki 2024)

[cvtmyhearttopieces]

the feeling of getting worse is so comforting

[emotionaleating]

[dumbbitchdisaster]

Full stomach= nasty feeling, nauseating, disgusting, fat pig, uncomfortable

Empty stomach= beautiful, angelic, comforting, it girl, worthy, confident

[stargirlanthem]

every day, i feel less and less real ✶⋆.˚

[schizopositivity]

If you see any videos online of a mentally ill person in public being filmed without their consent, please report it as harassment. Examples include: a video of someone talking to someone who isn't actually there, a video of someone having strange or erratic behaviors, a video of someone speaking gibberish or talking incoherently, etc.

This is a huge violation of the person in the videos privacy and extremely disrespectful. They could be having the worst day of their life. They could be homeless with no support system or access to care, with nowhere else to be but in public. They might not see that you are filming, and have no idea or control over who sees them in a vulnerable state. Please consider the feelings and safety of the people in these videos, they are already going through enough as it is, you don't need to add to their problems by filming, posting, or even just watching these videos.

No one is better than the mentally ill people in these videos. Everyone is capable of having a mental health crisis that leads to strange behavior in public. How would you feel if someone posted your worst moments online for people to laugh at? These are human beings that deserve the same amount of respect as anyone else in the world. Yes, even if they are homeless, or on drugs, or swearing, or dirty, or disturbing the peace of a public area. That is a human being no matter what.

As someone with schizophrenia, it's so disgusting how often I come across videos like that online (yes, even on Tumblr). A lot of these "strange" behaviors that are being filmed are literally just symptoms of mental illnesses like schizophrenia. The person cannot control what they are doing, and might not be aware that it is perceived as strange. It's also important to acknowledge that people with severe and persistent mental illnesses are at an increased risk of violence by others, homelessness, substance use disorders, being arrested, and being involuntarily committed into psychiatric facilities. Alienating us and reinforcing stigma against us can contribute to those risks. It's also worth noting that paranoia is a symptom of schizophrenia, and knowing that people are willing to film us in public to ridicule us at our vulnerable moments is extremely paranoia inducing. This can cause us to fear going out in public, which leads to isolation, which makes the symptoms of schizophrenia worse.

There is so much risk associated with the filming, posting and viewing of these videos. Plus it further dehumanizes a disenfranchised minority. Is it really worth it? Is the few seconds of "entertainment" really worth all this distress you are causing?

If you want to advocate for mentally ill people, or even just care at all, you must stop this from happening. Don't film people in public without their consent. Don't post videos of people in public without their consent. Don't like, share or comment on videos of people in public filmed without their consent, it just boosts it in the algorithm. Report any instances of this that you see, even if you think "this one's not that bad" or "the person doesn't seem distressed in this one" or "okay but this one is actually funny", no excuses, report it.

[willyouletmeloseonlosingdogs]

you know it's bad when you don't even want to listen to music anymore

[artiumghosted]

I just love making these types of memes. I'll probably make more lmao