#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

[cherry-vanilla-tea]

me after telling myself im clean from $h just to get an 3d

[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.

[betterluckthenexttime]

[emotionaleating]

[the-real-loser-otaku-girl]

Erm chat i think that girl covered in sh scars and drinking straight from the bottle may be mentally ill...shes trying to hide is sm tho...

Guys i think the person who openly talks about their mental health struggles may be unwell...thats just a theory tho....

No hate 2 the creator im just saying those subcultures r very open about having issues. Its not a "dark truth" that we're sick. we're very open about it.

And like yeah theres fashion 2 it but like? If u wear stuff like yami kawaii ur most likely got mental health issues. You wouldn't wear blades as earings or have menhera chan buttons if u were mentally stable if that makes sense.

Edit: i haven't seen the video i just got the screenshot from a moot/friend

[chirrups]

I feel like I have nothing to ask, I simply would love to hear more about them fucked up mermaid and murderer

And I would absolutely love to tell you about them, Tin.

This AU takes place somewhere vaguely in the Pacific Northwest (circa. 1970s-80s) in an isolated fishing town along a storm-wracked coast.

Fisheries in and around the bay have collapsed due to extreme winter weather patterns + overfishing + an oil spill from a tanker run aground down the coast, leaving most of the bay's inhabitants to live pretty much hand-to-mouth off contaminated fish in recent years.

get ready for LORE (and more drawings but mostly the LORE)

general warning: this is pretty long

The "story" as it were, kicks off when Gem finally gets fed up with another fisherman in the area, Grian, over continued conflict about ownership of fishing grounds in the mouth of the bay.

She orchestrates his death (with the eager assistance of Scott and Impulse) out at sea and passes off his death as a tragic accident in the winter swells with her being the unfortunate finder of his remains.

And it works.

See the thing is: Gem has a history of causing disappearances. It started with some accidents with out-of-town poachers. She would chase these people off and one or two would just slip overboard and happen to drown. It wasn’t her fault and besides they deserve it. But things start to escalate from there. Poachers become outsiders become fellow townspeople. Grian is someone Gem’s known for years, whose friends are tangentially her friends or acquaintances. His death is a cold-blooded murder driven by hatred and frustration. This time something is different about what she's done and Gem knows it.

But Gem is a reputable and well-known person. Her prices are fair, she drives poachers out of the bay and maintains order around the pragmatic fishing ground policy that undoubtedly helps everyone to survive.

She is the type of person to look to for guidance when things get hard because she can make those hard choices. So how on earth could it be her fault?

No one is wiser until Grian's funeral brings an old friend into town who is more than a little suspicious about the circumstances of his death.

Scar was one of Grian's crewmates when they did trawling much further south. They split when Scar took up (illegal) whaling and Grian moved into the bay.

As an outsider, Scar isn't so swayed by the goodwill the town has around Gem's name. He's no detective but for the sake of an old friend, he might as well try.

In this AU, mermaids are social mammals part of the Hominidae family that went back into the ocean similar to Cetaceans. They live in matrilineal family groups or in any other female-led organization of pods and have a very "survival-oriented" global culture (with regional variation).

Pearl is a lone mermaid whose pod lived in the bay until they were starved out by the collapsing fisheries. PNW mermaids are more territorial than other ecotypes and value strength over anything else. Pearl's inability (read: unwillingness) to oust other pods for better fishing grounds and the loss of one of her pod members summarily lead the other two to abandon her.

Without a pod to help her, hunting enough in her dwindling territory has been difficult and lonely, leading her to slowly starve just as the humans in the bay have begun to.

She took to trailing fishing boats to steal from their catch, which is how she met Gem who was mid-throwing some unfortunate soul overboard.

They have an interesting relationship.

Gem is enamored with Pearl at the halfway point between a person and a large apex predator. She loves the way Pearl needs her to live and the way Pearl, as a social creature with no pod, craves her attention. It's thrilling to have a predator at her beck and call like this and, in turn, to be so desperately needed. She also loves the way Pearl doesn't look at her like she's dangerous (the way Scott and Impulse have begun to when they think she doesn't see them). Her interest in Pearl seems to be leaching into something more than just wildlife admiration. She's begun to learn the mermaid language just to talk to her. For what? Who really knows. Meanwhile, Pearl is hungry enough to eat just about anything Gem throws her (including human bodies) and desperate enough that she lets Gem get much closer than many humans in this area have ever been to a mermaid. (They even touch, scandalous for mermaids.)

It's skewed for sure. From Gem's perspective, they've got something special going on. From Pearl's... not so much.

This being Secret-Life based, you can imagine how this story ends...

Bonus piece: Pearl and her old pod.

IN GENERAL, Biological females are generally larger with a set of rotated tusks protruding from their lower jaw for dominance displays. Biological males are commonly smaller and more agile, with more dexterous hands due to decreased adipose tissue distribution over their bodies. (They actually have 3 biological sexes and tons of social gender variation but that's a talk for another time). Pre-cultural awakening, these pods would form around a biological female and their harem for reproductive purposes. That female would then protect the harem from other females looking to "steal them" or their territories (like horses but reverse-style). In modern times, these pods are often composed of groups of friends/related family members as sort of "platonic life partners" and stealing other pod members is seen as a very archaic sort of thing. Territory stealing, however, is still up for grabs.

[willyouletmeloseonlosingdogs]

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

[cherry-vanilla-tea]

its a metab day, not a binge, i repeat to myself as i shake back and forth in my padded white room

[orphancoded]

[merakiione]

soap scum

(ione meraki 2024)

[stargirlanthem]

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

[rainandsugarcane2000]

lifes really hurting yall huh? please stay. im so sorry for everything you've been through. you can dm me about anything i promise. you can say anything. i'll listen to everything you have to say and try to help if i can <3 please dont go youre are so so loved

heres a list of hotlines

heres a website with distractions/fun games

i encourage rbs it could really help someone <3 (context ive lost alot of ppl lately this isnt targeted towards everyone i apologize. however this could really help someone)

[emotionaleating]

the silence after looking at yourself in the mirror

the silence after relapsing

the silence after breaking down in front of people

the silence after being screamed at

the silence when no one believes you

the silence after a jealous outburst

the silence after crying so much you can’t even remember what you were crying about

the silence after somebody leaves your life

[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.

[fawnsky]

neither relapsing nor recovering but a secret third thing