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Two baby goats!! Healthy and strong. They’re doing great. Two boys haha. Dahlia is on the watch and mom is doing good!

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Livestock guardian takes her herd on a field trip

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weird bug

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Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, Part I

Femshep/Garrus

Artwork 1 of 3

based on this scene from Taproot

Garrus’ finger throbbed as Shepard held it tight. Buoyant and eager, she was leading him down an alley of apple trees, so hastened that she was practically galloping. It wasn’t long into the night, but the waning summer sun was making its idle drift toward autumn, and Shepard was concerned it would be another seven to eight months before they had this chance again. “Come on,” she urged. “Where are we going?” “Just follow me.” “It’s too dark. I can’t see where the hell I’m going.” Garrus tripped on something small and hard, maybe a rock, and nearly tumbled into her. “Slow down, Shepard!” “The moon’s out, there’s plenty of light. Your eyes are just getting old.” “Need I remind you, you’re older than me.” “Older, schmolder!” she said dismissively. “This way. Watch your step.” They trekked along the the precipice and emerged from a thin stand of firs to reach the secluded beach. Garrus stopped at the treeline to appreciate the tranquil view. From here, the mountains were dark, jagged shapes against a cobalt dropcloth, and the lake their ward. Shepard continued to the edge of the water. Her puckish smile touched her eyes as she tugged her shoes off, then cast them away toward the trees. “What are you doing?” he asked. “What does it look like I’m doing?” “It looks like you’re taking your clothes off. All your clothes…” Garrus stared with his mandibles flapping. “You’re not going in like that, are you?” “Watch me!”

Before stepping into the water, Shepard rummaged through her pants pocket and produced an elastic band. She bent over, throwing her hair forward, then combed her fingers through it to gather it into a rough ponytail. In the weak light, Garrus could make out the outer ring of her amp port; the connection at the base of her skull was covered with a standard soft plug, which had been in place for some time. He’d seen it so little since the end of the war, he’d almost forgotten it existed. The sight made him sad, and his shoulders fell as she finished tying the elastic around her ponytail. She stood up straight again. The moon cast a blue pall over her naked body; the raised scars on her shoulders seemed to throb at the edges, and the thinnest lines, where Cerberus had grafted new skin to her existing tissue, shone like the fine threads of a spider’s web. She stalked to the black lake and disappeared into it with ease. “Come on G, water’s fine!” Shepard’s smile was bold and bright as she looked over her shoulder, her body halfway into the water. “You’re kidding, right?” “What, not even a toe?” “You know turians and water don’t mix.” “Come on, Garrus, don’t be such a chicken." The water had now come up to the undersides of her breasts. She cupped both hands and submerged them beneath the surface. She slowly brought them over her chest, letting the water fall and follow the curves of each mound, then did it again as if to make a point. “You’re a tease, Shepard!” he yelled after her. She grinned and dipped further down into the water. She was a ruthless crocodile, and through the darkness, Garrus could only see the whites of her teeth and the reflection of the moon across her forehead. She waved. Then she swam farther out, past the shallows and the buoys that demarcated the swimming area, and out of her lover’s sight. He listened for any indication she had turned around. “Shepard?” Garrus approached the lake’s edge and raised his chin as he strained to see what was happening. There was a faint splash. She was gone, and the water was still; only strokes of moonlight graced the glassy surface. Any evidence of Circe Shepard had plunged into the obscured depths with her. He listened again, and he began to grow nervous as the silence stretched on. A full minute passed, then another, and another. “Shepard?” he asked plaintively. “Shepard!” His stomach churned—a rare feeling usually brought on by stones that had grown too smooth and useless in his gut. Garrus tore his boots off. He looked down at his feet as his talons gripped tight to the pebble-strewn beach. His breaths were short and nervous. As the water lapped over his toes, any hesitation he had washed away, and he trudged into the lake with clumsy steps, his thick soles pounding the rocky bottom. He continued until the water hit his spurs and wicked up the fabric of his pants. “CIRCE!” he cried, the flange of his voice drawn high. The last vowel had hardly left his throat when a sudden splash rose and fell further from shore.

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BLOG | delphinemusic

The Loss of More Of Me...

If I'd have had my diagnosis at an appropriate time - i.e. Before 33yo - my life would have looked a Lot different… and a LOT Better…

“There Are Too Many Autistic Kids Diagnosed These Days,” they complain say….??

Nah. Just the right amount, since all Autistic People (younger all the way to older) are all getting properly diagnosed for the first time in FOREVER.

There ALWAYS WERE Autistic Kids and Grown-Ups. Just because they weren’t “labelled” so, doesn’t mean that’s what they were. Whether you get diagnoses and/or get labelled as such - Or Not - You Just Are Who & What You Are.

The Quirky. Their Weirdos. The Super-Shy-But-Super-Smart Girl/Woman. The Nerd Boy/Man who’s a genius scientist but can’t tie his own shoelaces or get to work on time. The “Mega-Shy” people who awkwardly just stand or sit in corners with a Rubix Cube. The ones who are adult but prefer to sit with the kids and play with them, rather than talk with the “Grown-Ups”.

I was one of those... Just Undiagnosed — as were thousands of others over the decades of ignoring and ignorance. Especially with girls.

A young family member, also Autistic, was diagnosed aged 12. She struggled hard with school, but she had a supportive family, at least some proper help with her studies and being in Mainstream School, who sat all her GCSEs with the right support, and aced her A-Levels after that.

Today, she got her 1st Class Law Degree, LLB with Honours. First Class Honours in Law!

It's never too early to get a Diagnosis so the right support can be given as soon as possible.

It might just save that person's life…

....

Now, Me?

I was Diagnosed when I was 33½ years old — and diagnosed at least 22 Years Too Late to Save Me from some of the Most Traumatic Things To Happen To Me.

The Things, Experiences & Horrors that changed the course of my life forever — and always for the Worse.

They Changed EVERYTHING. And I had to Live Barely Exist with the Catastrophic Consequences… Forevermore. I’ll have to live with the severe, soul-destroying CPTSD ALL of that CREATED, for the rest of my life.

People tend to forget One Simple Rule….:—

Autistic Children Become Autistic ADULTS.

The CPTSD that my Traumatic Experiences Caused… Haunted, Plagued, Destroyed & Dictated my entire life.

That’s Three Decades henceforth, thus far.

~~~

I was vilified by my own family, Blamed for Everything by them; nothing but A “Problem” & “Trouble” … Something that “Needed To Be Fixed”, from just a young child onwards…

And which got about 10,000x Worse after turning 12 years old. That was when they started telling me that I had wrecked “their” family, “ruined their lives”, “nothing but trouble” and “A Problem”. I was “demanding”, “controlling”, “evil”, always having “temper tantrums” because I “didn’t get my own way”.

— They made it Quite Clear they were better off without me, so I was 12 years old when I took my first OD. Unfortunately, it didn’t work and I got found [out] whilst I was still trying to shovel pills down my throat [so hard at that time, and it had to be with milk, bless]. This was my first attempt; it sure as hell wasn’t going to be my last.

I subsequently spent YEARS attempting to take my own life, on top of dealing with Eating Disorders & Severe Mental Health Illnesses. I self-harmed every single day in some way or another. By the age of 13, I was sent to “Child and Family Services” for “counselling” … and all they did was make things A LOT WORSE.

After a couple of years with them, my [child-and-family- “services”] psychiatrist wrote in my notes that I was "unhelpable", a “hopeless case” and, effectively, that I was broken beyond repair [paraphrasing], when I was just 15. That was after his own utterly useless “psychologists” supposedly “counselling” me, not only did nothing to help [seriously, how do you look a severely disturbed kid’s mother dead in the eye and tell her to buy said child a cookbook, when they’re suffering from Quickly-Getting-Out-Of-Control Anorexia Nervosa??], but actually Traumatised Me Even More.

The vilification didn’t even stop there… The GPs at my surgery all [but one] effectively and outright all but accused me of Munchausen's Syndrome [as it was known then], from age 12 onwards3 instead using the words, I was an “attention-seeking hypochondriac”. I was “diagnosed” with all kinds of psychiatric disorders — Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder were the most popular ones (I even got “Intermittent Explosive Personality Disorder” at one point, later on).

No one EVER cottoned onto the fact it was because I was An Autistic Teenager Going Through Hell Itself.

An Autistic Teenager Experiencing Exceptionally Severe Autistic Burnoutand Mega-MajorSensory-Overload.

An Autistic Teenager who needed unconditional love, support, and SAFETY. Not emotional, verbal and minor physical abuse.

What happened then and what happened next… Probably never would have happened, if they had done so.

I couldn't even go to high school, because I was utterly traumatised by the Exceptional Level Of Bullying that I was Enduring & Suffering there.

Frankly, I got even more from teachers and the headmaster, than the kids themselves — who, until 2nd year/Yr 8, were my really good friends. At that point, they inexplicably just turned on me. Viciously, cruelly, and devastatingly.

When I refused point-blank to go to [my first high] school because of bullying, my parents made an appointment with the school to discuss it, and subsequently took me there, on the agreed day, to see the Headmaster.

— They then let me go into my headmaster’s office alone, whereby he proceeded to belittle, disturb, and dehumanise me even more that I already was, culminating in him breaking Data Protection [if it existed for pupils back then] to tell me about a string of kids in “his” school that had all kinds of Pretty Bad Problems.

— He ended his tirade/lecture/whinging with the Classic, “So you see, there are far more people in this school with worse problems than you.”

Nice.

I refused to go back. [funny, that…]

Then, my first OD came on the heels of my mother demanding that I be dressed and ready to go back, one morning in January, once she’d taken my younger sister to her primary school.

… She came back to me sobbing on the floor of the kitchen, stuffing my face with paracetamol [the only things I could reach that I knew were dangerous in the medicine cupboard], and scarfing them down like they were smarties with milk chasers.

— Honestly believing by now that my entirely family would have preferred me out of their lives and gone... I was Utterly, Bewilderingly Astounded at how my mother freaked out and virtually dragged me to A&E immediately — well, after calling the school to tell them I wasn’t going to be coming back under any circumstances [AND Why], given that’s what tipped the straw on the camel’s back.

I was found a new school to go to — and my heart broke as to How Freaking PERFECT this school was for me. This was where I should have been from Day One.

Not only that, they were ALL so achingly lovely and so patient towards me in their own unique ways, I was dying inside, knowing that I would never, ever be OK in school again. Even in this one.

I saw the one GP who was kind to me, and saw I was genuine and trying. He diagnosed me with Depression. He wasn’t really that far off — the feelings were very similar, but what I really had was Trauma, and later, PTSD.

By this pint, I was 13 years old, maxed out on Prozac, and utterly WRECKED by life. And People. And ESPECIALLY School. Social Phobia, School Phobia, and -- ultimataly lifelong, forevermore --Agorphobia simply Exploded out of me as my insides Permenancly IMPLODED.

When I was 15, I was eventually sent to an Adolescent Mental Health Unit, where I was expected to… magically??… be fixed.

... Somehow?

They, at least, helped me a little bit. Unlike literally every single other person or institution ever, before.

— I sat my 4 GCSE exams in that Adolescent Mental Health Unit. Just 4, in the end.

My dreams of being either an artist or a doctor burnt up in the smoked ashes from the ruins of my young life. I’d had a plan since I was little...

— To go to school, learn hard, kick it at all my GCSE’s, knock my A-Levels out of the park, go to uni and graduate with nothing less than a First.

But with only 4 GCSEs, and 1 of them a Grade D [Maths, because I insisted I Did Not need the Welsh Tranlation paper to go with the English one... Guess who didn't understand a WORD], I had no idea what I was ever going to do with myself, anymore.

My world had been destroyed, and so was my future along with it... And Whatever I Became After That… Just Wasn’t Me.

A small part, a fragment left over of that me, tucked inside somewhere, maybe. But after that, the original person that I had been born as… Died an agonising death.

And was I Obliterated.

The difference between my own life and that of my above family member is… spectacularly, astronomically BIPOLAR to each other.

We are SO alike in personality & characteristics, our Autistic traits and temperament are almost identical. I called her my 2.0 — and never has it been more obvious than today when I heard what she was graduating uni with.

I’m SO proud of her.

That COULD have been me.

It WOULD have been… IF I’d had the same opportunities and support.

If I’d have been Understood, instead of Vilified & Decimated by everyone around me. Especially my family.

…If Only I had been Diagnosed Properly… Just This ONE TIME.

Just one Diagnosis.

… And It Would Have Saved Me, Too.

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BLOG |

The Loss of More Of Me...

The One Thing that was once my sanctuary has suddenly become my Torturer. What once offered me some form of independence, now punishes me for the complete loss of it from a new twist in my conditions...

What was once a source of joy and comfort, has suddenly become a starkly dehumanising thing that just seems to be making everything harder, where once it made everything MUCH Easier.

Being Disabled is one thing… Being Severely ILL & Disabled is quite something else. There is nothing that is easy or makes it easier anymore.

For a hospital appointment in a hospital far away, I’ve ALWAYS booked Premier Inn stays close by; it made it easier, especially if the appointment was stupid-o’clock-in-the-morning. It allowed rest and being able to wake a lot later than I otherwise would have. It means I don’t have to go far to go “home” afterwards. Then get a small break after all well over-extending myself, to recuperate somewhat before going on the journey Home. Especially when getting home always means having to unpack and put things back. as well. I really loved these little breaks from home, and I could have a little bit of minor independence. That… was a long time ago, now, it feels.

It no longer helps anymore.

In fact, it’s gone the other way and started to become a bigger burden in and of itself. I’m not quite sure what’s happened to me in the past year or so, but my condition has Deteriorated EXTREMELY Badly.

I haven’t been this ill since I was in hospital having IV Antibiotics for Septicaemia and Sepsis… In 2018.

KEEP READING MORE....

[lelibug]

If this is a "PAY RISE" then I would like to know what OTHER "Jobs" have:

- 24/7/365 hours as STANDARD for 52 weeks annually

- ZERO time off

- Home Imprisonment

- Acceptably Constant & UNREENTING Torture....

AND you're never EVER EVER ALLOWED TO QUIT.-

Well. Unless you die.

Maybe.

# #disabled #disabilityrights #disabilitybenefits

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/04/07/benefits-increase-cut/

[lelibug]

BLOG | Autism Isn't "Over" Diagnosed; We're Just Finally Being Seen Now...

“There Are Too Many Autistic Kids Diagnosed These Days,” they complain say….??

Nah. Just the right amount, since all Autistic People (younger all the way to older) are all getting properly diagnosed for the first time in FOREVER.

There ALWAYS WERE Autistic Kids and Grown-Ups. Just because they weren’t “labelled” so, doesn’t mean that’s what they were. Whether you get diagnoses and/or get labelled as such - Or Not - You Just Are Who & What You Are…

— 📖 TO KEEP READING… 😊⤵️—

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Even ten years later, Shepard can't drive.

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Livestock guardian takes her herd on a field trip

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Two baby goats!! Healthy and strong. They’re doing great. Two boys haha. Dahlia is on the watch and mom is doing good!

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Losing my train of thought part way through a sentence...

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𝙰 𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝙲𝚑𝚎𝚢𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚑𝚊𝚕 ₊⊹

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Local woman has the worst week of her life, hometown invaded by hell

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Vilverin

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BLOG | Chronically Ill Time Bows To No Clock

When you're #disabled with Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain or Medical/Healthcare/Psychological Conditions, your life & daily cycle looks SO very different to everybody else's "normal" one... But nobody notices.

Over the last few years, and even more so recently, I’ve been finding out that for all the will, the want, the ability/skill, the determination, the dedication, in the world is Nothing when it comes to a body that Just. Doesn’t. Work.

Trying to write whilst also inhabiting a body that is so broken it can barely function, or manage, well… Anything… Is… It’s Much More Than Overwhelmingly Frustrating. It dictates Everything. Evaporates your autonomy. You don’t get a say in anything — you’re completely at its mercy.

[Anyone who wants to say otherwise… You. Have. Absolutely. NO. IDEA. So Hush!]

Then, you’ve somehow come to the point where you’re somehow forced into… facing… fighting… accepting? … There’s absolutely Nothing you can do, when you’ve got to the point where you’ve tried Everything, and it’s still not enough to control it.

So, yeh…. It’s frustrating.

No — Worse… It’s Upsetting. It’s Dehumanising. It’s Humiliating. It’s Heartbreaking. It’s Devastating.

>>READ ON<<

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My mantra...