deadmemefrom2012

[deadmemefrom2012]

I went into recovery with the goal of a healthier relationship with alcohol instead of complete sobriety forever. As a broke college student, my only option for help was an abstinence group, where I never felt comfortable and was deemed a failure when I finally felt comfortable to have wine on a date.

But I still went from drinking straight vodka before bed every night to cope and getting blackout on a whim to a couple drinks with friends on the weekends and never drinking as a coping mechanism. It was a bitch and a half to get there and I can’t talk about it without people looking at me like an undetonated bomb.

every time I mention how many days sober I am I appreciate people congratulating me and telling me to keep up the good work. it is nice. but I also wish that milestones in addiction recovery weren’t still so pinned to length of sobriety/abstinence

yeah yeah I’m 50 days sober who cares. how about the fact that, when I do drink, it tends to be nipped in the bud after two days nowadays instead of weeks or months? how about the fact that drinking has been condensed to a six pack because I’m at the end of my tether, instead of browning out every night? how about my friend who has decided to stop drinking alone, and is actually sticking to that? recovery doesn’t always look like sobriety and I wish it was more normal to talk about that. yknow. when addiction is normal to talk about at all

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He carries my dog tag in his pocket and I wear his sweatshirt to bed and even though we’re hundreds of miles apart and not together, the world feels a little less lonely

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I’m so down bad for this man Jesus Christ

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When he gets drunk and forgets your dynamic is being mean to each other and instead starts complimenting you 🥰🥰🥰

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anothermag

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some more recent patches

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I’m hungry but I don’t want to move so I guess I’ll just masturbate instead

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April 30th, 2020

Memories that stand out in my mind:

As an elementary school kid, walking the halls after school because my mom was a teacher. Feeling acid rise in my throat outside the bathroom near the principal’s office. Going to my mom and asking her if throwing up in my mouth every once in a while was normal. She gives a distracted yes because I don’t tell her how often it happens.

Being about 9 or 10 in the doctor’s office, finally getting a name for what I’m experiencing: Acid Reflux. I’m so excited to have some bit of information that I tell my friends as soon as I see them next. They seem disinterested and I can’t understand why. A weight is off my shoulders and I feel hopeful that the pain will stop.

I’m thirteen years old in my career and college readiness class. I ask the teacher if I can go get some water. She tells me no, there’s only a few minutes until the bell. With tears in my eyes, I plead with her, but she is set in her decision. After three excruciating minutes, the bell rings and I run to the water fountain to gargle water over and over. Finally, the taste of bile leaves the back of my mouth and the burning sensation starts to recede. The tears of pain that had been building release at last as tears of relief.

I’m still thirteen. I’m laying on the doctor’s examination table as he feels my stomach with cold gloved hands. He thinks the cause may be an ulcer, so he attempts to book me for an endoscopy. All of the specialists nearby have transferred, so for the long months of waiting, I take gigantic pills in an effort to stop the pain. They don’t work, but I keep taking them. Eventually, we drive the four or so hours to Memphis. My mom is with me when I go under for the first time. When I awake, they tell me they saw nothing outwardly abnormal except scar tissue in my throat. We wait and wait just to receive lab reports with no answers.

We see another specialist, who hypothesizes it’s a bacterial infection in my stomach. I have another pill to take and a humiliating stool sample to give, before more waiting for test results with no answers.

At fourteen, my doctor prescribes me anxiety medication. It does wonders for my mental health, but absolutely nothing to the near constant pain. Another cause ruled out and I’ve nearly lost hope.

It’s ninth grade, I’m fourteen years old and walking down the upstairs hallway of the fine arts building with my broadcasting friends. Acid suddenly floods my throat and nasal cavity and I cry out in pain. At the water fountain I gargle over and over, before breathing the water in and blowing it out to maybe stop the burning that’s spread from my nose all the way down to my lungs. My friends stand around me, startled and asking frantically if I’m ok.

Tenth grade, I receive a new medication. It still doesn’t work, and my new doctor doesn’t have any new answers.

The summer after eleventh grade, I’m excitedly waiting to go with my best friend and his family on a trip to see our favorite musician in concert. As we wait to get in the car, my stomach begins to hurt and I feel overheated and nauseous. This is the worst of the symptoms, worse than even breathing in the stomach acid. I can’t move, and my best friend holds me as I try not to cry. Eventually it passes, but the humiliation and helpless feeling stays with me.

Finally, I meet a doctor with new ideas at the beginning of the year. The specialist at the children's hospital tests me for gluten intolerance and lactose intolerance, but both tests come back negative. Still, she suggests that it may be a dairy sensitivity and I agree to slowly stop eating dairy over the next two months. I’m prescribed new medications and receive new hope.

In November of my senior year, on a mission trip in a room all alone in the middle of the night, the same feeling that I got in the summer comes back ten times worse. I’m not completely off dairy, but I avoided it as much as possible during the trip. I take my strongest meds kept in the bag right next to my bed. It doesn’t matter, and I can barely move enough to rest my head on a cool metal chair and call my youth director. He doesn’t pick up, and I end up calling a friend to wake him up. I feel humiliated to have anyone see me so helpless, but there’s nothing I can do. My youth director brings me some over the counter medications to go with my prescriptions and I spend another hour fighting the urge to vomit or pass out before the pain finally ebbs away.

I send off the new year and enter 2020 with one last taste of real ice cream. I regret it almost immediately and am in pain for days afterwards. I think the doctor is definitely right about the dairy sensitivity and I give up milk entirely. The pain doesn’t go away entirely, but it helps somewhat.

In February, I go to my state's Thespian Festival. For the weekend, I eat almost only salads along with the other dairy free and gluten free kids. They told us we would have options to choose from, but we didn’t, and none of us prepared to spend the weekend eating only from the hotel concessions and the meager salad bar. Eventually I can’t take it and order food for whoever nearby needs it. We spend hours talking and eating food that I checked over and over to ensure it was diary free. The pain still doesn’t go away entirely and I still have to swallow down rising bile multiple times a day. My hopelessness turns to rage because why won’t it just stop, please make it stop already, why?

It’s the end of my senior year, only two more days of school. I’m sitting here at four in the morning writing this because for the second time this week I’ve been kept awake by the burning pain in my stomach that has almost become commonplace. I know my grades are suffering, but I can’t focus from the pain and when it stops I’m too tired to focus. It’s only this, my recollections of the pain, that I’ve been able to focus on enough to ignore the current pain. It’s irony, and I feel bitter as I finish this, with tears in my eyes and unfinished assignments open in other tabs. I’m only left with one question:

Why?

[deadmemefrom2012]

What’s the point of grinding to the bone your whole life for money if you aren’t even gonna be there to spend it…

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Lizette Pinto by by Jeff Pearson for Altered States Magazine February 2022

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Time to talk about the importance of Spider-Man and Power Pack #1 (1984)!

Trigger warning for childhood sexual assault. Seriously skip this post if that’s a trigger for you.

So if you’ve never heard the story, this issue features not one, but two male victims of sexual assault, a young Peter Parker in a flashback and Tony, older Peters neighbor. Peter was assaulted by a teenager he thought was his friend named Skip and Peter (as spider-man) interrupts Tony’s babysitter, Judy, molesting him.

Now I’m not going to lie to you, just reading the full synopsis of this issue can make me cry. I was a male victim of childhood sexual assault by a girl older than me that I thought was my friend. Like Skip and Judy, she phrased it like a game and like Peter and Tony, I was too young to really know what was happening.

I didn’t find this issue until I was already an adult but damn that does not mean it didn’t impact me hard. It was the first time I saw a sexual assault victim in media I could relate to and there wasn’t just one, but two of them. Not only that, but one is Spider-Man. One of my favorite superheroes, someone I’ve admired since I was a kid. And Marvel let him be like me without being shamed for it all the way back in ‘84. This comic is in part what made me accept what happened and finally seek therapy for it.

I can’t fathom the impact this would’ve had on me as a kid. Unlike Peter and Tony, I never told anyone. I didn’t have the language to. When I tried, my parents thought I was talking about some make believe game. Because I had no idea how to describe what she’d done. Imagine if I’d had this comic and I’d’ve been able to point at it and go hey, that’s me. Spider-Man’s like me. Mom, Dad, Spider-Man’s like me. Maybe I’d’ve gotten away from my abuser sooner and maybe I’d’ve gotten help for the trauma before letting it fester for 15 years.

Because the part that makes me hall like a baby is when Tony tells his parents and they believed him. It’s what I wish had happened for me more than anything. Reading this now gives me hope that maybe somewhere out there there’s a little boy who read this on time and was believed too.

Bad things happen to kids. It’s unfortunate but it happens and the answer isn’t to hide them away and try to sanitize the world for them. It’s to give them the ability to seek help when they need it. It’s to give them superheroes that show them they don’t need to be ashamed and this is how to get help. I could go on a long rant about the book banning and sanitization efforts happening in the US right now but I think I’m just going to let my story speak for itself.

[deadmemefrom2012]

If you can't wash it off, paint over it, replace the item, or buff it out, turn a message of hate into one of love! I would never condone someone to do this discreetly and in mere seconds with a quickly concealed permanent marker, for example on a public bench or bus stop. Certainly not anything like whipping out a tat machine and adding to an unconscious white supremacist's existing tattoo. That would be illegal! :) And, dear followers, I would never encourage you to do something that's illegal. So, please only use this when someone has defaced your personal property to avoid breaking the law! Because that would be illegal, and following in the law is always in everyone's best interest. :) .... :) reblogs and even reposts definitely welcome

[deadmemefrom2012]

a lot of people on this website seem to be very upset about the way adults play pretend in their bedrooms while having consensual sex

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There’s not nearly enough trans men top reps out there, especially not trans men topping cis men. Like bro I know I’m not the only one

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Every time I see companies selling """punk""" jewellery or clothing I become apoplectic with rage. Just saw a £65 padlock necklace advertised to me bitch Fuck you go to your nearest weird little shop that sells everything in the world including fake Rolexes and bongs the size of a toddler. Buy a thing of chain and a padlock. Borrow some bolt cutters someone you know will probably own some and if not get some cheap ones or borrow from a local tool library. Slap em together. Maximum cost £30 and that's MAXIMUM that's assuming you bought over a metre of expensive heavy chain AND bought the bolt cutters. You can do it for under a fiver with a wallet chain and pliers. I still wear a necklace I made when I was 15 out of a wallet chain and pliers and a padlock I got in a set of 3 from poundland. If the issue is dexterity or otherwise disability related then find a friend and swap a favour with them it'll still be cheaper than these scamming poser companies and will help you build community and share resources. Something which is actually punk. Fuckin. Capitalist posers

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Sometimes I think maybe I haven’t been radicalized enough but then I talk to my mom and yeah it’s a miracle I’ve gotten this far