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[muskanreads]

sometimes I wish that every article naming how much a public service would cost (or how much it would cost to repair needed infrastructure for the service or to make the service more accessible to disabled people and poor people) would explain that number in terms of how much time it takes a billionaire to earn that much.

like "it would cost $8.6 million (or, a little under one hour of Bezos's earnings) to build a new public library building in this area which would serve 45 thousand people."

money is literally a social and political representation of how we are choosing to allocate resources. I wish these direct comparisons were made so people who haven't yet made the connection might at least start asking "huh... why should we allocate these resources to one person to do nothing with them instead of to 45 thousand people in the form of an essential service? why do we allocate this amount of resources to this one person every single hour of every single day but it's unthinkable to provide it to tens of thousands of people just once? why are tens of thousands of people (of which I am one), all of us collectively, less valuable than this one guy?"

[muskanreads]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[muskanreads]

Hey. Hey you. The person aimlessly scrolling, stuck in an immobilized standoff with your brain

It's not your fault. You won't be stuck forever. I know you're trying. I know you hate it. It's ok.

And tell the Mean Voice in your head that it's not helping. It knows as well as you do that you would get up and Just Start the task if you could. You're not doing this on purpose.

Take a deep breath. Relax your jaw. I see you trying so hard to break out of it, but you can't force it. You'll get Unstuck eventually. All you can do in the interim is be kind to yourself.

[muskanreads]

[muskanreads]

I found an extremely dope disability survival guide for those who are homebound, bedbound, in need of disability accommodations, or would otherwise like resources for how to manage your life as a disabled person. (Link is safe)

It has some great articles and resources and while written by people with ME/CFS, it keeps all disabilities in mind. A lot of it is specific to the USA but even if you're from somewhere else, there are many guides that can still help you. Some really good ones are:

How to live a great disabled life- A guide full of resources to make your life easier and probably the best place to start (including links to some of the below resources). Everything from applying for good quality affordable housing to getting free transportation, affordable medication, how to get enough food stamps, how to get a free phone that doesn't suck, how to find housemates and caregivers, how to be homebound, support groups and Facebook pages (including for specific illnesses), how to help with social change from home, and so many more.

Turning a "no" into a "yes"- A guide on what to say when denied for disability aid/accommodations of many types, particularly over the phone. "Never take no for an answer over the phone. If you have not been turned down in writing, you have not been turned down. Period."

How to be poor in America- A very expansive and helpful guide including things from a directory to find your nearest food bank to resources for getting free home modifications, how to get cheap or free eye and dental care, extremely cheap internet, and financial assistance with vet bills

How to be homebound- This is pretty helpful even if you're not homebound. It includes guides on how to save spoons, getting free and low cost transportation, disability resources in your area, home meals, how to have fun/keep busy while in bed, and a severe bedbound activity master list which includes a link to an audio version of the list on Soundcloud

Master List of Disability Accommodation Letters For Housing- Guides on how to request accommodations and housing as well as your rights, laws, and prewritten sample letters to help you get whatever you need. Includes information on how to request additional bedrooms, stop evictions, request meetings via phone, mail, and email if you can't in person, what you can do if a request is denied, and many other helpful guides

Special Laws to Help Domestic Violence Survivors (Vouchers & Low Income Housing)- Protections, laws, and housing rights for survivors of DV (any gender), and how to get support and protection under the VAWA laws to help you and/or loved ones receive housing and assistance

Dealing With Debt & Disability- Information to assist with debt including student loans, medical debt, how to deal with debt collectors as well as an article with a step by step guide that helped the author cut her overwhelming medical bills by 80%!

There are so many more articles, guides, and tools here that have helped a lot of people. And there are a lot of rights, resources, and protections that people don't know they have and guides that can help you manage your life as a disabled person regardless of income, energy levels, and other factors.

Please boost!

[muskanreads]

you ever feel like you were born with something rotten inside you and if people get close enough they’re gonna find out

[muskanreads]

A comic about having Restless Leg Syndrome and BID, and my first official comic! I hope to get one out every week or two!

[ID: A five panel comic of a person with a lavender undercut. In the first panel, they are holding a plate in each hand. On the left plate, it says “B I D” and on the second it says “R L S”. Above that, it says “I have the misfortune of having both Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) and Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). In the second panel, it shows a person’s waist and legs lying on a bed. Their left leg above the knee and right leg below the knee are partially transparent. Above that, it says “Since my BID affects my legs, I try my hardest to ignore them overnight so I can sleep.” In the third panel, it shows a pair of legs vibrating. Above that, it says “But if my RLS is flaring up, my legs get so uncomfortable I can’t ignore them anymore.” In the fourth panel, it shows a person with a lavender undercut wearing a green shirt and shorts sitting on a bed and holding their knees and crying. Below that, it says “I then have to move and rub my legs, which is deeply distressing for me.” In the fifth panel, it shows a bed next to a nightstand that has a purple eye mask, assorted boxes, and a lamp. Above the nightstand is a yellow sticky note that says “Stretch before bed!” Below the image, it says “Stretching before bed can help, but my struggles with RLS highlight how BID affects me every hour of every day.” End ID.]

[muskanreads]

An Opera In My Head

A sea is singing in my head. I hear its arias ebbing and flowing as they reach for a tale that doesn't know where it is going. A warble in my ear tells me I can't give up on this story yet. Applause is on the track if I promise not to pause or skip it. A bet is made between the tune and me. I can't give in until the chorus starts, but I see they aren't in attendance. I wonder if they know it's today that the overture begins. It's every day. A rippling of the strings lulls my thoughts into a quiet peace and they offer me a brief rest from the cacophony their orchestra brought. This piece has months 'til its debut but they still push on, each day a climb to the top of the score and back to the end again. Its title song is a loop in my mind. Caught out of time. I wait for the director, the producer, my manager to call death on the rehearsal and finally perform to someone other than myself. Is it still not done, this music of the disquieted brain? The break is over, I hear them crawling back into my skull, their instruments echoing as they scramble to the seats. It's not a symphony, not until they mould into one another. They will, given time. My time. I can't afford for them to wait. This melody is aching inside, pounding against the walls of my Skull. her voice clawing against my own. There’s no escaping from the constant refrain. There's music carved into the bone. 

[muskanreads]

Beginning Orlando by Virginia Woolf :)

[muskanreads]

Bruce Springsteen: I eat loneliness, man. I feed off it. The loner thing started from the very beginning. It was like I didn’t exist. It was the wall, then me. But I was working on the inside

Bruce Springsteen, 1978, about his youth:

“It was like I didn’t exist. It was the wall, then me. But I was working on the inside all the time. A lot of rock and roll people went through this solitary existence. If you’re gonna be good at something, you’ve gotta be alone a lot to practice. There has to be a certain involuntariness to it. Like my youngest sister, she could play if she wanted to. But she’s too pretty. She’s popular, you know what I mean? She ain’t gonna sit in the house in her room no eight hours a day and play the piano. No way.”

Dave Marsh: "Springsteen is a loner by nature. Even today, he is the sort of person whose favorite moments often involve being alone: speeding down a highway, or just soaking up the atmosphere at four A.M. on a deserted street."

Bruce Springsteen: “The loner thing started from the very beginning. My father’s entire family were outsiders. They didn’t give a damn what anybody thought.”

Video: Bruce Springsteen dancing on stage with his mother then playing with his sister: Dancing in the Dark, London 2013

Bruce Springsteen with his mother, and his sister.

"In fact, what was troubling Bruce personally was not far removed from what he’d already conceived as the central problem The River had tried to tackle: “People want to be part of a group yet they also want to disassociate themselves. People go through those conflicts every day in little ways: Do you wanna go to the movies tonight with your friends, or stay home? I wanted to get part of that on the record—the need for community, which is what ‘Out in the Street’ is about. Songs like The Ties That Bind’ and Two Hearts’ deal with that, too. But there’s also the other side, the need to be alone.”

Bruce was beginning to feel the downside of his loner’s life—his need to be alone was becoming something tougher, more pernicious: loneliness. He later compared his emotions to the scene in The Grapes of Wrath in which an Okie farmer tries to hold off eviction with a shotgun, only to be told that the men he wants to shoot are faceless, hidden away in boardrooms hundreds of miles away. “I felt the same way he did: Where do I point the gun?” Bruce said. “In the Seventies and Eighties, especially compared to the Sixties, it became awfully hard to identify an enemy.” Right now, though, Springsteen was fighting the enemy within."

Dave Marsh

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Darkness on the Edge of Town (Live In Barcelona)

Bruce Springsteen (in the mid-Seventies): “You know, you have to be self-contained. That way you don’t get pushed around. It depends on what you need. I eat loneliness, man. I feed off it. I live on a lotta different levels, y’know, because I’ve learned to cope with people, which is—be cool all the time…I can roll with the punches. It’s a way of getting along.”

'Well now I lost my money and I lost my wife Them things don't seem to matter much to me now Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop I'll be on that hill with everything I got Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost For wanting things that can only be found In the darkness on the edge of town In the darkness on the edge of town'

[muskanreads]

As time goes by I'm becoming more and more sure that I just can't survive on my own. I can take basic care of myself, but the second I have to go to a doctor or do some formal stuff I get paralyzed. I just can't. Fuck, I can barely even talk to strangers in general. Or even not strangers, I can't fucking text someone back if I'm not close to them, it's just so scary and exhausting. I'm becoming emotionally tired more easily and sometimes even talking with my mom about anything is too much for me and I love my mom. And I really need her, I can't do basic stuff without her pretty much holding my hand all the time. I can't get a normal job. We went to this blueberry plantation a few times but I just couldn't go there without her, and now the job is over and we can't go there at all. If I wasn't such a fucking baby I'd go there a few more times alone and get some money. I can't make calls, there's literally like two people I feel comfortable talking on the phone with. People used to say I was mature for my age when I was younger but I never grew up and now I'm almost 21 and can't do anything with my life. I'm scared of everything, I'm constantly exhausted physically and mentally. I'm like a fucking child. I'm scared that I'm gonna have to live with my mom my whole life. I can't see a future for myself, I'm just not able to survive without help and at some point I won't be able to get help, I don't want to be a parasite living off of my mom's money but I don't see anything else I could do. I hate my brain so much. I hate the way it refuses to work. I hate myself for being such a child.

[muskanreads]

those posts online that are like sometimes it’s ok to be tired and do nothing all day it’s self care were so damaging to me when i was like depressed asf and 20. sometimes you just gotta get up and do shit and you’ll feel less tired afterwards cuz you don’t have 100000 neglected chores and obligations slowly debuffing you and draining all your chakras. like sometimes you (ME) just gotta suck it up. not to sound like my dad but it’s true.

[muskanreads]

Hot take: Although it's great that mental illness has become way less stigmatized than it was a decade or two ago, we've swung so far toward "therapy is great! everyone should go to therapy!" that we are harming a lot of people.

Talk therapy doesn't work well for everyone. For many, it can feel just like gaslighting or talking in circles. You can't CBT yourself out of poverty, or abuse, or discrimination.

Some of us have been hurt badly by ableist therapists.

And if you're in a rural or conservative area, good luck finding a therapist who affirms queer people and has a more than rudimentary (and not pathologizing or ABA-based) understanding of autism.

I am not saying therapy is inherently bad, or that it never helps. But we need to stop putting it on a pedestal, and using "go to therapy" as a stock response for any friend in distress. And we need to acknowledge that sometimes therapy might do more harm than good.

[muskanreads]

Shout out (not really) to our old therapist who started off our first session by talking about “how many teenagers come into sessions claiming they have DID because they saw it on TikTok”. Really set up a line of healthy communication and me feeling like I wouldn’t be ridiculed if I talked about my problems.

She then proceeded to spend every sessions trying to shove CBT treatments down my throat and every time I tried mentioning that it wasn’t working and never has for me, along with reasons I think it wasn’t, she just… Told me to keep working on it. I had a whole LIST of reasons why I thought I had whatever mental disability I wanted to bring up to her and I never once was listened to enough to even speak my case.

I stopped seeing her pretty quickly, obvious. But some therapists needs to do better and actually listen to their clients instead of just dismissing everything or at least stop continuing to try to force something that isn’t working.

[muskanreads]

I haven't seen a lot of discussion about anxiety disorders as disabilities even though they impact so many people's lives, including my own. So I'm just here to say... Happy disability pride month to everyone with anxiety disorders.

Happy disability pride month to those who can't drive, make phone calls, go out, or do other things because of their anxiety.

Happy disability pride month to those whose anxiety is trivialized or joked about, or who have been told to "grow up."

Happy disability pride month to those with selective mutism, lots of stuttering, or other issues with speech.

Happy disability pride month to those with frequent or severe panic attacks.

Happy disability pride month to those whose anxiety has led them to self harm.

Happy disability pride month to those with physical manifestations of their anxiety, from appearance like hair loss to health issues like heart problems and fainting.

Happy disability pride month to those whose anxiety is worsened by other conditions.

Happy disability pride month to those with anxiety service dogs, AAC, medication, or other aids, including things that other people insist they "don't really need."

Happy disability pride month to those who need support or treatment but can't access it.

Your struggles are real and you're so much stronger than you think. Thank you for making it this far. 🩵

[muskanreads]

Anyway besides that, I’m just going to vent real quick about life with social anxiety.

It literally cripples you, and anyone who doesn’t have it just doesn’t understand.

In my case it’s pretty severe and it can be depressing at times when I know nobody around me understands it.

The amount of people who ask what I’m afraid of or tell me to just get over it is depressing and I know looking from the outside it’s stupid because why can’t I go outside? Why can’t I walk around in a grocery store or down the street or even to the trash can outside?

But you have no idea how many times I tell myself I’ll be able to do today or tomorrow or i start to head out the door and feel myself about to have a panic attack when I’m alone in places it’s even hard in my own home sometimes…

And I know I’m not alone but a majority of the people I meet don’t understand and sometimes that becomes depressing and eats me alive until I head down a path I don’t even wanna remember.

So if don’t have social anxiety be fucking glad because what I wouldn’t give to feel okay doing basic life things.

Anyway, nice talk.

Thanks for reading 🫶🏼

[muskanreads]