Something I've been chewing over is Forte's work as a service dog, or rather how I utilize him as one.
I put so much time and effort into training him and, aside from the odd outing or event, I really only take him on grocery runs.
Don't get me wrong, he is amazingly helpful to have on them and I've been able to improve my diet because of him. He's also super helpful at home. But a big part of my drive in training a service dog in the first place was to make my world bigger. To give me the ability to do the things I want.
I had that with Faye. We went shopping for clothes so I could wear things that made me feel good about myself instead of just whatever t shirt and leggings were clean. We went to movies and the zoo. Heck I had a membership to the semi local aquarium because of how often I went. And while human company would have been nice, it was so life affirming to be able to enjoy those things on my own terms.
And I really don't do that with Forte. Not because he isn't capable of it, he proves that he is any time I "dust off" his public access skills and go somewhere. Like today I got out of work early so I stopped at the mega mall on the way home, just to see how he'd do and refresh his training in a bigger/busier place. He did amazing. He switched between casual heeling and fmp as directed, ignored the people calling to him, alerted in a timely manner, and after an hour of wandering around - led me to my car in the giant parking lot. And he did it all happily. Nothing bothered him, not the flashing lights of an arcade, not the toy gun range, not the indoor bounce house, none of it.
So why don't I utilize him more?
When I sit myself down and really think through it, it's internalized ablism.
When I lived further from my family I was free from their direct input on deciding to go out and do things with a service dog. Now that I'm with them again, I live with their constant pushback around bringing my service dog. They want to go out to eat, but do I really have to bring him? It's such a hassle and really they're family and that should be enough for me. They want to see a play but there's no need to bring the dog when we're going together. And on and on until somewhere along the way I just started opting out of going because it was easier.
No amount of 'but we're your faaamily' changes my disabilities or benefit of having a service dog. But I've grown so accustomed to anticipating complaints that I talk myself out of going now before they can.
And honestly I'm pretty disappointed in myself to come to this realization. I don't want my life to consist only of home, basic errands, work, and nothing else. I worked so hard to give myself an avenue of independence and I'm wasting it.
So here's my pledge to myself. I will do more. I will go to places and enjoy the world again. I will visit the library and bookstores and cafes more than every once in a blue moon. I will see that really interesting museum exhibit. I will go to the aquarium because I absolutely love it.
I'm going to focus on easing him back into working more frequently out and about and for longer durations first. But I am also going to trust him more to do the job I worked so hard to train him for. The job he shows me he loves at every opportunity.
It's past time to start living life again.
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more for the garashir fairytale grab bag AU I am never going to actually write: garak knows exactly what would break his curse from the start, he just never tells anyone for the longest time b/c he's so sure it could never happen
(it's asking forgiveness, of course. he thinks it's tain's forgiveness he needs, and tain is fucking dead and knew he would be by the time garak woke up so it seems the perfect unbreakable parting fuck-you revenge curse. and garak would expect nothing less from his father than that, so he's resigned to dwindling away painfully. enter julian bashir and his fierce force-of-nature compassion (and also secret illicit immense magical powers) with a steel chair!!! to go 'OH YEAH??? we'll see about that', as you might expect. oh. OH necromancer-ish julian calling tain's ghost up to ask him about what the hell he did and how to undo it, ala his gambit to go see him the wire? and the knowledge he gains from that is what confirms garak's suspicions as to what is Up with this handsome young healer mage because it could be known only by those long dead. cue east of the sun west of the moon part of the narrative once julian understands his game is up and runs away??
anyway getting some true love's kissing in by the end of it all is just a nice bonus it's not needed like strictly magically for either of their situations lol)
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you don't have to post this.
I'm just happy you nodded to how destructive that blog is. I'm glad to see some resistance to that blogs fucking existence.
I'm sorry anto. Parts of me is happy you've slightly moved on from HL just so that hopefully didn't barb you as bad as I'm sure "bitch of the blog" wanted it to.
Yes she self-submitted it. She does that with all her worst ones. It's for attention - and blatantly visible in her discord servers. Do not take it to heart.
I will post this because if you and I feel similarly about it, there’s bound to be others.
I’ll say it with my whole chest: that entire blog is a joke and an excuse for insecure, mean spirited people to harp on others. I blocked the entire page basically right at the beginning when I started seeing it pop up in my feed, but from what I gathered when my attention was dragged there by the anons in my own inbox, it’s full of people who:
A. Hate the game and all the characters
B. Are jealous of other creators and their success
C. Are too lazy to write their own stories yet have the gall to criticize other writers’ work
The fucking audacity to make a blog like that and defend the blatant bullying with “well we’re allowed to dislike things and have our own opinions” is so unbelievably lazy it’s not even funny. Nevermind the fact that there’s nothing anonymous about half the asks there— I could clearly tell who certain asks were referring to. Maybe the whole thing started with a few harmless polls (which is what I saw at the start) but it’s transformed into something so nasty that to defend it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Fuck that blog and fuck the people who feed into the toxicity.
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I understand if you hate Nesta for what she did to Feyre but if you go around and say "how can anyone hate Elain," while she set foot on every step Nesta took, is straight up hypocrisy...
When Nesta called Feyre "a half wild beast" and told her she would die alone, Elain agreed with her. When Feyre came home after a hunt, she looked at her with disgust when she noticed Feyre's bloody hands. She kept ignoring their situation and just like Nesta spend their money on unnecessary things. She let a 14 years old Feyre, her little sister, go in the woods and hunt and didn't bat an eye.
Just because she act like a shy, kind girl and tend to her little garden, doesn't make her innocent. And just because she acknowledged they wronged Feyre, doesn't mean she's now blameless.
Just because Nesta was openly cruel to Feyre, doesn't mean you can ignore Elain's wrong deeds because she wasn't as loud as Nesta...
You can forgive her but somehow you can't give the same courtesy to Nesta...
K. :)
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She’s the sky that holds the clouds
She’s the lady of our house
We all need her
But no one more than me
[Image ID: A close up of Lief from the shoulders up. Sharn’s hand is cupped around his right cheek, a gold bracelet dangling from her wrist. Her hand is pale. Lief is looking in front of him in her direction, tears forming in his eyes. His teeth are bared. He has brown skin and hazel eyes, and dark brown curly hair falls just below his face. He is wearing his Toran cloak and a grey shirt underneath. Scars from the Masked Ones incident are still healing on his face. The background behind him is varying shades purple with lighter-colored cracks along the canvas. /End ID]
One of my favorite things about Deltora Quest is Lief’s relationship with Sharn. She has been constant through his life since the start of the story. When Endon died, she was there to help him. She’s like a mother to Jasmine, one of Doom’s closet friends. She is strong and undeterred. When the Grey Guards tried to get her to give up her son she fought back even in chains. She would die for him.
And just imagine the pain she went through when she had to send him away on this harrowing trip that he might not return from. Her son, and she sent him to all the dangerous places in the world without being able to give him any further information. And then seeing him have to step to the throne without his father’s guidance, to lead the people and fix the mistakes of his father and his ancestors. And then he had to leave again to an unknown world in the second series. All the while, he’s lying to the girl he loves and Sharn can do not very little to help him. He’s been trying to push everyone away to protect them. Sharn understands this, but others do not. Once again, she watched him go with little reassurance he would return.
Three times this happened. Each time, he did return, with a heavier burden. When he returns for the third time, she isn’t lucid enough to see him. When she finally does see him, he’s changed, like the other two times. This time, he bears horrible scars all across his face that will forever be there. Sharn might have not put those scars there, but there is nothing she can do to wipe them away. Not this time.
All throughout this, Lief has had to put on this front with most people. Sure, Jasmine and Barda are there with him through it all, but there are some things he simply cannot tell them. Like the fake belt, or the crystal. And there are things that he can tell them, but they might not fully understand. Sharn was once a Queen, and she is his mother. She survived where his father did not. And every time he returns from his journeys, she is there to greet him.
Except for the third time. She is sick and dying and he feels helpless to protect her. He saves her, realizes that he was wrong, and then is told that no, he was right to begin with. So she is alive and awake. A horrible threat is posed towards their people, but his mother is alive. And when he finally gets a moment alone with her, he suddenly realizes just how close he was to losing her, too.
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