#Same woman who believed her letting the schools know I was autistic would mean I got 'special treatment' n she didn't want that

[neuropoppins]

How people can still not think that gender being put into law and replacing sex doesn't affect your lives is astonishing. Our rights are based on sex based rights - so removing sex from law and replacing it with Self ID Gender Identities invalidates and removes sex based laws and protections. Who fought for these sex based protections? It was women! Why? Because we need them! We need safe spaces where we can undress and be vulnerable without being assaulted, we need to be able to choose a fellow female to do intimate care for us when we need it - like in a hospital, having a cervical smear, in a rape crisis center choosing a rape counsellor, choosing a sexual partner, joining a support group or dating group. Gender being put into law and replacing sex is meaning women are being criminalised for asking for sex based accommodations (you know, the ones we fought for for decades and rightly won and shouldn't have to politely be asking for AGAIN). Did you know a rape survivor got told she is not welcome in the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre because when she asked who her rape counsellor would be they gave a male name. The rape counsellor is actually female, as in biologically female, but identifies as non-binary and had their name changed to a male name. Of course the rape victim was concerned and asked if the rape counsellor was a man or a woman - she was assured that only "women" are at the centre. So she questioned the SEX of the rape counsellor (I mean, they had a male name so of course it was going to be questioned) and she was told that she was being a bigot and was thereby not welcome at the centre. A worker in the ERCC questioned how to handle this situation and was put under a disgusting disciplinary procedure, bullied, called a transphobic bigot and hounded out of her job position - for asking important questions on behalf of the rape survivors coming to the centre!

This is just one of so many stories of how women's lives are affected by this and how society is criminalising people who don't conform to the new laws that we must be bigots if we care about sex. This affects everyone whether you realise it or not, there will come a time when the crossover of sex v gender smacks you in the face and you are left in the position that many people, especially women, are currently facing in their lives now.

Perhaps your elderly grandma has gone into a care home - will she be a bigot if she asks for a female carer to bathe her? What if she turns to you and asks you to help advocate for her in the care home? What position will you choose? Will you say biological sex matters to your grandma or will you tell your grandma to stop being a bigot and let the male nurse bathe her against her wishes and instincts?

Is your friend a lesbian and being coerced into accepting males as lesbians and being told her same-sex attraction is outdated and phobic?

Maybe you have an autistic child who is confused in school and is asking you questions about male and female and how to tell the difference. Will you tell them there are no differences? Or that the differences are bigoted? Will you tell these "little white lies" knowing that they might believe it to be literal fact and not understand there is a difference and that this is politics, not science.

Or maybe you've been telling this lie about sex and gender for so long your child believes they are literally the opposite sex if they declare themselves so, and that the world believes this too - only to grow up in a world where reality is actually quite different. They are met with common sense and a changing societal attitude which contrasts with what you've told them. They find out that sex and gender are not the same thing and that sex does matter to people and people have been telling "little white lies" to them this whole time and now they feel like an idiot. But it's too late, they've joined the lie and have been shouting it from the rooftops, declaring people bigots! They're in too deep.

A life setup based on a temporary societal dishonesty cloaked as truth, when in reality it is cowardice and ignorance. We're setting up generations of people to feel "unnacepted", "oppressed", "born wrong" and that the world is against them and hateful. We're setting ppl up to feel they must be evil if they acknowledge sex differences and understand that sex is binary and immutable.

Not to mention how it affects how you are allowed to talk about yourself, your life, others, the world around you. Changes the language you can use and how people will perceive you depending on the language you use. Restricts how you interact with others, in a workplace, school, social settings, medical settings. Affects how you type out a Facebook status or a comment on a thread. Who you follow or click "unfollow". How you learn to judge others and be judged yourself. How we set up societal norms, belief systems and indoctrination. How we treat those who dissent. Who we distance ourselves from, who we smile and nod at whilst feeling differently inside, who we fear and who we've lost. So much has been affected.

Where do you draw the line? Because we do all know where the line is - we just don't say it aloud because we don't want to offend or look like a "bigot". But that line is there, clear as day! You know it, I know it, we all know it. Stop being so afraid of how people may wrongly view you if you say the most ordinary thing in the world: sex matters.

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Hi Dana and Ceph! I'm sending this to the both of you cuz I'd like to know your opinion (and between the Mimic debate and the "Gregory is evil" thing I trust yall more than youtube theorists X) )

I'm wondering, who do you think the other therapy tapes belonged to? Patient 46 if I'm remembering. What are/were your headcanons about their identity and do you still think that?

I was using that and the one unmasked ending to say that there were two Vannys in a fic/retelling I'm building, but with Vanny and Vanessa being pretty much confirmed 1:1 it's made me all confused.

Ceph already answered this, but I suppose I will too.

Sorry I've been sitting on this one for awhile.

But I guess I should get all my thoughts about Patient 46 out there.

Before the DLC dropped, I would have guessed Cassie was patient 46 and had possible connections to Charlie.

However, post DLC, Having played Ruin, I can say that Patient 46 is NOT Cassie nor does she have any connections to Charlie. Other then then her empathetic nature and wanting to help, but even that's a stretch to connect the two.

She also has no clear connections to the Profile in the therapy tapes. (And I mean behavior profile) so she doesn't match.

So Cassie is ruled out entirely.

Another thought I had was that Patient 46 was Vanny. And a lot of people had similar thoughts when the games came out. But..... No. A lot of the therapists in the way they address 46 are clearly talking to a child. As their feet dangle from the chair, and while it could be a very short woman, Vanny is not short. She's as tall as Vanessa.

The therapists often try to say "you don't know what that means" about rather simple terms or phrases. And often try to be gentle with 46, even when being accusatory as compared with Vanessa's tapes.

(one of them legit says "you need to let this go if you ever want to be happy" to Vanessa...great therapist Fazbear 10/10 .... 🙄 )

While as with 46, they moreso go "I want to talk to you about something....." And then they hit them with the hacker and manipulator stuff.

So Patient 46 is a non-verbal child. All the tapes involve them either making gestures or pointing at things we can't see. Which leads me to believe either... The patient doesn't want to talk to therapists and mistrusts them, is non verbal autistic or went through a deeply traumatizing event and that's why they're in therapy.

Or they're just mute but I think the other are more likely.

My other thought was that it might be Vanessa as a young child....

But that doesn't add up either.

Cause both of these therapists are disappearing at the same time.

One of the therapists (and I think it's the case for all of them) said to not just work with big corporations like Fazbear. They also work in schools.

So when these therapists are dying, in a small population like Hurricane Utah, it makes sense that the therapist they outsource for Fazbear Entertainment will also take a job at the local school if they transfer. Cause both positions need to be replaced.

So... Who else could it be....

Well, there's always a possibility that it's someone we don't know yet. Maybe even the protagonist or a character in Help Wanted 2.

But....

Well...

No.

I don't think so.

It's Gregory.

There's no one else it could be.

In the GGY Story from the books... There's this weird paragraph aside that talks about the school therapists.

How the newest one was like, and how the old ones were like...

And they described their personalities as presented in the tapes. One being strict and a bit full of herself, the other being nice and cheerful, and another one being matter of fact.

These were there therapists at Gregory's school who were going missing.

GGY also connects the Greg in that story to Freddy Fazbear himself, and being a really skilled hacker who cheated to get high scores on arcade cabinets.

Gregory also gives him the alias Dr.Rabbit. most likely in reference to the Scraptrap arcades he plays. And he probably likes the mad robot scientist..... And where he got the idea to upgrade Freddy by Frankensteining parts into him.

Before the DLC I wasn't able to make sense of GGY. Because we'll "Gregory's not a hacker. He follows instructions on a keypad to update Freddy"

But.... In the DLC

Gregory said HE developed MXES......

Sure, there is speculation that Vanessa might have helped him, as he says that Vanessa has access to the building maps and is helping him...... But he said that HE designed the MXES Security System.

Which takes the shape of a Rabbit....

And Patient 46 was told by the therapists to lie about his home life. The therapist did research and find out that 46 had loving parents and lied about it.

We see a trend of that behavior in the GGY Story.... Where Tony, our dumb protagonist, thinks Gregory has super rich and well off parents..... But also admits that Gregory is dirty and cuts his own hair....

Something that just doesn't add up if he had attentive parents. So he probably ran away from home at that point and is squatting at the Plex.

It's unclear if 46 is actually lying about having horrible parents.... Or the background search was incorrect.

Patient 46 also came into contact with someone or something with Rabbit ears at some point.

However, I'm not drawing conclusions that Gregory is being manipulated by Glitchtrap or Vanny at all. Cause the therapist legit says:

"I don't think you're being manipulated here. I think you're the one doing the manipulating...."

.....

All the evidence lines up.

Gregory is GGY and Patient 46. There is no one else it can be.

What we know, he lies fervently about his home life. He ran away from home. He mistrusts adults A LOT. He programed Freddy to basically be his body guard. He's been abducting his classmates to the Pizzaplex. He's been using animatronics to kill his therapist when they get close to him.

And he is manipulating someone with rabbit ears....which could be anyone.... It could even be a Fazbear Technician we don't know or Cassie's Dad.

The only reason Gregory is vulnerable in Security Breach is because Vanessa took Gregory's toys from him, and Freddy experienced a system malfunction on stage so he doesn't answer to him or remembers him anymore.

(I do believe that Gregory genuinely sees Freddy as a friend by the end of the game and not a tool)

And from Vanessa's frustration, she's been hunting down Gregory for a LONG TIME. Not just the night of the in-game events. It's only that night she figures out his name, cause Gregory was good at staying hidden and out of her way since before then.

I don't nessarily think all of this means Gregory is evil.

The MXES being associated with a purple rabbit was the main reason why he was so misleading in FNAF and why a lot of people thought he was the villian at first.

So maybe all of Gregory's behavior is meant to be misleading. He might be an anti hero. In game, he mentions the disappearances at the end and seems concerned about them, despite him causing some of them in GGY and if he's patient 46.

I don't think Gregory is evil.

I honestly see a scared kid, who has been forced to play defensive his entire life. So he lashes out with agression.

An eye for an eye.

"get them before they get me"

Play offensive preemptively, against people who aren't even playing with you.

There is no one else Patient 46 could be at this time...

And I am interested to see what they do with this.

If they just go "he's just evil" like FNAF is prone to do....

That will be a bit disappointing.

Because I do think that there is a way that you can make Gregory like this, and still have it be very interesting.

Because child innocence tarnished by neglect and suffering is a very dangerous thing.

[iron-bullogna]

I'm going to vent a bit about it here then. I'm a bit flustered so hopefully it isn't all over the place. Over my life I've experienced a lot of cruelty, primarily at the hands of white cis women and men. I grew up in a town of 1,000 people and my graduating class was 32. I went to the same school my entire life. The area was predominantly white and I mean that in a "I can count on my fingers and toes the amount of POC I encountered in my life before 18" way. I was also born AFAB. It was very clear from a young age I wasn't "normal". I have preschool paperwork highlighting my very obvious autistic traits (playing alone, organization, and at one point I could see from one quarterly report to the other how I taught myself to mask a behavior the aids noted as an issue, etc). My first "best friend" was a boy from the Ukraine who no one wanted to befriend because everyone assumed his English wasn't good. I can't even tell you how his English was because I don't remember that. I just remember he didn't care that I was a little weird and liked "boy" stuff and wore boys clothes when I could cause he liked "girl" stuff.

The boy and girl stuff mentioned here are literally as simple as Pokemon and Britney Spears. We were bullied by our peers, family, and parents for just being children. The only female friend I had growing up that I chose myself was bullied for being indigenous, looking masculine, (I believe Shoshone/Cherokee but I was 9 and I can't recall now apologies) and liking "boy" stuff. She moved only a few years later. I did not have another female friend until my senior year in high school and big shocker that a few years ago she was diagnosed with autism alongside her son. I knew from age 12-14 roughly that I was trans. I thought I was a transman back then. This was pre-internet btw folks. I had NO IDEA wtf a trans person was or that it was even a real thing. I just felt like I wasn't a girl and I couldn't possibly be a girl, all because of how those around me treated me. I'm not saying every transman is just a traumatized cis woman, but I know for a fact for me and my personal situation, being told I looked like a boy, all the stuff I liked was for boys, just literally everything about me = well that is what boys do, not girls. I genuinely think in my case, that it impacted me psychologically in a way so deep it gave me a lot of mental health issues surrounding gender. I would go through phases of hyper performing femininity and hypersexuality to try and fit in. I developed a huge complex around my self worth and being desirable that still persists to this day. This is the part Twitter was angry about and wouldn't let anyone interact with. I'm now 34 and it's manifested in a new way since quarantine since I didn't have interaction with people outside of close friends for that entire time. I find myself with an intense fear of pretty cis women, particularly white women. It's a genuine uncontrollable fear response where my entire body starts trembling because I can't stand the thought of being perceived by them. I feel so lacking. I don't even fucking identify as a woman anymore either but I can't even describe the dread I feel about being near them. It isn't even their fault either. They can be the nicest in the world to me but societal pressure and the treatment of women, cis and trans alike, has caused me so much harm I'm actually actively searching for a new therapist to help with this issue. TERFS out here literally causing the issues they say are "plaguing women from being women". Like HUH? You're literally reinforcing stereotypes babes!!! The same stereotypes you say are misogynistic! You're the problem!!! I actually have surgery on Monday and I told my husband I'm more afraid at being perceived by the beautiful women in the clinic (it has an attached MedSpa, trust me, they're all flawless goddesses in there) than I am being awake for the actual surgery. I don't doubt I would still come out as trans (rn I identify vaguely as non-binary/transmasc) because I just don't really vibe with the concept of gender as a whole. I would have just probably figured out that those feelings weren't necessarily me wanting to be or actually being a man a lot sooner. My heart just hurts for Imane Khelif because I can't imagine if she legit is just a normal ass cis woman with higher testosterone how it must feel right now to be attacked like that. And if she is intersex, how much she probably faced a lot of similar treatment that I did growing up. At this point I'm just rambling, but it has all made me very very sad and just brought up a lot of trauma from my own life.

[dbphantom]

Next person to tell me "if you really wanted it bad enough, you'd do it. mind over matter." is getting mauled to death

[algumaideia]

The ableism in the Acotar series

I was thinking about all the problematic aspects of the Acotar books, and I realized that they are pretty ableist. I don’t know if someone have already talked about it, but just in case I’ll do it. But before I start, I need to say some things:

1. I haven’t read the series for a while, and I don’t remember some stuff. So, I might write something that is wrong.

2. I’m not disabled myself. This post is based on my research about disabilities and how disabled people are represented in the media. I have a lot of interest in the subject, and I also researched about it because I’m writing a story with several disabled characters. I also did a school project about assistive technologies.

3. English is not my mother language and I’m still learning it. There are gonna be spelling and grammar mistakes. I’m sorry about it, but it is life.

4. I haven’t read the acosf book, so maybe SJM changed the story or some character in this book and therefore my post will be incorrect.

5. Besides the fact that I consider Emerie to be disabled, I won’t talk about her in the post. Because as I said I didn’t read acosf and I think that her appearance in the acofas has the same purpose that the other female Illyrians (since Idk how to write Illyrians this will be write wrong in the entire post, I’m sorry).

6. I forget the name of some characters and I don’t want to search it, so I’ll just give them new names.

Now let’s begin.

I’ll analyze the following characters in this post: Papa Acheron, Lucien, Cassian and Ianthe, the woman from the library and the female Illyrians, the female creature from the forest, the Illyrian soldiers that came back from the war and the girl who couldn’t fly. I think I forgot someone, but patience. In the end of the post I’ll talk about disabilities, ableism and worldbuilding.

I also would like to say that almost all her characters got their disability as a punishment, and the problem with this is that it always links disability with something bad.

Papa Acheron:

As I said Papa Acheron got his disability as a punishment, since he didn’t pay his debts, some people went in this house and broke his leg. I might be wrong, but I think that it didn’t healed well and because of that he has chronic pain. So, to better analyze him I’ll compare him to two other characters with chronic pain, Kaz Brekker and Melissa, one of my main characters.

Papa Acheron became useless after he became disabled. He thought he was useless and by extension Feyre thought it too. I’m not saying that internalized ableism doesn’t exist, but the narrative never calls it out. Feyre accepts this excuse, it is kind of implied that if he weren’t disabled, he would be able to help his family and get money. Now let’s look to Kaz (I haven’t read the second book of the duology, please no spoilers). He accepts his disability, not only that but he uses his cane as one of his symbols. He goes against the idea that a disabled person is stuck with a cane or a wheelchair or whatever. He feels free with his cane. Now, this doesn’t mean that every disabled character needs to feel okay with his disability. My character, Melissa, feels a lot of anger because of her chronic pain. It hurts her, it disrupts her plans, it makes her suffer. However, it didn’t stop her to live her life and she also is not seeking anyone’s pity, which is very different from the Papa Acheron situation. Mel has friends, a social life, she studies, she will have a job, she will date, get married and have children. She doesn’t feel mad because she is disabled, she is also autistic, and she loves that part of herself. What bothers her is that her disability makes her feels a lot of pain. Papa Acheron is just someone to you feel bad and angry about. He doesn’t do anything because he is disabled and believes that this makes his useless and the narrative kind of agrees with him.

Lucien:

Lucien doesn’t have one eye, and that’s what makes him disabled. He became disabled as a punishment for falling in love with a lesser fae and not only that, but he is only without his mechanic/magic eye when he is on his worse. He was without his eye when his family was torturing and banishing him. And then when he was UTM. Again, disability being connected with bad things. Now about his mechanic eye. The first time that Feyre describes his eye she says it is creepy. Which is bad. But also, why it had to be magic and give him the ability to see spells or something like that (this was never brought back btw)? Why can’t he have a normal mechanical eye? Why he needs a mechanical eye? Why does his mechanical eye need to compensate the fact he is disabled? He is as much complete with and without his eye.

Cassin and Ianthe:

I put this two together for one reason, their disabilities were cured. I’ll talk about Cassian first. When they invaded Hybrein (I also don’t know how to write the name of the country) they hurt his wings badly. And considering that to Illyrians the wings are as much a limb as an arm or a leg, he was disabled for a while. (I’m aware that to something be considered a disability it needs to be long lasting. But I think that the fact that it was cured is ableist, if I’m not wrong the text said it was a miracle he was healed.)Then we had Cassian in the floor with his wings all damaged, suffering a lot, what a horrible scene. But don’t worry! The next time he’ll appear completely cured, because being disabled is such a horrible thing and SJM never used deus ex machina to save her characters. So, this injured made him disabled for a while, and it could be interesting. The wings are the Illyrian symbol, the symbol of their toxic masculinity and their sexism. Cassian being disabled because of his wings would make him revalue his culture and his own idea of masculinity and it would be so amazing. But he was cured. I think that this makes Cassian falls in the disabled for one day trope. Just like Ianthe. First the way she became disabled was disgusting. Feyre invading her mind was such a horrible thing to do. I’m not denying that Ianthe is a terrible person/fae but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a horrible scene. I really dislike characters with telepathic powers, because for me their powers are crossing a line. They invade and control someone’s mind. They take off the person free will. They basically turn the person in a robot. If I remember correctly when Feyre made Ianthe broke her hand it was with the purpose to make it useless. And when she appeared again in all her glory she was, surprise, surprise, cured.

The woman from the library and the female Illyrians:

I put they together because their disabilities are used for the same two purposes. The first is that they became disabled as a punishment for being female, and the second it to show how FEMINIST Rhysand is. He isn’t feminist, so all these women suffered for nothing. Again, disability being linked with bad things. The symbol of the female Illyrians suffering is they becoming disabled. NOT GOOD AT ALL. About the woman from the library, she was there to also show how good Feyre is. She is there so we can feel pity of her. She didn’t deserve it.

The female creature who couldn’t see:

My problem with her is that it is implied/said that she has better senses because she is blind. And that’s not how it works?? People just pay more attention in what they hear, touch or smell when they are blind/visually impaired.

The girl who couldn’t fly:

I'm gonna call her Anna. First Anna is like the only character who just have a disability. No trauma, no war, no punishment. She just has. Then she is a great disabled character, right? Wrong. She has inspirational porn written all over her story. She is there to make Feyre feel better about herself and make other abled people/fae feel inspired. She is there so we can say: ohhh poor thing, but at least she overcame her disability and now can fly. So ableist. Anna is also only valued after proving herself useful. That is wrong. Disabled people should be valued because they are people. They don’t need to be amazing in anything to be treated with respect.

The Illyrian soldiers:

My problem with them is how their disability is used to reinforce sexism and make Cassian and Rhysand feel bad. But what about the Illyrian soldiers? How are they feeling? It seems this is not important. They also bother me because of worldbuilding questions.

Disabilities, ableism and worldbuilding:

First, why humans and fae feel the same about disabled people? Feyre has the same opinion the IC have. And the humans and fae were separated for 500 years. This doesn’t make sense. Every court think the same thing about disabled fae? Does something change if the disabled fae is a lesser or a higher fae? It should make a difference. A real world example of how social class affects the way disabled people are treated: the first school for deaf people created only taught children of the nobles.

And why the way people look to disabled fae didn’t change after the war? What about the assistive technology? You know what, it is unrealistic the fact that we don’t have any assistive technology in this world. But this happen in the antient times, how could there be any assistive technology? First, assistive technology is everything that helps a disabled person, a cane, a screen reader, a scooter. Everything can be an assistive technology. Second, assistive technologies exist since the antiente times. One of the oldest prothesis were found in a mummy. There is a painting of Hephaestus using a wheelchair. And considering that this series happens in what was supposed to be the Middle ages, it was supposed to have assistive technologies. Wheelchairs during this time were heavy and the user couldn’t use it by himself, but they existed. There are records of a king using a wheelchair during the middle ages. And I mean with the war something was supposed to change. The first place to blind people in the France was created because 300 soldiers came back from the crusades without their eyes. It was in the century 20 that disabled people started to be more included in the society. And one of the reasons were the soldiers that came back from WW1 and WW2 disabled. Not only that but in war times the technology improves, so a lot of new assistive technologies and materials were created during this time. The first record of guide dogs comes from 1819 in school in Vienna, but it didn’t work. Only after WW1 that guide dogs appeared again. And you know with what purpose? Help veterans that were blind due to the war. Braille was a system used for the French army during battles. Louis Braille only made it simpler. The war should change something.

Why is the world ableist?  The excuse that this is an antient society doesn’t work my friend. The Egypt was a very including country. Blind people could be part of any social class. Dwarfs were part of the society since they had a dwarf god. In antient Japan blind people were expected to be independent. They could work with music, religion, telling stories etc. And the work of telling stories was very important since it made the Japanese tradition to continue. The excuse that this is an antient society is just this, an excuse. Now she could have used to say something. Leigh Bardugo used the ableism of her world to criticize the ableism of our world. I’m doing the same thing with my story. SJM made an ableist world just because.

That was my analysis. I’m sorry this was very long. I know this was a little confusing, but it was very difficult to put all the stuff that was in my mind in text. In my mind everythig made sense, but when I was writing it I realized I wasn’t following a logical argument. If that makes sense. Anyway, thank you for reading it.

If you read the books and realized I wrote something wrong, please tell me. If you are disabled and think I said something offensive, I’d love to hear you. If you are non-disabled and want to comment and give your opinion, feel free. And if you don’t want to comment, don’t do it. You can do whatever you want.

Best regards,

Me.

Ps. This is my first post in Tumblr, so I don’t know if I tagged it right, if you want to help, I would be really grateful.

[floxalopex]

*overthinks in Latin*

Premise: although I chose to do something completely different at University, when I was a teen I attended a "classical High School", as we call it here. Probably you already know that, anyways it's a school whose main focus is on ancient Greek and Latin literature, grammar and poetry. I did that manly because I believe ancient religions are way more cool than the Abrahmic ones, plus I wanted a "last taste" of humanities before a future life of science and also because the alternative ( a "scientific" High School) had a lot of Math...and let's be honest, Math kinda sucks (curse autistic stereotypes).

I feel the need to specify this in order to make everyone understand that this is NOT my field, it's just something I kinda like. My knowledge it's very rudimental and I'm open to suggestions and criticism by more experienced people.

That said.

One of the first things that came into my mind seeing Horde Prime's clones condition was the content of "Epistula 47" by Seneca, also called the "Letter to slaves". Let's begin with fragment 7.

7)"Another carves the priceless game birds; with unerring strokes and skilled hand he cuts choice morsels along the breast or the rump. Hapless fellow, to live only for the purpose of cutting fat capons correctly, – unless, indeed, the other man is still more unhappy than he, who teaches this art for pleasure's sake, rather than he who learns it because he must."

I recall that this passage in the original language was written with repetetive words. The meaning of the passage is strongly related to one of the most dehumanazing things slaves have to face: alienation. Doing the same thing all over again, forever. Ned Ludd, father of "Luddism", in the newly industialized England did one thing: he destroyed his frame. Why? Because he was overworking, was alienated by his task so much that he was loosing his identity. He became his task, his only need to exist was his task of weaving. Again and again. I've read many posts about clones' duties and how the probably switched them among other clones so they didn't develop a "talent" in that task or take pleasure in it. My point is, imagine this: they give you this task, let's say putting exately 10 cookies in a box (I'm hungry ok? Plus cookies are cute). At first you kind of suck, the cookies are small and slippery and you take like 12 cookies, 9 cookies instead of 10. Then your cerebellum makes your movements have a "rhythm", a coordination (it really happenes in factories) and you are pleased with yourself. You think "wow I'm good at this". Then you do it for a day, a week, a year. You become stressed, bored, tired. But it's your job, you are the only one who can do it at this rhythm. Don't you want to do your job? You know what the consequences are if you don't do it. And so...slowly...you become your task, your sole purpose in life is to fill that damned box with cookies, which aren't even for you.

This is what crosses my mind everytime I see people not calling the clones their proper name: slaves.

But things can get worse. I know this is a kid show and they wanted to make the "sexual arrassement thing" subtext. But really, why are those who understand it find it sexy to ship clones with Prime? Kinky? ( my demi ass: when did sex become more important than dignity?). It's rape. Not "making love".

So that's the other passage that came into my mind

8)"Another, who serves the wine, must dress like a woman and wrestle with his advancing years; he cannot get away from his boyhood; he is dragged back to it; and though he has already acquired a soldier's figure, he is kept beardless by having his hair smoothed away or plucked out by the roots, and he must remain awake throughout the night, dividing his time between his master's drunkenness and his lust; in the chamber he must be a man, at the feast a boy."

So...where do I begin? The clones can't age, they aren't allowed to age. They must be fit, healty. Always, otherwise...you know.

And I think I don't want to add more to this, just because the passage is quite fitting on its own.

Moving on, men I like Glimmer but I don't like how she didn't respect the food prepared by the clones for her. Yes, respect. First because it's food. Food is not an enemy, food is a gift. Second because it took time to make it. You Glimmer threw away food the clones so elegantely prepared for you, despite the fact they probably don't even know how it tastes like.

9) "Another, whose duty it is to put a valuation on the guests, must stick to his task, poor fellow, and watch to see whose flattery and whose immodesty, whether of appetite or of language, is to get them an invitation for to-morrow. Think also of the poor purveyors of food, who note their masters' tastes with delicate skill, who know what special flavours will sharpen their appetite, what will please their eyes, what new combinations will rouse their cloyed stomachs, what food will excite their loathing through sheer satiety, and what will stir them to hunger on that particular day. With slaves like these the master cannot bear to dine; he would think it beneath his dignity to associate with his slave at the same table! Heaven forfend!"

Pay attention how the words are used: Another, Another, Another. Another nameless slave. Another nameless clone. So many of them.

But, this letter made me also think about Entrapta and how she can be the one making people understand what the clones really are, without Prime.

1) " [...] "They are slaves," people declare. Nay, rather they are men. "Slaves!" No, comrades. "Slaves!" No, they are unpretentious friends. "Slaves!" No, they are our fellow-slaves, if one reflects that Fortune has equal rights over slaves and free men alike. [...]"

One more thing. According to Seneca slaves are more free than their masters because unlike them they are free from what a free-thinker soul could be burdened by: guilty pleasures, gluttony, arrogance and excessive lust and comforts. So, in summary, even if Prime thought of himself as a god, belived himself of being the master of the clones it was actually the contrary. Because, like Seneca said "a slave can live without a master, but a master can't live without his slaves. So he is not only slave of his pleasures, but of his slaves themselves, for his own existence depends on them"

[hydemind]

Your thoughts on Isaac, William, Frankie an Jack 🎤?

OHHHHHH CROW I COULD GO ON ABOUT THEM FOR HOURS.

this post is SUPER FUCKING LONG so for the first time in my life im using a read more link.

I'm gonna start out with Will, who, a little fun fact, isn't actually named William! His full name is Willis Grossman. His parents thought it'd be funny. Will doesn't know his full name.

Here are some other fun facts about me and @functionentropy 's Will (along with other characters below) (he is also the one who has been making this entire creepypasta interp with me! Go check out their art or else /lh):

Will was born in the late 1800s early 1900s!

His parents were a lot like a Bonnie and Clyde duo, and they cared and loved for Will very, very much.

Will always looked up to Isaac! He wanted to be exactly like his grandpa when he grew up. Isaac was also a wonderful grandfather as well.

Will, on his 13th birthday, got Isaac's mask as a gift. When he got it, Isaac said to him: "keep it safe. It's a family heirloom.", Will uses that excuse as to why he still wears it to this day.

Speaking of Isaac, he's the underrealm equivalent to a tumblr sexyman. Everyone thinks he's hot shit, but that also goes for a lot of serial killers residing in the underrealm. Will unfortunately had to see his grandfather on magazine covers talking about the underrealm's HOTTEST NEW KILLER. He hates it.

Will ran away from home after Isaac died at around the age of 20 to 21, and considering he was a legal adult, his parents couldn't do much. They're still looking for him. (How, you may ask? Well, a little thing about the underrealm is that it stunts growth. You're essentially unable to die of old age down there. Think shitty immortality. His parents are looking for him, and they know he's in the underrealm- so that's how they are still around!)

Will had the worst time in the underrealm for the first few years he was down there. He wasn't immediately enrolled in the institution and he had a hard time holding down a job. Eventually he met Frankie! They live(d) in an apartment together. The first time Frankie met Will he thought he was Isaac and told his landlord and him HELL NO. Frankie does not like Isaac. Cue [will's offended gasp] and him saying he's his GRANDSON, and WHY IS HE ACTING LIKE ISAAC SUCKED? Cue Frankie making fun of him for being a grandpa's boy.

Frankie and Will had a bumpy relationship for a while. Will wasn't always a good person. Not really bad, just a fucking dumbass.

Speaking of Frankie...

Here's stuff about Frankie!

Frankie's origin story is essentially the same in this interp. Except for the fact that Frankie very much HAD A PAST. (which. If u wanna know more........I would love to talk about it......but this is about CURRENT Frankie so if u wanna know more bro just pop up in my dms or send another ask im feeling wild tonight)

After Amy passed (which was NOT due in part to the operator in this universe. The operator just found her like that) he was found by Bell (prince beelzebub, ruler of the underrealm at that point). You should know Frankie wasn't always an adjusted and normal fuckin person. He was like a rabid dog for a good while there.

While Frankie was unhinged he fucking death rolled Daisy the first time they met. (Daisy is an oc! I'm willing to talk more about him if you want the deets. He's interesting :]) because of this Daisy is the only one allowed to openly make fun of Frankie. (Playfully, of course.)

Daisy and Bell both basically helped Frankie adjust to society.

Frankie is autistic! So is Will. And Isaac. All. Everyone. Everyone has autism. (Shhhh. i'm projecting.)

Frankie can see souls! He's a very good judge of character because of it. However Frankie doesn't know what he's seeing is people's souls.

Frankie goes specifically after bad people. He'll take jobs from bad people, but he'll kill them, too. He says "he's sending them back to where they belong".

Frankie was the first to really show Will killing isn't just something you do. It's more than that. Will had never really processed death and murder of his fellow man like that before. He has a hard time even processing people as people sometimes, outside those of whom he cares for. This is because of Isaac. Isaac taught Will that people are bad- all of them. And that killing them is preventing them from hurting others, even if they haven't yet.

Frankie is a good guy and honestly a softie deep down. He worries and cares for all those who are close to him, even if he doesn't act like it sometimes.

Frankie says Toby "kidnapped him" and "made him diseased". 1. Frankie can very much leave the household at any time and 2. Frankie is referring to the operator sickness. Speaking of that-

Frankie was dragged through the operator's own personal hell! (Aka the realm they reside in more often than not, aka the place that Tim gets tossed around in near the end of marble hornets.) Reason being was because he threatened Toby's life. The operator is very protective of Toby.

Speaking of that, someone else was around when Toby met Frankie...

ONTO LAUGHING JACK!

ohhh man. Oh man. Oh baby. This clown is FULL of illness. Alright. So let's start off simple:

Lj was of course, made for Isaac. That's still a consistency. What isn't is that lj was around Isaac for a lot longer than in the original story. They developed a very close bond over the years they knew eachother, but, all good things must come to an end.

Lj returned to his box when Isaac left for boarding school. However, unlike the original story....Isaac didn't really come back to open the box. In fact, the most Isaac did was...well, I'll wait to spill that for Isaac's part later.

However! Eventually the house got passed off to another family. Years, and it mean YEARS later someone found lj's box in the attic! They were an unfortunate casualty.

After this, lj went and hunted Isaac down. Cue gore filled murder scene.

Things to note: LJ feels HORRIBLE about what he did to Isaac. He regrets it everyday. He wishes he had never done that to him.

But, time skip a bit.. we're further in the future now. LJ has his carnival set up and hidden away in an empty spot in the forest. He eventually comes across a wandering spirit because of this. This wanderer just so happens to be Sally!

LJ takes her in and swears to protect her with his life. In a way, you could say he sees her as a chance of redemption.

Sally was a wandering spirit, meaning she never really was stuck to one spot in particular- also meaning she wasn't very strong. Because of this, LJ gave her some of his own angelic essence. This boosted Sally and essentially made her a poltergeist!

(Note: Sally doesn't know how she died. Also, none of the things in her og story happened to her in this one. Fuck mishimishi. All my homies hate mishimishi.)

A little while after this they actually meet Toby and Jeffery! But this is getting long and to explain THAT entire debacle would make it even longer. but again I fully invite you to send more asks or just straight up dm me if you wanna know!

Now, last, but certainly not least..

ISAAC GROSSMAN.

OH MAN. Isaac is a DOOZY. Just like LJ, this baby is chocked FULL of illnesses! *slaps the top of his head like the roof of a car* but also, fair warning here: im gonna be talking about some heavy stuff. Abuse, physical and mental, gore, just. Death in general. Cannibalism, and EXTREME MENTAL ILLNESS *loud airhorn* so if any of that stuff gets to you steer clear of this part!

Anyways, let's start out simple!

Isaac was born in victorian England.

Isaac's mother was terrible towards him. I'm talking mental and physical abuse. She was a horrible, horrible woman.

Isaac's father...he wasn't a good person either, but he didn't beat Isaac. Nor did he really mentally abuse him either. He just...let it happen. He didn't even hurt his mother like he did in the original story. Isaac's mother was just plain bad for no good reason.

Isaac was sort of. Born having mental illness. They didn't just develop for him due to the abuse he experienced, though they certainly DID make it worse. There were other mental issues he has now that developed due to the abuse, however.

LJ was quite literally a godsend for Isaac. Metaphorically and not Metaphorically. LJ made Isaac happy, gave him comfort, and was basically like the mom he never had.

that's why it was so hard on Isaac when he had to leave lj behind. For a while he even had hallucinations of lj while in boarding school (which only furthered his future belief that lj was a hallucination brought on by the need to cope).

Isaac's first technical "murder" you could say was at boarding school. He pushed a shitty teacher down the stairs when there was no one around and they died. It wasn't even premeditated- more like it just sort of..happened.

Eventually Isaac graduated. When he did, he promptly returned home and killed his parents, as you do. /s

Isaac killed his mom in a rather violent fashion in comparison to his father- he whiplashed her so hard she fucking died.

Not long after this Isaac started his..well. I guess you could call it career.

Basically you know what happens after that. human skin chair, yadda yadda yadda, underrealm's sexiest killer, you know the drill.

Isaac did more than the human skin chair though! In fact, he uh. He. He did a lot. He did. SO much. But that was because Isaac believed in not wasting any part of the body. Which means Isaac not only made human skin chairs, but he was an avid cannibal, as well. (Fun fact, this very much extended to Will's father, mother, and Will as well. Will didn't know they were eating human for a long time. He had to realize that on his own.)

Eventually, Isaac punched his ticket because of LJ. But..I'd be a liar to say he really died.

No, our wonderful boy Isaac didn't die. He became a ghoul. Which, by the way, only further fucked with Isaac mentally! He's so ill. Some other things happened which I won't say here because they're spoilers for the fanfic I'm working on (Oh yeah the hyperfixation is that bad, but if you wanna know, again, I fully invite you to ask), but basically Isaac eventually gets taxidermied by, drumroll please..TOBY!!!! yeah. Toby does taxidermy as a job. He invited a new type of it for taxidermying Isaac. It was to repay daisy for something he did for the group.

But to say, again, that THAT was Isaac's end, would be another lie! No no no. Isaac was alive during the entire process! The good news is that he's never looked better after he escaped daisy's house when it got exploded by Frankie. Which..that's uh..another story for another day. This post is already insanely long and I am NOT putting it in the main tags.

So yeah! Im absolutely crazy for these dudes and I love all of them. By the way if you couldn't guess before Frankie and Will very much get together and are so so gay. Another little thing: Isaac is gay too, he had a past relationship with a man by the name of Dr. Locklear! Locklear is French German and his accent shows it. They were very close but fell out because of Locklear being involved with the institution and...a certain foundation.

I'll leave it to you to ponder on that one.

[molsno]

I’m skipping the middleman on that trans ask game and just answering all the questions myself <3

this is long so it’s under a read more

1. How did you choose your name?

in senior year of high school, while I was in french class, I was thinking about the word vivre, to live, and how it conjugated. I forget what tense it is, but one way of conjugating it is “nous vivions”, and it dawned on me that the name vivian is based on the word vivre (or its latin origin). of course, I already liked the name due to the character from paper mario ttyd, but knowing that it means life really spoke to me, as I think the ability to live is a precious thing that shouldn’t be wasted. I decided pretty much then and there that I would name my daughter vivian some day. well... then I got the chance to play a character in my friend’s danganronpa killing game, and I thought playing a girl would be interesting. granted, I also already knew I was an egg and saw this as an opportunity to try out my favorite name, so I created vivian tamochi. as you might have guessed, I loved being her so much that I made vivian my actual name

2. What gives you the most dysphoria?

um, hearing recordings of my own voice probably. I always think that I sound very feminine but then I hear a recording of myself and it sounds like a bad impression

3. Do you have more physical dysphoria or more social dysphoria?

more social I guess? actually yeah I think all of the dysphoria-induced breakdowns I’ve had have been because of social things

4. What do you do to perform self-care when you’re feeling dysphoric?

something that helps a lot is shaving, especially when it’s a fullbody shave

5. What was the first time you suspected you were transgender?

this is a bit embarrassing but it was honestly christmas eve 2018. I saw my little cousin (I think she was 8 at the time) wearing a pretty dress and I felt sort of jealous that I never got to do that when I was her age. I was so confused about this feeling that I told my trans friend kyra about it and after asking me to clarify what I meant she linked me to the egg_irl subreddit. that was the first time I seriously considered it

6. When did you realize you were transgender?

I told my friend amanda how I’d been confused about my gender and she offered to take me to goodwill to try on some clothes. I was extremely nervous about it while we were there and I really had to work up the courage to not only pick out some clothes to try, but also take them to the fitting room with me. but once I put on a skirt for the first time I stood there for like a solid 5 minutes just looking at myself in the mirror with the biggest happiest smile on my face. in that moment I finally understood what gender euphoria was. I couldn’t deny I was trans any longer, it was just a matter of working up the courage to tell people

7. What is your favorite part of being transgender?

um, probably that I feel like a person now. also the little things, like seeing my hips get bigger or looking at how long my hair has gotten. just little things to smile about!

8. How would you explain your gender identity to others?

um, I’m girl <3

9. How did you come out? If you didn’t come out, why do you stay in the closet? Or what happened when you were outed?

I mean it depends on who, but I decided to do it on national coming out day 2019, in my discord server with friends. basically I commented on it being national coming out day and reposted my intro in the introductions channel with my new name and pronouns. everyone there sorta saw it coming I’m pretty sure

10. What have your experiences been with packing or tucking?

I’ve tucked a few times in public. it’s uncomfortable for sure, but not terrible once you get used to it. the idea of it made me squeamish at first, I’ll admit. but since I haven’t had much excuse to go out in girlmode the past year or so, I haven’t tucked much

11. What are your experiences with binding or wearing breast forms?

the closest I’ve ever gotten to wearing breast forms is wearing a bra every day for..... almost a year now? it doesn’t serve much purpose other than letting me feel something there, though that is changing since I’ve been on hrt for several months

12. Do you pass?

I mean... probably not? I feel like I’m very visibly trans. there have been like two times where I’ve been gendered correctly in public (one in girlmode, one not) but those are extremely rare

13. What (if any) steps do you want to take to medically transition?

well I’ve been on hrt for 8 months now so that’s one thing. I want to get laser hair removal for my facial hair because that’s one of the biggest sources of dysphoria for me, but yknow. that’s expensive! according to my understanding my insurance supposedly should cover bottom surgery, but I’m honestly in no rush to get that. I don’t really have much bottom dysphoria, but it would be nice to get surgery some day

14. How long have you been out?

it’s been about a year and two months now...... time flies

15. What labels have you used before you’ve settled on your current set?

up until I was like 17 I was incredibly insistent on being cis and straight despite very obvious (in retrospect) signs to the contrary. around 18 I was very confused why all my friends were lgbt in some form and also I kinda started realizing I don’t mind dick, and I thought it would all make sense if I was bi. I identified as cis and bi for like 4 years or so but the longer it went on the more wrong it felt considering I had never once during that time been attracted to a man

16. Have you ever experienced transphobia?

surprisingly not really? the most transphobia I’ve experienced has been a result of automated processes like proctored testing or emails. of course, I’ve seen all the nasty shit that terfs say about people like me, but I’ve never been a victim of it directly

17. What do you do when you have to go to the bathroom in public?

if there is a universal restroom that I can lock from inside then I use that. if not, I sigh dramatically and sadly use the men’s room

18. How does your family feel about your trans identity?

truthfully I don’t know. my mom seems accepting enough, but with the pandemic going on I haven’t talked to her much. I know my sister is aware, and shockingly she seems supportive too, but we haven’t talked about it in depth

19. Would you ever go stealth, and if you are stealth, why do you choose to be stealth?

if I could go stealth I would. I’m sorry but I don’t want to be visibly trans

20. What do you wish you could have shared with your younger self about being trans?

the sooner you start transitioning the happier you’ll be. by denying this part of yourself you’re just making yourself miserable

21. Why do you use the pronouns you use?

she/her makes me happiest. I’ve (against my will, mind you) used they/them and been called molsno in a group that I wasn’t out in, and..... it made me feel..... distant, I guess? it was better than he/him, but it felt much less personal

22. Do your neurodivergencies and/or disabilities affect your gender?

I mean...... yeah? as a trans lesbian it’s very easy for me to hate masculinity given how it’s instilled nothing but negative feelings in me literally my entire life, and being autistic makes it harder to understand how the things I say about gender negatively impact the people around me

23. What’s your biggest trans-related fear?

the fear that I may never be able to believe I can be loved as a woman, probably

24. What medical, social, or personal steps have you already taken to start your transition?

coming out nearly everywhere and getting on hrt!

25. What do you wish cis people understood?

I desperately wish cis people understood even the basics of trans issues. still to this day many cis people don’t even know the right terminology to use for trans people. they think “trans man” and “trans woman” mean the opposite of what they actually mean and that’s just so goddamn frustrating. many of them think transitioning is just bottom surgery and that’s it. like, they don’t know anything about hrt. cis people please educate yourselves on trans issues I’m begging you

26. What impact has being trans had on your life?

it’s affected many aspects of my life but I think the biggest one is that I feel like a person now. I always felt like a robot, or like someone putting on a performance before, but I feel like a human being now

27. What do you do to validate yourself?

ummm... not much really. I guess one thing that has helped is making my character astrid trans? because if I ever think something bad about myself I can stop myself and ask if I would think the same thing about her, and of course the answer is no.

28. How do you feel about trans representation in media?

it’s bad. trans women very rarely get any positive representation. like the only transfem characters that come to mind that I think were handled well were lily hoshikawa from zombieland saga and vivian from paper mario (although even that’s debatable given the english censorship about her gender and the way beldam abuses her in japanese). meanwhile nonbinary representation consists almost exclusively of aliens, shapeshifters, robots, etc. and trans men get literally nothing. like. trans representation is just so abysmal it’s not even funny

29. Who is your favorite trans celebrity?

umm....... I don’t really care about celebrities lol. if I were to answer this question it would be “oh yes I’ve heard of these people”

30. Who is the transgender person who has influenced you the most?

gosh, how could I ever decide? most of my friends are trans so it’s hard to say but if I had to answer.... my friends kyra and modeus were probably the most helpful when I was figuring myself out

31. How are you involved with the trans community, IRL or online?

mostly online

32. How do you see yourself identifying and presenting in 5 years?

I’ll almost certainly still be a woman, and hopefully my transition will have gone well enough that I’ll be able to pass

33. What trans issue are you most passionate about?

healthcare. the difficulty so many people face with getting access to trans healthcare is ridiculous and discriminatory. I’ve written essays for school about this topic and they were the easiest essays I’ve had to write because of how passionate I am about this

34. What advice would you give to other trans people, or what message would you like to share with them?

pick your head up queen/king/royal, your cat ears are falling down

35. How do you feel your gender interacts with your race, disability, class, weight, etc. from the perspective of intersectionality?

well I’m white, able bodied, average weight, and I’m about to get a degree in computer science, so I have a lot of privilege that other trans people don’t have. I fully recognize that. it breaks my heart that so many less privileged trans people, particularly trans women of color, are murdered and never even get the justice they deserve. I wish there was more I could do to stop it, but privileged as I am, I’m only one person. I want everyone to be aware of who the major victims of transphobia are. look out for black trans women especially, they need your protection and support most of all

36. What, if any, is the difference between your gender identity and your gender expression?

not much. I’m a woman with a very feminine gender expression, when I’m free to be. the biggest feminine thing that I don’t do is makeup, but that’s more due to dysphoria rather than a distaste for it

37. Do you feel more masculine, feminine, or neither?

feminine uwu

38. What is your sexual and romantic orientation, and what are your thoughts on it?

I am a lesbian and that is very epic of me. I love girls and seeing girls in love makes me happy and imagining myself as a girl in love with another girl makes me even happier

39. Is your ideal partner also trans, or do you not have a preference?

I always hate admitting this, but due to personal reasons, my ideal partner is cis. this is mostly because I very much want to have biological children, and that’s simply not possible with another trans woman. I wouldn’t rule out an afab nonbinary person entirely, it just really depends on how comfortable said person is with femininity and also how they feel about dating a lesbian. if not for my desire to have kids (which is not something I’m willing to compromise on since it has been my lifelong dream) I would have a lot more options. truth be told, cis women kind of scare me, and it would be so much easier to date someone who fundamentally understands what it’s like to be trans. but biology is cruel unfortunately

40. How did/do you manage waiting to transition?

it was incredibly difficult. thankfully, it didn’t last very long. I only had to wait about 6 months, and most of that time was spent waiting until I was able to bank sperm because I didn’t want to risk becoming permanently infertile after starting hrt

41. What is the place (blog, website, forum, IRL space) you get most of your info on being trans or on trans related things?

ngl...... reddit. the trans boards have many, many helpful resources for transfem people. I don’t really go there anymore but it was immensely helpful in the early stages

42. Do you interact with other trans people IRL?

I mean..... yeah, but not very much anymore on account of the pandemic. I made a few trans friends junior year of college and we still talk occasionally, but it’s been several months since I last saw them all

43. Are you involved in any trans-related activism?

not really 😔

44. Free space! Answer any question you want, or make up your own question to answer.

“Wow Vivi how come you’re so epic?”

I was born this way <3

[thisartofeveryday]

For those of you who thought I should make my life story into a book…here is the outline. For the sake of clarity as you are reading, let me explain who the characters are. The kids from my Dads first marriage: Jim1, Patty, Seana. The kids from my Mom’s (Mary Ellen) first marriage: Mary Jane and Jim2. My brother that I am a full sibling to is Charles (chuck).

I think you might know that 95% of our lives are lived from the unconscious mind. From birth to age 7 a childs mind is in Theta wave (hypnosis) and everything that they learn in those years (mainly through observation and repetition) is the program that their minds run for their entire lives. Knowing this – I look back on the first 7 years of my life.

I think we moved 7 times in those 7 years. I am certain it was because of Dads extreme anger management problems and the fact that he is a sociopath, a pedophile and a rapist. Zero stability or chance to make lasting friendships. My dad was sexually abusing me and unpredictably violent. I was terrified of him. I was being terrorized/bullied by my brother, Chuck, who was every bit the sociopath that my dad is. My mom was overwhelmed by the number of children she was responsible for - none of which she actually wanted- and add to that, her husband was sexualizing all of the kids, so really being the last of her kids I was the last of her problems. Being the youngest (and as traumatized as I was), I was quiet and easy to forget about or push to the side. The older kids were the ones in the spotlight and where all the attention went. They were enrolled in activities and they were more the same age, so they were a unit. I was just an observer of them. I felt so left out and forgotten. Always.

I was a mistake and a burden (dads exact words to me on my 11th birthday). Mom made sure I knew that she thought I was mentally retarded- she would joke about it all the time. (I guess she never made peace with her sister being autistic) She also loved humiliating me even when I made it clear she was hurting me. Remember her sausage fingers joke or how many years I got called Boomer? I absolutely hated both of those things, made it clear, and yet she refused to give up the name calling and humiliation. There was very little respect for my personal boundaries. Dad would assault me in the middle of the night and I would wet the bed out of fear- then he would make me sleep in it to teach me a lesson. Mom would do nothing to help me, though she was awake in the middle of the night when I would work up the courage to go into their room to ask for help. She let him treat me like that. Goddamn…I remember the night terrors and being scared to be in my room at night because the scary man was sitting in the rocking chair, in the dark, next to my bed.

I have a memory of being in the garage in our house in South Windsor. I was playing with our basset hound, General…I was crawling around on the floor and the dog mounted me and was dry humping me. Dad got this sick laugh and let it happen. Mom walked in and got mad at him, but did nothing to help me. My personal boundaries were nonexistent. Nobody was protecting me from him. I remember him eating the food off my plate at dinner…or kissing me on the ear or touching me when I would tell him I hated it and to stop. I remember the baths dad would have me take with him and how he taught me to touch and work his dick. I remember the photos he would take of me after the bath. I remember being 7 years old and trying to lay on his bed and be sexy enough for him. I remember kissing mom passionately the way that dad taught me to and mom getting upset and asking me where I learned that. I remember having a baby doll that I drew all over, angrily, with lipstick. I remember being scared because my ass was bleeding and I told mom while her brother and sisters were visiting and she shushed me and scurried me away. I remember him also beating the shit out of me…sometimes for no reason. I remember being deeply attracted to and absolutely terrified of him. I was 7.  These are the only memories I have of my dad. I don’t remember him being there for me, or interested in me as a person, or engaged in anyway. I just remember him being what I now know is a predator.

7 to 13: I remember some stability in Connecticut because we stayed there for three years… but I also remember having moments of being deeply depressed and hiding in the basement of the house writing notes that I hoped someone would find, asking for help to get me out of there. When I look back, those were my first experiences with disassociation from stress and waves of major depression. While I was being assaulted during those years, those years were all about Mary Jane, Seana, and Jim2. These three had each other. These three were a team. I was just an observer to your lives. I had no voice, no opinion, no importance, never truly included and absolutely my feelings went unheard and did not matter. We can say it was the age difference, sure, that’s part of it…but that’s also just an excuse. Things could have been done to validate my importance too.  I had Charles bullying me….I had my Dad assaulting me. I was so alone.

My internal voice wants to shout: Why did nobody see this? Why did nobody help me? Where were my siblings? I guess everyone was doing the best they could…

Literally anyone looking in knowing the truth could have easily assessed that this was a horribly destructive environment for any child to grow up in. I know dad was doing this to all the kids. I wasn’t the only one. It is absolutely stunning to me that through the years of my life I have consistently been blamed by my Mary Ellen (narcissist/borderline personality disorder) and the people who chose to listen to her twisted opinions that there was something wrong WITH ME.  I mean, logically the mental health issues I have faced my entire life are perfectly normal and healthy reactions to a situation that was deeply flawed. But somehow the blame has always fallen on me.

The very first thing I think when I think of my mom is her asking me “Whats wrong with you Melissa”. Ive lost count of how many times she has asked me that very question.

I now know that its just deflection. Queen Narcissist cant take responsibility for her actions so she puts it on the person who she always denied a voice. That’s nice. Very loving and motherly. Doesn’t fix the 40 some odd years of my life that I believed her and wanted to die.

Right around age 9 or 10, we move again. I remember it being a big scandal – I think the truth came about that my dad is a sociopath, a pedophile and a rapist. (By the way, that’s in my DNA. I get to live my life connected to that. I look just like my dad. I think like a Painter. It’s fucking unsettling.)  I remember all the pressure to say nothing about the move and to constantly behave as though we were the perfect family and nothing was wrong. So incredibly demented.

I remember a HUGE fight about Seana and Jim2 staying behind in Connecticut. (by the way: I also remember Jim1 leaving for the Marines and wondering where my brother went and why he never talked to me. At one point he came back to visit and gave me a beautiful geisha doll in a glass box that mom destroyed in a fit of anger at me…she intentionally violently knocked it off the top of my dresser in one of her vindictive off the handle rages…Im sure at 8 years old I totally did something to deserve it, right.)

And, of course I remember the night Seana was killed. (why did the man that killed her not serve jail time? Why are bad people never held accountable?) Dad wasn’t there. Again, Dad wasn’t there. As I recall he was having an affair with some woman in Arizona? Mom was already distraught to be back in Michigan. That night, I remember being awake before the call came in…watching the clock radio in my bed… it had a short in the wire that would spark. I was listening to the Beatles: My guitar gently weeps…. To this day, I hate the Beatles.The phone rang. Mom screamed to you “Mary Jane, OMG, Seana is Dead”. I didn’t understand what happened. I just knew we were packing up like we did so many times before to take yet another long drive across country. It felt to me like another move. I didn’t understand death or that my sister was gone forever. I didn’t get it.  

(an aside: I struggled in school. When I was in Beginning Algebra One for some reason that class would make me check out and I would always soul travel to the night Seana was killed and it felt like it was happening to me. I took that class 4 times including summer school before I passed.)

(later, when I was maybe 13, my dog got hit by a car in the street and now I knew what death was so I freaked out like Mom did when Seana died and I remember Mom shaming me: You cried more over than damn dog than you did at your sisters funeral. Very nice. Very motherly. Very supportive and kind of her.)

At Seanas funeral, I remember not knowing what was expected of me. I was just so focused on getting it right and who I was supposed to kiss (because that sexualized stuff was already so ingrained).

There were so many goddamn rules for behavior, (rich white republican ex-military country club going family that we were) and I remember getting it wrong and being scowled at all the time. Mom was always angry and stressed out. We had to BE someone and over and over again: “Don’t forget the family name” and how important our clan was (hilarious that she kept the Sterling last name because her current husband is too ethnic and this sounds classier to her than her own actual last name)….

Meanwhile, My developing sense of self was being assaulted and neglected/ignored out of me and I felt wrong all the time for every single action I took.

I think we moved back to North Carolina briefly and then to Florida? Whatever the case….

Then we move again. Again. Again. Now we are in Florida. Im 10. My parents are getting divorced. Mom is deeply goddamn depressed. My family is falling apart. I don’t know where my brothers and sister are. Everything is exploding. Im powerless and hostage to all this. I cannot underline the importance of that sense of being hostage to a situation that I was powerless to escape and having my feelings and my personhood completely ignored and erased. It consumed me. I wanted to die. I am, as always, the least of moms concerns.

In Florida I was so incredibly dissociative. I was experiencing C-PTSD. I remember feeling numb all over. Having no ability to react to this little girl that fell off her bike in front of me….I just stared at her…the adults nearby yelled at me for doing nothing. I went further into my head. I was so checked out. People just thought I was quiet or shy or retarded. I was deeply traumatized and needed help.

I remember Mary Jane and I sitting on the bed watching this music video by The Cars. In the video there is a woman who is laughing and crying. I remember asking MJ what she was doing because I do that too and I think she told me she was having a mental break down.  

I remember getting a Walkman and listening to the Police nonstop. That was my only retreat from how much I hurt. WHY DID NOBODY SEE THIS AND HELP ME?

I remember during that time that I was given another baby doll. I remember MJ and mom watching me play with it to see what I would do. I felt scared of them both and the creepy way they were lurking to watch me. I felt ganged up on. I couldn’t trust anyone. I was so alone. I wanted to die.

In Florida, I remember my birthday and dad cocking his fist back like he was going to punch me in the face…he did that sick laugh and told me he wished I was never born and that I was a mistake. (later when I told this to Patty she explained he punched her in the face on her 11th birthday. Im related to all that. That’s in my dna.)

My body was changing. I was getting my period. I felt crazy. I was in that HUGE school in Jacksonville and I had no friends and I was so scared. Everything was terrifying….and Dad was getting more unhinged thus Mom has Jim and Lynn move in to protect her and had you come back… and then I remember walking in to the living room in the middle of a sunny afternoon and mom on the pull out sofa, trying to make dad jealous, was fucking the guy who was there to buy the house  that we had just moved in to because we were MOVING AGAIN….

Not to mention, I remember MJ and I quickly taking Dads gun to the beach to bury it so he because he wanted to kill us all.

Im not even 13 yet….. Are you exhausted?

Any one of these things would make a fully functioning stable adult fold like a house of cards. “Whats wrong with you Melissa?”…. It took something like 20 years of therapy but now I have some clues to answer that question. Here are some more clues:

We finally make it to Boone. Mom followed her best friend, Mary Jane. After all that… that incredible pressure cooker of my pre teen childhood we arrive in bumfuck nowhere, North Carolina….and everyone is gone except the sociopath brother. The house is basically empty. Everyone abandoned ship. Where did my brothers and sisters go? I remember coming home after school and there would be nobody home. For my entire life I had come home to my family but now there was no one. I would sit on the couch and watch the clock with growing anxiety and cry until mom came home from work. It was beyond torturous. And then she would be pissed off that I needed her because she just got home from work. At this point Mom is just angry and exhausted all the time. She had to get a job outside the home for the first time in her life which she hated, she was sick of being a mom…she wanted it all to be over so she could have HER life. Charles was getting more and more abusive- physically and mentally and had to be sent away for our protection.

And then she starts dating Don Bailey. I think the sex must have been amazing because the guy was an utter low life. He was living off of her/my child support money… and beating the shit out of her. Their fights were never goddamn ending. I would hide in my room after school and not come out. I was so alone. I had no friends and no escape. Mom was friends with Mary Jane, not with me. Mom wanted nothing to do with me. One day we were driving home and I was so attached to her. I needed my mom so goddamn bad… I was struggling to make friends at yet another new school and the PTSD made me feel so distant from everyone but I had no words for what was wrong with me I just thought I was terrible at making friends (I remember this: pathetically I checked out a book at the library: How to be your own best friend)… She pulled the car over and told me “we cant be friends.” Mom has some glorified memory of us driving around looking for our favorite tree in Autumn… the only thing I remember is that conversation…her rejecting me when I needed her the most… after we moved to the town my sister lived in so she could be close to her.

Again, still no help with the major depression, the CPTSD… just a lot of blame “why cant you be happy Melissa…whats wrong with you?” and I cant be clear enough about this: all her spare time at home was spent on Don, not me. I didn’t have clubs and groups and activities that she as sure to enroll me in. I didn’t have my brothers and sisters there with me. It was just me, after all that, trying to figure it out.

I was a burden to her. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me and be done. I felt it always.

An aside: When she was unsure if she wanted to stay in Boone, I remember her asking Charles if we should stay or go back to Florida…after he chimed in with his answer, I gave my opinion which she angrily scoffed at me and told me it didn’t matter what I thought, Id go where they tell me to go.   My voice didn’t matter, I was a burden to her. I had no value as a person. I was powerless. So there I was in my bedroom that was the walkway between the living room and her room… at the mercy of whatever happened with no privacy or power over my life….. whats new.

Another aside: During that time we had gotten a dog that was a total pain in the ass for her to take care of. She gave it away while I was at school. I came home and the dog was gone and I was tearful thinking it ran away. She gave my dog away without telling me.

Then we moved out to Valley Crusis (9 miles outside of town…so isolated. I was so alone. The isolation was killing me. Where were my siblings. I needed help. I needed someone who was just there for me.) and Dons abusive behavior got even more extreme. I remember him picking me up from a concert that I was at….because he had sent Mom to the hospital with a sprained wrist and a busted lip. He was laughing about it when he told me to get in the car. Another time I remember Don looming in my bedroom door when Mom was at work and it was just us in the house… telling me: “Go ahead and call the police, nobody will believe you anyway.” I remember the woman who lived up the hill from us, with the curly hair…I think her name was Susan… coming down to the house while Mom and Don were gone and telling me If it ever gets too bad, you can always run up here. The neighbors knew I needed help. Where were my brothers and sisters? Where was my Mom? FUCK.

I remember Mom having many off the handle rages at me because I looked like a boy and my hair was crazy and I was so fucked up. I remember one morning after she had raged at me so hard that I was in stunned silence… we were sitting at breakfast at St Sinners and MJ kept looking at me, she knew something was wrong, I was clearly checked out and fucked up. I needed my sister. I had no voice or ability to speak up. I was scared of her husband, Glenn. Nobody helped me. Mom was the star of the brunch party!

I remember getting my first job at 15 and working at St Sinners…. Then, when mom bought the restaurant I stopped getting paid. She cut me off from my paycheck and told me it was my “duty to the family”… but she had Jim2 and his first wife Lynn there working and they were getting paid…and also stealing her money to fuel their coke habits. She didn’t value me, or my efforts but her golden son Jim can do no wrong even when he is fucking her out of her business.

I remember Jim2 offering me coke at a house party and John Golden and another friend getting me out of there away from my own brother. I remember Lynn being LIVID that I would stop by their house when I was lonely and wanted my family but instead I got shamed for thinking I could stop by and see them…and mom would tell me that “they had BUSY LIVES and I should leave them alone.”

I remember being so fucked up and alone in Boone….I mean, I now know I was just in shock and experiencing major depression. Mom kept asking me Whats wrong with you Melissa…when I was your age I had to choose between boyfriends… etc. Its incredible to me how Mom normalized my childhood abuse and completely erased my feelings or my personhood then blamed me for somehow being a problem child or wrong in whatever way….more incredible: people believed her.  

During those years in Boone I remember her doing things like openly making fun of me when I thought I might be gay, fixing regular hamburgers and telling me they were tofu when I became vegetarian…starting a burn pile in the back yard full of toxic things after I told her how important recycling was to me and laughing at me as I cried…..every chance she had to make me feel awful about being me and disrespected she took.

Once I visited her at her office and she told me I was “too ugly to look at and she didn’t want anyone to know I was her daughter and to never come to her office again.”

Shes right, we were not friends. She was a jealous mean girl, obsessed with appearances and her shitty boyfriend.

Lets not forget when she, with Mary Janes help, stacked my portfolio with MJs lithographies and coached me how to lie to get me in to Governors school for the summer. She wanted me gone and she got her wish. I remember feeling like a fraud that summer. I wasn’t good enough to be there. I had to lie to be included. I remember she didn’t even drive me there. She had Don do it. He harassed me in the car all the way there, 3 hours…. then dropped me…16… off on the curb in front of the college and drove away. All the other kids had parents excitedly helping them get set up in their rooms…excited about their major accomplishment of getting in to Governors school… I was there with my milk crate of shit, a fraud. alone. Acting like a tough girl who didn’t need anyone. I was a pro at that. Mission accomplished, she was rid of me.

I remember how deep my depression was becoming by the time I was 18. That last year of high school I would bang my head against my bedroom wall in an attempt to knock myself out, in hopes that I would get sent away to a treatment center or something. I couldn’t take all the fighting between her and Don. I fucking hated him and he was in my house and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to throw myself down the back stairwell at school. I barely graduated high school my depression was eating me alive.

Amazing that nobody IN MY FAMILY SAW THAT I NEEDED HELP. I was invisible. Mary Ellen cast her proclamation that all was well, she was amazing and I was a problem child and that was that.

I have a million stories about Mom demoralizing me during those years…. Whats weird is that I have no memory of my Mary Jane there. I think she was so involved with Glenn and way up the mountain, I had no way to reach her. And I was scared of her husband Glenn. And, we were never close. And, she was Team Mary Ellen…. So I was just alone and wanted to die. Sincerely. Goddamn. Let it end.

I remember Don telling me that Mom was using my child support payment to make her car payment. So I asked her about where my child support was going and she told me she used it for my Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance…. So I called the insurance company to see if I had coverage…. They had no record of me. She was, again, a liar….

When I graduated high school she couldn’t get me out of the house fast enough. She pawned me off on my boyfriend Gebeaux and expected him to simply take care of me. We broke up. He didn’t sign up for that. I was basically kicked out of the house in valley crusis. I wasn’t prepared for life on my own. I wasn’t ready. She just wanted to be done being a mom so Hey..I came back to the house one day and all my stuff was packed and that was that. I had to figure it out. Fuck me.  

At one point during that time I was living in a trailer with my friend Stacy. Mom was horrified about this. I was getting food stamps and she was so ashamed of me for being so low class. She came to the trailer and was completely off the handle. She said there was “no air” in there and grabbed a 2x4 and smashed out all the windows. Mind you from her perspective it was just another example of what a loser I am, living in a trailer on food stamps how did I end up such a piece of shit when she is such a wonderful mother… it must be because there is something inherently wrong about me.

She has seen me as trash who is incapable of being anything great my entire life.

Somewhere in there she stopped dating Don and started dating lawyer Rand Sterling…who broke her ribs multiple times and literally pushed her out of a moving car and then she walked 5 miles back to his house to be with him.  That relationship took her to Texas. She followed the money. The insanity of that relationship is all I heard about from her. She needed Jim2 to come protect her from her husband multiple times. I absorbed all of this through her very rare but insane emails to me. She has always used me as her emotional manipulation dumping ground.

I had my first total mental break right around 19 years old. I was fetal position on the floor at my girlfriends house… Jenn… I couldn’t stop crying for multiple days and I felt my mind split in two. I literally went into a black hole and was begging for death. Jenn and the next door neighbor scooped me up off the floor and drove me to the Watauga County Mental Health and got me some help… but at this point I was having a total mental collapse… the part of me that was traumatized was a child denied her voice or any recognition of her Self, so I had no way to articulate what was wrong and Mom had denied and normalized the abuse and denied me voice and my personhood for so long that I had ZERO chance of articulating what was wrong… it was buried so deep inside of me and I was so scared to trust anyone…. I was experiencing schizophrenia and Major depression.

Jenn helped me with my depression. Jenn made sure I was housed and fed. Jenn took care of me. I owe her my life.

I mean, that is an extreme mental health episode. Where was my family? How could none of the people who were supposed to love me the most see any of this? Why did none of them help me? Why did all of them think I was to blame? (my guess: Team Mary Ellen)  

Somewhere in that year my friends were moving to Chapel Hill so I packed up the car that my child support paid for and I went down the mountain. She threatened to call the police on me for stealing the car.  She told me I needed discipline and needed to go into the Army. She just didn’t know what to do with me…such a problem child. If I remember correctly, you echoed her sentiments. Everyone was always so angry at me for being so wrong and so bad. None of my family (meaning MJ and mom because my brothers had long bailed on me and my extended family has never made a single attempt to reach out to me or know me at all.)  were my friend, or loving, kind or compassionate.

I got away….I went to Chapel Hill and lived with my best friends Kerry, Lesley, Julie, and two other guys in Kerry’s Moms rental house. I was working at the Columbia Street Bakery and dating this boy, Richard…. Who happened to be a really abusive drug dealer… who held me down one night and violently orally raped me and when I called mom for help she told me with the exasperation of a mother who had supposedly tried so hard to do the right thing and raise her child with love and support but that child was just tragic and terminally fucked :

“I don’t know whats wrong with you Melissa, I guess you just like the bad boys.”  

Again, no self reflection on her behalf…she did nothing to help me.

I didn’t know how to get away from Richard who was playing mind fuck with me and I was getting high with him (LSD) …which was basically, me being drugged and him using me for sex but not being loving or kind in any way (felt like home)  Eventually, Richard got busted for selling a page of lsd to an undercover cop and threatened to kill me because he thought it was my fault… so I had to get out of there and I went to New York to chill out and work for the summer at the Omega Institute of Holistic Learning… to just be around hippies and eat good food. I hung out with Baba Ram Dass and Ben & Jerry…and took a class on the whirling dervish… These moments when I wasn’t in the pressure cooker of my life were both brilliant because I needed healing but also the worst because all this trauma would start to surface and I didn’t know what it was or how to speak about it. I would start to shatter again.

I believed it was my fault and there was something inherently wrong with me.

I was so lost. I needed help. I needed a parent or loving compassionate family or someone trusted to guide me through that time in my life. I had no one but my friends from North Carolina who were just as fucked up as me. I needed help. I needed help. Oh my god, I needed help.

Omega ended…I had no money to get out of there, nobody to turn to for help, no clue what to do next, I certainly couldn’t go back to Mom who hated me and was living with Rand so fuck that… I had no idea where my brothers and sisters were and no relationship with them so that wasn’t on my mind as an option…..so I caught whatever ride I could get and ended up in Boulder. One of my friends from Omega hooked me up with her cousin for a month and I tried to make it work… it was basically winter in Colorado at this point and I was out there door canvassing for Green Peace making no money and freezing to death. Just walking door to door for Greenpeace… looking in on other families and their loving lives together. I was so fucking sad. I was hungry and scared and completely out of options. I had to get out of there.

I called Mom for help. She said: “You got yourself into this, get yourself out”…. And hung up on me. The bitch hung up on me. I was stranded and so scared and I needed my mom. She hung up on me. She blamed me. She wanted to punish me for being such a problem. She was done being a mom. She hung up.

I remember having gone to the Planned Parenthood to get some medical help because I was sick. I explained my situation and the nurse looked at me incredulously and said “where are you parents?” I explained to her that Mom hung up on me.  I was devastated, living in a constant state of shock. Scared out of my sense of self or ability to connect to the present moment.

I was a fractured soul in every possible meaning.

My month at my friends place was over and I had to find an apartment or live on the streets. It took me another month of begging whatever guy I could find to give me a place to stay and then I contacted the boy I was dating at Omega, Scott, and asked him for money to get a bus back to North Carolina. He helped me. Bless him. He got me out of there.

I got on the Greyhound and ended up going to Idaho to visit with my friend Stacy (who I lived in the trailer with) and stay with her for a couple weeks to get grounded and feel safe with a friend for a minute. My mental break was coming back full force. I was inconsolable.  I remember laying on her bed fully having an out of body experience from the stress and being so disoriented. She is so patient and kind. She took care of me. When my time with Stacy was up, the next layer of insanity: I got on the Greyhound and took a 5 day no sleep, no food journey across country. I got chased down, carrying all my bags of things and looking like a little hippie… on a layover, by a group of drunk men in Wyoming…they almost got me but I found a laundromat that was open and full of people so I ran inside and hid until my bus was leaving again. I was terrified. By the time I made it back to Lesley and Kerrys house in Chapel Hill it was New Year night…I got some hours back at the Columbia Street bakery I was working at and got some money rolling in.

I want to mention that Poverty, which I have lived most my life in, is no joke and more damaging than anyone outside of the experience can understand. It is cyclical, like bi polar…. Living paycheck to paycheck or however you get just enough to maybe hold on for a moment longer but never knowing if more will be coming is a terror. Always feeling like the bottom is going to drop out…and never knowing when youre going to eat…and what that does to your hormones and your mental health…. Poverty is proven to damage people on a cellular level and have lasting effects that lead to chronic illness.

After making it back to NC, few weeks later the boy from Omega came to Chapel Hill and told me he wanted to marry me and wanted me to move to Boston with him. So we took a little road trip and eventually ended up in Boston. As a surprise to no one sane, that was not a lasting relationship. So after a year of misery in Boston, (more poverty, more loneliness, more no family) Scott drove me back to Chapel Hill and that’s when the girls and I all moved up to Asheville. All the while, checking in with Mom who was yelling and shaming me for being such a fuck up.

I can’t underline enough: I was disassociating the entire time. I was having episodes of schizophrenia. I was experiencing major depression and bi polar disorder. The stress of my entire life was more than I could handle and I had no support and no compassion and nobody validating my experience or me as a person. People just thought that was who I was. I was just fucked in every way possible and believed she was right and all that was normal and I was a terrible piece of shit. She had everyone believing that.  

Mary Jane believed her. She echoed her sentiments to me. Go Team Mary Ellen.

I moved up to Asheville and got somewhat stabilized. I was again living with my friends and I got a decent job at the Laughing Seed Cafe. I met Mark and I had decided to go to college because I thought that would make Mom happy and I needed to DO something with myself.  

Mark and I were together maybe 8 weeks before we moved across country and started a life together. Eight weeks.

I was so adept at being a high functioning  dissociative major depressive and I had no way to articulate what was wrong with me (all that stuff that had been normalized and ignored…all the ways my feelings and personhood was erased)… I just knew something evil bad was in me and it took me out from time to time. I thought it was my fault and I was ashamed of myself.  I was living in a constant state of shock. CPTSD.

So, I get myself into college and thanks to Mark and his truck we move across country.

When I hear my friends now talking about saving money for their kids college and really setting them up for success by helping them choose a school and get settled in or making sure they don’t have to work so they can focus on their studies and have a healthy social life with friends and do activities Im so confused. I didn’t know parents and families helped their kids with such things. I didn’t understand that in other families they help, protect and support. I made it through without any of these blessings.

Mark and I get a shitty apartment (the ceiling caved in out of rot and the place was full of roaches. The property managers stole my drum set and we would catch them on the roof at night peeping through the skylight to watch us), I get a full time job managing a restaurant…in addition to schooling full time...Im overwhelmed by the workload, scared to be across country, freaked out by college and the expectations… it was too much. I was away from the source of my abuse and things started to surface… I NEEDED HELP.

I needed my family except, honestly, I have none. Additional mindfuck: when I tried to talk to people about this I get the old trope about how everyone has tough relationships in their families and I need to love my mom and work it out with her.SO I KEPT GOING BACK FOR MORE WITH MOM BECAUSE I NEEDED HER LOVE SO BAD AND I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS ME. Further, because I was so regressed I just sounded like a petulant child when I tried to talk about the abuse I had no accurate words for so nobody outside the experience really got it or could conceive how bad things really were for me… why would they? My family is extraordinarily fucked up, like nobody I have ever known.

In college, nobody comes to check on me and make sure Im ok. Nobody was calling. Id get rare emails or letters. When I would tell mom how hard it was, mom would mock me and tell me to suck it up when I would reach out to her and “complain” about how things were going for me… See, because its always my fault and Im never measuring up.

An aside: To this day, 40 years later, Jim2 has yet to even send me a single email to check and make sure Im ok or get to know me at all. He has never responded to the multiple emails I have sent him, so I stopped reaching out. I used to cry to mom about it and she would tell me that he “has a busy life” and I had to understand that’s why I wasn’t a priority to him. Personally, I cant imagine anything being more important than making a connection with your little sister, but I guess Im biased and not like him: busy getting high and drunk and being a cool party guy.  

During my college is when he married Lori. I worked over time and got a plane ticket to be at his wedding. I was sick to my stomach at the idea of having to be around my family but I love my brother and I wanted to be there. He ignored me the entire time I was there. I was a HUGE FUCKING DEAL that I could afford the ticket and made the effort to be there for him. I showed up for him….He ignored me. I was devastated and felt invisible and so worthless.

Another aside: I was 24 and that very first Christmas on the west coast Mom calls me, driving herself to the ER to get her stomach pumped from a suicide attempt. She was dramatically telling me her goodbye in case she didn’t make it. I was stressed and powerless beyond the telling of it. I cried all the way through that Christmas. Again: Mom always uses me as her emotional manipulation dumping ground. Out of all her children, Im the one with heart and she gets the sympathy she is working me over for.

During my college years, I would ask Mom for help she would mock me “Im sending baby Sava (MJs daughter) a care package…are you a baby? Do you need one too?”

Mean girl jealousy that I went to college and her life was taken from her by her children….

In college I had no friends, just Mark. No time for activities and my mental health was so fragile I had no ability to form friendships. I was barely hanging on. I would be catatonic in my time at home. We had this geometry screensaver on the computer and I would be frozen staring at it for hours while my brain felt like it was going to shatter. I was an absolute wreck and a shell of a person…but I was determined to prove I could graduate college and I wasn’t a fuck up. I wanted Mom to be proud of me.

I guess it should come as no surprise that after 4 years of no time off, working and schooling 80 hours a week, getting zero support emotionally or financially from my family …. that absolutely NOBODY FROM MY FAMILY CAME TO CELEBRATE ME AT MY GRADUATION.

Nobody came. Nobody celebrated me. Nobody saw the value in me or my hard work.

I remember being on the phone with Jim2 the day of my graduation. I had called him to ask why he wasn’t there for me. I was in tears. He told me that if that was the worst thing that ever happened to me, congratulations on your nice life. He thought it was bullshit that I was so upset. He thought I was being a baby. This loser dropped out of college which he had a scholarship for and did nothing with his life but drugs and alcohol and saw no value in me or what I did on my own. He didn’t show up for me.

Me going to college and graduating on time with full credits was a major fucking accomplishment on so many levels.

Not one of my family was there for me and I will never forgive or forget that.

We moved to the same fucking town Mary Jane was in when she was in college and never ONCE did anyone come to check on me and be interested in what I was doing or validate how amazing it was that I was in school and making it happen on my own.  

When I talk about how alone I feel in life, its in my bones.

I had worked over time to get Mom a plane ticket so she would be there for my graduation and she called me a couple days before to tell me pathetically “She couldn’t get the day off work.”  (Lie: I think she has some legal issue and couldn’t leave the state or something like that.)

After she called to bail on my graduation… at 27 years old… I had a heart attack on my walk home. I collapsed in my living room. Mark found me on the floor when he got home from work. She literally broke my heart. I was devastated. I was in shock. I was dissociating. I was so fucked up. I needed help. Poor Mark. He didn’t know what was wrong and neither did I.

Shortly after my graduation, MJ graduated and she drove to see her and was sure to tell me about it. I mean, they are BFFs so, no surprises there. GO TEAM MARY ELLEN, right?  

Whats wrong with you Melissa? My family. My family is whats wrong with me.

During college I was stressed to the point of being catatonic when I wasn’t at work or school. My mental health was tanking in every possible way… but the pressure cooker of school and work kept me hemmed in and my desire to prove that I was someone worth loving (because god knows I wasn’t going to be loved just for being me…No one was simply going to show up for me or simply be there. I had to earn it.)

…. then we moved to Seattle and I had three years at Amazon in that pressure cooker of a job… (10 to 14 hours a day, 6 days a week) working as a Lead running a team of 200 people to keep me too busy to feel my feelings or connect to emerging myself.  

At some point after I graduated and it no longer mattered, I remember MJ came to visit me one time. That was nice of her. Thank you for trying, MJ.

But heres the fun part: Mark. Mark loved me.

Mark is the very first and to this day ONLY person who has been intimately involved in my life who loves and respected me just as I am.

It was Mark loving me that allowed me to start developing a voice and for that very young very traumatized person inside of me to start coming to the surface. Mark was the very best thing that has ever happened to me….and, ironically, it was because he loved me that all that evil finally came to the surface…and was our demise.

All the things dad did to me, all the never ending abuse from mom that sought to vilify and demoralize me… all of the hurt from the abandonment from my brothers and sisters… all that evil came up because he Loved me enough to make me feel safe and supported…I just didn’t know that then and couldn’t see or feel that he was the most tremendous gift this life has ever given me ….

and I started sexually assaulting myself in my sleep (woke up one time with an entire box of tampons inside of me and had to go to the doctor to get them all out). I would throw punches in my sleep. I was having an utter mental breakdown/ breakthrough… and then I started acting out sexually with other men that I met online. I felt like I was being puppet mastered from some evil unknown source. I was manic and acting out sexually. That default programing from my childhood was calling the shots. I didn’t have a sense of self so I was acting from what I knew and what Dad taught me about myself and the self-worth that mom made sure I didn’t have.

I say acting out sexually. What I should say is reenacting the trauma…which there was so very much of. I was on auto pilot and at that time if you asked me if that’s what I wanted to be doing I would have said yes out of programming but the core truth of who I am knew it was not at all right or who I am or what I wanted…that core didn’t have a voice yet.

2001, Amazon had laid us all off. I got hired working at a treatment center for abused youth.  I was major depressive and would be fetal position on the floor and cry for a month at a time but I didn’t know why or what was wrong… I was just deeply goddamn depressed and wanted to die. All the time. Goddamn. Let it end.

Poor Mark. He didn’t know what was happening. He was the perfect boyfriend. He tried so hard to help me. I honestly could not have asked for a more perfect man to come in to my life…and he was stuck with me. Mentally fucked Melissa with no clue what was wrong… and worst of all, I thought I had to get out of my relationship with Mark.

Crazy,right?….I asked Mom for help. She had no relationship with me and no clue what was going on in my life…She is a complete train wreck of a human and so deep in her own denial and so wrapped up in her latest abusive relationship with a rich man that she could honestly give a fuck about me and thought the worst of me anyway… so yeah, break up with him and oh my god Melissa I don’t know what to do with you.

I kept cheating on him over and over again. I was off the rails with my manic depression. Spending, fucking, driving my car too fast…. Through a chat room, I got mixed up with a man that felt like Dad to me and I was entranced and captive to him. Mark asked me to marry him and I broke up with him, moved out.. I was off the rails with the sexual acting out/re traumatizing myself.

(Mark immediately met the woman he has since married and has been with for the past 18 years. I would give anything to have that man back in my life…Throughout these years, my memory of how he treated me has been the standard by which I have held all other men and nobody measures up….Beyond his character and integrity, the art, music and intelligence that lives within this handsome and kind man is incomparable. I blew it. Fuck. I pushed away the most incredible man I ever knew and he loved me. I still love him to this day.)

At that same time I heard a rumor at work that one of the counselors (reggie, 24) had slept with a client(raya,16). I knew reggie was capable of it (I had slept with him) so I reported it to the Unit manager, Big Mike. ……What I didn’t know is that Reggie, Mike and the guy I was so into, Cash were all friends who grew up together and in the same gang……

and so it was that month that I moved out from Mark that the man that I was so “in love with”, Cash, drugged me at a house party and raped me with 4 of his friends to teach me a lesson for reporting Reggie.

I remember sharing a beer with Cash and then feeling tired and dizzy and asking to lay down and then multiple hours of being barely coherent and having no control over my body and being passed around for everyone to fuck over and over again.

Cash was a sex trafficker and grooming me all along. No wonder he felt like home. My need for family and my daddy issues in full effect, I couldn’t break the spell. I was terrified of him and wanted him to think I was so sexy…..He was masterful with the mindfuck and kept me under his thumb at all times which felt like attention and love to me and was intense enough that I could feel it.

At that time, in Washington, you had a statue of limitations of 8 years to report a rape.

Mind you, I was so dissociative and still had no idea I was a person or had any rights to my thoughts or my body… I was really goddamn checked out at that point in my life….I was in shock. The childhood assault trauma was just surfacing and I had no words for it because it had been normalized and my feelings negated by my parents So, I didn’t know if I had been raped or not….it took me years to figure out that its wrong to drug someone and have all your friends fuck them…

I didn’t know I should or could ask for help. I didn’t believe I could be helped. I didn’t think anyone would help me. I didn’t know I was a person. I didn’t know I had rights. I didn’t know I could escape or how.

ANYONE CONFUSED ABOUT WHY I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO GET HELP OR THAT I DESERVED IT???????

Whats wrong with you, Melissa?

In the meanwhile, Cash was making sure I wouldn’t report it.

He knew I was away from Mark, had a history of sexual assault and no family, and that I lived in absolute poverty so there was zero chance I could escape him.

I was in so much trouble. I needed help. I called Mom. I explained that it all to her. I explained that they were a gang. That it was sex trafficking… that I needed help…. To which she said “Let them play godfather. Whats the worst they can do?”….. (nice way to minimize the extreme danger I was in and negate me as a person, don’t you think?)

that bitch loves to see me suffer and struggle, doesn’t she. Doesn’t it make her look amazing when I look like shit? So she didn’t help me. She shit talked me to the rest of the family like I wanted to be in that situation because I was trash. Nobody helped me.

I remember talking to Mary Jane around that time explaining that I was getting counseling and she, like mom, shamed me and told me I didn’t have bipolar or something like that… She was Team Mary Ellen all the way and me getting counseling was just attention seeking or something like that.

See, this is why MJ and I have never been friends or close. I cant trust her. Shes not someone I think of as an ally. Sorry about that, MJ. Im not trying to be mean but… look at why I think that.

I really do look up to her though. She is so smart and capable. But I cant trust her and this is why.

By the way, here’s just a few of examples of the worst they can do while “playing Godfather”: They were so invested in making sure I never spoke about the rape they made sure I was living in such constant fear for my life (mental domination) that I was too scared to talk to anyone about it:

*They had voyeur cameras in my house…that they were making money off of.

*They had software on my laptop to collect all my personal data (social security, passwords, answers to security questions) so I am owned by them to this day.

*They had GPS on my car to track me everywhere I went and would leave notes on my car to let me know I was constantly being watched.

*They flipped my therapists office and stole all her files to make sure there was no record

*They poisoned my dog every day for a month while I was at work…I would come home to Milo cowering in the corner like he had been abused all day long and diarrhea all over the floor until one day I yelled out in my home with nobody there that I would find Cashs son and do the same to him…and I went online and found his childs home address…yelled that out to my empty apartment…and after that day Milo was never sick again….

*Then there are the 2 times they broke into my apartment in the middle of the night, drugged me in my sleep and did whatever and dumped me at the park. One of those time I woke up with half my face slack and paralyzed as though I had a stroke. By the grace of god I got the feeling back but to this day its still a little droopy.

*They sent their equally psycho boy Alex into my life to keep watch on me. He was horribly mentally abusive. I was so broken and demoralized. I needed to get away. Instead, I got pregnant. Alex also gave me syphilis ..and so I had an abortion. I had to get two Orders of Protection to get Alex away from me. When I called mom for help with the pregnancy, she was off the rails hysterical and I was yet even more scared and alone. Mom blamed me for all of it. Further evidence Im trash. I got pregnant by a mistake by a black man.

There is more, I mean it was 8 years of daily torture… but I think you get the idea. Complete mental domination was the name of their game.

I had no friends. None. I was so fucked up. I was terrified to speak to anyone because everything felt like danger. Just these men showing up when they felt like to to fuck me and terrorize me. Eight years. My 30s. I was miserable beyond the telling of it.

Whats wrong with you Melissa. I needed help. I was so scared. I needed my family. I got yelled at and shamed. I was so alone. I wanted to die. I was so depressed and fucked up. Goddamn. Let it end. And the worst of it all is that I really didn’t even have myself. I never had a chance to be safe enough to develop a self. I was a shell of a human. I was out of my head. I was so checked out with the PTSD and the trauma of it all. I was scared to be alive. Soul fracturing is real.

This was how I spent my 30s. Somehow pulling myself together to go to work during the day because I didn’t want to be homeless, coming home and having a total mental collapse at night and all the while being mentally tortured by a gang of sex traffickers and when I reached to my family for help I got blamed for being a fucked up piece of shit.

I had no one. When I talk about my isolation and how alone I am, its cumulative.  Its all this and more.

I don’t need to volunteer at a shelter on Christmas to be with someone for the holidays. I don’t need to get a dog. I need family. I need to be validated on a daily basis that I matter and am loveable just as I am. I need someone safe who is simply there. I need people in my life who celebrate me without me asking. I need people who are there for those simple mundane acts of living that define us…I need to come home to love.

The miracle: I kept myself employed and was successful in my corporate career path, I kept myself housed, and drug and alcohol free the entire time. I had the where with all to get counselling and try to work through my shit. I never gave up on myself even though I didn’t yet know who I am and my family had absolutely written me off from day one.

Then the Recession happened. I, of course, had never learned money management skills so there really wasn’t any savings to rely on. I was comfort eating like a motherfucker, I had student loans, a car payment and insurance and a foolishly large and expensive apartment, I had these lecherous men that were taking advantage of me financially too… I was manic depressive… I was paying for counselling (which if I am not mistaken over the years has totaled $100k) But to be honest, I don’t know where my money went… so when the Recession hit it took about 2 months before I was selling off everything I own and living in my car….where I stayed for the next year with my dog.

Nobody help me stay safe or in my integrity. I had no friends in Seattle to turn to. Mom told me to put my things in garbage bags and throw it all away…take the dog to the pound… and work with my counselor (she was angry about me getting help because she perceived it as being me trying to vilify her and this was her chance to punish me for getting help) and find a shelter to check in to because I wasn’t welcomed at her home.

Let me say that again: My mom knew I was losing everything, told me to throw my life away, dump my kid at the pound and told me to check into a shelter, I wasn’t welcomed at her home.

MY MOM.

Shes sees me as trash. She threw me away. Doesn’t she look amazing when Im failing?

Work in Seattle was impossible to find. I literally had 700 resumes out. Understand, I have held a job consistently since I was 15 years old and somehow mom thought this moment was me being a lazy piece of shit and just trying to manipulate her for money when I asked for help.

Sure. Ok.

I spent the next year in my car with no money coming in other than whatever odd jobs I could grab on craigslist to make my car payment. I drove back to North Carolina to seek help from my friends and my brother. My friends back home were not in a position to help me in any long lasting way but bless them all for what they did…

but Jim 2, who lives in Raliegh, was. He just declined. He made me a sandwich…told me there was nothing he could do for me (he has three houses)…and I spent the night in my car outside my brother’s house.

I had an ex acquaintance from Seattle who lived in Raleigh. He was part of the abuser sex trafficking gang. He let me sleep on the floor but would beat the shit out of me if I tried to sleep on the couch. I was so demoralized and out of my head, I needed literally anyone to be there for me….so, I stayed there, on the floor, for a month.

My brother was 15 minutes away, could have kept me safe but my brother chose to do nothing to help me.  

Whats wrong with you Melissa. My family. Definitely gonna say my family.  

When it was clear that North Carolina wasn’t going to be any better for work than Seattle I decided to drive back to the west coast. I had to drive through Texas and I didn’t stop at Moms house. I didn’t even try. Why would I?  I was so hopeless and out of my head with depression and PTSD. I was screaming into the great black nothing. I was cutting myself all over to get the evil out. I would punch my own face black and blue from self loathing… again, thinking it was all my fault and that I was defective. I mean… my own family didn’t want me. Nobody did. It was me. I was a horrible piece of shit and deserved to die. Nobody loved or wanted me. Nobody kept me safe. I was deeply lost in the void. I wanted to die. Goddamn. Let it end.

That year in the car was by far worse than the 8 years of being tortured by sex traffickers or the 13 years of living with my sex predator father or the 7 years of being stuck in bumfuck North Carolina with my moms abuser boyfriend stealing the show.

Without question having nobody and knowing that nobody cares if you are safe, in your integrity, have a door to lock, privacy of any kind, if you are fed or showered… knowing for a demonstrated fact that there is not a single person on earth who cares enough to validate your humanity is the absolute worst feeling I have ever known.  Being completely dehumanized, demoralized, erased. I begged for death.

Whats wrong with you Melissa?

Fun fact: during that time, instead of helping me or offering me a job at her business doing the exact job I did so well at Amazon (I asked for one and told her I would sleep in the attic at the office and she told me No), to mock me and show me what a failure I am and that I was just trying to manipulate her for money because Im a lazy loser

Mom went to her local Costco and applied for a job to show me how easy it was for her to get hired.

I mean, if youre going to be void of a soul, you should really go for it. Kudos, Mom.  

I drove through California on the way back home to Seattle and met my sister Patty for the first time. We look like two peas in a pod. We think exactly the same. She is undeniably my sister. It was the most incredible feeling.

For the first time in my entire life I actually felt and thought the same as someone else.

She casually declined to introduce me to her family. They kept looking at me incredulously because we look just the same… but she would shoo them away when they would come over to talk. I met her at her restaurant and then she took me to her palatial home. She has a huge family. She had tons of photo albums… and then she started talking about Dad…like she was in a trance and talking about a favorite lover… it was clear that Dad had sexualized her and maintained that relationship with her well into her adult life and that was the reason she had no contact with us and didn’t want a deeper relationship with me. One conversation was all I got with her. I slept in my car outside her home. My sister didn’t help me. Whats wrong with you Melissa???

In one shot from LA I drove back to Seattle. I figured out that the Queen Anne neighborhood had the lowest crime rate so I parked there. I was so sick to death of all the nights that year that I would wake up with someone trying to break in to the car. Thank god I had Milo with me. He saved me multiple times from intruders that year. My body was a wreck from car living and shit food. My mental health beyond destroyed. I was really just done. Run through. All the way run through.

I did a brief stint staying in Silverdale with my friend from NC that I managed to re connect with on my drive back… but the hour drive into Seattle from Silverdale was too much so I lumped it and just slept in my car in Queen Anne once I secured my job…..

I went in to Top Pot Doughnuts every day for a month and demanded a job until they gave me one. I was 8 weeks into that job, still sleeping in the car but I had forward momentum when I totaled the car. I had the very last car payment in the seat next to me I had worked so fucking hard to maintain my payments in good faith despite it all and come out of that situation with my car but nope…fuck me. I was on my way to the gym and I was giving myself a pep talk telling myself everything was going to be ok….and I ate it…40 miles an hour into a stopped truck on the West Seattle Bridge. Entirely my fault. Milo went to the pound. All my earthly belongings went to the impound yard. I went to the ER…. And I called every single person I knew and who I thought could help me.

Just when you think you have nothing left, turns out you can go lower. Nobody returned my call.  

Me, the unwanted, loveable piece of shit. I could die and nobody cared. Whats wrong with you Melissa?

I got out of the hospital, I had made contact with my online friend Rishad and he let me stay for a couple days… BLESS HIM… In those two days I got on the bus. I took the bus that goes through Capitol Hill and up to Queen Anne where my job was. I wrote down every apartment for rent phone number I could see and I started making calls. In the first true lucky break I had in years, this apartment manager woman at a really sweet little apartment on the hill heard me out…heard my story… it was the 15th of the month. I had my car payment check and I cashed it and gave her the money… She gave me the keys and a wink and told me I could move in “on the first”, that’s what the money I gave her would pay for…. and that she definitely didn’t know anything about a dog so no pet fee was needed.

I went right upstairs, LOCKED MY OWN DOOR and laid on the floor with literally nothing left to my name and cried so fucking hard.  

I had whiplash from the accident. I fractured 4 molars on my steering wheel and over the years as my dentist promised they have slowly one by one fallen out of my face. I had broken both my feet and wracked my knees…. But I had a place that was my own and a job and that’s all that mattered.

I went right to the pound the next day and got Milo. I went to the impound lot and got what was left of my life. I missed a sum total of two days of work…. I was so thankful to have a job again I blocked out the pain from my broken body and I just kept going.

(Mind you the only thing Mom has ever been proud of me for in my lifetime is losing weight. That’s what got her attention…that’s what she was impressed by. I went on a diet.)

That next year, I lost 70 pounds at the gym. I perceived my training team as the family I never had and I was good at lifting weights. They weren’t honestly my friends or family but it was something consistent and I needed that stability and I needed them so fucking bad. It took 5 years to start to return to a somewhat functioning human... Lifting helped me get back into my body and stop checking out so much. My nutrition plan made me focus on myself every moment of every day…and nothing beats depression like clean food and working out. Structure and consistency.

My PTSD was off the rails though. I was worse than a soldier coming back from war…I never signed up for that shit and it started when I was a child. I was suffering. I wanted to die. Every moment of every day. I was miserable to be around. Nobody wanted to be my friend. So, trust me…just work and the gym with my illusion that people were there for me and me inappropriately and overly attached to them.

The irony is that I looked amazing and strong and I was, yes. The reality is that I wanted to die. I begged for death. I had two suicide attempts in those years….I surprised myself and cut my wrist with my house keys on the way to work one day and another time I walked into traffic but the car swerved.

Coming out of all that happened and processing all that trauma took more will power and resolve than anything I have ever done. It was so dark. I felt demon possessed. I was out of my head. I would find myself walking out of my place into public with no skirt on just my tights or other crazy shit like that. I was talking to myself, having heated arguments with nobody there all the fucking time. I was punching myself in the face. I was cutting and other such self harm.

It was really bad. I was hurting so fucking much.

And, I had another sociopath boyfriend taking full advantage of my disadvantage…keeping me fucked up because it kept me there for him. Thomas was in my life for 7 years. Absolute Scum. But he was the only person who would show up in person for me. I needed to be held. I was so out of my head and I still had no friends in my life…just people on the internet.… So again, this familiar situation: I just let him use me so I could have literally anyone there. The social and emotional isolation was killing me and I was convinced I was in love. He felt like home. He kept telling me we would be together if I waited. That he loved me. That I was the Key! I was the only time he was happy. The reality was he wouldn’t speak to me during the week. He would just show up on a Friday or Saturday night when he felt like it, from 1am to 3am…literally show up with his dick out to fuck me…very often wouldn’t speak to me when he was there���then he would leave and that was what I considered my relationship and love. It was about 2 years into our “relationship” that the truth slowly started to surface that he was in a long term relationship and he lived with her….

The details of how twisted he is and how he manipulated my daddy issues is disgusting. How he used neglect to keep me working so hard for him to be there and begging for his attention….really sick.

He felt like home which is the worst part. He was exactly like home.

It took me three years at the doughnut shop to get emotionally stabilized enough to make a plan for next steps. I was too emotionally fragile to go back to corporate work or be in an office environment. I knew I wanted to go to massage school and I really thought it could be an answer for me even though Mary Jane and mom had previously shamed and mocked me when I said I wanted to go. Mom didn’t think I could be anything better than a waitress. She told me to stop complaining that I hated my work and just go do it.

It was around this time that I had to move out of the apartment because they raised the rent by double on my sweet apartment and I found my way into squatting in my Art studio, where I have been for the past 7 years.

This studio has been so needed and healed me in so many ways. It is private enough to have a complete mental collapse and since it was a former isolation tank/jail… Nobody can get in here….bars over the windows and a steel door…so, I could sleep at night for the first time in years. The rent is crazy affordable which allowed me to go to school and later afford activities to try to learn social skills and be a real person in the world…. This place is my everything.

When I had my first art show… consisting of the photos that I took when I was living in my car. One of the ways I survived and changed my paradigm to get out of the car alive was that I would walk around and task myself with Looking through the eyes of Love. I would try to find one thing each day that I could see beauty in so I could continue to see good in the world…thus my collection of flower photos that I maintain to this day as my gratitude practice.

Mom picked up the phone and called me the night of my show.

(Mind you, she has never been there for me. Over the years since she kicked me out I think we have talked on the phone maybe 10 times. There have been years where she refused to give me her phone number…she made a game of it for years…I would email and ask for it she would say she was going to give it to me in her reply but never would. Then she finally did and a week later she changed it again. Psycho. Another time I can remember a time we talked on the phone and I ended by saying I love you and she was silent and struggled to say it back. Whats incredible is that she has always pretended to be someone who knows me and knows whats going on in my life and talks about it with such authority. This is a narcissistic abuser in action. What she was doing was scanning my social media and whatever scraps of information she could get and twisting it into whatever story she needed to support her storyline about me being a problem child and a fuck up and what a wonderful mother she is so she could continue to live in denial. She cant face the past and she has never done any work to own her part or apologize. So, now Ive cut her off. She does things now like call the place where I get my mail and had the people who run the PO box office tell me my mother called and she is worried about me and she asked them for whatever information they had on me -so I had to get a new PO Box place where the owners have English as a distant 2nd language-  or she will go through my friends list on social media and contact people to see if they will keep tabs on me for her and share her story about what a problem I am and how she is just a loving mother who I have scorned and of course people believe her. She said the magic word: Mother. Nobody would suspect what kind of Mother she actually is and they see me all angry, regressed emotionally like a child and so fucked up and struggling in the world so she must me right about me, yeah? Text book actions when you try to break away from a Narcissist)

So…I get into the studio and Im all set up for my show and she called me to say this: “So, youre having an art show huh? You think youre so great. Youre still alone though aren’t you? (the mean girl was jealous that I somehow retained a sense of self and did something neat to be proud and again, she wanted to punish me…the woman is demented.) You know, the longest relationship you’ve ever had is with that damn dog.” And then she laughed at me. Made some shit comment about my basement studio “not having air” and some other bullshit and we ended the call. My party guests were arriving. My self-confidence was missing in action for the rest of my night.   Nice, right? That’s my mom.

Shortly after I get in to the Studio Milo got sick. Really really sick. As I promised him from day one, I would never let him suffer for my own selfish reasons…. So, I rented a car, took him to the vet and had him put down. The love of my life and my great protector. This sweet soul that was my constant source of love and hope for 14 years. When I posted on my facebook thread about his passing, mom commented that she was devastated at her loss. Because, you know… Milos death, this dog that she wanted me to throw away, was about how it impacted HER.  …yeah….ok.

I want to mention out of the context of a clear timeline that somewhere in here I trained for and ran two Tough Mudders. They are 12 mile courses with 20 really fucking hard obstacles. They are designed to be run with a team. I ran them both solo because nobody wanted to join me. On the days that I went to the events, neither my Trainer or the man I was so in love with, Thomas, sent me as much as a good luck text to wish me well or acknowledge my accomplishment. My previously 215 pound ass had shrunk to 140 pounds and, at 40 years old ran a team event solo and made it through in TWO AND A HALF HOURS completing every single obstacle, no excuses…. And nobody who should have been excited and invested in my success said a word.

I was still invisible. I still did not matter. I was still not celebrated by the people who should have been there for me.

I want to point this out: Even I did not think I mattered or what I was doing was noteworthy. I was still so checked out and erased to myself that it didn’t click in my head that my life and all that I was doing and surviving was me doing the impossible.

My friend Luke (who I met online dating but I knew we were meant to be solid friends for life) made a point to come with me to the first Tough Mudder. He spent the entire day out there and he took photos of me… He is the reason that I can now reflect on what I did and actually SEE MYSELF. That gift is immeasurable. Luke evidenced me. Im here today as a whole person in part because of him.  Also of note, the transition time between the apartment and the studio: Luke let me stay with him. He kept me safe and he was my sounding board and my true friend. I have nothing but the deepest most heartfelt love and respect for him. His story is equally harrowing and he is a miracle in action. Thank you Luke. I love you. Youre in my inner circle for life.

Now that Milo was gone and I was feeling somewhat more stabilized as a human, I knew it was time to make my career plan and try to get into massage school. Here is the next great stroke of luck in my lifetime: I went to Discovery Point and I talked to the women that run the school I explained my situation and that I was completely broke. They let me go to school for free in those 9 months with the understanding that I would clean the school on the weekends, make what payments I could as I went along and work out a payment plan immediately after graduation and that they would hold my diploma until that was complete.  OH SWEET MERCY.

My days during those 9 months were 17 hours long. I would manage the café in the morning 5am to 1pm, go to the gym to lift and run from 2 to 4, then to school from 5 to 10pm…all the while walking to get to each place. I was getting something like 12 miles a day. I did it. I made my 9 months of cleaning the school and keeping my life on track ( no cheering section, nobody doing laundry, cooking, keeping bills paid or there to comfort me but me: Whats new?) , I passed my exam and I was on track to move my life forward.

I feel like there should have been a celebration when I graduated because that’s fucking astounding…. but, hey… nothing happened, nobody in my life said a word of congratulations about it. Surprise.

I live alone. I have no friends beyond those that exist on the computer, acquaintances from community, and a few co workers that I have hung out with from time to time and I always make a big deal about that on social media which gives the illusion that I have people, but I really dont. My only contact with others is at work. I go home to an empty room and there is no support or comfort. Its really impossible to describe to people who have people what it is like to live with this constant isolation and utter lack of emotional intimacy and how it eats you alive…but this has been my life.

People who don’t understand tell me to get a dog or volunteer or pay for therapy for companionship. That’s a cruel tone deaf response. People need people and it is reasonable to want to be loved, intimately, from the outside in. What I want is to simply matter, and be loved and valued, and have someone who is there without having to do something to receive that…..

Because I have yet to be understood when I talk about it, I have for the most part stopped talking about my isolation that is to this day very real for me.

Im so lonely I just want to die. Whats new.

In the next year, I was waiting tables still and somehow managed to pay off $10k for my license… on a year where I only made $24k. again, no celebration when I told my co workers about it…. I thought it was a big deal.

During that year I went to the doctor and discovered that I was literally malnourished. I was pushing it too hard with working out and keeping everything on track and my personal trainer wasn’t actually reading the food journal I sent him each night… so I got pneumonia as well….but just kept going.

I also got my Personal Training Cert and my Nutrition Counseling cert that year and started working as a Personal Trainer while I looked for a Massage job. Things were lightening up for me. The tremendous crushing weight of my entire life was lightening up.

But the reality of who my Trainer was and what a fraud he was came to the light. He was sleeping with some of his clients and I have a laundry list of unethical things he, and his business partner, were doing. When I held him accountable that was the last straw for him. He was sick to death of weathering my PTSD and how fucked up and sick I was and how fucked up I was over Thomas all the goddamn time… and additionally I was calling out all the ways he was unethical: I was bad for business. I was bad for him in the fitness community.

He kept gaslighting me to try to get me to leave but that was my community for 5 years and I didn’t know what to do…….So, Matt did whats guys do: Shes crazy… and shit talked me throughout the fitness community.  He kicked me out of his gym and I now have no gym to work out at and no trainers willing to work with me. Thanks Matt! Super appreciate you!

I maintained my own lifting program for another year but honestly, I was in it for the community and sense of belonging that I never had before in my life. Without that and with Matt shit talking me in the background so I had no support elsewhere my program started to slip…. Add to that, I had begun  working full time in massage and my shoulder got burnt out. I have a repetitive stress injury from my Amazon days that was made worse at Tough Mudder when I got my arm yanked nearly out of its socket in an obstacle… so, Lifting started to fade… and honestly, I was burnt out on the regiment of it all. I needed a break. I deserved a huge break.

I think it was right around 2014 when Mom had me come to Houston for Thanksgiving as though we are friends or she was a Mom. The highlights of that visit include her telling me the reason I wasn’t welcome in Houston during the Recession was because her husband Rumi forbade it.

(I forgot to mention that all through the years of her being with Rumi she has painted this picture of him being physically and emotionally abusive. That she was hiding money to escape him and what a horror he is. She had some secret email account that she sent me emails from at one point and told me that she was trying to hack his email to see who he was having affairs with or some other drama….. but you know if you ask Jim2 who his best friend is, its Rumi…apparently they text all the time…so, you know…she loves to lie and paint these horrific pictures of who people are to support whatever her manipulation is to get sympathy or whatever pay off)

Anyway, While I was in Houston visiting her she was acting like everything was normal and fine and that I had just made up whatever it was that I went through during the Recession. She reminded me that since I “left home” at 18 she has had to give me something like $20k in support and implied what a burden I am and how I always have my hand out. She has kept track of the financial support she gave me as a parent and wanted me to feel like shit for needing her. Cool….

Another example of how mentally deranged she is: While I was there we went out to lunch. Mind you, I have maybe $100 to my name at that time. I offered to pay for lunch at this fast food place and after we ordered she commanded me to go pick a table. So I got a booth with a chair. I sat on the booth side so I was facing the café and could see her when she came out of the restroom… I waved her over and she sat in the chair. Unbeknownst to me, the booth side made me taller than the chair side…. She got this twisted angry look and became livid that I thought I was better than her. Paying for lunch and sitting above her like that….. The next day Mom and Rumi started playing a really fun game where they forgot my name and kept calling me “Savannah” (my niece) for the remainder of the time I was there …. You know… because at 44, they saw me as a child. Nothing like a little game of erasing your daughter’s person hood and replacing it with infantilism to let your daughter know you really see her and respect her.

I really hope this is making clear why I have a strict no contact in place with her that I will never change.

Now its 2017 and I get hired at my dream job. The Spa that I am at is beautiful. My co workers are the best. I make really fine money. My mental health is slowly coming together. I got Thomas out of my life and have enough mental clarity now to really see him for who he is.  I had spent yet another holiday season alone and the isolation was killing me, as per usual…so I decided that the best thing for me to do to help pull me out of my PTSD and stop being so scared to be seen or heard would be to go to music school…. Learn how to make friends for the first time in my adult life and be with people who were not my co workers. Try to trust people again. Try to trust that I could be liked for who I am….though rejection has been a very prevalent theme in my life… Try to learn some social skills that I missed out on basically my entire life.

How to simply hang out and play….was brand fucking new to me. Music school was really really really hard… not to mention I have no musical ability and I get triggered by stress pretty quickly and freeze… but I knew it was the right thing to do to reparent the kid inside me who never learned to make friends or be in activities with others and who wanted to play drums…. So hell yeah. I did it.

Thank you to Katy,Tracy,Melissa,and Kiyan for coming out to see a couple of those shows and being there to support me. You have no idea how much that meant to me.

I thought if I could make friends there I would have people to go out with and maybe could have a chance to meet a man and have a relationship… but all the women there were married with children and had little interest in going out at night, and I still wasn’t fully integrated as a Self yet… so that was a bust.

Music school was really me making up for my 20s and 30s when I should have been out at shows and hanging with friends and making art and and dating but instead I was being mentally tortured by my entire life. I gave it a good shot, but Im a mixed media artist not a musician and that’s really that. I have to take it in stride: Bless my heart for trying. Thank you to all my bandmates for being so kind and supportive of me and for being stellar humans

I was in my first year of Music school when I met the most amazing man, Joe. He was magical. He honestly loved me for me and I loved him right back. It was fast and deep and I felt so completely seen and wanted by him and OH MY GOD I NEEDED THAT FOR SO LONG. He made incredible things happen and took me on dates that made me feel like a Queen…. But Joe was terminally ill and two months later took his own life. I was in shock again….but kept going as I do.

Also out of context of timeline: When I got into that sweet little apartment I would go down to Edge of the Circle which was just a couple blocks away and get Tarot readings from Raven and Kiyan. I didn’t know how to simply ask for friendship so I would buy Tarot readings to have someone to talk to. These two helped me so much in so many ways…through their compassion and through helping me develop my Self and my skills. Over and over again these two have shown up as real people who have treated me with integrity. People who genuinely care about me and support me in my developing personhood. Ive made it through because of them and so many others along the way.

The shitty thing about being knocked out of your self is that even though you have people around you who care, you often cant see it or feel it and like a dick minimize what people are doing for you because the all-consuming feeling that nobody is there is so much larger than the gentle loving efforts of those around you…. And what happens: you push away the people who are there for you because they have self-respect and youre unwittingly being a dick. I want to say Im really sorry about this because I know for sure Ive done this.

Also out of context of timeline: Somewhere in here I started working in Tarot and caught a lucky break and got hired at Percys to be their Reader. Huge shout out to Krista who made that so possible for me. That Tarot night did more for my sense of Self and well being than I can explain and I was a success there largely because Krista made it so beautiful and kept that night going for me.

I also want to say Thank you to Tracy, Katy, and of course Brian who were my friends and co workers at the RowHouse Café… through those early massage school years. Endless support and encouragement from these guys, even when I was too fucked up to really receive it or reflect it back. Im really lucky to have met you and have had you in my life.

It was right around the solar eclipse and the night before that hurricane hit and flooded Houston and moms house got flooded that I emailed her a long list of things she had done that hurt me and explained that I would be taking time away from her and Id let her know when we could speak again. The next morning after I sent that email I again felt puppet mastered…. But this time by the little kid inside me… I literally woke up, jumped out of bed and started to dance. I was filled with glee. I was amazed by myself. I don’t know where that came from except to say that the kid inside me was OVERJOYED to be free of her.

In the coming years I kept proving to myself that I wont let her back in and that Im safe now… and as I have been staying true to this practice of not letting her, or anyone like her, back in my life… I have become happier and more whole as a human being…. More capable of making good choices in friends and finances….

She made an attempt to contact me around the holidays this year. I saw her call but let it go to voice mail. The message she left was something to the tune of her wanting to know if I had forgiven her yet and gotten over it. …See, because its about me and what I need to do because its my damage that is the problem here…. Nothing had changed with her. It was still my fault. No apology. No self reflection. Had I forgiven her yet. For fucks sake: I will never forgive her.  

I have learned to celebrate myself, take my self on vacations and to my great delight I had friends who spent time with me and took care of me!!!!!! Incredible!!!!!, give myself the compassion and nurturing that I always wished I had and reasonably should have had from my family. I have been working on being able to see the love that is there for me from the people that I have in my life, though I still struggle with that.  I have been working so hard on Self Love, Self Respect, Healthy boundaries, creating safety and stability in my life in all way and I know that Im doing great work because my inner me, those little kids inside of me that needed a parent are really responding to the parenting Im giving them…. Check this out:

A month or so after I declined her call I was out at the café in my neighborhood, having a treat and a coffee and doing some writing. I was sitting at the table and this incredible feeling came over me as though a golden light was shining on me and I could see it glittering down on me. I started laughing and crying like when you cum really hard and youre filled with ecstasy and bliss. And then I had a vision of being in a hospital room that was in the forest… it was just two walls of the room and then the woods…I could see deer and birds. In the hospital bed there was a person in a full body cast. The cast had moss growing on it and tiny sprouts of pine trees. The Doctor walked in to the room to check on the patient. I was both the Doctor and the Patient. I told myself: Hey, its time to get you out of there. And I grabbed my circle saw and started to cut my cast from end to end and crack to open like a sarcophagus. I told myself Welcome Back! We are so glad you are here!!! Go slow, take your time getting up. No rush.

I was so elated. I walked home immediately. Upon arriving at my studio I had another vision of all the ages of myself, down to the youngest and up to the oldest and wisest all linking hands. I recognized these women as my Sisters/MySelf… all of us agreed that the next would watch out for the next and that nobody would ever hurt us again. SOUL RECLAMATION.

For the first time in my life I am here, in this body, in this present moment. The first time in my life I am ME. Im currently 6 months in to my actual LIFE. THIS IS ME. I AM HERE. OH MY GOD. I MADE IT.

Yes now, of course, the world is ending and my career in massage is tenuous at best and I might be fucked again…. But so not worried because honestly, Ive survived worse with less. So I will figure this out and keep myself alive, housed and fed.

Over the years my attempts to talk it out with Mom were pointless… she would erase my feelings and angrily tell me that it was hard on all of us. She would hold no space for me and just be my mom and have some compassion for her baby girl. Nope: It was hard on all of us so stop complaining… but see, I was a child and they were my parents and that was my family and I had no choice…. So really, at this point, Im done. Im better off on my own.

I don’t know what else to say other than those yearly years were tremendously bad for everyone in my family, yes. I can now at this time in my life see and understand why everyone did what they did…. That my parents were also victims of abuse from their parents and all that and yeah, I have compassion and Im really sorry they had to go through that….But it doesn’t make it ok or make mom someone I will let back in my life. I mean, I went through it and Ive dedicated my lifes work to helping others heal and I try to be so good to everyone around me so…. No excuses. And, I still have questions like: Fuck, why did dad never go to jail? Im guessing it was about the money…..and really, how did nobody in my family see that I needed help?

Anyway… Ive done epic amount of self work to be here today as a whole person and really change my reality to one where I have value and can share love. Im still working on it… My social anxiety is still the worst. I can barely form words into sentences when Im out in public and I dont have a job to do as my role to play....but you know, I keep trying and its easier and keeps getting easier… and I have amazing friends like Brad to have mini adventures with… and I have my Studio to do my art in and now that Im feeling so much more whole as a person I think I might actually see some work through to completion that I can be proud of… and I have a job that I love and Im getting training for some other skills to expand my skillset and I feel that things can only get better from here so

I feel so lucky to be alive and so fucking grateful to be me and I really like myself. It’s a miracle. All things are possible if you just remember: LOVE IS THE KEY and keep moving in that direction.

That’s my experience and now you know.

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via Now That’s Some Serious Chronic Fatigue. Spoon Theory 2.0? (Patreon Link Within))

October 4, 2019

Many chronically ill people eventually learn about the “Spoon Theory” of chronic fatigue, which is basically a way to explain to healthy people what it’s like when you no longer possess (or never had) virtually unlimited mental and physical energy to do what you want.   Because it’s always the responsibility of the weakest and sickest to explain ourselves to healthy people innit.  A person’s spoons are a visual representation of their physical and mental energy reserves for the day, where a physical or mental activity “costs” one or more spoons to perform and when the spoons are gone the sick person has no choice but to stop acting and rest.  With adequate rest and recovery time, hopefully their spoon reserves will replenish by the next day but that is not always the case.  Many days, seriously ill people may have no spoons at all.

Spoon Theory was described and named by a chronically ill woman and it is pretty accurate in my own experience.  For the first time in my life, after putting myself through law school, studying for and passing the bar exam, and then working more than full time in a stressful and demanding career in addition to a lifetime of “adulting” meaning maintaining a household and nurturing various parasitic males I no longer have anywhere near the energy I once had and can now barely get anything done, regardless of urgency or import.  It’s not a matter of how important anything is anymore, nor how badly I need to or want to do it.  I am not in control of that now and it is debilitating and terrifying.

Healthy people have no idea that’s even possible and they often refuse to believe it.  And that’s an example of ableism, or discrimination in policy and practice against disabled people and in favor of healthy people.  Young people seem acutely aware of the concept of spoons, chronic illness and ableism while older people seem to have not a clue; the implications of that are terrifying but I will leave that for another day.

I recently attempted to describe my own limitations to my mother, and even though as a nurse who claims to have rigorously studied the issues and thinks she knows everything there is to know about health, wellness and chronic illness (LOL) she had never even heard of “spoons” or spoon theory.  Considering that that information is literally everywhere if one only cares to look, her research skills get an F.  Her practical knowledge gets an F.  Empathy F.  Effort F.  Fucks given on behalf of the chronically ill F.  Fucks given about me and my new normal F.   Decent human being D+.  Maybe.  Maybe there’s hope, I think to myself, and at least a D+ is better than an F in that department, although the D+ is likely generous.  It’s a pretty important department and I like to think it matters but maybe it really doesn’t.  Maybe there is just no way that healthy people will ever understand or care what it’s like to be seriously chronically ill no matter how decent they are but I decide to try.

I proceed to explain my limitations to a nurse, to my own fucking mother thusly: in a week’s time, in addition to fulfilling the basic survival needs of my business, myself and my 2 adopted shelter cats (procuring nutrition and toileting basically) I can maybe cook/prepare food 5 times, clean up the mess twice, and shower once.  That means there are at least 3 times a week where I cook/prepare food and do not clean up the mess right away.  Yes, that’s a thing that happens and no, there is nothing I can do about it.  My mom responded by shrieking “bullshit!   bullshit!” into my ear, as if that changes anything except to (more) completely alienate me and yes, to waste even more of my spoons.  My mom is a garbage disposal for my spoons and causes extreme spoon deficit on the regular, or she will if I let her.  And by “let her” I mean have any contact with her; I haven’t spoken to her in a year and a half, and very little in the past 7 years since I became seriously chronically ill and that’s why.  After her most recent outburst and what it did to my spoons I think I could easily go forever without speaking with her again.

Then yesterday I came across a post by another chronically ill blogger who described her own experience with chronic fatigue in a unique way that despite my own extreme brain fog and forgetfulness generally, I will probably never forget.  Michelle reads and comments here regularly (hi Michelle!) and has recently become a fulltime boondocker which means that she lives in wilderness areas in an RV all or almost all the time.  Like most or all chronically ill people, Michelle is a “Spoonie” and suffers from chronic fatigue and has only so many fucks to give and so much energy to burn on any given day and while it’s not up to her how many spoons she has, it is kind of up to her how she spends them.   Despite her “garbage can” diagnosis of ME/CFS she does the absolute best she can, as do we all, but in her case she has particular trouble using and maintaining her bulky and temperamental portable generator and cleaning up the dishes after she cooks and eats.

The really striking (and totally relateable) part of her experience, for me, was this:

Michelle often parks her RV in bear country and dirty dishes attract bears and she knows that.  But still she cannot necessarily muster the mental and physical energy needed to clean the dishes right away and the task must be put off until the next day or possibly even the next.  Get it?   Now that’s some serious fatigue, and I (and she) don’t mean to say that she has any worse fatigue than any other chronically ill person.  She may and she may not, how would that even be measured?  Rather, I (we) mean that chronic fatigue is serious, it is seriously and unbelievably debilitating and in this post Michelle explains the reality of it so well.  She cannot do anything more than what she can do, even if when her life literally depends on it.  And in her situation her life actually does depend on it.

Do you see what I am saying?  The import and urgency of the task changes nothing, NOTHING about what she is and is not able to actually do.  When her spoons are gone that’s it, and the only way she might have a spoon left over to do the dishes is if she never even cooked at all. Do you see the problem there?  Because I do.  She can either risk being attacked by bears or not cook (and therefore maybe not even eat) at all.  From what I’ve gathered through reading her blog, Michelle will probably not decide to stop boondocking if she can help it and she has (actual, valid) reasons for that too, one of which being that boondocking gives her spoons, being in nature gives her spoons, and being peaceful and quiet preserves the spoons she does have.  If she wasn’t boondocking in beautiful natural areas, maybe she would have even less spoons than she has now.  Maybe she would have no spoons at all.

THAT is the fucking reality of serious chronic fatigue and all the cursing and shrieking and being berated by others in the world will not change it.  It doesn’t matter how much you wish things were different.  You no longer make the rules.  The woman who gestated and birthed me does not make the rules.  Michelle doesn’t make the rules.  I don’t make the rules.  If we ever made the rules we don’t make them now and there is no reality-based reason to think that we will make those rules for ourselves ever again.  I would beseech healthy people to attempt to grok that, to please for the love of God grok that shit already but even that doesn’t matter!  It doesn’t matter if healthy people grok it or not, or at least their understanding will not in itself make sick people’s material reality better or worse.

What will help, though, is if the people we rely on for comfort, companionship, conversation, money, shelter or whatever don’t waste the few spoons we have by demanding we explain shit, or destroy those spoons in the garbage disposal of their shitty shrieking ignorance.  Now that would actually help.  And by help I mean stop making it fucking worse.   That is the reality of chronic illness and chronic fatigue and that reality cannot and will not be changed, or anytime soon, not until these serious, debilitating and fatiguing chronic illnesses are able to be treated or cured.  That is not the case today where most chronic illnesses including the one I suffer from, Crohn’s disease, produce symptoms that can maybe be somewhat managed sometimes (and maybe not) but that is not the same thing as treatment and it’s hell and gone from a cure.

__________________________

And on that note, I would like to leave a link to my Patreon and ask that my readers consider and pass along this most recent request for donations.  Despite my symptoms and their all-encompassing effects on my life, I have made some progress towards getting disability and housing benefits, but it looks like I am going to need to buy myself more time (or have it purchased for me as it were).  The game has now changed somewhat and with much (well, total) effort on my part, I now have additional medical evidence to support my claims, and my disability advocate has put me in contact with an organization that may be able to help: it’s an organization that helps autistic people maintain their independence and I am hopeful that they might actually come through.  This whole time, it has seemed as if no one really cared about the Crohn’s diagnosis but now that I have an additional diagnosis of high functioning autism, my disability advocates seem hopeful that they now have something they can actually use.  And importantly, they seem keen on doing some of the legwork to actually make that happen, like helping me fill out and drop off forms and such.  That is huge.

In a nutshell, it is very important that I stay where I am for now and not lose this apartment which does take housing vouchers if I am approved for one.  That means, as soon as I am approved I will start receiving rental assistance without having to wait for an eligible apartment to become available because I am already in one.  It also means I will not have to move again, when the move I made last year nearly killed me and left me seriously depleted of spoons for an entire year.  If I have to do that again, I literally very well may be unable to do it and if I can’t, it won’t matter that my life depends on it.   Can’t is can’t when you are chronically ill.  I know many of my readers know exactly what that means.

Thank you so much for reading and thank you for your support.

Comments Open.

[citrusandbergamot]

you know, I realized something

I’ve probably been gay for like, as long as I can remember

maybe? pretty sure? 

looong post under cut just to get some shit outta my head

looking back on stuff I remembering thinking when I was quite young, I definitely didn’t know like girls was an option but I knew for sure I didn’t like boys. and I mean, I am definitely ace. I wish I could redo so much of the shit I put myself through, trying to like sex, trying to like boys. I really didn’t. I wanted to but my brain and my body wouldn’t cooperate. I used to drink so much...

anwyay not the point. 

so yeah, gay. probably. I have always liked girls more than boys in terms of friendships. I was told that was unusual by all the ‘cool’ girls. They were friends with boys, cause girls are too much drama (lol). I remember being told this when iwas about 12 and thinking, but why would you hang out with boys at all? All boys did was make fun of me and tell stupid fart jokes. I cou;dn’t wrap my head around it. I’ve never had more than a handful of male friends. 

so girls. but like, had no idea how to handle it mostly cause my mom is like, super anti-girl. just, not consciously, but it’s always there. she calls women’s sports boring, she makes comments about slutty clothing (which is not actually slutty? but to her it’s uncouth). Every tv show she’s ever liked, she hates most of the women. The only woman character in all of star trek canon she liked was Jadzia Dax. Kira was too angry, Seven too curvy, Kes too useless, Beverly had too much makeup, Deanna too useless, it goes on, it goes on. I once said I didn’t want to watch some old movie because I didn’t feel like watching 2 hours of something with no women in it. All men, every scene. It’s so boring. And my mom was like, yeah, but that’s how it was (back then). To which I said, yeah, there were women who worked there, even back then, it’s just easier to pretend that there wasn’t. 

(My mom is a big believer in tv and movies being ‘accurate’ to how she remembers stuff being. It’s funny, I told her I was in a play by a local playwright and she said, oh yeah, I saw the film of another one of his stories. Really offended my mother, because it was about a coal miner and his daughter. My mother’s father was a coal miner (”--and he didn’t act like that! My father was a gentle man.”)

To which I said, yeah, but the play wasn’t about your father? The playwright wasn’t saying all coal miners were like this??? It’s a story? that needed characters to behave in semi-ghastly ways?  My mother has such rigidity about her way of thinking. Like I told her I thought my older brother is on the autism spectrum (and like, yeah, he is, both my brother and I think so). But my mom immediately said, ‘no, he’s not, I taught autistic children in the schools and your brother is nothing like that. he’s normal, just shy.’ The kids in the schools she’s talking about are the ones who are non-verbal, who scream all the time, who run around and hit their heads against things. That’s the schema for autism she has in her brain. And so anything that doesn’t fit that clearly isn’t autism! Right.) 

It’s just so...argh, the older I get the more I notice it. But like, I can now look back and realize that yeah, I kinda did notice girls when I was young. and then I fully adopted the ‘i’m not like other girls’ mentality and then I got into fanfic, which, you know, wasn’t that nice to female characters back in the day. still isn’t, but it’s not what it used to be, thank the gods. 

anyway long story very short, I’m kind of sick of my mother (and other people I know irl) constantly favouring men. I definitely took the lesson that you’re not supposed to like women to heart when I was young. It’s... kind of hard to walk that shit back. Also doesn’t help that girls are slightly intimidating? At least the ones I find attractive. I want a girlfriend who can crush men’s spirits with her glare, and I become the stupidest, dullest person on the planet whenever I meet that kind of girl.  

Anyway, this is all come to light again because I was in the house by myself for a week (and it was gloooooorious). So much of my mental gymnastics comes from stuff I picked up from my mother. I mean, I think she’s also on the autism spectrum, she’s the most ravenclaw person you’ve ever met, thinks her rationality is infallible, she’s a libra, (i grew up in a house full of air signs, and let me tell you, I’m the leaast grounded person you’ve ever met, also, every single person in this family can make me so mad, like oxygen being pumped into a flame. Aries really need some non-air signs in their lives.) and I’m fairly sure that she’s got some aro/ace tendencies.  just....it’s weird living here. It’s really weird. I grew up in this house. I’ll probably die in this house. I never thought I’d be here, you know? I moved away from this island as soon as a could and then came crawling back again, and again, and again. But it’s not a bad life here. I don’t want to buy a house somewhere else. I don’t really want to live here either. it’s... weird. I don’t think I’d be happier on my own. But at the same time, argh argh argh, parents and their issues and then their issues with their kids that they pass off as fact.

[ih8me2ash]

My Journal Entries (post #18)

( Word Count:  2356 )

“My name was safest in your mouth, and why'd you have to go and spit it out? Your voice, it was the most familiar sound, but it sounds so dangerous to me now. I have questions for you.. ” 

  "It's been a few years since you've been gone, and there's not a day that I don't think about you. I grew up to be exactly what you wanted, I've been living out the dream that you dreamt up. Because honestly life is a nightmare when I even think of a memory of you. You still haunt me, and you’re not even close enough to touch me, see me, breathe my air, not even close enough to hurt me.. So I thought, all you have to do is sit in you’re throne of lies, as the whiplash will hit me harder than a hurricane. What did I ever do to you that made you hate me so aggressively, when you mixed it so erroneously with the word love? And that was the worst part of this endless occurring heartache. That you would never admit you’re true feelings about my whole entire existence. Love is a word you don’t throw around so nonchalantly, effortlessly, easily, you get the point, you don’t throw that word around if you don’t mean what you say, and say what you mean. " “The only closure at this point for me is not the death threats, not the aggressive rants, the insults, the claims of me lying. It’s you finally saying those three words, do you want to know what it is? Come’on it’s okay to guess, no answer? Okay, I’ll say it. I want you to say “I hate you.” To my face, via text, to me. Because I know this time you’ll mean it.”  “You said, you’d love me like a sister would love her real sister. So tell me this, when I ask the question, “why.” Everytime I try to think of a time when you weren’t trying to use me.. Emotionally, physically, verbally, sexually, constantly,  you loved me like a sister my ass... And I kept it inside, all of it, to make you happy.. To make a facade of a happy life, so most nights I wouldn’t cry myself to sleep because of the things you would say and do to me.. And I don’t want people to believe me, I could care less who is on my side or not. Because I know what happened, it’s my body.. And you took it from me, you took my innocence, you took the only thing that mattered to me, and that was myself.. You still have that part of me, and honestly, you can keep it, if that’s what helps you sleep at night. Because that’s a piece of myself that I never want back,  Why did you leave me here to burn? I’ve combusted into flames, and rose from the ashes that held the spot of my body in graved into the soil. Reborn into the person that I, myself wanted to always be.  ”  “I think, you’re scared that I’m off my leash and chain, that this poor dog is going to cry and whine. But I don’t want to keep this negative vibe in-caved into my soul, sure I can rant and rave all I want. But what is the actual point of that? Fame? Attention? Fake friends built on a bridge of insecurities trapped behind a mask? Oh doesn’t that sound like the dream, but it’s not the dream I wish for myself. So I blocked all the people who even remotely associate themselves with you. To avoid the drama you and them bring along in the air to make me the slightest bit upset. Because I’m not unhealthy, I’m not obsessed by spreading mockery through out non-important peers, I’m not in controlling the media to turn myself into the victim, who wants to play the victim anyways? It’s really boring.“ “Speaking of playing victim; I love how you thought I would even been the slightest pushed away from our own brother, because the woman that called herself his step-mother. Let’s get one thing straight, I cried the whole time because she use this get together that was supposed to be about our brother but making it about trying to eat me alive. To torment, ridicule, jeopardize, snarl, nit-pick, bite, and poke at me. You know she acts like our real mother right? So you understand that she’s a psychopath? That now she verbally abuses him? He was trying to have fun, but you know that’s kind of hard when he kept being reminded of the bad things that happen to us. And not once did I mentioned the gun thing, because I did not want to trigger our “non-autistic” brother. Yes, to her the woman you think so highly about, thinks that our brother isn’t normal if he has autism and labels him with OCD?”   “Let’s take a step by step of how I felt that day, and let’s use a bland word I don’t want to use but that’s how it made me feel.. I felt like I was all alone, and now I’m a shame to our family because I didn’t choose them to run to. But you want to know something? Now that I think about it, I never belonged in the first place. You all are such hostile and violent people, I could never compare myself to you all, not even in a single timeline. It’s kinda embarrassing now that I think about it, all my family is good at, is making a big seen in public in make an absolute ass out of themselves. Hysterical, because to be honest my real family is just a joke to me. Of course, their are a few decent people in the bunch, but two have passed away, of natural and murder causes, one is on his way of dying, and going legit senile, and the last one is my brother who has a crazy bitch-ass of a step-mother holding him captive, making it crystal clear that she does not want him communicating with me. But seventeen years, beats two years. I raised him, not his father, not his real mother, not his step-mother, it was Nana and I.. And I was the one taking care of the family, went Nana couldn’t anymore, or at least I tried.”  “No one can say I didn’t do anything for anyone, while my sister was having fun getting knocked up on pills she could get in her body, I was making money, the same with Alex to support the family of not going hungry.. While balancing helping around the house, helping my brother with his homework, and getting caught up with mine always the hour before school started. She couldn’t keep a fucking job either, and when she got money, it went to things that were only for her, like drugs, booze, make-up, unnecessary things that we could not lived on.. And if my aunt said she cared and she loved me, then why the hell did she not check up on us? Did she think a 21 year old could take care of a family of five? This is the stuff the hit me so hard. It burns, and I’ve been made into the ashes of the pain and suffering that has been. This world is just a crazy fire, and I am a log being thrown in to it.”  

“She’s in love with the concept, as if we’re all just how she imagined. How we talked shit like we knew what we wanted, I still remember what she said.“I don’t need your love anymore.” It’s easier if she thinks she won so I’m going to let her think all she wants. Look at us burning down in flames for kicks but just know, I’m not saying this for your love, I’m just saying this because it’s over. And I used to blame myself, then I blamed everybody else, but never you because you were just a messed up kid, who’d step in it, get mad, and say you didn’t give a shit about anyone besides you. But I won’t change for you anymore, I’m ash. And I’m proud of myself. From where I came from, to where I stand now. It’s probably the most improvement that has ever even occurred in my life. Now can I say that I’m happy? Not at this point just yet, I’m still fighting my “demons” after all. Most try to end up physically in my life, but my emotions are always on high alert. Never calm with the feeling of you ever trying to control me again, which makes me sick to my stomach. ”  “I’ve been thinking about talking to you after the five years are up, this is for you to understand, that my existence even grazing your bubble occurs on your actions and how you decide to treat me in a few words. Treat me the way you want to be treated, and if you treat me like shit, that I’ll throw it back into your face like acid. Can’t say I didn’t try, and to be honest I know til this day, you haven’t changed. But I have, because I didn’t want hatefulness to control who I want to become later on in my life. I was tired of the gossip, so I dropped everyone who still talked about you, because you want to know something? I still love you, even if you fucked me up.. I think you fucked me up, I don’t know, sometimes I believe I could of done something, somewhere to make you stop all of the pain you have cause onto me. But sometimes you got to let go of some beliefs. Because I understand, you’re the type of person that cries wolf, and when someone tries to even help you out of the teeth gripping onto you’re limp body, that you’d swat away the hands of caring. Not even the most loving, supporting, caring, person in the world can even remotely take care of someone like that. Toxic, the only word I can use to describe you so clearly.”

“If you ever think about on a point in time where I ever hurt you, it doesn’t exist, because you made me out of that image to always support you.. And I was tired of being you’re security blanket, you learn when you could find other people to be fed out of you’re hands that you didn’t need me anymore. That in you’re eyes it was me who was never perfect to you. When in reality, you were the one who had so many insecurities  that you didn’t want to claim you had. You didn’t want to be the damaged and the damned, it feels hopeless doesn’t it? That’s how you made me feel all those years, without you even batting an eye about my problems. Because in the end, it’s always about you. Never about the people you tend to surround yourself with, and honestly I think you would care less about them. You just don’t want to be alone, but you already are. ”  “Those people, aren’t you’re family. You say that they are, but family doesn’t hurt you. They don’t make you feel unwanted and alone. They make sure you’re okay, and if you’re not, they say “it’s okay, we’ll work this out, and we’ll find away to make it okay.” That’s why I didn’t go to my real family, because I knew they would never do that for me. They would never care as much to look at me the same, and just blame me for everything that happened to me. As if I didn’t do that to myself already, for every second in this life.. But not anymore, people like Alex, DeAndre and Jennifer, know who is really at fault.. It was never me, but you. “ “Some part of me wants to know, if you ever understood your actions and were willing to take any of the consequences, and all this time acting dumb to it all? or were you just so mentally inefficient, or in a simpler way of putting it “to many screws lose,” that you didn’t really believe what you were doing to me was ever in the wrong? Because when I bring it up to a “normal” person, the same thing comes up of how you’re beliefs are invalided, or even cryptic. And they are disgusted of the fact that you still classify as an innocent person. When I was used by such a appalling person who dare called herself a “perfect older sister.” I still have flashbacks, now knowing everything was a lie and that you only wanted me to get your frustration out. Such a tedious tactic, or even better, such a cliche tactic.”  “You, even, forced me to smoke weed and get wasted with you! I never wanted to do any of the things that you thought I wanted to do, because I wasn't who you thought I was. You painted this picture of the perfect sister, and I struggled to fit my odd shaped puzzle piece into it, but I never could. Every time that I failed to do what you wanted me to do, you would yell at me and I would yell back, then you would shove me, push me into things, slap me, or threaten to sit on me. It doesn’t matter if you say that I wanted to smoke with you, it still against you! I was a minor, a kid, and you were supposed to be there for me, and not there to hurt me even farther. Because you cannot face the truth, that you are not defective, the world is. The only defect that you have, is that you don't know what love is, and I fear that you never will. You push away everyone that does love you, and manipulate those who are close to you. They should get their priorities straight, of what devil lives under their covers.”   “I can say now, that I’m in someway or shape of form of a so called survivor, of so many list of things.. I was finally diagnosed with Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), I’ve apparently had it since a very young age. I’ve also been  diagnosed with depression and anxiety, anorexia, and panic attacks. I don’t know if you understand what this means, but sometimes I can’t sleep at night, I’m scared too. I can’t be around people often, or I’ll have an overload of thoughts that will come to mind that have actually successfully made me blackout or faint. I actually hate having these problems, I can’t even cuddle my boyfriend because sometimes he touches me to hold me in a better position and I will have flashbacks and I’ll choke back tears.. He can’t even kiss me often because it scares me.. I’m terrified of life because of what you and mom have done to me..”  “Petrified of women authority figures, or who are mothers, or even mothers to me. I don’t want to be female because women are never good in my eyes because you showed me what their actually capable of.  It’s not a phase I promise, and you calling me by my prefer pronouns made me disgusted, because you’re the one who said you would disown me if I ever changed my name or my gender. Being a kiss ass, doesn’t, make, me, like, people. It’s just makes you look ignorant, and cheap with words. I was taught, that people’s  options and opinions are valid in the real world, so why try so hard to bite you’re tongue. Don’t even want to call me a faggot or a disappointment to the family like everyone else did? They didn’t even know I identify as a male. They just go off the fact that I’m a liar and that I can never be trusted. Because I lied about the abused that went on in that house, you think they believe me if I said you molested me as a minor for three years? Of course not, because I was always the outcast in our family, I was the weird shy mutt. The one who was putting a dint in the financials of my mother’s pocket because I was “ill”, which I found out that I have a upj kidney obstruction, not kidney failure, mom lied to you all to get more pills about of the doctors. 

- ａｓｈｔｏｎ ♡

[tarynisbunhead]

People will claim anything is Autism now, and seriously shut the fuck up.  It’s not a trend!  Like are you for real with this shit right now?!  This is why people don’t believe people who actually have medical conditions and mental illnesses. Be mad I seriously have never cared.

Watching a simple video of two toddlers in a Halloween costume and one is walking around the living room on their tippy toes.  Some idiot woman has to get on her soapbox and almost diagnose this kid as autistic by saying “walking on tip toes is a sign of Autism” you know, because her autistic son walks on tip toes all the time.  So if her son started wearing eyeliner and shaved half his head does that mean everyone who did the same thing is Autistic?  I have no doubt her son is Autistic but the way she’s acting, I see it all the time from other moms “My child does this and that means Autism”, this is dangerous and stop diagnosing other children because you’re not an expert.  Then you have all these moms rage about how that isn’t Autism but it could be tight hamstrings and just SERIOUSLY SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!  It was just a video about two kids in their Halloween costume, why can’t you just sit and say “yay adorable!”, is it really that fucking hard in 2022 to watch something and just be entertained?!  I swear everyone thinks they’re an expert on shit because they read ONE book or blog post on the subject.  When I was diagnosed with Epilepsy I had everyone and their ancestors telling me I couldn’t do things, when I went to my doctor about it he said “well last I checked I’m the one who went to med school and they didn’t.” For real, morons telling me how to live my life because of a medical condition they never heard of?  Fuck all the way off.

Children run on their tip toes, it’s a common thing since the dawn of time holy fucking shit.  I did it before I was ever thrown in dance classes!  Three years old and I ran around on my tippy toes like it was no damn deal, baffled my parents how I could RUN on my tip toes and not fall down.  So after my foot surgery, when I needed to get my balance back they threw me in dance.  Twenty years of watching kids at the studio and before they even start their ballet/tap classes - they tippy toe around the lobby.  Even students I had would do it, I’ve worked with kids for years and even see kids in the stores doing it.  It’s not an Autism thing and it’s not a stupid tight hamstring thing, children are just active because they want to see everything.  Unlike you they’ve only been on planet Earth how may years?  Yeah, that’s what I thought. Stop with these “expert opinions” and let kids be kids.

All children pick their nose and eat glue, I can imagine people are going to claim that’s a sign of autism.  It’s not, kids can be just plain gross

[timeisacephalopod]

1 & 99 for the Get In My Business Please question list?

The meaning behind my url:

If you’re talking my writing blog URL its literally just what my AO3 name is, which was chosen when I was 18 and liked Criminal Minds a lot. In hindsight it was a bad choice but I can’t change it now lmao. If you’re talking my personal blog (ridingcthulhudick) I just thought it was hilarious. And if anyone quoted my blog in an actual publication they’d have to print that my blog name is not appropriate lmao.

Have you ever met someone who didn’t seem real?

When I got this question I was like ‘do you answer on your phone’ and decided no because I have some fucking tales ok. You guys have all heard about this person if you’ve followed me for awhile- this is the person that I called on racism and she didn’t show up to school for a week after. But that is really only the tip of the ice berg.

So I meet this person at the beginning of my school year, who like me is named after a season, and she’s odd- wearing a cowboy hat with all these fandom pins and ok. That’s strange but ok. Then she starts talking, goes on an on about her kids, I discover that she’s 27 but if I were to age her by actions, style of dress, and mannerisms I’d put her at 17 and that’s only because she was in post secondary so that’s the youngest she could be. Otherwise I would have gone 15. And she has 2 kids. So ok. I leave and something is off about her but people can be eclectic and I don’t like being judgmental so I leave it be and let her actions speak for themselves rather than jumping to conclusions.

Class starts and she never. Shuts. The. Fuck. Up. And I don’t mean like useful advice, or even interesting facts that are irrelevant to the class but at least neat to know like another student in the class does. I mean every. Fucking. Thing. Out of her mouth is useless. So we all decide she’s annoying amongst each other and we all start to back away slowly.

Now we may seem like dickheads at this point but keep in mind, within a week, we all knew these things about her: she has 2 kids that were taken by child services and she complains about it a lot, she has an obsession with tiny houses, she’s a bronie and sometimes takes commissions for bronie porn, she’s a furry- which isn’t inherently bad but combined with the rest it just becomes another weird thing about her, she’s homophobic but also pansexual (??), she has a fiancee, but maybe also 2 boyfriends, we still aren’t sure and we’ve found her scrolling in dating sites, she’s an artist but I literally drew better at 12 (though in her slight defense I am naturally gifted at drawing), she tried to start a conversation with a friend of mine about incest on a busy street, and has a weird obsession with The Human Centipede. This isn’t even all of it, this is just the first fucking week.

So the semesters go by and in my school they’re 3 months long, which is a little shorter than normal universities, and we just got through our 3rd term. Here is what we know now. She lives in a small city (a couple hundred thousand people), but talks about it like its a small ass town like the one I came from (which is under 2000 people). Another student lives in the same city and has no fucking clue what she’s talking about. She’s sexist and racist (like hella racist- once she claimed that because she grew up with some Natives in her life she is one. That’s not how it works, and given how confused she seems to be on various cultural aspects that I know of from Natives in our area- which is admittedly not a lot I will full well acknowledge- this is a total lie). And she’s L O S T on all social cues. And not in a way where some people, like people on the autistic spectrum, are- I mean she intentionally has ignored social rules her whole fucking life and expects everyone to compensate for her bullshit kind of way.

And that’s a whole other thing. Not only is she racist, sexist, and homophobic, but she also has this obsession with bullying. She’s always on about high school (mostly in regards to herself- I will remind you all she’s 27) and bullying and has, on several occasions, defended school shooters and claimed they did it because bullying. As your local queer kid in a small, very homophobic town, eat shit bud white boys don’t school shoot because they were bullied- signed every other minority ever. Anyways. This grates my nerves and keep in mind I am a patient person, so I don’t like being That Guy. But there comes a point where I can’t morally or logically stand by when you’re an asshole. So a friend of mine from class was talking racism and she goes on what is essentially a #NotAllWhitePeople rant, claiming we should leave racism in the past and focus on the now, blah, blah. So I was like no, we have to examine the past because it continues to influence the present- to break this down into a smaller event this would be like a person in an abusive relationship focusing on processing their trauma and moving on from it- you gotta acknowledge the past to move forward.

WELL, she was not having this so I called her racist, because she continued on pulling the ‘colorblind’ argument, which is a fucking cop out so I said it. She was all ‘that’s my OPINION’ so I was like well then your opinion is racist, like shit son don’t hit me with that crap. In this exchange we’ve traded a good four sentences or so back and forth and the student that was originally talking racism (and the only brown person in this discussion) offered a single sentence of support for my argument. But she was silent for most of it. Well once More Annoying Tomi Lauren stomped off we find out she whined and cried about the brown woman eating her ass when it was my lily white ass that went all in. I was pissed.

Anyways. So we’ve established that she’s an asshole, and also weird as fuck. Lets run a highlight reel of this person: obsessed with tiny houses, general asshole, also emotionally manipulative but I didn’t even get time to cover that, looks and acts like a particularly annoying 15 year old (I’m so sorry to 15 year olds, you all deserve better than being lumped in with this), has an obsession with bullying but defends her racism (???), has the aesthetic of someone who shops at Claires and the lost and found exclusively, every single character she writes is a self insert (and I hadn’t covered that either- fuck I have tales ok), constantly monopolizes class time by yapping about shit no one cares about, thinks the Big Bang Theory is a good show, can’t take criticism for shit, and has more confidence than Joss Whedon when he wrote Age of Ultron.

There is more people- I didn’t actually touch on the emotional manipulation, which often links in with the bullying obsession, or any of the self inserts let alone her actual attempts at story. I didn’t even touch on all her racist Facebook posts or that time she whined about the gender neutral Canadian anthem (changed recently), which resulted in my sourcing that the fucking anthem was gender neutral when it was written, then was changed, and is now being changed back so at least know the fucking history of the anthem before whining and crying about it being changed. This is just what I remembered off the top of my head.

A friend and I from class once went out with a bud of his and we were talking about her and halfway through I realized she sounds fake. It sounds like writers all sat down in a room and were like ‘what pile of weird and asshole traits can we give a person?’ and then we created her. But we did not, we would not intentionally let ourselves suffer that way. And, AND, this is key- you’ve all read my writing here. You know I can create whole worlds with various levels of efficacy- I’ve written almost 200 stories that I’ve put on my AO3- but I simply am not creative enough to invent this person. I never would have combined ‘racist, self insert writing, tiny house obsessed person who thinks the Human Centipede is a movie that makes you think’. I wish that last part was a fucking joke but that’s deadass a quote. It is not a movie that makes you think. Wolf of Wall Street is a movie that makes you think assuming you figure out its a satire intentionally making fun of every white male power fantasy ever, not the fucking human centipede.

Conclusion: If you are so generally off the rails that a writer who prefers writing fantasy and science fiction is not creative enough to have invented you you are Some Shit ok. Like Hannibal Lecter is a character someone invented and that guy probably couldn’t have come up with my seasonal nemesis ok. There’s just too much to unpack there and she’s too willing to throw it all at us like a monkey flinging turds. I can’t believe this is a real human being. I wish I didn’t know she was, but if I have to suffer so do all of you.

[sweetandsavageautistic]

Autism and Being Infantilized/Patronized/Talked Down To.

I’m really interested in this part of autism, idk why. I believe it’s often come up in my writing well before I knew the term “infantilization” existed. It started with my fear of being in a birdcage. Then I had a few antagonists who would try to tell my protagonist that, well, here are some excerpts from my books. Try to find a pattern:

Book 3:

“’You aren't going to kill us, are you?’ I ask her. Antonia turns to me and gives me a look of shock. ‘Kill you? Heavens no!’ she exclaims as she walks over to us. ‘I have much better ideas of what to do with you and your friends than just kill you off. Much better ways. And besides, I wouldn't want to kill off someone like you so soon. Someone so young, so ignorant, so naive, so--so--so--little.’ My muscles begin to tense up at the sound of the word. ‘What did you call me?’ I ask through clenched teeth. ‘You're too young,’ Antonia giggles. ‘You haven't lived a full afterlife yet. You need to stay here with me.’ ‘Why should I?’ ‘Because I know best. Oh, don't worry, Liberty. It will be fun. It'll be like having a family again-only without your stupid, little brat of a sister, Lucette. Or that idiotic coward of a man you call your father. Or that abusive woman, Helena.’ ‘Don't play that game with me. You leave my family out of this, you bitch!’ I growl. ‘Uh, uh, uh!’ Antonia scolds as she places her finger on my mouth. ‘Such a little girl shouldn't be using such language, especially to her new mother.’"

“’Oh, that's too rich! A speech like that, coming from such a stupid, ignorant, naive, young, dependent, little girl who doesn't even know what she's saying. Oh, how precious, Liberty!’ Antonia turns to her army. ‘Isn't my little girl just the most precious, little thing you've ever seen?’"

Book 4:

“’We thought that you had gone into a coma for good,’ Ella says. ‘Shh!’ Melissa shushes, ‘Let's not fill our Liberty's head with such horrifying tales. She's young and impressionable. We should treat her as such.’"

"’What's with the cup?’ I ask. ‘We thought that you'd like some more tea,’ Ella tells me. ‘I told you. I'm good,’ I point out. "Nonsense," Melissa laughs. ‘You're only thirteen. You can't possibly know what you want yet.’ ‘I'm not that young, Melissa,’ I growl. ‘I know what I want.’ ‘Stop it,’ Melissa chortles as she strokes my hair. ‘Stop making me laugh. You're just a baby-you're far too young to know what you're talking about.’"

"’Why the fuck are we here?’ ‘Liberty,’ she gasps. ‘A little girl like you shouldn't be using such language.’ ‘I'll say whatever the hell I want. You're not my mother.’"

"’But why my voice?’ ‘I'd tell you why, but I don't think such a little, little girl would understand such complex words.’ ‘Don't try with me, Antonia,’ I growl. ‘Oh you can dish it, but you can't take it, little dear?’ ‘Age doesn't define strength.’ ‘That's where you're wrong,’ she chuckles.”

"’We're the same, you and I. We both enjoy the lust of killing those who deserve it. It's like a drug that you take when it's absolutely necessary. You could be my daughter. My little, little daughter.’"

This next one is kinda long, but bare with me:

"’I thought such a little girl couldn't make such grown up decisions all on her own.’ I begin to feel myself heating up. 'Control yourself,' I think. 'She's only trying to stimulate a reaction from you. That's what she wants.' ‘We thought such a stubborn, little child wouldn't want to go back willingly. We thought you only had the mind of a newborn infant, and you probably still do.’ I can feel my fists clenching up. 'Release,' I think as the two of them begin to circle me. ‘But look at you. You're realizing where you're meant to be; with us. Singing for us and us alone. It's the only thing you're useful for. Isn't that right, Ella?’ ‘Indeed. If she's not singing for us, she's worthless.’ ‘Useless.’ ‘Hopeless.’ ‘Powerless.’ ‘Helpless.’ ‘Better off dead.’ ‘Lifelessly dead, you mean?’ ‘Of course. I'd forgotten how her mother abandoned her in the forest one night. Oh, how tragic! Her mother never cared about her. She never wanted such a freak as her child.’ ‘Outcast.’ ‘Mistfit.’ 'Abomination.’ ‘Monster.’ ‘Demon.’ ‘I remember she hit her and left her to die. Fortunately we are merciful souls. You're no monster. You're a wonder.’ ‘Beauty.’ ‘Angel.’ ‘Musical.’ ‘A princess.’ ‘Lovely.’ ‘Sweet.’ ‘Youthful.’ "Alas, we didn't get to her in time. Now look at what we have brought upon her. All of this running and fighting isn't meant for such a delicate, little treasure.’ ‘Not at all.’ ‘Oh, poor dear! It must frighten her so. I'm surprised she hasn't broken down crying. But then we came along; her saviors.’ ‘Is that so?’ ‘Indeed. By keeping her in that room, we were doing her a life-saving favor. But she thought we were in the wrong-bless that naive mind of hers-and decided to run away.’ ‘How naive.’ ‘Precisely. However there's still time for her to change her mind.’ Melissa suddenly stops in front of me. ‘Well?’ I give her a blank glance. ‘Oh, poor darling! She's so afraid of this world and her ordeals that she's lost all emotion. She's missing out on a life of luxury; a life free of pain and suffering. Free from all the bad people. Tell me, Liberty. What do you say? Does this interest you?’ ‘Your words do not intrigue me in the slightest,’ I answer bluntly. ‘May that always be the case.’ ‘You're willing to reject a life of luxury and protection for a life where you could die at any given moment?’ ‘Knowing I'll have people I can trust beside me when I die for their sake, yes.’ ‘Oh, you are so naive! I don't think you realize, when you come down to it, we're the only two people you can trust.’ ‘Is that so?’ I growl. ‘Of course. Would your so-called friends lead you to a portal that led into an apocalyptic world from which you almost didn't escape from?’ My stomach jumps up into my throat. ‘Or would they let you get knocked out and taken captive?’ My heart palpitates violently. ‘Or treat you like a child, even when they know you don't like it? I don't think so. We would never let any of that happen to you, would we Ella?’ ‘Never.’ ‘Now do you believe us? If you come back to your rightful place, you won't risk getting into any trouble or even getting killed. You don't want to be chloroformed again, do you?’ I gasp and it all becomes clear. ‘Those figures outside the tavern. The rag. All of that. It was you!’ ‘What on earth is she talking about?’ ‘Don't talk nonsense. We best be going if we want to get our little dear home safely.’ ‘I'm not going anywhere with you, bitch!’ I growl.”

So what’s the pattern here?

If you said they all involve the protagonist being infantilized, you’re correct.

I’m honestly realizing just how much the theme of infantilization has kinda bled into my writing. 

Maybe everything I wrote is an allegory for the current treatment of autistics. 

Because this is literally what people seem to think of autistics. 

Maybe my protagonist, Liberty Anne, is actually autistic. (Fun Fact: Liberty Anne was actually the name that I got printed on the back of my senior shirt in high school)

But I’m curious; what are your experiences with being infantilized because of being autistic? Reblog or comment yours if you want.

[mermaidfan76]

Homeless Autistic Girl

Hey guys... this really kills me to ask, however right now I’m homeless at the moment.

Technology, I’m living with a long time friend who is hounding me to find a job since she believes it’s just so damn easy and move out by The end of February. I’ve put out application after application and only maybe a couple have called back for an interview. Only for them to tell me the same exact thing over and over, “You don’t seem like you will do well for this job.” With out even giving me a garsh darn chance to show them I’m willing to work my butt off.

Yet, they hire people who are literally ALLERGIC to manual labor, and pay them twice the wage to appease them so they don’t get sued. It pisses me off. I have Autism and PTSD, I watched my mother and fathers beloved dog get run over by a car, I know these people have mommy and daddy’s that coddle them. My parents died on September 22, 2013. My sister’s threw me out in the cold and said I’m on own. I’m still here, sadly. Not one day goes by and I don’t think about giving up and killing myself. Love to give that bayberry (under a new name) Bitch and all the rest what they wanted in the first place! With heartless pieces off shit like them in this world, I definitely don’t feel it’s worth the aggravation!

You push, you kick, you fight, you bite, you bunch, but guess what you end up someone else’s lunch! It’s survival of the fittest and you’ve won the game if you have Money, Fame, and/or Power! Just 1 on these gives you the right to control poor peoples lives!

You can play the advocate for good all day, but turning a blind eye to the innocent people that are truly in pain by the very people you are advocating for. Who’s the real villain? Saying the people who did nothing deserve it because someone said its poetic revenge... read a book. Get your facts straight, you really think they would attack now? Why didn’t they attack back then? People don’t postpone revenge -_-...

(if I had a grudge against a person, I’d want to get them now, not expect my descendants to attack his descendants. 1. How do I know if they’ll follow through? 2. What if everything is patched up and my other descendants didn’t know that and still desire to take their revenge? (They don’t even know what the whole argument is about... could be about stealing the last slice of pizza) This is about taking over the world just like before! We stopped them once! They’re trying again, however they fooled you!)

So with politics, islamphopia (more like not wanting an ideology of woman haters who desire to take over any free country and turn it to a world of oppression and insanity), racism (a political term used when a white person doesn’t agree with you), feminist (because women are oppressed because they have tits and a vigina), fatphopia (because veggies don’t taste like cake, if they did we’d still become fat, why? Because we’d get sick of sweets and want savory tasting veggies that you only get from cake... oh the irony), LBGT without Q (Queers are just feminist men who are really flamboyant gays... and real gays try to avoid, ever heard the term, “Queer as a Clock work Mouse.” Man I miss my English mother! The LBG, The Les, The Bi, and The Gay, do as you wish... Hey I’m you Bi, I find shapely girls just Be A U Ti Ful to draw, have to get that full body motion. Gays, love ya, best guy friends and you give perfect fashion advice, Lesbians, you’re very easy going and easy to talk to, al yal are A O Kay in my book. Trans, um... look umm... I’m female... I have more of a male mind... we can find common ground here can’t we?) and that’s what I go through everyday. Half the words I’m called... how do they apply to me? Like racist? I judge by character, not by skin tone.

(All I see is another human being in front of me. If you act like you’re above a human being, than I’ll treat you the way you treat me. Not one human is above another. If you have earnt that privilege than you are granted that only by the people who gave you such power, however they have the power to take it away. That is the true purpose of the second Amendment! In short; “a president is a civil servant to the people of his/her country that he/she has sworn to protect! As such nothing is beneath them!”)

I really wish people would do their homework...

My friend I was talking about earlier; well she’s not only getting on my case about finding a job, but she’s also pissing me off about politics. Her plan is to be an American History Teacher. She wants to teach her class how America was founded on the “Socialistic” Principles we use today and that’s bullshit! We wouldn’t have many of our largest company products that I bet everyone of you see every single day, more than likely every minute of your day.

(For Starters:

Let’s start off with Ford, if America was a Socialistic Society, well then all of you who drive a Ford let alone a car in general, would walk everywhere. If it wasn’t for Ford’s Model T being a Successful test run clearing the way to Model A. Ford’s company could only up from there. (Btw: anyone who drives the VMW Bug- just a little trivia for you did you know that the original design was created by Adolf Hitler himself? Adolf Hitler was the original Designer for the shape of that car the VMW Bug, just a little tid pit I know from Graphic Design School, hope that doesn’t ruin your VMW driving experience:D)

Another one I’d like to point out: McDonald’s, that famous Golden Arches fast food places started as a ma and pa rest stop, now it’s one of the biggest fast food chains in the world! Mickey D’s started again in America! Again how is that possible in a Socialistic society?

Socialism is structured to where everyone is equal... equal pay... equal healthcare... equal quality of living... doesn’t count the politicians! In this system if you work you’re an idiot. Those who sit on their ass get everything handed to them, those who work their asses off barely survive. So why bother putting yourself through that much torture. Because:

No one working:

No power

No cable

No doctors

No teachers

No police

No food

No safety

No security...

Why? This would have been a good thing! This here proves Socialism doesn’t work!

If everyone decided to not work because they’re getting ripped off; than America shuts down! The government is screwed! And so are the moochers!)

Those are only two examples of capitalism being a good thing.

There is so much more... not to mention the feminist aspects like Susan B. Anthony: Voicing her “opinion” by voting for who she thought would be a good president. Of course the judge was going to let her off with a warning because “woman privilege” (woman today would be like okay and do it again), however she, Susan B. Anthony, A Real Feminist, (no Feminist is an insult to her, She a Real Woman, The Genuine Wonder Woman!) demanded she was sentenced to jail just like any man who broke the law! (Please oh please can we do that to these modern, pussies who call themselves women!) The first woman to fly a plane over the pacific Amelia, or the women who rose up against unjust treatment Rosa Parks, I mean come on. Worst of all is, she’s being taught tha John Wilkes Booth was Republican and Abraham Lincoln was Democrat... and it’s reversed. There’s a saying the liberals came up with: “if those damn n$&@€ must vote then they should only vote Democrat!”

My friend has become heartless and greedy, I’m in a fucked up spot because of a malicious brat who played innocent and didn’t understand what happens when you compromise. It’s not one side surrenders and the other gains, but what do I expects from the preppy college school type, (not all preppy girls are mean, I just have this personality that sends the wrong vibes and makes them more territorial)AKA mean girl type... however, this girl demanded everything goes her way or else. She’s from Georgia, yet she comes to higher elevation part and in the middle of the US, it’s winter yet she expects sunshine and beaches? All of us to be drinking out of a coconut? Yes, her hair is blonde at the roots, and she smokes pot in the apartment. Kind of gives you a clue on the person she is. Of and her Boy Toy is always there... when I stayed there. She blamed me for her messes, and her food she didn’t eat. Thing is I hate fish. Well another one to count she has a low IQ from the Mercury poisoning... and here I thought fish helped with brain development.

Anyway, it was hell, so my friend volunteered on the condition that I find a job and move out ASAP. I’m tryin as hard as I can here.

Being told no everywhere I go is very discouraging. I’ve made a gofund me campaign to maybe to maybe help a little... I don’t expect anyone to donate really... if anyone could click the link and share it to a friend they know and spread it around.

By February the only place I’ll be staying is my car on the side of the road... just sharing the story helps. Thank you.

<link>https://www.gofundme.com/homeless-autistic-girl<link>