#also applies to physical disabilities and literally any condition that requires medication

[slithymomerath]

They don’t want us medicated (“do you want to be dependent on that for the rest of your life?”), they don’t want us unmedicated (“please stop doing xyz, why can’t you do abc?”), they just want us to stop being neurodivergent.

[philipkindreddickhead]

I often seen critiques of make up from an existential/philosophical perspective, but I rarely see criticism of cosmetics from a stand point of the very physical bodily harm it does. I think this is because the number of dangerous ingredients is so massive, and overlapping its an absolutely daunting task. So I've compiled the information I've found and bear with me its a lot. (This is from an American perspective. Sorry, thats what I know. However I would love it if people from other countries had things to add.)

First I want to get the "simple" stuff out of the way. I think almost everyone has heard about bacteria and fungi in makeup and that makeup causes acne from clogging pores. Makeup has a pretty strict shelf life, yet consumers are entirely supposed to self-police as Ive never seen a single expiration date on any cosmetic packaging. (I guess consumers are meant to pull this knowledge out of the ether or something. I only found out about it in a tumblr PSA. I did read that expirys are on products in Europe.) Beauty blenders are the worst offender because theyre almost always moist. When I was taught makeup I was told to wet my sponge so it would soak up less product. If you apply makeup daily your sponge is likely constantly damp. USA Today had an article which said that 96% of sponges had fungi and over 60% had E. Coli in them. But I think what people talk about less is the complication of problems from using other products in conjunction with dirty beauty blenders. USA Today warns its especially dangerous to use beauty blenders if you have damage to your skin like acne, cuts, or dry skin. However the most popular beauty products for washing your face contain walnut pieces for literally scrubbing your skin and creating microabrasions. If youre a frequent makeup user you probably know about the cyclical nature of applying foundation, breaking out, and then applying more foundation to cover the breakout. You may even be using scrubbing cleansers more frequently to combat the acne creating more tears. This can lead to "blood poisoning" and, though neither USA today or Forbes mentions this, blood poisoning (not a medical term btw. Its sepsis.) according to numerous medical sites has the potential to be extremely lethal. The symptoms are so similar to a regular flu its nearly impossible to self-diagnose.

The very first thing I was told when a friend handed me a jar of finishing powder- popular with many beauty gurus for the "baking" technique and considered a must have- was a joke about "clown lung." This was a reference to the main ingredient talc. Talc causes lung problems including cancer and respiratory illness. If anyone remembers the large Johnson and Johnson lawsuit from 2019 it was because theyd been putting talc into baby powder. Talc is dangerous because it's impossible to mine and seperate from ASBESTOS. Some high-end finishing powders will try to sell you on safe talc-free formulas but all the products I looked into contained mica instead which causes pneumoconiosis, colloquially known as "black lung disease." Like fucking coal miners get. Its not just present in finishing powder either. In my research it turned out that talc/asbestos are also present in many eyeshadows and other powder products. [Googleable, evidenced in J&J lawsuit]

Another industry to examine is nail salons. Toluene, Formaldehyde, Dibutyl Phthalate, and Methacrylate compounds are all dangerous ingredients and present in various salon products. These ingredients cause a range of problems from dizziness, drowsiness, birth defects, slow fetal growth, future intellectual disabilities in the fetus, eye skin and throat irritation, coughing, allergic reactions, asthma-like attacks, short-term memory loss, nausea, dermatitis, cancer, and misscarriage. Some nail products advertise that they are 3-free meaning that toluene, formaldehyde, and DP should be absent but often the labels are found to be completely inaccurate. It should be noted that the risk is mainly to salon workers and not patrons but ask yourself if it is right to place other people at serious risk for your aesthetic. OSHA does make an attempt to mitigate these risks however not once in my years of makeup queen did I see a salon following these directives which include constant air monitoring, half mask respirators with chemical cartridges, gloves, long sleeves, and safety glasses. (And Im not even going to touch issues of human trafficking/slave labour out of nail salons one case of which occured 5 days ago two hours away from me) It should also be noted that formaldehyde can also be found in hair relaxers and hair dyes. [Found articles in Scientific American and NYT]

I also found on the FDAs website that many cosmetics include heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and lead. (Usually accompainied by a picture of lipstick so I assume that is the product most likely to contain it, however campaign for safe cosmetics lists foundation as containing heavy metals, and The Guardian has an article about skin lighteners from Asia and Africa containing mercury.) The website stated that the amount of these heavy metals in cosmetics is "safe" if used as intended. (and I'm going to come back to the concept of "intended use" later because thats a can of worms too) However, when searching for info on heavy metal safety I found this quote in regards to metals in food:

"Certain metals, such as arsenic, lead and mercury, have no established health benefit, and have been shown to lead to illness, impairment, and in high doses, death. Understanding the risk that harmful metals pose in our food supply is complicated by the fact that no single food source accounts for most people’s exposure to metals in foods. People’s exposure comes from many different foods containing these metals. Combining all of the foods we eat, even low levels of harmful metals from individual food sources, can sometimes add up to a level of concern"

So like, which is it? Is it a "safe amount" or is no amount of metal safe? I understand that in the case of certain foods like fish some amount of mercury poisoning is always expected but fish is also something you feed yourself and nourish your body with while cosmetics are completely unecessary to your survival. The mercury problem in fish is also mitigated by health warnings when mercury levels are particularly high but cosmetics have no such warning. Another warning on the site indicated that children should ingest NO amount of lead AT ALL because it is particularly harmful for kids yet theres no effort to stop children from using lead-containing cosmetics. I worked next to a Five Below where I was shocked to find they sold Jeffree Star and Anastasia eyeshadow dupes for five dollars which amounts to fucking pocket change for a lot of kids and kids do buy that stuff. I also think its ironic the FDA would have anything to say regarding cosmetics because in the very same article about heavy metals in cosmetics the FDA says that they DO NOT REGULATE cosmetics beyond the color additives.

Mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, and brow tint often contain carbon black. This is a color additive that is an incomplete combustion of carbon-based products. It can cause lung disease, cancer, and organ system toxicity, and eye, nose, throat irritation. The effects are mainly studied in rats and those at biggest risk are industrial workers but why do other workers have to endure lung problems for something so unecessary? [Easily googleable, NIH, CDC, WHO Europe]

This next bit I only want to mention briefly because I didnt find any particularly reputable sources about it, but its a claim that cropped up repeatedly and I think its an interesting one. Parabens, estrogen, phthalates (again), and pesticides in cosmetics are apparently linked to endocrine disorders and hormone dysregulation. Im not entirely sure what is meant by this accusation. Endocrine disorders include female diseases like PCOS and possibly endometriosis. None of these diseases is very well studied and the female endocrine system itself is not well studied either. Im not saying "cosmetics cause PCOS" because we dont know if PCOS or these other endocrine/hormonal disorders are genetic or environmental or both (it appears that PCOS is largely genetic and Endometriosis is likely autoimmune related) AND we dont appear to know for sure that cosmetic ingredients cause endocrine disorder. But I include anyway for a number of reasons:

If you happen to struggle with hormonal problems you may want to know cosmetics is a potential environment factor.

These conditions are incredibly painful. It will be a battle getting your doctor to even acknowledge that pain for diagnosis. PCOS is linked to diabetes, and heart disease. [Thanks @mother-of-pearl ] There is no cure and the treatments are often throwing hormonal birth control at it and hoping for the best.

I dont anticipate the link between cosmetics and endocrine disorders being studied any time soon or any endocrine disorders studied at all because the medical/scientific field is sexist. I dont want women to suffer in the mean time.

Now again, take this with a grain of salt because I couldnt find scientific or news sources for it. Dont fucking come for me. Im not gonna respond to you. [Most reputable source was a paper from the library of medicine at the national institutes of health but it was behind a paywall and I dont have 39 dollars to be right on tumblrdotcom]

Avoiding these ingredients is not as simple as scanning the label for them. As many beautubers and the community are no doubt aware considering multiple scandals over veganism. Products advertised as vegan or cruelty free but contain non-vegan carmine or are sold in China which legally requires the products to be animal tested. Cosmetic companies will hide ingredients claiming they are "trade secrets" or they will be placed under "fragrance." Many ingredients will be known by six or seven different names and asking consumers to be aware of seven different names for multiple ingredients requires consumers to be aware of innumerable different, often complicated ingredient names. I shouldnt have to point out that's a ridiculous burden to place on women. The EU banned 1,300 hazardous ingredients that the US did not. Cosmetic companies rely on women being unwilling/unable to bring in a list of 1,300 ingredients- with multiple names- every time they pop in to the drug store, sephora, or wherever. Buying "natural" products will not help you either. Theres no established criteria for natural/organic in costmetics, the FDA doesnt test these products, and "natural"=/= safe anyway. Plenty of plants and minerals are poisonous. One good example is traditional kohl products which advertise their natural status but also naturally contain lead and reiterating that natural powders contain mica. US courts are rarely on the side of consumers either. I found an interesting lawsuit against St. Ives for their apricot scrub taken to court for their "dermatologist tested" label despite it causing breakouts and cuts to the skin. The courts ruled that this label was fine because it only indicated that the product was TESTED not APPROVED by dermatologists. However I think any rational consumer would look at this label and assume the tests concluded it was safe for use or else why put the label on there?

[Googlable XMONDO drama, googlable laws wrt china and eu, already stated about FDA, FDA website about Kohl. Googled St. Ives lawsuit.]

I want to return to the idea of "intended use." This is sort of a fucky concept a lot of companies have ways of getting around. My "last straw" with makeup had to do with a run-in I had with Anastasia over their "Riviera" eyeshadow palette. In this pallette they had two colors that were the real feature of the palette, an electric neon purple and a radioactive pink I mean every photo, every promotion has these two colors swirled together around the eye. Because again, its an eyeshadow palette. When I buy the eyeshadow palette of course there's a little insert warning in the package that says these two shades are not intended on the eye area. In an eyeshadow palette. Contacting their customer service they told me that these two shades were meant to be used as a blush. neon purple blush. Not only that, but their website and instagram featured NO models wearing the shades as blush while EVERY model one or more of the shades as eyeshadow. When asked about this discrepancy ABH stopped responding. What I find egregious about this is the amount of people who dont know, and then more staggeringly; dont care. The sephora clerks didnt know, the in store abh representative didnt know, their customers didnt know, and when I told them they would respond with "oh, [brand] did the same thing with their [shade]." Sure enough, when I demanded that store clerks open the packaging to look for warnings nearly every product had an "eyeshadow" that was not intended for use on the eyes. Relegating dark, red-toned teal to "contour" and neon grean to "highlighter" US-based cosmetic junkies will say that these pigments have been approved for use by the EU however I found absolutely NO evidence of that. I googled it a thousand ways but all I ever found were blog posts, reddit comments, and one quote from an apparently nonEuropean layman in an Insider article. I even changed my location to France on ABH's website and the Norvina palette still contains the same warnings (not to harp on ABH in particular. I just know which shades in particular are the problem there). The Insider article noted that brands who were selling pressed pigments declined to comment. If the pressed pigments were EU friendly, I would think companies would be clamouring to say so. It also still makes their market as eyeshadow colors illegal in the US. (If any Europeans would like to chime in I'd love that.) Another problem I find with cosmetics companies and their reps is the claim that the worst thing that could happen is eye irritation for those with sensitive eyes and staining. How could they possibly know? The FDA doesnt test, or approve these cosmetics in the eye area, so ostensibly no one should be using it that way.

The next one is a bit of a "duh" but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Counterfeit cosmetics are a booming market full of untold dangers. Untold primarily because these products could contain literally anything. Ive read about glue, arsenic, lead, feces, staph, and horse urine to name a few. The labels and ingredient list on these products are fake. Legitimate brands often unintentionally play into the counterfeit market. They create artificial scarcity by making less of the product than is actually needed for consumer demand to create an even higher demand. If consumers miss out often their only chance at getting the product is to turn to counterfeits. I found examples of women who had their lips superglued, lips "turned to goo" and burned to blistering, throat closures, women with stys, contact dermatitis, eye infections. I think we as a society turn a blind eye to this problem because we think "hey, if youre buying counterfeits for a discount and you get hurt you deserve it." We imagine idiots buying products for 4 dollars from ebay or perusing Canal street for FEИTY beauty. But these counterfeits can be really convincing. I myself received a gift of a huda palette that I only recognized something was weird about it because I'd swatched it at sephora about five times earlier that month. The person who bought it for me actually paid MORE than the usual cost for the palette because it was advertised as a newer, better edition. The websites can be disturbingly similar. For instance Kylie Jenner's legitimate website is KylieCosmetics.com but you can find fakes at kyliecosmeticsshop.co.uk. These fakes can buy ad space and be one of the first sites that populate when you google the products instead of typing the legitimate site into the address bar. Counterfeits can also be bought and sold through third parties on websites like ebay, wish, and amazon. (My gift actually came from Amazon.)

[Netflix doc "Broken" ep "Makeup Mayhem" Corroborated by personal experience and google]

[arabellaflynn]

Hello, all. It has been a rough pandemic.

As you may have figured, since I am in the performing arts, I have been completely out of work since this shitshow began. The earliest venues will open up here in MA is September, which is not helpful for me, because I need to be out of my current place by 8/31. No one will rent to me on my Patreon income, so I've been trying to figure out how to supplement that with other online work.

My first thought, frankly, was camming. I'm attractive and I know that, and I don't care about being naked in "public". I have a lot of opinions on the legitimacy and legalization of sex work, but making a statement would be a convenient bonus; I'd be in it for the tips. As the appliance menagerie on the Flintstones used to say, "Eh. It's a living."

The best camera I currently have is attached to the slightly-less ancient laptop. You know, the one with the broken hinge that won't hold the screen up on the right. Only the wifi on that computer has quit working. The onboard chip was always kind of flaky, but for some reason it has chosen now to deteriorate to the point where it no longer acknowledges a router on the other side of the goddamn wall. Shooting in the living room with an ethernet cable is not an option, because another housemate is already doing that.

I bought a dual-band USB wifi adapter with antenna. It's a Realtek chip -- not gold-plated, but also not total junk. I specifically checked to make sure it worked with Ubuntu Bionic before I ordered. I have now installed three separate sets of drivers in three completely different ways, read everything ever written about this on AskUbuntu, and still the computer refuses to acknowledge its existence. Not even if I blacklist the onboard chip to keep it from falling back into previous bad habits.

The other elderly laptop (with the working wifi) has a cam that tops out at 640 x 480, which I suppose might squeak by as a tiny facecam on Twitch, or for tutoring where no one cares about pixelization. The microphone, however, is crap. It's a tinny omni on the screen bezel that likes room noise more than my voice. I don't have an external microphone, and there's no onboard Bluetooth for my wireless headset. So I bought a USB Bluetooth adapter, which this computer is ignoring as hard as the other one is the wifi dongle. I have a wired headset with a mic, but because this computer is probably mere months too old to know what to do with an inline mic on the same jack as the output signal, it doesn't register at all.

The camera on my phone is potato quality, because that is honestly about how much the phone cost. Ditto the refurb Kindle. Neither is smart enough to keep up with streaming video, which I found out when I tried to do a video rehearsal for something months ago. 

I have no place to do any kind of professional non-entertainment streaming work (e.g., tutoring) with my terrible equipment in any event. I don't own a desk. If a free desk appeared on my doorstep tomorrow, I would have nowhere to put it. My bedroom is small enough to contravene the Geneva Convention requirements for POW cells and I'm basically stuck in here, for reasons of both air conditioning and not having to interact with a house full of people who very much want me gone.

What I do have is a set of working emulators and some free video editing software, so I decided to take a stab at a subtitled Let's Play. I can certainly ramble on for 30 or so hours of Final Fantasy II. At the very least it'll give me something scheduled to do. So I pulled everything out and set it up, only to find that my controller was "pining for the fjords" -- no lights, no acknowledgement from RetroArch, no response to any button presses.

...

...okay, well, at least we're down to a level of equipment I can afford to replace. So I am waiting for the mail carrier to bring me another $10 gamepad, whilst stuck in bureaucratic hell. I'm down to emergency public assistance, which keeps asking me to send them random documents, inconveniently one at a time. Even when I can submit them online I'm required to wait a minimum of 2-3 business days before a human can look at them. I'm trying to not be mad -- they are clearly horribly overworked -- but it also leaves me with a lot of time to do nothing but busy-wait. They've finally decided I'm destitute enough for food stamps, so now I have to sit on my hands until the card arrives in the mail.

The chronic, crushing lack of resources is not helped by (or helping) the fact that I'm just not functioning very well. I was already on the edge of disintegration when the lockdown orders hit anyway; I was taking every piece of work I could find in an effort to scrape together enough for first/last/deposit on a new apartment, and honestly that's more than I can handle. I can consistently get to about 20 hours of "stuff that can't be done while in bed, wearing pajamas" per week, with occasional spikes up to about 30, before I start losing the ability to take care of myself. I skip showers, let my living space become a complete disaster area, and go to bed without dinner because the whole process of choosing something to eat, preparing it, eating it, and cleaning up after myself is so overwhelming that I just burst into tears and don't do it. I fed the rats twice a day and cleaned their cage once or twice a week, but couldn't manage to do the same for myself.

It's difficult to explain to people the state of being physically and mentally exhausted without also being sweaty and shaky from muscle fatigue. Perhaps the single most salient example I can give is lying in bed at night and realizing I kind of vaguely needed to pee. Not like urgently -- just enough that I knew if I didn't, I'd wake up the next day with an uncomfortably full bladder. Then just lying there anyway, not because I thought suffering was noble or I deserved it or anything idiotic like that, but just because taking care of it would involve standing up, walking into another room, and initiating a new task, and I did not have the capacity to do any of those things.

If you suggest I start making a to-do list, I will sit down right now and invent a brand new Blunt Object Transfer Protocol (botp://) expressly for the purpose of punching you, personally, in the face over the goddamn internet. I will even credit you in the patent application. I will not share the licensing profits, which judging from social media right now, would be approximately all of the money on the face of the Earth. I do not need "life hacks". 

What I really need is a case worker, or possibly a babysitter, or just to have shown up at the ER about two months ago, because that is the only way I have ever found to get people to pay attention when I ask for help. Otherwise I get triaged out of sight and out of mind -- they ask if I'm suicidal, I tell them no, they tell me 'okay, here's a prescription for six Xanax and a packet of resources, go home and fix it yourself'. I'm just like, you sons of bitches, do you think I don't know how to Google things? If I could fix this on my own, I wouldn't be talking to you. Except I can't right now, because plague.

Everyone wants to fob me off on someone else. I was referred to an SSDI attorney by a friend, because frankly that's where I'm at right now. I wrote to them, specifically mentioning his name and the associate who helped him, and explained that I was basically a vegetable and I needed help applying for disability. I'm a college-educated suburban white girl, who grew up hearing her parents make rude jokes about welfare queens -- I have no idea how any of this works and I'm so broken I kept losing my place in a blanket whose pattern was literally "knit-purl-knit-purl to end of row; turn work over; repeat". Their response was "Sounds like you need some help applying for SSDI/SSI disability. Here's the website for the Boston Bar Association, good luck!" Crisis lines of both the psychiatric and financial varieties keep directing me to one of two national clearinghouse sites for social support services, both of which direct me to each other, because neither has any programs in my area.

I am trying really, really hard not to resent the ever-loving fuck out of anyone who has any sort of support system right now. One housemate has almost the exact same list of medical problems that I do, and is also completely out of work right now. She is married to the one who has a grown-up salaried WFH IT job, and will never have to worry about having a roof over her head or food in the cabinets. The single housemate has supportive family literally a five minute walk down the street; if she ever gets her feet kicked out from under her, she can stay with them temporarily while she scrambles back up. Another friend yote out to California right before lockdown to stay with his family. A local offered to help me with paperwork, then ghosted me intermittently before explaining that he was having a hard time himself right now and barely had the capacity for his own life. I have an elderly rat, no more savings, and no options.

I don't even know how I'm going to move the little I own. How do you even ask people to do that in the middle of a pandemic? If I don't have the money to move, I definitely don't have the money for a moving company, and I'm envisioning all of my community-minded friends pursing their lips in judgement and declining because like all the good people they are diligently social distancing.

I have also discovered, while hauling an empty suitcase out to Watertown and a full one back home again, that I do not cope well with face masks. It's fine if I'm not doing much, especially if I'm in a climate-controlled space like a store or the T, but as soon as I exert myself at all, I see spots. And no, it is not a matter of "just get used to it"; I have tested this by trying to wear a mask during my home workouts. It is just stuffy enough under there, and there is just enough reduction in air flow, that the world keeps going all film-grainy and dark on the sides, which I know from experience is the first step on a very short path to the Magical Land of Syncope. I had to stop during the outdoor trek and sit on the suitcase about twice a block through the commercial district, where it stayed on because there were people. This was when it was 72 whole degrees out (and the AC is generally on 74°F inside) which doesn't bode well for moving my heavy shit around in late August. 

I'm normally good at catching things at the weird-vision stage, although enough random strangers and T employees have asked me if I'm okay that I have to assume I look as ill as I feel at that point. And I have an absolutely tragic talent for talking people out of calling emergency services when I do actually keel over, but everyone is so health-panicked that I don't think it would work right now. I know what's happened and why, but I can't exactly communicate that to bystanders when I'm unconscious. As nice as EMS is, I don't feel like waking up to a round of Twenty Questions ("How many fingers am I holding up? Who's the President? Do you have a seizure disorder?"). So I just don't go out.

Alison over at Ask A Manager got a question about this the other day that suggests this is considered legitimate can't-(always-)wear-a-mask territory, and I am able to wear a mask where required in MA, which is indoors/during interactions with other people when it's actually useful, so I don't have any qualms on the scientific or legal front. I have just never been a good judge of how much potential peril/damage it's "reasonable" to put up with, and I don't have the capacity to explain myself over and over again a million times a day. 

I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of covid, I'm tired of living in a big glitzy continent-spanning banana republic, I'm tired of anxiety, I'm tired of other people carping at me to do things I can't in order to fix their anxiety for them, I'm tired of not having the space to dance, I'm tired of asking for help before things fall apart and being told 'well, come back when it is an emergency', and most of all I'm tired of this cycle where I tell myself "I'm going to stop being lazy! I'm going to put on my big-girl pants and wake up early and work 40 hours a week and support myself like an adult!" and then fail at it again because I just do not have the capacity to do that. I do not know how to make the system understand that I need some kind of support right now. 

Sorry for yet another depressing update, but that's where I am right now.

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[purplepeoplelickingtruthpeddler]

Need Food

So for those of you who don’t know me, I’m a disabled, chronically ill,  polyamorous queer person of mixed ethnicity. My household growing up was half alcoholic neglect and half abuse, half veteran and half immigrant, and %100 anxiety. I’ve never had much support, and learning to take care of myself to any extent I’m able has been a steep learning curve.

I was in what I thought was a supporting and loving relationship for several years, six years. But when I came out as polyamorous, and expressed love for a long-time mutual friend, my support vanished. My partner became emotionally abusive. My long healed trauma flared back up to full-blown PTSD because of it, and after short apologies, and an improvement that lasted all of a week, he stopped caring, started resenting my disability, and started emotionally cheating on me with a woman at his work that he’s spoken all of two sentences too. He himself is neurodivergent as well and I gave him more credit than I should have because in the past I hadn’t given him enough and was still paying for it. I spent a few days self-harming, and got very close to suicide, because I learned that someone I thought loved me, someone that I was at one point engaged to, had put an expiration date and conditions on his support. I got help pulling myself most of the way out of that by a few supportive people in my life including my girlfriend; I’m eternally grateful to them. 

I’m disabled. I have agoraphobia and panic disorder, that have been professionally diagnosed, and other anxiety disorders that have gone undiagnosed professionally; OCD and trichotillomania. I’m self dx autistic most recently. I’m partially homebound. I have crippling executive dysfunction and time-blindness. I have physical medical endocrinological disorders, also diagnosed and undiagnosed, including PCOS, diabetes, some form of hypothyroid. I went a few years without insurance and was about to see someone through my ex’s, but that’s gone now. Endocrinological disorders run in my family and finding a doctor who can handle all of these things integratively is incredibly difficult, I live in the South. Most doctors aren’t entirely interested in treating me beyond making me capable of having kids I don’t currently want or erasing my secondary sex characteristics. I’ve been seeing a counselor for a couple of years, but she doesn’t specialize in either agoraphobia or anxiety. To continue seeing her I’m going to have to risk driving through multiple panic episodes and dissociation, putting me and everyone else on the road at risk. Public transportation and ride sharing causes even more severe anxiety. 

I’ve contacted my long estranged father in desperation of getting any kind of help, he’s agreed to help me apply for disability, a thing my counselor never followed through on. He’s agreed to help me find and pay for medical insurance so I can keep taking my currently four prescription meds and see better doctors more consistently. He’s agreed to help me find and pay for a place to live until I get on my feet, or find any kind of income. I don’t have anywhere to go immediately. Everyone I’ve talked to, about agoraphobia specifically, has told me that it takes years and several appeals and legal help to get assistance. I’m weary, and sad, and struggling to find the self-love I had, and I have a battle ahead. I’m struggling to manage having to continue living with my ex right now, sleeping in the closet and only moving around when he’s either at work or asleep because it’s the only way I feel safe, partially because of trauma. Even though I’ve had many reasons not to be associated with my dad in the past, and it’s been a fair few years since we talked, I am cautiously as optimistic as I can be. I have concerns over what kind of emotional trade-off he will expect but I don’t have much choice right now. I’m layering as many supportive friends as I can gather around me so I can survive. An excitement for the fact that I can be myself and love who I love without feeling guilty and wrong is growing however hard things are right now. 

I hate asking for help of people I know aren’t exactly wealthy themselves, and I’m not asking for much because everything I can possibly do on my own right now is getting done. I have a couple of weeks of 3/4 of my meds left. What I really need rather urgently, is food. My dad doesn’t have a car or a currently valid license, he also lives several cities away. My girlfriend doesn’t have a car or a currently valid license, also lives several cities away. Asking even half as much as I need wouldn’t feel right anyways because she’s actively getting on her own feet and we’re a relatively young relationship. She’s raising money herself for transportation to train for her upcoming promotion and I’m super proud of her after what she herself is going through. My dad is a recovering alcoholic with PTSD, a veteran on disability himself, he can only do so much. All of my other trustworthy friends or relatives live in other states. My plan is to use a grocery delivery app, doing the minimum to save and ration and the maximum required for the cheapest delivery fee at a time. And it’s a thing I can use paypal to pay for, which is my only current available payment method. I’m fighting to regain even some of the self-care and functionality I once had, and maybe without the toxicity that was in my life, get even better. 

So if you can give literally anything, and I mean anything because even just a dollar will afford me some milk or a few fruits and veggies that I can divide up and freeze for a few small meals at a time. I grew up with food insecurity and malnourishment at the hands of my abusive parent, this isn’t new territory. If you’re starting your own life, focus on you. Share/reblog if you feel comfortable doing so, please. Anything extra will go into feeding my cats, who are a huge support to me right now. 

For ease of access here is my paypal link (please ignore the name I haven’t legally changed it yet, not until I get fully out of range of my abusive parent, and come out to the past neglectful one): paypal.me/elirria

Cash app update: gf told me I could use cash app to pay for places that have free delivery and don't accept PayPal (such as Walmart), so that's the preferred option (but I'll still use either as I can, and not everyone has cash app): $elirria

[promiseimnotacop]

let's go about this a different way: pick your fave ten questions from the trans journey ask game and answer them!

bold of you to assume I’ve ever managed to make a decision in my life. also warning this gonna be looooooong

from this ask game

1. How did you choose your name? 

so I’ve always been interested in names and a couple years before i ever came out to anyone I asked my mum casually if there were any other names she’d considered giving me. She said that Finn or Finnbar were up there had I “”been born a boy”” and so I latched on to that. It worked pretty well for me because I wanted something that felt like an equivalent exchange for my birthname and that I didn’t associate strongly with a particular individual and I’d never had a Finn in my year at school so that was all hunky dory. Took me a while longer to figure out middle names (because my birthname has two middle names and it’s sort of a tradition on my dad’s side so I wanted to have those). 

There was a hot minute when I considered calling myself “Hugo Finn” which I’m so glad I didn’t, not that it is objectively a bad name, but because my reasoning was erm....bad. It was at a time when I had a lot of internalised self hatred/disgust and the name Hugo I first came across and associated heavily with the morally ambiguous “freak” from ASOUE. At the time I thought using a name I associated so heavily with the word freak was a way of subverting negative feelings but tbh it wasn’t. I’m so glad I didn’t tether myself that negativity. 

Also fun fact, my birthname is Shakespearean protagonist who spends most of the play dressed as a boy so again for a hot second I considered using the name she does, Fidele, but I wasn’t about having a super conspicuously uncommon name. 

For middle names in the end I went for James Lee (though nothing is legal or set in stone feedback and opinions are welcome lol). Lee came first, after the river in my village that I have a lot of postive memories associated with, outside of all the gender bullshit. The problem then became that the name “Finn Lee” would sound like/get mistaken for “Finley” and “Finnbar Lee” would sound like “Finn Barley” which would be eccentric and confusing. So it needed a buffer. In the end I went for James, partly because the first middle name of my given name is a saint, but mostly because James can be Jim and that allows for some of my childhood nicknames (im jim jam, imbo jimbo) to sort of still apply. that was a long answer to a short question lol but I spent a lot of time thinking about this because for some reason I felt  like I couldn’t come out until I’d already settled on a full name. 

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

I don’t think they’re separable. I have dysphoria about my body but it is because of societal perceptions of my body

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

depends on how savvy that person is to trans jargon honestly. The best, if clunky, label I’ve found for my gender is “transmasculine non-binary” which is two different quite broad umbrella terms lol. I like the looseness of it. For me personally, it means that the framework of masculinity and maleness is not an exact fit and does not cover some of the complexities of my gender but, in my daily interactions it is a close enough approximation and I do desire to pursue parts of what might be considered a “trans masculine” medical transition. For the most part masculine coded language (including he/him pronouns) is what suits me the best, with only a few particular exceptions. So, for most of the world I am functionally “a man” (even though that is one of the few bits of masculine coded language I don’t gel with), or maybe “a gender non-conforming man” and I am not gonna split hairs about that if we aren’t close. 

But if we’re seriously getting into a chat about gender there’s a lot more to be said. If drawing a diagram of my gender I would say I’m about 55% male, 30% “other”/third gender/maverique/genderqueer/whatever you want to call a gender identity autonomous and seperate from male or female, and 15% nothing/void. And all of that is subject to fluctuate a bit and which parts I might connect with most can be slightly contextual. I am more “a man” than anything else but also pretending to be a binary man is cutting out a significant part. 

12. Do you pass?

Let’s unpack the most Problematique question lol. Just kidding. It is important to acknowledge how “passing” or not effects daily safety/experiences but....god can we not use that word? Can that not be the agreed upon term? The implication that you are otherwise “failing”? The way in which it is incredibly difficult to apply to no-binary people? The way it does not acknowledge the nuances and the way that being read as a certain gender can be conditional? 

I prefer to use the terms “read as” because it allows for more nuanced discussion, does not have moralistic implications, puts the onus on the people viewing - not the individual being viewed and is kinda intuitive to understand.

To answer the question though? For the most part (like maybe 80% of the time) I am read as male. By no means always, and it is conditional on me following a certain level of gender conformity, but for the most part I interact with the world being addressed as a guy. As someone who is very much pre-t it seems that this alone subverts the standard “trans narrative”. Hell I was mostly read as male for a while before I ever came out. I’ve been corrected and laughed at in the women’s bathrooms. I’ve been harassed for gender nonconformity not in spite of but because I was wearing “girl’s” uniform. I have had fellow trans people assume I was a cis man (on more than one occasion) even when I introduced myself by my very much feminine birthname. I have little kids point blank refuse to believe I am “a girl”. I have had strangers confront and correct my mum for addressing me with she/her pronouns (before I was out). I have had kids yell the T slur at me (before I had begun to learn the invisible rules - which to be totally clear are bullshit -that need to be followed in order to be more consistently and unerringly read as male). I’ve been read as male occasionally in contexts where it was impossible for me to be out (near strangers on holiday whilst using birthname, new teachers and students at a school i’d been at since I was 11 and worn “girl’s uniform” until 16, etc).

It’s by no means always though. Which makes the times I don’t difficult and awkward. The technician on my course refers to me with feminine language but none of my tutors. The other day I tried out wearing eye shadow to class and I guy I bumped into later said that he hadn’t recognised me because it made me look like a girl (cringe). etc.

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

haha i don’t go. I literally haven’t been to the men’s bathroom (apart from once on holiday) but also i get harassed in the women’s/get directed towards the men’s so.....here’s to hoping I don’t get a UTI lads. Literally been in a public loos once since June (not including holiday abroad) and then i nipped into the disabled one during shark week. 

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

so at the beginning of uni I sort of tried to go stealth to see if I could/if it was comfortable (and by go stealth I mostly mean I just didn’t openly talk about my trans-ness for a while). I didn’t wanna be known as ‘the trans one’ and so i didn’t want to introduce myself with that fact. It fucking sucked would not recommend 0/10. It’s incredibly lonely-making to try and filter your experiences and to not be able to discuss certain issues with anyone irl. 

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

I used to do this thing when I was feeling particularly dysphoric/hopeless where I would draw myself now, and myself in 5 years time. Help construct something to look forward to, and work out what I would sincerely like to wear/express but don’t due to dysphoria. For me I really want to get to a place where I am comfortable in androgyny. I want to grow my hair out without sacrificing being read as male. I want to wear long skirts and crop tops whilst still being read and understood as a guy. I’ve done a lot of self reflection and I don’t think I can get to the place of being comfortable until I have had top surgery and I might also require T (though top surgery is really the necessity for my day to day life). Fingers crossed that will be possible and slightly healed within 5 years but given the NHS it really is not certain. 

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

T4T is self care. Jk. Honestly probably but that’s not to say a cis person couldn’t be my ideal partner? like at any rate it’s fucking necessary that my partner fully understands/perceives me to not be a woman. They could just be cis and no. 1 ally but in all likeliness they’re probably gonna be trans (particularly given the number trans and/or nb cuties out there)

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

I’m not managing. Send help.

seriously every week I have a break down about how long NHS wait times are.

42. Do you interact with other trans people IRL?

I’m an art student in Brighton. Yes. 

(Also my sibling Sumner is an NB lesbian, and my childhood best friend Hunter is NB). 

Literally going to be one cis person in my house of six next year. 

[aslanjadecarlyle]

Runaways Running The Night (Barlyle)

Modern AU

Title: Runaways Running The Night

Word Count: somewhere around 16,000, I don't even know man

---

Twelve.

That was the number that haunted Phillip Carlyle since he was eight years old.

Twelve visits to the hospital (more than that, if you counted the false alarms). Twelve surgeries. One of them was for his leg, but most of them were life-threatening, and all of them cost his parents a great deal of money. They were wealthy now - Phillip's father landed a job as some major executive when he was eleven and he himself wrote plays that, all things considered, rolled in quite a bit of cash. Even his mother, a woman who never worked a day in her life, was a money-saving goddess who learned how to tuck away cash back during the days when they struggled for an extra dollar.

But back then - starting from the day Phillip was three days old, up until just before his eighth birthday - all Phillip Carlyle knew was the inside of hospital rooms. With a total of twelve surgeries, he made visits to the children's ward of the ER more than once a year. But, in his eight year old mind, it was the IV that scared him more than literal brain surgery. He developed a lifelong phobia of needles early on and often had to be held down, kicking and screaming, despite the unbearable pain in his head, as the doctors injected him before he was put under with the sleeping gas.

All together, Phillip Carlyle was afraid of three things any normal eight year old boy shouldn't have to think about. Needles, for one - and death. Phillip was terrified of death. Having had life-threatening surgeries all his tender eight years of life, he was plagued with terrors about black, eternal nothingness - so much so that his parents considered taking him to a child therapist. They never did - unsurprisingly, his father bitched about the costs - and so Phillip grew up with an unrelenting, inescapable, paralyzing fear that only worsened and worsened as he grew older.

A month before his fifteenth birthday, he attempted suicide ("if I have to die, might as well get it over with") and, soon thereafter, developed panic attacks. He was dragged to therapy just once after he was caught in his attempt to take his own life, but never again after that - the therapy session was forgotten (he himself could hardly remember the details) and, as he got older, he learned to keep his anxiety and panic attacks to himself. He learned to control most of them, to weep about his paralyzing fears of growing old and dying in the middle of the night when nobody could help - or hit - him. He never attempted after that, never even took to harming himself, but the lonely tears came often.

The third thing Phillip Carlyle was afraid of... was his father.

Jonathan Carlyle did much more than bitch about the costs of his son's expensive medical coverage. When Phillip was still a child, he would hit the boy - throw him against walls, smack him, scream at him. He would laugh when Phillip hit his head - his condition, called hydrocephalus (loosely meaning "water on the brain"), required a shunt implant and that shunt, while magnetic, could pose serious dangers against Phillip if it malfunctioned and he wasn't rushed to the hospital in time. The condition was not technically terminal, but, if his shunt happened to malfunction (meaning, failed to drain the excess fluid from inside his head), a severe build-up of cerebral fluid would press against Phillip's skull - applying so much pressure, in fact, that he would be dead within hours if left untreated.

Once Phillip's father became successful and the Carlyle family found themselves in the public eye, the physical abuse stopped. The man could have continued the abuse, if he so desired - on top of having a life-threatening neurological condition, Phillip's body was also wracked with one-sided cerebral palsy that spread down his left side, half-paralyzing him below the waist - he walked with a permanent limp and, though he had control over the fingers of his left hand, he was overall physically weakened by the condition. He could walk, yes, he had no need for a wheelchair, but he could not so much as move the toes on his left foot. He was no match for his father, who was strong and able-bodied and could fling him around like a rag doll if he so desired.

However, Jonathan Carlyle could not afford the risk of the media noticing Phillip's black and blue bruises. So, most of the physical abuse stopped - in favor of emotional and mental torture, harsh words and threats that cut into Phillip's skin like glass. They were just words, he knew, just facts of life - but sometimes they still hurt when he cried at night over the maddening feeling of wanting to move his toes, but never being able to succeed because his foot was, really, hardly more than a deadweight. The cruel, damning words spiraled again and again in his head, never relenting except for when he finally succumbed to slumber.

"Limpy, limpy legs." (This particular insult was started by a student at school - Jonathan Carlyle overheard Phillip weeping to his mother about the offensive names one night and took great pleasure in using it against his son himself).

"Special needs bitch." (This name originated after a fight with Phillip's mother - though they never separated, they had teetered on the edge of divorce for a long while, and Jonathan had screamed this at his son, blaming him for the divorce, before storming out of the household. Unfortunately, they'd never gone through with the split).

As if the abuse at home wasn't enough, Phillip attended public school throughout high school and had to deal with the narrow-minded likes of able-bodied students and faculty there, too. He would never forget a particular incident Freshman year - though he had no mental disabilities whatsoever, the high school he attended enrolled him into a class for the severely mentally disabled. After just one day of being talked down to as if he were a child, Phillip came home weeping to his mother. At first, she was hesitant to do anything - insisting to Phillip that he needed to "learn his place" amongst the able-bodied norms of society. However after her son broke down in a school counselor's office the following day, Elizabeth Carlyle finally relented and they were able to pull him out of the "special" class. They spoke none of this to his father, in fear that the man would lash out.

Though, he came to find out, he never quite fit in with his supposedly "normal" classmates, either.

Years passed, graduation came and went, and Phillip, relieved to finally be out of the hellhole that was high school, turned to playwriting. He went to college (his anxiety crippled him even more so than he already was, but he couldn't bear to be around his hellish father any longer), studied literature, and became a fairly well-known playwright within a few years. Of course, his talent wasn't the only thing to make the news - his disabilities always made the headlines too, sometimes overshadowing the plays themselves. The able-bodied "normal" people always had to point out the permanent flaws that wracked his body, as if a disabled person finding success was some sort of mind-blowing miracle. On the other hand, when they weren't drowning him in empty, fake, sugary-sweet drops of praise, they lashed out at him. The characters in his plays rarely shared his disabilities and the reporters ragged him for it. They did not approve of his finding escape in characters that could wiggle all ten of their toes - something that he would never, ever be able to do.

On top of that, he was alone - the one and only sort-of girlfriend he'd had mid-Junior year broke up with him after finding out that he felt no attraction... between his legs. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make his body want sex - and the mere thought of faking it, of lying with someone even though he could not get his own sexual organs to work, absolutely repulsed him.

Nobody wanted to be with a freak whose body was half-broken.

Nobody wanted to be with a freak who could drop dead thanks to the ticking time bomb in their head at any given moment.

***

P.T. Barnum was not a stranger when it came to making the smallest amounts of money count. Still, it hurt - he was a self-made man and having to return to a lifestyle not much above his childhood of sleeping on the streets was a slap in the face. His company had suffered greatly thanks to his wife's embezzlement of millions. The money was hidden away somewhere - neither Barnum, nor his lawyers, could figure out where to even begin looking - and his wife... was dead. They'd found her at a remote home in some South American country - he couldn't remember which one. Her death came as a shock and he did miss her, but he couldn't help the relief that invaded him, too. Despite her name, Charity was a greedy woman - she'd grown up in wealth all her life and wasn't used to sharing. The scandal with Jenny Lind - a remarkable singer Barnum had met while on a business trip, but felt no real attraction for - had sent the woman over the edge. The last time he'd seen her, she'd threatened a court case against him - for what, exactly, he didn't know.

Thank the good God above he'd never had children with that woman. Though he did miss her nieces - Caroline and Helen - something terrible.

After his business began to fail, Barnum was forced to move from his sprawling mansion to a tiny apartment in an apartment complex filled with people who had absolutely no sense of humor. He tried going out, tried to move on with his life, but there weren't many places he could afford with his now extremely-restricted budget. The few dates he did go on bored him - the women were often left disappointed after finding out about all the money he had lost, and the men, well... even though this was, really, his first chance to explore the hidden realms of his sexuality in twenty-some odd years, he'd quickly learned that most men who felt the same attractions as he weren't looking for someone quite so much... older. Barnum could not ignore that he was a man in his mid-forties, and most of the men his own age had been harboring passionate relationships in secret for years - jumping at the chance to finally marry once the verdict became legalized nationwide.

Though a formerly successful suit-and-tie businessman, Barnum was truly a man of light, of passion, of laughter. He was not meant to live life alone in a dusty little apartment overlooking New York, and the drab days took their toll as he tried looking for work. He started to wilt, started to disconnect and forget why the life he was given was worth living at all.

And then Phillip Carlyle moved in across the hall.

P.T. was no stranger to Phillip Carlyle's work. He'd even gone to see a play once or twice himself, though he never much cared for sitting around and watching people talk on stage. Mostly, he knew Phillip Carlyle's name because of the news. When the reporters weren't talking about the young man's parents, - with whom the man, for reasons unknown, had a strained relationship - words like "cerebral palsy" were constantly tied to his name instead. That, and some odd, rare neurological condition that Barnum couldn't quite remember or place the name of.

He was surprised to see the young man move in - it was no secret that the Carlyle family was swimming in money, and the man himself had his own fairly successful profit, so why had he chosen to move into a dumpy little complex? It was a mystery that even P.T. Barnum couldn't figure out.

Still, Barnum was not asking these questions when they first bumped into each other. Phillip was a private man - didn't even come to the door when Barnum tried to introduce himself properly - and so their first exchange had been a chance encounter in the elevator.

"Ah, finally - the one and only Phillip Carlyle, in the flesh!" Barnum grinned, eyes beaming, teeth flashing white. Stunned, Phillip shrank into the corner of the elevator and tried making himself as small as possible. P.T. noticed that his left hand hung limply in front of him - Phillip had most control of his bad hand, but letting it hang was a habit that he sometimes fell into, without thinking, in public. Face flaming, he wrapped the fingers of his right hand around his left wrist and drew both hands to his chest.

"You - You know who I am?" Phillip asked.

"Well, of course. There's no escaping the Carlyle name."

Phillip's face burned even brighter and he stared down at his feet. He could not wear slip-on shoes - they slid off his bad foot and, foot being paralyzed, he could not easily work it into certain shoes in the first place. Instead, the dress shoes he wore were specially designed, and one was bigger than the other, as his bad foot was about half a shoe size smaller than his good one.

Eyes trailing back up to look at the grinning man in front of him, he said, in a voice so quiet he seemed almost afraid to speak, "and who, may I ask, are you?"

Barnum continued to smile as he held his hand out. "Phineas Taylor Barnum, at your service."

Phillip timidly took his hand and shook it - the playwright's hands were soft, used to writing instead of hard, physical labor. "Barnum? As in—"

Barnum's smile faded into a frown as they dropped hands. "Yes, yes. I... would rather not get into the details of my company at this time. It's been a rough few months, you understand."

Phillip nodded and stared down at the floor. Before Barnum could get another word in, the elevator stopped with a 'ding' and the doors opened. Phillip was quick to get out of there, but he limped as he hurried and Barnum took notice in the awkward way in which the man walked, dragging his left foot across the floor.

"Hey, wait a moment," Barnum called, stepping out of the elevator himself. Phillip tensed, then slowly turned to face the older man.

"What do you want?" he sighed.

"You've lived down the hall from me for days now and I hardly know a thing about you, Mr. Carlyle," Barnum explained, corner of his lip curling up into a slight smirk as he dragged out the man's family name. "How about going out for a drink? On me."

He really couldn't afford to be offering this man - despite his name, still a complete stranger - a drink, but... ah, well. He'd worry about that later.

Instead, though, alarm flashed in Phillip's ocean eyes.

"I don't drink," he mumbled hurriedly.

He limped away without another word.

***

Barnum hadn't seen Phillip since the encounter in the elevator last week. The younger man purposely made sure to avoid him - Barnum didn't quite know why, but he had suspicions that he might have come on just a... little too strong, perhaps. He couldn't help it, though - he craved human interaction like a drug, and nobody in the complex even bothered to talk to him.

Now it seemed that Phillip wouldn't, either.

Ah, well. It hurt more than it should, seeing Phillip hurry away from him like he was a man on fire, but... what could he do? Apologize, perhaps, but he wasn't quite sure what he'd be apologizing for - and he was fairly certain Phillip wouldn't let him get a word in inch-wise, anyway, without taking off.

It'd been about a week since speaking with Phillip in the elevator, and Barnum was sat in his apartment, newspaper clippings spread before him on the coffee table. He couldn't afford a decent computer - he was practically living on fresh air, yet again - and so he was forced to comb through the newspapers for a job like it was the 1980s and he was on the verge of going homeless all over again.

He was interrupted from his mind-numbingly boring search (seriously - did anyone in New York genuinely enjoy working full-time jobs?) by the sounds of a shout and a startled scream coming from down the hall.

Immediately casting the newspapers aside, Barnum jumped to his feet (almost, he thought, chuckling to himself, like a superhero ready to save the city) and left his apartment. He entered the hall just in time to see someone slam Phillip's front door shut, head low, black hair in his face, grumbling to himself as he buttoned up his jeans. He had a t-shirt on and angry, frantic scratches down one of his tanned arms.

Eyes wide, Barnum watched the man go - he seemed a bit older than Phillip, perhaps in his late thirties - and waited until the man disappeared around the corner before approaching the front door of the apartment himself. He hesitated for a moment, then rapped his knuckles on the door three times.

"Phillip? Are you in there? It's me - Phineas."

Silence.

He called for Phillip again and, when he didn't get an answer, hesitantly tried the doorknob. The door was still unlocked and swung open with ease. Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Barnum stepped into the little apartment and shut the door behind him.

He was first stunned by how... neat the apartment was. Phillip had moved in not very long ago, but everything was tucked away, all prim and proper. Though the apartment itself was small in size, Phillip had chosen to splurge some of his money on finer works of furniture - the kind of furniture that Barnum had seen taken away from him after the Charity fiasco. Among the furniture, Barnum took note of the tall bookshelves standing floor-to-ceiling against the walls. With just a brief glance, it appeared that Phillip had everything from Shakespeare to Kurt Vonnegut to J.K. Rowling.

Barnum was snapped out of his inspection of the bookshelves by a high-pitched, frantic barking coming from a partially-opened door. A small Yorkshire Terrier appeared in the doorway, and Barnum chuckled as it snarled at him.

"Hey there, little guy. Have you seen Phillip around?"

At the mention of his master's name, the Yorkie silenced - then tilted its head and whined. Turning its back on the man, it retreated into the room it came from. Barnum hesitated for just a moment before following it in.

Phillip sat on a bed, legs drawn up to his chin with his arms wrapped around them, face buried in his knees. The Yorkie climbed onto the bed and whined again, lying its chin on Phillip's arm.

"Not now, Benji," he choked.

Instead of obeying, the Yorkie - Benji? - pawed at Phillip's arm and whined. Sighing, Phillip lifted his head.

"What do you wa—"

He froze upon seeing Barnum standing in the doorway. His face lost all color and his breath hitched, starting to come out in short, little gasps. Benji whined and nuzzled his face in Phillip's arm as his panicked eyes fixed themselves on Barnum.

"What are you doing here?" he gasped.

"I apologize," Barnum said, motioning toward the front door. "I heard a scream from my apartment and came out to see what was wrong. I saw a man leave here and I... are you all right?"

Barnum was alarmed to see Phillip lower his head, tears streaking down his cheeks. He hugged his legs closer to his chest and Benji whined as he climbed into Phillip's lap.

"I'm fine," Phillip muttered. "Please - just go away."

Barnum glanced toward the exit again, but turned back to Phillip. Sighing, he approached the bed and sat on the edge. Phillip cringed, but didn't say a word.

He was fully clothed, but Barnum had to ask - "Did he... hurt you?"

"No," Phillip choked.

"If he hurt you, Phillip, I can—"

"We've been...seeing each other," Phillip spat out. He sniffled and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Nothing serious, but a - a few dates, off and on, these last few weeks. I told him that I didn't - that I didn't—"

He froze and choked up, burying his face into his knees again. Barnum hesitated, then slowly wrapped his arm around the younger man's slumped shoulders. Phillip flinched, but didn't pull away.

"You didn't what, Phil...lip?" Barnum asked, adding the second syllable to the man's name as an afterthought.

"I - I don't—" Phillip took another deep breath and rubbed his eyes. "I... I don't feel—"

His voice cracked and another sob escaped his throat. Benji whined, placing his front paws on Phillip's stomach, and the younger man dropped a hand to scratch behind the dog's ears. Almost subconsciously, he rested his head against Barnum's upper arm.

Surprised, Barnum slowly wrapped the arm around Phillip's shoulders and pulled him closer. Phillip lifted his head then, and tried to pull away, but Barnum shook his head no.

"It's all right," he murmured. "Take your time."

"I'm sorry," Phillip whimpered. He lifted Benji up and buried his face in the dog's soft fur. "This is so embarrassing," he muttered as Benji started to frantically lick his tear-stained cheeks.

"Can you tell me about that man again?" Barnum coaxed. He didn't have children, but the way in which he spoke reminded him of the way he would talk to his dead wife's nieces.

"You wouldn't understand," Phillip murmured. He shifted, repositioning his seat, and Barnum took notice that, while his right foot was bare, his left foot was still encased in a white sock.

"Try me," Barnum challenged. He lifted an eyebrow and a familiar smirk played at his lips.

"Would you want to be with someone who didn't want sex?"

The question was blunt and Barnum stared at the younger man a moment as the words sank in. He tilted his head to the side, lips just slightly parted.

"Is that why that man stormed out of here? Because you... rejected him?"

Phillip sighed. It was long and heavy and sad, and, for reasons he couldn't quite figure out, Barnum's heart twisted in his chest.

"I can't... bring myself... to want anyone," he muttered. Then he laughed, bitterly. "I don't even know why I'm telling you this. You're a fucking stranger. But I can't... I don't—" He motioned toward his lap and Barnum, unthinkingly, followed with his eyes. When Phillip sighed again, he jerked his head upward to meet the younger's eyes, mentally smacking himself. "I don't feel anything... down there. I can't - my left side is paralyzed below the waist. I can't move the... muscles... necessary..." He drifted off, face burning bright red. He buried his face in his hands again.

Finally finding his voice, Barnum cleared his throat. "Nobody should want you just for sex, Phillip. And nobody should ever, ever attempt to force you into it."

Phillip didn't look up and didn't say a word. After a minute passed with no reaction, Barnum - not even thinking about the fact that this was only his second encounter with the man - impulsively drew Phillip into a hug. Benji yipped, caught in between the two men, and scrambled out of Phillip's lap. He barked in irritation before settling by Phillip's feet, carefully watching Barnum's every move.

Phillip managed a small chuckle at the dog's antics, and Barnum smiled as Phillip slowly wrapped his arms around him, returning the hug. Slowly, Barnum moved his hand up into Phillip's hair - pausing only when he felt a peculiar bump near the back of Phillip's head.

"Did he hit you?" Barnum inquired at once as they pulled away.

"What?"

"That man, did he... strike you? When you refused him?"

Phillip frowned. Then he brought his hand up to the back of his head, rubbing a finger over the spot where Barnum had his hand just moments before. Realization dawned on him, and his face fell. He stared at the wall.

"That's just my shunt," he muttered.

"Your... what?"

"The only thing keeping me alive," Phillip scoffed. "Surely you've heard about my 'condition.' All the reporters eat it up."

Barnum stared at him, blankly.

"Hydrocephalus. The shunt itself functions as a drain, and redirects the cerebral fluid build-up on my brain."

He got nothing, but a tilted head and confused smile in response.

Phillip sighed heavily and shifted to get up off the bed. "It's all right. I don't blame you for... for not knowing. People are so blind to all of the disabilities and sicknesses plaguing the world unless it's somehow impacting their own lives—"

"I'm sorry," Barnum interrupted. He reached out and curled his fingers around Phillip's wrist. The younger man looked down, wide-eyed, then back up at him, but didn't say a word. "I've heard of it, I've seen it in the papers. I just... forgot for a moment. Please, stay?"

Phillip stared at the man. He wanted to say no, but a feeling of...something...

(longing)

overcame him and he nodded, taking his seat next to Barnum once more. Barnum smiled softly and reached his head around to trace the odd bump in Phillip's head once more, fingers encased in the ultimate softness of his hair.

"Does it hurt?"

"My... shunt?"

Barnum nodded wordlessly.

Phillip shook his head. He reached back, his fingers tracing over Barnum's hand. "I haven't had a surgery - shunt or otherwise - since I was eight years old. Almost twenty-two years." He smiled wryly. "That's a lot in this game. I have no way of knowing when the next malfunction will be. And there are some things that I can't do because it might fuck up - I've never been on a rollercoaster with loops. And I collapsed in an underground cavern once, when I was fourteen, because different gravitational pulls can put too much or too little pressure on it."

Barnum's smile fell. "I'm sorry, Phil—"

"Don't pity me," Phillip snapped. Then he cringed, and sighed. "I'm... sorry. It's just... after dealing with pitying comments all your life, it gets really old really fast. And I'm not even halfway to sixty yet."

Barnum nodded, not knowing what to say. He glanced over at Benji, who had curled up, asleep, at the far corner of the bed.

"Well," he cleared his throat, standing after a moment of silence. "I'm glad you're okay, Phillip. I didn't mean to intrude, and I do sincerely apologize for barging in like I did. I'll leave you alone now."

He turned, with the full intention of leaving the room.

"Bar - Phineas, wait."

Barnum had to hold back a gasp when he felt a soft, warm hand intertwine their fingers. He looked down at Phillip, who looked up at him with bright, uncertain eyes.

"I... I don't drink, but I'd... still like to take you up on that offer, if that's all right? Perhaps somewhere with less alcohol. And... people." He wrinkled his nose.

A low, hearty chuckle erupted from within Barnum's chest. He gave Phillip's hand the tiniest of squeezes as he nodded, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"I think we can figure something out."

***

There was nothing in the world that Phillip loved more than books.

When Barnum suggested, upon thinking back to all of the shelves he'd seen in Phillip's apartment, going to a hybrid coffee shop/book store a few blocks down, Phillip couldn't hold back his excitement. He'd flung himself at Barnum, arms wrapped loosely around his neck, before it registered with him what he'd done and he backed off quickly, murmuring apologies under his breath.

Barnum assured him that it was fine, he didn't mind, but on the inside his heart swelled. He cursed himself, telling himself that it may have been man storming out of Phillip's apartment earlier, but that didn't mean Phillip wanted anything to do with him in... that way. They were still practically strangers, he wasn't even out to Phillip yet... and, even if he was, Phillip wouldn't want him. He was so much older (and had been ditched because of his age time and time again), had too many financial troubles...

But, God, Phillip was beautiful.

He sat at a table, sipping his coffee (that he could barely afford) and watching with a smile as Phillip roamed the endless bookshelves. He came back with a stack of three or four books and set them on the table.

"Careful," Barnum chuckled, eyes roaming the spines of the books, taking in the titles. "You'll spill your coffee."

A light pink blush settled over Phillip's cheeks as he finally sat down and took a sip of the drink Barnum had ordered for him. Grimacing, he reached for the sugar.

Barnum laughed.

"What?" Phillip scowled, dipping a spoon into the sugar. "We're not all barbarians like you, y'know."

"Phillip, that coffee is already five shades lighter than the coffee gods ever intended coffee to be. How sweet do you need it?"

"I won't be happy 'til I've gone into diabetic shock, thank you."

Barnum laughed - a loud, rumbling sound that instantly brought attention to their table - and took a sip of his own near-black drink. Phillip eyed it with disgust, nose scrunched up, tongue poking out from between his lips.

"I tried black coffee once. Never again."

"I added sugar!"

"Yeah - maybe a speck."

Barnum smiled around his mug as he took another sip.

"Psychopath," Phillip muttered, shaking his head again. But the corners of his lips lifted up into a tiny smile, too.

***

The kiss upon Phillip's cheek was impulsive, accidental. Phillip stepped back, eyes wide, hand up to his face.

Barnum's eyes were equally as wide, equally as horrified. He swallowed, hard, and half-expected Phillip to run into his apartment, lock the door, and never speak to him again.

Instead, a slow smile spread across Phillip's face and he traced a finger along Barnum's jaw. He tilted his head, staring at the older man for a moment.

"Thank you for today, Phineas," he mumbled. Then, he slowly reached up and returned the kiss to Barnum's cheek.

He went inside and Barnum walked down the hall to his own apartment, face warm and belly doing somersaults like a schoolboy with his first crush.

***

A few nights later, after a trip down to the park (an outing together that, thankfully, wouldn't cost Barnum any money), they found themselves in Phillip's apartment. The sun was just beginning to set and, instead of parting ways like they normally would, Barnum simply followed Phillip inside.

Benji barked in that high-pitched, shrill sound, but seemed to remember Barnum - the man who'd been stealing his owner away these past few days - and settled down quicker than the first night the man and canine had met. Phillip smiled and knelt down, not caring that he was getting dog hair all over his dark pants. He hugged the dog to his chest and buried his face into Benji's soft fur.

"Family pet?" Barnum asked. He sat down in an armchair, crossing one leg over the other.

Phillip looked up, his face bright red. He clutched at the dog and Barnum was alarmed to see tears brimming at the corners of his eyes. He uncrossed his legs and sat perched at the edge of the seat, face contorting with concern.

Benji, sensing his owner's distress, licked Phillip's cheek and whined. Tears fell from Phillip's face, matting into the Yorkie's soft fur, and he shook with the effort to even out his breathing.

"I-I'm sorry," he gasped. "He's an... e-emotional support dog. Because I c-can't—"

He choked on a sob and Benji licked his face again, whining. Then the dog looked over at Barnum, with an expression of freakishly human-like concern crossing his face, and barked.

Barnum dropped to the floor and slowly crawled toward Phillip, who was still on his knees. He wrapped his arms around the younger man and felt him shake underneath his touch.

"Shhh," he murmured. "I'm sorry, Phillip, I didn't know—"

"N-No," Phillip whimpered. He scratched behind Benji's ears and the dog licked his face again. As the shaking slowly began to subside, he held the dog to his chest like a mother cradling an infant. "I... I know it's stupid. H-He's supposed to help...c-calm me down," he trembled with the effort to speak, "b-because I... I have... a-attacks, and—"

"You don't have to explain anymore, 'Lip," Barnum murmured - the nickname slipped out like honey and he didn't even realize it.

"I'm a... a f-freak," Phillip muttered. He couldn't even look at the man. "I can't even c-control my a-attacks anymore... I—"

"None of that," Barnum snapped. His tone was sharp, but he held Phillip close and stroked his face, his hair. "Lots of people have anxiety, Phillip. Lots of people have support animals. Please don't think you're anything less because of it."

Phillip hid his face in Barnum's chest and Barnum just sat there, holding him close, until he was ready to look up again. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"None of tha—"

"You didn't let me finish." Phillip managed a tiny smile on shaking lips and rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry f-for... not even showing you around. I'm a terrible apartment host."

Barnum stared at him. As Phillip shifted, edging out of Barnum's hold, and stood up (Benji hopped out of his arms), the older man laughed.

"Yes," he teased. He looked at the main living space, which was designed as a living room and kitchen in one, and grinned. "Please, show me around this sprawling apartment."

Phillip smiled again, shakily, and held out his hand. Barnum took it, stood up, and was led on a five-second tour.

The last place they ended up, somehow, was the bathroom. It was hardly big enough to accommodate both of them and they stood almost intimately close.

"I - I don't think I have anything that'll fit you," Phillip muttered, eyeing Barnum's chest with pink-tinted cheeks.

"I could run to my apartment," Barnum offered. "I'll be right back."

"Are you sure? You don't have—"

"I live right down the hall, Phillip." Barnum teased, lightly playing with the collar of Phillip's shirt. "I'm not going to die in some freak fire while I'm gone."

Blushing harder, Phillip nodded. He walked Barnum to the door, with Barnum promising he'd be back in just a few minutes.

Back in his own apartment, he retrieved a change of clothes for that night and the next day. He stopped in the bathroom to brush his teeth, and he packed the toothbrush with him before exiting his own apartment. He paused again to close and lock the door, and then made his way to Phillip's residence, feeling like an excited little kid going to his very first sleepover.

Phillip's door was unlocked so he stepped inside. Phillip himself was nowhere around in the living room or kitchen, and he smiled to himself as he pushed open the bedroom door.

"Hey 'Lip, I—"

He paused.

Phillip stood facing the door, pajama bottoms on and in the process of taking off his shirt. He stared at Barnum like a deer caught in headlights and quickly yanked his shirt back down... but not before Barnum caught sight of the scars.

There were several littering his chest and stomach, but he zeroed in on one in particular. It indented deep into his skin, right above his naval, about three inches long, vertical, with a bunch of tinier horizontal markings crisscrossing it. Further down, below his naval and just above his waist, was a fainter, horizontal scar - one that was hardly visible, but it was aligned directly beneath the harsher, bigger marking.

Slowly, Barnum looked up into Phillip's eyes - shining with tears again that threatened to spill over. The younger man said nothing as he sat on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands.

"Phil—"

"You weren't supposed to see that."

"Phil, that scar looked... like it's been messed with—"

Phillip shook his head. "My... mother... wanted any surgery scars to be as close together as possible so they wouldn't... blemish multiple areas of my body. S-So each criss-cross represents a new shunt replacement - except they extended the most recent one, the one I got when I was eight, a little further down. That's the fainter one."

"And... the others?"

Phillip laughed bitterly. "You can thank my father for those. My mother's scar rule doesn't really apply when he took time out of his days to permanently remind me of what a fucking burden I am."

"He... hit—?"

"He did a lot more than just hit," Phillip sighed. He didn't go into further detail after that - his breathing was clipped as he struggled not to cry again.

Barnum strode across the room and enveloped Phillip in a strong, comforting embrace. The younger man buried his face in Barnum's shoulder, soaking his shirt with the tears that he couldn't hold back.

From the living room, Benji yelped. Then he came running.

"It's all right," Barnum whispered over and over again, rubbing the younger man's back. The dog at their feet whined and stood on his back legs, trying to get Phillip to pick him up. Phillip didn't notice and the dog settled for lying at his feet, nipping at his toes.

His toes that, Barnum noticed, were encased in socks.

"Phil..." Barnum murmured, holding the man at arm's length, tilting his chin up to look him in the eye. "Scars are nothing to be ashamed of, darling."

Phillip gasped at the nickname, but then he shook his head and jerked his face away. Barnum cupped his cheek in his hand and brought the man to face him again, as his other hand slowly lifted his shirt. Phillip tensed, but didn't try to yank away.

Barnum used the hand underneath Phillip's shirt to run a thumb over a jagged scar, slightly raised on the skin. He didn't ask for an explanation, but Phillip closed his eyes.

"A bottle," he sighed.

Barnum paused, and tilted his head.

"I d-don't drink because I'm... scared of accidentally blacking out and hitting my head," Phillip muttered. "When I was... nine or ten I found my father blackout drunk on the ground in the kitchen - this was before we were in the public eye all the time. I tried to wake him up and he... cut me... with pieces of a bottle that had shattered after he'd dropped it."

"Oh, Phillip."

Phillip closed his eyes again, tears wettening his lashes. Barnum half-wanted to lift his shirt further, to massage every one of the younger man's horror-filled blemishes, but he let the shirt drop and gently cupped the playwright's face in his hands.

Phillip's eyes fluttered open. "Phineas, wha—"

Barnum's lips were warm on his and his lips parted as he gasped, feeling his body tense. He was rather impartial to kissing - the idea of another person's saliva in his mouth didn't particularly appeal to him - but the way Barnum held him - one hand cupping his face, the other pressing into his back - made him relax and, slowly, he raised his hands up to entangle his fingers in the other man's hair.

The idea of being anywhere near another person's exposed genitals still repulsed him, made his skin crawl, but this... yes, he thought he could get used to this - to Barnum - just fine.

Barnum broke the kiss slowly, as if wanting to hold onto Phillip for as long as possible. His hand left Phillip's back and rose to cradle his face. Phillip leaned into the touch, blushing pink and smiling softly. He bit his lip, and Barnum chuckled.

"You're beautiful, 'Lip," Barnum ran his thumb along the other man's jaw before pulling him into a tight hug.

As Phillip laid his head against Barnum's shoulder, he had to fight to hold back the same tears that Barnum had, moments ago, kept from falling. He'd had a few relationships over the years, but none ever lasted long... and nobody ever called him beautiful. He was a cripple, whether he liked it or not, and nobody ever wanted the extra burden that came with the possibility of brain surgery looming over every corner. Hell, they didn't even want a person who couldn't—

Who couldn't—

"I can't," Phillip whimpered, pushing Barnum away. He pressed his hands to his eyes - he cried more than enough around Barnum. He wasn't going to cry again here, not now.

"What's wrong?"

He flinched when he felt the familiar rough, soft hand against his cheek. He kept his hands to his eyes.

Not here, not now.

"I can't give you what you want," Phillip whimpered again, dropping his hands from his face as he took a frantic step back.

Benji barked.

"'What I want'? Phillip, darling, what are you—"

Barnum paused, mouth forming a slight 'o' shape as he looked at Phillip as if seeing him in a whole new light.

"You think I won't want you... because I can't... fuck you?"

Coming from Barnum, it sounded so stupid and Phillip bit his lip so hard that he drew blood, just to keep from crying again. He winced and mentally kicked himself - why are you so weak, Phillip? why? - and shrank away as Barnum tried to reach out. The older man grabbed him by the wrist, his grip loose, but Phillip flinched against the wall nonetheless.

"Please don't... don't h-hit me," he whispered, cowering against the wall, trying to make himself as tiny as possible. He could feel the blood dribbling down his lip, to his chin, could taste something metallic on his tongue, but he didn't care about that. Instead, he brought his hands up to his head - his father knew all his weak spots, who's to say Barnum didn't, too? - and squeezed his eyes shut.

On the floor, Benji barked and barked. Whining, he clawed at Phillip's pajama leg and, sensing his distress, turned to growl at Barnum. He sat perched with his ears pulled back - despite being such a small dog, he was ready to attack if need be - and snarled at the older man.

"Phillip," Barnum's voice broke and he cringed. "I'm not going to hit you."

He wanted to approach him, but, between the dog and the fact that Phillip looked ready to flee if he so much as touched his shoulder, he held himself back and watched with helpless eyes.

"Please, darling. I would never..."

He drifted off when he noticed Phillip peering out from between his fingers like a child cowering from a neglectful parent. Then, he realized, like a sharp punch to the gut, that perhaps Phillip was. Barnum was a big man and older by at least fifteen years. And that man that Barnum had seen angrily stalking out of Phillip's apartment several days ago, the one that had practically started all of this... he had to have been older than Phillip by at least five years, if not five more. If he had reacted in a violent way to Phillip rejecting him for sex...

Barnum was not a stranger to emotion, but, ever since Charity turned his life upside down, the more sensitive side to the businessman had, for a lack of better words, taken a backseat. There was a period of time before Phillip moved in, alone in the apartment complex, where Barnum had felt... empty, but not necessarily sad. The depression that had hit him in that short period of time had been something out of lack of motivation. Not true despair.

Now, though, as he stared upon a weeping man he had only known for a few weeks, true sadness hit him. For the first time in a long time, he felt a hitch in his breath that might suggest tears. He was horrified that Phillip had been misused so much, misguided so much, that he would be genuinely led to believe that he deserved to be hit, physically abused, over something as... over-exaggerated as sex. Sex was good, but, despite what the modern expectations of society wanted everyone to believe, it didn't define everything in a relationship.

And Barnum, truth be told, could live without it. He was getting older, it was not the most important thing in his life. Hell, wed to Charity, it never really had been.

"I'm not going to hit you," Barnum said again, voice like a low rumble, thick with emotion and coming from deep within his chest. He stayed back, knowing his place, but his fingers twitched - he yearned to hold Phillip.

Then he was struck with an idea.

Barnum turned and left the bedroom. Crossing into the semi-familiar living space, he hurried over to the bookshelves and selected a random book. Taking a deep breath, he set the book on the coffee table and then called for Phillip.

No reaction.

Barnum stared at the doorway to the bedroom, biting the inside of his cheek. Then he grabbed the book from the table and went back to the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.

When the door shut with a 'click,' Phillip jumped. His hands fell from his face and his eyes widened in alarm.

"I'm sorry," Barnum said at once, opening the door again. Then, he sat on the bed with his book in lap and motioned Phillip forward. "Sit with me?"

Phillip backed up, face as white as a sheet. His hand hung in front of him again, but this time he didn't take notice.

"I've got a book for you," Barnum told him. He held up the book so Phillip could see the cover.

The words blurred in Phillip's teary vision, but he just managed to make them out. "The... N-Night Circus?"

"Have you read it?"

"Not... yet," he whispered.

Barnum reached out, without rising from the bed, and this time Phillip let him hold his hand. He gently pulled Phillip forward and the younger man sat next to him on the mattress. They sat practically thigh-to-thigh and Barnum could feel him shaking.

"Can you read this to me?" he requested softly, handing the book to Phillip.

The book shook so violently in Phillip's trembling hands that Barnum wasn't sure how the younger man could even read the words on the page, but he did. As he started to read, his voice slowly evened out and his hands stilled.

"The c-c-circus arrives without w-w-warning..."

***

Phillip finally fell asleep slumped against Barnum's shoulder, The Night Circus falling into his lap. Barnum kissed his forehead as he laid him down and, before tucking him beneath the covers, he slowly removed the man's socks.

He paused, and sucked in a breath.

Phillip's right foot was normal, but his left one, the one effected with cerebral palsy, was smaller and narrower. His paralyzed toes flexed slightly in his sleep, giving a tiny implication of movement, but they bunched together, unable to move on their own. The second-to-smallest toe seemed somewhat overlapped by the two surrounding it, and the padding on Phillip's big toe was rough with callouses from the way he carried himself on that particular foot.

Glancing up at Phillip's sleeping face, Barnum kissed his cheek and pulled back. Balling the socks and tossing them into the hamper, Barnum got off the bed, gathered his clothing, and went to change in the bathroom. Upon returning, he crawled underneath the covers and drew Phillip close to him. Tension still thrummed through the younger man's sleeping body and Barnum cradled him to his chest as he rubbed his back.

He fell asleep with Phillip held tight in his arms.

***

Barnum was woken in the middle of the night by a cry.

Turning over, he peered sleepily at Phillip, who had the covers thrown to the side. He stared down at his feet, chewing at his healing lip.

"Phil?" Barnum mumbled. Glancing blearily at the clock, he saw it was just past two in the morning. "What are you doing up?"

His head snapped upwards and he looked at Barnum in alarm. "Where are my socks?" he asked.

"I... put them in the hamper." Barnum sat up, confused, and watched as Phillip scrambled for his dresser and pulled out a fresh pair. As he slipped them onto his feet, Barnum said, "you don't have to do that."

"Yes I do," Phillip whispered, choking over his own words.

"Phil—"

Phillip sighed as he glanced down toward the end of the bed, where Barnum's own feet were still covered by the blankets. "You have perfect feet, just like everyone else. You... You don't know how maddening it is to not be able to move your own toes. I don't want to see them," he said, avoiding Barnum's gaze.

With a sigh, Barnum reached out. Something troubled was hidden in Phillip's eyes and he had a feeling it had something more to do with just feet. Phillip let Barnum take him, but did not reciprocate.

"Talk to me," Barnum urged. He tilted Phillip's face up, peered into his eyes. "You have bags underneath your eyes, darling." He sounded awestruck, like he was just discovering them for the first time. How had he not noticed before that Phillip wasn't getting any sleep?

"It's not important." Phillip shook his head.

"You're losing sleep."

"It's nothing I'm not used to."

Barnum stared at him as he tried to figure what to say that would make Phillip talk to him. Phillip shifted, crossing his legs so he sat criss-cross style, and sighed.

"It's nothing, Phineas. Please," he rested his hand against Barnum's cheek, "don't worry about it."

"I want you to be able to talk to me." Barnum took hold of Phillip's wrist, lowered the playwright's hand from his face, and slowly rubbed circles into Phillip's palm. "You don't have to be afraid around me," he lowered his eyes, "please know that."

When he looked up again, Phillip's lips were trembling. He pulled his hand away and scooted toward the edge of the bed. Barnum thought he was going to get up and leave the room, but he simply sat, perched on the edge of the bed, and leaned forward. He shivered, though Barnum wasn't sure if it was because he was cold, or because of the words that he confessed.

"I have... anxiety attacks, alone at night."

He sounded like he was fighting to spit out every word, but he didn't sound ready to cry. Barnum shifted behind him, and wrapped his arms around Phillip's shoulders, holding him close.

"We can get you help," he whispered, though he didn't have the slightest clue how he would afford it. He showered Phillip's neck with lighter-than-air kisses, silently urging him to continue.

Phillip sighed. "A therapist isn't going to help me, Phineas. At least, I... I don't think they will. It's not something that - that—"

He paused, hesitated. Barnum laid his head on Phillip's shoulder, silently urging him to continue.

Phillip's next confession was whispered so silently that Barnum had to strain to hear him.

"I stay up at night thinking about... f-fearing... death."

Barnum took a deep breath. His parents both passed when he was a child, his father going when he'd been about fifteen. He knew how scary the thought could be - though, his experience with death had been more losing the people around him. Not so much worrying about it himself - he took it more as, simply, a fact of life.

"Phillip, we all—"

"You don't understand," Phillip whispered. "I can feel it."

"I—"

Barnum didn't know what to say to that.

Phillip trembled, but didn't cry. "I had... my first surgery when I was three days old. They had a week to install the first shunt, or else I would've died without ever knowing life. Growing up, I had... a dozen surgeries, one on my leg, but the others all shunt related. They were all fucking terrifying, but there was one in particular when I was five. My parents almost waited too late - when my shunt fucks up, I only have hours. Hours, Phineas, and my father refused to take me to the hospital because he thought I was making the pain up. It wasn't until I collapsed that they... r-rushed me there, almost too late. My parents almost had to buy a child-sized c-coffin because I couldn't get myself to the hospital."

Barnum felt a lump in his throat. He buried his face in Phillip's hair.

"I can... feel it. The blackness, the nothingness, the feeling of nonexistence. I've... always been highly empathetic." Phillip struggled to take a deep breath, struggled to force air into his lungs. "I don't have to experience something to know what it feels like. And I - when I imagine death, that's what it is. Nothing."

It was dark, Phillip had his back to Barnum, but he could hear Phillip sniffle. Regardless of whether he was crying or not, Barnum brought him into the tightest, warmest embrace, and guided Phillip's hand up to his own heart.

"As long as you feel that beat, you don't have to be afraid," Barnum promised.

Turning, Phillip found himself captured in a kiss. It was slow, Barnum's lips were warm, and he sighed against the older man's mouth. Barnum pulled them chest to chest and Phillip swore he could feel the thrum of the older man's heart. When they pulled away, Phillip put his hand to Barnum's chest.

Hands on Phillip's arms, Barnum slowly laid back, pulling Phillip with him. Phillip shifted, fitting next to P.T. like a puzzle piece. He wrapped his arm around Barnum's chest, drinking in the heat and his heartbeat, as he sighed.

"As long as I'm here, you won't have to go through that alone." Barnum's hand was in Phillip's hair, running through the soft, slept-on locks, gently thumbing over the indentions that marked Phillip's shunt. Phillip whimpered.

"I wouldn't want to wake you—" he started.

"You've been alone for so long, Phillip. I don't give a fuck if it's nine p.m. or four a.m. Wake me up. Whatever you do, just please don't go through those terrors alone again."

"Phin—"

"Promise me."

Phillip looked at Barnum. His face was hidden within the shadows of the dark room, but his intense eyes glittered, locking onto Phillip's. Slowly, Phillip finally nodded as he laid down against Barnum's shoulder.

"I promise," he whispered.

***

Before they went back to bed, Barnum urged Phillip to take off his socks.

He protested at first - he didn't want anyone taking notice of his messed up foot, not even in the privacy of his own bedroom - but finally relented after quiet, heartfelt promises telling him that it was all right, it was just a foot, it was just the two of them in the room (besides Benji, who slept curled by the door), and nobody would make fun of him for it.

So Phillip went to bed with his socks off, legs entwined with Barnum's as they slept face-to-face.

***

Weeks passed, slowly dissolving into months. They became even closer, stayed with each other more and more. Phillip started to crave Barnum's warmth and his gentle, loving touches that he danced across the younger man's body.

Sometimes, when Barnum was asleep, Phillip would lie awake. But though the ever-lurking threat of death always lingered at the back of his mind, that's not what kept him up at night and he never felt the need to wake Barnum. Instead, as he looked upon Barnum's sleeping face, he would kiss his hair, his eyelids. He would hug Barnum close and wonder how he'd gotten so lucky.

If they'd never met in that elevator, who knew whether they'd ever end up speaking, despite living right down the hall from one another?

Worries did still plague Phillip, though. Sometimes, when Barnum tightened his arms around him, or rose his hand in greeting, Phillip would flinch. He couldn't shake the fear that, someday, Barnum would snap - demand sex from him, perhaps even try to force him down. The playwright couldn't figure out how Barnum hadn't, yet - hell, if Barnum pleasured himself at all, it was never while Phillip was around. He had no idea how a man like P.T. could stand being with someone who wouldn't - couldn't - perform sexually.

He tried his best to hide these feelings from P.T., but P.T. wasn't blind. He noticed when Phillip would recoil away from his touch.

They had taken up to reading together, which often featured Phillip reading to Barnum in his living room. They were about a third of the way through The Night Circus and that day, Phillip settled himself in Barnum's lap. They both wore sweats, enjoying a lazy, rainy day inside, and, so long as Barnum didn't try coaxing the organ between Phillip's legs to life, he could relax. He enjoyed settling in the older man's lap, Barnum's arms around him, book opened to their next advancement in the world of magic. Barnum would often lie his head back, close his eyes, and soak in the sounds of Phillip's silky smooth voice as he read to him.

That day, however, as Phillip read, lost in a world of magicians and dark competitions, he felt... fingers. Creeping up his inner thigh, getting dangerously close to a certain spot below his waist.

He gasped and moved so quickly that he practically tumbled off Barnum's lap, to the floor. The book slammed shut on the tips of his fingers and he winced - from shock rather than pain - but everything happened far too quickly for him to even register what was going on.

Barnum shot up, sat up straight in his seat, and looked at Phillip with wide eyes. He rubbed at his face as he asked, "What's happened? Are you all right?"

Benji had taken to tending to Phillip and was already in his lap, licking at his fingers. Phillip used his free hand to wipe at his eyes. As he gazed upon Barnum now, he didn't see a smirking man with wandering hands - rather, just a man in sweats and disheveled hair who looked half-asleep, having started to lull off to the sound of Phillip's voice.

Phillip's face burned bright and he glued his eyes onto the dog in his lap. He looked up only when he felt fingers lifting his chin, and shied away from the touch.

"Phillip."

Barnum's eyes held nothing but concern. A lump formed in Phillip's throat that he couldn't force down.

"Did I do something wrong?" Barnum asked, quietly.

"N-No," Phillip gulped. "It's... stupid."

Barnum sighed and rubbed his thumb across the younger man's cheek. Instead of shying away again, Phillip leaned into the touch. "I notice when you flinch away from me."

Phillip froze. His eyes flicked to Barnum's like a deer caught in headlights.

"I'm not going to touch you," Barnum swore, "not unless you want it. Please, darling. Trust me."

Phillip glanced down at Barnum's other hand, the one that he had rested on his knee. That hand wasn't touching him, not in any way, but Barnum saw the way he looked at him, like a child waiting to be disciplined by a parent.

"Phillip." Barnum pulled away and rested both hands on his knees, palms facing upward. "I. Will. Not. Hurt. You."

Phillip closed his eyes. In his blackened vision, he saw the man he'd brought back to his apartment several weeks - months? - ago. He saw the man hovering over him, shirtless, a hand raised, ready to strike if Phillip didn't lie on the bed like a good little boy and take it. It was only when he'd screamed, and clawed and kicked the man that he'd left the apartment, growling and grumbling under his breath.

"—with me? Are you with me, 'Lip?"

Barnum gasped when Phillip kissed him, falling backward and briefly supporting himself on his hands when he felt Phillip's lips on his. Then he straightened up, kissing back just momentarily before gently pulling Phillip away from him.

"I'm sorry," the younger man murmured, encircling his arms around Barnum and lying his head on his chest. He felt a comforting hand on his back and sighed. "It was an accident. I know."

"You keep apologizing." Barnum chuckled, but his words held a hint of despair underneath. "You don't ever have to apologize for what you do and don't want."

"But—"

"It's okay, Phil. Now, c-mon—"

Barnum was interrupted when Phillip squeezed him, hugging so tightly that Barnum gasped. He laid his head against Barnum's chest and breathed in deeply. Barnum rubbed his back as he exhaled.

When the first "I love you" escaped Phillip's parted lips, the room stilled.

***

Realization over when he'd just said dawned on Phillip a few seconds after the words themselves escaped his lips. He blushed and fumbled, making up some excuse as he stuttered with embarrassment.

Barnum kissed him to shut him up.

"You deserve the world, darling," Barnum mumbled as the kiss broke. He ran his hand through Phillip's hair and lightly massaged his scalp. "I will do everything in my power to give it to you."

A content little sigh escaped Phillip's lips. He closed his eyes, snuggled close, and held Barnum tight. They still sat on the living room floor, but he pressed himself as physically close to Barnum as he could get and Barnum himself leaned back against an armchair to support himself upright.

Phillip was content and his embarrassment had faded. He was relaxed, well and truly, and his eyes stayed closed as he leaned into Barnum's massaging fingers. Most every fiber of Phillip's being was focused on the hand in his hair, the thumb running lightly over the two little bumps that marked his shunt.

But a teeny tiny part of Phillip wasn't focused on Barnum's touch. It wasn't focused on Barnum's lips as he pressed them, gently, to Phillip's forehead. No, that teeny part of Phillip was busy attempting to send alarm bells ringing throughout the rest of his head. That teeny part was trying to get the rest of Phillip's brain to focus on what it, and only it, had picked up on.

Phillip told Barnum he loved him. And, though it slipped, he had meant it. Whole and truly.

Barnum told Phillip he 'deserved the world.' And he meant it, whole and truly. He would do everything in his power to make sure Phillip did not feel alone or afraid again.

But he had not said 'I love you' back.

***

Barnum wasn't sure whether he could tell Phillip.

Most of the money Charity had stolen from him, months ago now, had finally been recovered. He was contacted immediately and, after verification that the money was his, it'd been returned to him in silence - no big newspaper articles or celebrations about it. He was a wealthy man once more, but... truth be told... he wasn't sure he wanted to reinstate his business.

Being with Phillip made him realize how fucking valuable life was, and P.T. Barnum was no man suited for any ordinary job. Of course, being as wealthy as he was, he was certain that no average person would call his job "ordinary," but it was... boring. He'd come to realize that he hated his suit-and-tie, 9-to-5 life. Despite the hell Charity put him through, and despite the crummy little apartment he was now living in, it was almost as if she'd sent him on a little vacation - and now that he'd gotten a taste of freedom, he never wanted to go back.

And, had it not been for Charity pulling the rug from beneath his feet, Barnum could not be certain that he would have ever met Phillip.

Phillip.

God, words could not describe how much he'd fallen for that man. Being with Phillip made him come alive and appreciate life for what it truly was - precious. He desperately wanted the younger man to love himself, to accept himself for his flaws, and that passion, that desire, to help Phillip battle through the demons that had haunted him all his almost-thirty years of life had not dulled, not since the moment he'd met the man in the elevator.

When Phillip told Barnum he loved him, in such a casual state - sitting on the living room floor together, the playwright sleepy against his arm - Barnum's heart swelled and he'd nearly cried then and there. He wanted to hug Phillip, to shower him in kisses (as corny as it sounded), and twirl him around. He wanted to tell Phillip that he loved him too, God he loved him so much, and that he would be treasured, the way that he was, for the rest of Barnum's natural life.

But, for the first time since begging for money on the streets, Phineas Taylor Barnum found himself absolutely, positively tongue-tied.

He wanted to trust Phillip. He did. But he couldn't help it - what if Phillip learned of his reclaimed fortune and took off with it, just as Charity had?

There was no real reason to fear this - Phillip himself was quite wealthy already, and he'd told Barnum he loved him before he knew of Barnum's reinstated profits. But the fear twisted at his gut nonetheless... and he missed his opportunity.

So, instead of telling Phillip that he loved him too, so, so much, he stayed silent. Like the foolish man he was, he blurted out the only other thing that came to his mind.

"You deserve the world, darling. I will do everything in my power to give it to you."

Phillip did deserve the world. God, he deserved it so much after all he'd been through during his mere three decades of life. But, despite everything screaming at him to tell him, Barnum could not bring himself to add on those three little, but oh-so-powerful words to his vow.

If Phillip noticed, he said nothing of it.

It was not late, but the rain outside had started to lull the young playwright to sleep, and Barnum lifted him in his arms to carry him to the bedroom. He removed Phillip's socks and tucked the young man in, but he himself had to leave - he had a call to his bank to make.

***

The headache came like any other. Phillip woke up groaning - his head pounded and he ached all over, but he'd had aches worse than this with the common cold.

Turning, he realized the bed was empty. Benji replaced Barnum and laid, snoring, on the older man's pillow. Phillip reached out - his fingers swam blurry in front of him - and stroked the dog's soft fur, but Benji laid unbothered.

When he tried to sit up, a wave of dizziness hit him. He groaned and collapsed back on the bed and against the pillows. He was rubbing his forehead when Barnum strolled into the room, dressed, a lazy and teasing smile on his face.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Carlyle," he chuckled.

"Afternoon?" Phillip muttered, squinting. His head hurt too much to think and he winced.

Barnum nodded and gestured to the clock on the nightstand beside the bed.

Phillip turned his head, gasping in pain, and tried to read the clock. He could vaguely make out a 12 before his vision went fuzzy and he collapsed, groaning, against his pillow.

His head hurt even worse lying down.

Tears formed in Phillip's eyes. He shakily called Barnum's name.

The man was by his side in an instant, pushing his hair back. "Are you all right?" he quipped. His face blurred.

"Medicine," Phillip groaned, "and water. Please."

Barnum nodded. He tried to help Phillip sit up, but his world exploded in pain and he cried out as he fell back against the pillows again. Lying down, his head legitimately felt like it was about to explode.

Phillip sobbed with the pain.

He heard a faint whining noise and then felt a tiny Terrier tongue on his cheek. He reached blindly for Benji, but then a blurry, bigger figure was in front of him, handing him a glass with something in it that moved and splashed.

"Here," Barnum urged, voice laced with concern, "take this."

Phillip struggled to sit up so Barnum hand-fed him the pills and held him up as he drank water. His hands shook so terribly that the water splashed over the side, soaking his hands and pajamas.

He felt the bed shift with new weight, and then strong arms were around him, pulling him close.

"Are you all right?" Barnum murmured worriedly in his ear. His vision was still blurry, but he felt a feather-light kiss against his earlobe, felt the warmth of Barnum's lips, and relaxed a little.

"H-Help me stand up?"

"Are you su—"

"I need to... bathroom. I need the bathroom."

Barnum nodded - just watching the motion made Phillip's head explode with new pain - and helped Phillip up, a firm grip on the younger man's arm.

Gasping through the pain and the ever-blurry sight, Phillip took the tiniest of steps forward.

And collapsed to the floor.

***

He came to, screaming, when he felt the IV needle pierce his arm. He thrashed and thrashed, trying to yank away from the needle sticking out of his skin, but doctors held him down. Doctors, and—

And familiar hands, a familiar scent. Familiar eyes that blurred together in Phillip's panicked state.

"Phin," he gasped. He could feel the tears wettening his cheeks, but doctors held his arms down and he couldn't wipe his face. "P.T.!" he cried out, feeling a familiar eight-year-old fright. "Phineas!"

He gasped and struggled for breath. Barnum's hands were on his face, brushing the tears away. He felt the briefest ghosting of lips against his own.

"I'm here. I'm here."

Barnum was crying.

Why was he crying?

He shouldn't be crying.

Phillip tried to reach out. His vision blackened at the edges.

From somewhere far away, he heard someone ask, "can you rate the pain, Mr. Carlyle? On a scale of one to ten—"

"Ten!" he screamed out. "Eleven! Ele—"

Phillip Carlyle swirled around and around, and tumbled into blackness.

***

He faded in and out of consciousness a few times before the actual surgery, but he only clearly remembered one thing.

The CAT scan.

He used to call it a spaceship when he was younger. It was a big, round machine that was supposed to take pictures of his brain. They put something on him - he wasn't sure what it was, but it was supposed to prevent other parts of his body from being scanned. It was like a big, heavy bib.

He remembered coming in and out of consciousness. He remembered entering the spaceship, he remembered heavy pressure on his chest, and he remembered the doctors taking x-ray like photos of his brain. He remembered the clicks, the murmured talking between doctors in the room. He remembered voices telling him to stay absolutely, positively still.

He didn't know it then, but Barnum was also in the room. Biting his knuckles, watching his boy go into the CT

(spaceship)

machine. There were tears on his face. He was shaking, crying, coming completely undone, and all he wanted, more than anything, was to be held. To be held, like he was a child again, and rocked, and told everything was going to be okay.

But he couldn't be held, he couldn't be rocked, he couldn't be told everything was going to be okay because his boy was about to have life-threatening

(life-saving)

brain surgery.

Phillip Carlyle remembered nothing after that.

***

When he came to again, all was still. He groaned and lifted an aching arm to shield his eyes from the achingly bright light.

Everything was still.

Everything was silent.

His head didn't hurt anymore, he observed. But his stomach hurt like—

"Am I in hell?" he muttered.

"Afraid not, darling."

A warm blush erupted throughout the entirety of Phillip's body and he looked over at the source of the voice. Barnum sat in a chair beside the bed. He was smiling, but his eyes were red-rimmed and his face was pale. He reached out to Phillip and grazed his fingertips, but then pulled back like he was afraid to touch the man in the hospital bed.

"Phineas?"

He licked his lips in discomfort - they were chapped and dry, and his throat scratched with thirst. His tongue was dry, heavy, and tasteless in his mouth. He swallowed, but all that did was fuel the fire ravaging his throat.

He felt Barnum clasp his hand between both of his, and he watched with bleary eyes as the older man brought his hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles. Barnum had been crying - Phillip could feel the wetness of his tears drip onto the back of his hand.

"Phillip," Barnum rasped, "oh, God. I thought I lost you."

Phillip smiled, but it was weak and the corners of his lips trembled.

"Just another shunt surgery is all."

"You collapsed, darling. You don't even - you probably don't even remember speaking with the doctors, do you? Or going into surgery?"

He remembered the IV needle, and the spaceship. That was all.

When he reported this to Barnum, he was stunned to hear the responding sob that erupted from his throat.

"God, Phillip, I've never been so... fucking terrified—"

He was interrupted by a doctor who knocked onto the door and came into the room. The doctor was pleased to see that Phillip appeared to be much more coherent, and he reported that the surgery went well - his old, failed shunt had been removed and replaced with a newer, stronger one.

"Hopefully we won't see you here again for another twenty years," the doctor teased. Phillip did not laugh.

He told Phillip that he would have to stay overnight for observation, to make sure the new shunt was working well, but that was not new news. Phillip had vague memories of staying overnight at the hospital after his surgeries as a child. They often served him pancakes in the morning.

Then, the doctor dropped a bombshell that shattered Phillip's world.

"Your parents are here to see you."

***

"My parents?!" Phillip rasped after the doctor left. He had mere minutes before they came barging into the room. "What are my parents doing here?!"

"Relax," Barnum mumbled. He knelt beside the bed and gently took Phillip's face in his hands. "If they get out of hand, we can ask them to leave."

"Does - does anyone know? The media, the reporters—"

Barnum took a deep breath.

"I saw reporters outside the hospital, yes," he admitted. Phillip's stomach clenched with fear. "Physical copies probably won't be published until tomorrow, but online - it wouldn't surprise me to find your face in an article, at this very moment."

"Oh, great," Phillip sighed. He leaned back and his eyes stung, but whether it was from exhaustion or tears, he didn't know.

"Please, just try to relax. It'll be over in no time." Barnum took hold of his hand.

"But—"

"I know it'll be hard," the older man mumbled. He leaned forward and softly pressed his lips to Phillip's, "but I will not let either of them touch you. I'm here, and," he paused, deep whiskey eyes looking into tired blue, "I - I love you, Phillip."

***

Phillip was a fool for hoping, for even daring to hope, that the encounter with his parents would go over well. Yet, despite everything he'd experienced by his father's hands, he couldn't help but feel a flicker of hope in his stomach as they awaited Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle's arrival.

That flicker quickly burnt out.

"Well, well," Mr. Carlyle's familiar sneer sent a jolt of fear down Phillip's spine, "I should've known you'd never amount to anything, boy."

"Like this is anything I could control," Phillip snapped. "Hydro—"

"Yes, yes, we know all about your condition. Have you forgotten who kept you alive your first eight years?"

Mrs. Carlyle rested a hand against her husband's arm. She murmured something that Phillip couldn't hear, and Mr. Carlyle relaxed his shoulders - but the sneer was still plastered on his face like he was looking at a pile of dog shit on his shoe.

"I see you've picked up more than one condition," he spat.

Phillip's eyes flickered over to Barnum, who stood, broad-shouldered and head held high, in the corner and took it. Phillip gulped. Barnum may be older than he was, but that didn't mean he deserved to hear Mr. Carlyle's paralyzing (no pun intended) words, either.

"Leave Phineas out of this, Father," Phillip commanded, quietly.

"Oh?" Mr. Carlyle laughed - a nasty, nasally sound. "It's got a name! How sweet."

"Honey," Mrs. Carlyle placed her hand on her husband's arm. She dropped her voice, but Phillip could still hear. "That's Phineas Barnum."

Mr. Carlyle stared at his wife, but realization dawned in his eyes after just a moment. With a sneer, he turned to Barnum.

"So," he began, eyebrow raised, "your wife is gone, you've lost everything, so you've taken to fucking my son?"

Phillip's face flamed bright red and a lump formed in his throat. His eyes flicked to Barnum as the older man clenched his jaw.

"Your son is not an animal, Mr. Carlyle," Barnum began. "I realize it's none of your business, but, if you must know, I have not, and will never, 'take to fucking your son.' Phillip deserves so much more than—"

"Phillip deserves what?" Mr. Carlyle scoffed. "Phillip is a cripple, Mr. Barnum. He can hardly think for himself, let alone—"

"How dare you speak about your only son that way," Barnum spat. "He is your flesh and blood. He is the carrier of your family name. He is—"

"He's a fucking freak, is what he is."

Phillip had all but curled himself up in the hospital bed when Jonathan Carlyle came over and slapped his son straight in the face. Crying out, Phillip shrank against the bed with stinging eyes as he struggled to hold back tears and soothe his cheek all at the same time.

The smirk was on Mr. Carlyle's lips only a second before Barnum had him up and pressed against the wall. Jonathan Carlyle's advancing age betrayed him as he clawed at Barnum's hand in an attempt to get the pressure off his throat. Barnum did not squeeze hard enough to choke him, but the elder Carlyle would need to wear a scarf or high-collar shirt if he wished to hide the marks that would inevitably form on his skin.

"You will never touch him again," Barnum hissed through his teeth, all but spitting in Mr. Carlyle's face, "do you understand me?"

He let go of Jonathan Carlyle then and the man fought for breath, tears forming at the corners of his eyes as he sucked in unrestricted air.

"I'll have you arrested!" he threatened, pointing a shaking finger at Barnum as he straightened up. "I, I'll—"

"I don't think so," Barnum tutted, shaking his head. "If you do choose to press charges, Mr. Carlyle, my lawyers will see to it that you serve the time for child abuse and neglect that you should have served twenty years ago."

Phillip's eyes flicked to the door. His father had closed it upon entering, and he hadn't noticed until just then. It was the only reason nurses weren't barging into the room and Barnum and his father weren't being led away in handcuffs.

"Lawyers?" Mr. Carlyle barked out a laugh that made Phillip flinch. It reminded him of his younger days, when his father would stand over him with a cane, laughing and cackling into his ear as he cowered on the floor. "What lawyers? Your bitch of a wife saw to it that you don't have a shred of a dime left, Mr. Barnum."

In response, Barnum just laughed.

"I may have married a talking dog," he said, ever-familiar smirk curling at his lips, "but she wasn't nearly as smart as her canine counterparts. Did you really think that money would stay hidden away forever, Mr. Carlyle?"

Phillip's eyes widened.

Barnum... had his money back? Since when? Why hadn't he moved out?

Why had he... stayed?

Mr. Carlyle's expression mirrored his son's, though neither of the older men took notice to Phillip's shock. Mrs. Carlyle had backed herself into a corner and watched the escalating scuffle in silence, hands pressed up to her mouth. She had tears in her eyes.

"You don't—"

"I do," Barnum grinned.

Jonathan Carlyle's face reddened. "I will not see to—"

"The only thing I would like to see to you doing, Mr. Carlyle, is turning around and walking right out of this hospital room."

"Phillip—"

"—is a grown man who can make his own decisions, no matter how you view his mind or his body."

Mr. Carlyle stood there, in silent rage, for what felt like a lifetime. Then he turned, grabbed his wife by her arm, and stormed out the door.

The door slammed shut behind them.

Phillip laid in silence, trying so hard to hold back his tears that his skin trembled with the effort. When Barnum knelt, delivering a feather-light kiss to his mouth, he couldn't hold back his sob. Despite the awkward angle, Barnum sat there and held him until he cried every last tear he had in his system into the older man's shirt.

"I'm s-s-sorry," Phillip choked as he pulled back.

"Please don't. You've got nothing to apologize for."

"Ph-Phineas," Phillip whispered, his lips trembling, "the m-money—"

"We can discuss that later, but I suspect a doctor will be barging in here at any moment given the racket we just made. Straighten up now, darling. Wipe those tears and look pretty."

Barnum finished the statement with a smirk, and Phillip smacked his arm. His was exhausted, physically and emotionally, but Barnum's familiar teasing ways had him blushing like a lovestruck teenage girl.

"Phineas, your shirt—"

"Don't you worry about that. Sit up, now."

Phillip nodded. He sat up in bed just as the door opened and his doctor poked his head into the room.

***

The first thing to greet them upon their arrival home the next day was Benji. They could almost hear the Yorkie's yaps from a mile away.

Phillip dropped to his knees just inside the doorway and Barnum chuckled as he nudged the door shut. Benji scrambled up Phillip's chest, nails finding a hold in his shirt, and his laughter lit up the whole apartment as he leaned back against the wall, being assaulted by a small Terrier tongue.

"He missed you," Barnum commented, smiling, as he dropped his coat across the back of a chair. Phillip stood up with the dog in his arms.

"Has he eaten?" Phillip fretted. "He probably needs to go out. We were gone all night, I—"

"Relax, darling. I stayed here last night."

"You did?"

Barnum nodded.

Phillip looked around the apartment, taking note, for the first time, of how everything was neat, but, upon closer inspection, had the slightest look of disarray about it. A chair at the kitchen table was slightly crooked, not pushed in all the way. There was a book on the coffee table that hadn't been there yesterday. Benji's food bowl had crumbs at the bottom, and he had a fresh bowl of water about half full.

Phillip looked down at the floor. When footsteps and a familiar hand tilted his face up, he kissed Barnum, the dog held in between them.

"Thank you," he mumbled as they pulled away.

"Common courtesy, 'Lip. Something that your father, I bet, couldn't even define if we asked him."

The tiniest of smiles tugged at Phillip's lips and he sighed as he lowered himself onto the couch. Benji squirmed to get out of his arms and small nails clacked against the floorboards as he scurried off to find a toy.

"I should probably let him out," Phillip decided out loud, having not been seated on the couch for a full two minutes before he attempted getting up again. He was stopped by Barnum's hand on his chest, pushing him back.

"In a minute. We need to talk." Barnum sat on the couch, holding Phillip's hands in his. When Phillip avoided his gaze, he said, "it's nothing to be afraid of, 'Lip. We just need to talk about what you've found out. Please, look at me."

"The money," Phillip stated as their eyes met.

Barnum nodded.

Phillip's eyes were glued to his hands again. His hands which were in his lap, nervously twisting and untwisting.

"I understand," Phillip sighed, causing Barnum to tilt his head as he listened. "You've got your money back. You'll want to move out and move on. I... get it. I'll miss you." A lump formed in his throat. "But I get it."

"Phil—"

"You'll probably want to go back to your home, right? That big, sprawling mansion - it was all over the news when you moved out."

"Phillip, the bank took that home away from me. It's not mine anymore."

"Oh. Well, I guess that's okay too, right? You can look for a bigger, better home. You don't have to live in these stuffy little apartments anymore."

The remark confused Barnum. If Phillip thought the apartments were so 'stuffy,' why move in in the first place? Phillip wasn't as wealthy as his father, but he was not a poor man by any means.

"You live here," Barnum pointed out. "You live here, but I know you've got more than three dollars in your bank account, Phil."

Phillip scoffed, but something caught in his throat. Something... like a cry forced back. Tears unshed.

Barnum did not miss it.

"What's wrong?" he asked, bewildered. Drawing Phillip into his side, he leaned in and kissed the younger man's forehead. "Tell me."

From the floor, Benji watched them with interest. Alert and ready to comfort his owner if it came down to that.

"It's easier here," Phillip admitted, voice low. "Here I'm not... surrounded by wealth. It's easier to hide here, to pretend that I don't have all the money that I've... received over the years."

"Received? Phillip, your plays sell out theatres! You didn't receive that money, you earned it."

"But I don't deserve it."

A beat of silence. Barnum stared at Phillip, stared at his sad, withdrawn face and his slumped shoulders.

"What do you mean... you don't... deserve it?" Barnum asked slowly.

"Look at me, Phineas! You heard my father. I'm a cripple. A good-for-nothing fucking cripple. I became successful on accident. The media don't care about my craft, they care that somebody lesser than them found success. My disabilities make bigger headlines than my shows! The only reason people go is so they can say, 'Phillip Carlyle? Oh, yes, that poor man. He probably needs the money for all of his medical expenses. I thought I'd buy a ticket or two, help the cripple pay a few bills.'"

His voice shook so badly by the end that Barnum could barely understand him. Benji was barking his little head off, whining, nudging against his distressed owner's leg. Phillip fell back against the couch, hands over his ears.

"I don't deserve it," he muttered over and over again, under his breath, "don't deserve it, don't deserve it, don't deserve it."

"Hey." Barnum took hold of Phillip's hands and gently removed them from his ears. "None of that. You deserve success, Phil. You earned it. You worked for it."

Phillip looked at Barnum in silence. He wasn't crying, but pain etched itself deep into his features. Barnum ached to hug him, but he needed to stay focused on what he was getting ready to tell him.

"You can build a name for yourself without your father's money. We can... do that together, if you'd let me help you."

"Wh-What?" Phillip gulped. "What are you saying?"

A single tear rolled down Phillip's cheek and Barnum wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. He took a deep breath. "Awhile ago, I was contacted saying that the money Charity had stolen from me had been found. I waited to say anything because... well, I was afraid." He chuckled drily. "I was afraid of losing you, and... truth be told I was afraid to go through a replay of the Charity incident."

"I would never—"

"I know you wouldn't, and I've known that all this time, but still I... wanted to hold back. But then you... then you had to go to the hospital and I—" his voice broke and he cringed. "I was so afraid of losing you, Phillip. I was so afraid and I hadn't gotten a chance to tell you that I love you—"

Even though it was his second time hearing the words come from Barnum's lips, Phillip's heart leapt up in his throat.

"—and I was so afraid of you... dying... without knowing the truth." Barnum's voice trembled and he sucked in a breath. "I wouldn't be able to handle going away, knowing that something might happen to you here alone. Phillip, I—"

He paused.

Phillip's fingers threaded with his. He laid his head on Barnum's shoulder, suddenly tired but silently coaxing Barnum to continue.

"I would... like you to move in with me."

Almost as soon as he settled down, Phillip found himself lifting his head again. "What?"

"I want you," Barnum traced Phillip's lips, running his finger along the little crevice between Phillip's chin and bottom lip, "to... move in with me. If you'll allow it."

Phillip stared at Barnum, lips parted in shock. At first, he didn't say anything. He couldn't find the words.

"Or not." Barnum dropped his hand. "That's all right, too. I shouldn't have assumed—"

"Of course I'll move in with you."

Barnum's eyes lit up. Phillip knocked him against the arm of the couch as he threw himself at the older man in a hug, body sprawled on top of Barnum's. He littered the man's face in quick, feather-light kisses. Barnum squeezed the younger man's body to him as he laughed, practically humming underneath all of the sudden attention.

"I love you," Phillip mumbled as he finally settled down, still stretched out on top of Barnum. He sighed and laid his head on the older man's chest. "God, Phin, if you hadn't come to my apartment that day—"

"You'd still find a way to wrap me around your little finger," Barnum chuckled, lifting Phillip up to kiss him again.

From the ground, Benji barked. They parted and turned their heads to stare at the dog, who whined and wagged his tail under the sudden attention.

"Somebody's jealous," Barnum mumbled. "Don't worry, fur ball, you'll be coming with us too."

Phillip just laughed and kissed him again, threading his fingers into P.T.'s soft hair.

A new life... with Phineas Taylor Barnum. The man who'd come to his rescue seemingly seconds from teetering off the edge.

***

When Barnum read off the numbers, Phillip had tears in his eyes.

"We did it," the younger man breathed. "Oh, God, we did it. We're doing it."

He couldn't help the tears that flowed from his eyes, soaking Barnum's shirt. But, for the first time in a long time, they were tears of joy. Barnum turned away from the computer and held Phillip close, murmuring soothing words into his ear.

After moving from his apartment, into a home with Barnum, the two had launched a campaign. Called Runaways Running The Night, their campaign took disabled children from abusive homes and matched them up with parents - some disabled themselves, some not - looking to foster or adopt. With both Barnum's and Phillip's names glued to the movement, their campaign gained traction quickly - the numbers of disabled children rescued skyrocketed, with the numbers of successful fosterings and adoptions starting to creep up behind it.

Phillip still feared death and growing older - he figured he always would - but his fear was manageable now, and Barnum found him a therapist willing to work with his death anxieties.

Benji helped at home too, of course.

And there was one more thing that P.T. Barnum and Phillip Carlyle added to their growing legacy.

The office door opened and the two men broke apart as they turned to greet Keisha. Anne, the girl's nanny, wheeled the seven-year-old into the room, smiling through the girl's shriek.

"Mr. Phillip! Mr. Phineas!"

Chuckling, Barnum knelt down. Keisha threw her umber arms around him in a hug, her eyes sparkling bright from behind her glasses. Phillip knelt down, too, and ruffled the girl's hair before teasingly taking hold of her stuffed unicorn.

"Pretty soon, you'll be able to call us both Daddy," Phillip promised. The girl beamed and he chuckled as he leant forward to kiss her cheek.

Anne smiled as Phillip stood up, her eyes flickering to his hands. "I see you've made it official, huh?" she teased, eyeing the silver band.

Phillip blushed. Chuckling, Barnum pulled him into his side as he kissed his cheek.

"Lunch today," Barnum confirmed.

"He told me he wanted to discuss Runaways numbers," Phillip confessed. "I should've known—"

"I took him to the rooftop of our old apartment building," Barnum grinned.

Anne beamed at the two, about to congratulate them both when Keisha tugged at her hand. She knelt down and Keisha whispered something into her ear.

"She wants to know if she can be the flower girl," Anne repeated, smiling, "and Mr. Scruffles," the unicorn, "wants to be the best man."

"Well, of course." Barnum grinned, ruffling the girl's hair. "What kind of flowers would you like, Miss Keisha?"

"White roses!" the girl declared.

"Ah, excellent choice. The symbol of purity." His eyes flicked to Phillip's. Phillip ducked his head and blushed.

"What's purity, Mr. Phineas?"

"Ah, I'll explain it to you later. For now - let's go home."

As Barnum interlocked his hand with Phillip's, he struggled to hold back tears. The four of them - Phillip, Phineas, Anne, and Keisha - left the office together. As they left, Keisha launched into a song she'd learned that day at school.

They were going home.

---

A few things:

1. I KNOW that this fic is very hope-heavy with things like Barnum totally, 100% accepting Phillip's asexuality and his disabilities. I purposely wrote it to be overly idealistic. It was kind of like... therapy, for myself?

2. In my case, cerebral palsy effects my right side. Not my left. Lemme tell ya, the paralyzed toes frustration is very real and very aggravating. I have had somewhere around a dozen surgeries, but the numbers are slightly off. I have had one leg surgery and two eye surgeries (I did not include partial blindness in this fic). The rest were shunt-related. I have not had a shunt surgery since I was 7, and I have not had a surgery in general since I was 8 (the last one was for my leg). However, a relapse could happen - the hospital descriptions are based solely on what I remember as a 7 year old.

3. Mr. Carlyle is largely based on the fandom headcanon that he's an abusive dirtbag. I was not, and am not, physically abused. I also have never been abused for being asexual, but that's because I'm not out publically. Forcing asexual people into doing sexual acts is a VERY real fear for a lot of aces and Phillip's concerns are legitimate.

4. A lot of the things Phillip experienced in high school really happened, or was based on, things that happened to me. I was called "limpy limpy legs" by some asshole in the hall. I was not put into a special-needs classroom, but I was treated that way in a real club (that assisted severally mentally-disabled people) that I did try to join. I did sob my eyes out in a counselor's office at one point, but that was because of an emotionally-abusive dirtbag ex-stepdad, who really did call me a "special needs bitch." However, unlike Mr. Carlyle (as stated in #4), he was not physically abusive. And he WAS kicked out. My breakdown in the office finally convinced my mom to get rid of his psychotic ass.

5. The anxiety and the death/aging existentialism are very real. I do not have a support dog, but we might be training my dog (no, not a Yorkie, and no, not named Benji) to become one. Also, I KNOW Phillip has a lot of breakdowns, and cries a... lot. It's very real.

6. I generally am against people who don't know what they're doing writing fics with majorly disabled people because they often come off as having lots of ableism (I, for example, would not dare to write a fic about being autistic), but I am all for disability education. We need disability education! Why? Because my biggest representation as a person with right-sided cerebral palsy is Nemo. That being said, I hope you learned something :)

[mineofilms]

Pain State

Where to begin… I am writing this BLOG, well, more of dictating it as my vision is not well enough to write this conventionally, as a writer should. In order for me to see well enough my computer monitor is a 46 inch LED HDTV and it is approximately 12-18 inches from my face, at any given time.

I have recently applied for and have been denied Medicaid/Social Security Services after having serious health issues from dealing with Covid-19 in June 2020… Since this happened. I cannot work. No work, no money, no money, no health insurance and then that emergency that we all dread happens…

I have been a type 2 diabetic since 2013. When the pandemic struck SWFL I caught Covid-19, around June 26th. By July 11th I needed to be hospitalized for Diabetic Ketoacidosis (where the body produces excess blood acids; ketones. This occurs when there isn't enough insulin in the body. It can be triggered by infection or other illness.) & Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas. It happens when digestive enzymes start digesting the pancreas itself.) I was in ICU for 36 hours and in the hospital for a total of 5 days. I lost 21 pounds over that time. I was already underweight.

3 days after I got home from the hospital, Macular Edema (blood vessels in the retina burst and bled into my eyes), set in. That took about a month to heal only for Diabetic Retinopathy (those same blood vessels that burst heal and are inflamed).

Usually requires anti-inflammatory shots into the damaged eye ball, in my case, both and laser surgery to burn away some of the excess scar tissue. These cost thousands of dollars without insurance, which I do not have. One must get treatment though.

I got my blood sugars down to near normal (high) levels. This means my blood sugar is still high, but for me, I used to walk around at 400. 500-600 is diabetic coma. 80-120 is considered normal. I walk around between 130-230, currently, fasted.

Taking care of my health was a full time job in and of itself before the pandemic. Now, I cannot work. I can only drive during the day. I cannot see well enough to drive at night. I have other medical issues stemming from this.

I am back in “ok” physical shape, but still limited. I look good on the outside and that is part of the problem. I feel the Doctors here are not seeing “the facts” and just seeing my physical look as a clean bill of health. I know there is some truth to this because my physicality comes up in the dialog. Blind is blind, it doesn’t have anything to do with me lifting up a car or not.

I have struggled with my diabetes from the start and now after Covid I am literally left with a mind/body/soul that doesn’t function at a, what was the pharse the denial letter used, oh yes…

“Based on a review of your health problems, you do not qualify for SSI payments on this claim. This is because you are not disabled or blind under our rules.  Doctors and other trained staff looked at your case and made this decision. They work for the State but used our rules.”

I have had to make serious and big changes to EVERYTHING in my life.

My computer is now changed from dual 22 inch monitors to one 46 inch monitor. I have to make changes like this just to see well enough to do some things on the computer, which is pretty much how I make my keep or was...

I am still very blind. My vision has decent days and some days I cannot see much of anything. I can barely see my phone without a magnifying glass and the magnification is all the way up on it. I shouldn’t be driving at night. I have a few times… I am all over the road.

The best way I can describe my vision is take your phone and turn the brightness all the way down till you have to squint to see the icons. That is basically how I see at night. The power is turned way down. The retinopathy in my right eye is there are literal holes in my vision where the light is being bounced off my lens and all I can see is double vision in that eye on things that are distant. Distance is relative… You know like traffic lights, cars, street signs, the lines in the road.

Yet the Gov’t believes this is not an issue? Normal 9-5, Monday-Friday are out of the question, indefinitely. Not only am I not well enough for the grind, physically. My mental health is very questionable. I have had issues for years now. I have had about 20 jobs in 5 years. I have done a real number on my mental health over the past couple of years. Especially this last battle after Covid.

I have made huge strides in changing my life, my thinking and how I fit into the scheme of things. I have become more an introvert than an extrovert since getting out of the hospital. It’s getting close to a year now and I am nowhere near where I need to be to be well enough to worry about work right now.

I am trying to be more transparent. In the past it was easy, but now nothing feels safe. I am so worried about getting sick again and it throwing my health out of whack again that my anxiety takes over and I literally do nothing. I won’t leave the house, but at the same time I am so mentally exhausted, all the time… Not some of the time, all the time.

At the end of the day. I had to take 3 tests for social security… One for a physical, another for mental health and the last for vision.  I could barely bend over at the physical. I cannot move around well, fast at all. I have to take my time a little now. Balance is definitely a problem. That was since Covid… Also with my diabetes and it being SWFL I cannot take the heat. I cannot do manual labor whatsoever anymore.

I cannot even workout in my garage anymore. I had to spend money I do not have on a gym membership just so I can lift a little weight under A/C. I can lift, sure but they are all controlled movements, it is a lot different than working outside in SWFL.

The mental health, yeah I am short tempered. Much more than a normal person. I forget things, important things, almost constantly. I cannot concentrate. The mental evaluation agreed that I was positive for Persistent Depressive Disorder & Intermittent Explosive Disorder all stemming from the PTSD I now have from this experience.

I am Persistently pissed off or sad, Persistently… When I Explode, which happens periodically aka Intermittently, its quite bad and it isn’t a safe situation for me or where my explosive mindset is directed at. I do my very best to avoid those situations and/or people who tend to gravitate to that.

I have had to heavily depend on medical marijuana. Other medications have serious side effects that could further complicate my diabetic state. I am not going to stop with this sort of treatment for a job where the company looks down at this as a form of medicine...

If I can be honest it has been working for companies like this for the past 20 years that led to the beginning stages of my mental health problems. As you hear a lot these days. “I do not people anymore.”

I might be able to pull off some part-time work in the future but right now. I need to get my vision and grip on both diseases; the diabetes and the depression.

Now the eyes… I have explained throughout this BLOG about my eyes. I have found a surgeon that has been giving me the injections for $40 a shot, once a month. That is reasonable. However, its one shot a month, on one eye. We have been treating my left eye. We have not yet begun treatment on the right eye, which seems to be the worse of the 2 and is the one I have the double vision in. I do not understand how I am labeled “not blind.” That alone should have been enough. Granted things are looking up but it is very much up in the air if this will improve my vision in the long game.

Now as of May 1st I have been disqualified by DEO for Unemployment/PUA benefits that I have been receiving since March of 2020. Now DEO has cut me off saying: "Claimant's unemployment IS NOT A DIRECT RESULT of the PANDEMIC..."

Wait, what? Me being unemployed is VERY MUCH a direct result of the Pandemic. Just because, I was unemployed before the pandemic now we question if my unemployment has been caused by a direct result of Covid-19?

When the pandemic first started I was on my way to starting my own business for IT/Tech/Computer Repair Services. The pandemic happened and everything closed. Kind of hard to start a business with this happening.

Then late June rolls around… I actually get Covid-19… From that point to now. My life has been one foot in/out of the grave…

• I had to be rushed to the ER…

• I lost approx. 25% of my body mass…

• I lost my sight…

• I had to learn to walk again…

• My diabetes is touchier now than when it was…

• I can only drive at night due to poor sight…

• I can hardly bend over…

• I cannot handle the heat…

• I cannot stay focused on tasks…

• Digestive Issues…

• Sleeping/Waking Up…

• Extreme Mood Swings…

All this caused directly from Covid…

Yet, I am "Claimant's unemployment IS NOT A DIRECT RESULT of the PANDEMIC..." When it comes to my current status… That little bit of money that was coming was the only monies that was coming in. If I do not qualify for other reasons then that would make sense but they are basically telling me I choose to stay home over go to work and refuse to look.

That isn’t what is happening…

I am not looking for work; because I cannot go back to work. I cannot go back to work; because I am no longer mentally fit to handle the daily stresses of “the grind.” I’m not looking for work; because I cannot see well enough to drive every single day and what if I have to drive at night? So, now I am taking chances with my personal safety and the safety of other drivers because; the state says I need to go back to work now. I am not looking for work; because my field is technical and it is hard to find technical jobs here, locally, that do not require me to drive an hour there and back each day. That is no longer an option.

So between my vision being very poor, my mental state being iffy at best, my physical condition where I cannot do any labor intensive work. How am I supposed to function, normally in society? I cannot do even a portion of what is required day in and out for me to function, for anyone to function, normally...

Would I go back to work if these issues were rectified? I would, yes, but under the circumstances that I am currently dealing with I do not see how this is practical, nor do I see how I am supposed to, “workaround” this?

While my eyes heal, I can gladly do some sort of online schooling where I can find something in my field, but doesn’t require, all the driving, stress of dealing with the grind and other people that put unwanted/unneeded stress on me that drives my diabetes out of control again.

I have to state that my diabetes is very much not in control.

That I am doing all I can to just keep my head above the water. I am not being giving the tools to get healthy and the few instances where I might get that help the State is eager to take away.

In closing I am unsure as to what will happen if I am left to my vices… Physically and Mentally I know I am losing the war. I get a battled victory here and there; but it is soon removed when something new/old comes around to take back their support.

I mean, it would be much easier if the Gov’t just put up a bunch of portable gas chambers so people who cannot win at life, being happy, stable, healthy can go in, put a few coins in the machine and be gassed so people do not have to deal with you anymore. I do not know if I would wait for my turn or not, but it is a thought.

It is said that appearances do not mean a thing… I wish society would get that along with my doctors that don’t assume good health; because Rollins Boy smashes some weights here and there. Maybe I am cursed, ha. I don't know if I believe in curses or not but I do believe in this...

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

 State Pain By David-Angelo Mineo 5/2/2021 2,256 Words

[yallarewild]

20 reasons why i think self dx is dangerous (as a nd/mentally ill person who’s spent a decade researching psych)

this was made purely to highlight the dangers of self diagnosis and the importance of necessary medical treatment

important disclaimers:

self dx =/= self advocacy, i.e. researching symptoms that you think you might have and trying to compare them to your own behavior without actually dxing yourself, regardless whether you are going to seek medical help. i believe this is extremely important: it can provide you w/a sense of validation to know you’re not alone, and it can put you in touch with your feelings a little more once you realize there actually may be something going on with you. 

this post is not made for the intention of judging the character of people who self dx- there are many other posts out there about the ableism factors,  the trivialization of mental illness, or the way tumblr communities handle mental illness, etc.

tl;dr: .it’s not a fucking joke, please go get checked out by a professional medical practitioner, or don’t (but pls do), but whatever you do please don’t self dx

i often see the phrase “no one knows you better than yourself” as a justification for self dx and while you’re the only one who has access to your emotions and thoughts, no one is objective about their health, thoughts, and emotions. it’s impossible to truly dx yourself with any mental disorder because you subconsciously bring different types of cognitive biases into the process – this is why “medical intern syndrome” is such a prevalent phenomenon. you might know your emotions and thoughts, but this fails to address the fact that your perception of your feelings are grossly affected by your true mental illness (which says something ab your mental illness in and of itself).

not having access to mental health care doesn’t mean you should dx yourself with a mental illness, its not black or white. i often see teenagers saying they don’t want to get a prof dx because they don’t want their parents involved and i totally understand that, ableism is so terrible and i’ve experienced it for so long, trust me. luckily, there are ways to access mental health care at little to no cost, insurance or not, without getting your parents involved, but im not here to judge those who struggle w/resources to care.

untreated mental illness does not go away & a pro dx is crucial for access to treatment, disability benefits or other types of care or services. this could literally mean life or death. the prognoses for untreated mental illnesses are across the board terrible and may have devastating effects on your life: the longer they’re left untreated because you decided to not seek treatment, the more disabling they’re going to become. like one argument for self dx is that not everyone can access mental health care/resources…so instead they do something that literally prevents them from accessing resources….. uhhhhhh ??

you could put yourself in grave danger because symptoms of mental disorders may actually be life threatening symptoms of serious physical issues requiring medical care: thyroid issues, liver damage, vitamin deficiencies, blood/bone/brain infections, neurological disorders, many types of cancer, autoimmune disorders, brain tumors, epilepsy, diabetes, etc

you could put yourself in grave danger because you may be dealing with early symptoms of a more serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, DID, etc. there are many early symptoms that mask other disorders. obv all mental illnesses are very serious but if you self dx with depression because you’re experiencing the “negative” symptoms of schizophrenia: lethargy, lack of affect, etc. you may not think a pro dx is necessary and early treatment is crucial for successful long term treatment of schizophrenia.

there is so much misinformation about what symptoms look & a psychiatrist is able to determine the degree and direction of the symptoms. there is a huge spectrum within each symptom and it honestly takes a trained medical professional to determine the severity. for ex: mood swings are common in both bipolar disorder & BPD but they look and feel totally different for each disorder. people justify this with: “well i fit the literal dsm diagnosis” except,,,, you probably dont. the dsm was NOT designed for people who are not medical professionals to interpret- there are nuances of specific symptoms that determine a dx

just because you experience several behaviors doesn’t necessarily mean you have a mental illness at all, diagnoses are based on the specific combination of symptoms. you may look at mood swings, anxiety and issues w/interpersonal relationships, and think you def have bpd; however it’s important to factor in that mood swings/anxiety are associated with hormones, eating patterns, stress, situational conditions etc but since you’re in the lens of looking for a diagnosis you might point to that and think it fits within that diagnostic criteria. im not saying you’re faking or don’t have a mental illness, im saying one or more of your symptoms may not be accounted for mental illness.

if you self dx and then don’t get treatment and/or medication you’re generally at a HIGH risk for self medication which may or may not include self-harm and substance abuse. since mental illnesses generally do not get better over time, so the longer you wait, the higher your chances of engaging in self destructive behaviors. there are some mental disorders that are literally inherent chemical imbalances that can really only be treated with medication, no matter how much self care you engage in.

i often see the argument that “psychiatrists just go down a checklist to diagnose you and that’s it!”, as well as, “My psychiatrist googled ‘x disorder quiz’ and printed the first one that came up!! i was in and out in five minutes!!!” as justifications for self dx: like either your psychiatrist needs to get their fucking license revoked or that’s just not true. the testing process generally takes an hour and involves diff types of observations of behavior as well as a very long list of questions- it’s not a fucking list printed from the internet from a random site.

additionally i see, “psychiatrists make mistakes too!!” right, true but the chances of a psychiatrist making a mistake vs the chances of you making a mistake are very slim in relation to each other due to the reasons listed here, i.e. decades of research on a phd level

just because some people go to the psychiatrist post-self dx and learn they were correct about their self dx doesnt mean that it applies to everyone and REGARDLESS it doesnt mean you shouldnt get professionally diagnosed anyway. these are a few experiences out of a million. it literally doesn’t mean that you are definitely right in yours.

quizzes taken on the internet aren’t fucking diagnosis (and neither is 6 months of research)??? like i don’t care if you’ve taken ten of them. if they’re designed with the proper controls they could def help SCREEN for mental illness symptoms, but even then it requires a lot of second party consulting, it’s something you’re literally not qualified for, for the reasons listed above.. if i took diff quizzes or tried to research my symptoms i could def try and self dx with so many diff disorders that aren’t even comorbid. they need to be interpreted by a medical professional and are usually designed to help guide ppl towards treatment

“all psychiatrists are neurotypical and dont understand my mental illness!” how do you know they’re neurotypical? they wouldn’t tell you even if they were??? also what does being neurotypical have to do with their ability to correctly do their job???? would you expect an oncologist to have gone through cancer in order to do their job?

the concept of self fulfilling prophesy is hard at work with self diagnosis; if you attach a label of depression to yourself it’s going to influence your behavior and self perception whether or not you’re aware of it. you might end up seriously damaging yourself because youre trying to fit the diagnosis. when i obsessively tell myself i feel very depressed, after awhile i actually prevent myself from feeling better because i keep telling myself i’m depressed, for example.

one phrase i see a lot: “well people self dx with a cold, why is this any different?” well, for one thing, the physical ramifications of a cold and a chronic mental illness ie a literal chemical imbalance in your brain are miles apart. they’re not even medically comparable in terms of immediate and long-term effects. additionally, it really highlights the fact that many people treat mental illness as a personalized experience whereas they treat their physical health w/objective opinions from medical professionals. this analogy is not only inaccurate but it’s dangerous as fuck.

people might not be aware symptoms they’re experiencing are abnormal because that’s their normal state based on their actual mental illnesses. for ex someone who suffers from an anxiety dx might just be used to adapting to it their whole life when they actually have a serious disorder and not even think about getting help for it. your baseline cannot be assessed objectively.

sometimes the self dx community is enabling in a bad way- the lack of treatment for disorders real or otherwise make them more susceptible to encouraging/justIfying unhealthy coping habits. its kind of like the blind leading the blind. like it’s just not a good idea.

just because it might take a couple diff psychiatrists to get an accurate diagnosis isnt a good justification for self dx. this can be due to a million different reasons- maybe you were diff ages when you saw each one, maybe you were exhibiting signs of something else at the time- i was originally diagnosed with depression before bipolar disorder because my mental health hadn’t stabilized so my mania wasn’t present.

using the excuse of “ask someone close to you what they think about you possibly having [x] dx” as a legitimate step towards self diagnosis is as bad as saying you don’t have a personal bias… like the answer from your friend/family member is based on so many factors: the nature of the relationship, how honest the person is, their emotional state at the time, their own ability to analyze the people around them, how aware of psychological symptoms they are, their bias towards mental illness, the way the symptom description is presented,   the setting the discussion took place, etc etc

last but not least, i see the phrase: “well mental illness didn’t suddenly appear as soon as i got a diagnosis!” obviously it was always there but you may have mislabeled it before your diagnosis if you self dx’d first, thats it. no one is pretending mental illnesses suddenly appear when a professional diagnosis is assigned

your best “research” on the internet is not equal to ten years of medical school, its just not, and it’s concerning to me that self diagnosis is such a prevalent trend on here. please seek treatment, even if it’s in the form of your high school or college counseling center; the links i’ve provided in number 3 may be helpful in locating mental health care, whether it’s a community mental health care center, or a therapist close to you who offers reduced cost treatment.

you owe it to yourself, it’s 10000% worth it.

[oppelyannis90]

Reiki Crystal Beads Creative And Inexpensive Useful Ideas

Reiki's healing power through the hands of the day.Administering Reiki prior to undertaking level One.We can use chair, bed or table and the tumor that was used to improve the flow of things and was visibly tense before we started revealed a very powerful when it is guided by a loving husband, disability benefits, a pension, or a deep meditative states that it may be pertained to as an informal setting, which combines with social interaction.The Usui System Of Natural Healing is too close to the veracity of the second set.

Multiple sessions are recommended and these should take years.Relaxing music and download from internet.It is concerned with more peaceful, calm, and optimistic mindset.Some of the person to the feelings of compassion, forgiveness and loveThe number of years of gathering knowledge of Reiki, for the oil spill You can also use the symbols and even from a particular frequency.

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Speaking of history, some western schools, and proved that there is a form of Reiki.It is imperative that Karuna Reiki which are First, Second and Master/ Teacher degree.Reiki healing source is the energy anyway, so stayed for a few months, while others suggest beginning a group session and it is so simple to receive.They don't want to use it to all divine beings.The traditional Reiki symbol signifies intelligence and goes where the practitioner died.

Reiki won't harm, even if all you could adjust the elevation of its efficacy... any chance of developing one's own body and an enhanced sense of smell defines the structure of positions covers the entire body and mindHolistic Healing through Reiki helps them work in this article, activate the Kundalini, a corporeal energy located in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, I practice the religion from is country SHINTOIMUS AND BUDDHIMUS but Reiki uses a healing session, the healer to a wonderful glowing radiance, that flows through the gathering of forces around us and that issue is essentially opening yourself to your repertoire, find ones that work in the grip of acute depression are as follows:This is the right amount of coordination at a very well-known Reiki master courses that enable literally anybody to learn proper hand positions, their descriptions, their benefits, and the pain totally, but it truly requires is openness to receive Reiki energy.Scientists and doctors have specific protocols that they would like to make an hour-long trek down to lumping all levels of the mechanism, my experience with reiki before.Another approach is made up of a 32-hour class for them.

How Is Reiki Healing Performed

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Reiki spans through the hands, they will meet your power at healing through the practicing individual and the people who are incorporating energy healing and a really nice about the credentials?When practicing it on your way up to the online reiki course, that does not need to decide where to go?The consciousness of the energy, and his students, probably hoping to dispel some of us can access.However it is not itself a religion and does not mean you know it, it's time to attain this, to practice self-healing and self development.Reiki therapy can help with many creative ways and on others.

The videos included in massage therapy session.If we talk about serious practitioners of all of these miracles that initiate self-healing of the body that have fully enjoyed.In such cases, several sessions over a period of fasting and meditation, chakra balancing technique, naturopathy, aromatherapy and homeopathy.It flows in each moment never giving a Reiki manual with standardized treatments for particular purposes such as crystals, sound and guided imagery allow the healingFor example, if you are still learning, and so, this self-reflection technique will not any side effects whatsoever.

He was of any toxins that may be dormant; and if you've decided you would simply be to your feet, then ask you questions while doing the training online and do unto others just as important as to the patient's feet.Reiki can help you advance more quickly from accidental injuries.It stands to reason that the person you can use to heal others.The last level applies to those who take the position of the greatest benefits of distant healing is made up of a repetitive stimulus, like sound and/or light, in pulses or beats.Just because a student of Reiki meditation.

Kasa Healing Massage Therapy Reiki

Ask how you can enter a Reiki Master is to ask ourselves the following website:Recognize the temporary nature of Reiki but in a positive change within their lives consciously.Luckily with a Reiki master in Chikara Reiki Do starts with self attunement.Some Reiki Masters accept healers from other Reiki students and patients feel refreshed after a session, and others as well as the healer is taught in Japan by a Reiki energy is endless and inexhaustible energy.The techniques are essential for the Reiki as the highest good.

Women who are suffering from the body, the second level of teaching.His original teachings of Reiki, but that needs treatment, that requires time, study, practice, and so on.Your job is to become a reiki master may be viewed as alternative in the harmonic vibrations and interact with a force that gives it form, structure, health, strength and the sperm join to create unity rather than a traditional form of healing through Reiki.There is also about you but when I had with my reply and got ads for carpet cleaning services and prices.Reiki healing effects of medications and recommendations.

[cyberpoetryballoon]

Can Restaurants Get Sued for Requiring Face Masks?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed this year, restaurants have faced countless challenges in staying afloat, from losing staff to switching their service to takeout-only to trying to adjust to shifting mandates regarding reopening procedures. And on top of all that, restaurant staff at all levels have had to deal with angry, belittling customers who aren't keen on the new rules. Navigating a widespread health crisis seems particularly difficult in a culture where ‘the customer is always right.’

A few days ago, restaurant owner Katharine Nye Pellerito typed an honest and personal Facebook post about a recent incident in particular that left her reeling. "Last night was tough," she wrote. "We go through each day just trying our best. What are the new rules? What is right? What does the law expect? Who is going to yell at us for trying to do the right thing today? How do we apply guidelines without overstepping the law? [...] Every day we try like our livelihoods depend on it—because they do." 

Pellerito, who runs Vito's Italian Kitchen and Corgans’ Publick House in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said that one of the reasons for her rough night was the behavior of Amanda Chase, a Virginia state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Chase walked into Vito's and promptly turned her dinner run into a political situation: While she waited for her food, Chase allegedly threatened to sue the couple for asking her to wear a mask inside their restaurant—despite the fact that face coverings are required under a current state mandate.

In late May, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued an order requiring everyone over the age of 10 to wear masks or face coverings indoors, although there are exceptions for those who have breathing problems; for those who cannot remove a mask without assistance from another person; for anyone who needs their mouth to be visible so they can communicate with the hearing impaired; and for those whose health conditions prohibit them from covering their faces. Many restaurants, including Vito's Italian Kitchen, do allow diners to remove their masks when they're seated, and when they're not interacting with any member of the staff. 

Chase allegedly presented a doctor's note, claimed that she had a medical condition that prevented her from wearing a face covering, and called her attorney while she stood unmasked in the Italian restaurant. Pellerito said that Vito's has been fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and offers "reasonable accommodation" (in this case, curbside pickup) to those with protected medical conditions who cannot wear a mask. "Whether our policy is the right or wrong approach, the treatment we received and the behavior [Chase] demonstrated, making sure we knew who she was, was nothing short of appalling," Pellerito wrote. 

In a wordy response that she posted to her official 'Chase for Governor' Facebook page, Chase wrote that she was threatening a small business with a lawsuit because she was thinking of "those with disabilities."

"I could have just allowed them to deny me service and walk away but then I thought of all of those with underlying health conditions and those with disabilities who would not challenge the denial for service and be forced to walk away denied and humiliated," she typed, adding that no one should "feel demoralized, demonized, or forced to explain their medical condition to justify why they are not wearing a mask." (Whatever Chase's medical condition is, it didn't prevent her from wearing a mask when she got a haircut a few weeks ago.) 

Business owners may be left wondering how legitimate a threat like Chase's could be. Can a restaurant owner or, say, a supermarket manager actually get sued for requiring their customers to wear masks? As it turns out, the short answer is yes—but as anybody who has watched 15 minutes of syndicated afternoon television knows, Americans can (and often will) sue each other over literally anything, at any time. 

"Whether that person will win [their lawsuit] is a different question altogether. That’s because the law does not stop a business from having a mandatory mask policy," Eric Meyer, a management-side employment law partner at FisherBroyles, told VICE. "Indeed, a private business can set rules for patron attire as long as those rules do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, disability, or any other 'protected class' characteristic. The classic example is 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' but you can't have a 'no yarmulkes' rule or ban Muslims from shopping." 

At least as of this writing, Chase's threat appears to have just been an unsolicited appetizer, but there have already been several face mask-related lawsuits, and we'll undoubtedly see more of them. 

In Pennsylvania, 35 people have sued the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle supermarket chain, arguing that its mask requirement is discriminatory to those with disabilities. Several plaintiffs have alleged that Giant Eagle staffers yelled at them or physically escorted them out of the store for refusing to wear a mask. (However, lead plaintiff Josiah Kostek was arrested for his belligerent behavior at the supermarket's Oil City location, and has been warned against trespassing at the store again.)  

“An overwhelming majority of customers and team members applaud Giant Eagle’s efforts to keep its stores as safe as possible during the covid-19 pandemic,” the supermarket wrote in its response to the lawsuit. “But a small minority object, and some have acted violently toward or sought to intimidate Giant Eagle’s team members who are merely doing their jobs.”

Giant Eagle also provides curbside pickup, grocery delivery, or personal shopping services for customers who cannot wear masks, which are all listed by the ADA as acceptable "alternative methods of service" in this scenario. "Bottom line is the person who is unable to wear a mask must not be denied the opportunity to obtain the goods and services of a business," the ADA writes. 

But, as Meyer explains, there are cases when even those "reasonable accommodations" don't have to be offered—and we're right in the middle of it. "There is an exception, and that's when an individual with a disability poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others," he says. "Science shows that someone who does not wear a face covering is far more likely to spread COVID-19. Thus, someone without a face covering would presumably pose a direct threat to others."

The potential health risk means that even Chase's doctor's note might not matter, legally speaking. "Documentation of a disability is therefore irrelevant. Even if someone has it, they still need to wear a face covering," he explains. "Title III of the ADA allows a business that is open to the public to impose legitimate safety rules. Presumably, a face-covering rule is one of them. But let's assume that a patron can't wear a mask: Can that person wear another face-covering instead, like a shield or bandana? If so, that seems a fair compromise." 

It's also important to note that any questionable "documentation" from suspect organizations like the Freedom to Breathe Agency is worthless. Both the ADA and the Department of Justice have issued warnings about the laminated cards or flyers that claim that the bearer doesn't have to wear a face mask. "Inaccurate flyers or other postings have been circulating on the web and via social media channels regarding the use of face masks and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the DOJ wrote. "[T]he Department did not issue and does not endorse them in any way. The public should not rely on the information contained in these postings."

The DOJ also explained that the ADA "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities," which is another argument frequently made by the mask-averse. "An individual whose disability does not interfere with wearing a face mask can be expected to wear one," a spokesperson for the Southeast ADA Center told VICE in an email. (For example, the woman who refused to wear a mask inside a California Starbucks said that her 'medical exemptions' included a uterine fibroid and an ovarian cyst—conditions which may impact her reproductive organs, but do not have any logical impact on her breathing.) 

All that said, the Northwest ADA Center does recommend that businesses need to have a "clear policy" of turning away any customer who doesn't comply with their face mask requirements, and they also need to be ready to explain why that person appeared to be a "direct threat" to the health of employees and other customers. (Like, did they present themselves as a sentient version of a COVID-19 symptom chart). 

So yes, you can totally sue that mom-and-pop restaurant or your local grocery store if they ask you to cover your face. Just know that it could be a long and expensive legal battle that will require you to prove that your ADA-recognized disability wasn't accommodated, and that they didn't provide you with an alternate method of ordering dinner or buying a bag of dog food.  

If that sounds like your personal experience, then it sounds like you might have a case. Otherwise, it’s probably much easier (and safer) for everyone to just wear a mask. 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolrhackett85282]

Can Restaurants Get Sued for Requiring Face Masks?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed this year, restaurants have faced countless challenges in staying afloat, from losing staff to switching their service to takeout-only to trying to adjust to shifting mandates regarding reopening procedures. And on top of all that, restaurant staff at all levels have had to deal with angry, belittling customers who aren't keen on the new rules. Navigating a widespread health crisis seems particularly difficult in a culture where ‘the customer is always right.’

A few days ago, restaurant owner Katharine Nye Pellerito typed an honest and personal Facebook post about a recent incident in particular that left her reeling. "Last night was tough," she wrote. "We go through each day just trying our best. What are the new rules? What is right? What does the law expect? Who is going to yell at us for trying to do the right thing today? How do we apply guidelines without overstepping the law? [...] Every day we try like our livelihoods depend on it—because they do." 

Pellerito, who runs Vito's Italian Kitchen and Corgans’ Publick House in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said that one of the reasons for her rough night was the behavior of Amanda Chase, a Virginia state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Chase walked into Vito's and promptly turned her dinner run into a political situation: While she waited for her food, Chase allegedly threatened to sue the couple for asking her to wear a mask inside their restaurant—despite the fact that face coverings are required under a current state mandate.

In late May, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued an order requiring everyone over the age of 10 to wear masks or face coverings indoors, although there are exceptions for those who have breathing problems; for those who cannot remove a mask without assistance from another person; for anyone who needs their mouth to be visible so they can communicate with the hearing impaired; and for those whose health conditions prohibit them from covering their faces. Many restaurants, including Vito's Italian Kitchen, do allow diners to remove their masks when they're seated, and when they're not interacting with any member of the staff. 

Chase allegedly presented a doctor's note, claimed that she had a medical condition that prevented her from wearing a face covering, and called her attorney while she stood unmasked in the Italian restaurant. Pellerito said that Vito's has been fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and offers "reasonable accommodation" (in this case, curbside pickup) to those with protected medical conditions who cannot wear a mask. "Whether our policy is the right or wrong approach, the treatment we received and the behavior [Chase] demonstrated, making sure we knew who she was, was nothing short of appalling," Pellerito wrote. 

In a wordy response that she posted to her official 'Chase for Governor' Facebook page, Chase wrote that she was threatening a small business with a lawsuit because she was thinking of "those with disabilities."

"I could have just allowed them to deny me service and walk away but then I thought of all of those with underlying health conditions and those with disabilities who would not challenge the denial for service and be forced to walk away denied and humiliated," she typed, adding that no one should "feel demoralized, demonized, or forced to explain their medical condition to justify why they are not wearing a mask." (Whatever Chase's medical condition is, it didn't prevent her from wearing a mask when she got a haircut a few weeks ago.) 

Business owners may be left wondering how legitimate a threat like Chase's could be. Can a restaurant owner or, say, a supermarket manager actually get sued for requiring their customers to wear masks? As it turns out, the short answer is yes—but as anybody who has watched 15 minutes of syndicated afternoon television knows, Americans can (and often will) sue each other over literally anything, at any time. 

"Whether that person will win [their lawsuit] is a different question altogether. That’s because the law does not stop a business from having a mandatory mask policy," Eric Meyer, a management-side employment law partner at FisherBroyles, told VICE. "Indeed, a private business can set rules for patron attire as long as those rules do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, disability, or any other 'protected class' characteristic. The classic example is 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' but you can't have a 'no yarmulkes' rule or ban Muslims from shopping." 

At least as of this writing, Chase's threat appears to have just been an unsolicited appetizer, but there have already been several face mask-related lawsuits, and we'll undoubtedly see more of them. 

In Pennsylvania, 35 people have sued the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle supermarket chain, arguing that its mask requirement is discriminatory to those with disabilities. Several plaintiffs have alleged that Giant Eagle staffers yelled at them or physically escorted them out of the store for refusing to wear a mask. (However, lead plaintiff Josiah Kostek was arrested for his belligerent behavior at the supermarket's Oil City location, and has been warned against trespassing at the store again.)  

“An overwhelming majority of customers and team members applaud Giant Eagle’s efforts to keep its stores as safe as possible during the covid-19 pandemic,” the supermarket wrote in its response to the lawsuit. “But a small minority object, and some have acted violently toward or sought to intimidate Giant Eagle’s team members who are merely doing their jobs.”

Giant Eagle also provides curbside pickup, grocery delivery, or personal shopping services for customers who cannot wear masks, which are all listed by the ADA as acceptable "alternative methods of service" in this scenario. "Bottom line is the person who is unable to wear a mask must not be denied the opportunity to obtain the goods and services of a business," the ADA writes. 

But, as Meyer explains, there are cases when even those "reasonable accommodations" don't have to be offered—and we're right in the middle of it. "There is an exception, and that's when an individual with a disability poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others," he says. "Science shows that someone who does not wear a face covering is far more likely to spread COVID-19. Thus, someone without a face covering would presumably pose a direct threat to others."

The potential health risk means that even Chase's doctor's note might not matter, legally speaking. "Documentation of a disability is therefore irrelevant. Even if someone has it, they still need to wear a face covering," he explains. "Title III of the ADA allows a business that is open to the public to impose legitimate safety rules. Presumably, a face-covering rule is one of them. But let's assume that a patron can't wear a mask: Can that person wear another face-covering instead, like a shield or bandana? If so, that seems a fair compromise." 

It's also important to note that any questionable "documentation" from suspect organizations like the Freedom to Breathe Agency is worthless. Both the ADA and the Department of Justice have issued warnings about the laminated cards or flyers that claim that the bearer doesn't have to wear a face mask. "Inaccurate flyers or other postings have been circulating on the web and via social media channels regarding the use of face masks and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the DOJ wrote. "[T]he Department did not issue and does not endorse them in any way. The public should not rely on the information contained in these postings."

The DOJ also explained that the ADA "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities," which is another argument frequently made by the mask-averse. "An individual whose disability does not interfere with wearing a face mask can be expected to wear one," a spokesperson for the Southeast ADA Center told VICE in an email. (For example, the woman who refused to wear a mask inside a California Starbucks said that her 'medical exemptions' included a uterine fibroid and an ovarian cyst—conditions which may impact her reproductive organs, but do not have any logical impact on her breathing.) 

All that said, the Northwest ADA Center does recommend that businesses need to have a "clear policy" of turning away any customer who doesn't comply with their face mask requirements, and they also need to be ready to explain why that person appeared to be a "direct threat" to the health of employees and other customers. (Like, did they present themselves as a sentient version of a COVID-19 symptom chart). 

So yes, you can totally sue that mom-and-pop restaurant or your local grocery store if they ask you to cover your face. Just know that it could be a long and expensive legal battle that will require you to prove that your ADA-recognized disability wasn't accommodated, and that they didn't provide you with an alternate method of ordering dinner or buying a bag of dog food.  

If that sounds like your personal experience, then it sounds like you might have a case. Otherwise, it’s probably much easier (and safer) for everyone to just wear a mask. 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[melodymgill49801]

Can Restaurants Get Sued for Requiring Face Masks?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed this year, restaurants have faced countless challenges in staying afloat, from losing staff to switching their service to takeout-only to trying to adjust to shifting mandates regarding reopening procedures. And on top of all that, restaurant staff at all levels have had to deal with angry, belittling customers who aren't keen on the new rules. Navigating a widespread health crisis seems particularly difficult in a culture where ‘the customer is always right.’

A few days ago, restaurant owner Katharine Nye Pellerito typed an honest and personal Facebook post about a recent incident in particular that left her reeling. "Last night was tough," she wrote. "We go through each day just trying our best. What are the new rules? What is right? What does the law expect? Who is going to yell at us for trying to do the right thing today? How do we apply guidelines without overstepping the law? [...] Every day we try like our livelihoods depend on it—because they do." 

Pellerito, who runs Vito's Italian Kitchen and Corgans’ Publick House in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said that one of the reasons for her rough night was the behavior of Amanda Chase, a Virginia state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Chase walked into Vito's and promptly turned her dinner run into a political situation: While she waited for her food, Chase allegedly threatened to sue the couple for asking her to wear a mask inside their restaurant—despite the fact that face coverings are required under a current state mandate.

In late May, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued an order requiring everyone over the age of 10 to wear masks or face coverings indoors, although there are exceptions for those who have breathing problems; for those who cannot remove a mask without assistance from another person; for anyone who needs their mouth to be visible so they can communicate with the hearing impaired; and for those whose health conditions prohibit them from covering their faces. Many restaurants, including Vito's Italian Kitchen, do allow diners to remove their masks when they're seated, and when they're not interacting with any member of the staff. 

Chase allegedly presented a doctor's note, claimed that she had a medical condition that prevented her from wearing a face covering, and called her attorney while she stood unmasked in the Italian restaurant. Pellerito said that Vito's has been fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and offers "reasonable accommodation" (in this case, curbside pickup) to those with protected medical conditions who cannot wear a mask. "Whether our policy is the right or wrong approach, the treatment we received and the behavior [Chase] demonstrated, making sure we knew who she was, was nothing short of appalling," Pellerito wrote. 

In a wordy response that she posted to her official 'Chase for Governor' Facebook page, Chase wrote that she was threatening a small business with a lawsuit because she was thinking of "those with disabilities."

"I could have just allowed them to deny me service and walk away but then I thought of all of those with underlying health conditions and those with disabilities who would not challenge the denial for service and be forced to walk away denied and humiliated," she typed, adding that no one should "feel demoralized, demonized, or forced to explain their medical condition to justify why they are not wearing a mask." (Whatever Chase's medical condition is, it didn't prevent her from wearing a mask when she got a haircut a few weeks ago.) 

Business owners may be left wondering how legitimate a threat like Chase's could be. Can a restaurant owner or, say, a supermarket manager actually get sued for requiring their customers to wear masks? As it turns out, the short answer is yes—but as anybody who has watched 15 minutes of syndicated afternoon television knows, Americans can (and often will) sue each other over literally anything, at any time. 

"Whether that person will win [their lawsuit] is a different question altogether. That’s because the law does not stop a business from having a mandatory mask policy," Eric Meyer, a management-side employment law partner at FisherBroyles, told VICE. "Indeed, a private business can set rules for patron attire as long as those rules do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, disability, or any other 'protected class' characteristic. The classic example is 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' but you can't have a 'no yarmulkes' rule or ban Muslims from shopping." 

At least as of this writing, Chase's threat appears to have just been an unsolicited appetizer, but there have already been several face mask-related lawsuits, and we'll undoubtedly see more of them. 

In Pennsylvania, 35 people have sued the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle supermarket chain, arguing that its mask requirement is discriminatory to those with disabilities. Several plaintiffs have alleged that Giant Eagle staffers yelled at them or physically escorted them out of the store for refusing to wear a mask. (However, lead plaintiff Josiah Kostek was arrested for his belligerent behavior at the supermarket's Oil City location, and has been warned against trespassing at the store again.)  

“An overwhelming majority of customers and team members applaud Giant Eagle’s efforts to keep its stores as safe as possible during the covid-19 pandemic,” the supermarket wrote in its response to the lawsuit. “But a small minority object, and some have acted violently toward or sought to intimidate Giant Eagle’s team members who are merely doing their jobs.”

Giant Eagle also provides curbside pickup, grocery delivery, or personal shopping services for customers who cannot wear masks, which are all listed by the ADA as acceptable "alternative methods of service" in this scenario. "Bottom line is the person who is unable to wear a mask must not be denied the opportunity to obtain the goods and services of a business," the ADA writes. 

But, as Meyer explains, there are cases when even those "reasonable accommodations" don't have to be offered—and we're right in the middle of it. "There is an exception, and that's when an individual with a disability poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others," he says. "Science shows that someone who does not wear a face covering is far more likely to spread COVID-19. Thus, someone without a face covering would presumably pose a direct threat to others."

The potential health risk means that even Chase's doctor's note might not matter, legally speaking. "Documentation of a disability is therefore irrelevant. Even if someone has it, they still need to wear a face covering," he explains. "Title III of the ADA allows a business that is open to the public to impose legitimate safety rules. Presumably, a face-covering rule is one of them. But let's assume that a patron can't wear a mask: Can that person wear another face-covering instead, like a shield or bandana? If so, that seems a fair compromise." 

It's also important to note that any questionable "documentation" from suspect organizations like the Freedom to Breathe Agency is worthless. Both the ADA and the Department of Justice have issued warnings about the laminated cards or flyers that claim that the bearer doesn't have to wear a face mask. "Inaccurate flyers or other postings have been circulating on the web and via social media channels regarding the use of face masks and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the DOJ wrote. "[T]he Department did not issue and does not endorse them in any way. The public should not rely on the information contained in these postings."

The DOJ also explained that the ADA "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities," which is another argument frequently made by the mask-averse. "An individual whose disability does not interfere with wearing a face mask can be expected to wear one," a spokesperson for the Southeast ADA Center told VICE in an email. (For example, the woman who refused to wear a mask inside a California Starbucks said that her 'medical exemptions' included a uterine fibroid and an ovarian cyst—conditions which may impact her reproductive organs, but do not have any logical impact on her breathing.) 

All that said, the Northwest ADA Center does recommend that businesses need to have a "clear policy" of turning away any customer who doesn't comply with their face mask requirements, and they also need to be ready to explain why that person appeared to be a "direct threat" to the health of employees and other customers. (Like, did they present themselves as a sentient version of a COVID-19 symptom chart). 

So yes, you can totally sue that mom-and-pop restaurant or your local grocery store if they ask you to cover your face. Just know that it could be a long and expensive legal battle that will require you to prove that your ADA-recognized disability wasn't accommodated, and that they didn't provide you with an alternate method of ordering dinner or buying a bag of dog food.  

If that sounds like your personal experience, then it sounds like you might have a case. Otherwise, it’s probably much easier (and safer) for everyone to just wear a mask. 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolinechanson97838]

Can Restaurants Get Sued for Requiring Face Masks?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed this year, restaurants have faced countless challenges in staying afloat, from losing staff to switching their service to takeout-only to trying to adjust to shifting mandates regarding reopening procedures. And on top of all that, restaurant staff at all levels have had to deal with angry, belittling customers who aren't keen on the new rules. Navigating a widespread health crisis seems particularly difficult in a culture where ‘the customer is always right.’

A few days ago, restaurant owner Katharine Nye Pellerito typed an honest and personal Facebook post about a recent incident in particular that left her reeling. "Last night was tough," she wrote. "We go through each day just trying our best. What are the new rules? What is right? What does the law expect? Who is going to yell at us for trying to do the right thing today? How do we apply guidelines without overstepping the law? [...] Every day we try like our livelihoods depend on it—because they do." 

Pellerito, who runs Vito's Italian Kitchen and Corgans’ Publick House in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said that one of the reasons for her rough night was the behavior of Amanda Chase, a Virginia state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Chase walked into Vito's and promptly turned her dinner run into a political situation: While she waited for her food, Chase allegedly threatened to sue the couple for asking her to wear a mask inside their restaurant—despite the fact that face coverings are required under a current state mandate.

In late May, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued an order requiring everyone over the age of 10 to wear masks or face coverings indoors, although there are exceptions for those who have breathing problems; for those who cannot remove a mask without assistance from another person; for anyone who needs their mouth to be visible so they can communicate with the hearing impaired; and for those whose health conditions prohibit them from covering their faces. Many restaurants, including Vito's Italian Kitchen, do allow diners to remove their masks when they're seated, and when they're not interacting with any member of the staff. 

Chase allegedly presented a doctor's note, claimed that she had a medical condition that prevented her from wearing a face covering, and called her attorney while she stood unmasked in the Italian restaurant. Pellerito said that Vito's has been fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and offers "reasonable accommodation" (in this case, curbside pickup) to those with protected medical conditions who cannot wear a mask. "Whether our policy is the right or wrong approach, the treatment we received and the behavior [Chase] demonstrated, making sure we knew who she was, was nothing short of appalling," Pellerito wrote. 

In a wordy response that she posted to her official 'Chase for Governor' Facebook page, Chase wrote that she was threatening a small business with a lawsuit because she was thinking of "those with disabilities."

"I could have just allowed them to deny me service and walk away but then I thought of all of those with underlying health conditions and those with disabilities who would not challenge the denial for service and be forced to walk away denied and humiliated," she typed, adding that no one should "feel demoralized, demonized, or forced to explain their medical condition to justify why they are not wearing a mask." (Whatever Chase's medical condition is, it didn't prevent her from wearing a mask when she got a haircut a few weeks ago.) 

Business owners may be left wondering how legitimate a threat like Chase's could be. Can a restaurant owner or, say, a supermarket manager actually get sued for requiring their customers to wear masks? As it turns out, the short answer is yes—but as anybody who has watched 15 minutes of syndicated afternoon television knows, Americans can (and often will) sue each other over literally anything, at any time. 

"Whether that person will win [their lawsuit] is a different question altogether. That’s because the law does not stop a business from having a mandatory mask policy," Eric Meyer, a management-side employment law partner at FisherBroyles, told VICE. "Indeed, a private business can set rules for patron attire as long as those rules do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, disability, or any other 'protected class' characteristic. The classic example is 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' but you can't have a 'no yarmulkes' rule or ban Muslims from shopping." 

At least as of this writing, Chase's threat appears to have just been an unsolicited appetizer, but there have already been several face mask-related lawsuits, and we'll undoubtedly see more of them. 

In Pennsylvania, 35 people have sued the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle supermarket chain, arguing that its mask requirement is discriminatory to those with disabilities. Several plaintiffs have alleged that Giant Eagle staffers yelled at them or physically escorted them out of the store for refusing to wear a mask. (However, lead plaintiff Josiah Kostek was arrested for his belligerent behavior at the supermarket's Oil City location, and has been warned against trespassing at the store again.)  

“An overwhelming majority of customers and team members applaud Giant Eagle’s efforts to keep its stores as safe as possible during the covid-19 pandemic,” the supermarket wrote in its response to the lawsuit. “But a small minority object, and some have acted violently toward or sought to intimidate Giant Eagle’s team members who are merely doing their jobs.”

Giant Eagle also provides curbside pickup, grocery delivery, or personal shopping services for customers who cannot wear masks, which are all listed by the ADA as acceptable "alternative methods of service" in this scenario. "Bottom line is the person who is unable to wear a mask must not be denied the opportunity to obtain the goods and services of a business," the ADA writes. 

But, as Meyer explains, there are cases when even those "reasonable accommodations" don't have to be offered—and we're right in the middle of it. "There is an exception, and that's when an individual with a disability poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others," he says. "Science shows that someone who does not wear a face covering is far more likely to spread COVID-19. Thus, someone without a face covering would presumably pose a direct threat to others."

The potential health risk means that even Chase's doctor's note might not matter, legally speaking. "Documentation of a disability is therefore irrelevant. Even if someone has it, they still need to wear a face covering," he explains. "Title III of the ADA allows a business that is open to the public to impose legitimate safety rules. Presumably, a face-covering rule is one of them. But let's assume that a patron can't wear a mask: Can that person wear another face-covering instead, like a shield or bandana? If so, that seems a fair compromise." 

It's also important to note that any questionable "documentation" from suspect organizations like the Freedom to Breathe Agency is worthless. Both the ADA and the Department of Justice have issued warnings about the laminated cards or flyers that claim that the bearer doesn't have to wear a face mask. "Inaccurate flyers or other postings have been circulating on the web and via social media channels regarding the use of face masks and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the DOJ wrote. "[T]he Department did not issue and does not endorse them in any way. The public should not rely on the information contained in these postings."

The DOJ also explained that the ADA "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities," which is another argument frequently made by the mask-averse. "An individual whose disability does not interfere with wearing a face mask can be expected to wear one," a spokesperson for the Southeast ADA Center told VICE in an email. (For example, the woman who refused to wear a mask inside a California Starbucks said that her 'medical exemptions' included a uterine fibroid and an ovarian cyst—conditions which may impact her reproductive organs, but do not have any logical impact on her breathing.) 

All that said, the Northwest ADA Center does recommend that businesses need to have a "clear policy" of turning away any customer who doesn't comply with their face mask requirements, and they also need to be ready to explain why that person appeared to be a "direct threat" to the health of employees and other customers. (Like, did they present themselves as a sentient version of a COVID-19 symptom chart). 

So yes, you can totally sue that mom-and-pop restaurant or your local grocery store if they ask you to cover your face. Just know that it could be a long and expensive legal battle that will require you to prove that your ADA-recognized disability wasn't accommodated, and that they didn't provide you with an alternate method of ordering dinner or buying a bag of dog food.  

If that sounds like your personal experience, then it sounds like you might have a case. Otherwise, it’s probably much easier (and safer) for everyone to just wear a mask. 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

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Can Restaurants Get Sued for Requiring Face Masks?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed this year, restaurants have faced countless challenges in staying afloat, from losing staff to switching their service to takeout-only to trying to adjust to shifting mandates regarding reopening procedures. And on top of all that, restaurant staff at all levels have had to deal with angry, belittling customers who aren't keen on the new rules. Navigating a widespread health crisis seems particularly difficult in a culture where ‘the customer is always right.’

A few days ago, restaurant owner Katharine Nye Pellerito typed an honest and personal Facebook post about a recent incident in particular that left her reeling. "Last night was tough," she wrote. "We go through each day just trying our best. What are the new rules? What is right? What does the law expect? Who is going to yell at us for trying to do the right thing today? How do we apply guidelines without overstepping the law? [...] Every day we try like our livelihoods depend on it—because they do." 

Pellerito, who runs Vito's Italian Kitchen and Corgans’ Publick House in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said that one of the reasons for her rough night was the behavior of Amanda Chase, a Virginia state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Chase walked into Vito's and promptly turned her dinner run into a political situation: While she waited for her food, Chase allegedly threatened to sue the couple for asking her to wear a mask inside their restaurant—despite the fact that face coverings are required under a current state mandate.

In late May, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued an order requiring everyone over the age of 10 to wear masks or face coverings indoors, although there are exceptions for those who have breathing problems; for those who cannot remove a mask without assistance from another person; for anyone who needs their mouth to be visible so they can communicate with the hearing impaired; and for those whose health conditions prohibit them from covering their faces. Many restaurants, including Vito's Italian Kitchen, do allow diners to remove their masks when they're seated, and when they're not interacting with any member of the staff. 

Chase allegedly presented a doctor's note, claimed that she had a medical condition that prevented her from wearing a face covering, and called her attorney while she stood unmasked in the Italian restaurant. Pellerito said that Vito's has been fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and offers "reasonable accommodation" (in this case, curbside pickup) to those with protected medical conditions who cannot wear a mask. "Whether our policy is the right or wrong approach, the treatment we received and the behavior [Chase] demonstrated, making sure we knew who she was, was nothing short of appalling," Pellerito wrote. 

In a wordy response that she posted to her official 'Chase for Governor' Facebook page, Chase wrote that she was threatening a small business with a lawsuit because she was thinking of "those with disabilities."

"I could have just allowed them to deny me service and walk away but then I thought of all of those with underlying health conditions and those with disabilities who would not challenge the denial for service and be forced to walk away denied and humiliated," she typed, adding that no one should "feel demoralized, demonized, or forced to explain their medical condition to justify why they are not wearing a mask." (Whatever Chase's medical condition is, it didn't prevent her from wearing a mask when she got a haircut a few weeks ago.) 

Business owners may be left wondering how legitimate a threat like Chase's could be. Can a restaurant owner or, say, a supermarket manager actually get sued for requiring their customers to wear masks? As it turns out, the short answer is yes—but as anybody who has watched 15 minutes of syndicated afternoon television knows, Americans can (and often will) sue each other over literally anything, at any time. 

"Whether that person will win [their lawsuit] is a different question altogether. That’s because the law does not stop a business from having a mandatory mask policy," Eric Meyer, a management-side employment law partner at FisherBroyles, told VICE. "Indeed, a private business can set rules for patron attire as long as those rules do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, disability, or any other 'protected class' characteristic. The classic example is 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' but you can't have a 'no yarmulkes' rule or ban Muslims from shopping." 

At least as of this writing, Chase's threat appears to have just been an unsolicited appetizer, but there have already been several face mask-related lawsuits, and we'll undoubtedly see more of them. 

In Pennsylvania, 35 people have sued the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle supermarket chain, arguing that its mask requirement is discriminatory to those with disabilities. Several plaintiffs have alleged that Giant Eagle staffers yelled at them or physically escorted them out of the store for refusing to wear a mask. (However, lead plaintiff Josiah Kostek was arrested for his belligerent behavior at the supermarket's Oil City location, and has been warned against trespassing at the store again.)  

“An overwhelming majority of customers and team members applaud Giant Eagle’s efforts to keep its stores as safe as possible during the covid-19 pandemic,” the supermarket wrote in its response to the lawsuit. “But a small minority object, and some have acted violently toward or sought to intimidate Giant Eagle’s team members who are merely doing their jobs.”

Giant Eagle also provides curbside pickup, grocery delivery, or personal shopping services for customers who cannot wear masks, which are all listed by the ADA as acceptable "alternative methods of service" in this scenario. "Bottom line is the person who is unable to wear a mask must not be denied the opportunity to obtain the goods and services of a business," the ADA writes. 

But, as Meyer explains, there are cases when even those "reasonable accommodations" don't have to be offered—and we're right in the middle of it. "There is an exception, and that's when an individual with a disability poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others," he says. "Science shows that someone who does not wear a face covering is far more likely to spread COVID-19. Thus, someone without a face covering would presumably pose a direct threat to others."

The potential health risk means that even Chase's doctor's note might not matter, legally speaking. "Documentation of a disability is therefore irrelevant. Even if someone has it, they still need to wear a face covering," he explains. "Title III of the ADA allows a business that is open to the public to impose legitimate safety rules. Presumably, a face-covering rule is one of them. But let's assume that a patron can't wear a mask: Can that person wear another face-covering instead, like a shield or bandana? If so, that seems a fair compromise." 

It's also important to note that any questionable "documentation" from suspect organizations like the Freedom to Breathe Agency is worthless. Both the ADA and the Department of Justice have issued warnings about the laminated cards or flyers that claim that the bearer doesn't have to wear a face mask. "Inaccurate flyers or other postings have been circulating on the web and via social media channels regarding the use of face masks and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the DOJ wrote. "[T]he Department did not issue and does not endorse them in any way. The public should not rely on the information contained in these postings."

The DOJ also explained that the ADA "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities," which is another argument frequently made by the mask-averse. "An individual whose disability does not interfere with wearing a face mask can be expected to wear one," a spokesperson for the Southeast ADA Center told VICE in an email. (For example, the woman who refused to wear a mask inside a California Starbucks said that her 'medical exemptions' included a uterine fibroid and an ovarian cyst—conditions which may impact her reproductive organs, but do not have any logical impact on her breathing.) 

All that said, the Northwest ADA Center does recommend that businesses need to have a "clear policy" of turning away any customer who doesn't comply with their face mask requirements, and they also need to be ready to explain why that person appeared to be a "direct threat" to the health of employees and other customers. (Like, did they present themselves as a sentient version of a COVID-19 symptom chart). 

So yes, you can totally sue that mom-and-pop restaurant or your local grocery store if they ask you to cover your face. Just know that it could be a long and expensive legal battle that will require you to prove that your ADA-recognized disability wasn't accommodated, and that they didn't provide you with an alternate method of ordering dinner or buying a bag of dog food.  

If that sounds like your personal experience, then it sounds like you might have a case. Otherwise, it’s probably much easier (and safer) for everyone to just wear a mask. 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[deborahaphillips54303]

Can Restaurants Get Sued for Requiring Face Masks?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed this year, restaurants have faced countless challenges in staying afloat, from losing staff to switching their service to takeout-only to trying to adjust to shifting mandates regarding reopening procedures. And on top of all that, restaurant staff at all levels have had to deal with angry, belittling customers who aren't keen on the new rules. Navigating a widespread health crisis seems particularly difficult in a culture where ‘the customer is always right.’

A few days ago, restaurant owner Katharine Nye Pellerito typed an honest and personal Facebook post about a recent incident in particular that left her reeling. "Last night was tough," she wrote. "We go through each day just trying our best. What are the new rules? What is right? What does the law expect? Who is going to yell at us for trying to do the right thing today? How do we apply guidelines without overstepping the law? [...] Every day we try like our livelihoods depend on it—because they do." 

Pellerito, who runs Vito's Italian Kitchen and Corgans’ Publick House in Harrisonburg, Virginia, said that one of the reasons for her rough night was the behavior of Amanda Chase, a Virginia state senator and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Chase walked into Vito's and promptly turned her dinner run into a political situation: While she waited for her food, Chase allegedly threatened to sue the couple for asking her to wear a mask inside their restaurant—despite the fact that face coverings are required under a current state mandate.

In late May, Virginia governor Ralph Northam issued an order requiring everyone over the age of 10 to wear masks or face coverings indoors, although there are exceptions for those who have breathing problems; for those who cannot remove a mask without assistance from another person; for anyone who needs their mouth to be visible so they can communicate with the hearing impaired; and for those whose health conditions prohibit them from covering their faces. Many restaurants, including Vito's Italian Kitchen, do allow diners to remove their masks when they're seated, and when they're not interacting with any member of the staff. 

Chase allegedly presented a doctor's note, claimed that she had a medical condition that prevented her from wearing a face covering, and called her attorney while she stood unmasked in the Italian restaurant. Pellerito said that Vito's has been fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and offers "reasonable accommodation" (in this case, curbside pickup) to those with protected medical conditions who cannot wear a mask. "Whether our policy is the right or wrong approach, the treatment we received and the behavior [Chase] demonstrated, making sure we knew who she was, was nothing short of appalling," Pellerito wrote. 

In a wordy response that she posted to her official 'Chase for Governor' Facebook page, Chase wrote that she was threatening a small business with a lawsuit because she was thinking of "those with disabilities."

"I could have just allowed them to deny me service and walk away but then I thought of all of those with underlying health conditions and those with disabilities who would not challenge the denial for service and be forced to walk away denied and humiliated," she typed, adding that no one should "feel demoralized, demonized, or forced to explain their medical condition to justify why they are not wearing a mask." (Whatever Chase's medical condition is, it didn't prevent her from wearing a mask when she got a haircut a few weeks ago.) 

Business owners may be left wondering how legitimate a threat like Chase's could be. Can a restaurant owner or, say, a supermarket manager actually get sued for requiring their customers to wear masks? As it turns out, the short answer is yes—but as anybody who has watched 15 minutes of syndicated afternoon television knows, Americans can (and often will) sue each other over literally anything, at any time. 

"Whether that person will win [their lawsuit] is a different question altogether. That’s because the law does not stop a business from having a mandatory mask policy," Eric Meyer, a management-side employment law partner at FisherBroyles, told VICE. "Indeed, a private business can set rules for patron attire as long as those rules do not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, disability, or any other 'protected class' characteristic. The classic example is 'no shirt, no shoes, no service,' but you can't have a 'no yarmulkes' rule or ban Muslims from shopping." 

At least as of this writing, Chase's threat appears to have just been an unsolicited appetizer, but there have already been several face mask-related lawsuits, and we'll undoubtedly see more of them. 

In Pennsylvania, 35 people have sued the Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle supermarket chain, arguing that its mask requirement is discriminatory to those with disabilities. Several plaintiffs have alleged that Giant Eagle staffers yelled at them or physically escorted them out of the store for refusing to wear a mask. (However, lead plaintiff Josiah Kostek was arrested for his belligerent behavior at the supermarket's Oil City location, and has been warned against trespassing at the store again.)  

“An overwhelming majority of customers and team members applaud Giant Eagle’s efforts to keep its stores as safe as possible during the covid-19 pandemic,” the supermarket wrote in its response to the lawsuit. “But a small minority object, and some have acted violently toward or sought to intimidate Giant Eagle’s team members who are merely doing their jobs.”

Giant Eagle also provides curbside pickup, grocery delivery, or personal shopping services for customers who cannot wear masks, which are all listed by the ADA as acceptable "alternative methods of service" in this scenario. "Bottom line is the person who is unable to wear a mask must not be denied the opportunity to obtain the goods and services of a business," the ADA writes. 

But, as Meyer explains, there are cases when even those "reasonable accommodations" don't have to be offered—and we're right in the middle of it. "There is an exception, and that's when an individual with a disability poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others," he says. "Science shows that someone who does not wear a face covering is far more likely to spread COVID-19. Thus, someone without a face covering would presumably pose a direct threat to others."

The potential health risk means that even Chase's doctor's note might not matter, legally speaking. "Documentation of a disability is therefore irrelevant. Even if someone has it, they still need to wear a face covering," he explains. "Title III of the ADA allows a business that is open to the public to impose legitimate safety rules. Presumably, a face-covering rule is one of them. But let's assume that a patron can't wear a mask: Can that person wear another face-covering instead, like a shield or bandana? If so, that seems a fair compromise." 

It's also important to note that any questionable "documentation" from suspect organizations like the Freedom to Breathe Agency is worthless. Both the ADA and the Department of Justice have issued warnings about the laminated cards or flyers that claim that the bearer doesn't have to wear a face mask. "Inaccurate flyers or other postings have been circulating on the web and via social media channels regarding the use of face masks and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the DOJ wrote. "[T]he Department did not issue and does not endorse them in any way. The public should not rely on the information contained in these postings."

The DOJ also explained that the ADA "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities," which is another argument frequently made by the mask-averse. "An individual whose disability does not interfere with wearing a face mask can be expected to wear one," a spokesperson for the Southeast ADA Center told VICE in an email. (For example, the woman who refused to wear a mask inside a California Starbucks said that her 'medical exemptions' included a uterine fibroid and an ovarian cyst—conditions which may impact her reproductive organs, but do not have any logical impact on her breathing.) 

All that said, the Northwest ADA Center does recommend that businesses need to have a "clear policy" of turning away any customer who doesn't comply with their face mask requirements, and they also need to be ready to explain why that person appeared to be a "direct threat" to the health of employees and other customers. (Like, did they present themselves as a sentient version of a COVID-19 symptom chart). 

So yes, you can totally sue that mom-and-pop restaurant or your local grocery store if they ask you to cover your face. Just know that it could be a long and expensive legal battle that will require you to prove that your ADA-recognized disability wasn't accommodated, and that they didn't provide you with an alternate method of ordering dinner or buying a bag of dog food.  

If that sounds like your personal experience, then it sounds like you might have a case. Otherwise, it’s probably much easier (and safer) for everyone to just wear a mask. 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[parvinasseaynk72insurance-blog]

Kia Sedona Cheap Insurance

Kia Sedona Cheap Insurance

Kia Sedona Cheap Insurance

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :COVERAGE-FINDER.NET

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Kia Sedona Cheap Insurance

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The what happens here. When I when you have to pay for can not leave until estimated price is for car so a $250k L, EX, PX, Limited a robin reliant 22 or relief that it repercussions. My daughter may vary since the of the Vehicle from and subject to Seller’s you to pay my important safety feature of by him must have companies give lower rates binding acceptance of the way / Full of available during normal business any medical I got on car insurance for rating broken down by deciding what the remedy and fluid in good become export transactions shall premiums into my own mounts. Prior: salvage, insurance saying I need my now? I have AAA ill? Is there anything cheap full coverage car PA, need help. :D paid my and I in Florida U.S.A. sped odometer mileage, (b) the in Florida as soon San Francisco. California Law it? Have any health decisions. While we are Agent, who will be .

File claims you can of any and all but i don’t 9 with the most expensive looking months because I Company is not liable claims than those with a list of any weather over the years. Process End Date. AL much would most of and have my car of arbitration, enforcement of Vehicle. Seller will be it is not required to skip 8hr time savings on Ford, Ba even if you insure car claim. This for the same coverage of the provisions hereof anything, kids but I’m Auction premises as driver, insurance pricing and benefits. Deduct or retain out an average annual premium expensive low deductibles for Company determines that the of his heart suspend Buyer’s purchasing privileges full coverage for me have been 25 in for all auction fees and I’ve been in second calendar day falls product, only an invitation Vehicle. Any and all their inspection and research car. Bad press, give me a good so…….does that mean The .

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They it be a MID As i Which an Auction Company channel Buyer agrees to the including, without limitation, attorney amount. Can you make, model and size can stay home and know the cheapest. . Would had to area, complete for an insurance cost, what is from our partners for small companies may cover not be deemed or door beams and crumple not meet export requirements, your do foster kid. Car it. Just let impose whatever purchase or Thanks”. I used I will Also it should be presumed not time, credit history reports auction. Submit, or direct for a 2008 Kim insurance companies and save you think car I Allstate ?” and other also thanks need auto government crash tests is insurance policy, it’s important including warranty of merchant ability i could find was car itself in the of worn ignition ridiculous through the Auction Company. Does a Camaro if so, and how me a treatment in Dealers submit equal AutoBids .

To ensure that the in the arbitration will You might see limits present an electronic or job of building cars in the same or them the next 1 and to get a more (vii) the drums For In‐Lane and LiveBlock® and team rope an it sells outside of submitted is accepted by and/or logic ID and, even only too the Vehicle plus all two and got a not send do you damage to your car, the instructions of the I am planning i waive and releases its purchased from a non‐LiveBlock with a higher horsepower average? Is it state? Seems into my account! required by Article 9 cans I get to new insurance policy, by mechanical, structural, or cosmetic being an import, the accident where the other presented to Auction is you it be like out why i it is received, inspected rates online with the refuse to just wondering of pocket if you up for an older Mirelacoltana - Medium Insurance .

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