#and bad at accepting things

[nelkcats]

Glimpse of a Lifetime

After years of working for the Waynes, age is finally catching up with the butler. Alfred begins to forget important things. Including those he love with all his heart.

It started with small things: from forgetting to feed the animals to waking up in the middle of the night and forgetting it after a few minutes. Alfred was aware that something was up, but he brushed it off.

However, the situation begins to escalate when he starts to forget the names of the children in the mansion one by one, and although he tries to cover it up, they all start to notice.

At the beginning, he and the other inhabitants of the manor look for excuses: a villain attack, mind control, a weapon that erases memory, etc. But when each one of Bruce's kid goes through a different experience they begin to accept reality: There is no doubt, Alfred is sick.

Unlike the others, Bruce refuses to accept that there is no cure for the disease and seeks every possible option. When he is about to give up he stumbles with an ancient legend: The Yeti.

A legend that talks about the old days, where there was a friendly Yeti who was able to cure any disease. And it may be his last hope. X

[andthebeanstalk]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[keymintt]

as i stand plainly in the shade, unseen

[cozylittleartblog]

worst way to start my new year, thanks. i have a lot of things to say about these companies but i'm tired and just keeping it focused to the pin side of things for this one. do not ever buy pins from these companies, literally ALL of them are stolen from small artists like me. if you want to buy enamel pins, check out etsy, and artist's personal websites and shops! (though even Etsy has some bootleg pins that ship straight from china, so tread carefully…)

Every pin I've designed is, thus far, EXCLUSIVE to my etsy. if you find it anywhere else, it's been ripped off! and once these stupid bootlegs pop up, it's basically a never ending game of whack-a-mole trying to get them all taken down...

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Valentine's Day! (and this blog's first post anniversary!)

[swagveryswagamazinf]

aough them

[villowrose]

a little bit of an unfinished short comic about a conversation between flowey and frisk, talking about them both struggling to heal and move on from their past in a post-pacifist route.

[kita-shinsukes-hand-holder]

I hate you mfs that don't like Gwen after across the spider verse it smells like misogyny

[vaguely-concerned]

there are a lot of daddy issues to go around on DS9 in general, but odo, bashir and garak are really in their own special little fucked up 'what am I but wrought in my father's image' club

[uncanny-tranny]

So, so many queer people, I've noticed, can put themselves in precarious situations wherein they feel accepted by people and the queer person would do anything for those who accept them, even if it is harmful to them, even if it is scary. It feels like you are indebted to those who accept you because you know that isn't the case for every person you meet. To so many queer people, they are afraid to upset others who accept them (or "accept" them) because they are so scared of rejection. This is completely human and completely normal. But that doesn't mean you deserve to be taken advantage of. You deserve to be treated as an equal because you inherently are an equal - to everybody.

Please know that the people who truly, truly respect and care for you will understand when you can't do everything. They will still respect you, because you are a human being. Saying "no" is neutral at worst. You deserve to honour yourself, too.

[paintpanic]

Malevolent gods

Are better than none

[spghtrbry]

this and the brainrot again

yeah. don’t ask.

bonus: my ranking of saul’s suits. that orange shirt + green tie makes me feel things for some reason

[positivelyadhd]

As good as it can be to try and figure out "why" we feel a certain way and how to fix it, sometimes there isn't really an answer.

Trying to make up reasons for that feeling can be a lot more painful than just allowing yourself to feel something.

It's difficult, especially when you're trying to develop your understanding of yourself and recover, but over analysing and ruminating doesn't always help.

Give yourself some time to just, feel without trying to fix it.