#health mention tw

[hatchetsfield-arch]

my head is covered in blue gunk that they used for all the wires & electrodes to do the sleep deprived EEG this morning and i both look and feel like i walked straight outta professor hidgens lab

[ghoulsplay]

Yes hi hello. It is Thursday so tomorrow is Friday. I’m going to do some writing tomorrow and Sunday. Maybe Saturday night. I’m having surgery on Monday and I’ll be home for 2 weeks healing so I’m hoping I can get a lot of writing done once I feel better after the first few days.

[vigilantdesert]

Hey all. Sorry I've been weird and distant, I'm dealing with a health issue that's probably not all that serious but is definitely causing some pretty serious anxiety. I already have health anxiety so. yeah you can imagine what it's like. I'm on medicine which should help, but you know how it is. If anyone wants to chat I'll be around but I'm trying not to stress myself out too much. I've got some replies and stuff in queue for you. I love you all <3

[vyrulent]

so i think i may have bruised a kidney with my trip down the stairs. i'm still incredibly sore and so so tired like to the point it takes so much energy to just go to sleep -- and it hurts to try to get comfortable. there's no blood in my urine or anything but i'm hurting where it says it would hurt. the strange thing is i don't have any bruising in that area. the only bruise i have on my entire body from the fall is on my middle toe on the knuckle.

[fearbend]

i’ve been pretty unwell health-wise for a little while now but just wanted to pop in and say that i’m still here and hoping to get back into writing as soon as i’m better!! tysm for your patience and i hope you’re all doing amazing <333

[helldustedstories]

Ended up calling out of work today (hooray potential food poisoning plus the undercurrent of low-level anxiety that's kind of been constant recently). Gonna see if I can keep something down and then maybe try to work through some inbox questions.

[luminarai]

hey, hi, I was just on the former bird app and came across this info from a brand new study and now I cannot stop screaming internally??? what the actual fuckkkk

theres' an article from the guardian here and here is the actual study:

[uncanny-tranny]

Honestly, there is a certain type of fetishizing of violence that occurs when you are the victim of abuse - wherein people talk directly to you about how much they fantasize about your abuser/s dying and being killed - "all abusers must be killed!" they say.

As a victim of prolonged abuse, I never felt cared for when people indulged that information to me. It often feels like my abuse is being exploited for others to enact their own violent fantasies and secret desires - my abuse means nothing to them in the same way that I didn't matter to my abusers. It's not support - it's just another cycle of violence.

I'm begging people to care more about victims and survivors than they do about retribution of abusers. Nowhere along the way should your focus on the abuser outweigh the people affected by their abuse. If you truly want to support abuse victims and survivors, start with us

[emotionaleating]

[incorrectbatfam]

Rating mental breakdown spots in Gotham

Gotham subways: 5/10. Can blast emo music through your headphones. Train occasionally stalls. Other passengers too burned out to notice you. 

Gotham U: 10/10. You're likely not the only one. School mascot hands out free tissues. 

Batburger: 8/10. Semi-public depending on seating. Tears make the fries soggy. Line cooks are wrestling in the background. 

Crime Alley: 0/10. People think you're drunk. You're a prime mugging target. Kids laugh at you.

Sewers: -2/10. Smells bad. 50% chance of Croc attack. 

Iceberg Lounge: 3/10. Judgy rich snobs. Bathroom full of people doing coke. Drinks too expensive to drown yourself in. 

Wayne Gala: 4/10. Also judgy rich people. Must dress formally. Can't stick your head in chocolate fountain. Dick Grayson will become your therapist whether you like it or not. 

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[genderqueerdykes]

i saw this helpful print out at my local library earlier, i thought this could be of help to someone. even if you personally don't inject, this advice could save a life. I'm here for all addicts and users, we care about you and love you. everyone deserves to be informed about their health regardless of what substances they use

[winterbeheaded]

i’ve been so sick but i really hope to write again soon <3 maybe tomorrow if i feel okay :’)

[honeypleasejustkillme]

suicidal people deserve a space to talk about their suicidal feelings without risking hospitalization/institutionalization or being accused of being manipulative or attention seeking

[vyrulent]

got approved for a medical grant and was able to see a real doctor! emergency room had me on too much medicine so she cut off all the meds except for one. i go back next week for some tests to see if it’s my gallbladder not functioning properly  ( which i think that’s what it is considering it’s the norm with the gastric sleeve surgery )

[gor3sigil]

I’m Trans and Insane and I’m doing fine.

[TW Psychosis, transphobia, psychophobia, medication, psych ward]

“Are you sure ?” she asked.

I remember looking back at her in disbelief, because that was certainly a question I never asked her when she came out.

“Why do you ask ?” I say.

“Dude, I’ve seen you go into depersonalization so hard you even thought you were a human soul in a robot vessel and now, you want me to trust you when you say that you, too, are trans ?”

That’s the memory that comes back to me as I fold and put in my bag my psychiatrist’s note attesting that I suffer from gender dysphoria, NOT LINKED to any psychotic symptoms. Here it goes in my folder with my prescription note, an increase - again - of my anti depressants and Xan, and my endocrinologist’s HRT prescription, increased too - finally.

I go to two separate pharmacies to pick up each prescription for two reasons:

There is only one in this godforsaken town that always had testosterone in stock.

I can’t explain to you with words the look you can get when you give back to back, to someone who, despite not being a doctor, works in healthcare, a note for trans HRT and then a note for psychiatric meds.

And I’m lucky, because I’m not taking antipsychotics anymore. Contrarily to what you could think, it doesn’t magically makes the voices and the shadowy people disappear, but it can make a mess of your head pretty bad and my doctor and I both agreed that I didn’t need more damage up here than what I already had. And no, it doesn’t make your delusions vanish magically too: in fact, I was still pretty certain that I was talking to my soul family out here in Argentine telepathically about my mission on Earth, the meds just made it more difficult to understand their voices, but the belief was still solid.

Anyways, I’m back home with the Hoy Grail I fought tooth and nails to get: a letter from the Sacred Council of Mental Sanity also known as Psychiatry that I was, indeed, a bit delulu, but also trans, and that both things didn’t play into each other. My transness wasn’t a delusion, my delusions didn’t have anything to do with being trans.

Or did it ?

Chicken or egg, you know the drill. Did I have my selves fractured before and one of the piece that shattered my brain happened to make me trans or was I just trans with a shitload of traumas in the back that made me insane ?

But don’t worry, at least, trans people when we’re together, we have each other’s back ! Right ?

“Transidentity ISN’T a mental illness !! We don’t DESERVE to be FORCIBLY LOCKED UP and MEDICATED and MADE TO CONFORM FOR OTHER’S SENSE OF SECURITY !!”

Neither do I, RIGHT ?

Oh

Or do I ?

Remember what she said, my girlfriend, right at the beginning ?

How I can’t be trusted about myself when sometimes I don’t even have a sense of self anymore or I have too much selves who fight against each other ?

And what do we say to that ?

Get treatment. Get in-patient. Take medication. And for the love of God, shut the fuck up about it, you’re giving us a bad name.

Because being trans and crazy can’t exist. It’s absurd. You have to fix one of these two things. Choose which jacket I’ll wear, and they call it a straitjacket for a reason it seems, so am I queer or am I insane ?

All I know today is there isn’t a universe in which I’m a trans without any mental illnesses, or mentally ill without being trans. And yet, I can’t tell you how many time I got asked “do you think you’d be trans if you never got through [x trauma] ?”. I. Don’t. Know. I’ll never know. And I deserve just as much agency as you get despite being mentally ill. If you don’t believe in that, don’t come yapping about “liberation for all of us”, but “if one of us is crazy they’ll all think I am too and that can’t happen”.

No LGBTQIAA+ person deserves to be told they need to be put away, to be cured, to be allowed out in the open only if they’re deemed “acceptable” by society’s standards. And no mentally ill people deserve to either.

No trans person should be going through years of counseling to have the access to HRT.

And I shouldn’t have had to threaten my own mother’s life to avoid being locked in an adult psych ward at 14.

If you ever think, for one second, that these two things have nothing to do with one another, you are far removed from history.

To hear queer people say “yeah but some mentally ill people are dangerous !” feels like you don’t even know where you come from.

And if I want to say, that me being trans is linked to me being mentally ill, or at least, that both are connected in a way, all hell breaks fucking loose.

So I’ll explain very carefully.

See, when I was young, my mind got shattered into a thousand of pieces I had to try to glue back on. All these pieces of myself broke further more down the line because I couldn’t catch a fucking break. And now, it happens that the final puzzle does not have the same face it had before. It happens that its shape changed over time, for reasons over the control of all of us who tried to build ourselves back. Now there’s a bigger picture, less pieces, a few other shadows, and me. Built from the shatters. With my own needs and afflictions.

And whoever you are, whatever your agenda might be, I will not let anyone take any agency away from me under the false pretext that I can’t know anything for myself. They say that about children, they say that about minorities, about physically disabled people, about the people they want OUT. And my trans siblings, you know that.

I came out for the first time 7 years ago, to my then girlfriend, who was the one asking the question that is the first sentence of this text. I came out a second time 3 years ago. Been on HRT, had top surgery, had psychotic breaks, got my meds changed, switch therapist.

Because I am trans and crazy. And yet, all these choices I made, I made myself. It didn’t have to be that hard to get the basic care I needed. It didn’t need to be. But it WAS. And I’m part of the lucky crowd of people who had access to out-patient treatment, who never have been locked up in ward, who managed to stay alive through meds withdrawals without medical assistance when I had no therapist.

Be very careful of when you start to put conditions on the rights you think you deserve. Be very, very careful about your definition of sanity and of how it warps the way you see people. When you start to say “I have access to that, but there’s people like X or Y who shouldn’t BECAUSE”, pause and ask yourself what led you to think this way. More often than not, you’ll find yourself playing the same mind games as the ones you swore to fight against, and when it gives them the upper hand, they won’t hesitate to come for you after that.