#here's to those rough adhd days where it feels like everything is going wrong

[medicbrainrot]

i don’t wanna be here when you lose control

An awkward silence had taken over the room Task Force 141 was occupying when Ghost and Jaguar (Simon and Artemis) had gotten into a heated argument during a briefing meeting for an upcoming mission.

Ghost gritted his teeth. “Why do you always go on these off-topic tangents?! This is important!” His icy cold stare went right through Jaguar, putting a bit of a chill in the air.

“I’m sorry, but sometimes I get off track!” She says defensively.

“That is not good enough! This is important!!” He stalks closer to her, still gritting his teeth. His eyes look as angry as ever through the mask.

“We are not continuing until you realize that what you are doing is disruptive and wasting time!” His tone is cold, and his stare is even colder.

As his anger builds, his tone becomes even more harsh, to the point where he is almost yelling at Jaguar.

“Sit. Still! This is important! Now, can we please keep focus here!?” He grits out loudly.

“I CAN’T HELP IT! I HAVE ADHD!” Jaguar shouts.

Ghost growls and steps closer, putting his face right in front of hers.

“I said SIT STILL. This is IMPORTANT.” He said furiously.

His words shut her up immediately, and Jaguar didn’t move a muscle or say a single word throughout the rest of the meeting.

When the meeting was over, Ghost turned to Jaguar one more time. 

“I trust you understand the gravity of this now.” He said coldly, before walking away without another word. He’s absolutely livid, but he needs to calm down.

The next few days, the base feels awfully quiet as the team prepares for the mission.

Ghost himself is as silent as ever, hardly speaking to anyone, and keeping mostly to himself. It seems like he’s mostly gotten over the argument with Artemis, but he’s still a little pissed off about it.

No one really knows what’s going through his mind, but they’re all keeping an eye on him in case he snaps.

Artemis, in a similar vein, has been more withdrawn than usual, and barely gives more than one or two word responses when spoken to.

Simon picked up on Artemis’ behavior, and realized that perhaps she’s feeling the same way he is: guilty.

He knows he shouldn’t have snapped at her the way he did, but he couldn’t help it.

After a brief moment of pondering, he decides to go find her and try to make it up to her. He gathers a few of her favorite snacks into a little bag, and heads to her room, hesitating before knocking on the door. “Artemis?” 

After a few more knocks, Soap pokes his head out from his own room next door. “Jaguar’s not here, LT.” He says.

Ghost sighs internally. “Where is she?” He asks gruffly, even though internally he’s feeling guilty. His body language still reads frustration, but he manages to calm himself down so he doesn’t snap at Soap.

“Last I heard, she was headed to the firing range.” He supplies helpfully.

“The firing range?” Ghost asks.

Soap nods in response.

“Okay.” Ghost nods, hanging the little bag of snacks on Jaguar’s door handle before turning to leave for the range.

As he approaches the firing range, he can hear shot after shot being fired, in an even, precise rhythm. He slips on a pair of hearing protection headphones, and enters the range to find Artemis there, firing at target after target in pure anger and frustration.

She’s got her own hearing protection on, and it seems like she’s settled into a rhythm of firing round after round into the targets, quickly changing the mag, then continuing to fire.

Ghost approaches Jaguar carefully, getting closer with each step. He finally speaks when he's close enough she’ll be able to hear him over her protective equipment.

“Artemis?” He says, trying to keep a sense of calm in his voice, despite what happened the other day. “I came to apologize.”

“It’s alright Lieutenant.” She says stiffly, without turning around.

His tones soften a bit, not having expected forgiveness so easily. “Are you sure?” He pauses and lowers his voice a bit. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that…We disagree sometimes, but you didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s fine.” she says, equally as stiff as the first response.

Ghost stands in silence for a moment, before taking a deep breath. He’s not sure what else he could say to make things right between them, but he knows he has to do something.

“Are you absolutely sure it’s alright?”

She fires the rifle again. “It’s fine.” She says again. She has yet to turn around, and her voice remains awfully stiff.

Simon begins to worry that it’s not all fine. “I don’t like you sounding so stiff.” He says, notes of concern filling his voice.

He takes a step closer to her, his tone trying to remain soft and gentle. “Artemis…”

This time, she sets the rifle down and finally turns to look at him, slipping off her hearing protection. Her eyes are red and puffy, and now that she’s not holding the rifle, he can see that her hands are shaking. “I said it’s fine Lieutenant.”

An awful sinking feeling settled in Simon’s stomach, almost like he was sick. He knew immediately that he had to do something in order to fix this. All he wants is to comfort her, but he has to know where to start. He slipped off his hearing protection before speaking.

“No, it’s not. What’s wrong Artemis?”

“If you’ve come to yell at me to sit still again, don’t worry. I’ve been working on it the past few days.” She says, gesturing to the destroyed targets downrange. 

Simon looks at the targets, concerned by the mess, horrified by the realization that he was the cause. He takes a deep breath before speaking. “Artemis, I haven’t come to yell. I’m so, so sorry for snapping at you the other day.” 

He pauses for a moment, trying to put himself in her shows. “Do you…want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know…I might go on another tangent…” She says flatly.

His tone softens some more, he can tell that she’s very bitter. “Artemis, you can tell me anything you want. What’s on your mind?” He asks, trying to show that he is being genuine, and won’t criticize her for going on another ‘tangent’. 

“What’s on my mind? What’s on my mind!?” She exclaims, as she presses her hands tightly into her eyes. “What’s on my mind is I’ve been trying to figure out for weeks how to tell my boyfriend I have ADHD, only for it to slip out in an argument and then have him use it against me. That’s what’s on my mind, Simon.”

‘Oh god.’ Simon thinks to himself. ‘That’s what’s been keeping her up at night?’ Simon hasn’t felt this awful in a long, long time. He’s horrified that he’s done this to her. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s fine.” She mumbles, her hands still pressed tightly into her eyes.

“Artemis…” He takes a few tentative steps closer, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her to face him more.

“I didn’t mean to attack you like I did. I was wrong to do so, and I was wrong to not consider the consequences. I’m so, so sorry for my actions.”

“You’re not the first one.” She mumbles, lowering her hands from her eyes. “I’m surprised you haven’t broken up with me yet.”

“What do you mean?” He asks, his eyebrows raising under his mask. “Did I make you feel like breaking up is the only option?” He’s shocked at the possibility, a look of worry on his face. “Artemis, breaking up with you never even crossed my mind. Are you serious?”

“My last boyfriend broke up with me a few days after I told him, said I was too much to handle.” She says, a few tears escaping her eyes.

Artemis’ words cause Simon to feel another wave of guilt wash over him. He had no idea this wasn’t the first time she was treated this way, and it made him feel so much worse, knowing that he was one of the people who caused her pain. “He was wrong…” Simon starts gently. “He was wrong. You’re not ‘too much to handle’, Artemis.” He pauses. “You’re perfect just the way you are, I promise.”

“That’s not what you said when you yelled at me…” She says with a flat affect.

A look of guilt passes through Simon’s eyes, and he drops his head as he tries to come up with a response. “You’re right. I didn’t say that. I essentially said the opposite, something  cruel, that I shouldn’t have said. But, Artemis…” He pauses, his tone getting soft again. “What I said was wrong. You deserve to be treated better than that… I’m sorry.”

Artemis shrugs. “It’s my fault for fidgeting during a meeting.”

“No Artemis, it isn’t.” Simon sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “You have ADHD. It’s something you can’t control. You deserve to be treated with love and respect, and you shouldn’t have to be shamed simply because you don’t act how others might want you to.”

“I wish that conversation had gone differently.” She sniffles, as a fresh wave of tears fills her eyes.

“I do too, Artemis.” Simon steps forward and hugs her tightly, trying to comfort her. “Is there any way I can make it up to you?” He asks gently.

“I don’t know. My brain is so fucking scrambled.” She sniffles.

“Scrambled?” He asks gently. “Why? Do you feel anxious? Do you feel overwhelmed?”

“I don’t know what I feel right now. There’s too much going on in my brain.” Artemis says.

“It’s okay, It’s okay to not know, love.” Simon says softly.

“It’s not okay! I keep fucking up because I can’t get my fucking brain under control!” She yells, exasperated.

Simon flinches slightly when she yells. “What do you mean by that…?” He asks cautiously. “How have you been messing up?”

“I talk too much, I fidget too much, I annoy everyone around me because I’m too much. I have seventeen trains of thought going in my head at all times and I don’t know where any of them are fucking going!” She shouts.

It takes effort from Simon not to jump when she shouts again. He takes a deep breath before speaking, trying to calm his nerves, so that he doesn’t say something that might hurt Artemis further. “Artemis…If I might speak bluntly. It doesn’t sound like you’re the problem here. It sounds to me that your previous exes were too harsh to you…” He says gently.

“It’s not just my exes. My friends, my teachers, my parents. I feel like I’m gonna go crazy if I have to be still and quiet but there’s nothing I can fucking do about it!!” She tries to take a breath. “It’s always, sit still, stop talking, stop fidgeting, stop bouncing, stop shouting, you’re being too loud, you’re being disruptive. Everything about my existence is annoying and yet I can’t seem to SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”

Simon’s eyes go wide at the outburst, but he manages to keep calm and keep holding Artemis tightly. “Artemis…” His tone remains gentle, and he realizes what he needs to say. His own trauma is screaming at him to not go near this, but he knows that right now that’s not the answer. He takes a deep breath and starts softly. “I think I understand what happens when you get overwhelmed.”

“What.” She says in a small voice.

He can hear the pain in her voice and it makes him feel even more horrible for speaking so harshly to her.  He rubs her shoulder gently, trying to comfort her. “Your mind feels like it’s being attacked by constant thoughts, and you feel like you might explode if you don’t do something…And you feel like talking and moving helps you, even if just for a little bit.”

“Pretty much. I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 22, but it made so much sense.” She says quietly.

“Artemis, I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through this like that. Nobody should have to feel like they’re not allowed to speak or move. You have every right to speak and move around all you want. If anyone else tells you otherwise, they’re wrong.” His voice grows even softer. “You are not too much.”

“Even when it’s you telling me to be quiet and sit still?” She asks.

“That’s on me. That’s me being inconsiderate, and it’s me being wrong. I can’t apologize enough for that. I’m sorry Artemis, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He says softly, hoping she understands.

“It’s okay.” She says sadly. “You didn’t know…”

“Artemis, I still shouldn’t have treated you like that, regardless. I’m just…I’m sorry I didn’t realize something sooner.” He says gently. “If I could go back and undo what I said, I swear I would. But I can’t. All I can do is apologize and make sure I don’t do something like that again.”

“I wanted to tell you sooner… I just….didn’t know how…I felt like there was never a right time…” She says as a tear slides down her cheek.

“It’s alright.” Simon says softly, swiping away the tear with his thumb. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m the one who reacted poorly. It’s on me to learn, not on you to do something you aren’t comfortable with.” He holds her tighter, trying to express his love with the hug.

Artemis leans into the hug, burying herself into his chest. “I’m sorry for avoiding you.” She mumbles.

“It’s alright to ask for space after an argument. It just means you want time to cool down.” He says reassuringly. “If you need more time to process, I’m alright giving you whatever you need.”

“I don’t want more time to process. I haven’t slept in two days. I just want to go to bed.” Artemis says, trying not to cry.

Simon nods, pulling slightly back from the hug. He looks down at Artemis, still feeling guilty about how he hurt her. He can now tell how tired she is, and how desperately she needs sleep. 

“Okay, I can help with that. Do you need anything before you go rest? Water, a snack, anything?”

“A snack would probably be good. I’ve been here at the range since early this morning.” She yawns. “Maybe…maybe, after I’ve slept, we can talk some more about this?”

Simon gives Artemis a warm smile. “Of course, take all the time you need, love.”

He releases her from the embrace and turns to go get her a snack while she cleans up her stuff at the range.

“Simon, wait.” She calls out.

Simon stops in his tracks, turning around to face Artemis again. “What is it, Artemis? Was there something else?” He asks softly.

She steps forward and lifts his mask to press a gentle kiss to his lips. “I love you.” She says softly.

Simon is caught a little off guard by the kiss, but he quickly recovers. He leans into the kiss, and pulls away after a few seconds, smiling warmly at her. “I love you too, Artemis.” He pulls her into another gentle kiss, holding her close. “I love you… more than you could ever know. Never forget that.”

A/N: Thanks for reading! Likes, reblogs, and feedback are appreciated!

Masterlist

[americasmarauders]

umm, hello guys, long time no see.

If it feels like I've been at best absent from here and at worst straight up gone, it's because I've pretty much been those things. I'd like to throw a ready excuse and say 'school's hard, I haven'ts had the time' but althought that's also true, a lot more has happened to me other than just that.

Well, to say it shortly, fandom life has felt like it has run its course for me. I have lost contact with everything that made it feel like a safe community for me. And that comes from several reasons.

Beggining last year, around february, I kinda had a rough patch. I'm sure if you absentmindely followed my #luiza talks posts you'd see that I was kinda (?) involved with a guy that was very much NOT the person for me. He pushed me to do uncomfortable things, say uncomfortable things, and told me very untrue perceptions about myself that wrcked my self-esteem and peace of mind for basically 6 months (which may seem like a short time in the grand scale of things, but while I was going through it, it was the most terrible time of my life, and my life has not been easy). We were never official, and while I can recognize that he may have helped me in some aspects, he definitely destroyed others.

During that same time last year, I was going back for my first in person semester at my uni since 2019. The pandemic was a hard time, but going back to uni after spending 2 years studying at home was much harder than anticipated. I'm an applied physics major, the sciences are usually fields where big egos come to play. I didn't have any luck and I got 2 of the biggest and most assholish egos to teach me for that first semester. I wasn't nowhere near ready for that reality, and I found myself going down a rabbit hole of so much anxiety, there were days I couldn't step foot in the classroom without feeling like the walls were closing in on me. It was bad. JUst straight up bad.

All in all not a good time.

I was feeling disconnected from everything. I burried myself in the only thing that brought me some modicum joy which was, surprinsingly, VALORANT. I felt alone, truly and deeply alone. While that was not a novelty for me, it was so intense, and I felt like no one would truly understand what I was going through. I didn't know how to talk to my friends about it without sounding like I was just some complaining baby, I didn't know how not to find fault at behaviors that I didn't agree with, I didn't know how to deal with anything that wasn't what I thought was right and comfortable for me.

After a particularly bad night (that I woke up crying and didn't stop until my mom urst into my room and took me to her bed to help me calm me down), I went to see a psychiatrist. I got lucky that the first doctor I went to see was the one who truly understood what was going on. She medicated me, and slowly my anxiety subsided. I can say today I'm like 1000000% better. I haven't had an anxiety attack in months. Who would have thought that drugs would be the answer?

The doctor also said: "You know, you say you can't pay attention properly in class, you have rituals and such. I need you to do some neuropsychological tests, okay? Because you could have, adhd, ocd or aed." (AED: autism spectrum disorder).

Hearing from the doctor that I might fit in one of those boxes was a mix of relief and fear. I didn't want to be labeled sick or disordered. But at the same time, if I was, things would make so much more sense. Cut to me spending from september to january going to see 2 psychologists and doing endless of tests, talking about my past, and apologizing everytime I didn't have a witness to corrobate something that I said. My parents didn't stop me from doing the tests, but they didn't exactly agree that something might be wrong with me. For them, every behavior I had displayed since I was a tiny baby was normal. I don't know how many times I said to the therapist "No I don't have any close friends from childhood who can help you understand this about me." "No, I don't have any close relatives that can help you get to know how I was as a kid. They're both dead." "No, I don't think my friends would know how to answer these questions, I'm sorry."

I finally got the diagnosis in february, a year after this whole circus started. I'm autistic. If I had been diagnosed like 15 years earlier, they would have said I have Asperger's Syndrome. Today, I can say I'm just autistic. It made so much sense. The tantrums I threw when something didn't go my way. The tics that I have when I'm nervous. Why I can't make friend easily, and why I just need to sit in the same spot everytime, I just need to. But mostly, why I couldn't be like everyone else.

It lifted a huge guilt that I carried around for not being like others. For not being able to stand loud noises, and strange smells. For not dancing at parties, and not kissing drunken strangers. For felling so little in those places, and leaving so exhausted I just couldn't speak the next day.

But at the same time, it was so cruel to see all that I have been through, because I was autistic. All the bullying, and name calling. Feeling isolated and being mocked because I was sensitive and cried when I didn't get the grade I worked for or for not being heard. All the times I wished someone looked at me and saw more than those things, but they just couldn't. Because they didn't understand and they never would. They'd never respect me, and my boundaries, my quirks and needs.

I'm lucky enough to have my parents, that respect me and feel like everything I do is normal (thank god). I'm so lucky to be with a person that loves me so much, and respects my boundaries, and waits for me, because he knows my time is slower than everyone else's.

And although I still fell isolated, specially know that I've been going through sort of a friend group transition, is so much easier. At least I have these 3 people that get me. Even if I wished I had more, I have them.

Anyway, that's all that has been going on. I'm sorry I kinda abandoned this place. I miss it sometimes, truly. I still lurk around here, but I don't feel like being so active in fandom is in my future anymore. Who knows, maybe another catastrophe will happen and I may come back, but for now this is (sort of) a goodbye from my fandom days.

I hope this finds you well and safe,

Luíza (04/22/2023)

[a-lil-perspective]

70 Encouragements/Tips For The Writer:

A/N: Rules don’t exist. These are real and personal and stem from a deteriorating, exhausted Writer who is here to tell you (and herself) that you are amazing and keep going. I hope you find some encouragement within.

Your mental health comes first and foremost.

Indulge and embrace your creative writing pieces when they come (and when they don’t). Especially when they don’t.

Suffering from Writer’s Block or fluctuating hyperfixation? Me too. So is your favorite author. Welcome to the Writer’s Block Party (all my uwus if you see the pun).

Did you spend five hours on this one segment, forget the last time you ate, develop chapped lips, dry eyes, and a stiff back (time to get up and move), bang your head on the wall, laugh, cry, fidget, take your ADHD meds, deviate to watch YouTube, have an epiphany, curse in frustration and wonder why the hell you do this to yourself? Congratulations, you’re a Writer.

Embrace all the not-so-glamorous sides of writing, and accept the fact they’re going to happen time over again.

When you say “just one more line” and it’s 2:00 AM, I’ll be here to remind you to “go to sleep” (because I’m also depriving myself lol).

Actually, sleeping helps your mind feel refreshed, and it’s good for your health. If you’re struggling with a particular segment, one of the best things you can do is just put a cap on it for the time being, put in a placeholder, and get some shut eye. I know you don’t want to. But you will feel so much better and have more clarity and energy to continue when you wake. Trust me.

More often than not, those words you “just didn’t write down fast enough and now forgot” end up revealing themselves to you later in a much more profound way. Give the words time to get ready. They’re just spiffing up before coming to visit. :)

Be proud of yourself and your prose. Writing is an amazing part of who you are.

That trope has been written 1000 times before? Make it 1001.

You’ve already written this scenario? Write it again.

You’ve just written a single sentence. Now sit back for moment and think: you just wrote something brand new, never before seen. Nobody out there will ever write that sentence or formulate those thoughts the exact same way. You are a unique, mind-blowing, awe-inspiring human being.

Bask in the excitement that comes with a completed piece. Reflect on what you learned throughout and celebrate the little victories.

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback, but also understand that you might not always get it, and that is OK.

Please re-read your work. Be gentle with yourself. You had to write that very first piece to get to where you are now. Love the process.

Your personal writing success is not based off of kudos or likes or reblogs.

There is no right or wrong way to write.

There is no such thing as “good” writing.

Improvement is becoming of everyone so get comfy, strap in. The journey of a Writer is a lifelong one. Here’s to many more works ahead.

Don’t mourn the words you did or didn’t write. Celebrate the ones you will.

One day, you’ll read a piece that will blow you away—and it will be yours.

There is nothing “shameful” about reblogging your own writing works.

I promise you’ll find your “wow” piece—either in something you’ve already written, or something yet to come.

Baby. Please don’t write out of spite. You’re better than that.

You are just as valid/deserving as the next Writer. And you do belong.

If you feel sad/unworthy when sharing your works or interacting with others’, get to the root of why. Writing should be fun, rewarding, and relaxing. Not shameful, embarrassing, or a chore.

Writing (fanfiction, specifically) is labeled as “transformative works”. Self-explanatory, right? However, if you notice the transformative part begin to have a personal effect on you—a negative one—it’s time to take a step back.

Right now, I can name a single quality you possess: diligence. How do I know? Because you’re a Writer, and the two go hand-in-hand.

Got that single scene in your head but you haven’t completed or even began all the chapters preceding? Bruh. Jot that down right now. You don’t need 20k words beforehand.

Embrace your writing mood swings. The stray, sweet and condensed blurbie. The ideal, bridging drabble. The solid, substantial oneshot. The hefty, elaborate 10k word chapter. Appreciate everything in-between, and that you are capable of all of it.

Nobody remembers that extra word or typo or stray speech mark back all the way back in chapter 3. Tell the little monster in your head to go to hell.

You’re not a weirdo for making facial expressions and mulling through your dialogue aloud. You. Are. A. Writer.

It’s OK if the Readers can’t always see exactly what you envisioned in your head, or the full extent of the picture you painted. We all see colors differently.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with your writing.

In fact, challenge yourself to dabble into a new plot/trope/concept every day, even if only for a few minutes. You may discover you love writing it.

There’s no rush to finish/begin any written work. If you take your time, you will make your mark. You’re not falling behind or running late. Slow down and wait for it. :)

Three cheers for hiatus.

Listen to your body and mind, know your limits and when it’s time to take a break.

Actually take a break. :)

If you feel like you’re falling stagnant in creativity, looking to/revisiting other forms of creative media can help encourage the flow.

Ask for encouragement, and be at peace with asking.

Take shelter in fellow writers. Uplift each other always.

You are/will be someone’s favorite author. :)

You don’t have anything to prove. You have something to share.

Someone is thinking about your work right now.

Someone started a series because they drew inspiration from you.

Personal writing style can reflect a lot on the state of one’s mental health. Try to always be attentive to that of your own.

Self-validation must be cultivated early on or nothing will ever work.

Freestyle every once in a while. Write a snippet, timed, and go—without editing. Write the first thing that comes to mind and go from there. Do it all the way through the set time. When it stops, you’ll find yourself unable to. 3,800 words here we come. :)

Not everything needs an outline. :)

It is completely normal to write your story out of order.

Create guidelines for yourself. If they aren’t working, toss ‘em.

Word vomiting can help you feel better (it’s just how it sounds). By clearing all those jumbled thoughts and scattered concepts, you achieve a clearer objective. Try it sometime.

A rough draft is supposed to be rough.

Sometimes the words come to you quicker than others. Be patient. That is merely the construct of a Writer’s mind. You’re a beautiful enigma.

A sentence written is a story progressing.

Writing is an endurance sport. You must pace yourself and exercise it daily.

You are still a Writer even when the words aren’t on the actual page.

You’re not obligated to a writing/posting schedule.

As you progress in your journey and gain more awareness, don’t sacrifice your style. Those beginning works are what define you. Hold onto them and don’t ever let them go.

You’re the only one cringing—

Remember that sometimes words are elusive and you don’t always have control over them, and that is OK. Sometimes they write themselves. Sometimes your characters come to life and break out into dance across your page. Dance with them. You can wrangle them back when the music stops. :)

There is nothing condemning or embarrassing about asking for a beta. Allow someone to help carry the load.

Allow people to cheer you on—even if they don’t read your work.

It’s OK if your writing style isn’t someone else’s preference.

Be your biggest cheerleader. Sometimes you are all you have.

You don’t need anyone’s approval except your own.

You love that trope/concept/story you just wrote? That’s all that matters. The end.

You will never write good. You will write you. And that is good.

Above all else: remember to write for you.🤍

[adhdeancas]

Dean gets screened for ADHD

“I don’t really buy into the whole ‘shrink’ thing,” he blurted out as soon as he got in the door. The woman in the white coat raised an eyebrow at him, not unkindly. 

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a shrink, then.”

Dean floundered at that. He nodded and sat awkwardly in the chair across from the psychiatrist, perched on the edge, just in case. His fingertips bounced nervously against his leg. “Okay, yeah, sure, but- you know, the whole-” another indiscriminate arm wave, another soft smile. 

“Mental health?”

“My brother thought I should come.” he confirmed, sighing and resigning himself to his fate finally. He settled back further into the chair. “Well and my- my buddy.” he looked down, his heartbeat picking up a little. 

“I am going to have to ask you some questions, though.”

“Hm? Uh, yeah, go ahead, whatever you gotta do.”

Dr. Pearson took out her clipboard, an action which stopped Dean in his tracks. He was starting to feel a little boxed in. “So, first off, what are you here for? I mean, besides placating your brother.”

Dean grinned at her, the knot in his chest loosening a little. “Yeah, uh… so my brother and my… friend, they think I’ve got ADHD”

“Do you think you have ADHD?”

Dean blinked at her. “I- I dunno, I mean, I’m a little old for that, ain’t I?”

The doctor shrugged. “ADHD doesn’t have an age limit. And you’re never too old to improve your life.”

Dean held his hands up in defense. He didn’t want her to think he was just flat out dismissing it, but… “Don’t get me wrong, I’m fucked up in a thousand different ways, but for once… my life kinda feels… good. I got a good thing going. Don’t know how much I wanna change.” It felt like way too much to mess with, what if he messed it up? 

The psychiatrist nodded, interested. “Tell me about that. Your life now. It’s a recent change?”

Dean scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. Me and my family, we got past some pretty big stuff not too long ago, and uh… I got into a relationship, a good one,” he cleared his throat and wiped his palms off on his pants. “I moved and everything, and I kind of have a kid. And I have a job, a real job, for the first time in my goddamn life.” He looked up and beamed, so proud of his bar. His bar. He swore, everytime he talked about his life it sounded like a fever dream. 

The psychiatrist returned his smile, which made him feel like a third grader. “Those sound like some pretty big changes. Congratulations. And you said you had different circumstances before? Would you characterize any of your past life events as traumatic?”

Dean laughed, actually cackled then. “Uh, all of them?” From the patronizing smile the doc was wearing, he guessed she didn’t believe him. “I- I was a soldier, kinda. For a while. Seen a lot of bad shit.” The doctor nodded; she started scribbling something down on her paperwork. “I’m not, like, traumatized or anything, though.”

A genuine smile pulled at Dr. Pearson’s lips as she wrote, and Dean leaned forward, eager to see what kinda joke she thought he was pitching. “You know, in all my years of being a psychiatrist, almost no one has wanted to admit they have trauma.” She looked at him and shrugged. “Most people, at least, most people who come to see me, have trauma.”

Dean crossed his arms, knowing it made him look cartoonishly uncomfortable and not being able to stop himself anyway. “Okay, can we move past this part of the- whatever? Exam?”

She nodded, surprising Dean. “We can do the ADHD screening now.”

“What, so all the rest of that was for shits and giggles?”

“Background.” She was unfazed. “Okay, now I’m going to ask you some questions about your attention and work habits and how your day to day functions, they’re called executive dysfunctions, how they work and how they present in your mind. It’s going to be a lot of questions. You don’t have to worry about any right answers, there aren’t any. And if you want to expand more on an answer, please feel free. All information helps me get a more accurate picture of your mindspace.”

Dean blinked. Once. Twice. He didn’t mean to zone out, he really didn’t, but his brain just kinda glazed over the words, like they went in one ear and out the other without translating into English. The doctor waited patiently, and he nodded his go-ahead, hoping it was the right answer. “Yeah, sure.”

She cleared her throat and flipped the page on her clipboard, looking down at a list of questions she apparently had. There were a lot of questions, some of them confused Dean, and he had to think about them a lot. He’d never thought about thinking so much in his life. His brain just worked, what the hell was he supposed to say about it? 

“Are you organized?”

“Yeah, totally. Except when, y’know, if I’m going through a rough few days, then… nobody wants to do laundry when they feel like shit.”

“So your ability to maintain your cleanliness relies on your mental state?”

“Yeah, doesn’t everyone’s?”

“So, what goes through your mind if you’re having a rough day, or week, and you see laundry on the floor. Or dishes in the sink. What do you think, what do you do?”

“Well, I think I should clean it up, obviously.”

“And you do?”

He shrugged, embarrassed. “It’s a lot of work.” He shakes his head. “No it’s not, I know that stuff would take me like three minutes but… I gotta get up first.”

“Do you find it hard to concentrate on work?”

“Yeah. I mean, sometimes. Research, fuck yeah. I swear to- I swear, I can’t read more than three pages before I-” He waved a hand in front of his eyes. She seemed to get it. “But if it’s like- cars, then I can work for hours and just - zone the fuck out.”

“What about watching tv? Can you sit on the couch and relax?”

“Yeah!” Dean started confidently, but then wavered. “Well, unless, I’ve like- I dunno, sometimes I just need to do something with my hands, y’know? Or some days, my car is my couch. All I need is my Baby, the open road, some music… But I can watch a good marathon, don’t get me wrong. One time I watched John Wayne’s entire life’s work in one sitting.”

“Do you lose things often?”

“All the fucking time. It’s why I try to be organized. My keys, my guns, my wallet, I know where that stuff is, I always put it in the same place.”

“Like a cubby or a bedside table?”

“Uh…” He scratched his head. Maybe he was batshit. Every answer he said made him sound crazier and crazier. “No. So, I put my keys on this one shelf of the bar while I’m there, my hus- Cas got this cutesy little key holder from a garage sale, so that’s where I keep ‘em at home. Wallet on this one ledge in the kitchen, and I’ve got a gun in basically every room.” He was hoping she wouldn’t fixate on the gun thing. Luckily, she didn’t. 

“But other than those things, you lose?”

“Yeah. I- I found this one ring I lost years ago in my trunk a few months ago, and I’ve been wearing it every day. But I took it off because-” He coughed. He took it off because he and Cas were fucking on their living room couch while Jack was with Sam for the weekend and he hadn’t wanted any… roughness to his fingers. “I took it off and set it down, and I knew where I set it down, right? But then I was afraid of losing it again, so I didn’t look for it, even though I know I knew where it was. So like four days later I finally look for it, and it’s not there.” He sighed heavily, and looked up just in time to see Dr. Pearson looking at him like he was a mummy who’d come back to life and started talking about the intricacies of hieroglyphics. Okay, so he had ADHD, apparently. That was ADHD. 

Dean left with a prescription for a when-needed stimulant and a weirdly light feeling in his chest. It took him five weeks to find his ring, right where Cas had put it in his bathroom drawer. He had laughed at Dean when he yelled at him, which brought Dean back down to a self-deprecating laugh. Later, Dean forwarded him an article about ADHD and object impermanence, and Cas started immediately giving Dean things he found if he thought he’d lost them. Which. Was A Solution.

[poptod]

In Death (Josh Washington x Reader)

Description: You take care of him.

Notes: posted this wrong had to correct it here it is Word Count: 1.8k

+

He wasn't weak when they found him. Scared, yes – but not weak. He fought back and he hurt them, but they controlled him, and sent him to the hospital where he was contained for a month. For the better half of that month he was not allowed visitors, not his parents, not his friends, but you visited him anyway. You weren't allowed inside his room, but you stood outside with your face pressed against the glass. He breathed deep when he slept – almost normal, with a Joker-like tear in his grin, teeth like a shark, and blood dripping from the wounds that refused to heal.

He turned to you and did not grow angry. He turned to you and he almost smiled – almost human – and the doctors let you in. So you sat at his bedside, talking nonsense and reading him stories. Unfortunately his condition had fed a sickness to his mind, and though you showed up every day, he did not remember his time in the hospital.

His memory started to work like any other's only when he returned home from the hospital, kept in his room he recognized so easily. No one could tell if it was a conscious recognition or just a comfort in a familiarity he couldn't decipher, but it kept his tantrums and screeching at bay, and the sight of you sitting on his bed was one that calmed his temper. He didn't know why that was.

You spent all your time in his home, growing a fair enough relationship with his parents as you took care of him. Both his mother and father were busy, and as much as they wanted to be there for him, they couldn't fund his medicine and spend time at home. That was where you came in; you moved into the bedroom beside his and you took care of him.

Running the bathwater, you peeked out into his room, where he sat entranced with the poster above his head. A small smile came to you before you turned back to the adjacent bathroom, dropping lavender and honey scents into the steaming water. Once it filled halfway you put in bubble mixture, watching as mountains of it began to appear, stopped only when you turned the faucet off.

"Josh?" You called softly, looking out to find him still staring at the poster. Quietly you made your way to him, taking his hand in yours and pulling gently. "I ran you a bath."

You couldn't tell if he understood your words. No one did, but nonetheless he followed you, a half smile on his face, which was as much as he could do with the scars healing across his cheeks. They were a horrific sight, still gaping and scabbed but you'd grown used to it. 

Sitting him down on the edge of the tub, you raised his arms, pulling his shirt off of him while he looked up at you as though you carved the moon into the sky. He often looked like that around you. You knelt in front of him, helping to pull off his socks and jeans before removing his boxers, all of which you kept in a pile on the floor while you helped him step into the warm water.

Immediately a rough sigh left him, his eyes closing as he sank into the bubbles. Rolling up your sleeves you grabbed a nearby cup, dipping it into the water before pouring it gently over his head, watching carefully for any sign of distaste. Like usual he enjoyed it – you supposed you'd enjoy warmth too if you were stuck in winter mountains for six months.

"Do they hurt much today?" You asked him, your soothing voice always a helper in your interactions.

With a water-soaked hand you cupped his cheek, running your thumb ever so gently over the injuries, helping the biting cold dissipate. He shook his head – a simple no, but when you tried to withdraw your hand he pulled you back, placing your warmth over his scars and melting into your touch.

"I'll need that soon, but alright," you murmured with a quiet giggle, an expression that had him smiling a crooked, broken smile.

Once more you ran water through his hair, letting him keep your hand sandwiched against his cheek (he still hadn't moved his hand away from yours) for another minute or so before moving to the shampoo.

"You're quiet today," you noted in a hum, massaging the shampoo into his scalp in just the right way. You'd gotten a lot of practice.

Like usual, he didn't respond, at least not in words. Despite his appearing to have forgotten english, you kept talking to him like normal – maybe it was laziness on your part, but you liked to believe he could understand you. Eventually he'd gain the consciousness to speak again. After all, he was getting slowly better, and with each passing week he grew more civil.

"Close your eyes," you said, preparing to run water over his sudsy head. He did so, and as your cup spilled warm water down his neck, he hummed pleasantly.

You went slow till you finished up, reaching low into the tub to release the plug. Even though your sleeves were rolled up nearly to your shoulder, you still managed to soak your shirt, bubbles still resting on your chest and stomach. Not that you minded, but you'd have to change shirts to make lunch.

The doctors told you one good meal a day – vegetarian of course, and snacks were allowed throughout the day. You kept to their words, though you could tell it annoyed Josh. He must've missed his old favorite foods quite a lot. If he remembered them.

Stirring the tomato sauce, you eyed Josh sneaking out of his room, making his way over to you. He looked over your shoulder and you could feel his breath, a warmth that only grew when he wrapped his arms around your middle, his chest against your back. Resting his chin on your shoulder, he hummed a tune you couldn't quite identify, pressing his cheek against your neck and jaw. You chuckled.

"Pasta or baguette slices?" You asked, looking to the unopened box of spaghetti and the freshly baked baguette his mother had gotten from a nearby bakery.

Unwinding himself from you he knelt at the counter, coming to eye level with the two objects. After a moment of looking between the two, he reached for the baguette, handing it to you.

"Alright," you said as you took it, offering a smile before he left the kitchen.

You sliced about half the baguette up, setting the pieces on a tray seasoned with olive oil, salt, and a hint of garlic. The tomato sauce would go well on it, and since the sauce already had garlic in it, you didn't need too much for the cooking sheet. With the sauce and the bread boiling and cooking away, you cut up broccoli and brussel sprouts. Those soon went into a pan, before being seasoned with olive oil and jalapeno slices. Fresh vegetables always took a shorter time to cook, though Josh liked them a little overcooked, which was a little harder for you to enjoy. Still, you found comfort in the routine, always happy to help him.

When you finished you called Josh over, who quickly jumped over the couch and rushed to your side, looking over the food with a hungry look. To be fair, he usually looked hungry. You helped him load food onto his own plate before getting your own, joining him on the couch, where you pulled up Hatari on the television. A classic.

He couldn't sit through the whole movie, so at the midway point you paused, taking care of the dishes before joining him in his room. For the most part he stayed up there, and this time was no different as you found him lying on his bed. In his hands he held an ADHD fidgeting toy covered in scratches from his claws which, to your surprise, were fading at the same pace of his scars. No one expected them to go away, but it was a pleasant revelation.

"I brought cookies. You know, the ones I made a couple days ago," you said, climbing onto the bed with him and placing the cookie box between you. "There aren't any more heart shaped ones, though. Sorry. I only made three of those."

One for his mother, one for his father, and one for him.

Scooting across the sheets, he leaned against you, his posture much lower than yours to the point where his head was almost in your lap. You placed your arm over his head, resting your hand on his shoulder and tracing tiny shapes on his shirt.

"We'll need to go take your medicine soon," you reminded him softly, something that had him burying his face deeper into your waist. "You can sleep for now, though."

He loved touching you, that much was obvious to anyone who observed your interactions for more than a minute. Something in his mind told him you were safe – you couldn't be more thankful for that little memory, as faint as it was.

He never said your name. He didn't always recognize your voice if you called from another room. When he had nightmares, he didn't realize it was you waking him up unless you turned on the lights. But sometimes, he tried to sing to you. Weird, yes, and according to his friends and family he never sang before the incident, but it was sweet, and... lonely. There weren't any words, and despite that it still put an ache in your heart. Other times he tried to massage you, but you couldn't bear him doing that for very long, what with his claws. He clung to you when you sat beside him, especially in bed – he'd wrap his arms around your waist or chest, slinging his legs over the lower half of your body till there wasn't even a chance of escape. Over everything, you found it endearing. His parents found it embarrassing.

He didn't remember when you first spoke. He didn't remember driving you to the outskirts of town just to ask you on a date – he didn't remember you saying yes, and he didn't remember how you made him banana bread when he mentioned that he liked it. He didn't remember that you kissed him, and he didn't remember kissing back.

He didn't remember anything to do with you or any of his friends, or really any part of his life.

No, he didn't remember you, but he recognized you.

Only you.

And to him, when you murmured 'I love you' into his ear, you were all that existed.

[system-of-a-feather]

How do you feel about endos? Just curious.

Oookay, Riku will probably never get around to this, and while Riku wants to “get all the aspects” addressed in a “diplomatic” manner because it is a “complex and multifaceted discussion”, but they are over thinking this and will literally never do it so I’ll go with the really rough outline that they started and fill it in with what I know of our system.

Sorry if I sound really inflammatory, I’m not a diplomatic person lel 

Also, for comedy sake, I am going to maintain everything Riku kept in this outline and try my best to fill it out. A lot of this I am completely lost on so, there will be moments where I am clearly confused lel

I may get some of our opinions “wrong” because I’m kind of taking a guess from my access of the brain, so I apologize if Riku looks at any asks or reblogs we might get from this and goes WHY DID ADERIS SAY THAT?! I’m trying my best

===

Overall TLDR Opinion: So as a system, we don’t like to be too involved in it publicly. Its a multilayered complex topic with too much nuance for it to be worth advocating for or against, and with how large of a cultural phenomenon it is, it isn’t going to change with us. We don’t think it is likely that DID can be formed without trauma, but we also don’t write it off fully. We strongly however do not like “intentional” systems and find it really offensive and gross. With that being said, we also recognize issues in being too forward about that, so we don’t bother with it much.

More details below the keep reading.

-Aderis (Local Discourse Alter)

Can I follow if…

Yes. We really don’t limit or care who is following us. If you identify as an endogenic, singlet, fictionkin, a roll of toothpaste, we really don’t mind or care. I mean, we’d prefer if transphobes and homophobes and all those gross things weren’t following us because honestly - G r o s s - but also like, whatever.

I guess the only people we don’t want following are people that are actively going to use our posts to hurt others or to fetishize trauma or anything? I don’t think we have much worry for that but yeah nah. If you are endogenic or whatever, you can still follow. Just know that our writing isn’t written for an endogenic crowd.

====

Stages of Understanding DID and Endogenic Spaces

I don’t FUCKING know what Riku meant this. What the FUCK is “stages of understanding DID”? I’ve been sitting here for like... five minutes trying to understand what that meant, but I *think* they were trying to get at the idea of how people come to terms with DID.

If that is the case, then one reasons we don’t want to bash or actively advocate against endogenics is that identifying as an endogenic / endogenic-parallel concepts or finding concepts put out there by endogenics is kind of a stage / easier way to accept the situation since it doesn’t carry to baggage of having to accept that you were abused / mistreated. 

It isn’t necessarily the healthiest and there is a large concern of getting misinformation and feeding the denial or learning really bad coping mechanisms through those environments, so we don’t think it is a **good** purpose or environment to be in, but the last thing we’d want is to force people who are still struggling to understand their mental state and come to terms with the past that they *have* to admit that they were really fucked up and hurt by things that had happened in the past.

We have a lot of mixed feelings and don’t have a firm stance on if that role in coming to terms with DID is good or not so we really don’t know there or have firm opinions. Since we don’t have firm opinions, we default to “we don’t want to rush / control / dictate what other people with DID are doing in their path of healing and we don’t want to rush people’s healing journey with DID” so we refrain from involving or telling people one thing or the next.

====

Intentional Systems / Tulpamancy Systems

We think they are really offensive and problematic. We instantaneously unfollow and block systems that claim to be intentional, and we tend to unfollow people who post about intentional systems. That is the part of the endogenic community we have very little patience for.

We do know there are still probably actual DID / OSDD systems out there that use those terms to write off their condition similar to endogenics mentioned above, but the amount of damage these ones do and the just straight up often horrible thoughts and opinions about DID that they have outweighs our opinion on not budding our head where it doesn’t belong.

Don’t fetishize / make our disorder a fun thing.

====

Median Systems

Uhh.... I think Riku was going to mention something about how we found out that some people have multiple people in their head through median systems and came to understand that as ourselves and learned beyond that???

I don’t really know what stands out in specific about Median Systems though. I think there might be an opinion somewhere about BPD and Median systems? But generally we also put this in the same categroy as “stages of understanding DID”. Maybe if Riku comes around they can explain if they even know.

====

Can you have a system without trauma?

Oooookaaay, this is one Riku would be 10000% better at answering because they have a lot of nerd stuff about this about science and psychology and statistics and research and shit. I’m not that savvy in those topics though? So I guess I’ll give you a quick rundown from the gist.

We don’t think that it is likely that you can have a system - a true dissociative system with dissociated parts - without trauma. That though comes with the key word “likely”. We are very much open to the possibility / idea that other methods could form dissociated parts and are actually a bit keen into maybe some day doing research on it. Science and research has backed that DID is formed due to disorganized attachment to caregivers and repeated trauma at a young age, but DID is very under researched, psychology is a soft science, and very little about the conscious, identity, and dissociation is actually firmly known.

Until the exact neurological structure / reasoning / process to how DID forms and how it differs from those that don’t have it, we really hesitate to put it in any box because that’s really not how mental health works. It might be that the majority of cases are due to trauma, but theoretically other disorders can cause pretty dissociation and if said disorders occurred at a young enough age, then theoretically maybe something like that could happen. There is somewhere in this brain a tab on ADHD or something, but I can’t go into that cause I really wouldn’t do it a service.

The really condensed version is we don’t think so with our current understanding and readings, but we don’t think it is 100% certain and there is a very reasonable possibility that there is something out there, a different path way that can cause the DID we know - or a different condition that looks and appears similar to DID but is fundamentally different.

You rarely ever *know* anything in psych, especially with something so abstract of a disorder with little research on it such as DID and how consciousness / states of consciousness work in the brain to really be claiming anything so certainly.

====

Should endogenics be considered DID?

I don’t care?? Honestly, our system is generally of the consensus that until evidence comes to show that it is possible AND the same disorder, then no. And even then, I think the question Riku meant was “should endogenics and DID be related / equated / in the same space” which is a strong no.

Even if endogenics are real and are possible, the amount of which trauma plays into what we currently know as DID is so ridiculous that there is honestly little overlap other than the “same hat” of having multiple parts in a body. So much of DID is much more about “spicy” C-PTSD with the exclusive DLC of thick dissociative barriers. A lot of our experience is centered around navigating trauma and helping parts grow beyond the trauma that seeded their existence and I really don’t know how much of that would be able to be properly understood and shared with someone who has NO trauma? I also feel as though inherently the dynamics between parts would HAVE to be extremely different without trauma because all of the “roles” in our system are fundamentally absed on how we are because of our trauma and how we cope and manage things.

====

Endogenics on Social Media / Practically Speaking?

We leave them alone for the most part. If they aren’t being toxic or spreading misinformation, its really not our deal to care about much - and even then it really isn’t. We have a lot of other things in our life to care about and we really don’t have the time or energy to get worked up, heated, stressed, or anything because we see someone claiming to have parts without trauma. 

I say let people be people and do things as people do so long as they aren’t harming anyone. We disagree and are technically “sysmeds” or whatever, but like, its not that huge of a thing.

Anyways, that’s all.

[theindigomillennialchronicles]

Blog Entry 6

08/30/2021

10 days ago marked the 2 year anniversary of the death of my best friend of 11 years. She was born 03/11/1996, died 08/20/2019, right before the pandemic started rampaging. Writing that word, “died”…it’s hard. Harder to say. It’s been a rough time since then. I went into the pandemic already severely depressed, anxious and grieving for her loss. Then I got reinjured at work and fell behind on bills because my doctor didn’t properly fill out a document so my 7 months worth of worker’s compensation claims were denied. A lot has happened. I mean A LOT. I know nobody actually reads this blog. I use it more for a place to vent and make order of the emotional soup and rampaging mess that are my thoughts. I’ve spoken to 3 therapists in that time and all of them recommended I should go to a psychiatrist, that I might need to be medicated. Unfortunately all of that is expensive and I fell so far behind on my bills from the 7 months of no income that everything I started earning once I got cleared to return to work, I used to catch up as much as I could. I ended my marriage in 2019 as well. The loss of Lash (my bff) made me realize how short life is and how one day I could die, seemingly out of nowhere and have never cared about my happiness. I had to be selfish for a time, I had to choose me and in that process I realized something about myself. I’m polyamorous. Maybe I’ll get into all that in the next blog entry.

Not everything that has happened has been negative, however. After 7 year of destroying my body and mental health, I quit my federal job and decided to start over somewhere new. I’m moving to the country and am going to start my dream of building a self sufficient homestead. Getting into all those details would entitle an entirely different blog so I’ll move past that to the biggest blessing I have received. Sometime through my time being separated and decide to focus on me I met her. We met at the club, she asked me for my number, and for someone severely introverted that gets you points. Anyway I gave her my info that night and six months later, I asked her to be my girlfriend on a camping trip. Being polyamorous is weird sometimes. To experience the heartbreak of ending a marriage while experiencing he high of falling in love with someone new made me feel like I was going insane. At times guilty as if I was wrong, but after all this time to be home and do research, educate myself and speak to others like me, I learned that it was normal and it would all fall into place with time. Spoiler, it did.

Fast forward to today, I’m writing again, my mental health is still a struggle but I’ve cleared the mind space enough to remember my passions. I have project ideas and new ways to share infinite consciousness with those around me. September 1st we are leaving on our long road trip north to a new adventure, and the best part is I for once feel safe and like I’m not carrying the weight of the world and it’s responsibilities alone. She showed me a new kind of love. I’m beyond grateful to have her in my life.

So that’s what I have been up to…anyway, now that we got that over with I have some of those random thoughts to share. I started reading a revised version of the Gnostic Bible and it pushed me to these random thoughts. See, I’ve always felt this weird fear with religion. I mean apart from the trauma of growing up in a aggressively Pentecostal household, as an adult religion makes a weird dark feeling crawl up my spine. According to the Gnostics, the god of the christian bible is actually the bad son of the actual real life force energy and this planet was created out of envy and jealousy. Making it the reason why this world is so full of darkness, pain and anguish. They say we were imprisoned in this physical form by a him as a way to try and harness the energy our souls carry. The way to salvation being knowledge, not as in book smart but as in true infinite wisdom. The knowledge of ourselves, past present future all connecting us to the real creator.

I’m still working on finishing the book but just the bit I read opened up a whole new can of worms because lately I’ve been feeling off. My existential crisis has been flaring, I find myself disassociating a lot or going about my days in a fog. I hear things when nothing is there and I’ve been absorbing people’s emotions too much for my own good. I get random moments of extreme sadness on days when my morning went great. Idk how my gf deals with it but she’s been keeping me grounded. She has bpd, and adhd so she has her own battles to fight and I always help her as I should, we keep each other above water, yet I feel most days she’s better of without me, not because I’m no good but because I feel like I wont ever feel normal, like I don’t belong in this reality. There’s a darkness about this dimension. IDK wtf is going on but people are walking around empty eyed, I guess a pandemic will do that to us.

I’m not giving up, don’t worry, but I keep feeling like a huge change is coming and if I don’t do something about my noggin I’ll miss out on being a apart of the shift that is nearing. In my opinion we’ll either be the generation that changes this planets course or, we’ll let the dark forces win and cause us to be so busy fighting with one another to try and stop the train of humanity which is barreling down the tracks towards a cliff that will toss us right off the edge of existence. Millennials and GenZ are creating a lot of noise currently, I’m proud. I just wish more of us would stick to it instead of just posting when it’s viral. I’ve decided that being as my social anxiety is so bad, I’ll start working on my grain of salt by using my creative energy. I’ll try to build a platform, a stage where I can express myself and educate through the communication noise of 1s and 0s that is the internet.

I’ve been told that the best thing to do to fight low frequencies and pain is to produce alot of love energy. So I’ll start there. As always remember I am here. If you need an ear or someone to tell happy things to. Maybe that’ll help. Maybe hearing your good will help me appreciate mine more. I’ll be back tomorrow. I have a project to get started. I have dreams of an audiobook series. I decided to stop letting it stay a dream.

Much love. Day

[kainumbernine009]

I literally cannot do anything else until I get this out.

I’m... really not okay.

And when I say that, I’m not mentally unstable. I say that because I’m tired of waiting on empty promises, I’m tired of never having money in our account, I’m tired of living in a fucking city where half of the white people fucking worship the ground Trump walks on, and where most of the gay community has so much messy drama that it’s worse than middle school. And I went to a rough middle school.

I never talk about my past, because I don’t like to. It sucked. HARD. Being and only child in my family was nothing less than torture, especially as a closeted queer person. We grew up in the white Christian part of Nashville that dominated Music Row in the 90′s and early 2000′s. I played basketball with Alan Jackson’s daughter, and being around famous people was just no big deal. But, my parents decided to leave Nashville after my dad lost his job at TPAC, and we moved down south an hour to the town where the KKK got started (Pulaski, TN).

I had maybe two non-white people in my private Christian school growing up. I was never afraid of Black people, but my parents showed their racist asses quick when we moved there. The KKK has never left America, guys, no matter how many articles you read or studies you do. From 2005 to 2009 I saw a white town show its very worst to the Black community. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a march for “White Christians for Purity” the summer before Obama got elected. The disgust I felt inside was palpable. I had all kinds of friends in school, and I didn’t give TWO SHITS who they were or what they looked like... but I saw children my age, being brainwashed by their parents, that “white” is “right.”

Ever since then, I have been learning and growing about the issues of race. I remember my white classmates using the N word and getting away with it. I remember hearing about the principal at the high school punishing all the Black kids but not the white kids. I remember being invited to a church south of town that was a historically Black church, and how nice the ladies were to me for coming.

But I’ll never forget the racism that the religious groups promoted there, especially First Baptist Church and the 12 Tribes. I’ll never forget how FBC told me that my friend was going to Hell because she killed herself. I’ll never forget my mom telling me not to marry a Black man because of “impure genes.” I WILL NEVER FORGET THE INJUSTICES I SAW WHITE PEOPLE DOING TO BLACK PEOPLE THERE. NEVER.

And thank God, I have shaken the burden of religious guilt, but I still fight against this mentality. I live in a place that’s usually not even 10 minutes away from Trump-humping, sister-fucking, meth-addicted Confederate cunts in any direction. And we’re even closer to the rich white people who silently supported him, upset that their taxes would go up because of Biden.

And in the past four years since Trump got elected, I’ve gotten married, graduated college with honors, started my own photography business, and was making more than my husband there for a minute. I did my own taxes, marketing, editing, and everything. And then I came out as trans.

I lost everything.

I lost my studio. I lost friends. I had rumors started about me. I had people post hate messages on my wall. I had people at my drag shows tell others not to tip me, for whatever fucking reasons. I’ve had bosses give cis people jobs over me, and I’ve had government workers give me second looks when I hand them my license.

It. Fucking. Sucks. To. Live. Here. Like. This.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’m also a witch/medium? I’ve talked to dead people before and have told their relatives things I shouldn’t have known otherwise about their grandparents. Like, this information doesn’t even exist on Google. And I’m attuned to reiki. I’m always aware of what’s happening on at least SOME metaphysical level. This is a gift that I’ve had to go through life developing and learning about myself, with no one’s help but me.

I didn’t even know until I was an adult that I have autism and ADHD.

I’ve taken bullets from people who were about to kill themselves. I’ve yelled at 5th grade music classrooms for doing racist dance moves and appropriating Native Americans (I have a degree in Music Education K-12). I’ve consoled kids in classrooms who suddenly have panic attacks. AND I’ve told horny teenagers to stay in their fucking lane and respect the girls around them. I’ve apparently been an inspiration to those around me, but inspiration NOR exposure pays the bills. I’ve already had COVID, and so has my husband, but I knew that after graduating college that I would never have a fulfilling life being a music teacher in Tennessee’s public schools.

And now that we have COVID, and an orange, small-dicked, pedophilic, rape apologizing, dirty, crusty white president who STILL REFUSES TO CONCEDE, who is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HAVING HIS FOLLOWERS SEND DEATH THREATS TO MY FAMILY, I really don’t know what the fuck else to do other than go burn down all the houses I know of in North Georgia that belong to these Christian sex cult pedophiles and call it a day. My girlfriend unfortunately was born into one of those families, and I know just how bad it can get. In fact, her dad’s lawyer threatened me with blackmail earlier in November, so that was fun!

And now, on December 11, 2020, I’m still sitting here in the same fucking house, doing the same fucking things I’ve been doing all year - trying to get a job and failing horribly. I’M SICK AND TIRED OF THIS COVID BULLSHIT AND OUR INCOMPOTENT CUNT OF A PRESIDENT! And there’s only ever one other person I’ve ever called a cunt... my own mother.

I’ve lived in many places. I’ve met many different people. I’ve made mistakes, and have grown, but there’s one thing for damn sure that I always make sure to do, every single fucking day.

I ALWAYS try to do better.

In addition to this, I treat everyone with the same amount of respect, unless they have done something directly to me to negate that. If I know that someone believes in something that directly harms me or my family, I don’t even associate with them. I don’t spend my energy on things that don’t need it. And everyone else should, too.

The problem with some of y’all is that you care about the wrong things. Like will Becky text me back or did I get front row seats to that concert, or did I slave my life away to capitalism just so that I can own a Mercedes and have my friends jealous. I’ve had way too many dear death experiences to know that EVERY single fucking day is a gift. EVERY day.

I don’t want to be remembered first for the art I create. I want to be remembered for my character. I want to be remembered as the courageous person who never backed down in the face of adversity. But when you live in a place that already hates you and that is against you, that’s really fucking hard. Trust me. My marriage went from a cis straight passing couple to a white gay passing couple. I’ve seen how people’s attitudes changed around me as I transitioned. I know what it feels like to slowly lose a piece of your privilege you were born with.

So yeah, I kinda get a little fucking upset when I see people saying All Lives Matter, or when I see doctors refusing to treat trans patients in pandemics, or when I see cops YET AGAIN harassing Black people only a few blocks away from my house for no other reason than racism. And at this point, anyone who thinks they know me but only knows what people think they know about me can suck my entire ass and eat ten dicks. I don’t give a FUCK about who you are or what you’ve done. If you treat me or other people with no respect for no reason other than to be an asshole, you’re just plain shit. If you SERIOUSLY believe every little rumor and lie that someone tells about me before meeting me, fuck you AND the horse you rode in on.

What I can’t stand is people doing or saying things just to get a rise out of me or others. I thought we left petty shit in high school. Some of the people that “know” me really need to fucking grow up and grow a pair and either say what they want to my face, or stay mad. I’m tired of playing fucking petty games with y’all. We have a whole ass pandemic to solve.

So here’s the ultimatum... if you agree that Black Lives Matter and that queer people deserve basic human rights, EVEN THE ONES YOU HATE, then that’s the bare minimum to even be a decent person. If you can’t even do those things, then I don’t fucking know what else to say to you.

So NBC, maybe not have John Mulaney joke about my license debacle with my gold van on SNL, and Seth Meyers... maybe HIRE ME INSTEAD of Mulaney because clearly y’all don’t know about the south as much as I do? Oh, and that gazeebo joke with Lee University... I caught that. I may have autism, but I’m not a fucking idiot. I mean. I’m funny when I’m given the chance. And yeah, I’m on a watchlist, but who the fuck isn’t these days? At least all my secrets are out for the world to see, and I have a bangin’ tattoo.

I’m tired of everyone being like “omg, I’ve seen what he can do, it’s fantastic!” or “omg you’re so funny haha” and bragging on me and then NOT FUCKING HIRING ME. I’m TIRED of waiting on something that’s clearly at this point never coming.

I don’t even have testicles, and my balls are bigger than most of the cis men I have EVER met.

So, if you want to help me, or hire me, or get me out to an audition... I’ll be there. But until then, I’m so fucking MAD at some of these producers. Yeah, my mom is a cunt, but she worked in various forms of digital production from the 1980′s until she retired this year. She taught me SO MUCH about directing, writing, shooting, and more. I know how these things are supposed to run behind the scenes. I know what the fuck I’m doing, and I don’t take constructive criticism like a bitch. I actually WANT to be criticized, so I can do even better.

So PLEASE, for the love of Christ... y’all need to get your priorities together AND PLEASE STOP LEAVING ME OUT OF THE LOOP WITH THIS BULLSHIT. Grow a fucking pair and either call me, email me, or leave me alone. It’s really not that fucking hard. Looking at you, Lorne Michaels.

Oh and someone tell my husband what the fuck’s been going on because I’m tired of him gaslighting me about it.

[repulsivepangolin7]

Fic: 31 days of whump (2/31)

A/N: Oh, what the heck, I might as well rapid-fire the first two or three.

Word count: 3 764

He knew a good portion of his character flaws. One was dyslexia, although he didn’t really consider it a flaw anymore. Another was what someone, sometime, had argued had to be ADHD, or at least ADD. He didn’t really care about that, he knew his attention span wasn’t the world greatest, but it was alright.

Some would call it a character flaw to be as tied up to his job as he was.

And there was a bunch more.

Eating like a medium sized industrial vacuum cleaner…

Maybe a bit more quick-tempered than one should be…

Right then and there, chasing a suspect, only one of those flaws he could come up with from the top of his head came back to bite him in the ass. -Or rather, the ankle.

He heard tires squeal against the hot asphalt. And quick reflexes was the only thing that saved him from being hit head on by the Mercedes-Benz star, but it wasn’t quite enough for him to avoid being hit by the car all together.

The first couple of seconds after he landed, he was in a sort of numb state where pain didn’t register yet. It was almost like a land of denial, as long as it didn’t hurt yet it couldn’t be that bad.

At the same time, he wasn’t sure if he could force himself to look towards his ankles.

The car that hit him didn’t stop, the next car didn’t either. But then again, it wasn’t even sure that the second car had seen what happened.

And then his right ankle started letting him know something was seriously wrong.

Tan came running up to him, and Luca managed to convince him to bolt after the suspect.

Next came Hondo.

SWATSWATSWAT

“Are you hurt?” Hondo asked as he kneeled down next to Luca, who was in the process of propping himself up on one elbow.

Luca blinked a few times and chanced a glance towards his legs.

“Luca, are you hurt?”

“My leg’s broken.” Luca answered with a 1000 yard stare.

“You think your leg is broken?” Hondo asked, “Which one?”

“No. My leg IS broken.” Luca swallowed.

Hondo frowned, “Which one?”

“Right one.”

“Lower leg? Upper leg?”

Luca swallowed hard, “My ankle’s toast. My lower leg in general feels wrong.”

Then random cars which had been further away, and had a better view of the whole accident started slowing down and stopping.

Hondo called in the accident, and Luca’s suspected injury. Agreeing that they needed an ambulance to come pick him up.

“Hey, I barely saw what happened…” A guy who had parked his truck came up to them, “Are you alright?”

“He likely broke his right leg.” Hondo answered for Luca, “Dispatch said the ambulance was ten minutes out.”

The guy nodded, “Anything I can do?”

Luca shook his head.

“No, nothing I can think of…” Hondo shrugged.

“We’re good here.” Luca ground out, “You can move on, no need in being parked on the side of the road and making LA traffic worse.”

The guy chuckled a bit, “Okay, alright. I wish you a speedy recovery.”

“Thanks.” Luca nodded, he was uncharacteristically pale by now.

The guy left.

Hondo looked back down at Luca, “How are you feeling?”

The blond shook his head.

“Still not a mind reader…” Hondo reminded him.

“My leg’s pounding.” Luca grimaced, “And I feel like I’m either going to pass out, or puke.”

“Well, please don’t do either…” Hondo smirked, hoping that he’d pull a short laugh from Luca. A short laugh from Luca would make it feel like everything was going to be alright.

“Man, it hurts.” Luca admitted through gritted teeth.

“I know…” Hondo nodded and placed a comforting hand on Luca’s shoulder, “Do you want me to start untying your boot? So that we can take a look at your ankle?”

Luca shook his head, “Nah. I think the ambulance people has more experience in that. Let them do it.”

Hondo nodded, “Okay, that’s alright.”

SWATSWATSWAT

After work they all went to visit Luca at the hospital.

He was basically just laying, waiting for swelling of his ankle and leg to go down enough for the surgeons to piece it back together.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Deacon asked as soon as he had stepped into the room.

“Been better.” Luca admitted, “But they give me enough painkillers to make laying here semi-comfortable…”

Deacon offered up a brief smile.

“So, what’s the damage report?” Street bumped in, nodding towards Luca’s leg, which was covered in a temporary cast and rested on a mountain of pillows.

“Definitely broke it.” Luca shook his head, “Don’t really remember the fancy explanation for it, but I broke my leg six inches above the ankle, straight across both the bones… And my ankle is in multiple pieces. No better way to put it.”

Street nodded slowly as he tried to imagine the fractures in his mind. “So you’ll be laid up for a while?”

Luca shrugged, “I don’t really know what’s going to happen. Except that I need surgery to give all that a chance to heal…”

“That sucks, man…”

Luca bobbed his head in a nod, “Sure does.”

“On the plus side, Tuana might come visit you…” Street teased.

“Tuana?” Tan asked, as Luca blushed bright red.

“Kelly’s mom…” Street answered with a shit eating grin.

“What?” Deacon’s eyebrows shot up, “Are you dating her?”

“No…” Luca shook his head, “N-”

“Not officially.” Street chuckled, “I’m really tired of the way the two of you are doing your best futile attempt at keeping it hidden.”

Luca shook his head, “Well, it’s not, -official-, yet.”

“Well, maybe you two can finally get a move on, now that you’re off duty.” Street shrugged, causing most of the other S.W.A.T members to laugh.

“Dude, stop it.”

“Never.” Street answered smugly, “Not unless you come over here and stop me.”

“You’re punching a man while he’s laying down.” Luca said as he gestured to his cast clad leg.

“Only unfair fight is the one you lose…” Tan chuckled, “Isn’t that what you said to the recruits last year?”

“Yeah. I also told them to not kill each other, because they weren’t in the streets.” Luca pointed out.

Right then there was a knock at the door, before it opened up and Kelly and her mother entered.

“Hey team!” Kelly beamed, she saw most of the team first, before she came far enough inside the room to see Luca, “Hey Luca. Mom said you got hurt.”

Her eyes went wide when she saw the cast on his leg.

“I did…” Luca nodded, “But I’m going to be alright. It’s just going to take some time.”

“Wow, hey…” Tuana nodded at the guys and Chris, “I should have known all of you’d be here…”

Hondo smirked, “Actually, we were just about to leave… But our boy here could use the company…”

Tuana blushed a bit, but recovered quickly. Then she looked over at Luca, “Hey there… How are you doing?”

Luca shrugged a little, “Gonna be a rough couple of months… But I’ll be okay.”

“You didn’t really answer my question, now did you?”

Luca chuckled, “Well, no. My leg hurts, and I have to have it elevated and completely still…”

Tuana smirked a little, “Can you actually lay, or sit, still?”

The whole team chuckled.

“She really called you out there…” Chris grinned.

“Well, my girl texted me that she would have dinner ready when I came home. So I gotta leave now.” Hondo said, looking at the other team members in a hope that they would take the hint.

“Yeah, and we have that thing at… At…” Chris rolled her hand in the air, like she was searching for the correct word.

“Oh, yeah…” Street nodded when he caught on, “Yeah, you, me and Tan are meeting Derek and his girl…”

“Exactly.” Chris nodded.

Deacon smirked, “Well, I’ve got about an hour before I have to pick up the two youngest from kindergarten… That gives me a chance to grab a coffee and sit down in peace and quiet for a spell.”

The team members who weren’t confined to a hospital bed up and left, switching between goodbye hugs and fist-bumps on their way out the door.

SWATSWATSWAT

“Well, the team acted weird…?” Tuana shrugged after the team left.

Luca chuckled, “Yeah, you should’ve heard them before you guys came.”

“Oh yeah?”

Luca nodded, then he tried to shift a little in his bed, ending up with grimacing and groaning, fighting not to let out every four letter word he could think of.

After half a minute he pulled the pillow from below his head and placed it over his own face, finally allowing himself to whisper a silent ‘fuck’ into it, before removing it and placing it back under his head.

“-Are you alright?” Tuana asked, “Do you need anything?”

Luca shook his head, letting his right hand dart up to wipe away the remnants of smeared tears.

“I’m alright.” he choked out, “I just need my leg to stop aching so much.”

“You’re acting weird…” Kelly said with worry in her eyes.

“I’m sorry Kelly-girl…” Luca sighed, “It’s just that my leg hurts really bad. And I don’t want to… I don’t want to say bad words in front of you…”

“Like, Hell? Or, Damn?” Kelly asked, “Some kids at my old school cussed really much. Some kids at my new school says some bad words every now and then… It’s not like I haven’t heard it before?”

Luca chuckled, “Well, I’m trying to be a good role model here…”

Kelly chuckled, “Alright. Okay.”

Tuana chuckled, then she looked at Kelly, “Kelly, maybe you could go down to the lobby and buy yourself some snacks? Since we didn’t go home to eat before we got here…”

Kelly’s face lit up at that, as Tuana pulled out a few dollars to give to her. “And bring me back a coke.”

Kelly nodded before she headed out the door.

SWATSWATSWAT

“So, how are you really doing?” Tuana asked after the door closed.

“I’m a little freaked out…” Luca admitted, “But I know that’s mostly just because this hurts like a motherfucker right now.”

Tuana nodded.

“Wanna hear something funny?”

“What?”

“Street kinda mentioned that we had been seeing each other a bit more recently…” Luca admitted, “To the rest of the team… That’s why they acted weird…”

She smirked, “I kinda guessed it had to be something along those lines…”

“Yeah…” Luca nodded, “He’s getting impatient…”

“Well, he’s not completely alone…” Tuana winked, then stood up and stepped over to Luca’s bed, placing a hand on top of his.

“Maybe we should… Y’know…” Luca’s tongue darted out to wet his lower lip, “Maybe we should…”

“Make it official?”

Luca nodded.

“Maybe we should…” Tuana smirked and leaned down to place a kiss on Luca’s lips.

Luca met the kiss eagerly, running a hand through her dark hair.

“You had me worried.” She said as she pulled away a little, “I heard it on the news before I got your call.”

“I’m sorry…” Luca said, rubbing a calloused hand against her upper arm, “Someone left my phone on the other side of the room, with my clothes… And I didn’t exactly know where it was…”

“Not like that…” Tuana shook her head, “You were in great pain, of course your first thought wasn’t to call your secret girlfriend. And besides, I bet the doctors and nurses kept you occupied for a while…”

Luca nodded at that.

“I meant, I know I don’t want to lose you…” she admitted, “Actually, I’ve known that ever since you helped Kelly get into her new school…”

Luca’s lips curved at one side.

“But, I also want to be able to be proud of you in public.” She winked, “Not… Not real public, but… Amongst our friends…”

“Darling, it would make me so incredibly happy to just… -To just tell my friends that I’m with this amazing woman and mother…” Luca gave her arm a squeeze, “And to be Kelly’s… Kelly’s… Step-dad?”

Tuana chuckled, then nodded.

“About that…” Luca looked down at his lap for a bit, “I never asked, ‘cause it wasn’t my place earlier…”

She nodded slowly.

“But…” he looked back up, “Is Kelly’s dad still in the picture?”

She shook her head, “No, he’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“Relax.” Tuana rolled her eyes, “He’s never been in the picture… He left as soon as he heard I was knocked up. He died before Kelly was born.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Must’ve been rough on you…”

“It has made me cautious with men…” she chuckled, “You must’ve noticed.”

Luca couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, “And here I thought I was the one playing it safe…”

“We need to talk about your definition of ‘playing it safe’…” Tuana chuckled and jerked her head in the direction of his busted leg, “You’re more of a crash-test-dummy…”

Luca blushed a bit, “I deserved that one…”

She let her hand come down at his hairline, and brushed his hair back a few times before she leaned down to kiss him once again.

They got lost in it.

Lost in it, and they didn’t even notice Kelly opening the door and returning to the room.

Not before she let her presence be known with an audible squeal.

Luca and Tuana both froze, then Tuana stood back up.

“So you two ARE together!” Kelly grinned, “I knew it!”

Luca and Tuana both still had the deer in headlights look for a few seconds more before they simultaneously broke out laughing.

“How long have you been together?” Kelly wanted to know.

Luca shrugged, “A while.”

“Since my birthday…” Tuana clarified.

“That’s…” Kelly started counting on her fingers, “That’s four months!”

Tuana nodded.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“-We wanted to know that it would work out between us first…” Tuana answered, “We were planning on telling you soon.”

Luca nodded, “I hope you’re not angry…”

“Why would I be angry?” Kelly frowned at the thought, “I’ve been wishing for this for almost a year!”

Tuana and Luca both visibly relaxed a bit more at that.

“Does the team know?”

“Not really…” Luca answered, “Street might have started to spread rumors, but they haven’t been confirmed yet. I was planning on telling them after we had told you.”

Kelly grinned.

“Well, now you know…” Tuana chuckled.

Kelly nodded. “So, are you going to move in together?”

The two grownups looked at each other for a moment, neither really knowing the answer.

“That’s something we haven’t talked about yet…” Luca said, scratching the side of his head.

Tuana nodded towards Luca, “Yeah, we should probably talk about that soon…”

“-Amongst other things…” Luca nodded back.

“Am I going to have siblings?”

Both Luca and Tuana froze once again.

“That’s also something we haven’t talked about yet…” Tuana answered.

Luca nodded.

“But is there a chance of it?” Kelly asked. Hope was audible in her voice.

Luca shrugged, “We haven’t talked about it yet. So we don’t know what to answer…”

“Can you talk to each other about that a little quick?” Kellie prompted in a voice only a girl in her pre-teens could manage, before realizing how she sounded and added “Please?”

“I think that’s something we have to talk about alone…” Luca thought out loud, and gave Tuana a questioning look.

Tuana nodded.

“If I went outside, could you talk about it now?” Kelly asked, still very excited about the idea.

The two grownups looked at each other, scanning each other’s expressions for what the other one thought.

Half a minute later Tuana nodded, “Sure.”

Kelly grinned, “I have my phone on me. Call me when you have an answer!”

Tuana nodded, and Kelly headed out the door again.

SWATSWATSWAT

“So…” Tuana started, pulling a chair over next to Luca’s bed, “Guess we have to talk…”

Luca nodded, “Yeah…”

“Do you want kids?” Tuana asked, tilting her head.

Luca trapped his lower lip in thought for a moment, then he looked over at Tuana. “Well, yeah… But as long as I get to be a father figure for Kelly, that’s enough. I mean, if you don’t want more kids…”

Tuana’s face softened, “But if I’m up for more kids?”

“Then yes. Definitely yes.” He winked.

“How many kids would you like?” Tuana followed up.

“I don’t know, never really thought about that…” Luca rubbed his neck, “Always figured I’d have to start with one anyway…”

Tuana laughed, “Think about it… Do you have a maximum limit?”

Luca thought, then chuckled, “Well, I guess it’s probably an idea to slow down if we’d have to drive two cars to go anywhere as a family.”

Tuana chuckled as well, “You’re probably right about that.”

“That being said, I can’t really come up with a number right now.” Luca shrugged, “What’s your number”`

“Well, growing up I always wanted a big family.” She answered, “But I guess two to four kids would do…”

“So, four’s your max?”

“I wouldn’t say that…” Tuana shrugged, “I guess my actual max is when I start feeling that I’m losing more grip than is okay.”

He chuckled, “That’s a nice max limit. Mind if I adopt it?”

She chuckled, “No, go ahead.”

“Then that’s my max as well, whether that means two or ten…”

“So, at least one sibling then.”

“As sure as we’re able to, yeah.” Luca nodded, “I mean, you’re obviously able to… You’ve got a real life proof of that walking around… I can’t exactly point to a definitive proof like that.”

Tuana shrugged, “Just because I have one kid, doesn’t mean it’s going to be just as easy to have a second one. Not this many years later at least.”

Luca nodded, “Well, at least we can have some fun trying.”

Tuana chuckled, “Yeah, after your leg is better.”

He nodded, “Yeah, there’s not going to be any ‘trying’ for AT LEAST a month. Maybe longer.”

She nodded, “I think you’re right about that…”

He nodded.

They both fell silent for a little while, then Luca cleared his voice, “About that other question…”

“What other question?”

“If we were going to move in together…”

Tuana nodded.

“What are we going to answer to that?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know…”

“I mean, there’s three possibilities I see.” He shrugged, and started counting them off on his fingers, “First one, I move in with you guys. Second, you guys move in with me… We might have to figure out something to do about Street then… Or the third option, we continue living in separate houses, but I sleep over at your place every now and then, and vice versa…”

Tuana nodded, “All three are valid options.”

Luca nodded.

“Just because we chose one for now, doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way…” she mentioned.

“That’s true.” he nodded.

“How about we go for option number three for now, and then we just roll with it? See what happens?”

Luca nodded.

“But of course, if you want option one or two…” she shrugged, “I mean, we could keep the other house and rent it out…”

Luca shrugged, “Whatever is fine by me. Sticking to status quo and just seeing where that leads us sounds good.”

She nodded, adding a reassuring smile.

He smiled.

“But maybe you’d like to stay with us for a little while now?” she asked, “I mean, Kelly and I are probably at home more often than Street, right?”

He nodded, then tried to shift ever so slightly. His right hand darted down towards his leg, and it took everything he had to not start sobbing. “Dammit.”

“Do you want me to go ask the doctor if you can get anything stronger?”

He shook his head, wiping at his eyes as salty tears rolled from them.

“Luca, you’re in pain…”

Once he was able to speak again, he looked at her, “Well, I can’t really have opioids.”

She tilted her head, “Have you had a problem in the past?”

He shook his head, knowing what she was thinking. “Not like that… I just have a really low tolerance for that stuff, it often makes me sick… And I don’t want to add ‘nausea’ or ‘throwing up’ to my list of troubles right now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry… I thought… That was dumb of me…”

“Don’t think about it… It was a bad choice of words on my part.” he chuckled.

“So, do you want to stay with us for a while when you’re discharged from this place?”

He nodded, “Could I borrow the guestroom? I’m pretty sure it’ll probably hurt too much to accidentally get bumped into… -And you move around a lot when you sleep…”

“Of course…” she nodded, then she glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall, “Maybe we should call Kelly now?”

He nodded, “We probably should, but I’d like to sneak a kiss from you first…”

She smiled, stood up and stepped over to make that happen.

SWATSWATSWAT

“Now? What did you decide?” Kelly asked, almost bouncing where she stood.

“What do you want to know the answer to first?” Tuana asked.

“Everything.” Kelly grinned, “But I guess it makes sense to start with if we’re all going to live together first.”

“We decided that we don’t know the final answer yet.” Luca shrugged, “But I’m going to stay with you guys for a while now that my leg is injured.”

Tuana nodded, “After that we’ll have to wait and see. We might decide to live like Theo’s parents. They don’t live together all of the time, but it seems like all three of them like the arrangement.”

Kelly nodded, “Theo’s parents fight less than most of the other parents, so that’s cool!”

Luca really liked Kelly’s way of reasoning.

“And babies?” she then quickly switched over to the next question on her list, “Am I going to be a big sister?”

Luca and Tuana laughed.

“Well…” Tuana started, “If everything works out well, then you are going to be one.”

Kelly’s grin grew wide, “Really?”

“Yeah.” Tuana nodded, “But we can’t make any promises before you actually have a brother or sister, you know that? Sometimes it can be really hard to get pregnant.”

Kelly nodded, her head going up and down at a comical speed. “But you want kids together?”

They both nodded.

“But if it doesn’t work out for us, you are enough.” Luca pointed out, “Remember that.”

Kelly smiled, “Thanks.”

[master-thief-gray-shadow]

So as of today it’s been exactly one year since I first watched Revue Starlight, and it’s been a really interesting year. I’ve been thinking about the impact the series has had on my life lately and felt like I needed to get some thoughts down.

TW: self harm mention, suicide mention

Love Live changed my life. It was not my first fandom ever, but it was the first one where I got seriously involved with the community. Not only did I manage to make friends within the fandom (and to be honest these friends have proven truer than any I’ve had in real life), but I also managed to meet not one but two amazing partners, which is two more than I’d ever anticipated I’d have. Love Live was good to me, and for a good three years I happily allowed it to consume my very soul. But things like these don’t last forever.

I don’t talk about it much (there’s a reason why but that’s another story), but I am autistic and I do have ADHD. Obviously hyperfixations are a big part of my life. The big ones tend to last for years. Naruto was three or four, Touhou was a solid three, Kancolle was less than a year but I feel like it would have been longer if I hadn’t forcibly divorced myself from it due to the fact that my mental health at the time was spiraling out of control. Love Live was just another one of these things. For years it was constantly in my thoughts, and at the height of all this I couldn’t watch a movie without thinking “hm, what if this was Love Live characters?” It gave me a reason to live and got me through a few rough patches. But my interest did eventually start to wane. Unfortunately this coincided with one of those rough patches, and this particular one had something that I hadn’t had to deal with in a while: uncertainty.

Early last year I quit my job. It was a customer service job, one that I had been at for a few years and was starting to get tired of. I figured that I would be unemployed for a month or two (which at the time sounded refreshing, one of the reasons I quit was because the job had become so soul-sucking that I didn’t have energy for anything else) before getting a new one, preferably one with better hours and better pay. What I hadn’t counted on was my depression, which was already a contributing factor in my somewhat fragile state, utterly consuming me now that I didn’t have any kind of routine or purpose, and was therefore at the mercy of my thoughts at all times. I tried to take refuge in Love Live like I always had, and for a while, it worked. But eventually it just kind of...stopped working. So here I was, unemployed, depressed, and rapidly losing the ability to find joy in things. All that, but thankfully in no actual, real, physical danger. But apparently my brain thought I was. So that’s what it started telling me.

I’m not gonna go into what I specifically believed was happening. The long and short of it was that I started having irrational fears about my health, brought upon by some discussion that was going on in the spaces I hung out in. At first I was able to just dismiss it as paranoia, but certain things happened that only served to deepen it. Eventually I started thinking that I needed to go to the hospital, but what for? Nobody would believe there was anything wrong. I didn’t even believe it myself, at least consciously. But my brain was telling me I needed to go. And if I didn’t have an obvious reason to, I should give myself one.

I did not actually reach the point of doing self-harm, fortunately. But I came close. One evening something triggered a massive panic attack, and I, sincerely believing my life was in danger, began seriously, seriously considering it. I was very lucky that my parents kind of knew what was going on and rushed me to the hospital before I could do anything I might regret. I ended up spending a few days in the hospital’s psyche ward, which from what I’ve gathered was actually pretty okay as far as psyche wards go, but it was still a quiet and sterile place with no clocks and no contact with the outside. I was relieved to get out, to say the least. Even spending five and a half hours a day in intensive therapy, five days a week, was an improvement. I even managed to keep the job I had just started.

And that was the state I was in when I first watched Revue Starlight. Crawling my way out from the bottom of a pit. I had heard of the show, I’d seen it on my dash a few times, and this one anon, you know who you are, kept recommending it to me, which I had responded to every time with “okay, I’ll consider it.” For the past month or two I had been watching JoJo for the first time, and I had just finished Stardust Crusaders. Stardust Crusaders, if you haven’t watched it, is not bad at all. But it is very long and has some pacing issues. I needed a break from JoJo. A short one-season anime like Revue Starlight? The perfect palette cleanser. After all, it’s just Love Live with swords, right? It’s not like it’s gonna take over my life or anything.

And it didn’t. The first three episodes were...uh...well, I was more than a little confused. I didn’t really gel with any of the characters or understand what was going on, so, upon finishing episode 3, I unceremoniously closed the tab and declared myself done. At least that was how it was initially. One evening a couple days later I found myself bored, and figured that I might as well just finish the thing. I had time to kill, after all.

Now this was what did the trick. This time I found myself blown out of the water, especially by the finale, which had just aired that day. Revue Starlight quickly flooded in to fill the void Love Live had left, and I found myself giddy with that new hyperfixation feel. Therapy was going extremely smoothly, I started getting the hang of my new job, and I was even going to the gym regularly. I had something to live for again. A rope to hold onto so I wouldn’t fall deeper and hit the bottom that I’d struggled so hard to climb away from. No matter what happened, I would have the 99th Seisho class to fall back on.

Things, of course, did happen. I grew to resent my job, which wasn’t well-suited for me, so I started looking for a new one. A better one. I had my eye on one in particular, it seemed like a nice cushy desk job that probably had good pay and benefits. I was sure I had nailed the interview. I’d opted to finish the holiday season with my current job, but I really, really wanted that new one. I’d just start once I was finished with my current one, and I had gathered the next starting date was early in the spring. It was for this reason that I wasn’t too concerned when the place I was currently working at got closed down. No problem. I’d just wait for my new job to start.

And so I was unemployed again. In winter, no less, so my depression was particularly monstrous now. For two months I sat in figurative and literal darkness, clinging onto two things: the expectation that I would hear back from the people I was hoping to hear from, and my love for Revue Starlight. I was absolutely miserable. But I held on. I held onto those two things. And finally, the date where I would be called in for an initiation drew near.

Unfortunately, it turned out I actually hadn’t gotten the job after all. I nearly fell apart completely.

I’m kind of convinced that if I hadn’t gotten into RevStar and renewed my need to hyperfixate on things I might’ve actually gone through with killing myself. The sheer despair I felt when I found out I had just spent so much time sitting around for nothing, that I had wasted a whole two months of my life, was crushing. In the heat of the moment, I really did think about it. I felt so utterly worthless and foolish, and if I took my own life I wouldn’t have to feel that way anymore. But I couldn’t. Because I did have a reason to keep living and to move on. I still had Revue Starlight.

Eventually I did manage to get a job, my current one. It’s not ideal, but the pay and hours are better than either of my previous ones, as is the nature of the job itself. The effects of my hormone replacement therapy, which I had only been on for about a month when everything had fallen apart, soon started to become more apparent. Now that I had a steady and regular source of income I decided to make plans to go out and see my girlfriend, who I figured it was about time I met in real life, which I eventually did, and she was wonderful. And those were just things that happened within my personal life. As for Revue Starlight? Shortly after I’d gotten the job, I managed to actually watch the stage plays, which I hadn’t seen yet, and they were amazing, especially the second one. Starira got an English release, pulling new blood into the fandom. Sato Hinata was slated to appear at Anime Central, which is the one con I actually bother to attend, and I got to meet her. For real. In person.

And if I’d gone and killed myself? I would never have gotten any of that. I would have missed out on so much. As much of a fool as I had felt like at the time, at least I didn’t do the single most foolish thing that I could have. And I’m glad. And thankful.

So thank you, to that one anon (you know who you are) for pointing me in the right direction. Thank you to the fellow fans who make up this community that I’ve settled down in. Thank you to the seiyuu in front of the mics, and the artists, animators, composers, writers, and coders behind them. I’m here right now because of you. Thank you.

[redfangst1drants]

Depression and Diabetes

Let’s be real here. Depression is no fun. Diabetes is no fun. But the truth is, they’re out there, and sadly they tend to coexist with one another. “Well how do you know, Luke,” I hear you ask? I’m more than happy to explain.

I have struggled with depression since I was probably 11 years old, due to traumatic abuse caused by my ex-stepmother, who was not only abusive to me, but also to my brother and even my father. I have moved on from the past, but the depression, anxiety, and PTSD still haunt me to this very day, and for someone who is already dealing with ADHD and is somewhere on the autism spectrum, it makes it all the more challenging. I was hit with a really bad wave of depression when I was 16, and a junior in high school. I was starting work on my research paper (something our school always did), and while I had done many papers up to that point, something inside me just snapped. And I snapped like a dry fucking twig... that October and November were really hard for me, because I was at the point where I would literally cry over spilled milk. I don’t know what caused it, I don’t know why it happened, but it did, and I couldn’t shake it off. Eventually I gained the courage to talk to my family and friends about it, and they encouraged me to get professional help, which I did. I got on medication and started being more open and bottling up my emotions less. And as luck would have it, my life began to improve DRASTICALLY! I went from barely passing through the day to actually (and kinda arrogantly) finishing most of my homework before the class was even halfway through! I started feeling much happier with my life and the direction it was going. For me, 2015 was kind of a rough year, but it ended well and 2016 was gonna be MY YEAR, God dammit! And? It was! I had an amazing year from January to September. I got better grades, improved socially, and even regained a bond I had lost with some of my best friends (distancing yourself will do that to you sometimes). And then to top it all off, I gained permission from my family to start opening social media pages, and I opened up my Instagram (which you can follow @ redfang_foxx ), and I rediscovered my passion for music, and picked up the guitar, teaching myself! Everything was going great for 17 year old me, so what went wrong? September 26, 2016 (I’ll never forget the day), I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and I was told I was predisposed to it, and that there was no way I could’ve possibly prevented it. Being the healthier guy in my family, I was taken aback. Surely this must be a mistake, maybe the computer is acting up, maybe it’s just prediabetes and I can take some measures to reverse it. Those were just a few thoughts running through my head. Nope, it’s Type 1. You know how they say there are five stages of grief? There’s Denial, bargaining, anger, despair, and acceptance. Yeah no if I was gonna live the rest of my life with this disease, I may as well take it like a fucking man. I went from denial to acceptance literally overnight. Now do I still feel resentment for having this disease? Oh, hell yes. But it’s just something I have to live with. Why bitch about it constantly?

“Okay okay, that’s good and all, but where’s the connection with Diabetes and depression,” I hear you ask? Hang on, y’all I’m getting there. If you don’t have depression and you get diagnosed with diabetes, it can actually cause depression due to all the factors involved that would make this already long blog post even longer than it needs to be. But if you’re like me and you already had depression and then you get diagnosed with diabetes? My God, dude! That just exacerbates it to the high heavens! Time and again I feel worthless, unloved, and like death would be a preferable alternative to what I’m dealing with right this second. But would you believe it? In all my years, never once have I attempted suicide or had the desire to! Anyway, having both diabetes and depression makes life a living hell more often than not, because you can’t seem to mentally “just get on with life.” It’s a daily, no hourly, no, IT IS A STRUGGLE EVERY GOD DAMN SECOND OF YOUR LIFE! That being said, I love my life, I’m loved, and I truly have a great life and nothing could ever change that. So if you’re reading this and struggling, don’t worry! Trust me! There is hope, there is help, and you are loved. God bless you all!

[that-was-anticlimactic]

Jay Has Tourette’s Headcanons

- he’s had Tourette’s since he was a kid

- his laugh (The little nervous one that happens at random times occasionally or when he’s nervous) is a verbal tic

- his motor tics include: neck twitching, blinking, tapping, and rubbing (his cuticles on his palm and his fingers on random things. It sounds dumb but like. It’s the worst)

- he doesn’t have Coprolalia, which is the stereotypical swearing tic !!

- this boy can’t stop moving. Like ever. He shakes his legs in bed, he rocks back and forth when sitting, he bites his fingernails and pulls at his cuticles...

- no but he bites his fingernails so much and subconsciously, like he won’t realize he’s biting them until he starts bleeding

- sometimes he makes random noises, mostly when he’s alone. Like, he’ll be taking a shower and will just start wiggling his tongue in ways that make sound or he’ll be doing the dishes and he’ll start smacking his lips simply because he feels the need to.

- he doesn’t need medicine for his tics because his Tourette’s isn’t bad enough that he needs it. The side effects of the medicine would make him worse off.

- he didn’t tell anyone he had it when he first joined the team because he was really embarrassed by it. He always felt like a freak for never being able to stop moving and that something was wrong with him because no one else ever moved as much as he did.

- he was really self-conscious about how much he moved compared to other people is kind of a simple way to say that^^

- like, at dinner he’d be rocking back and forth and shaking his leg and no one else would be moving at all aside from an occasional tap or shake or something. It’s just always been like that for him, even with Ed and Edna (who would NEVER judge him ever, the boy is just self-conscious)

- he had always been called annoying by people before he met the team because of it, and so he always thought he was annoying and annoyed everyone because he couldn’t stop moving and he didn’t want the team to think he was.

- so he would try to hold back his tics and hold back his fidgeting as much as possible with his teammates. He would clench his fists to keep from wiggling his leg or tapping his foot or he’d avoid eye contact so he wouldn’t feel the urge to blink as much

- then one day he had this really Tourette’s bad day. Like he just woke up and couldn’t physically stop moving. He felt stressed and anxious for literally no reason and he was tapping his foot when Lloyd walked in and sat across from him to eat breakfast and asked him to stop tapping.

- Jay freaked out because oh FSM Lloyd thinks I’m so annoying and obviously Lloyd doesn’t think that, he was just tired and didn’t know, so Jay then left and spent the next hour suppressing as hard as he could.

- but he was having a bad Tourette’s day so it started to hurt and hurt and he could feel it in his gut. Eventually, he ran to a room and hid as his tics, like, exploded, and everything was let out.

- Then Cole or Nya (whether you want some platonic / romantic Bruise or platonic / romantic Jaya) walked in on him letting it out and got concerned for his well being and asked if he was okay and what was going on and he tried lying but he / she was like yeah I know you well enough to know that’s not true and Jay’s sitting here trying to suppress again and he’s sweating and blinking like mad despite his best efforts and he / she opens his mouth and Jay thinks they’re going to get mad so he just screams “I CAN’T HELP IT”

- long story short, Jay ends up telling them and Cole / Nya is like Jay we never find you annoying. If we mention it, we’re either in a horrible mood or joking but now that we know we’ll stop. We don’t think any less of you because you are the best you and if you need to move, by all means please move. Stop hurting yourself like this.

- and Jay is just sitting there trying not to cry because wow he needed to hear that so much and he’s rocking back and forth and just ticing like normal.

- and then he told the rest of the team about it and they loved and accepted him for him and his quirks and asked what they needed to know and what made it worse and what made it better and that’s how the team found out.

- ADHD and OCD are common side effects of Tourette’s. Jay doesn’t have OCD, but he sure as heck has ADHD. (Actually if you’re a “child” with Toruette’s, there’s a 60-80% chance you have ADHD. Jay is in that percentage.)

-sometimes when he’s ticing, touching him makes it a lot worse. If it’s a bad Tourette’s day, being too close to things or if things are too loud make it a lot worse and he just needs time to himself. The team knows not to just hug him, they ask him if he’s okay being touched.

- that’s not always the case, Jay only doesn’t want to be touched if it’s like really really bad, like at his absolute worst which doesn’t happen too often. The physical contact actually helps him most of the time and calms him down, though, when he’s ticing he prefers side hugs or one armed hugs because he feels less confined that way.

- when he makes eye contact with someone for too long (and ‘too long’ varies— it could be one minute or twenty minutes) is blinking tic kicks in and he can’t stop blinking. He doesn’t like making eye contact. Sometimes it’s fine but he just prefers not to just in case.

- Jay hates it when people tell him to calm down because telling him to calm down when he’s ticing just makes it worse and makes him feel like he’s over reacting (and sure sometimes he is but like... he doesn’t with his Tourette’s)

- his Tourette’s isn’t terrible by any means, he has it easy compared to some people, but like I mentioned earlier, sometimes he has his really really bad days and sometimes he has really really good days :) because both of those kind of days exist.

- his bad days happen when he’s stressed, if something really really awkward happens to him, if he has a really bad day, if someone touches him and it triggers a tic (like not that a certain touch triggers a tic, but sometimes if he’s like slightly agitated and he’s touched a certain way it gets bad), or it just happens randomly like he’s perfectly content and then suddenly BAM !

- did I mention he gets really agitated on his bad days? Because he does. He gets super bitter sometimes but he works on it and he gets better with help from the team !! :)

- he eventually feels completely comfortable just ticing freely and making all of the weird noises or movements he deems necessary, because he can’t always tell what his body wants him to do

- like they’ll be eating lunch or training and he’ll just makes random sounds and the team won’t look at him weirdly or mock him or anything because that’s just Jay !!

- this boy has stress balls. Like, he has five different stress balls because sometimes his mood determines which texture he wants to feel or how aggressively he needs to squeeze.

—————————

as someone with Tourette’s, I immediately connected with Jay and I just want to put a few headcanons out there because I relate to this boy a lot and I genuinely believe he has Tourette’s. Aka, I’ve been having a rough Tourette’s week like, this month hasn’t been kind to me fidgeting wise:/ and I can’t physically bite my nails anymore without bleeding so I’m posting this instead:)

I’ll be honest, some of this is projection. I headcanon is having some similar tics and some different tics. I have ones he doesn’t have, and he has ones I don’t have. But. Yeah. I love Tourette’s Jay, it just genuinely seems like it’s a part of his character and yeah.

Some of these are super specific because I wrote a oneshot about it... called I Can’t Help It. It’s part of my google docs “Friendship” series (where I write a platonic oneshot for every ninja with every ninja because friends lol)

Well. I hope you guys enjoyed and didn’t think these were trash! Any other people with Tourette’s out there?

[deadmomjokes]

(Normal? 1/2) I just went to a psychiatrist for the first time today. I got a recommendation from a therapist I used to see for a handful of appointments. I tried to be open minded, but I think they were bad at their job? They didn't tell me what the diagnosis was for sure (I could only assume depression/anxiety), and when I brought up concerns with general side effects, they brushed it off saying all things have side effects listed. They didn't even ask for all my symptoms?

(Normal? 2/2) I brought a whole notebook of information per recommendation of my past therapist, but then the psychiatrist never even asked about my family health history or triggers or coping mechanisms Ive tried. I don’t know, I felt like I was just treated like a body and had a set routine she was going through rather than actually hearing me. Am I just being overly anxious about this? Was this normal? Do they not need to know all my symptoms if I think I know what I got???

(Normal, Bonus) I don’t know, sorry for bothering you about this, I’m just super worried and don’t know anyone I can ask if this is normal for these kinds of appointments/treatments. Thank you so much for your time, even if you don’t answer. Have a lovely day

You’re definitely not bothering me at all! This stuff is hard enough to navigate without having a rotten experience like you did. And I do think your experience was terrible. You’re not just being overly anxious, you’re well within your right be frustrated and confused by your experience, and I would certainly find it anxiety provoking, myself!

A psychiatrist should absolutely be interested in both your symptoms and how they are affecting your day-to-day, as well as family history. As my husband explains it, a psychiatrist is primarily a doctor that also knows some psychology. If you went to a doctor experiencing a bunch of symptoms, and with a family history of certain conditions, and they just kind of brushed them aside and sent you straight to pills, it would be bad form. This is no different.

While it’s true that all medications have side effects, even stuff like ibuprofen, a doctor should never dismiss or handwave your concerns, particularly when it’s a psychiatric medication, where the side effects can be more serious and bothersome. She should have spent time talking to you, too, about what her thoughts were and WHY she was prescribing you a medicine in the first place. The fact that you walked out of there with pills and no clearly stated differential diagnosis is concerning to me. Not to say that the medication won’t help, but she should have taken time to talk to you about her thoughts and what the medicine is generally used for. It’s possible that she wasn’t able to make a definitive diagnosis after one appointment, or that she assumed your therapist had more or less diagnosed you already and she was going based on that, but she should have explained it a whole lot better.

It’s possible that if the therapist referred you, they could have sent over their case notes and that’s what the psychiatrist was going off of. She could have seen things like your symptoms and history in the notes, but since the therapist told you to bring a list to your appointment, and you said the therapist was a past therapist, I find that slightly less likely.

Depending on what the medicine is, I’d say it’s almost certain to be for anxiety/depression. Medicines like SSRIs and SNRIs, which are used for anxiety/depression/ptsd are generally considered safe, and so most doctors are comfortable writing prescriptions for those even after just one appointment. I know you’ve probably been doing a ton of research on it already, but since the psych didn’t take the time to talk to you about these meds, I’ll give you a quick (non-professional) rundown. (Handy graphic I did here!)

SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. Basically, when anxious/depressed, your brain doesn’t get enough of the serotonin it needs from what you’re producing naturally. Serotonin naturally gets reabsorbed after a certain amount of time anyway, meaning the places its supposed to go are short because the supply is low to begin with, and then your brain keeps sucking it back up before it can get where it needs to go in the quantities it needs to be in. The medicine stops much of the serotonin from being reabsorbed so more of it floats around free and ready for your brain to actually use. It won’t naturally increase the amount you make, but it does increase the amount that’s available, and sometimes having a good, steady, sufficient supply will allow your brain to get back to normal levels of production, because hey, everything’s working great now and we don’t have a nasty feedback loop! That’s why some people can go off their meds after a while and be fine; their brain has fixed the deficit enough to fix the production problem. (If you’re like me, your brain has something wrong with it where it has never produced enough and probably will never until they make a bunch of medical advancements.) SNRIs do the same thing but with both Serotonin and Norepinephrine (Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors).

Generally speaking, the first try for anxiety and depression is an SSRI. If, however, you only have anxiety and not depression, or depression which stems from the constant anxiety, they may try an SNRI, which is specifically for anxiety and things like chronic pain. That’s not to say that SNRIs aren’t helpful for depression, because they are (that serotonin again), but it’s generally for a primary anxiety or pain concern. SNRIs can also sometimes be helpful for people with ADHD, but it’s generally not a first try or used alone.

Some common SSRIs that they start people on are Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac, and Celexa. they have fewer side effects than most, or are most easily tolerated. Generally it’s things like temporary headache and fatigue (which can be reduced by taking the medicine at night). Common SNRIs are Cymbalta, Pristiq, and Effexor. They tend to have more side effects or more annoying side effects, like nausea, dizziness, and sweating.

Ultimately, only you can decide whether you’re comfortable enough with that doctor’s analysis of the situation in order to start the medication that she prescribed, but it is well within your rights both to go ahead and see, and to find a second opinion. Most insurance allows for a second opinion if you schedule the appointment as such, or you could contact your insurance to find out how they’d handle a second psych appointment with someone other than the first doctor.

Your therapist wouldn’t have agreed to refer you to a psychiatrist if they didn’t think medication might be in your best interest, so the question here may be whether you’re comfortable enough with the analysis of your problems to start this medicine. Unfortunately, side effects with psychiatric medication are relatively common, but not all of them last the whole time you’re taking it or are that serious. Sometimes they can also be predicted by your past health history; for instance, if you’ve ever experienced migraines, you’re more likely to get headaches as a side effect when starting or upping dose on a medication.

I’m sorry you’re in such a sticky and anxiety-provoking situation. That’s a lousy place to be in, especially when you’re already having a rough time. Feel free to ask any more questions you like, to vent, to ask my opinion on the specific medicine (I’ve been on a lot of them, because my brain is garbage and likes to build resistances), or to keep me updated on what you decide to do. Also, I apologize if I’ve misread the situation/your asks, or if my response was totally off the mark for what you were hoping. I’m gonna blame that on baby brain and also switching dosage of my own medicine. (I’m starting the Weird Zone today, so hopefully this response has been coherent cuz I’m not in any position to tell that for myself.)

[doomednarrative]

2018: A (Personal) Year in Review

I put off writing in general so much, but I’ve put off this particular post long enough. 

And no, this isn’t about the general world or the country. It’s about my personal life, and it’s mainly a vent/personal rambling post, so I’ll put under a read more. If you don’t care to read it, that’s totally fine. 

But anyways. Here we go: 

2018 was...a fuckin ride, to put it in simplest terms. 

For those who are new and unaware, lemme briefly bring you up to speed about the end of 2017 for me, cause it’s important to the context of this entire thing:

December 17th of 2017, when I was on my third day home for Christmas break from college, I packed a backpack, and I left my dad and stepmom’s house for good. 

Their house had been abusive for years, and my mental health was in the absolute tank in college. I was feeling casually suicidal and had a full on breakdown about having to come home for winter break. After a fight I got into that night with my stepmom after she found me texting some friends on Discord (which I wasn’t supposed to have, even tho I was almost 19 and an adult at the time,) she got Pissed, and so did I. I had finally had a group of friends who supported me and helped me out so much, and I didn’t want to loose them. And I couldn’t stand the abuse, the treatment of me like I was a child with no privacy or personal autonomy, the constant pushing for me to date my one long time friend and to be straight, or my parent’s inability to accept me as their son and not their daughter any longer. 

I was given a choice, and told if I decided to leave, I wasn’t welcome back. A few months before, my best friend had said that their parents had a safe space for me to go if I ever needed it. They had been aware of how bad some things had been with my parents and feared for the worst, so they offered me a home if it came down to that. And that night, it came down to that choice. 

I packed one backpack of stuff I was allowed to bring (solely because it was stuff I bought) and I walked to my friends mom’s house, and by the next morning, I was at her dad’s house, safe and sound. 

2018 became the year of learning how to be an adult in a house that treated me as one, and in a house that didn’t put my personal safety and mental health in danger. 

2018 was...well, it was simultaneously the worst and best year of my life. 

Early on, I could tell my parents weren’t going to let my off easy for leaving. My mom wasn’t a problem, she had been out of my life for almost two years at that point, and hadn’t attempted to make contact with me for a long time. 

But my dad and my stepmom? Oh, they were determined to make my life as bas as they could while not being physically around me. 

First thing they did? They tried to take all of my possessions from my dorm at college without my knowledge, because they thought that They owned that stuff. I only found this out because I called the college to formally drop out and ask when I could pick up my stuff, and they informed me my parents were already planning on picking up my stuff for me. 

Me and my now adoptive parents ended up making an impromptu trip, four hours up and four hours back, that night to my college campus to make sure that I could get my possessions before they could. And we were successful.

Next thing my dad did to screw me over after moving out? 

That bastard stole about 700$ from a joint bank account I had with him to use for college. That was money I earned from about 7 months of work at my summer food truck job. And he took it because he legally could since it was a joint account, and didn’t tell me. i found out when I went into the bank to withdraw that money and open a separate account. 

So I was starting off the year with already some setbacks. 

Thankfully, I Was able to replace my birth certificate and social security card relatively easily, so that was in my favor at least. 

Then, come my birthday on January 26 last year, I got a letter. Two letters to be specific. One from my stepmom, and one from my dad. 

Both were full of manipulation and guilt tripping language and just. Gaslighting and more emotional abuse. They had somehow gotten my address from when I had set up my separate bank account and changed my information in the bank system.  And they decided to send me abusive shit as a birthday present. 

I’m not gonna lie, it hurt a lot. 

They continued to try to do stuff like that. They called me multiple times from different numbers, they called police on my adoptive family to say that I was crazy and that my parents were like. concerned for my safety because i had blocked their phone numbers after the first two phone calls. They texted me from different numbers, just. A lot of different bullshit. 

February was the first time I saw my dad since leaving. I had gone to a screening of Love Simon, as it was really important to me, and somehow thru some stalkery methods, he knew i was there and he confronted me in the theater lobby after the film. (When I asked how he found me there, his answer was ‘I have my ways.’ I never posted about this encounter when it originally happened.)

He proceeded to be transphobic to me in public, demeaning me and humiliating me in front of everyone in the theater, told me I was the reason my siblings were now in therapy (which is a lie, my brother was already in therapy for anxiety long before I left), calling me crazy, telling my adoptive mother that I “needed help” and that “she’ll outstay her welcome.” He said a lot of awful things, and eventually I left the theatre in tears after screaming at him that I was his son and that this shit was why I left in the first place, and that he should go fuck himself.

Thankfully, I didn’t see him for months afterword, not til october, right before I left my retail job that he and my stepmom found out I worked at. I saw my stepmom three times at that job, once with my siblings (which is the only time I’ve seen them since leaving and that was. Very hard to deal with and a very emotional time), and twice without my siblings. The times she came without them, she was an absolute fucking asshole to me, still spewing her abusive rhetoric about how I was in the wrong for leaving, and how my father did nothing wrong when he saw me in February. 

She and my father only left me alone after I told them that I would not get into an argument while I was on the clock, and that if they didn’t leave I’d call the store security guard. 

After that, they haven’t done anything else. Yet. We’ll see what 2019 holds. 

But, aside from the bullshit with my parents, 2018 had its other ups and downs. More ups than downs, but it still had it’s rough moments. 

I got a job in early May as a sales associate/cashier/fitting room attendant for a well known Coat Factory chain store. 

That job was pure fuckin hell, and I’m glad I don’t work there anymore. The last week that I was supposed to work there before leaving for my new job, I got pulled into the side office by the manager on duty (she wasn’t an actual manager, she just had closing priviledges) and she Screamed at me about how a customer complained about me, she hated me, my coworkers all hated me, all three of my managers hated me, and how she was tired of my attitude and how she couldn’t wait til I was fuckin gone. The whole issue that night had started because of her and how she couldn’t properly communicate to me where she wanted me to be that night and what duties she wanted me handling. She took out her frusteration at her own mistakes on me, and I had had enough. I stood my ground with her and didn’t let her walk all over me, but I went home that night, bawled for about two hours because being yelled at is a trigger for me, and she had been all in my personal space like she was going to hit me, and then I emailed my general manager the next day and told her she could replace me for my last two shifts and I wouldn’t be coming in for them. 

I haven’t stepped foot in that goddamned store since I left that night. 

I have a different job now. I work as an overnight personal care assistant at a nursing home, but it’s a higher end one, and it’s not bad. It can be stressful and super draining at times, but enviornmentally its a better job than the retail one ever was, so it’s good. 

My mental health has been a wild ride as well. I won’t get into the full details here, but let just say that uh. I’m 99% sure that I’m both ADHD and autistic, and I’m thinking I have some form of ptsd as well from years of trauma shit. I’m not suicidal anymore, but I have bouts of depression and anxiety and sometimes anger that last for days to weeks at a time. It’s...rough, to say the least. And dysphoria doesn’t help any of that. 

But I’m alive and fighting, and that’s the important part. 

Not everything this year has been bad tho. There’s been a fair amount of good too, and I’m greatful for it. 

December 23rd I celebrated my first year aniversary with @curious-corvids, and i couldn’t be happier about that. He’s been there thru this Entire ride, and he’s been such a positive force in my life, and I hope to keep him around for years to come. 

Similarly, March 18th this year will be my one year aniversary with @sinclair-solutions, and that I’m immensely happy about as well. They’re such a wonderful person and just. i’m very lucky to have them, I really am. they’ve also been here thru everything, and I could never thank then enough for that. 

I made some friends in the past few months that I can’t imagine what my days would be like without them in it. Kathy, Jay, Fi, and Evan are such great people, and I’m lucky to have them around. 

I got the chance to meet Ren, Lu and Erin in person for the first time at DragonCon, and went to both my first comic convention and my first out of state trip alone with them, and it was honestly the best five days of my life. I can’t wait to do that again with them this year. 

I’ve been steadily improving at art this year and took commissions for the first time, and that’s been a very fun thing to do. 

I’m actually able to like. Afford to buy things for myself and spend my money without interferance, and thats such a change from how my parents used to control my finances. 

Overall 2018 was just..a wild ride. 

2019 is sure to bring better things. With luck this month, I should be starting the process of legally changing my name, and that will be a very freeing thing to do. 

I turn 20 on January 26th, and just. 

I didn’t think I’d actually make it to 20. That’s a personal milestone for me, to have made it this far. 

Whatever this new year brings tho, here’s to hoping it goes better than 2018. 

Here’s to hoping I’m better this year than I was last year. 

[my-actual-life-dot-com]

March 14th

IT’S NEXT YEAR BAYBEEEE!!

Yeah, kinda forgot about this blog.

I have stuff to say BUT FIRST I GOTTA TALK ABOUT MY PROFILE PICTURE OR WHAT EVER YOU CALL THAT.

i did have red hair. At one point. Like a year ago. Then I shaved ALL OF IT and dyed it dark brown again. (That’s my natural hair.) Then I grew it (also I was kind of hate crimed at work every day BUT OH WELL TRANSPHOBES CAN JUST FUCK OFF  I DON’T EVEN CARE ANYMORE.) Okay then it grew like 2 inches and I bleached it (twice because my hair is naturally so dark lmao). And why did I bleach it? BECAUSE I WANTED TO DYE IT PURPLE! It was sort of pinkish purplish whatever. Then I was tired of that, I cut it again. (NO I DID NOT SHAVE IT THIS TIME.) I like shaved the sides and the back and like had longer parts like in the middle IDK YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. And I dyed it black. Then it just kept growing and faded to my natural dark brown and then I just had that style. I just cut it and it grew and I cut it. THEN DISTANCE LEARNING STARTED. AGAIN. This is actually what I wanted to talk about all along so let’s include that in the story.

Soo... Distance learning. My old.... Friend.... I really hated it the first time. That was like a year ago. I didn’t learn anything. My attention span is so small. I wasn’t able to focus because I had so much things around me. At one point I stopped even trying. I did get my usual grades tho but that was only because I had the internet and the textbooks on me so I was available to just check the answers from there. THE ONLY SUBJECT I DIDN’T CHEAT AT WAS SPANISH BECAUSE I LOVE SPANISH AND THE TEACHER ASKED SO NICELY!!! SHE’S AN AMAZING PERSON AND HONESTLY DESERVES EVERYTHING!!!!

Okay enough about my Spanish teacher. So again, I completely gave up on my education. I learned NOTHING. Not. A. Single. Thing. I had important courses but... NOPE. 

TRIGGER WARNING: TALKING ABOUT DEPRE$$ION, DY!NG, SU!C!DE

Okay but it was hard for me because of other reasons too. I wasn’t able to see my friends, I wasn’t able to be social, I wasn’t able to go to school normally. So everything went so bad. I don’t understand how but for some reason the period of distance learning and social distancing really REALLY got me. It CRUSHED me. I was so, DEPRESSED, I could even say. Yes, I’m breaking out the D word.

Another tangent by the way. I’m really scared of using the D word because I don’t have depression but I still feel the symptoms of depression sometimes. (Like we all do.) Like I can’t be bothered to do anything, I’m not sad but just apathetic and unmotivated and literally can’t do anything. And just want to not be alive anymore. And that’s not sad to me. That’s feeling depressed. Or at least that’s what I could imagine. I don’t know. But I think we all have those rough patches in our lives, don’t we?

Anyway, I felt really, REALLY bad. Never felt that awful before. I’m so glad I have a dog because I went outside every day to walk him at least once. That was defo a life-saver. But like, I hated life so much. I wanted to be dead SO BAD. If there would have been a button that would have killed me if I pressed it, I would have. Several times. Oh I’m sorry this is getting really dark. 

TRIGGER WARNING ENDS HERE. NO MORE SAD TALK FROM NOW ON EXCEPT FOR THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE. AND THE ONE AFTER THAT.

So a quick recap: I was having a bad time. A rough patch, if you will.

And now we get to the part that I actually wanted to talk about. Distance learning again!!! Soo my country decided to do it like this: one week of distance learning, after that one week of winter holidays, after that two weeks of distance learning. And I was mentally preparing for it. SO MUCH ACTUALLY. I knew that it went horribly last time because of all the distractions around me so this time I had a different mindset. I was here to learn!!!!!!!!!1 But it went like this:

Day 1: yeah, yeah, kinda learning. Math was hard tho. Also I had one (1) class normally so it was kinda cool to see all of my friendos. (Okay yes only 1 ((or actually 2)) classes are normally because we have this huge musical production coming up and we can’t really practice from home.)

Day 2: yeah, kinda boring, Swedish was SOO boring and I absolutely hadn’t done any homework so I didn’t even try to learn. (This is where it all went wrong.)

Day 3: yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely opened zoom at least twice. Was bored so I cut myself a mullet. I actually love it very much although the upper part of my hair is longer than like the back part of my hair so I’m kind of still growing a mullet but WHATEVS. OH AND MY BROTHER WANTED A MULLET TOO SO I ALSO CUT HIS HAIR.

Day 4: yeah, yeah, definitely woke up. Opened zoom every class. Ignored everything and played my guitar / watched twitch streams. SORRY TEACHERS.

Day 5: yeah, yeah... Okay, actually NO. NOPE, NOPE. I GOT NOTHING DONE. I GOT SO BORED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY I STARTED MAKING TIKTOKS AND I BAKED LITTLE WITTLE TEENY TINY CAKE BABIES. HATED THE WHOLE DAY. SPENT 10 HOURS ON MY PHONE. 

After that was my winter holiday. Yay. Now it’s Sunday the 14th, last day of winter holiday but honestly I don’t really care because this doesn’t really feel that different from distance learning. I just have to pay a little less attention.

Oh dang sorry I got distracted and wanted to know how fast I type so I just did like a bunch of WPM tests. (89 in my native language and around 70 in English btw.)

Yeah okay so I think I’m finally getting to the end of this, this post wasn’t supposed to be as long as it is but OH WELL. Distance learning starts again tomorrow, I’m feeling just fine and I think I might have ADD or ADHD. 

Before I go on another tangent, 

HAVE A GREAT NIGHT!

[lgbt-teenager-support]

(not lgbt+ related but idk who else to tell) For some reason I feel really bad today, like I'm drowning in a lake of sadness, and I don't understand why. I feel like I could break down crying rn and I wouldn't mind if I didn't wake up tomorrow tbh. It started at PE today, I failed 3/7 test things, and got a miminum pass on 4/7 (lowest score of the class). And idk but from then I started feeling sadder and sadder and now I just want to cry until I fall asleep. I don't know what to do

Hey kid, first, here’s a list with some mental health resources. 

Second of all, crying is actually very good for you and will help you get some of those emotions out. There’s some hormone stuff involved, but just know, crying will make you feel better. 

I know life, and especially school, can be super tough. Some days we have rough days. For some of us thats a lot of the days. If this is a common thing in your life, and not just a one day thing, then asking your parents to go to a medical professional about it may help, or if you can’t do that, school counselors are also there for a reason. It may not even be something like depression, for example I went through a long time like this before I found out I had adhd. I was failing a bunch of stuff, felt terrible about everything, and was just not mentally ok. 

But if its just a today thing- first, focus on something you like. I ground myself with dandelions a lot, dunno why, but I like them. Maybe write down a list of things you like. You can keep up this list and add to it every day. Distracting yourself is also something good to do, watching a favorite movie or show (ghibli is good for this) and just eat something you like. Maybe playing a videogame with friends, or going out with friends might help. Humans love social interaction, even if you think of yourself as antisocial, I guarantee you that you still like to have some sort of community. Going to clubs, joining groups, or just going out and physically doing things with people you know can vastly improve your mood. 

Maybe try doing a hobby. I write often when I feel bad, even if its not good work, and it makes me feel better. A lot of people make vent are and vent writing, where they put their emotions down and talk about them, and it can help get the emotions out so you can calm down. It works really well for me. I know poetry is the stereotypical teen angst thing to do, but thats because it works really well, so, maybe try some poetry. 

Also, finding the root of some problems might help to. If this test went badly, try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Preparing before tests, going to tutoring, and other things can help. Maybe something else is the thing that is wrong, and if you can get rid of it, that can help. I know these things are hard and overwhelming sometimes, but they might help you feel better.

Finally, check what you’ve eaten today. I know this sounds silly, but sometimes I am having a terrible day and hate everyone and everything, and then I realize the only thing I’ve had to eat was one sugar filled donut. Eat some protein, such as cheese, and drink some water. Diet (including hydration) can vastly affect mood.  

Overall, being a teen sucks ass. Hormones are all over the place, and a lot of us are not neurotypical too which makes it suck more ass. Maybe one of these things help, or maybe they don’t. Sometimes these feelings pass, sometimes they don’t. Your feelings are ok and valid, and I just have to strongly recommend finding some sort of healthy coping mechanism for them. 

-Mod Rowan