#the general idea of what OCD is already so fucking wrong and harmful

[moghedien]

i swear if you people start uwuifying OCD like you did with ADHD and autism I'm going to start attacking

[chrobinrickhen]

shit that happened

tw for child abuse, beating, physical assault, minor transphobia etc ///

my parents have been abusive to me my whole life. from things starting small with my mom treating me as her spouse and talking to be about things a parent shouldnt talk about with their as young as 3 year old child during times she was in fights with my dad, to while i was younger primarily beating me for simply crying at things (mainly in public places), the total and complete gaslighting of my abusive 5th grade teacher (which was somehow far worse than them lol) etc. however, they never seriously beat me before, as in, all out beating me up with continuous punches kicks and thrashing.

my mom would frequently slap me in the face or punch me once in the back at times as of recent during my years in high school where i struggled to my near (literal) hospitalization and death from mere over exhaustion and stress (i averaged less than 4-5 hours of sleep for all 4 years and my senior year i nearly didnt sleep At All) during my senior year my dad even threatened to kill me during one of my parents outbursts against me simply trying to reason (more like beg! lol!) for them to help me drop out of school because it was destroying me and was more and more traumatizing literally every day and they thought they were justified because “i was so close!” “youve already suffered for so long may as well stick it through!” despite my therapist and psychologist doing the best they can to tyr and get me out. my parents have punched a whole in the wall, thrown and broke things, (thankfully not at me) and simply just been physically threatening with destroying things important to me and my belongings.

however, after i graduated. and after i was diagnosed with ptsd. and after they seemed to become more understanding and learning from their mistakes i thought they were genuinely open to becoming better people and challenging themselves to listen to me and others.

this incidence proved that wrong.

itd been 2 years give or take i genuinely dont even remember what year i graduated lol since he threatened to kill me. i thought they changed and genuinely had formed trust with them that was slowly growing. and then somehow or another the topic of asylum seekers, ice, and the current concentration camps came up, to which my parents responded with some of the genuinely most vile words ive ever heard people say to my face.  i dont even want to try and repeat it here bc im pretty sure you can get the idea. i calmly tried to talk to them, they started to scream, i went up stairs. they continued to shout horrible things to me, that again, im skipping over for my own wellbeing bc it isnt exactly fun to recount. something something “you havent sufferred through shit” she said to me at one point. yes, your child who has been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, general anxiety disorder, depression, panic disorder, ptsd, ocd, eating disorder general symptoms, a survivor of school abuse spanning my whole life for not being neurotypical and cishet, and a pending diagnosis for adhd, TOTALLY has not suffered.

anyway, i wanted to die. what they said to me, was so horrific i really just, wanted to die, i kind of lied about it on twitter saying im not actually suicidal dont worry but i highkey was and i dont wanna try and cover that up again. i just didnt want anyone to worry (IM OKAY NOW AND NOT SUICIDAL DONT WORRY this if anything was a good lesson for me to learn) anyway, i told them this. i knew it was kind of shitty and guilty but all i asked of them. is that even if they cannot agree with me, if they would at least care to listen to why this is wrong and accept that they dont know everything like they are convinced they do and yet accuse me of claiming i myself am.

i texted them, that long thing, telling them how i would stay in bed and not eat or drink (for context my sleep schedule was fucked the two days prior and i barely had eaten or drinken) my memory is fucked and i would have to check with my therapist if im confusing this with another instance bc im pretty sure the beating happened the day the argument did but i also remember staying in bed for mulitple days? but anyway thats not important fhdiujng so. they came to me and started screaming shit at me. again. horrible shit. their response to their child saying “im suicidal and would rather die than you be my parents any longer if you refuse to listen to why these people deserve to not be put in cages and die” and their reaction was not concern but screaming, insults, calling me a monster, a puppetmaster (the irony) and I DID NOT. SAY. A WORD. TO THEM. I DID NOT MOVE> i was. completely. still. the entire time. i was weak. i was sick. Literally from dehydration and starvation. and because i did not answer them back they jumped ontop of me and my mom beat the shit out of me and chokeheld me, my dad then also did the same even though he did not hit me, he came close to strangling me before leaving the room. i was swollen and bruised all over including my face it was super visible for whatever reason but my body hurt like a motherfucker for over a week since that happened. i just cried when they left

then an hour later after htey beat me they came up and starting their baby uwu act of “i dont want to fight just go shower and come down and eat your dinner blablabla you know we love you rihgt?” and forcing me to apologize to them whenmy mom literally beat me, my dad screamed in my face with his nose to mine to and they helf my neck in their hands with the intent to cause physical harm to me.

proceeding this the aftershock of trying to process what hat happened was just. a lot as you can imagine. i was so paranoid and uncomfortable the week preceeding this just being aorund them hearing their voices literally everything about my house and them living in it was horrifying to me. my therapist helped me a lot and im ok now but like. they proved to me that they really just cannot be helped. theyre a lost cause. at this point to me, the only thing they are are a financial source to cover my transition and im left with no choice but to force myself to play the puppet. i tried to do a mix of both working with and against them before and it blew up in my face. it sucks but thats what it is and as long as obey their shitty asses ill be fine. i dont know where my future will go but i know and pray that it cannot and will not be with them. the moment i am away from them and my belongings are not in their possession they no longer exist to me unless they genuinely will accept the fact theyre the 2nd reason my ptsd exists.

tl;dr my parents suck and im forced to play their child puppet in order to literally survive their love of me is toxic and based on a false perception of what a child is supposed to be and i regret not calling child protective services on them whe n i had the chance

[curtisandlewis]

A Guide to The Playhouse

The Playhouse is a fic of my own creation and my baby. It originated from my need to write about the parties that Jerry, Tony, and Janet revolved their lives around that occurred at the building in Jerry's backyard affectionately named The Playhouse. As I sat down to plot this epic story that spanned from 1948 to 1953 relationships developed complexity, conflict was practically handed to me, and I got the gift of writing scene after scene of Jerry with Tony. They're not my OTP but are my biggest obsession. However, I am completely changing the storyline.

I knew from the start the "The Playhouse" would not be a fairytale. The relationships are complex and can be unhealthy and abusive. Mental illness, trauma, sex addiction, abuse of drugs and alcohol all contribute to risky and abusive behaviors. BDSM is also at the core of the story both being practiced in safe and dangerous ways. I thought it would be sufficient just include warnings at the beginning of each chapter as I do for any of my fics that can be "problematic" but I now realize the twenty or so thousand words I have written are not just "problematic" but can be harmful especially to anyone like me. I have written this guide to explain why I wrote those words and hopefully reverse any damage they have done.  

To anyone that read what I wrote and got the impression that certain sexual acts were more taboo or wrong than others, I am truly sorry. That is a fucked up way to live. I wouldn’t wish anyone to have shame for who they are or what they want in a consensual sexual relationship. Think about the sex you enjoy, without shame or restriction. Read the sex scenes that entertain you the most. Write the kind of sex you want to see in the world and is the most fun for you to write. Choose to masturbate and explore your body in the ways you want. Or choose not to touch yourself. Have sex in any way you and your partner/partners desire and consent to. Or choose not to have sex at all. It is your decision to make. That is your right as a person who is in charge of their own body. Please learn from my mistakes. 

I just want to make it clear that the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey came out in February 9, 2015. I had no idea about the book until I saw the trailer for the movie. The first chapter of "The Playhouse" was published May 17, 2014, and I had been writing and planning several months before that. I have never read Fifty Shades of Grey and I only saw the first half hour (I couldn't make it to the sex scenes) of the movie in 2016. After I saw Christian Grey say the infamous line, "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard." I worried that Tony was similar to Christian Grey and that his relationship with Jerry was similar to the one in the movie. However, I NEVER presented their sexual relationship as a love story to be watched on Valentine's day. It may be that the two stories have nothing in common but I obsessively worried that they were and that I wrote something deeply problematic.

In March of 2015, I wrote a spin off of "The Playhouse" about the first time Tony humps Jerry (their fave activity). After I wrote it I felt like I had done something wrong. Not too long after something bad happened to a member of my family. I believed by writing the words in that story I had caused the bad thing because I was being punished. I now know I have OCD and this is how OCD works against you. It makes you believe you caused something when there is no logical way you could have caused it to happen. This is why "The Playhouse" has not been updated in over two years. I can look back now and realize the reason why I felt like I had done something wrong is that the characters were acting in a way that was wrong to who they were. I had projected my anxiety and shame onto them.

From here on out there will be liberal use of sex terms and discussion of sex  

What you need to know: I have anxiety writing anal sexual stimulation or anal sex due to many toxic beliefs and stigmas I internalized over the years. To avoid writing these scenes I made Dean's character believe due to his internalized homophobia that it was wrong for a man to penetrate another man or be penetrated by any gender even if in masturbation. Since the age of sixteen, Jerry has had curiosity about being penetrated. Tony has wanted to top Jerry since Jerry's sixteenth birthday (the fic that sparked my OCD) that is six years starting from chapter one of the story. To again, avoid having to write any penetrative scenes I had to write Dean being emotionally abusive and using shame and threats to control Jerry's sexual behavior. All of this because I as a writer did not realize I could just not fucking write anal sex scenes. I thought if I wrote a bunch of dry humping scenes you would think I was weird so instead, I wrote horribly abusive relationships...

Quick History lesson, since the medieval times it was believed evil for a man to be penetrated because he was in a passive role that was reserved for women. Men that were penetrated were put to death while women who had sex with women without penetration were encouraged to do so for their health. These toxic beliefs are deep within history and still exist in society.

Allow me to get a little bit personal. I’ve always had anxiety writing anal sex scenes. I’ve written it very rarely in the past ten years that I have been writing sex scenes. I wrote mostly oral sex because it was less "homosexual" than anal sex. (I had a lot of internalized crap I was dealing with). Even though it’s absolutely possible for two men to have a sexual relationship and never have anal sex, I thought it would be too weird for Dean and Jerry to be having sex for six years and never try it. Also as a writer, I enjoy writing them being physically intimate but not having sex. That word I see in fanfiction tags: frottage (such a weird word). You know the act of two men rubbing up against each other. It just offers so many more options than manual sex or oral sex ever could. THE FACT YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF. How convenient is that? But I never saw it as the main option for sexual gratification. It was always presented as either foreplay or the only option because the characters couldn’t have sex. What made me feel weirder is that I enjoyed writing “humping” scenes (also a strange word) This is “frottage” but front to back instead of front to front. All of the advantages of anal sex without any of the problems. It required no prep. Whoever is on top can do it as hard and fast as they want and not hurt their partner. Likewise, to show intimacy it can be done in a gentle and romantic way, maybe even being left for special occasions like anniversaries. It’s also very easy for Tony and Jerry to take turns being top and Jerry doesn’t always have to be in the passive submissive role. Speaking of submissive it’s also easy to incorporate BDSM without it becoming too intense. Have you read those stories where the guy bleeds? You know what I mean. I didn’t want Jerry to bleed. And if he did I didn’t want it to be sexy. I wanted it to show that his sex addiction was getting out of hand or their BDSM relationship was becoming reckless. They can do it again, and again, and again. It wouldn’t put nearly the amount of strain on Jerry’s body that intercourse would. And of course, if you read “The Playhouse” you know that I use it an awful lot in group sex situations and to show just how fucking possessive Dean can be. As you can see there were a lot of positives to writing scenes in this way but that didn’t stop me from feeling weird about it. I probably read only one scene like that in my life. Before that, I saw it only a few times in movies and it made me go hmmm. I felt it was something that wasn’t really talked about or done. It wasn’t presented as an alternative to sex or even an option. I thought if I were to write the scenes I wanted to, people who read them would say, “Why don’t they just fuck already? What the fuck am I reading? This is so weird.”

I projected all of my toxicity onto Jerry. It started out simple enough I heard a lot of jokes as a kid that went, you must have known your husband was “gay” because he liked your finger up his ass. Because all women that enjoy receiving oral sex are “lesbian” right? (I hope you saw the sarcasm in that) Then I noticed there weren’t a lot of heterosexual married couples in movies having non vaginal intercourse. Sometimes you could see the couple in the “doggystyle” position but the wife was still being penetrated in her vagina. When I saw the other form of intercourse it was gay men or people not in love. I think that had a lasting effect on me. But what was worse is that I watched a movie with a BDSM theme. The woman worked as a dominatrix (hated her job btw) and her male partner confessed to her that he liked to be penetrated and dominated. Her reaction was so verbally abusive it was disgusting. Instead of thinking you are a horribly abusive person and he needs to leave you I internalized it as oh I guess it’s really not okay for men to want that. I have struggled with internalized homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. I have dealt with it all. I just didn’t have the tools back then to see things as they are. An abusive woman who had a very illogical view of the world and a media that didn’t have the imagination or the knowledge of what sexual relationships could be.

These are the general reasons why I wrote: "The Playhouse" with such problematic themes and why I have decided to no longer continue those themes.

The lesson I learned from this was to not project my toxic shit onto my characters and make them act in ways that are not authentic to who they are. I give myself the permission to write what makes me happy and fulfilled.

DEAN: What you need to know: Dean has internalized homophobia due to childhood trauma. He was taught if a man is penetrated by a person of any gender they will instantly become homosexual and not a man.

As a young boy Dean was told by his mother don't be a f...well, I'm sure you can guess what she said. All his life he was reprimanded (sometimes with hitting) for behavior that was too "homosexual" Behaviors like, crying, telling someone he loved them and showing emotion. As he got older his so called friends just made his internalized homophobia worse. He was terrified that he wasn't masculine enough and that he had to be a man like they said or else be nothing. Along the way Dean was taught the rules, he lives his life by:

A man never says "I love you" even to his own family

A man never ever says "I love you" to another man

A man never lets anyone see him cry or be emotional

A man must keep people at a distance

A man has sex with women and has sex often

A man has a wife and children and whatever he can get on the side

A man can do "guy stuff" with other guys as a form of bonding or just a quick way to get off.

A man does not suck cock

A man can get his cock sucked by another man and be secure in his manhood because he is in the active "manly" role

A man must never ever under any circumstance be penetrated by anyone even himself. A man must not fantasize or actively desire to be penetrated otherwise he is a homosexual and will no longer be a man. He will be nothing.

That is the reasoning for Dean's problematic and abusive behavior towards Jerry. He tries to control Jerry's sexual behavior and desires because if Jerry were to be homosexual Dean would have to end their sexual relationship (He could never think of ending their friendship). 

The truth is that in real life during the time Dean was growing up this was NOT the belief. It was believed a man could have anal sex with another man as long as he was the one doing the penetrating. This meant he was in the active "male" role. It was actually preferred to penetrate a feminine homosexual man because they were believed to not be men and to be a third gender. Jerry is bisexual, not homosexual but close enough to be a PERFECT candidate. The only worry Dean would have is hurting his pally that first time. They could happily fuck for the whole ten years of their partnership and Dean would think of himself as nothing but the picture of masculine heterosexuality.

and of course

YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY HAVE ANY KIND OF SEX YOU WANT AND MOST CERTAINLY MASTURBATE IN THE WAY MOST PLEASURABLE TO YOU WITHOUT AFFECTING YOUR SEXUALITY JUST AS LONG AS YOU DON’T CAUSE HARM TO YOURSELF OR OTHERS.

What you need to know: Dean is emotionally and at times verbally abusive to Jerry and arguably to his wife Betty as well.

[mychemicalrant]

What To Do

I’ve been writing a lot. It’s been helping.

For the last month pretty much the only thing I’ve done is write giant ass posts for this blog that no one reads. I’m glad no one reads it because it gives me the chance to explore these ideas out loud without getting pummeled by discourse and infighting.

Right now, I’m not quite sure what to do. I haven’t contributed much to any of my major projects. I’ve spent the last week embroiled with one of the worst emetophobia/health anxiety flare ups I’ve had since high school, complete with numbness, disassociation, and feeling disintegrated with my environment. It’s like I can’t settle back into my routines. Like everything has been disrupted.

But even though I’m starting to come down from that and come back into my body a little, I’m still stuck with one major question: what do I do now?

I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good planner (for myself anyway) and internally well organized. But there are times when I have no idea what to do first and so I end up doing nothing. There are things I have been neglecting to do for years because my brain completely freezes up about how to go about the process. It’s like I feel like I don’t have enough information to make even the first step. I’m not sure I would call this “executive dysfunction” on my own. I would need a professional to talk this out with, because in other ways I’ve always been pretty together, or so I thought. But all the same, it’s like I’m paralyzed by the choices?

I once heard a catatonic schizophrenic person describe what was happening as they stood frozen with their hand palm up to the sky: there was a battle of Good and Evil playing out on their hand, and they feared that any slight movement would give Evil the advantage. That has become a metaphor for every time in my life when I feel completely paralyzed by small decisions. I can order a drink or food item at a new restaurant, but it takes me awhile to make a decision because there are so many factors to consider. I don’t just consider the food and what I want (and if I want more than one thing, uh oh). I consider systems within systems within systems. Sometimes I consider whether such a choice would be gastronomically redundant (while then allowing myself to subsist on samefoods for most of my diet), or too many calories/sodium/whatever, or whether the taste balance would blah blah or what my general opportunity level for getting that food would be.

Like, if it’s a sushi place and I want to get unagi don, I feel bogged down by the fact that I also love sushi rolls and don’t get to eat them very often. So now my choice is, do I get the unagi don because that is what I want? Or do I get a sushi roll because these opportunities are rare and what if I never get to eat this again? What if what if what if? It really does feel like if I move, I’ll give “evil” the advantage, even with small decisions. Every decision is like this big web of potential and each “wrong” decision could have this big ripple effect.

Is this autism related or just plain ol’ OCD/anxiety? I don’t know, but the obsession is driving me crazy.

Admittedly, I am a little scared about taking the first step regarding diagnosis. I have resisted going to therapists for a long time out of fear that they would tell me I’m just a worthless adult for not being able to drive or hold a job, that the only “cure” is just to do these things and suck it up because that’s what adults have to do. If they are just going to tell me that I’m a piece of shit, why bother going at all? I already know that and I don’t have to pay 40 dollars a week (sliding income scale) to hear that.

But if the actual situation is that I am facing untreated cognitive impairment that affects my ability to cope, AND that my adult coping mechanisms are no longer working and I have “exceeded my limited capacities” in life, I would at that point qualify for an assessment and possibly a diagnosis. A diagnosis is sought when impairment becomes noticeable, and for over a decade I’ve been hiding my impairment out of shame. I’ve hidden behind “I’m just getting on my feet” and “I’m still figuring things out” and “I’m not sure what I really want to do yet.” All the while spending 14+ hours in bed and having no spoons to do much else.

But you know where I’m at right now. I’m caught between the “not diagnosed but strongly suspecting I’m on the spectrum and exploring this as a valid possibility” and “you don’t REALLY have autism if you’re functioning enough to go through life being undiagnosed/your autism isn’t severe enough to matter/you’re taking away space and voices from people with REAL autism with your fake self-diagnosis” echo chamber.

Like, I get why people are suspicious of self-diagnoses, but at the same time, real people with autism exist without diagnoses and this doesn’t mean they don’t have it. It doesn’t even mean they are coping or not impaired! It just means they’ve fallen through the cracks and have turned to other mechanisms like secondary mental illness, substance abuse, or addictions they can’t explain because they are not getting treatment and support. That’s where I found myself before I started looking into this possibility.

I’ve been reading through a bit of the discourse lately on why people with “real autism” and parents of “real autistic kids” feel that self-diagnosed adults are a bunch of bullshit fakers bringing harm to the community, which is tough to read even if not unexpected. Gate-keeping was one of the first unpleasant realities I discovered in MBTI communities, and it was tempting for one to get a Certified Assessment to “prove” that one was whatever type they were claiming to be, even though the Official Certified Assessment still relied on self reporting and was still subject to being, you know, entirely subjective and not at all scientific? So finding it in the autism community is not at all surprising.

I’m sick of gate-keeping. It’s why I more or less moved away from MBTI and to the Enneagram which I see less defensiveness in. No one in the Enneagram community is supposed to be fighting over an ego label and who “deserves” to get to define their personality as a 4 or an 8. That’s absurd.

Anyway. I’ve been caught between this whirlpool of “do I think I have enough of a case to pursue diagnosis?” and “do I have the time/resources/money/energy to pursue a diagnosis?” and “am I severe enough for it to even matter?”

I want to do this. It’s not a question. I have a credit card so I can put myself thousands of dollars in debt to get this assessment. Should I do that? Probably fucking not, but if this will help me figure out what the hell is going on with my job issues, it might be worth it?

But is it? Should I just suck it up, you guys? Should I just deal with this shit on my own? I feel like I am disintegrating more and more. I drink now more than I used to to “cope” with difficult feelings I can’t process. Going to grocery stores is hard for me because the lighting and temperature and people bother me. My OCD is crushing me. I can barely touch anything now for fear of contamination. I have cut off relationships cold turkey (and warm turkey) just to avoid telling people how bad things are for me. I certainly haven’t had any luck in finding another job. 

Not to be recursive here, but my Special Interest of autism has been keeping me afloat. Many of my Special Interests have always cycled around psychology (abnormal psych, personality theories) such that I have strongly considered buying a copy of the DSM-IV (now 5) to read for fun. Obsessing and archive diving this topic has been the one thing helping me navigate some of the stuff I’ve been dealing with in life. But the obsessive drive always comes with a Call to Action: should I seek a diagnosis?

How? How do I do this??