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elsareyblog · 5 months

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BPD & OCD, total madness

(ENGLISH translation)

Anna,

Hello. How are you doing? I hope that very good. I share with you a fragment that is part of a larger document, where I write when I have inspiration about anything I feel I have to write about. It is a very messy archive, full of shameful intimacies and personal processes, which is made to be the last book of a great future literary career. Ha ha ha. Well, this is a part that came up on my dad's birthday. I started writing and this is the result. I am looking forward to reading your opinions on the matter.

Finally, I would ask you not to share what is written here with my dad because the only thing it would cause is him to be unnecessarily alarmed. My way of writing can be quite suggestive. Thank you.

Greetings.

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Whenever I've been given a diagnosis, I've felt like they were partially right. Because let's say that I have always been a psychological hypochondriac. Although I don't know if it could be considered hypochondria when you are correct about your suspicions that you are missing a couple of screws. You feel it in others and in yourself.

However, I said “partially” because certain things didn't quite add up. Until they told me I had BPD combined with OCD. As I said, I had searched for these disorders myself and there were things that did correspond to my reality at that moment and others did not. Until things happened that awakened and enhanced both disorders and it became undeniable. My problems are most often explained by both disorders.

(Maybe - Tony Dize & Ken Y. Weird soundtrack to be writing this.)

No matter what I do, the answers to the questions I have about my own behavior are found in my diagnosis.

Now, looking back, I can say that they were always at the bottom of things but, depending on the time, they were more or less “asleep.” In my childhood the type of attachment I would have for the rest of my life was determined: disorganized. This would be the precursor to my BPD and a problem to constantly solve in future therapies. At the same time, OCD began to form, especially in the educational and sexual part of my life (this would not contribute to the characteristic presence of trauma in BPD either). It was the rise of OCD. In adolescence, the necessary things for the BPD to be complete were finished being brought up, it was trying to wake up but the repression of the OCD almost always won the battles. That's how I became a quiet teenager, who didn't cause much trouble other than a couple of jokes. Bah, I mean I never went out to party except for the 15th birthdays of people I knew. And there weren't many either. I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't have relationships, I spent years without having any action with guys. I didn't give my family any problems, that place was occupied by my brother who was living his adolescence with dignity as everyone should. He was the one who arrived at dawn without permission, who had bad company, who smoked, etc.

I got my family used to it. To the lack of problems.

Until I was 18 when I got a boyfriend and decided to go live in a province I didn't know and where I had no one, just my partner of only 3 months. To be exact, one month after we established a relationship we started preparing for the move that was going to happen two months later. It was my first bad and hasty decision that would mark the next four years with too much mental and emotional pain. This was the first real boom of the TLP.

Living in isolation with my boyfriend, 4 years older than me, made my worst side and my first “hit rock bottom” come out. That first year of living together I lost a lot of weight because I stopped feeling hungry. I went days without missing food, I was satisfied with a cup of tea a day. However, in the mirror I could never see that change. I always looked the same. It was as the years went by and seeing the photos that I realized how I looked to others back then.

We stopped living together for a year and a half but maintained the relationship at a distance and in 2018 we returned to live together in the same province where we had no one. A year passed before he told me that he wanted to return to Chile to work, earn money and come back. By this point I no longer felt any love for that man. I let him go knowing how it was going to end. Not a month passed until the relationship ended. I cried one day and I never cried again.

2019, September and my singleness returns. Living in a lonely house, in a lonely province. With nobody. I started smoking cigarettes. The same day I ended my relationship, I tried my first pucho. I remember that I felt excited just seeing myself in the mirror smoking, breaking a little the rules that I had created for myself. I finished my first year in psychology with good grades, passing everything. Looking at boys and girls even though I did nothing. Making two friends. I decided to adopt two beautiful kittens who blessed my life. After having argued many times with my ex-boyfriend because I wanted to adopt a dog or a kitten and always receiving a rejection of almost all my wishes, I deigned to take that step. A year later Marquesa arrived. I slept with a guy once, it was a failure. The pandemic happened, my second year of psychology went like shit, I had to start again some subjects. There I did well again but I still had 3 subjects pending that (spoiler:) I would never study again and would crown my posthumous abandonment of the degree. I only had to take three exams to pass, but I never gathered the guts to come back. In short, 3 years of (almost) zero sex, university and what would be the real rise of OCD. This is where my obsessions regarding animal abuse and my own loneliness began. Gradually I stopped leaving my house unless it was in the early morning to look for the reasons for the noises, for the meows and howls. I slept from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., spending the nights awake and overwhelmed with paranoia. It was in this situation that I began treatment with what would be my last psychologist, psychiatrist and nutritionist. Everything would improve a lot (I straightened out my sleeping routines, I did physical exercise, diet, I got a job,...) until the arrival of a young man into my life who would mark the beginning of the control of BPD in my mind and my life.

My suicidal thoughts returned, with increasing volume. My fear of abandonment, my emotional instability, my impulsivity, my disorganized attachment that sometimes clung and sometimes pushed others away, all of this and more began during this nameless bond. They gave me home confinement. I gained a lot of weight, stopped exercising (although it was a really satisfying decision) and stopped treatment. By this point, it was evident that the diagnosis had been quite correct. But it still didn't wake up as much as it does now.

2023 and I feel like BPD is taking the reins of my life. This writing arises from a thought I had yesterday. I had smoked some marijuana. Enough so that my obsessive mind did its debates in low frequency, where I could barely hear it. I turned on my computer, took off my sneakers and so on. In the midst of all that, a thought comes to me strongly: The things you are doing, those impulsiveness that you have that are highly reprehensible socially, that carefree and rebellious side that you are bringing out, are taking you down a path that does not seem to finish well.

Sorry, I'm not doing the thought justice because that's not how it came. I didn't have it with so many explanations and turns. It was simply the phrase: BPD is leading you to death in its own way. No self-harming behavior, no suicide attempts, no pill overdoses. But in another way.

I have very marked ups and downs of mood. I can be very sad or very happy. When I'm in a really good mood, I do most of my stupid things. Of my impulsive decisions, of my socially strange and reckless acts. Like having melon with wine outside of my work, smoking cannabis at work dinner, or going to Villa Carlos Paz at the house of a boy I didn't know well, without cellphone to communicate nor acquaintances in that place. Etc. The list is a little longer and increasingly bizarre. In that state, perhaps a little euphoric, I feel like I don't care about anything. That I'm fine, that there is a solution for everything, that nothing is too serious. That nothing stops me, that I am beautiful, strange and sensual. I feel like I like my lolita side, and people's reaction to my face or eyes. In those times is when I spend money giving unnecessary gifts to people just to thank them, making myself look a little strange to others. But they like me a little better when I'm like this. Except my bosses. Although I think even they like it when I am like that, it's just still wrong.

When I am sad is when my feet return to the ground, I isolate myself again, I regret everything I did under the effects of that untitled joy. Because…, it's very easy to know if I'm really happy or maniacally happy: you ask me why I'm like this and if I don't know how to answer it, it's because it's just the result of my emotional instability and not because there is a context that gives me genuine happiness.

However, despite the alarm that the phrase “which is leading me to death” suggests, which is dramatically negative, it is not without a good side. I have spent most of my life repressed, doing whatever causes the least chaos, whatever helps me go unnoticed in the lives of most of the people who have known me. Without stories to tell, without friends to share them with, without intimate experiences that lead to self-knowledge, without anything valuable in short. Having spent a decade in deep and constant depression. The beast must awaken eventually. The side effects of transgressed childhood sexuality, a broken home, and a superficial society had to make their arrival. I am overwhelmed and on the edge but it is a noisy release of a lot of repressed pain. I have to roar like a dragon and spit out all the fire that is in my dark soul full of secrets. At the end of all that I will have my rest, my peace of mind back, I will finally have my satisfaction with the story I am making of my life and everything will be better. I will be a mother, I will have a family and my life will last as long as my mental health is willing to cooperate. In part I have come to the intuition, not to say conviction, that I will not have a very long life. I have felt it in my chest since I was 6 years old, when I looked at my trembling fingers like those of Pope John Paul II (I think it was him). I have always felt in the abyss of things, in the imminent end of everything. I can't imagine life without that feeling, so I think it exists for a reason. Maybe I sense my destiny.

Nowadays, I want to fight against that a little because I don't want to die as much as before.

I just had another strong thought: Maybe I'm taking myself to a point of no return, a bit risky, to punish myself for not doing anything for my ex-partner's dog..

I don't know how to get his address so that he can get someone to take him away from the dog and she can be better. Every day that passes is a punishment of mental guilt because it's another day that he could be doing anything to his dog. I don't know how to get it because there is no other person who would be suspected of doing that other than me. Which would lead me to be a little exposed to the danger of a guy over 40 years old, angry and aggressive, with a brother who recently got out of prison and handled weapons. Plus that whole situation is more than I can handle.

All this helplessness and all the joy I may feel makes me make decisions that expose me to too much.

Or maybe it's just taking a self-justifying attitude because of the guilt I carry, looking for excuses for my behavior, and in reality I'm just a terrible person.

In any case, all is not lost.

I still stand by my most fundamental principles. I feel like I've lost everything else or that it's getting out of hand, because it's not adapting very well to what's right in society. Being like this, I get into trouble often and each one is worse than the last. (Sometimes I suspect that I also have some degree of autism, because I don't understand the world like others to a degree that it is absurd to explain.) However, Selene, especially from childhood, is more present than ever. She is throwing a tantrum inside me that is necessary and relieving. It's just that I also need a little restraint so that my life doesn't go completely to shit.

However, I am not willing to admit prohibitions, nor another home confinement or anything like that. I only recognize that I am aware that I am not well even though I laugh a lot, talk more and be more sociable. My mom thinks I'm better than before, I just overdo it sometimes. I don't know if “being better” is entirely correct, but rather I am acting a little more normal but at a very late age: 26 years old. I look less like a zombie, which is how I was before all this. Nothing was happening in my life, I didn't cause problems but I wasn't a person who acted normal either. I went from one side to the opposite in a short time, from doing nothing to doing anything.

It happens that... many things made me understand that almost everything lost its meaning. That I don't want to be like the others. That I'm fine doing my thing. That Gabriel is my karma because he is everywhere in my life without really being there. But that's it, he's already dead and it's not worth crying. But to enjoy the havoc it has caused, of which having found myself as a woman back is one of them. My sensuality back, the one he sullied. Almost nothing matters anymore. The aggressiveness of nature fills every piece of the world and life, fighting against it is a guaranteed defeat. Feel guilty because it is your minimum deserved punishment for the bad acts you have had. Do with that guilt what you can, what your mental health can. And then, live intensely so that the day you die you have reasons to shed your last tears.

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(ESPAÑOL original)

Anna,

Hola. ¿Cómo está? Espero que muy bien. Le comparto un fragmento que es parte de un documento más amplio, donde escribo cuando tengo inspiración sobre cualquier cosa de la que sienta que tengo que escribir. Es un archivo muy desordenado, lleno de intimidades vergonzosas y procesos personales, que está hecho para ser el último libro de una gran carrera literaria futura. Jajaja. Bueno, esto es una parte que surgió el día de cumpleaños de mi papá. Me puse a escribir y salió esto. Estoy atenta a leer sus opiniones al respecto.

Por último, sí le pediría que no comparta lo que está escrito aquí con mi papá pues lo único que provocaría es que se alarme innecesariamente. Mi forma de escribir lo puede sugestionar bastante. Gracias.

Saludos.

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Siempre que me han dado un diagnóstico, sentía que estaban parcialmente en lo correcto. Porque digamos que siempre he sido una hipocondríaca psicológica. Aunque no sé si se podría considerar hipocondría cuando estás en lo correcto respecto a tus sospechas de que te faltan un par de tornillos. Lo sientes en los demás y en ti misma.

Sin embargo, dije “parcialmente” porque por ahí ciertas cosas no terminaban de encajar. Hasta que me dijeron que tenía TLP combinado con TOC. Como dije, yo había buscado por mí misma estos trastornos y habían cosas que sí se correspondían con mi realidad de ese momento y otras no. Hasta que pasaron cosas que despertaron y potenciaron ambos trastornos y se volvió innegable. Mis problemas la mayoría de veces se explican por ambos trastornos.

(Quizás - Tony Dize & Ken Y. Raro soundtrack para estar escribiendo esto.)

No importa qué haga, las respuestas a las preguntas que me surgen de mi propio comportamiento se encuentran en mi diagnóstico.

Ahora, mirando al pasado puedo decir que siempre estuvieron en el fondo de las cosas pero, según la época, estaban más o menos “dormidos”. En mi infancia se determinó el tipo de apego que tendría el resto de mi vida: desorganizado. Esto sería el precursor para mi TLP y un problema a solucionar constantemente en futuras terapias. Al mismo tiempo, el TOC empezó a formarse, sobre todo en la parte educacional y sexual de mi vida (esto tampoco colaboraría para la característica presencia de traumas en el TLP). Era el auge del TOC. En la adolescencia se terminaron de remover las cosas necesarias para el TLP, que estaba queriendo despertar pero la represión del TOC ganaba casi siempre las batallas. Así fue como fui una adolescente tranquila, que no daba demasiado problema más que un par de chascarrillos. Bah, me refiero a que no salía nunca de fiesta más que a cumpleaños de 15 de gente conocida. Y no fueron muchos tampoco. No tomaba, no fumaba, no tenía relaciones, pasé años sin tener nada de acción con chicos. No le daba problemas a mi familia, ese lugar estaba ocupado por mi hermano que sí estaba viviendo dignamente su adolescencia como deben hacer todos. Él era el que llegaba a la madrugada sin permiso, que tenía mala junta, que fumaba, etc.

Acostumbré a mi familia a eso. A la falta de problemas.

Hasta que a los 18 me puse de novia y decidí irme a vivir a una provincia que no conocía y en la que no tenía a nadie, con mi pareja de hace apenas 3 meses. Para ser exactos, al mes de novios empezamos con los preparativos de la mudanza que iba a ocurrir dos meses después. Fue mi primera mala y precipitada decisión que marcaría los siguientes cuatro años con demasiado dolor mental y emocional. Este fue el primer auténtico auge del TLP.

La convivencia aislada con mi novio, 4 años mayor que yo, hizo que mi peor lado y mi primer “tocar fondo” salieran. Ese primer año de convivencia adelgacé un montón porque había perdido la capacidad de sentir apetito. Pasaba días sin extrañar la comida, me saciaba con una taza de té al día. Sin embargo, en el espejo nunca pude ver ese cambio. Yo siempre me veía igual. Fue con el pasar de los años y viendo las fotos que me di cuenta cómo me veía para los demás.

Dejamos de convivir un año y medio pero manteniendo la relación a distancia y en 2018 volvimos a vivir juntos en la misma provincia donde no teníamos a nadie. Pasó un año hasta que me dijo que quería volver a Chile para trabajar, juntar plata y volver. Para este punto yo ya no sentía amor alguno por ese hombre. Dejé que se fuera sabiendo cómo iba a terminar. No pasó un mes hasta que la relación terminó. Lloré un día y no volví a llorar jamás.

2019, septiembre y vuelve mi soltería. Viviendo en una casa sola, en una provincia sola. Sin nadie. Empecé a fumar cigarrillos. El mismo día que terminé mi relación, probé mi primer pucho. Me acuerdo que sentí excitación de sólo verme al espejo fumando, rompiendo un poco las reglas que yo misma me había creado. Terminé mi primer año en psicología con buenas notas, aprobando todo. Mirando chicos y chicas aunque no hacía nada. Haciendo dos amigas. Decidí adoptar dos gatitos hermosos que bendijeron mi vida. Después de haber discutido muchas veces con mi ex novio porque quería adoptar un perrito o un gatito y de siempre recibir una negativa a casi todos mis deseos, me digné a tomar ese paso. Un año después llegó Marquesa. Me acosté con un chico una vez, fue un fracaso. Pasó la pandemia, me fue como la mierda en el segundo año de psicología, tuve que recursar. Ahí me volvió a ir bien pero me quedaron pendientes 3 materias que (spoiler:) no volvería a estudiar jamás y coronarían mi póstumo abandono a la carrera. En resumen, 3 años de (casi) cero sexo, universidad y lo que sería el auténtico auge del TOC. Aquí empezaron mis obsesiones respecto al maltrato animal y a mi propia soledad. Gradualmente dejé de salir de mi casa a menos que fuera en la madrugada para buscar las razones de los ruidos, de los maullidos y aullidos. Dormía de 10 a 20 hs, pasaba las noches despiertas y abrumada de paranoias. En esta situación fue que comencé el tratamiento con los que serían mis últimos psicólogo, psiquiatra y nutricionista. Todo mejoraría mucho (enderecé mis rutinas de sueño, hacía ejercicio físico, dieta, estudiaba,...) hasta la llegada de un jóven a mi vida que marcaría el inicio del control del TLP en mi mente y mi vida.

Volvieron mis pensamientos suicidas, cada vez con más volúmen. Mi miedo al abandono, mi inestabilidad emocional, mi impulsividad, mi apego desorganizado que a veces se aferraba y a veces alejaba al resto, todo esto y más empezó durante este vínculo sin nombre. Me hicieron internación domiciliaria. Subí mucho de peso, dejé de hacer ejercicio (aunque fue una decisión francamente satisfactoria) y abandoné el tratamiento. Para este punto, era evidente que el diagnóstico había sido bastante correcto. Pero todavía no despertaba tanto como ahora.

2023 y siento que el TLP está tomando las riendas de mi vida. Este escrito surge a partir de un pensamiento que tuve ayer. Había fumado un poco de marihuana. Lo suficiente como para que mi mente obsesiva hiciera sus debates en baja frecuencia, donde casi no la podía escuchar. Encendí mi compu, me saqué las zapatillas y demás. En medio de todo eso, un pensamiento llega fuerte a mí: Las cosas que estás haciendo, esas impulsividades que tienes que son altamente reprochables socialmente, ese lado despreocupado y rebelde que estás sacando, te están llevando por un camino que no parece que vaya a terminar bien. Perdón, no le estoy haciendo justicia al pensamiento pues no es así como llegó. No lo tuve con tantas explicaciones y vueltas. Fue simplemente la frase: el TLP te está conduciendo a la muerte a su manera. Sin conductas autolesivas, sin intentos de suicidios, sin sobredosis de pastillas. Pero de otra manera.

Tengo altibajos muy marcados de ánimo. Puedo estar muy triste o muy alegre. Cuando estoy de muy buen ánimo, hago la mayoría de mis estupideces. De mis decisiones impulsivas, de mis actos socialmente extraños e imprudentes. Como tomar melón con vino fuera de mi trabajo, fumar en la cena de trabajo, ir a Carlos Paz a la casa de un chico que no conocía demasiado, sin celular ni conocidos en ese lugar. Etcétera. La lista es un poquito más larga y cada vez más bizarra. En ese estado, quizás un poco eufórico, siento que no me importa nada. Que estoy re bien, que para todo hay solución, que nada es demasiado grave. Que nada me para, que soy linda, rara y sensual. Siento que me gusta mi lado lolita, la reacción de la gente ante mi cara. Ahí es cuando gasto plata en hacer regalos innecesarios a gente sólo para agradecerles, resultando un poco rara para los demás. Pero les caigo un poco mejor cuando estoy así. Exceptuando a mis jefes. Aunque creo que hasta a ellos les gusta cuando me encuentro de esa forma, sólo que sigue sin estar bien.

Cuando estoy triste es cuando mis pies vuelven a la tierra, vuelvo a aislarme, me arrepiento de todo lo que hice bajo los efectos de esa alegría sin título. Pues es muy fácil saber si estoy realmente feliz o maniaticamente feliz: me preguntas por qué estoy así y si no sé responderte es porque es sólo fruto de mi inestabilidad anímica y no porque haya un contexto que me dé genuina felicidad.

No obstante, a pesar de la alarma que sugiere la frase “que me está conduciendo a la muerte”, que es dramáticamente negativa, no carece de lado bueno. He pasado la mayoría de mi vida reprimida, haciendo lo que menos caos provoque, lo que ayude a pasar desapercibida en la vida de la mayoría de la gente que me ha conocido. Sin historias que contar, sin amigos con quienes compartirlas, sin experiencias íntimas que llevan al autoconocimiento, sin nada valioso en resumen. Habiendo pasado una década en profunda y constante depresión. La bestia debía despertar eventualmente. Los efectos secundarios de la sexualidad infantil transgredida, del hogar roto y la sociedad superficial tenían que hacer su flamante llegada. Estoy desbordada y al límite pero es un descargue ruidoso de mucho dolor reprimido. Tengo que bramar como un dragón y escupir todo el fuego que hay en mi alma oscura y llena de secretos. Al final de todo eso tendré mi descanso, mi tranquilidad de vuelta, tendré mi satisfacción con la historia que estoy haciendo de mi vida por fin y todo será mejor. Seré madre, tendré una familia y mi vida durará lo que mi salud mental esté dispuesta a colaborar. En parte he llegado a la intuición, por no decir convicción, de que yo no tendré una vida muy larga. Lo siento en el pecho desde los 6 años, cuando miré mis dedos temblorosos como los del papa Juan Pablo II (creo que era él). Siempre me he sentido en el abismo de las cosas, en el fin inminente de todo. No me imagino la vida sin esa sensación, por lo que pienso que existe por una razón. Quizás presiento mi destino.

Hoy en día, quiero luchar un poco contra eso porque ya no quiero morir tanto como antes.

Acabo de tener otro pensamiento fuerte: Quizás estoy llevándome a un punto de no retorno, un poco arriesgado, para castigarme por no hacer nada por la perra de mi ex compañero.

No sé cómo obtener su dirección para que le caiga alguien que lo aparte de la perra y ésta pueda estar mejor. Todos los días que pasan son un castigo de culpa mental porque es otro día que él le podría estar haciendo cualquier cosa a su perra. No sé cómo conseguirla pues no hay otra persona de quien sospecharían que haría eso más que en mí. Lo cual me llevaría a estar un poco expuesta al peligro de un tipo de más de 40 años, enojado y agresivo, con un hermano que hace poco salió de la cárcel y manejaba armas. Además de que toda esa situación es más de lo que yo puedo manejar.

Toda esta impotencia y toda la alegría que pueda sentir hace que tome decisiones que me exponen a demasiado.

O quizás sólo es tomar una actitud justificativa por la culpa que llevo, buscando excusas por mi comportamiento, y en realidad soy simplemente una pésima persona.

En cualquier caso, no todo está perdido.

Todavía mantengo mis principios más fundamentales. Siento que he perdido todo el resto o que se está yendo de mis manos, porque no se está adaptando muy bien a lo que es correcto en la sociedad. Al ser así, me meto en problemas seguido y cada uno es peor que el anterior. (A veces sospecho que algún grado de autismo también tengo, porque no comprendo el mundo como los demás a un grado que es absurdo explicarlo.) No obstante, la Selene, sobre todo de la infancia, está más presente que nunca. Está haciendo un berrinche en mi ser que resulta necesario y aliviador. Sólo que también hace falta un poco de contención para que mi vida no se vaya completamente a la mierda.

Sin embargo no estoy dispuesta a prohibiciones, ni otra internación domiciliaria ni nada por el estilo. Sólo reconozco que soy consciente que no estoy bien aunque me ría mucho, converse más y sea más sociable. Mi mamá considera que estoy mejor que antes sólo que me excedo a veces. Yo no sé si “estar mejor” sea del todo correcto, sino que estoy actuando un poco más normal pero a una edad muy tardía: 26 años. Parezco menos un zombie, que es como estaba antes de todo esto. Nada pasaba en mi vida, no daba problemas pero tampoco era una persona que actuaba normal. Pasé de un lado a lo opuesto en poco tiempo, de no hacer nada a hacer cualquier cosa.

Pasa que… muchas cosas me hicieron entender que casi todo perdió el sentido. Que no quiero ser como los demás. Que estoy bien haciendo lo mío. Que el Gabriel es mi karma porque está en todos lados de mi vida sin estar realmente. Pero que ya está, ya es un muerto que no vale llorar. Sino disfrutar los estragos que ha causado, de los cuales el haberme encontrado como mujer de vuelta es uno de ellos. Mi sensualidad de vuelta, la que él mancilló. Ya casi nada importa. La agresividad de la naturaleza llena todo pedazo de mundo y vida, luchar contra eso es una derrota asegurada. Siente culpa porque es tu castigo mínimo merecido por los actos malos que has tenido. Haz con esa culpa lo que puedas, lo que tu salud mental pueda. Y luego, vive intensamente para que el día que mueras tengas por qué derramar tus últimas lágrimas.

#mental health #personal #bpd #ocd #toc #tlp

1 note · View note

st4rry4pples · 2 years

Text

alas, i have made it back from the trenches (my toilet)

man, what is there to say? kate was the first real queer female representation i had seen in media, which was cool for little gay me. aidy has always been one of my favorites, she just has this loving and fun energy thats impossible to not make you smile. kyle is the most autistic non autistic person ive ever seen and i mean that in the best way possible. not only is he hilarious in all the weird shit hes done on the show but his creations outside of snl are amazing (watch brigsby bear!) and i cant wait to see what he does next (just please dont let it be dressing up as baby yoda dear god). and lastly, pete... pete davidson has gotten me thru some really shitty times. as a kid whos anxiety and hypochondria got so bad to where i couldnt leave the house, it was always cool to see a rad lad like him being so honest with his mental health struggles. ive been thru a lot with pete, all his rich fancy girlfriends, his movies. i remember one day at school i had felt depressed and completely burned out, so durinf my lunch break i watch (part of) his special alive from new york, and suddenly my troubles melted into laughter... until i would find out later that day that school would be shut down do to a pandemic 👍 but his comedy definitely distracted my anxiety for a bit which was cool. no matter his tone deaf choices in women, petey boy is always gonna have a special place in my heart :-)

now, where the hell can i start with you guys. im gonna be open here, i started liveblogging snl in feburary of 2020 (i know im ancient) then the pandemic hit and i fell into the worst mental state of my life. for once i didnt have an answer. i felt completely and utterly useless and didnt feel like i was living in my own body. every day felt the same. of top of that in august of 2020, a friend of mine took his own life. so adding grief onto my isolation made every day feel like a nightmare i couldnt wake up from... that was until i thought of actually doing something and getting in the snl liveblog tag again, where i was very pleasantly surprised at the community that had suddenly blossomed out of nowhere. at first, our crew was small, but it grew and grew with every month and soon it became a tradition i looked forward to every week. things had started to feel real again and i finally had something in life to look forward to even if it was just for an hour and a half every saturday (mid)night.

flash to a year and a half later and i can honestly say i am in the best mental state since i was a kid. sure i have my own set of problems and the world keeps getting wilder and wilder by the minute but i finally feel real yknow? im finally with my friends again and ive gotten so much better with my relationships and myself and balancing things (ok for the most lart i have a shit ton of work to do) hell even with work i finally feel an ounce of motivation, im even motivated to do stuff i like again like draw! i havent drawn reguarly in 3 years! i can honestly say that tuning in with you guys every saturday night has definitely made a difference more than you know. and while a big change may be happening to 8h, hell they got us through a big change and now its time for us to root them through one. thank you all from the bottom of my heart from hearing me ramble about my special interest, i wouldnt be who i am without snl or the comedy of the cast members throughout generations. its shaped me as a person and im proud to contribute to this niche little community :-)

i love you all, take care of yourselves, [insert an snl reference here im too tired to come up with], and i'll see you all in october :-)

#this is so long no one will read this and that is fine #snl liveblog #snl #saturday night live

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c0smicheaux · 4 years

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Third Houses in the Signs

Aries- we see an individual with a fast mind and an aggressive approach to communication. This is someone energized and filled with active ideas, whose mind never stops working. It is a blessing as much as it can be a curse, for the sign of Aries holds our unresolved anger issues just as much as it brings speed, intelligence and clear reasoning. When this position is accented, a person has to learn about consequences of their words, as well as words spoken by other people, and build up their patience for matters they obsessively think about. Stubborn communicators, they can be quite annoying when in a large group, at least until they realize what they need to do to become true leaders, giving respect to everyone around them.

Taurus- thoughts are often slow, static, and turned to hedonistic or material matters. This is one of the most practical and constructive positions, although sometimes irritating for people with third house cusp in signs that belong to the element of Air. When a person born with this position discovers their talent to create, it is easily incorporated into their daily routine, with ease in taking responsibility and handling dull details that would turn others away. This will bring them a lot of satisfaction in the material world, shown through financial gain and everything it has to bring through beauty and a cozy way of life. The greatest challenge of such a mind hides in their lack of flexibility and the inability to accept change, as in all loving matters of the sign of Taurus.

Gemini- The position of the third house in Gemini is the most natural of all positions. It is a blessing in itself, and a person always has a smart approach, clarity in their choice of words, and the same clarity in their mind. In a practical sense, it often speaks of one’s attachment to their sibling, and points out that communication is an important part of a person’s life. Depending on the position and the dignity of Mercury, we can see how challenging or positive their mental world actually is. What people with third house in Gemini often lack is compassion, as well as reason when it comes to practical material issues. More often than not, these individuals need a healthy routine and to build respect for time and their own body in order to truly be satisfied and learn to get in sync with, and speak from their heart.

Cancer- The third house in Cancer speaks of inherited intelligence, for better or for worse. If one is born into a family of well-educated individuals with a wide dictionary, we can safely presume that theirs will be similar and deeply rooted with their ancestry. However, problems with any sort of reasoning especially when it comes to division of rational from emotional issues, has the root in the same place too – their parents. They need to build a strong personality and care for their individuality in order to release some pressure from their mind. The main challenge of each Cancer thinking individual is in expressing their emotions in a practical and acceptable way, and they will often fight the battle of reason vs. emotion even though they should be accepting both rolled into one.

Leo- thoughts are mostly focused on one’s Self. Even though this can be troubling to many friendships and tricky relationships in their lives, these individuals have a task to build up their personality and character with clearly set boundaries towards the outer world. This is a strong position that brings a lot of ego challenges, unless one is truly enlightened and fully aware of their infinite abilities, including the one in which they understand that there is no thing that should be taken personally. In a way, these people can become the happiest of all individuals once they learn to accept and nurture their child within, clear on their own desires and goals in life, and aware of their responsibility. Only then will they express their core personality with easy and shine a light on everyone around them.

Virgo- this is a strange position that is as often weakening as much as it is empowering. While the sign of Virgo exalts Mercury and speaks of intelligence and incredible mental abilities and clarity, it is also a point of practical issues, matters of physiology and routine, and health issues that don’t need to be discussed as much as they like to. In many cases, people born with this position get burdened with their health, turn to the role of a victim, and some even end up in a state of mild or severe hypochondria, simply because they lack emotional satisfaction and search for faults in everything, especially in themselves. They have to develop strong faith and always leave room for love, inspiration and creativity, without digging for rational explanations for every single thing throughout their lifetime.

Libra- we can see someone who thinks and speaks of other people way too often. As much as this position can be good for one’s love life, speaking of childhood sweethearts, handsome neighbors, and the ability to see “the other side of each story”, it is also a challenge to turn to their own inner core unless they are properly built through their upbringing. This is someone who has to have a strong personality, always aware of their own judgment and attitudes, before talking to anyone else about them. Once they learn to incorporate their own opinions into the society, they become great thinkers and orators, with the ability to touch others and raise their confidence, awareness and clarity. If they become too judgmental, it is usually time for them to make an inner change and build a more satisfying personal life.

Scorpio- it is never easily handled. This is a strong, deep mind, often enriched with a sense for dark humor, and thoughts and words that are difficult to remain pure and free of dissatisfaction. This position is a strong one for science, research, and occult matters, but brings challenges in areas of the heart and emotional contacts with the closest people. Darkness of Scorpio is best seen through one’s mind and a person needs deep emotional clarity and enough laughter and easiness in life to accept it with grace and beauty. The best practice for such strong personalities is to imagine beauty daily and choose a creative line of work. If they manage to recognize the good in all things, it will clear up the fog and help them discover incredible treasures within.

Sagittarius- , we instantly see someone who talks a lot. This is a position for philosophical thinkers and people of wide perspectives, opinions that always shift to more positive views, and the ability to use their beliefs in the scope of their practical existence. It can also speak of solutions that always seem distant, in case lack of direction in life is accented and one has no knowledge on their own true path and destination. In a positive setting, these people are optimists, travelers and teachers, blessed by a giving nature and a mind that is always ready to learn. In a negative one, they get lost, talk excessively, while thinking and talking rather than actually acting in their own best interest. Scattered opinions and expressions will easily take over when they are tired and lost in their path through life.

Capricorn- we can see a pretty tough individual. Although Capricorn is the sign of depth and rational choices as well as practical use of all things in life, it is also a sign of karma, damaged things, mistakes and coldness of heart. To keep your third house in Capricorn balance, you cannot detach from your emotional core. Compassion followed by rest is the key to any challenge of this house, especially in cases where a sibling has constant, chronic problems, no matter if they are material, physical, or any other kind. At the same time, strong boundaries and the need for rest are accented, and one can easily give in to stress and discover that as soon as they’ve had enough sleep, their mind clears up and the future seems much brighter, or at least acceptable. If they learn to not take life too seriously, they can be incredible in-depth, practical mentors and a real inspiration for everyone around them.

Aquarius- we instantly see an incredible mind filled with brilliant ideas and a rich social life. This is a rebel that never relies on advice of others, and falls into the field of problems if they start feeding their ego through endless advice they tend to give. The important thing to acknowledge here is that everyone is smart in their own way, and nobody needs any advice given unless they specifically asked for it. With liberal expression and a mind turned to alternative ways of reasoning, these people make good astrologers, innovators, and friends, for as long as they don’t give in to stress and take good care of their body and their physical state. Without a strong physique, one’s incredible mind simply has no grounding to bring its sparkling existence down to planet Earth in a satisfying way.

Pisces- we have to keep in mind that this is a sign of Mercury’s fall. The greatest conflict of emotion and reason is seen here, and it can be confusing, strange, and deeply challenging for one’s ability to speak, write, or even think clearly. However, the sign of Pisces speaks of our talents too, and depending on the position of Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune, we can see that one of these talents can be grounded through positive aspects and dignities of these celestial bodies. In order for the third house in Pisces to reach clarity, all mind-altering substances should be avoided, including alcohol, narcotics, medicaments and even nicotine. Purity within will allow purity of mind, resulting in purity of words and reasonable life choices. If they practice what they preach, they could discover that magic of life is there for the taking.

Source; astrology-zodiac-signs dot com

#astrology #astrology posts #house astrology #astrology facts #houses in the signs

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spookyboogie3 · 4 years

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Analysis Time!

So I was looking into personality types from the Enneagram of Personality and got to thinking about Steven Universe after looking at the Type 2 personality. and HOO BOY do i got some stuff to dissect here.

Lets start with what the type 2 personality is. It goes under the name The Helper or The Giver.

The Helper is the caring, interpersonal type. They are generous, demonstrative, a people-pleaser, possessive, sincere, empathetic, and warm-hearted.

Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved

Basic Desire: To feel loved

So far kind of sounds like Steven.

There are levels to development for each type that go from healthy to average to unhealthy. And i want to look at Steven’s character through out the whole series so far.

Healthy Levels:

Level 1 (At Their Best): Become deeply unselfish, humble, and altruistic: giving unconditional love to self and others. Feel it is a privilege to be in the lives of others.

Level 2: Empathetic, compassionate, feeling for others. Caring and concerned about their needs. Thoughtful, warm-hearted, forgiving and sincere.

Level 3: Encouraging and appreciative, able to see the good in others. Service is important, but takes care of self too: they are nurturing, generous, and giving—a truly loving person.

Through out most the series, Steven goes between these levels and a little bit into the average levels at times. He is a kind, loving kid. He encourages and inspires others around him for the better. He is forgiving to everyone around him. Even the Diamonds, while he disagrees with what they were doing, he gets them change their ways and forgives them for the crimes they committed.

Steven goes around Beach City trying to help everyone he comes across and wants to be helpful and seen as a good person.

He sees the good in many bad guys of the series and wants the best for them and wants to be on good terms with everyone.

Average Levels:

Level 4: Want to be closer to others, so start "people pleasing," becoming overly friendly, emotionally demonstrative, and full of "good intentions" about everything. Give seductive attention: approval, "strokes," flattery. Love is their supreme value, and they talk about it constantly.

Level 5: Become overly intimate and intrusive: they need to be needed, so they hover, meddle, and control in the name of love. Want others to depend on them: give, but expect a return: send double messages. Enveloping and possessive: the codependent, self-sacrificial person who cannot do enough for others—wearing themselves out for everyone, creating needs for themselves to fulfill.

Level 6: Increasingly self-important and self-satisfied, feel they are indispensable, although they overrate their efforts in others' behalf. Hypochondria, becoming a "martyr" for others. Overbearing, patronizing, presumptuous.

In the original Steven Universe series, the highest level Steven probably got to was a level 4 and it wasn't too often. Its not even that bad. Hell, Steven in the movie wasn’t past level 4 to our knowledge.

However, watching Steven Universe Future’s first 10 episodes shows the audience that Steven is moving into more unhealthy levels. Now a level 5 and 6 arent bad necessarily but one line struck a cord with me and was a real inspiration for this analysis.

They need to be needed.

Boy does that sound familiar. Don’t know what im talking about, watch Prickly Pair.

Theres also this

self-sacrificial person who cannot do enough for others—wearing themselves out for everyone.

Thats the whole freaking thing Steven’s been going through in Future.

Now we get into...

Unhealthy Levels:

Level 7: Can be manipulative and self-serving, instilling guilt by telling others how much they owe them and make them suffer. Abuse food and medication to "stuff feelings" and get sympathy. Undermine people, making belittling, disparaging remarks. Extremely self-deceptive about their motives and how aggressive and/or selfish their behavior is.

Level 8: Domineering and coercive: feel entitled to get anything they want from others: the repayment of old debts, money, sexual favors.

Level 9: Able to excuse and rationalize what they do since they feel abused and victimized by others and are bitterly resentful and angry. Somatization of their aggressions results in chronic health problems as they vindicate themselves by "falling apart" and burdening others. Generally corresponds to the Histrionic Personality Disorder and Factitious Disorder.

Now I dont think Steven has hit any of these levels so far but Future isnt over yet. And im scared for the future of Future.

#steven universe #steven universe future #Steven Universe spoilers

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marginalgloss · 4 years

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A little while ago I wrote about Swimming to Cambodia, a copy of which I discovered in a charity shop. I read it and I liked it a lot. And then for a while I forgot about Spalding Gray until one day my wife pointed him out to me in the film Beaches. I think he played a doctor of some kind — I wasn’t really paying attention — but it was enough to get me thinking about his stuff again.

I started trawling YouTube for what I could find. Most of his stuff is out of print, but there at least you can find a few of the monologues — Terrors of Pleasure, Gray’s Anatomy and It’s a Slippery Slope are all delightful. The most interesting primer is Steven Soderbergh’s documentary And Everything is Going Fine, which is assembled entirely from excerpts from Gray’s monologues and interviews. It’s a deft, skilful, and beautifully elegiac piece of work which feels more like one great final performance than it does a conventional biography. Appropriate, perhaps, given that so much of what Gray did was rendering up his life through storytelling.

I also bought a couple of books: Impossible Vacation, which is the only novel Gray published, and the posthumous collection of extracts from his journals. Apparently he laboured for years over the text of Impossible Vacation, with the original draft running to over a thousand pages — the monologue Monster in a Box was actually performed with the manuscript sitting in a scruffy cardboard box at his elbow. The final published form of Impossible Vacation is a relatively svelte few hundred pages in paperback, which is enough to make anyone wonder about the scale of the original.

I was expecting Impossible Vacation to be a bit more novel-like. I was expecting a modern American comic story along the lines of A Confederacy of Dunces, perhaps. But in fact, the novel is a lightly fictionalised version of Gray’s own life. And that’s about as ‘light’ as it gets: it’s funny, but it’s also just as self-involved as any of his monologues. Gray’s protagonist is renamed Brewster North, but not much detective work is required to map North to the author. Much of the novel is mirrored elsewhere in Gray’s stories from the stage: the trip to India, his brief stint as an actor in pornographic movies, the experimental theatre scene in New York; and above all the memory of his mother, and the lasting effects of her suicide.

If you read (and watch) far enough into Gray’s work it feels a little like wandering into a hall of mirrors: we see the same selves and preoccupations reflected over and over again, sometimes in distorted or disturbing ways. Glimpsed in passing the effect is comic, but after a while the effect becomes haunting. There is a moment in Gray’s Anatomy where he describes watching a student in a storytelling workshop, and staring into her eyes, and watching her face somehow disintegrate until the flesh falls from her skull and her face becomes a sort of ball of white light. Sometimes that’s what reading his stories feels like: the contortions of history and storytelling are subject to a relentless focus that becomes so intense that the reader is lulled into a sort of hypnotic compliance.

This feeling of falling into a sort of dissociative trance is not uncommon in his work; it seems emblematic of a sort of transcendental feeling that Gray was perpetually striving for. Hence the dream of the ‘perfect moment’ in Swimming to Cambodia, hence escapism via skiing in It’s a Slippery Slope. Set against that dream of escape is everything the real world has to offer: the anguish of the domestic; the problems caused by anxiety, depression, drinking; the sad, strange, tortuous complications of his love life. In these respects, it hasn’t aged well – I can imagine audiences today having a little less patience for Gray’s occasional sways into mysticism. And his attitude towards women might at times be generously described as ‘problematic’. In the 90s perhaps it was easier to dismiss his casual reports of philandering as the trappings of the tortured artist; today it only seems sad, and a little wearying.

So why is it that I find his stuff so appealing? I’m not in the habit of reading biography. I like podcasts, but while Gray seems like a model for all kinds of modern tendencies in vlogging, I’m not aware of anyone who is doing exactly what he did in the same way he did it. Current trends towards the confessional in stand-up comedy don’t quite fit, either. The form of the thing is so important. He was as much a performer as he was a storyteller. The closest equivalent that I know of is David Sedaris, and I find his stuff intolerable. There are a few reasons for this, but to me Sedaris always seems convinced that the problem is with other people. He is stuck in a mode of perpetual disdain. But with Gray, we are never really left in any doubt that this author is in fact the only author of his own troubles. And yet he also knows how to have fun, sometimes; and I find that endearing because it seems to me more honest, and less spiteful.

One point of comparison is Proust. I don’t mean to say Gray’s prose is exactly Proustian, but they have an endearing amount in common. There’s a perpetual anxiety about death and entropy that often manifests itself as hypochondria. There’s the obsession with the mother, the retiring nature, the preoccupation with irony. The pursuit of the perfect moment through which emotion can become recollected in tranquility. And though both took to entirely different forms of media, it seems like both were attempting something a level of formal innovation which, while initially seeming familiar, approached a new way of committing memory and experience into art.

Impossible Vacation is often intense but it’s not always laugh-out-loud funny. More often it seems possessed by a restless, struggling, enquiring energy. Sometimes the writing is inspired, but it lacks form – the feeling of form that was so dominant in the monologues themselves. As it stands, you wouldn’t consider half of the things that go on in the book as the plot for a novel because (like life) they don’t entirely cohere. And the story ends before it ever really begins, though it does at least contrive a neat circular ending that recalls (lightly) Finnegans Wake.

Still, it’s a shame that the novel is out of print because, much like his monologues, it’s certainly worthwhile; the published journals of Spalding Gray are an entirely different and more difficult thing. The journals are kind of a mess. An enormous amount of biographical heavy lifting is provided by the notes and annotations by the editor, Nell Casey, and without this context any reader would struggle to discern what was going on. But the notes are pretty comprehensive, and in the end this seems as close to a biography as we are ever likely to get. It does, however, take a long time to get going. The journal entries all through the 70s and early 80s are sketchy, and not especially interesting. A lot of the time they’re purely expressive, and we have to be told what it is exactly that they are referring to. It’s only once the monologues get going that his private style becomes elaborate and involved enough to be worth reading.

The picture we get of Gray is less of a single-minded auteur and more of a man who sort of wandered-or-fell into fame as a monologuist. After the fame and exposure of Swimming to Cambodia there is a sense of freewheeling — of doing what he’s doing because it’s what he does, and it’s rarely entirely under his own steam. He is perpetually worried, questioning, uncomfortable. Eventually he would become concerned with the idea that he had used himself up, and that he had no private life worth living outside the performances. But some of this was ameliorated by the late in life arrival of children and a more settled family situation. For a while, he thought himself happier than he had ever been.

In 2001, Gray was involved in a terrible car crash while on holiday in Ireland. His injuries included a broken hip and a fractured skull that likely caused brain damage. The accident changed his life, and afterwards he was never the same. The journal entries from after this point are harrowing — there is no other word for it. I knew of his eventual suicide, but I had no idea until of the extent to which depression utterly consumed his life. I didn’t know about the frequent hospitalisations, the shock treatment, and the pain his failed suicide attempts caused on others. There aren’t many extracts from this time shown, but what we are given was enough at times to make me wonder if any of it should have been published at all. But perhaps there is a purpose in trying to give a picture of the anguish he was in.

All through his life Gray had been preoccupied with the idea of his mother taking her own life. The story he told about this was that this was precipitated by his parents moving house, to a new place away from the ocean, which his mother could never feel at home in. After the accident he and his family also moved house, and he came to regret this decision intensely. The editor Nell Casey calls this ‘his obsession, a mythic rant’. Gray cannot seem to accept the idea that a house might be, as a psychologist puts it, ‘a pile of sticks’. Here is how Gray considers trying to explain it to his sons:

‘…And they said, I’m sure, that, you know, Mrs. Gray—my mom—has other problems about the house, it must be symbolic of something, that same old Freudian rap, you know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a house is just a house. She missed the house. It wasn’t symbolic of something, she really missed walking along the sea. I miss walking in the village, I miss the cemetery, I miss hundreds of things. But boys, listen: when you get to that point, where you have been driven so crazy by something, like for me, when I think about the house, it’s not me thinking about it, it’s thinking me…’

#spalding gray #impossible vacation #swimming to cambodia #books

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puppetstringgallows · 4 years

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It’s been a long while, but we’re back at it again with the Read More

I guess I feel kind of... redundant? Like, there’s no reason for me to be here. Like, don’t be concerned about me, I’m not gonna do anything stupid, I’m just sad. It kinda feels like noone wants to acknowledge me for any period of time. Which is dumb, because I know people are, but... it’s really hard to convince myself that. And I’m tired.

The isolation is hitting me hard, and I feel like I have no real reason to be hit so hard by it. But it’s the smaller things that are hitting me harder, and I want to talk about them but don’t want to take up people’s time/emotional space. Last month I ended up coming down to my housemate at 2am and just. Crying. Unfortunately she’s had to go home to her family for a while, so I don’t really have that in-person interaction anymore.

So that’s fun.

The two issues currently hitting me hardest, which I’m going to type just to get the words out of my brain, are 1 of my moles was acting sus and has sent me into a bit of a hypochondria spiral (it’s... stopped and I’m keeping an eye on it anyway, but I love reminders of my own mortality); and one of the family doggos is currently ill, and the vets aren’t 100% sure what it is (she’s currently on antibiotics for what they suspect is an UTI, bless her) so hopefully that’s what it is and it’s kind of minor, but the symptoms she’s showing could also be indicative of something much more serious, and it’s not like I can go see her if it is. This is legitimately the longest I have gone without seeing my family OR the doggos, and... it’s not like I can whatsapp the dogs, you know? We’ve tried, they don’t understand the screen. I miss them, and the thought that something could happen without me being able to be there is really upsetting.

Anyway, it feels like I can’t actually talk about my problems with people because I don’t want to be a problem myself. Which is ALWAYS a fun prospect.

Time to keep avoiding an email from my supervisor because I’m terrified of not being able to complete my fucking coursework after all this fucking time. Why am I like this.

#home stuff #uni stuff

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wordssometimesfail · 5 years

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Textual Reddie & Queer!Eddie: A Masterpost

So I’ve been planning on doing something like this for a while, but it had fallen to the wayside until @skinks and I started talking about Reddie again, and my weak little heart was rekindled.

Speaking of reKINDLEd (ehh? Ehhhhh?), my Kindle copy of IT is full of highlighted textual support of unresolved Reddie feelings, and a queer reading of Eddie specifically. And lo, a disjointed essay-type meta was birthed. This fucker’s about to get long, so if you’re interested, dive on under the cut – but be forewarned, there are massive spoilers for the book and (probably) Chapter 2 below!

(Seriously, cannot emphasize the MASSIVE SPOILERS enough. If you don’t know what happens and you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read this.)

As a very general disclaimer, I am not going to be including everything that I highlighted. There is a fuckton, including a lot of small moments of Richie and Eddie interacting that don’t showcase anything other than their closeness. I’ll be paring it down here to moments that prove a larger theme, and some standout cuteness. With that said, IT is a 1,300-page behemoth, and it’s definitely possible that I skipped over something. If you know of anything significant that I missed, feel free to reblog with additions.

Note: I will be using terrible, half-assed MLA citations for this. Pagination is from my Kindle copy of the novel. All quotes will be italicized to help differentiate them visually from my points (if something was italicized in the original text, it’ll be unitalicized here). Unless otherwise stated, all bolded emphasis is mine. “--” will be used in place of em-dashes, “/” will be used to denote paragraph breaks.

PART I – ASTHMA

“When Eddie’s nervous he reaches for his aspirator.” (King 372)

It doesn’t get much more explicit than this. We’re told in no uncertain terms that Eddie’s psychosomatic asthma is rooted in nervousness, in things that make him scared and uncomfortable. The trigger for this particular explanation is being overwhelmed by the age and significance of Boston, but in an earlier scene:

“These shoes no longer looked just right... but he supposed they would do for where he was going. And for whatever he might have to do when he got there. Maybe Richie Tozier would-- / But then the blackness threatened and he felt his throat beginning to close up.” (King 112)

This is Eddie’s first on-page asthma attack. It hits him the first time we see him as an adult, having just received his call from Mike to return to Derry. And yet it’s the thought of Richie, not It or Derry, that makes Eddie nervous enough to need his aspirator. Notably, the thought goes unfinished. We don’t know, nor do we ever find out in explicit terms, what Eddie thought Richie Tozier would.

Of course, asthma is the most prominent symptom of Eddie’s hypochondria, so the attacks crop up often in the text. The most interesting of these attacks for our purposes (other than Eddie becoming nervous at the thought of Richie) is the following:

“‘The first of the ‘new murders’ [...] began on the Main Street Bridge and ended underneath it. The victim was a gay and rather childlike man named Adrian Mellon. He had a bad case of asthma.’ / Eddie’s hand stole out and touched the side of his aspirator.” (King 646)

Mike (speaking) tells the gang about the death of Adrian Mellon, and takes care to note three things about him: he was gay, he was childlike, and he had asthma. The connection between Eddie and Adrian is drawn quickly and obviously as Eddie reaches for his aspirator, seemingly out of reflex - but what we can also infer here is that this is making Eddie nervous. He could be nervous because a man with asthma was just killed by It, and he, too, is a man with asthma. He could also be nervous because the parallel that Mike and the prose have none-too-subtly drawn between Eddie and Adrian implies that they have more in common than a respiratory problem. But what?

PART II – EDDIE/ADRIAN

“[The other Losers] are being called--I know that much. Each murder in this new cycle has been a call.” (King 1116)

Mike writes this in the fourth interlude, referring to the way that It’s murders 27 years later all seem to be calling out to the Losers’ Club. By drawing a parallel between Eddie and Adrian through their asthma, King leads us to believe that Adrian’s murder specifically called to Eddie. He also leads us to consider how else they might be linked.

Adrian is virtually Eddie’s opposite. He’s out and proud and in a loving, unstrained relationship. He flirts openly with other men, teases his aggressors, and, to contrast with the neurotic and nervous Eddie:

“‘He didn’t have much in the way of protective coloration. He was one of those fools who think things really are going to turn out all right.’” (King 27)

His openness, however, is what gets him killed. While being harassed by some homophobes, Adrian teases and antagonizes them, and the next time they see him they assault him and unwittingly gift him, half-dead, to Pennywise.

It especially kills me that Adrian’s asthma is not significantly mentioned in his chapter. He makes a comment to his boyfriend that the “air’s better” (King 36) in Derry, which could imply that he has had less problems since he moved there, but the word “asthma” is never used. It’s not relevant to his story, and it’s not brought up until King has to draw a parallel between Adrian and Eddie. Because it’s not relevant to Adrian’s story, the connection that King draws between them feels almost half-assed and weak, until one considers their contrasting personalities and contrasting happinesses in their respective relationships. Along that same line of thinking, the implications of having Eddie directly paralleled by a gay man killed for being gay cast a suspicious light on Eddie’s presumed straightness.

If we accept that Eddie and Adrian are linked, that Adrian’s murder was a specific call to Eddie, then it goes without saying that there is a strong implication here that Eddie is closeted. He is being contrasted with an out gay man who fears no consequence for being out in a small, violent, hateful town. Eddie’s neuroses and fixation on his psychosomatic asthma are contrasted with a man who hadn’t a care in the world - not even his (presumably) real physical condition. The fear and self-hate that dogged Eddie his whole life never bothered Adrian Mellon, until it killed him.

If we accept that Eddie and Adrian are linked, and what that implies, then we can infer that Adrian is what Eddie could have been, were he happy, open, and out - and what happens to Adrian is the exact kind of thing that may have kept poor, terrified Eddie in the closet.

PART III – SEX, QUEERNESS, AND SELF-LOATHING

So, I think we all remember the leper scene--creepy in the 2017 movie, even creepier in the novel. One notable book-only detail is that the leper “[offers] to give Eddie a blowjob for a quarter” (King 400) in addition to chasing him around and being generally disgusting.

“Come back here, kid, the hoarse voice whispered. I’ll blow you for free. Come back here! / No, Eddie moaned at it. Please, go away, I don’t want to think about that.” (King 394)

Eddie is immediately terrified by the mere thought of getting a blowjob, of being touched by someone diseased, of being touched by a man. He doesn’t even want to think about it... and then the question becomes, does he not want to think about sex with the leper, or sex at all? Regardless, it seems pretty normal for an eleven-year-old boy to be scared of a blowjob from a strange adult with open sores on his face. But there is, of course, more to unpack here.

Another difference between book and film comes when Eddie recounts the tale to Richie and Bill...:

“‘He didn’t have leprosy, you dummy,’ Richie said. “He had [syphilis].’ / […] / ‘It’s a disease you get from fucking,’ Richie said. ‘You know about fucking, don’t you, Eds?’ / ‘Sure,’ Eddie said. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.” (King 400)

All of a sudden Eddie isn’t just afraid of disease, but of a sexually transmitted disease. Pennywise’s angle on Eddie is a big fuck-off combo of decay and sex--specifically gay sex. Not only is the “leper” a man offering him sexual favours, but Bill is quick to point out that men can get syphilis from “another g-g-guy if they’re kwuh-kwuh-queer" (King 402). Queerness and gay sex are therefore lumped in with Eddie’s fear of the “leper” from word go.

Since he’s a pre-pubescent child (in that same scene, Eddie recalls trying to masturbate and nothing happening), Eddie’s disinterest in and general apprehension towards sex makes sense without bringing the element of internalized homophobia into the mix. But this is my post, I can do what I want, and Stephen King already brought it into the mix for me.

Eddie is frightened by the thought of queer sex at another notable point in the novel as well, when he recalls a vignette from his and the Losers’ past:

“Patrick Hockstetter was down [in the Barrens]. Before It took him Beverly saw him doing something bad. It made her laugh but she knew it was bad. Something to do with Henry Bowers, wasn’t it? Yes, I think so. And-- / [Eddie] turned away suddenly and started back toward the abandoned depot, not wanting to look down into the Barrens anymore, not liking the thoughts they conjured up. He wanted to be home with Myra.” (King 720)

Myra, for those who haven’t read the novel, is Eddie’s wife. If you’re one of those people (or even if you haven’t read it in a while), you might also be wondering what exactly Patrick Hockstetter did to Henry Bowers in the Barrens that made Eddie balk and suddenly crave his wife’s company. Well, my friends, Patrick tried to give Henry Bowers a blowjob. Eddie has to turn away from the mere thought of two men (well, boys) engaging in a sex act. He has to return to his wife, the implication here being that she is there to shield him from queerness, from queer sex.

And the scene between Patrick and Henry, which we do see later from Bev’s point of view, is extremely telling as to why Eddie has to turn away. Henry gets violent and angry when Patrick propositions him, just like Adrian Mellon’s assailants got violent and angry, just like Eddie’s own mother gets defensive and cruel at the thought of a pair of (unconfirmed) gay men in their town with a nicer house than hers:

“‘Any two men who bother keeping a house so nice must be queers,’ Eddie’s mother had once said in a disgruntled sort of way, and Eddie hadn’t dared ask for clarification.” (King 712)

Eddie here is afraid to even question the root of his mother’s assumptions, or the very fact of her prejudice. Questioning, experimentation, being openly anything other than straight in Derry only earns you bile and violence from the rest of the town, and Eddie knows this. Why would anyone come out? How could they? Isn’t it better to just turn away and leave the thought unfinished?

And it is explicit that Eddie feels somehow wrong and incomplete, in addition to his general aversion to all things queer and sexual. At one point, compounding himself and the homeless “leper”, Eddie has an internal monologue that ends as follows:

“I got me a disease that’s eating me up. My skin’s cracking open, my teeth are falling out, and you know what? I can feel myself turning bad like an apple that’s going soft. I can feel it happening, eating from the inside to the out, eating, eating, eating me.” (King 405)

By conflating himself with the “leper”, Eddie makes the disease his own. He makes his fear of the “leper” falling apart a fear he has about himself. He fears something within himself, something rotten, turning him “bad” - bad like offering a blowjob to Henry Bowers in the Barrens. It’s a literal fear of disease, to be sure, but that sense of being rotten to the core, being bad on the inside in a way you cannot change, also feels like an apt metaphor for internalized homophobia in light of the subtextual queerness of the rest of Eddie’s fear. And especially in light of another scene in which he feels inferior, rotten, wrong:

“Simply reaching for the cubes of bread [at communion] became an act which required courage, and he always feared an electrical shock... or worse, that the bread would suddenly change color in his hand, become a blood-clot, and a disembodied Voice would begin to thunder in the church: Not worthy! Not worthy! Damned to Hell! Damned to Hell!” (King 1247)

We will absolutely come back to the fact that Eddie uses Voice with a capital V, but for now let’s focus on the rest of the scene. Eddie’s fear of being damned and unworthy is rooted in a story his Sunday School teacher told him, about a boy who blasphemed. Even as a small child, he has anxiety about his existence or behaviour cursing him – making him diseased, or turning bread into blood. And, of course, for the purposes of this reading, we can’t ignore the fact that queerness and American Christianity don’t typically go hand-in-hand. This compounded with the suggestion that he is rotten from the inside out suggests that Eddie has some reason to think he has blasphemed – and his persistent association with queerness suggests that this reason may be the knowledge or suspicion that he isn’t straight.

Eddie’s worries even follow him into adulthood:

“Get off it, Eds, Richie’s voice seemed to whisper. You ain’t solid at all […].” (King 715)

I included this quote because it reinforces my point about Eddie not feeling whole or right within himself. It’s not quite time for the Reddie part of this meta, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Richie is nowhere in this scene and has absolutely nothing to do with it, and still it’s his voice that voices Eddie’s subconscious fears about not being “solid”. Again, I will be going into this in more detail later. First, there’s one more element of this queer reading of Eddie that needs to be tackled.

PART IV – THIS ONE QUOTE GETS TO BE ITS OWN PART BECAUSE MY GOD

Most of you are probably familiar with Anthony Perkins, even if you don’t know you are – if you’ve ever been exposed to Psycho, either by watching it or through pop-cultural osmosis, you'll know him as Norman Bates. You also may or may not know that he was famously closeted. He reportedly only had relationships with men until he met and married Berinthia Berenson in his early 40s, and never came out during his lifetime. (Obviously one’s sexual history doesn’t necessarily determine one’s sexuality, but most sources I can find suggest that he was gay, not bisexual.)

Now, if you read Eddie Kaspbrak as gay, this may sound somewhat familiar. Married a woman, never came out, horror icon, it’s all there. But why do I bring it up? Well, because of this:

“Eddie--it was weird but true--had grown up to look quite a little bit like Anthony Perkins.” (King 628)

On its own, it’s a seemingly innocuous, if oddly specific, pop-cultural reference. Nothing to write home about. Compounded with everything else we know about Eddie, and everything else I’ve covered above? It’s telling as balls. King could have simply described Eddie, as he does immediately after this line, but he takes the time to compare a character repeatedly associated with queerness and sexual repression to a closeted gay man who eventually married a woman.

(Note: admittedly, IT would’ve been written in the early-mid 80s, at which point Perkins was not officially known to be gay, but according to my father there were plenty of rumours. He was, additionally, known as a repressed, shy “mama’s boy” who was made nervous by female attention. Sound like anyone else we know?)

PART V – REDDIE

And now for the main event.

If I unpack every individual piece of Reddie goodness to the degree that I’ve unpacked Eddie himself, we’ll be here for another 2,500 words. So, I’m only going to hit three major points:

PART VA – CLOSENESS

Richie is all over Eddie. He frequently pinches Eddie’s cheeks, calls him cute, and is all-around physically and verbally affectionate with him. Some notable examples:

“Richie […] pinched Eddie’s cheek. / ‘Don’t do that! I hate it when you do that, Richie.’ / ‘Ah, you love it, Eds,’ Richie said, and beamed at him.” (King 384-85)

This is their first on-page interaction, mind you. This moment sets the stage for the rest of their relationship.

“Richie jumped to his feet a second time and pinched Eddie’s cheek. ‘Cute, cute, cute!’ Richie exclaimed.” (King 390)

“‘[My aunts] all pinch my cheek and tell me how much I’ve grown,’ Eddie said. / ‘That’s cause they know how cute you are, Eds--just like me. I saw what a cutie you were the first time I met you.’” (King 446-47)

Listen. Do you think I’ll ever get over this? Do you think I can move on, knowing that this exists? Richie teases everyone, but he only ever uses “cute” for Eddie.

“‘Take it easy, Eds,’ Richie soothed, and leaned toward him. / ‘Don’t call me Eds and don’t you dare pinch my cheek!’ [Eddie] cried, rounding on Richie. ‘You know I hate that! I always hated it!’ / Richie recoiled, blinking.” (King 668)

This scene takes place when they’re adults, and I love it for a number of reasons – the easy return to form for both of them, Richie genuinely trying to comfort Eddie, and Richie’s surprise at being snapped at. My heart goes out to the man.

“‘I hate it when you call me Eds.’ / ‘I know,’ Richie said, hugging him tightly, ‘but somebody has to toughen you up, Eds. When you stop leading the sheltered igs-zistence of a child and grow up, you gonna, Ah say, Ah say you gonna find out life ain’t always this easy, boy!’ / Eddie began to shriek with laughter.” (King 1334)

There are quite a few scenes where they make each other laugh, but this one is my personal favourite.

And the cherry on top:

“[Richie] slapped Eddie’s can.” (King 1322)

The context of this is less than shippy (they’re squeezing through a tight passageway, Richie is behind Eddie and needs him to move forward), but there are few ships that can say that party A has canonically smacked party B’s ass, and I think we should appreciate that more as a fandom.

There’s also a strong element of protectiveness – Richie is very protective of Eddie in a way that Eddie’s mother isn’t. He genuinely pays attention to Eddie’s needs and tries to do right by him:

“It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. […] Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. ‘Bite on this, Eddie,’ he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.” (King 903)

“Richie heard Eddie cough twice […] and then fall silent again. He shouldn’t be down here, he thought […].” (King 968)

“...Eddie [agreed to follow Bill into the sewers] last. / ‘I don’t think so, Eddie,’ Richie said. ‘Your arm’s not, you know, looking too cool.’” (King 1251)

“Richie turned Bill toward him, looked at him as you would look at a man who is hopelessly raving. ‘Bill, we have to take care of Eddie. We have to get a tourniquet on him, get him out of here.’” (King 1396)

Hey fun fact? Fun fucking fact, Eddie’s already dead in this scene and Richie knows that.

On a cheerier note, and to add one last dimension to Eddie and Richie’s closeness, Richie is the only person with whom we see Eddie intentionally swapping spit/germs (outside of ritualistic bloodletting). Not only does Richie use Eddie’s aspirator at one point, but there’s also this scene:

“‘I can carry [the Parcheesi board],’ Eddie said, a little out of breath. ‘How about a lick on your Rocket?’ / ��Your mom wouldn’t approve, Eddie,’ Richie said sadly. […] ‘[…] Ah say you kin get germs eatin after someone else!’ / ‘I’ll chance it,’ Eddie said. / Reluctantly, Richie held his Rocket up to Eddie’s mouth... and snatched it away quickly as soon as Eddie had gotten in a couple of moderately serious licks.” (King 1243)

The obvious humour of this scene aside (poor Richie, having to share), the fact that hypochondriac Mama’s boy Eddie doesn’t mind Richie’s germs in particular is both sweet and interesting. The imagery here, of Eddie licking Richie’s Rocket despite his mother’s disapproval (compounded with the pre-established association between Eddie and blowjobs) is just... interesting, to say the least. As is the fact that I totally stole this scene and reversed the roles for the sake of a fic that I would like to pimp as a reward for making it this far into this monstrosity. It has a happy ending, don’t worry.

What does all of this put together signify? Richie and Eddie are close. They clearly love each other as friends, and the almost flirtatious touching, cute-calling, teasing, protectiveness, and Rocket-licking can also all signify the beginnings of something else as well. If nothing else, it’s fun, sweet fic fodder.

PART VB – THE VOICE (WITH A CAPITAL V)

This is one of my favourite details. Eddie thinks of all the Losers from time to time, but Richie is straight-up one of the voices in his head. Richie refers to his impressions and characters as Voices with a capital V, and Very often, Eddie will think in them. He’ll hear jokes in them, Pennywise will taunt him with them, he’ll hear the very criticism and hate that he fears hurled back at him in Voices. Right from the start:

“‘Had any good chucks lately, Eds?’ [Eddie] says out loud, and laughs again.” (King 374)

As he drives to Derry, Eddie is already laughing and delighting in the thought of his friends (specifically Bill and Richie) and the way they used to be. Later in the same scene:

“‘Sure, kid, EV-ery day,’ he says in a Richie Tozier Voice, and laughs again.” (King 376)

King quickly establishes that Richie’s Voices are a source of joy for Eddie, and that Richie himself is one of the Losers that Eddie is most looking forward to seeing. Indeed, in several scenes (including one of the ones quoted above), we see Eddie laughing at or with Richie when he does his Voices, both in the present and the past. But Eddie’s love of the Voices gets twisted by his own subconscious fears – I mentioned earlier that it is a Voice with a capital V that tells Eddie that he’s damned to Hell during his imaginary blood-communion. And it’s Richie’s voice that reminds Eddie that he’s not “solid”, to cap off a scene where he literally runs away from thoughts of queerness and sex. Eddie’s fear of himself becomes conflated with the Voices in a way that suggests his fear is of Richie, of Richie’s hatred, contempt, and dismissal. He is afraid that Richie sees him as unworthy, damned, unsolid. He is afraid that Richie sees the thing that’s eating him from the inside out.

Eddie wants to be home with Myra. It’s easier to keep Richie and his Voices in his head than to risk what they would (--) do if they saw all of Eddie clearly.

PART VC – EDS & EDDIE’S DEATH

Yes, we all know and love “Eds”. We love Richie being a little shit, we love Eddie being his tsundere self, and we love that Eddie canonically has a soft spot for the nickname:

“Man, he had hated it when Richie called him Eds... but he had sort of liked it, too.” (King 374)

We also love (or hate) that “Eds” factors into Eddie and Richie’s final exchange in the novel:

“But there was something else [Eddie] had to say [before he died]. / ‘Richie,’ he whispered. / ‘What?’ Richie was down on his hands and knees, staring at him desperately. / ‘Don’t call me Eds,’ he said, and smiled. He raised his left hand slowly and touched Richie’s cheek. Richie was crying. ‘You know I... I...’ Eddie closed his eyes, thinking how to finish, and while he was still thinking it over he died.” (King 1386)

(A.k.a. the scene that nearly made me throw my Kindle across the room.)

This ties into a broader theme with Eddie that I only began noticing when I started compiling my notes for this meta – his thoughts, when connected to other men, queerness, or sex, often go unfinished. He cuts them off before they stray somewhere that makes him nervous (the thought of Richie giving him an asthma attack), before they stray anywhere at all (the memory of Patrick and Henry making him yearn for Myra, not wanting to think about blowjobs), or before they even become thoughts (not daring to question his mother’s homophobic comments). And here, when he has to say one thing before he dies, when he’s finally allowing himself to conclude a sentimental, intimate thought that he doesn’t even know how to word... he’s cut off one last time.

And we don’t know what he was going to say. We can speculate, we can infer, but we don’t know, just as we will never know what “Richie Tozier would”.

Richie Tozier seems to know, though. When he realizes they’ll have to leave Eddie’s body behind, he kisses Eddie’s cheek (just as Eddie touched his in his final moments, and in contrast to the way he used to pinch them) and...:

“Richie got up and turned toward the door. ‘Fuck you, Bitch!’ he cried suddenly, and kicked the door shut with his foot. It made a solid chukking sound as it closed and latched. / ‘Why’d you do that?’ Beverly asked. / ‘I don’t know,’ Richie said, but he knew well enough.” (King 1427)

Richie’s shutting the door on Pennywise and the sewers and the whole horrible tragedy of it all, yes. But he’s also furious with the grief of losing Eddie, and shutting the door that will now forever separate Eddie’s final resting place from the hole where he died. Bev’s question allows Richie to do just what Eddie did, too – keep it quiet, cut it off, not acknowledge what he’s avoiding or what he’s just lost. Still, he knows well enough.

PART VI – CONCLUSION

I don’t know for sure that King intended for Eddie to be closeted, but I think he did. He’s gone on the record that he believes in leaving stuff like this for the reader to figure out. There are a lot of scenes, a lot of small moments, that suggest that Eddie is gay, and while many of them make sense without that reading, the entirety of the picture they paint does not. I’m partial to Reddie, and as I’ve demonstrated above, I believe there is a lot of textual evidence to support the theory that they had feelings for each other. Eddie’s death alone, and the fact that the last thing he had to say needed to be addressed to Richie while Eddie held his face in his hands, is... a LOT. But I’ll be honest – my loyalty is to queer!Eddie on its own.

If Eddie Kaspbrak is gay, then his story is ten times more heartbreaking. It’s a story of fear, not just of the supernatural but of the very real hatred and pain he would have faced being openly gay in Derry. It’s a story of fearing that something inside of him was rotten and sick and sinful, and that one of his closest friends in the world thought so too. It’s a story of self-loathing. And it’s a story without an end, because Eddie could never let himself think of how to finish admitting what he needed to admit to himself. The truth was lost in asthma attacks, in Myra, in death. In that sense, it’s fitting that King never explicitly stated that Eddie was gay, if that was indeed his intent – it's one more thing we’ll never know for sure, because Eddie couldn’t bring himself to tell us.

THAT BEING SAID. My loyalty is to queer!Eddie. Which means that my loyalty is to making this shit better, exploring and dissecting the hell out of it, and fixing it. Give Eddie Kaspbrak the ending he deserved! Let him finish his thoughts! Take these quotes, draw inspiration from them, and let’s all cling to each other in preparation for Chapter 2.

#it stephen king #stephen king's it #reddie #eddie kaspbrak #gay eddie kaspbrak #it meta #reddie meta #Aaliya writes #I have been working on this... for a long time #please tell me what you think and what I've missed #unless what you think is that eddie isn't gay because why are you here then #why did you read this #who are you

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randomslasher · 5 years

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I’m a hypochondriac. This is how I cope.

The following is a personal post about my experience with hypochondria, and a list of coping strategies and advice to others who also suffer from this debilitating form of anxiety. Specifically, it is aimed at people who may not have been living with their condition for long, and may not have many strategies to cope with it yet.

Anyone is welcome to read it, but if you are not a hypochondriac, I would ask that you keep your thoughts and comments to yourself, unless they are thoughts/comments of support. This post isn’t for you. (this post is double-spaced for accessibility and ease of reading)

Yep, that’s right: I’m a hypochondriac. No, that doesn’t mean I “want to be sick,” nor does it mean I harass my medical team with constant complaints of various imaginary ailments.

The stereotypical hypochondriac you see on TV and in the media is, like so many other representatives of various mental conditions, nothing but a degrading caricature of a condition that leaves 4-6% of the population debilitated with the persistent fear of illness.

Read that word again: fear. Fear isn’t something we want to be feeling. It’s something we seek relief from feeling, in fact.

So please, if your preconception of hypochondriacs is that we want to be sick, erase that preconception from your mind right now, because we don’t. We’re literally terrified of being sick.

For some of us, yes, that manifests in frequent doctor visits, but for others, it manifests in a head-in-the-sand approach that makes us avoid doctor’s visits for years on end.

Take me, for example.

My hypochondria centers around three distinct fears: heart attack, diabetes, and my teeth being bad.

As a result, I have avoided the dentist for close to six years, even though my insurance pays for annual cleanings, and I live in terror of getting my annual physical.

Interestingly, though I do visit the doctor frequently, it is NOT as a result of my hypochondria.

My hypochondria does NOT have anything to do with the real condition that I suffer from (my bad back).

No, my persistent fears relate to my weight, and to the fact that my parents convinced me from a young age that I was going to die before I hit 40 if I didn’t lose that weight.

(Never mind the fact that my labs have ALWAYS come up good in my annual physicals--apparently facts do not play a role in fear tactics).

Combine my parents’ fear tactics with my own ADHD (hyperfixation) and anxiety disorder, and you ended up with me: an adult living in constant fear of either having a heart attack or developing Type II diabetes at any second.

Sounds fun, right?

Here’s what many people don’t really realize about hypochondriacs: it sucks to live in this much fear. It’s exhausting.

And believe it or not, we KNOW we’re being irrational. We KNOW we can be annoying. We know our constant “oh my God THIS TIME I’m dying!” fears are probably false. We know that needing constant reassurance is actually making us worse.

But just like you can’t tell a depressed person to ‘snap out of it and stop being so sad!,’ you also can’t tell a hypochondriac to ‘snap out of it and stop being scared.’

Our brains are tormenting us, and breaking that cycle is not a matter of willpower--it’s a matter of finding ways to cope, and treating the root of the problem, whatever it may be.

The rest of this post is for people like me, who suffer from this miserable condition that sends us into spirals of terror at the slightest symptom. I’m going to tell you how I cope, and some of the things I’ve learned over the last 15 years of living with this condition.

My hope is that my experience may help some of you learn to manage this miserable (and misunderstood) disorder a little better, and with a little more kindness.

***

Reminder: If you are not a hypochondriac and you decide to read on, please respect my request that you keep your own thoughts and opinions to yourself.

This is not about you; it’s not about the person you know who might have this condition (unless you want to @ them to read this post).

It isn’t about similar conditions that feel/sound/look like this one.

Nor should you consider this a place to shit on us--we get that enough.

Be a decent human being, and if you want to learn more about what we go through, you’re welcome to read on, but heed this reminder.

***

So: you’re like me.

You’re a hypochondriac.

Your brain torments you day in and day out with the terror that Something Is Wrong, but you worry that no one will believe you. I understand. And I have some coping mechanisms and general “rules of hypochondria” that I sincerely hope can help you.

1) NEVER GOOGLE YOUR SYMPTOMS. This one I’ve put in all caps, because it is critically important.

While I understand the temptation (and while I’ve definitely fallen prey to it a few times, full disclosure), googling your symptoms is a terrible idea if you are a hypochondriac.

First of all, though there are a number of medical resources available to you online, they are very broad and generalized, and if you google “chest pain” you’re going to get results from “strained ligament” all the way to “heart attack.”

Google is virtually useless as a diagnostic tool when you’re dealing with vague symptoms, and for a hypochondriac, we can do very real damage to ourselves by giving our brain a list of symptoms to manufacture.

I said ‘manufacture’ because:

2) Understand the human brain is not an objective device.

People compare the brain to a computer, rational and logical and incapable of deception. They are very wrong.

The human brain is actually an incredibly subjective, suggestible device. It can literally be tricked into falling in love, or given a false memory (cw: discussions of abuse and trauma in the linked article). It’s also very accommodating in that it can literally manufacture symptoms on request.

For example: did you know that it is possible to manufacture all the symptoms of pregnancy, including weight gain, swollen breasts, missed menstruation, morning sickness, even the sensation of fetal movement and the production of breast milk (in people with mammaries)--all without being pregnant? It’s a condition called pseudocyesis, and it is proof of the brain’s ability to manufacture clear and “incontrovertible” symptoms, even in the absence of a causal condition.

It is very important for hypochondriacs not to feed our brain’s already-heightened suggestibility by giving it symptoms to create, because our brain is a very accommodating organ: if we are fixated on a particular symptom, our brain will do its best to produce that symptom for us.

(Again: this does not mean we WANT our brain to do this. What it means is our brain recognizes the strong emotion tied into a particular idea and creates a reality based on that idea. Human brains are very good at creating their own reality, which is why the placebo effect happens--sometimes even to patients who know they’re being given a placebo!).

3) Do not google the ‘warning signs’ of the conditions that scare you. I know this may seem counter-intuitive, especially in a culture that goes out of its way to insist we know the warning signs for everything from a stroke to the flu.

But for hypochondriacs, knowing is dangerous (see point 2).

The way I get around needing to be aware of dangerous symptoms without knowing what they are is: I use a third party.

My partner is well aware of my condition, knows which particular ‘triggers’ scare me most, and is ready as a voice of reason to help me understand my symptoms. If I start experiencing a set of symptoms and I can’t shake the fear on my own, I run them by her. She will either check on them herself online, or run them through her own experiences to assure me that they are normal and common (which usually they are).

She helps me re-examine my day to pinpoint reasons for them (if I’m feeling excessively sleepy, for example, she will remind me that it’s more likely due to my working 11-hour days, or the fact that my back pain rarely lets me sleep deeply or for the entire night, than it is to the sudden development of diabetes). She is endlessly patient and always willing to listen, so my fears never feel dismissed, but she CAN help me rationalize them away in most cases.

4) Know that it’s always going to feel like “this time, it’s different.”

Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and in the case of hypochondriacs, it’s easy to look back at a previous episode of panic and fear and say, “Ah, yeah, I can see now that I was panicking, not actually having a heart attack.”

But that kind of objectivity is nearly impossible to manufacture in the moment.

In the moment, it will always feel like “this is the one time it’s finally real,” -- something that increases our fear, since a large part of our fear is based on the idea that, when it IS finally real, that’ll be the time no one believes us.

Understand that your conviction about this time being the time it’s really something really wrong is part of your condition. It may be cold comfort in the middle of an attack, but it’s something to try to keep in mind.

5) Find coping strategies.

For an inwardly-fixated condition like hypochondria, it is critically important to develop ‘escape routes’ --ways to cope with your condition that don’t make it worse.

Googling symptoms or constantly rushing to the doctor/urgent care/ ER will make it worse, because you are actually feeding your brain’s need for that reassurance and validation.

And, just like getting a ‘hit’ of an addictive substance, that feeling of reassurance and relief will start getting harder and harder to find.

Instead, find other coping strategies.

The best one I’ve found is distraction. When I feel a panic spiral setting in, I will put on a movie, or go for a walk, or start working on a project of some kind. I’ll hop on tumblr or start taking silly online quizzes.

If I can effectively distract myself from my symptoms and they abate or disappear altogether, that is “proof” I can use as ammunition against my fears later if the symptoms try to recur.

Because if the symptoms disappeared when I was distracted, then they were clearly being manufactured by my brain (serious symptoms don’t vanish because you started listening to a podcast).

6) Manage the underlying cause. For most people with hypochondria, there is something driving our condition. Maybe it’s ADHD causing an inwardly-directed hyperfixation. Maybe it’s depression causing symptoms. Maybe it’s anxiety causing us to spiral into panic attacks.

Whatever the cause, our distress is very real. We deserve to live without debilitating fear. If you approach a doctor, do so with the intent to find out how to manage your actual condition--hypochondria--instead of doing so in order to “check” your symptoms.

Let them know the fear you live with. Let them know you’re aware it’s irrational, but that it is still debilitating. Tell them in what ways it interferes with your life (do you call in sick a lot? Lose sleep? Have you lost friends or had friendships become strained or distant?).

You deserve treatment. Just remember, the thing we need to focus on treating is the hypochondria itself, not the diseases/conditions it has us convinced we have.

---

If you read this far, and you are a recently-diagnosed, self-diagnosed, or untreated hypochondriac, chances are some of this may have made you angry. That’s okay. When I was figuring all of this out for myself the first time, I got angry a lot, too.

“I’m not making this up!” “This is really happening!” “I can literally feel this pain!” --All of that is true. Like I said, hypochondria is a real condition in which your brain manufactures real symptoms and in which you feel real terror and panic. None of that is fake. And all of it is cause to seek help, because all of it can have a real and lasting impact on your quality of life.

But self-awareness is the best place to start. Keep track of your symptoms. Have an objective third-party to help you ‘check’ yourself when you experience them. And know that just because the cause of your pain is mental instead of physical, that does not mean you deserve help any less.

If I think of anything more, I’ll reblog and add onto this post, but I think this is a decent start. I hope this can help at least one or two people out there who are suffering from this very real and often-maligned condition.

Our symptoms may not be what we think they are, but that doesn’t make our experience of them--or our suffering--any less real. We deserve help too.

(P.S. If you are a hypochondriac who has been managing their condition and has more advice/suggestions to add, your input is welcome. I am going on about 15 years of experience only, and I know there are probably things I missed. I would also definitely not mind more coping strategies to try out!)

#hypochondria #hypochondriac

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ratherashleigh · 5 years

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the sign is an accurate account of the artist.

i've started and stopped a chunk of thought in both public and private, but maybe it's healthier just to acknowledge that things are a constantly shifting landscape and it will only be accurate at the moment i capture it.

a few months ago i shared that the mental health system has finally caved and deemed me depressed. i don't remember if i also shared that they gave me a gold star for severe anxiety. it's been a barrel of laughs around here, let me tell you. the really fun part is that the actual panic attacks are triggered by pain, which is hilarious if you've met me and my cavalcade of medical ailments, but it's only ~mystery pain~ that seems to do the trick. the other really fun part is that people around me keep dying. as time went on it stopped being about pain so much as anything weird, and let me tell you, the body does a lot of weird things. so it's partly real and partly imagined that every day is another step closer to dropping dead.

a couple of weeks ago i finally, finally, finally got in to see my neurologist. you may remember her from that time i went to a neurologist and she was so hot i nearly died. the good news there was that i'm not dying, the anxiety just triggers a textbook definition of long term stress responses in me. the bad news is that response is... is exactly what sets off my anxiety.

it's not all bad news though. wrecking my ankle wasn't a problem. i'm good with my shoulder flare-ups. and i'm calling it a win that today i wandered off to the radiologist with a referral that said "please rule out malignancy" and not once did i freak out even a little bit. the best part was still when they were like, this is totally fine, though :) hypochondria is when minor symptoms cause extreme concern, but sometimes a spade is just a spade that looks like a very serious spade on the surface.

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autistickitten · 6 years

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Hi. I have had quite severe depression for about 7 years that has never been officially diagnosed. Up until now, segregating my academic life and everything else as well as anxiety has kept me just about alive and functioning. However, I am really struggling with that academic/rest of life partition and recently my school work has suffered. Seeing as seven years of untreated depression mounts up a bit, and even after four years of therapy I am not getting better. Finally after three weeks of (1)

being really bad to the point where my school had to be notified, I was experiencing frequent memory lapses and have been suicidal pretty much the whole time, when my parents and I went for the review session we basically said, this can’t go on.

Both my parents and me want me on medication and to have an actual diagnosis of at least depression, if not everything else.

My trouble arises in 1) the only psychiatrist in my area did my ASD assessment and I sent her a four page PDF document which basically told her to shove it because she’s clearly incompetent and can’t properly do her job if she can’t spot clear autism outside a four year old white cis boy.

The other is I really struggle to fully communicate how everything inside my head affects me. One, I am very worried about the effect truthfulness would have (I’m nearly 18, so hopefully no sectioning type repercussions can occur anymore), so I have spent about four years lying and also, words are hard.

No matter what I say, I can never properly impress upon someone how dire my situation is and how much I am struggling. I barely function (don’t shower, brush my teeth, eat regularly, exercise, etc), am passively suicidal constantly, have a history of direct and indirect self harming behaviour (which I have not mentioned) and don’t experience joy or anything just numbness and a lot of depersonalisation.

This is only the depression part. Using long words does not convince doctors I am struggling.

How can I make them understand how hard it is so I can get the help I need? I am going to fail out of high School if I don’t manage this if I don’t end up seriously harming myself first. Thank you.

I see one major upside here and that is that both you and your parents are on the same page about what you want.

How much of this do they know ? In an ideal world (and yeah, I am aware that this is not an ideal world), a struggling child can open up to their parents and have them do the “make the professionnals trust the child” part.

I understand why you’re scared of being 100% honest with a professionnal, but the more your parents know about your situation the better they can advocate for you. Be open with them about your communication difficulties, at least, and tell them that they NEED to support you if the doctor doubts you.

As for your other problem, yikes ! I’m sorry your previous therapist didn’t help you adequately. Would you/your parents be open to travelling a bit in order to seek a different professionnal’s help ? I don’t know where you live, but the nearest big city should have more options than a single therapist. I read somewhere that training hospitals might be able to provide help (and sometimes even diagnoses) because doctors in training need to see real patients the more they advance in their studies, so that might be an option.

I hope this helped a little bit !

- Sister Cat

Two things I’d suggest: One, as an effort to get through how much you’re being affected by this, I think you should take this ask and either print it or write it out. It’s very candid, and it might be useful to be able to pull it out when words or thoughts fail you in the moment.

Two, drop using Big Words when talking to professionals. Because professionals aren’t very professional, and when a patient knows Too Much about their own problems and experiences, they see it as threatening, and often chalk it up to hypochondria and WebMD and other stuff like that. It’s total BS but it’s still a prevailing thought, especially in the psychiatric community, that sick people Aren’t Supposed To Know that they’re sick.

Worse comes to worst, primary care physicians can prescribe antidepressants. So if you have a regular family doctor, and your search for a competent psychiatrist fails, try talking to you PCP. They might be able to help you get on a medication that works for you.

-Brother Cat

#Anonymous #self-harm cw #suicide mention cw

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wearejustvisiting · 5 years

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I never got to go to college.

When my older brother went, he had no scholarships. He went out of state, for a very expensive program. The rest of the family were proud of him. I was just glad he was gone, I would only have to see him a few weeks out of the year, shit was fine.

When my twin brother got to go to college? It was really nice. He got like 2 scholarships, one f them meant he paid in state tuition, it was really good to see him go into something he really wanted to do. I was proud of him. We all were.

But I also knew it sorta sealed my fate.

My parents saved money for us to go to school, but I knew that if I went, it would be bad. I would have to go out of state, I wanted to use college as an opportunity to get out of here. I’m not a particularly smart kid. I got good grades, I studied well, turned in assignments on time despite (or maybe even IN spite) of my depression and problems reading. I wasn’t getting any scholarships.

And none of the things I wanted to major in would lead to ‘real jobs’. I would have gone for a degree in media studies, maybe creative writing. My older brother was going to be a professor. My twin is going to be an elementary music school teacher. Both of those jobs are extremely important.

It didn’t help that my mom’s side leans conservative, it didn’t help that I had convinced myself it wouldn’t work. My depression obviously did me no favors. I had always been the odd one out of my family. I was the weird one, the one with the hair, the one who changed their name, the one who didn’t talk or talked too much about cartoons. The one who didn’t like change.

My older brother dropped out of college. The money we spent on him went to him cheating on his girlfriend, asking for nudes from a minor four times, and lying about being a talent agent while he was driving a truck for dollar general, all the while foisting his rent payments on my parents.

He wasted his shot. He’s never gonna get to go back to college.

My twin brother, though? He’s loving it. He’s already got plans, he wants to stay on course, get his degree, he wants to do this; not to beat my older brother at this, but because he WANTS to do this.

He won’t fail because he doesn’t want to.

And that leaves me. Stuck in my hometown, probably gonna end up dying here some day after leaving my chances alone. I was convinced I was going to kill myself by age 18. Now I’m a 20 year old with no specialized skills, chronic migraines, depression, paranoia, hypochondria, and who knows what else.

I never got to go to college.

And I’ll never forgive my older brother for it.

#mari rambles #personal

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voguestrology-blog · 6 years

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neptune in the houses and personal danger

neptune in the houses can lead to unhealthy idealisation in that particular area of life, which can create difficult personal problems.

1st house: neptune here creates compassion towards others that is indiscriminate. you can trust without much thought and in a way that sometimes leads to unrealistic expectations and ultimate disappointment. don’t lose your kindness, but learn to exercise greater caution in spreading it

2nd house: you don’t think of yourself as money oriented and pride yourself on that fact, but this sometimes results in financial carelessness. a lack of materialism shouldn’t mean a lack of care. try and avoid naive spending - if it sounds to good to be true it probably is.

3rd house: your interest in particular topics can sometimes become obsessive and while this isn’t unhealthy in itself, this immersion can lead to neglect of other aspects of your life. a balance is important. although you may not want to, try and also avoid tuning out information you find boring as it can often be pertinent!

4th house: you may have a greater sense of obligation towards your family than most and have a tendency to take on a maternal role to everyone you know. this is valid, but don’t overextend your emotional abilities to the point of exhaustion - you don’t always have to take care of others.

5th house: there may be a tendency to hold an ideal partner up so highly that relating to real people becomes a problem. you may find yourself attempting to change the person you are in a relationship with and finding their reality hard to accept. it is important to recognise flaws as intrinsic to all of us, and separate your fantasies (which can be healthy!) from the actuality of a relationship.

6th house: having a job you find unappealing can take a personal toll, as the workplace should be a realm of peace. a job you dislike can lead to poor performance due to daydreaming, stress and hypochondria. try to find a job you’re in tune with.

7th house: the charitable inclination here can attract negative influences and lead to relationships where you’re particularly susceptible to being taken advantage of. be careful of romanticising unhealthy partnerships. take time to get to know people - your nature may make a whirlwind romance seem appealing, but it could lead to crisis in the long term.

8th house: you may have difficulty in separating sex and romance, and a tendency to become over involved with people who don’t reciprocate your feelings. setting boundaries in relationships and communicating with sexual partners is essential.

9th house: spirituality and mysticism have always been more interesting to you than practical study. your search for connection can create naivete however, and you may try and find meaning where there is none. you may also be vulnerable to cults and charlatans and it’s important to discern between truly enlightened souls and those pedalling false belief systems.

10th house: you may idolise a boss or authority figure, particularly if they are male, and this can lead to confused decision making, especially in the work place. it’s essential to separate your personal and professional life, and also recognise that your public image may not necessarily correlate with your true self, as a failure to do so can create a false impression of your reality.

11th house: you may overlook the faults of your friends to a detrimental degree and when you are confronted with them react aggressively. your admiration for you friends is admirable but it is important to recognise a person as a whole, or you risk disappointment.

12th house: you are deeply sensitive and as such too much time with others can be overwhelming. your time alone is important but don’t retreat from the world entirely. isolation and interaction must be done in equal measure an your friends can help you deal with the intensity of your emotions.

#neptune #houses #mine #astrology #i hope this is helpful #.

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mengfeihe-blog · 5 years

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Contextual Studies: Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is defined as:

‘A system of psychological theory and therapy which aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association.’ (Oxford Dictionaries online)

Why is it relevant to talk about psychoanalysis?

Art has similar commons to psychoanalysis, art makes psychoanalysis visible.

The Unconscious

The idea of the ‘unconscious mind’ is key to psychoanalysis. The treatment itself revolved around the analysis of various things Freud believed brought it to the surface, including:-

Free association Dreams Parapraxis

Freud believed that unlocking the unconscious was key to curing his patients.

Ice burg theory. 80% unconscious under the water. It drives basic needs or pleasurable.

The id - our basic ‘animal instincts’ and primal desires - it works on the pleasure principle

The ego - this can also be thought of as ‘I’. The ego mediates between the id and the real world, working on the reality principle

The superego - this can be thought of as ‘the conscience’ and incorporates learned societal values and morals, and works on an idealistic principle superego control the id,

the ego harmonic between the superego and id.

A neurosis is defined as:

‘A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality.’ (Oxford Dictionary online)

Freud believed that these were caused by repressions, both of the pleasure principle and of childhood traumas.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

The oral phase (0-1 year) - The anal phase (1-3 years) - The phallic phase (3-5 or 6 years)

The latent phase (5 or 6 to puberty) - The genital phase (puberty to adult)

The Oedipus complex is one of Freud’s most controversial ideas and one which many people immediately reject. It is the idea that, during the phallic stage, a young boy (sexually) desires his mother, and therefore wants to remove the father. Irrationally, the young boy believes that should his father find out about these desires, he would remove what the boy loves the most (his penis). This is known as castration anxiety. The young boy then aims to resolve the issue by imitating his father’s masculine traits, and taking on the male gender role.

Free Association Freud’s Couch at the Freud Museum in London ( seated and talking doesn’t mean the theory is worked.)

Sublimation is defined as: ‘ ing express strong emotions [read - libido] or use energy by doing an

activity, especially an activity that is considered socially acceptable’

‘Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.’ -Salvador Dalí

The Doll [1936] By Hans Bellmer

The uncanny valley theory, The concept of the uncanny valley suggests humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.

Torches of Freedom’

Parapraxis

Something else that Freud believed ought to be analyzed as it brought the unconscious to the surface was parapraxis - or, as they are more commonly known, ‘Freudian slips’. Parapraxes reveal that we are not always in control of our own speech or actions, and for Freud, they were telling of repressed desires. An example here could be writing ‘thigh’ instead of ‘though’, or trying to open your car with your house keys, possibly signaling you’d rather be staying at home.

‘Pure psychic automatism ... the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns’.

André Breton, 1924 The Surrealist Manifesto

Dream.sleep. the surrealist art.

Automatic Drawing By André Masson, 1924

The Uncanny

In 1919 Freud published a book entitled ‘the uncanny’. He was particularly interested in the psychological effect that something which was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar had.

This unsettling feeling is often employed by creatives and designers - for instance within health campaigns.

How valid are Freud’s theories today?

Criticisms of Freud’s Theories

Some of his data is not credible His patients only represented a very small demographic There is no evidence to support his theories of child sexuality Some of his theories can be damaging to certain groups - such as for instance his belief that homosexuality was a failure to reconcile the anal phase - and his now laughable idea of ‘penis envy’

John Bowlby

John Bowlby (1907-1990) was a British psychologist and psychoanalyst who had a particular interest in child development. He is most famous for his work on attachment theory. One huge insight of psychoanalysis is that the challenges of life start when we are young. John Bowlby traced many problems back to issues with maternal care.

Separation Anxiety

In 1959 Bowlby wrote a very influential book called Separation Anxiety about what happens when there isn’t enough maternal care in a child’s life. If a child is separated for too long, they begin to think all good things will disappear at any given moment, therefore becoming anxious or volatile - or they may become detached as a way of dealing with this.

Secure attachment

Anxious attachment

Avoidant attachment

Jacques Lacan Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and philosopher, considered by many to be the most influential after Freud. His work was perhaps more influential in universities rather than consulting rooms across the UK.

Within the arts, he is most well- known for his idea of ‘the mirror phase’

Lacan’s Psychoanalytic Orders (mirror trick)

Lacan divided the psyche into three orders of experience to do with development, which begins with the mirror phase. Extremely simplified, they are:

The Imaginary: The newborn baby does not realize it is a separate being from its mother; as it gains a visual image of itself (the mirror phase) it starts to understand that it is a distinct object

The Symbolic: The infant comes to realize all experiences are filtered through language

The Real: This is the leftover from our pre-language stages. This is when an experience or thought occurs that language cannot symbolize

I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me “Daddy check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering “Daddy there’s somebody on my bed”

‘This illusion of unity, in which a human being is always looking forward to self-mastery, entails a constant danger of sliding back again into the chaos from which he started; it hangs over the abyss of a dizzy Assent in which one can perhaps see the very essence of Anxiety.’

Jacques Lacan, Some Reflections on the Ego (1951)

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