takemycptsd-blog

[takemycptsd-blog]

About

hiding out from Good People™️

tender-hearted and short-tempered

nonbinary gender-meh

kind but not nice

bad cripple

csa survivor

(they/she)

[takemycptsd-blog]

Fumbling through “nuance”

If someone read this later, read all of this, better written, some account by someone who is better at writing, if someone read all this later maybe it would be funny.

I could see this being a dramedy. Or a dark comedy. More my style. But this that i mean isn't just this here about me. It's all this.

It's EOs every day. It's one that's going to tell me that the butter in my fridge is causing the downfall of children in America, and that promises to keep kids healthy as if as if (the presumption!) as IF we all start out "healthy". As if. It's all this. It's “Well actually I NEVER SAID DISABLED PEOPLE” bros on Twitter - YES I SAID TWITTER - doom-bragging about how much they can lift. It's other crips shutting down each other's accounts over someone saying they don't actually like being sick. No, it wasn't that. It was something else. It was a harm. It was a harm done and no she didn't yes she did and everyone can feel how they want about their disability but also we will pile on and shut down a social support you had. And now you don't.

And now the terrorists or at least the "not-sees" will have won. One is real, hyper real right now right outside on the street and will be there again in about a month I'm sure waving a flag and some shitty sign on the side of the St. Patrick's day parade. We will see it in the news, at least locally. They're winning, btw. When we mob someone out of a community space because their expressions of grief and pain are so fucking uncomfortable (they are, truly, so fucking uncomfortable and cringe and awful but sad and where the fuck is the empathy) when we do that, we're doing the job of the naught-seas for them.

I know there are some insincere shit stirrers stirring too, but I expected better from the folks I know to be real and genuine. I still expect better. And that's funny too, since how can I still expect better at this point from anyone? HOW? It's funny.

or it would be funny if someone talented enough to capture the grimmest of grim humor could just write it down.

[takemycptsd-blog]

remembering, memory, and memories

I have memories of memories. I don't know how other people's brains / minds work so I sort of assumed as a younger person that it was similar but many years of bumping into situations where it is demonstrably not the case that our brain / minds work the same have taught me to not assume shared cognitive experiences.

So I will expand. Clarify. Over-explain.

I mean a strong clear recollection of the first time you had a moment of reflection on something that (seems to have) happened.

For example: maybe on your first day of middle school, you sat waiting for the bus and you were looking at your new book bag and your mind drifted to your last day of elementary school with a strong immersive vibe. Maybe something triggered the association. Maybe it was a new pencil. Doesn't matter. You're just sitting there in September and your brain is time traveling back to June, to the color of after-school hours sunlight filtered through a tinted pizza place window where you some classmates were pooling money and deciding if you could afford a whole small pizza. Waiting for the pizza to be done, you and your schoolmates (a collection of friends, siblings, and neighborhood kids) all crammed into two booths each sized for 4 small adults. People were promising they'd still hang out once they were split up across the city into different schools. You remember the song on the radio and the noise of an arcade machine. The colors of a fresh friendship bracelet, your fascination with the beaded safety pins on someone's shoelaces. The plants that trailed around the walls. The smell of the pizza and the cold semi-flat sweetness of the fountain soda you were splitting. The texture of a plastic tray beneath your fingers.

You remember all this months later while at the bus stop on your first day of middle school, and this is the first time you've had this particular memory in this particular form that it will forever be fixed in. It is the first time your brain has served it to you as a Memory of a definite done thing.

Now we are here. Present. 2025. Now, and in all the years since that day at the bus stop, you have both the last day of elementary school memory, but also the first day of middle school memory of remembering the last day of elementary school for the first time.

A memory of a memory. A memory of remembering. It doesn't have to be past, for me. Or a done thing. Or a thing. It turns out.

I have these memories of memories a lot. With some of them, the thing I remember "remembering" is a thing that didn't happen. This isn't a false memory issue or some shit like that. It's not implanted. It's not misfiled, or misremembered. I "remember" a scene as clearly as I remember the one from the last day of elementary school. And I remember "remembering" it for years. The non-memories though are different in that they tend to be shorter snippets, just as vivid, but lacking a whole narrative context. I've wondered if they were from my very young childhood, a time from which I have very low conscious recall.

The non-memories are also different in that sometimes I can't recall the first time I remembered them. It's like they were always there. They're few. But they're distinct.

Over time, as I accumulated these "memories", these I assumed they were amalgams of pieces of actual memories. Scenes my brain constructed for me out of scraps of events and circumstances only half remembered, or maybe only half encoded to start with.

A snowy street near the gas station that was just off the ramp from the south east expressway to my childhood home. The taste of ribbon candy. The sense that airplanes were involved, maybe we were coming back from the airport? Not common in my childhood but possible I guess. An association with a family member who we tended to see around that time of year. A feeling of change. The look of January light and bare trees in snow, a view from a window. The knowledge that someone had died or was dying.

I have had that one for a long time.

What's kind of creepy about these things is that more than a couple of them have turned out to be things I encountered later.

A low iron fence outside a window or step I know is mine, I know I live there. I'm recently independent from someone or something. I'm in a chapter that feels uncertain, but also that feels amazing from the spectator view because it is so different from my life when I first "remembered" it. I filed that one as wishful thinking pulled together from half-registered things in my past.

Until the day it was there in front of me and it was like two parts of an image coming together and converging into a full three dimensional experience. In that moment. It was an apartment I lived in when I was 33 that I had been "remembering" since I was at least 10 years old.

I didn't recognize it when I first moved in. It took a few months for the final set up, the light to get to the time of year light I remember. The colors and temperature, the length and tone of shadows. And then one day I was at the back door I hardly ever used and knelt down to pat a neighbor cat and realized "oh, this!" This was the time I remembered.

So these things are odd. I don't expect you to believe me. I don't believe me. I try to test them out, but there's no real way to do that. I don't control when they come as "memories" and I don't go looking to recreate them in the real immediate present world. They are hardly ever consciously top of my mind, except now and then when something seems close, they're evoked. I have throughout my life taken them as sorts of small signs that I'm on the path I am meant to be on. When I encounter one of the moments of which I had a memory but a memory that lacked an actual contextualized antecedent event, situation, or circumstance, I think "Oh, hey, here I am. This was it." It's sort of like deja vu except I have had the "vu" part for years and years prior to the event.

I mention all this now because for as long as I have had a narrative memory, I have had one of a night time scene out a hospital window. I didn't realize it was a hospital at first. And the scene was really fucking weird because there was stuff I didn't recognize in it at all. I now do, it's tech like smartphones and laptops, it's light fixtures that are modern (more so than the period in which I first had this "memory"). It's night time, there's a city outside, and something ominous. And I or someone I love deeply is dying. It is a troubled vigil. A death-bed with terror outside, a death-bed where death is inevitable but is not actually the most alarming or scary or upsetting thing happening, except for the upset of leaving someone to face the rest of it (what's outside) alone.

I mention all this now because I got medical news recently that is potentially putting me into the place that I "remembered" and I'm feeling uneasy, but also like this was just the inevitable path of me. If that makes sense.

[takemycptsd-blog]

the relief knowing she is no longer suffering

This is what he wrote on my friend's wall the week after she died.

She died in a hospital where she'd been mistreated. She died in agony. She died not wanting to die. She died "recovering" from surgery her family pressured her to have even though she knew her condition was more complicated than the surgeon could handle.

She was pressured into this surgery by the hospital and her family. Her mother told her to have the surgery or don't come home. Her mother made her homeless. Her mother says that's not what she meant.

What the fuck did you mean, Linda?

Her suffering.

My friend wanted to get out. If I can just get a place, she'd say so many times, from hospital beds and chairs, from rehab beds and chairs, from her home where she was with her dogs but also with her abusive mother who popped in at any old time. If I can just get a place, she said. We worked on it together, those last months. A PCA, we did paperwork. I did the research for her. She needed one. Ok, we had that in the works. And meanwhile, back and forth to hospitals and rehabs, to ERs where her brother sat with her and said that when she died he was going to get rid of her dogs.

He's relieved, now, to know she's no longer suffering. She was suffering him. Her mom. A system not designed to keep you ok. She was suffering as a nurse who was too sick to work on a floor, and in a profession that is one of the most ableist. She had been discarded, and she was indeed suffering, but not in the ways that asshole of a brother of hers thought.

I wanted to punch him when I read his post.

We're coming up on a year. I keep saying I'm going to write about this, about what she went through. She told me to. Tell my story if I die, changed to when I die. She knew she wasn't likely to make it, but she still hoped, which is why when she did die it was a horrible shock.

We're coming up on a year and everything I've started to write hurts too much, is wrong, isn't what I need or what she wanted. It's not right. I think though it won't ever be. How can it be? She's dead. I am not relieved. No one should be. I wanted to punch him.

[takemycptsd-blog]

Typos and no-shows

CW: discussion of drug use, death, assault, physical child abuse, emotional child abuse, abusive parents, religion, family estrangement.

This is what happens when he's using again. It's what I get as the initial signs at least. We're remote, so I don't see all the other things that go with it until he's crashed.

It starts with last minute texts written in an uncharacteristically loose way. Dropped words, swapped letters, subjects without predicates. It's not a thing if that's your style, but that's not his style. He's always been Mr "Straight A". He usually is one of those people who corrects typos in texts, even when the typos are just noise and don't change the meaning. Usually he is, when he's not high or crashing.

This is why my heart sunk yesterday when I got the fragmented text from him cancelling an hour before he was supposed to come visit. Again.

After his vague excuses, he asked "can I call you later". He didn't call later.

It's the next day. It's cold. I feel sick. Will he call, crashing and sobbing, telling me how it's my fault he uses because I don't have a relationship with our parents? Will he be safe? The last time, that I know about, somebody died. He tried to resuscitate them. The person threw up, the person’s ribs cracked. The person died in the hotel room. The police were involved. He was shaken, hard. That call was particularly bad. He said he could still taste the coffee vomit, could still feel the ribs crunching under his hands. He said it was my fault. 

I take these calls. I cry, and listen to him crying. I tell him I will come with him to therapy when he’s back in therapy, when he’s ready, and we can talk about it more there. I tell him if it’s hard for him to be “split” between our parents and me, that I’m truly sorry and ask what I can do - other than reconnecting with our abusive parents - to make this less terrible for him. He says he understands, but then he tells me that I have to make up with them, cries about how short life is, and how I’ll regret it if they die before we reconnect. I tell him I know it’s short. I tell him won’t be sorry if they die without us reconnecting, and if I am, that’s my business and something that I and my therapist will work on. I tell him that right now, as it has been for the last nearly 20 years, my life is better for having ended my relationship with my parents. 

The time before the guy died, he called from a state away. “I’m in Woonsocket” he told me through sobs. It was late. My partner and I were going to go get him. My father, in denial of his vision loss, ended up driving in the dark to get him. He got a rehab bed, then got discharged to a day program. Then my parents called me to tell me that they wanted to talk about him and how we can support him. I agreed. I am sometimes, even at this age, naive. 

The day they came over, I was sick. My ovary had twisted inside me and was dying. It was painful. I didn’t know that was what was happening yet, I just knew I was in pain. They came over, and my mother spoke only of herself. It was the first time I had seen her since her conversion to catholicism a few years prior. She was wearing a large, rough wooden cross on a twine-like cord around her neck. It looked medieval, and not in a cool way. I imagined she’d ordered it online from some outlet that sold genuine religious doodads made from sanctified materials. 13th century wood from St. WhoeverTheHell’s wagon. Iron from a recovered papal horseshoe. 

My father spoke very little, and mainly of others’ failures, others’ “fuck-ups”. This meeting was not, as advertised, a meeting to discuss how to help him. It was a chance for my father to complain, for my mother to try to worm her way back into my life, using him as an excuse. At one point, my mother looked at me with big tear wobbly eyes and said “I feel like I should say I’m sorry.” 

I sighed. We’ve been through this, she and I. 

“Sorry for what?” I asked, not kindly but not cruelly. 

“For... everything” she said. 

No. If she’d actually given this real thought and done real work on it, she could have offered an apology for any of the many concrete things that she did that made our relationship untenable. But “sorry for everything” is a request for absolution for everything for always. It’s a get out of jail free card that allows her to skip the shitty, hard work of acknowledging all the ways she harmed me (and him for that matter) as an abusive parent. I told her if she was looking for absolution, to talk to a priest. I hear they do that. 

I tried to refocus on him, the reason we were supposedly meeting. To help him. She left the room and blew her nose. My father wouldn’t look at me. “What can I do to help him?” I asked them. It was clear they had no idea. It was clear the reason for this visit was not to help him.

I wanted to ask my father if when he was kicking him when he was a toddler around the floor, punching him, or locking him in a cabinet for hours while he wailed and screamed... if my father thought doing those things might have been setting his kid up for a life that was going to be so much harder than it needed to be. 

I called my parents today after hearing nothing from him since the broken text he sent me yesterday morning, canceling last minute, again. Using again? 

My father called back, sounding hassled. “I’m about 99% sure he’s using again” he told me. I know better than to ask them what I can do. What I can do, apparently, is wait for him to crash. I can hope he’s safe. Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if I’m supposed to call him out more on his use. I wonder how much trust is good and right and how much is irresponsible and bad going forward. When he starts rescheduling with his broken texts - should I ask? Should I ask “Are you using?” “Are you safe?” Would it tell him I don’t trust him if I ask? How horrible would that feel for him, I mean, if he’s not actually using and is just tired or something. 

I used to swoop in and save him. Buy him a ticket home. Pick him up from night bus stations, drive him to ERs, wait with him and his agitation to be seen. To be admitted somewhere, to an increasingly hard to find rehab bed. But this is 10 years later, and I’m too sick now to reliably rescue him. All I can do is listen when he calls me crashing and crying and hope he’s safe. 

[takemycptsd-blog]

Dear Tumblr --

Hello, my name is Katie.  I am a creator here on Tumblr.  I run a witchcraft blog where I share my spiritual beliefs and host my shop information (where I give readings and such.)  This blog, in particular, has been active for several years, and I have a few others where I run a magazine, or one where I post poetry, or one where I write stories.

I have met some amazing friends here, too, and not just within the realms of spiritual beliefs and practices.  I have friends that are artists; I have friends that are content creators.  These people use Tumblr for their businesses, like me.

In so little words: part of my livelihood depends on the activity involved with my blog.  It is how I pay my bills; it is how I make sure my pets have food.  Without Tumblr, I don’t know where I would be now.

I get that you all don’t want kids exposed to inappropriate content.  They shouldn’t be.  They should be allowed to be kids without disgusting adult human beings creeping on them.  

I get that you don’t want to promote self-harm, including eating disorders and body mutilation.  No one wants other people to hurt themselves.

I get that you don’t want to play host to racists, or bigots, or just your run-of-the-mill trash fire people who find enjoyment in hurting others.  I wouldn’t want to be forced to sit next to a Nazi indefinitely.

But these things have been problems on your website for some time.  And you did nothing.

I know because I have reported them and have NEVER received acknowledgment for my concerns.  Not to be a narc, but I have flagged bots with adult content and I have reported blogs where someone was posting content that was worrisome to me.

I don’t give a crap if an adult working in an adult-related industry wants to use the platform.  There are so many tools that you all could utilize instead of making broad, general swipes at the larger problem.  Tools like:

proper post tagging

age verification

business accounts

actual human beings looking over blogs instead of an automated system that cannot determine context

It’s basically like this:  you’ve made a really shitty mess that you refused to take care of and now you are trying to clean your mess with a dirty towel.  

You aren’t actually fixing the issue.

In doing so, you are forcing the people who aid in the making of your money to turn to other sites.  Why?

Because you refuse to actually get down in the muck and do the work needed to FIX this issue.

And it probably has something to do with money.  That’s usually what things like this boil down to.  

Already, posts of mine are being flagged…and they don’t violate ANY of your community guidelines.  I can’t wait to see the havoc you will really wreak across your platform come the 17th.

This is ridiculous and you know it.

Sincerely, a Random Somebody that Uses Your Website

(Because that is exactly how you view me and everyone else here.)

@staff @support

[takemycptsd-blog]

[ID: Jessica Fletcher from tv show "murder she wrote" eating popcorn and watching something intently, off camera]

The art historian in me can’t wait for Tumblr to try and explain what they consider to be Actual, Real Art that is exempt from all of these rules. Go ahead, please try to settle a debate that’s been raging for hundreds of years, Tumblr.

[takemycptsd-blog]

Tumblr hates my nipples more than it hates actual Nazis @staff

[takemycptsd-blog]

Boosting.

ill b making a comprehensive post with details about how and where you can find me since i think i’m going to have to do a social media haul anyways. tumblr has flagged some of my drawings as inappropriate when they clearly aren’t and i have the feeling its because i use lesbian tags for my posts

[takemycptsd-blog]

"you're too nice to be sick!" said a fool to me once.

“You’re too young to be disabled!”

This is a shock. A revelation. Before today I had never known my age.

My disability realizes it has chosen the wrong body. It slowly slips off of me and slinks away, in search of an older body to haunt. My wheelchair disintegrates into nothingness. I am free.

[takemycptsd-blog]

"Happy Thanksgiving!"

Me with gastroparesis and estranged from most of my family....

[ID: Cass from Supernatural giving a massive eye-roll and turning away]

[takemycptsd-blog]

Believe chronic pain

I did something foolish tonight. Playing with the cat, I sat on a ball. It's one of those large inflatable exercise balls healthier people use to "work their core". My "core" is basically a set of worn out bungee-cords.... because of EDS, myasthenia, and multiple pelvic surgeries from endometriosis and EDS (tldr; EDS = hypermobile insides too) oh and malnutrition from the gastroparesis.

So sitting on a ball is bad for me, and foolish. Since my EDS moved from the relatively painless hypermobile phase to the phase where it's ungodly painful because stuff slips out of place and doesn't go back in right, I've had to repeatedly learn the lesson of "just because you can do that doesn't mean you should.

Just because I can sit on a large exercise ball for 5 minutes doesn't mean I should... Because a week ago, I pulled or popped something in my pelvis out of place and was immobilized with pain. And because I have no idea what triggered it or what made it go away (other than time and rest). So I've been trying to be careful, like not standing with my feet on different levels... Like standing on stairs "sideways", like you'd do if you stopped going up and turned so you were facing out or the wall instead of straight up or down.

Anyhow. I’ve been trying to be extra careful. But I forgot, and sat on the ball that my sister had left in front of the futon. She comes in and says "Oh, I need to crawl behind you over the couch to get my water” (she'd left it in the room). I say "I should move anyhow." And in considering how I should best stand up, I realize oh fuck what did I do. So she's crawling across the futon behind me, and I'm waiting, and when she's done, I inelegantly get off the ball and say "I shouldn't have been sitting on that." And she says "why not?" And I say “because my pelvis isn’t stable enough to sit on that without risking something slipping out of place...” She then goes on and on about the damned ball, like she has a dozen times before, how it’s good for you to sit on it, how it’s actually partly deflated so it’s “not that bad right now”.

I started to re-explain that although she thinks these exercise balls are amazing, they are not something I should use. And I realize though mid-word that the only reason I would have to re-explain this is if she didn’t understand or didn’t believe me all the times she’s seen me hurt myself just standing up, or sitting and leaning forward, or going up or down stairs, or trying to bend with my legs and hips not lined up exactly right. She’s witnessed this so many times, including times when I end up collapsed on the floor sobbing in pain and unable to move. So I’m left with the conclusion that she just doesn’t believe me. Or doesn’t believe it’s that bad. 

Just because I’m not in that level of pain every second of every day does not mean my EDS went away. It doesn’t mean I’m cured, it doesn’t mean it’s not that bad. 

[takemycptsd-blog]

Dear santa,

Please bring all.

😻💖

Still Disabled...

Anyone who uses a mobility aid even occasionally has had to deal with other people’s reactions.  And one of the biggest annoyances is what happens when we step away from, or don’t use, or CAN’T use our regula mobility aids for whatever reason.  

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Any ambulatory wheelchair user has inevitably stood up to get something off a grocery shelf and had to deal with accusatory glares and even outright accusations of fakery.  

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Those of us using canes or crutches have undoubtedly had to forgo them in some family member’s tight-spaeced home and had to explain (usually more than once) that not using them doesn’t mean we’re “cured.”

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Our new designs remind folks, even when we’re note using these devices- we are STILL DISABLED.  

[img description: 3 blue toned shirts, 1 ¾ sleeve, 1 long sleeve and 1 hoodie.  All bear a swirly gray design with text reading, “In my chair… STILL DISABLED… out of it.”]

[img description: A tote bag that’s white on one side and black on the other. Both sides bear a swirly gray design with text reading, “On my crutches… STILL DISABLED… Off of them.”]

[img description: A white mug laying on a counter surrounded by colorful donuts. On the mug is a swirly gray design with text reading, “With my cane… STILL DISABLED… Without it.”]

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Available as Tees, Bags, Mugs or Pillows, get out ahead of the inevitable with these designs- now in our PrettySick Supply Shop.

[takemycptsd-blog]

This is EXCELLENT. Now I just need a script for how to tell someone I care about when they've violated an emotional boundary.

Etiquette and Consent in Emotional Exchanges

When we’re emotional, we want to connect with people. And it’s usually taken for granted that the other person is physically available to talk, then they are emotionally available as well, because as a culture we tend to assume that emotional labor has no cost.

However, human nature is to care. And that means investing in others’ emotions. When my friend tells me he’s sad, I feel a fraction of that sadness with him. I want to help him feel less sad a) because he’s my friend, but also b) because I don’t want to take on more sadness in my life if I can help it.

For normal sadness, this is fine; it’s occasional, it’s usually not on a huge scale, and usually the friend is more than willing to accept responsibility for their feelings and physical well-being. In other words, when people are mentally healthy, they tend to reflexively do a lot of the emotional work. Some examples of the emotional work being done here:

identifying the problem

validating emotions

identifying solutions

challenging distorted thoughts/perceptions

empowering / encouraging the person to take the steps they need to take

ensuring immediate and long-term mental stability

ensuring immediate and long-term physical stability

taking turns holding space

For those with chronic emotional issues, there needs to be a different approach; it is unfair to expect someone in crisis to do the same amount of emotional work as someone who’s not. However, it’s ALSO unfair to expect others to take on a bunch of labor just because you’re not up to doing it yourself. What’s more, this difficulty gets used as a justification for isolating and letting an emotional issue fester.

But there is hope!

Keep reading

[takemycptsd-blog]

[ID: 3 panel black and beige cartoon, each panel shows a person in a wheelchair trying to come through a door and a person who is trying to hold that door for them. 1st panel shows door-holding person standing in the doorway, extending their arm against the door to hold it open. Even if the other person could get through the now much narrower doorway, they’d have to squeeze the door-holding person into the doorway as they go. Standing in the doorway and using your extended arm to hold open a door for someone who needs all the doorway space is bad, and gets a red “x”. 2nd panel shows the doorholder, now standing opposite the door-jamb but still in the doorway. They stand completely across the doorway, with their butt against the door’s strikeplate side and their arms stretched up and out to hold the door open. The effect is that they’ve both narrowed the clearance of the doorway horizontally still, but now also created an arch - so narrowing the vertical clearance. The person with the wheelchair cannot pass without hurting themselves or the door-holder, and this panel also shows a red “x”. The 3rd panel shows the door-holding person standing out of the way behind the door, holding the door handle from the pull side. They are out of the way, the door is open wide, and the person in the wheelchair is able to get through. This panel gets a green check mark.]

Most wheelchairs only just fit through standard doors and so often, well meaning people who open doors for wheelchair users actually make it more difficult because they get in the way.

Please ask if someone needs help and if they do, please make sure to stand out of the way 🙂

Reblogs are welcome, please don’t repost

[takemycptsd-blog]

Hurt and harm

Common use.

Hurt is one of those verbs, like break and heal. Ergatives.

X hurts...

Can mean x is experiencing pain xself, but it can also mean x causes pain.

Harm on the other hand is, at least structurally, more intentional.

X harms...

Means x causes pain, danger, injury to others.

You don't have to (mean to) hurt to harm (but it helps).

[takemycptsd-blog]

Tumblr loading erases brain

Every time I open Tumblr or reload something on Tumblr, I get that flickering spinning rainbow donut thing. And every time it makes my eyes hurt, gives me vertigo, and erases my brain.