why-oh-why-did-i-do-this-blog

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This Is America.

Do any other american high schoolers have intense survivor’s guilt and trauma with school shootings even though they weren’t at your school?

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“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”

-Brianna Wiest, in Thought Catalog

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Top Surgery (Teet Yeet)

Hi I'm Kam Brooks, I'm a nonbinary transgender college student who's currently in their Sophmore year at Seminole State College of Florida's Sanford/Lake Mary campus.

I'm currently saving up for top surgery (also know as a double mastectomy/chest masculinization surgery) which for those who don't know is a gender affirming surgery for transgender/nonbinary people. My gender dysphoria has become increasingly worse in the last year and due to job-related circumstances I wasn't able to save up very much money during my summer. I am extremely grateful for those who donated to my YouCaring fundraiser while the site was still up but the effort from both parties still wasn't much of a dent in my surgery bills.

Here's what they look like:

Non-refundable fee for reserving a date: (Orignially $500) Now $1,000

Surgical Fee: $6,500

Hospital & Anesthesia fee: ~$1,900

Pathology Examination fee: $300

The total is: ~$8,400

*This estimate excludes gas/travel, hotel and post-op care supply costs

Outside of being a full time student and working ~20 hours a week, I help out at Zebra Coalition as a part of their Youth Council. There, with the collaboration of other young leaders on the Council, I coordinate events to give a voice and extend support to the LGBTQ+ youth here in Orlando. On top of all of this, I'm also the president of Unity! Gay-Straight Alliance on my campus with an overall goal of creating an intersectional, supportive safe space for LGBTQ+ students, providing local resources to them and educating non-LGBTQ+ people on various issues as well as how to be more supportive and respectful of their LGBTQ+ peers.

This is why I need some sort of support. I can only do so much alone and I want to keep making my contributions to the LGBTQ+ community and its youth but I'm limited due to mental and physical health problems from binding and gender dysphoria. I often times wear a chest binder 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week and slowly but surely am suffering from the affects on my body. My back can oftentimes ache due to the compression. I can also experience some tightness in my chest and even (on thankfully very rare occasions) have an ache or two in my lower ribs. I'm doing what I can to develop safer binding practices but I know it would be better for myself and my body in the long run if I got top surgery sooner rather than later.

So please if you can buy a shirt and/or share the link. If you can't buy a shirt then please donate whatever you can to my Venmo account here: Kam-B

Any sort of contribution is greatly appreciated and another step toward my goal. Thank you so much for supporting me!

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Alright so I hardly use this blog anymore and only lurk but get to know more about me! I’m a 19 year student going to a (junior) college and hoping to transfer to a university in the next year. While I’m a full time student I work part time (with a whopping 8 hours a week) in hopes to save up for top surgery. Due to how low my hours are I barely afford bills food and all that fun adult jazz and while I would love to take up a second job I have to be and will be a full time student coming this fall. (I have to because I’m on academic scholarship, which is one of the requirements). I have insurance but it only takes the costs down from $8,400 to around $6,600 (this excludes the costs of travel and hotel stay). So what I’m trying to say is, ya boi is broke and growing more and more dysphoric. So any and all help is appreciated. Share the link of even message me directly about ideas or whatever you think could help. Also here is my paypal below in case you can't buy a shirt! Every bit helps! paypal.me/KamGB Thank you to anyone that reads, shares, donates and/or picks up a shirt!

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Hi, I love this rabbit hole I fell down

be nice to my good girl :’’’’)

(And you can read all my other Voyd comics here!)

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true 2000′s nonsense was finding an amv with a cool song and revisiting the amv for the song instead of actually looking it up

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Summer Moods

instagram.com/chromat

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Me n bae

important

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Hi, I'm in love with this. Show this artist appreciation (pls).

Mom of the year. ;_;

(This is a continuation of part 1 and part 2.)

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It’s finished! 

(This is a sequel to my earlier Voyd comic. You can read it here!)

Edit: This comic continues here!

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A really sweet commission for a good Family friend, John!

My commission info is here 

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status quo! status quo! status quo!

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i don’t think straight people quite understand how good they got in when it comes to romance in media like??? you guys don’t have to sit and wonder if there’s going to be straight romance in a show, movie, or book you like.

you don’t deal with the stress of your favorite character coming out and wondering if they’re going to be killed off soon due to media often using the “kill your gays” trope. 

you don’t constantly deal with being ridiculed when you have wlw/mlm ships that you love and that represent you and get told (and know) that they’re most likely never going to happen just because they’re lgbt.  

you don’t watch or play or read media and see a relationship that has great potential or better development than any other straight relationship in said media but you know it won’t happen just because it’s lgbt.

you don’t have creators, pr, and marketing taking advantage of your desperation to be represented in media, get treated like money fodder due to that desperation, and then receive nothing.

you don’t deal with organizations boycotting your very existence in media, and aren’t constantly labeled as inherently mature and sexual content. 

you don’t deal with the constant disappointment of another show not having any type of representation that relates to you. 

you guys literally don’t have to sit and worry about if you’re going to be represented in media at all, and i don’t think you realize just how lucky you are, not having to worry and wonder about these things, because it’s pretty much a guaranteed luxury for you.

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Reason 193728283 why I will do everything in my power to support my kid(s)

To be honest.. if more children were shown from birth that they are loved, cared for, and listened no matter their gender we might not have some of the problems we have now.  

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A really sweet commission for a good Family friend, John!

My commission info is here 

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