but seriously, i can't believe how far i've gone. and how i should be really proud of myself.

11 years of never-ending pain, of learning how to ignore and endure it, how to look and act "normal".

then my first shitty canes (they're pretty but completely unusable). first steps. first shame. how i was afraid to show up at work with it.

after that, i ordered a custom cane. and then another one. i decorated them. made them vibing. i started taking it to work, still afraid to use it around my colleagues.

then i got three house canes (first and second ones got chewed by my beloved dog lol) and started using it at home as well.

and now i use it everywhere i go. when i walk my dog, when i go to my lunch break on work, when i get around my apartment.

i got forearm crutches and learned how to use them. i decorated them too! they're yellow, covered in flowers stickers.

today i started saving up for my future rollator. i believe i'll be able to actually order it by june.

it all happened too fast, i still have impostor syndrome, i still feel self-conscious, like i'm not actually disabled and don't belong to cpunk communtiy and i'm a faker etc etc etc... but one thing happened: i improved my life. (even if i'm a faker lol) i got less pain every day, less fatigue, i stopped being ashamed at least of my canes.

my best friend was a big part of this journey, without her support i'd never get here. love her so much.

did anyone ever tell the Backstreet Boys why

legitimately so scary that i just made a doctors appointment for 2025. you mean the far distant sci fi future 2025? you mean the pacific rim 2025? you mean i have to go to the doctor while giant robots are fighting the fucking kaiju? fuck all the way offfffffff

I feel like a good shorthand for a lot of economics arguments is "if you want people to work minimum wage jobs in your city, you need to allow minimum wage apartments for them to live in."

"These jobs are just for teenagers on the weekends." Okay, so you'll use minimum wage services only on the weekends and after school. No McDonald's or Starbucks on your lunch break.

"They can get a roommate." For a one bedroom? A roommate for a one bedroom? Or a studio? Do you have a roommate to get a middle-wage apartment for your middle-wage job? No? Why should they?

"They can live farther from city center and just commute." Are there ways for them to commute that don't equate to that rent? Living in an outer borough might work in NYC, where public transport is a flat rate, but a city in Texas requires a car. Does the money saved in rent equal the money spent on the car loan, the insurance, the gas? Remember, if you want people to take the bus or a bike, the bus needs to be reliable and the bike lanes survivable.

If you want minimum wage workers to be around for you to rely on, then those minimum wage workers need a place to stay.

You either raise the minimum wage, or you drop the rent. There's only so long you can keep rents high and wages low before your workforce leaves for cheaper pastures.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" doesn't hold water if the reason nobody applies is because the commute is impossible at the wage you provide.

As a person who spends a lot of time lying down and rarely does any kind of activities, I come off as someone who's taking a lot of 'me' time, or a lot of 'resting' time. However I have to assert that any time I spend recovering from an activity is not 'me time' or 'resting time', it's the time that is stolen from me. I can't do anything with this time. I am in pain, I can't move, my activities are limited to 'hopelessly distracting myself so that I do not experience the full horror of what's going on in my body right now'. I don't even get to have 'me time' because of how much of the time is stolen from me.

Int: what was your biggest takeaway from the show?

Hugh: for Mads it was the suit

the problem isn't just that media literacy is slowly becoming a dying art. it's that people straight up do not pay attention when they watch tv/film anymore.

with every passing year of my friend's parents being grade-A dipshits re: their kids being queer, I'm more grateful for my mom. will she fuck up your pronouns? god, absolutely. but she'll apologize, and she asks questions because she genuinely wants to learn. she's called me for input on how to most effectively rip her colleagues a new asshole when they're shitty and transphobic to clients who are just trying to get their food stamps. she once walked out of a salon mid-appointment with the foil still in her hair because the owner was being transphobic in front of her. she'd been getting her hair done there for years, and she never went back. she's still furious about how shitty my best friend's mom was about my best friend coming out in high school, over ten years ago. she loves buying me every silly rainbow product she sees but after I explained rainbow capitalism to her she started checking with me beforehand to make sure she's not throwing her money anywhere extra shitty. she absolutely does not understand every aspect of queer identity and politics and I don't need her to, because her heart is exactly where it needs to be and she's also excessively willing to bite any homophobe or transphobe who tries it in front of her.

Spencer was not once seen sleeping on an actual bed unless he was literally dying and that it's so funny. It was always a couch, a chair, or a fucking cell "bed".

Baby you are 1.85m tall, I can see your spine screaming for help since here.

Y’all the Mads & Hugh pics are incoming !!!

Apparently encephalitis can cause damage to the nerves that control the diaphragm, so now I want a Hannibal AU where nothing is different except Will has the hiccups the entire first season.

Life is all about being really scared and wasting your youth

i really like outsider POV, but the thing is, it fundamentally works better when whatever is going on with the characters in question is so fucking weird that no reasonable outsider could ever discern it

like, the ideal outsider POV should have at least some element of 'what the fuck is wrong with these people'.

so fucking evil that i don’t have the jagged pointy cartoon teeth that fit together like triangles. i deserve them