I'm usually at least 1.5 years late when an artist I like drops new music simply bc I don't follow them like that and also I never listen to the radio so pleasantly surprised to find I'm only 4 months late wrt Kevin Abstract. Blanket lockdown for the next 3 months.

Fuck, I'm not sure I'll ever get over how much CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health service, it's the under-18s mental health service in Scotland) let me down as a kid.

It's like this. You're 11 and you're traumatised but you're scared of using that word, you don't know if you're allowed it, but you are traumatised. And you're so anxious you can't breathe most of the time, you can't sit down and speak to any of your friends, you can do your school work but you keep falling apart and everything feels like it's getting worse all the time. You don't fit in, you're weird and awkward but your schoolwork is good so you aren't worrying about your grades, you're not even sure why you feel this way (it's unprocessed trauma, but again, you don't feel like you're allowed that word). You're s/hing and struggling with suicidal ideation, and you're lucky enough to still trust authority figures, so you do what everyone says you should. You trust an adult. And she calls your GP, who is another adult you choose to trust, who you bare your heart to with all of these symptoms that make your feel sick to even acknowledge, and then they make you an appointment with CAMHS. You came in asking for treatment. They referred you to CAMHS. They did not explain what CAMHS was other than what the letters stood for. That's okay - it's treatment, right? They're gonna help. You can talk this through and they'll help- just gotta be careful you don't get institutionalised. You don't want that, yet.

You talk to a CAMHS worker. She's a psychologist. She says it's very likely you have autism to your mother after your first session. Your mother broaches the topic gently. You are overjoyed: there's an answer! oh fuck, this explains so much! but it's not treatment. It's a word. The psychologist puts you on a waiting list and you have 22 sessions of CBT with her, trying to unpack your trauma and trying to build up coping skills. So many of them feel like just denying the truth, so many of them feed into your magical thinking ("the one thing you can control is your thoughts, you must always control your thoughts, good things will happen when you control your thoughts and stop thinking the bad thoughts"), but it's treatment, mostly. You stop seeing her twice- once because you are trying to develop an eating disorder and having a mental health professional who wants to hear how you're doing is totally cramping your style (I wasn't actually trying to develop an ED really, I was trying to cope in ways other than s/h, in ways that felt honest to the situation and real and gave me a sense of control that "controling my thoughts" just wasn't doing). You come back for recovery. You tell her you want an eating plan. By the time she even considers an appointment with a nutritionist, you've moved past that stage in your recovery on your own. You stop seeing her again because you get into an abusive relationship who doesn't really like you having contact with people who aren't him, and he super super doesn't like you not being able to talk to him for a whole hour every week. That part isn't their fault: no one could be gotten me out of that until I decided to; believe me, everyone around me tried, and it didn't work until I wanted I to, the third time.

But I left, again, I was without support for 6 months, and when I came back it was after my father (the earliest source of my trauma) had died. They take 4 sessions compiling evidence as to what treatment i needed going forward, without telling me that was what they were doing (I was trying to build trust with an adult again after 6 months of constant reinforcing that I couldn't trust anyone but my abuser), and then an appointment with a psychiatrist and your mother and a new psychologist. They dismiss and justify the symptoms that most worry me, they have at this point turned down my request to be institutionalised multiple times (including after an aborted suicide attempt, I presume they thought that was fine because made it clear that I did want to live), and they say at the end of the meeting that they are going to give me an official diagnosis of autism and that after that CAMHS has nothing more to offer me.

They say that if after 22 sessions with a psychologist I am still struggling so much (bear in mind that probably close to half of those sessions I was concealing factors that were actively making my mental health worse and which were traumatising me) I clearly can't gain anything more from their service, and anyway, autism isn't a mental illness and CAMHS as a service can only help while waiting for/trying to get a diagnosis, or if you have a diagnosis or a disorder for which they could provide specialist treatment. My very obvious PTSD? nah, no big-T Traumas, and c-ptsd is way too hard to diagnose. I receive a hilarious letter detailing all of the evidence (I mean genuinely insightful but also fucking hilarious and I do want to note down funniest bits and post them hear at some point, stuff like "unusual speech was noted, (exclamations of 'wacky!' while describing his symptoms)") and then they refer me to a charity which, at time of writing, I have had 1 assessment phone call with, and am waiting for a call back for my next and first proper appointment.

They did not inform me when I was first referred that CAMHS is a diagnostic and specialist treatment service and if they did (this was well over two years ago now, I don't remember word-for-word what my GP told me), they did not tell me that meant that they would kick me out to a charity once they figured they couldn't label me with anything requiring specialist treatment. During our last sessions they were unyeildingly focussed on the trauma of my father dying and of the "shock" of my diagnosis (that I had been waiting for for 2 years. yes, very shocking/s) when those were not my biggest problems. My relationship with my father is complex and I won't get into it here, but suffice it to say that his death was the last step on a very, very long journey, and honestly one of the least traumatising.

I let them keep the focus there because I desperately hate talking about the actual, recent, debilitating trauma of being in lockdown with an abusive partner for 6 months. That shit hurts, I can't even say his name, but that is the thing that I need to unpack if I'm ever going to be able to go outside in the sun again.

Repeatedly ignoring the requests I made for specific treatment until past the point where I needed it anymore, not informing me how the service I was going to be working with for 2 years even worked in something so basic as "what is this for? what will happen to me if I get a diagnosis they can't give me specialised care for?", telling an 11 year old child that suicidal ideation is "not that serious", a fundamental misunderstanding of what I needed and wanted to hear ('normal' is not a helpful word. 'normal' tells me 'suck it up, everyone experiences this and they're all fine, you're normal, just think better' why are they all so adamant that I am normal? Not even considering my mental health I am an autistic bisexual gnc trans guy, we went past whatever 'normal' means a long time ago, fucking listen to me), at every single step of the way this system has left me in the same state I was before, the only improvement being through support from my friends, fucking Childline (gd fucking bless Childline volunteers, but still, I shouldn't have been getting so little support that that felt like my only option), mental health masterposts on Tumblr, chats with my (luckily) very nice guidance counselor (they're called pastoral teachers here but I know most folks reading this are American or are most familiar with the American school system) and what amounts to gritting my teeth and getting through it.

It was worth it, of course my life was worth it, of course I say the same thing every person who's attempted suicide says, I'm more grateful than words could possibly express that I survived, that I get to go home in a few minutes and feed my kitten and write and message my friends, but for fucks sake it didn't need to be this hard. And it doesn't need to be this hard. I'm not out of the woods yet, I'm still waiting on that second appointment with this charity, I'm still 3+ months behind at school, and I'm one of the lucky ones. My boyfriend has been hurt worse by CAMHS, left even more isolated than I was, even more traumatised by the way he was treated, and every single person I know who's been in this system agrees that it's deeply, deeply flawed.

I don't want people to have competitions over who's medical experiences are worse, who's country has the worst mental health system, who's been the most traumatised by their psychiatrists or lack thereof, please. Please don't make this the suffering Olympics. I'm just making this post cause I know, I know that other people have had similar experiences, whether with CAMHS or whatever their equivalent is. Mental health services need serious reform that puts patients first, listens to their needs and requests, that is well funded and well staffed by people who care about their patients wellbeing more than they care about controling other people's lives.

Austerity in the UK is a huge reason why this happened the way it did- my first psychologist left the service to go work somewhere that pays better, leaving just one newly-graduated psychologist that clearly had no idea what she was doing and didn't care to sympathise or show compassion for me.

This shit needs to change, because kids need help, and this is not good enough.

--------------------------------------------

What i wanted people to see was the scope of this shooting as well as the fact that it was mostly unpreventable without removing guns from the hands of citizens.

Now my information is inaccurate, my searches mostly talk about the scope of events with no detailed lists or maps so i’ve had to piece everything together, despite my horribly triggered boyfriend(who knew a half dozen people in locked down stores) spending hours watching the news ( i suppose we are more informed than most). But i’ve tried to detail a map to show the scope of this

This is odessa tx (i guess the red line is the city limits). It takes about 20 minutes to drive across it , 20 minutes to drive to midland. it takes me about 15 minutes to use the loop to get to work (which now has a bullet hole in it). 42nd street, which most of the red dots are on, is the biggest and busiest street in Odessa, as it goes straight through and merges with 191 leading to midland.

The red unfilled dot up north is where the main intersection that leads from my house to the middle of the city is blocked off as a crime scene. Allegedly one of the shootings happened here. this is also where Ratliff stadium (from Friday Night Lights, the movie. Where all our football (college and highschool) happen). I couldnt verify this so idk if my boyfriend is wrong, if it was a different shooting or an accident for sure.

The orange unfilled Dot is the cbs news station in the mall. As we watched the news they were evacuated twice. the whole mall was on lockdown. The newscaster shops at my store frequently and my bf’s associate and my brother in law work there. I dont know if the police were worried the shooter was going there, i believe a mall security cop was shot in our dillards.

The Red filled dots are what i’ve heard repeatedly for sure were attacks. the bottom left is Twinpeaks were one of the teenagers were shot and there are two cars i saw this morning blocked off by police tape.. the next three are the car dealership (now taped off) and Home depot , The small dot is Logans Roadhouse which is blocked off by one of the shot up cars. And then there was shots at UTPB across the street. I understand that out to the west several blocks away someone was shot at starbucks. The far right red dot is Best Buy where someone else was shot.

The black X is cinergy where the killer was killed. Over 21 ppl were shot, some on the highway so maybe i’ll keep this map and fill it in as more details come out.

My point is that alot of the discussion is about how these happen at events. that even if a shooting happens in your town that it will be condensed into one area like Ariana’s concert, or a parade. However this guy literally drove around our busiest street shooting random people. Luckily i’m going on vacation because otherwise i’d be having to take a 5 or 10 minute detour to get to work because the main street ppl in north odessa use to get to odessa is blocked off.  Almost every store from starbucks to home depot was closed yesterday afterwords(not my work or walmart of course, HEB was closed so that meant more customers, yay capitalism). The school, 2 of peoples favorite restaurants. the starbucks is very popular and right in front of the petstore our family goes to all the time.

Thats the power of guns. A single man can drive around and terrorize HALF a city, murder over 20 people by himself, terrorize hundreds (how many do you think were in the mall on a saturaday? ). This wasnt a single place attacked it was 1/3 of  a city of 90k. and all of us were impacted. If you dont know someone who was killed you know at least several people who were huddled in a locked store afraid of it. Me and my boyfriend love playing the Dorothy game at Cinergy. that area of the city is basically the heart of odessa with some of the biggest sources of education, food, and entertainment. Over the course of writing this i’ve had to X out this map and reupload it as i remember “oh yea someone was shot THERE too”

--------------------------------------

But that’s not all.

The evil people of america are already going “we HAVE to have guns” “good guy with a gun” ‘thoughts and prayers”

the 17 month old and the 15 year old killed were waiting with their family when they got shot. A stray bullet hit my work with a good 2 hundred workers and customers inside. one of the victims was a Fed Ex worker doing her job when she was shot in the head. multiple of the victims were just driving.

it wouldnt have mattered if EVERY person was armed. You have to know a gunman is there and that he’s intent to kill you before the possibilty of killing them in self defense comes up. These were driveby’s most of these people didnt see it coming. A car was driving up, maybe recklessly and BAMF someone has a hole in their body.

More cops wouldnt have stopped this, security at every establishment (like the companies would pay for that) wouldnt have stopped it. body armor in all our fashion wouldnt stop it (shot in the head, remember?), “A good guy with a gun” wouldnt have stopped it. Our entire police force and the state troopers were after this guy for a good 2 hours. Understandably we thought that there were 2 gunment when he murdered the mail carrier and stole her truck.

As big as this country is I knew this would keep happening but wiht 500 million people i never thought it would happen here, But it did and it will happen in a town near every American.

Every other country with a better economy and more civil government has stricter gunlaws or no guns at all. It doesnt matter if we get rid of all of them or some of them, if we make it harder to buy guns or ammo.  But the fact is that all the things the Gun Cultist say did not help, would not help and will never help. Everyone in our town was effected in some way and there was no way to prevent this other than making sure ppl like this asshole cant have a gun, let alone one that can can carry more than a few bullets.

------------------------------------------------------------------

november reading

so with lockdown #2, my master’s thesis done & handed in etc, i just had absolutely nothing going on so this month so... lots of books. featuring Houses full of statues and birds, an AU of weimar berlin, and... the plague?

someone who will love you in all your damaged glory, raphael bob-waksberg (audio) actually listened to this last month! anyway even tho i forgot about it, i actually really liked it! it’s a collection of short stories, all about love in some way, most with a strange twist - a couple wants a small wedding but the MIL insists they have to at least sacrifice 5 goats to the stone god and have a shrieking chorus, or it’s hardly a real wedding, right? that kind of thing. i really liked these stories; they were fun, hopeful without being cheesy (mostly), and the audio production, with lots of actors reading the different stories was fun. 4/5

the driver’s seat, muriel spark man this novella is nasty, but in a good way - sharp, vicious, mean but so well executed. it’s also pretty hard to discuss without spoiling it & i do think one should go into this unspoiled. but it’s certainly a classic of the unhinged women genre, showing lise seemingly making herself as noticeable, irritating and off-putting as she can on a trip to an unnamed (probably italian) city. 3.5/5

the empress of salt and fortune, nghi vo (singing hills cycle #1) a lovely novella set in an asian-inspired fantasy empire, which shows young cleric chih and their speaking hoopoe almost brilliant learn the story of a previous empress, a northerner who rose from exile as an cast-aside wife to power and of her servant, a peasant girl called rabbit. enjoyed the setting and the way this story unfolded through objects and rabbit’s retelling, and will definitely read the sequel novella which comes out in december. 3.5/5

pine, francine toon (audio) this is a crime/thriller type book with some horror elements about a young girl whose mother has disappeared mysteriously when she was very small. she lives with her dad in the scottish highlands close to a giant forest. the beginning is pretty cool & creepy, but then like 80% of it is just the girl being sad & wanting to know what happened to her mother & the dad being an alcoholic mess. and then most of the plot happens in the last 10% & isn’t great. disappointing. 2/5

where the wild ladies are, aoko matsuda (tr. from japanese by polly barton) a collection of short stories retelling japanese folklore stories about female ghosts/monsters with a feminist twist. on the whole, i liked these stories, but also found them a lot more light in tone than i expected; i guess i thought this would be more on the wild & raw side, so i ended up finding them a bit underwhelming. might also be a problem with lacking cultural context. will say tho that tilted axis press is great & i will seek out more of their books. 2.5/5

piranesi, susanna clarke (audio) god this was so good! so delightful! the House with its many rooms full of tides and clouds and birds and statues is a wonderful, magical yet melancholy setting, the narrator is kind & gentle & earnest, full of wonder and curiosity at the House and its mysteries (the contrast between the narrator’s and the Other’s attitude to the House... yes), the slow building up to the numerous reveals are just. very well done. the writing is lovely (did i almost cry about the albatross? yes) and chiwetel ejiofor is a great audio narrator. just all around lovely & the ending hits just right. 4.5/5

doomsday book, connie willis reading this book during lockdown #2.... a galaxy brain move i wouldn’t necessarily recommend. anyway this is set in a near future where time travel is used for historical research; oxford university is sending the young historian kivrin on the first mission to the middle ages (1320, which is perfectly safe, as far as medieval years go), but things go wrong and soon modern day oxford is under quarantine (ha. how wild. can you imagine.) and kivrin notices that some things are a bit off about where she is (spoiler it’s actually 1348 and y’all know what that means right... PLAGUE TIME). lots of people on goodreads found this slow and boring and while it is pretty damn slow (and for a world with time travel way too many plot points hinge on being unable to contact people by telephone), i found it riveting and uh dread-inducing throughout, but also really warm and immersive. adored this, was devastated at the end. even almost a month later i’m still in my feelings about it. 4.5/5

too loud a solitude, bohumil hrabal (tr. from czech by michael henry heim) a novella i intellectually appreciated but didn’t really love - the narrator works as a paper compactor in a nightmarish basement full of mice (that also get crushed by the hundreds) from where he imagines rat wars in the sewers but from where he also saves hundreds of books. it’s fascinating & well-written but as soon as it gets away from the nightmare paper-crushing basement, it just loses its appeal, especially when the narrator reminisces about his relationships to women (how to simultaneously put women on a pedestal and smear shit on them!!!). 3/5

i’m thinking of ending things, iain reid literary horror/thriller type book with a really intriguing first half, as a young woman is visiting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time while thinking of ending the relationship and things increasingly feel off (the parents are weird, there’s a picture on the wall that the boyfriend claims is him as a child, but is actually her, she gets weird voicemails from her own number). great sense of vague unease, very scary. then the second half kind of blows up the whole story in a way that i should theoretically find interesting but just found kind of underwhelming and not scary, especially since the ending then feels the need to spell it all out for you. 2/5

passing, nella larsen (reread) ugh this is brilliant and i almost don’t have anything to say about it so i’ll just summarise it i guess. it’s a novella about two black women in 1920s america, who knew each other as teenagers and who run into each other in a rooftop bar, where both of them are passing as white. irene finds out that clare is passing full-time, married to a white man who does not know that she is black, and although she strongly disapproves, she can’t help but be seduced (the queer subtext is strong here) into renewing their friendship, which begins to threaten her sense of stability and control. this book is pretty much pitch-perfect, has a lot of things to say about race, loyalty, what happens when categories we live by are threatened or destabilised, and is also just tight and elegantly written and. ugh. brilliant. 5/5

ring shout, p. djèlí clark an alternative history/fantasy book where the ku klux klan gets possessed by demons from another dimension and a group of black (and other marginalised) women (some men too) who are able to see these demons have to fight them from gaining more power through a showing of birth of a nation. note: the klan is still already evil without the demons, but their evil makes it easier for the demons to possess them. very cool concept, very cool setting, but i found the main character and some of the plot progression a little boring. 3/5

amberlough, lara elena donnelly (amberlough dossier #1) this is really just the nazi takeover of weimar berlin in an alternate world (literally... the denizens of the city of amberlough are amberlinians... the two epigraphs are from le carre and cabaret...), told thru an amberlinian spy (cyril) forced to work for the nazi-equivalent (the ospies), his secret cabaret mc/smuggling kingpin boyfriend (aristide), and rough-and-tumble sally bowles (cordelia). as such, it’s extremely my shit, although i will say that donnelly makes it a bit easy on herself by making the nazi parallel so very overt; the ospies’ ideology is not particularly detailed beyond ‘real fashy’ and wanting to unite four loosely federated states. it’s just.... a bit weaksauce, and while she does include an ethnic minority for the ospies to hate, this also doesn’t feel as fundamental to their ideology as it should. also cyril sucks. but these issues may be solved in the sequels & it was a lot of fun. also.... amazing cover. 3/5

the vanishing half, brit bennett very much in conversation with larsen’s passing, this is a 2020 historical novel about passing, colorism, and identity, in which desiree and stella, very light-skinned african american twins who grow up in a black town that values lightness very much, become separated when stella chooses to pass for white and marry a white man. the book is very immersive and engaging, and stella and desiree are interesting characters, but (i felt unfortunately) much of the book is focused on their daughters, whose chance meeting might expose stella/reunite the sisters/etc etc, but who weren’t as interesting. the plot also relies on coincidences a lot which is a bit annoying. still an interesting and entertaining read. 3/5

die stadt der anderen, anthology printed version of an art project where three pairs of authors were sent on trips through berlin, which each person writing about what the other person showed them and how they experienced the city through the other. there was nothing earth-shaking in this, but reading it during lockdown was lovely. in conclusion i love berlin... would love to experience it again some time. 3/5

the fire this time, edited by jesmyn ward collection of essays on anti-black racism in america, many in response to the beginning of the black lives matter movement. i don’t have much to say about it, but it is very good and i would recommend. as is often the case with essay anthologies about serious topics i don’t really think i can rate it.

intimations, zadie smith a very short collection of essays written during early lockdown. smith is always smart and fun but i wish these had been a little more focused on politics and less on personal experience, but like, you can’t really criticise a book for not being what you wanted it to be. ‘contempt as a virus’ was very good. 

superior: the return of race science, angela saini really solid, engaging and accessible discussion of race science and why... it’s bad & dangerous, both looking at race science in the past and the invention of race, and how it is returning and regaining influence (not to say that race science ever completely disappeared, but as saini explains, it moved into a more marginal space in the sciences after ww2). 3.5/5

the hive, camilo josé cela (tr. from spanish by j.m. cohen & arturo barea) spanish modern classic set in madrid during the last few years of ww2. told thru short fragmentary snippets with a huge rotating cast of characters, mostly lower and middle class, going about their days, with the theme tying them together being “the city, that tomb, that greased pole, that hive”, which is a very sexy line, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me. the tone is v dispassionate and in combination with the huge cast it just made me profoundly unengaged. it also has the weird habit of changing scene in the middle of a paragraph, which i found rather confusing. 2.5/5 slave old man, patrick chamoiseau (tr. from french by linda coverdale) absolutely amazing short novel from the creolité movement aabout an old slave, seemingly resigned to his position, suddenly escaping and being pursued by the slavemaster’s terrifying monstrous mastiff through the forests of martinique, but really also about selfhood, relearning humanity, trauma and nature. the language is at turns sparse and lush and always gorgeous and the translation from french/creole uses endnotes (we love an endnote) and a strategy of doubling to retain some of the original language, which was really cool to read. so yeah this is brilliant. 4/5

mexican gothic, silvia moreno-garcia gothic horror novel about young mexican socialite noemí visiting her recently-married cousin in her new (english) family’s isolated, creepy and dilapidated mansion after said cousin sent a disturbing and strange letter calling for help. gothic horror shenanigans involving vivid dreams, family secrets and eugenics ensue. after a slow start, i absolutely devoured the second half in one afternoon bc once it gets going it REALLY gets going. not super-scary, but a nice creepy atmosphere & reveal. also loved how it combines the clear yellow wallpaper inspo (the cousin’s letter involves people in the wallpaper) and the focus on the english family’s eugenic ideology (not a fun fact but charlotte perkins gilman was a eugenicist), and the vain & flighty but also smart & stubborn protagonist. had a lot of fun with this. 3.5/5

i’m also still reading a tale of love and darkness by amos oz which is really good but which is taking me forfuckingever.