I can't remember if I followed you for the Destiel content or the Dragon Age content. Cullrian in the year of our lord 2023 made me do a double-take so hard I got whiplash.

Well I was a Dragon Age blogger first, then Mass Effect, then Destiel for the loooongest time (season 8 to season 16!). So really, it kinda depends on how long ago it was, but I'm glad you're here for both! lol

I wasn't really into Inquisition, unfortunately, but I always adored Dorian. I went back to play the series again last year at this time, and decided to try romancing Cullen, and experience his romance finally. Over the years I'd seen lots of my DA friends shipping Dorian and Cullen and I always nodded and said "nice" as I scrolled past it. But something about experiencing Cullen's romance made it click in my head, and I started reading fic, and I fucking buried myself in it. I blazed through all the fic, and I'm out, otherwise you'd see even MORE Cullrian blogging in 2023 😆

Anyway, got any fic recs? lol

♡ obligatory end-of-the-year art thing ♡

(semi-lengthy chat and a fairly massive art wall under the cut)

It's been quite the year (and then some) in terms of my art (and everything, really). I've improved certain things (line quality is so so much better), while certain other things have suffered (hesitancy with color and certain subject matter; shying from backgrounds, etc.). In 2024 I hope to correct what is lacking in my current art--but (above all) the best achievement of 2023 is rekindling my personal love of making art.

After graduation from college in 2020, I suffered nearly a 3-year burnout in any and all of my interests--but especially in art. I didn't stop making art or doing what I used to love (and what I was desperately trying to love again), but I certainly didn't love it like I used to. I'd even say that, for a significant span of time, I hated my art and I hated even the act of making art. I was not at all gracious with myself between 2020-22 (and even into a good half of 2023). To make things worse, I had started teaching myself the new-to-me medium of digital art in 2020, which only added to my frustration as the learning curve was far steeper than I anticipated.

(I'll not even dedicate more than this sentence on how the advent of AI "art" affected all this artist-self-worth shit).

I was unemployed at the time, too, from mid-2021 to the summer of 2023--which made me feel like shit. Job market sucked. Most everything fucking sucked.

I even got a job waiting tables in June of this year and promptly lost it in July (the owner closed the restaurant with ZERO communication to any of her employees--I remember I laughed the whole night in utter shock).

In all this I remember continuously reading forums/trying to find advice late into the night about what to do when I fall out of love with what I know I want love but can't, whether in regards to my writing, my art, or even my general liking of watching movies--I no longer cared for any of this. And there wasn't really any answer to my problem outside of therapy and medication (neither of which I could afford).

But I am in a far better place now. Mentally, financially. That same month I got work as a barista only a week after I lost my waitressing job, and I've been going strong at that place for about six months. I'm also employed at the local library and I enjoy both my jobs. I am grateful.

I am beyond grateful for those that still loved me when I was hard to love--still tried to love me even when I was bitter and angry and in a constant state of emotional whiplash.

And I am most grateful for the restored relationship between me and my passions. And that is due in no small part to those who have supported me along the way with seeds of encouragement (you all know who you are; thank you so, so very much).

I hope for more art from my hands in the coming year--better and bolder and unapologetically self-indulgent. And I wish the same for all other artists/writers/creators.

here follows a portion of my stuff from this year (mostly):

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[my] rabbit hole. (and the resulting hyper-vigilant-brain. )

Right now, there are a lot of dead people inside, and I don't know why I have this feeling of having to swallow them all again. I grow marigolds for my grandmother, I pick blue thistles for my grandfather, but that's not enough. Nothing probably ever is.

At work, I don't know if I'm experiencing what they all call "after covid", but in two years of graduation I can already see the difference. Before, it was hard, we were constantly understaffed, but I had the feeling that my colleagues still had resources, and we were still united.

Now, and frankly I can't believe it only comes from my feelings and my personal prism, I only work in pain. But such pain that I wonder how I will be able to continue.

The work is not done. We spend our time doing the work of the team before us. Who probably had to do the same.

We only manage the emergencies or almost. So we are doing double duty. We never leave on time. We see the patients abandoned. Especially the elderly. We are 2 to manage more than 40 beds, in services such as general medicine, therefore serious pathologies and people who all require significant care.

I finished my service at the public hospital in Oncology on the verge of a massive personal burnout. I've come back to work so many times on days off.

After that, I worked in the emergency department at night, in a private for-profit clinic, whose chief surgeons make 50k a month. My colleagues and I are at 1800. 2000 with overtime. I ran out of patience to continue. Emergencies are the Cour des miracles. People come for nothing. Those who really should come grit their teeth and stay home.

Emergency doctors (but others too) no longer touch patients and prescribe tons of check-ups (blood, urine, etc.) to be profitable and heaps of drugs not reimbursed.

Besides, in two years, I don't think I've ever seen a doctor touch a patient. Even in the hospital. We send the residents to do lumbar punctures; nurses or nursing assistants for all other technical actions. I'm even talking about laying electrodes for an electro-encephalogram. I'm even talking about taking a pulse, measuring a breathing rate, feeling a patient's stomach.

Thanks to morphine for allowing me to write this morning. I have never vomited so much as in the past few months. And I still want when I have an empty stomach.

I am so tired of seeing my fellow caregivers in such a painful situation. Too much suffering and fatigue does not create solidarity, on the contrary, it produces more mistreatment, more low blows, more pettiness. A doctor would say it's a symptom, however painful it is, it shows that the body is still alive. It's better than a clinically dead, even if that's what will inevitably come next.

The French health system is collapsing in silence, in the most total indifference, oh you assholes who applauded us two years ago, what contempt and what arrogance... As long as your tumor has not become dangerous you are no longer aware that we exist. The price of the latest iPhone is more important. The lack of sunflower oil too.

Frères humains, qui après nous vivez...

The world of health in France is collapsing and what to do if not follow the movement?

Swansong Review:

So as it turns out, I finished rereading Swansong tonight and finally finished chapter five. (I know that was fast, but to be fair I read a lot to keep myself awake at work overnight, so I had the time to spare for it.) And as it turns out, I had only halfway finished chapter five the last time I picked this up. Cannot remember why I stopped midway through, but I can say reading it fully through in one sitting made it easier to digest and process together. It's not as densely worded as the earlier chapters (at least to me it's not), but emotionally it holds a different weight, so it felt right to read it all together like that. I'm writing this note right after finishing so my thoughts on the text are fresh this time around.

Before I even get to my thoughts on chapter five though; I made the comment before that everytime I read this fic, I pick up a new thing from it that tends to hit a personal note for me, and this time around was no exception. This passage from chapter 4 struck me as I was reading it this time:

"He wasn't doing that because he wanted to feel happy, but because he needed to draw clear lines in the sand as to what he could and couldn't acknowledge if he wanted to carry on living.

He would have lost his mind otherwise."

This is just...a feeling that I found I've been much more intimately familiar with than I previously thought, and I only realized that recently truth be told. I was suffering from massive creative burnout for like a year and a half that only started to relent about two months ago. (And it wasn't just because of the pandemic, but because of other personal matters that just happened to line up Too well with it.) I came to the realization that I'd spent so many years constantly grinding out art and writing in an effort to stave off some feelings and experiences I hadn't processed, and covid more or less brought those to the forefront and made me Stop for awhile to give my mind a rest. And while thats not exactly what Sebastian is doing here, I can still say I now recognize and understand the feeling you were conveying with this writing. (And safe to say, I'm dealing with it a lot better than poor Seb is currently.)

With that said, we reach my thoughts about chapter five itself.

Chapter five is...very much about the Weight of a lot of things it seems, from the weight of what Sebastian and Vincent had actually felt about each other in the past and what that meant, the actual depths of their connection due to shared life circumstance and unique understanding of each other. But in present time, its about confronting the weight of Sebastian's grief over Vincents death and ultimately, the acceptance of it it seems, at least if his tears at the end speak for that themself. And its funny because you mentioned something about acceptance not long before Seb and Vincents conversation at the end, and that passage stood out to me the most in this chapter:

"But acknowledgement wasn't acceptance. He didn't accept his despair, either. So the source of all his recent stress had disappeared. Why should he care? What wasn't to like? Vincent was gone! Fantastic! That was his problem solved, just like that, and he hadn't even needed to lift a finger! Sebastian was free to resume his life at last.

So why wasn't he happy?

Down that path lay madness."

It's clear that Sebastian has at least Acknowledged Vincents death and the feelings associated with it. But he's compartmentalized it all and shoved it so far away in his thoughts that even with the reoccuring dreams, and even with Vincent standing in front of him again, he hadn't truly accepted it. And of course that's what leads to him just breaking down finally and yelling about everything, and eventually to his tears.

It felt visceral to read that part; the way you wrote it felt very real, and honestly because I've more recently been going through a similar time learning to accept some of my own issues leftover from running away from an abusive home, I really understood what Sebastian was feeling here. Because youre right, acknowledging is one thing. Saying "This has happened and I know it did" is One Thing. But really taking it fully into account, and Processing and Accepting it in All of its weight and emotions attached, is a whole other thing. And it really does take time and effort and eventually, if you don't do it for long enough, it'll come out messy and explosively. Thankfully I started working on my own traumas and grievences in much more quiet and less painful ways, but even so, I understood what you wrote here with Seb all the same.

I think overall what strikes me about this fic as a whole is just how youve written about grief both as a concept but as we watch Sebastian start to come to terms with it in different ways, and for very different parts of his life. And I say this with full honesty: while I've read/seen other works that have handled grief well enough and left some impact on me personally, none of them have done it quite like this fic. I know you put a lot of your personal feelings into these writings, and so maybe its because youre reflecting your own experiences back into the narritive, but man...something about growing up and going through so much in the past five years while consistantly coming back to this fic as it grew, and as I grew too, has really made it stick in both my heart and just in my thinking in general. I can relate to the concepts of grief and the questions and the overall life lessons and advice you've stuck in here in a way that I haven't connected with to any other work I've encountered, and that's why it's stayed so relevant for me this whole time you've been working on it. Of course I love it for the story of Sebastian and Vincent as well, I wouldn't have started the story all those years ago if it hadn't been for that in the first place. But even if it were an original work without those two in it that you'd written, it'd still hold the same impact for me I think. Your writing is just That good and you've written this story from such a realistic and human place of emotion that it really does stick with you and make you think about it.

I have loved this fic more and more with each reading as I've come to understand and be able to connect with it more as a whole over the years, and now that I'm caught up properly I can say yet again that I cannot wait to see where it goes, and I'm eternally greatful that you decided to write this piece in the first place. I look forward to when it updates again, no matter how long that may be 💕

Fuck. This. Shit.

Oh hi gentle reader,

Thanks for dropping by.

Where to begin?

First of all, an apology...

I apologise unreservedly for the name of this blog and for the premise of this blog. I have come to realise that this contemporary mindset - which was foundational to this project - that of those-who-are-injured-being-responsible-for-turning-their-victim-hood-to-the-heroes-journey-of-self-actualization is fucking bullshit.

I am writing this, by the way, from my bed. Where I have been all day. Where I was all day yesterday. Because I have been too shaken (my partner calls it "unwell") to leave the house.

This is why I think this mindset is bullshit: Not only does the ideology of victim-turned-hero shift the burden of responsibility for change on to the victims (and minimise the role of the perpetrators), it also doesn't address the massive underlying societal causes of the violence in the first place. By making it about the victims personal transformation (from squashed caterpillar to beautiful butterfly), we do not address the traumas of our contemporary society and of the violent, patriarchal, colonial, white supremacist capitalism which people pass on through their own violent, coercive and life-denying words and actions. Secondly, this mindset is bullshit because it implies that, when the victim fails to heal themselves, they have failed as a person. Failed to take control, to turn things around, to "man-up" or to "turn the other cheek", in this meritocratic society, they haven't "earned" or "deserved" it yet. What's more, there is not room in this mindset for the ongoing agony which is the traumatised brain. If, like me, you have done all the work in your power to heal (Meditate, Exercise, SSRIs, Psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Shamanic Journeying, Journalling, Self Medicating, etc) and continue to work on it daily yet still suffer, this concept of "rewriting trauma" just underscores what poor writers we are, unable to conjure a different reality. What if I am so overwhelmed and overburdened that I cannot, I have almost never been able to, imagine another reality, let alone bring one into being? I guess I'm just a shit writer and all this pain and chaos is my fault?

It's been over a year since I last posted on this blog as I've been undergoing something of a slow burning subterranean change, catalysed by a number of encounters, that is only just now starting to smoke above ground... Over the last year I have been threatened with physical violence by a stranger (white male) near my home; received a long series of uninvited, episodic attacks on my beliefs, politics and ways of life from a man who I previously believed to be a friend and ally (who then gas lighted and alienated me when I expressed my pain and anger at this behaviour); witnessed a close family member (female) be bullied, stalked, and threatened by another (older, male) family member; have been shouted at in the street while working as a personal assistant to a woman in a wheelchair (by a white, middle aged man); had to challenge gas lighting from a male family member after discovering their concealed porn addiction; been aggressively, verbally attacked (and shouted at) by a mature male (white) student while conducting a lecture; and all the while completely unsupported by the societal structures which are meant to aid us when in need. Worse, when I have sought help, support, and/or protection, I've been told no or else it's not a problem. There is something very gendered about all of this and, while it's nothing new, the frequency and the intensity of these attacks has been seriously disturbing and oftentimes frightening.

Over the last year I have been in an increasingly rapid cycle of boom and bust (where now the busts are so frequent and so heavy they virtually merge into one uninterrupted constant). All of these encounters, individually and cumulatively, have left me with burnouts, breakdowns, and the worst negative internalisation I've known since I was a kid. I've had suicidal ideations, blackouts, insomnia, fainting attacks, I've had the shakes so bad I had to sit on a pavement and wait for them to pass. I've had brain fog so heavy that I can't even make simple decisions like what pair of socks to wear or been unable to engage in even nice plans like seeing friends or listening to (and hearing) conversations on the phone. And all the time, every day, I'm working really hard to try and maintain my position as a human being, to be employed so that I can keep a roof over my head, pay for my therapy, doing daily meditations, daily exercises, journalling, eating well (or trying to), anything, everything, the hard fucking work of just keeping going. But it is too hard. I am so tired. It's been over 20 years of this shit and I am no more functional now than I was when I was a suicidal 17 year old. Worse, in many ways. I managed to pass my A levels and keep down a job then. Now, 20 years later, I drop out of every situation I am in, I spin out after even innocuous requests or suggestions, I lose the thread of every thought and 90% of my actions. Because it all gets too much. All the time. It's like living in a vortex.

Fuck it.

Fuck these patriarchal systems of inequality and oppression that bring all of this about and then fail to support those who fall out. And if you are reading this and can't recognise these systems - you're in it. I recommend you go outside - go to your local food bank or job centre, talk to people about their experiences. Go to the PIPs assessment centre nearest you, the immigration detention centre, or come and have a chat with me (don't do that, I don't want to see anyone but the cat). If you don't want to go inside, go online. Look at the statistics for child poverty in your area, for life expectancy, employment. Talk to a friend or neighbour who is not employed by their family about how it is. Look at the Extinct Ocean Animals list or UNHCR's 2022 statistics for refugees... This white, colonial, patriarchal system is sick.

Fuck it all. I am fucking done. When I can get out of this bed I'm leaving, I'm not participating anymore.

If I'm the canary, and this is the coal mine, you have been warned.

Ix

have you heard about that eating disorder diabetics get when they purposefully don't get insulin so they can lose weight? I'm trying so hard not to start it, but it's like an urge inside me. I'm not "fat" but I would say I'm a little chubby. I really want to lose about 15 pounds before college, but every time I start to exercise and eat right I gain weight since my blood sugar is low all the time no matter how many adjustments I make. Do you have any words to offer me?

This is a topic I have often thought of writing about, but never had the courage to post. Anonymous, I’m doing this for you, please listen:I know exactly what you are talking about and exactly how you feel, because I’ve done it, it almost killed me, and even though I nearly died from it, I’m sometimes still tempted. It’s called diabulimia (if you don’t already know) and while not yet officially recognized as an eating disorder, it is finally gaining the attention of the medical community and even the media; the BBC did a brief documentary on it recently, which I haven’t yet seen. Diabulimia falls under the bulimia umbrella because restriction of insulin is used as a form of purging; one doesn’t have to induce vomiting to have bulimia, as some people think – people may have exercise bulimia (overexercising as a form of purging), use laxatives, or other purging behaviors. For us type 1s, insulin restriction is a unique option. The first and most important thing to know is that you are not alone. You are not alone. And that is worth more than you may realize.   In a survey conducted by Joslin Diabetes Research Center, one third of type 1 women admitted to having manipulated their insulin in an attempt to lose weight. Yes, you read that right: one third. And that is self-reporting, which means it’s probably lower than the real number. The statistics on the incidence of eating disorders in both men and women with diabetes have not yet been nailed down, but the evidence does show that people with diabetes also are much more likely to have eating disorders than the general population. 

To understand one of the possibilities why this is the case, here is a quotation from Ulla Kärkkäinen, a Finnish research nutritionist, defining disordered eating: 

“Eating is disordered when a person arbitrarily decides when they are hungry or full, regardless of how they are feeling; weighs themselves constantly; or drinks non-caloric drinks to keep from feeling hungry. Eating can also be considered disordered if a person meticulously plans each meal long into the future, counts calories and weighs foods, follows an excessively strict diet or cuts certain foods from their diet…”That is the treatment for type 1 diabetes. Whether or not we eat is dictated by a number on a meter, not by how we feel. Meals are planned and food is measured and weighed so that we can dose properly. What and when we eat is almost always at the forefront of our minds, literally so we won’t die. Our bodies are constantly being measured to see whether results are satisfactory. Add to that societal misconceptions about diabetes, the tendency of insulin to make some people gain weight, the recently discovered direct effect of insulin on dopamine levels, and the multitudinous other factors that can make weight management harder for diabetics, and you’ve got a perfect storm. So I’ll say it again: you are not alone.The first time I experienced diabulimia I was fourteen. I didn’t have a word for what I was doing, because the word hadn’t been invented yet. I just knew that before I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I was losing weight and feeling good about my body, and after I was diagnosed and started taking insulin, I gained weight and felt ugly and fat. It was the mid 90s and heroin chic was in, the pressure to be super thin was already overwhelming for any girl, but added to that was the pressure not to conform to diabetic stereotypes: I didn’t want the ignorant kids who thought I got diabetes from eating too many sweets to be validated. I knew rationally that my chubbiness didn’t make them right, but reason couldn’t change how I felt. I was too afraid to restrict my insulin for more than a few days, though…or maybe I was too strong and had not yet been worn down enough? I don’t know. It wasn’t until my twenties that I really went for it. Like you, I wasn’t fat. I was athletic with maybe 10 or 15 pounds of chub that I would have liked to have shifted. My family life was difficult. I was broke and on my own. I had no insurance and was already rationing insulin to try and make it last. I didn’t know at the time that burnout is common for diabetics, but I was suffering my first burnout. I was completely worn down by life and by diabetes, and I just wanted to be able to control one thing. Just one. So I started manipulating insulin. I took control by refusing to control my diabetes.And, oh how I rationalized it! I would take my long-acting and skip the fast-acting, I was still taking some insulin, that was surely better than none, right? I was riding 300s and 400s, but it wasn’t 500s or 600s, so it couldn’t be that bad, right? I’d had perfect A1Cs ever since my diagnosis – that was over a decade! What could a few weeks of high sugars really do? Other people were out of control of their diabetes all the time, and they were still okay. There were type 2s walking around with high blood sugars for years not even knowing! And when it started to work and the weight just fell off, it was easier and easier to rationalize. “Just five more pounds,” I’d say. “Just ten more pounds and I’ll stop.”Of course, one of the side-effects of high blood sugar is extreme hunger, so my eating habits became harder and harder to control. I craved carbs like never before. A whole pizza, an entire box of cereal, two dozen Oreos couldn’t satiate me: and the more I ate, the thinner I got. I never binge ate before the diabulimia, but my body was starving, and so bingeing became a thing for me…especially since it just made me lose more weight. I hadn’t gained control, I’d lost it. Completely.One morning at 5am, after three months of rationing insulin and rationalizing my diabulimia, after a night of nonstop vomiting…I realized I was dying. I was so sick, I lost seven more pounds THAT DAY. I could barely breathe and my heart felt like it was going to explode, trying to pump the sludge that was my acid blood through my veins. I asked my roommate to drive me to the Emergency Room, but before I left, I stepped on the scale and felt really good about how much weight I’d lost. I’d gone from someone whose chronic illness necessitated disordered eating to someone with a full blown eating disorder. And the eating disorder had taken me over.I spent the next 3 days in the ICU wearing an oxygen mask, catheterized, a massive hematoma on my arm from the excruciating arterial blood draws, searing potassium being delivered via IV to the other arm. Five IVs in all. They told me if I’d waited just a few more hours I’d have died. I’m not telling you this in an attempt to “scare you straight”, though. You know the risks as well as I did. Sometimes knowing the risks and even having lived them isnt’ enough. Eating disorder wouldn’t be a mental illness if it was rational. What you may not know is just how quickly and easily and how TOTALLY it takes you over.So I’m going to tell you the one thing that keeps me from going back to diabulimia when I am really struggling: diabulimia doesn’t really work. The minute you start taking insulin again, the weight comes back with a vengeance. It is a fleeting fix – the high blood sugar might as well be the high of heroin or meth: you feel better in the moment, but when you come down off that high it is hell, and everything that pushed you to try it the first time has just been made worse.I’ve been struggling with eating disorders ever since, though I’ve not resorted to diabulimia again. Sometimes, like I said, I feel so down that the only thing keeping me from it is knowing its effects are temporary. I even checked myself into one of the most renowned eating disorder treatment centers in the country…sadly, there is little known about treating eating disorder in type 1 diabetics, and the traditional treatments for eating disorders are in direct contradiction to the treatment of diabetes. In the end, their attempts to help me only made me worse. With hard work and help from a sympathetic endocrinologist and diabetes educator, though, I’ve been recovering. I’ve even gone a few years at a time with the eating disorder tamed. I still have relapses, though. While I can never know for sure, I think that if I had never tried diabulimia, I would never have developed any full blown eating disorders.You asked if I had any words for you and it saddens me that I have so many, and that so few of them are good. I don’t think it is hopeless, though: I have lost weight in a healthy way with diabetes, and without my eating disorder taking control. It was harder for me than for people without diabetes, but it can be done. I’ve had periods where the eating disorder was barely even there. I learned that weight really wasn’t even the real problem, and learned that there were other things to focus on for my mental and physical health. And even though my treatment experience was mostly negative, I took a few really positive things from it: the realization that my eating disorder didn’t have to define me, the realization that I wasn’t alone, and that it was okay to ask for help. You see, just as the stereotypes about diabetes are mostly wrong, so are the stereotypes about eating disorders. Eating disorder is seen as the ailment of the young, white, middle-class, anorexic chick. But the truth is, there was every kind of woman in that treatment center: women from age 14 to 64, of every ethnicity and religion, rich and poor, rail-thin to morbidly obese. And there were so many women there whom, had I not known they were struggling with eating disorders, I would have thought totally had their shit together, were confident, were admirable. Knowing that such admirable women were facing the same struggle as me made me hate myself less. You are not alone. Your weight doesn’t define you, and it certainly isn’t worth developing an eating disorder and potentially losing your life. If you need more help, ask for it, but remember that you have to balance your mental health with your diabetes, and don’t let anyone tell you one is more important than the other. They are both necessary.And that is it. There is no easy solution to this problem, there is not a moral or neat ending to this story, there isn’t a tidy little bow to tie this shit up with. I just hope that you will read my experience and spare yourself going through it, because it’s not worth it.