How / why did you start writing in the first place ?

I don't remember exactly how, just that I had always loved books. I can't remember a time when reading and storytelling wasn't the focus of my world. I loved words!!! I loved spelling them, looking up their definitions and using them to express myself. The only subject I ever excelled at or cared about, was English . I loved using my imagination to create worlds for my toys to live in. I think it started when I was younger as a way to cope with my tough childhood. As I got older, I noticed the positive attention adults and my friends would put on me because of my writing. Though I didn't believe in myself, a lot of people were in awe of my stories, which made me keep going.

I also wrote a lot because it felt good to release all of the emotions I had built up inside me.

I just want to say, I'm so sorry that you guys are having to deal with this, I know how scary this can be, I know I wanted to just hear someone say that it's sucks you're dealing with this,

So Im sorry this is happening to you, it sucks, it's a shitty situation,

My anxiety is making it bigger than it is, but its truly fucking shitty.

One of the things that's eating at me is that, short of having enough money to simply buy a house in cash, these problems are not solved by throwing a wad of cash at it.

Because the problem with buying the house was not that I didn't HAVE enough (I did have enough, but to simply buy the house would deplete my entire savings and I would have no way of clawing out of that) it was that I didn't MAKE enough. So the solution to that problem is to get paid more. I have a raise coming in August, but theres two months in the summer where I make nothing. So I got a summer job for those two months and I did the bunny thing, but that's only 5K more than I made last year and I'd still be short about 10k to meet the barest minimum for an FHA loan, according to the guy I talked to on the phone.

Okay so Plan B was to find an apartment at a lower rate since the roommates are moving out soon. But every time I applied to an apartment I would either:

-get beat out by someone with a faster clicker and who doesnt need a cosigner

-would go to apply only to be told that there were no units available

-the scam alarms go off.

Clearly its just a bad time for me to move. So to save my mental health a little bit because looking on Zillow was turning into a form of self-harm, we decided to stay in the rental house we're currently in and hope that the month-to-month upcharge won't eat away at my savings.

But.

Our rental is through a property manager, which means that any communication to the landlord has to go through our agent who appears to have her own schedule. I asked her on March 30th for some options and after emailing her every day for the past week she called me back on April 19th with 'I'll have to ask the owners, I'll get back to you tomorrow.'

And then she didn't get back to me.

And that's what I've been writing to my senator about because fuck this shit.

everyone has been posting about their 2023 and how much jere and joker out have impacted their lives and i guess it's my turn now

this is pretty long and all over the place but... i have a lot to say, i guess

i'm a big eurovision fan but not to the point of watching all the national finals or preparties or anything. i'm pretty invested in it during may but prior to this year i haven't really gotten invested in any artists (at least not to this extent)

anyway, this year, for some reason, i ended up watching cha cha cha the day after the umk final and i was in love. i didn't even need to listen to any other songs - i knew right away käärijä was my 2023 winner. i decided to check other songs that were already out and... guess what other song i liked right away? yeah, carpe diem

and then the universe decided it'd be lovely if bojan and jere met and it fundamentally changed the trajectory of my year. their friendship made me so happy at a time of my life i was struggling so much in terms of mental health - and with their friendship, their music, their interviews, and the rest of the kä crew and joker out

i started lurking around tumblr again. i didn't feel comfortable enough to participate in fandom, but i did love seeing all the content and all the discussions everyone was having. i hadn't felt this excited joining a new fandom in... years, literally. and despite all the shitty moments i've had in 2023, both jere and joker out have helped me a lot and i've felt so happy thanks to them

when i got the ticket for the tavastia show, i spoke to non fandom friends, expecting them to tell me it was a silly idea to fly to the other side of europe just to see joker out (and potentially experience the next bojere reunion), but they all said the same - we haven't seen you this happy about anything in a long time. you should go. and it was one of the best concert experiences of my life

then i also booked an entire trip to dublin to see jere AND I GOT TO MEET HIM? and now i'm getting my first tattoo ever? and, sure, i also got covid for the first time in my life, but it was yet another AMAZING concert experience and one i'll never forget, both thanks to jere and everyone else i met in line. dublin will forever be in my heart. it's one of those experiences that seemed straight out of a fanfic and i can't believe it all happened to me

and finally, it was time to see joker out in madrid, which was a little bit of a birthday gift to myself. i was awake for 30 hours straight and i don't even know how i survived, but it was PHENOMENAL. i truly loved every second of it

after dublin, i made the decision to start being a bit more active around here and got to meet some more lovely people and... while i still feel a bit weird, because i'm not exactly the best at interacting with others and i often feel like i'm the kid who transferred schools mid school year and is still trying to figure out exactly how to fit in, i do love how wonderful this community is. our silly joint fandom has brought me so much joy and i can't wait to see how it'll be in 2024

i'm not exactly ending this year feeling great, in terms of mental health, and i've been feeling quite down about certain things both jere and joker out had helped me feel a bit better about - body image and my own writing being the two main ones - but i seriously believe the positive impact they've had on me will influence how i deal with this during 2024 and i do hope to get to a better place

i wish you all the very best and thank you for being a part of my wonderful fandom experience and making my days a little brighter 💖 and i guess this is a good moment to say that my messages/inbox are always open and i'm always more than happy to make new fandom friends! also, if any of you are going to milan, just let me know (and, yes, i'm still deciding on some more joker out dates for next year because i can't resist spending money on them, it seems 💀)

Hey there and excuse me for just disappearing on everybody. I was having... quite the time over the last month or how long I haven't been here. Let's just say, I wasn't in a very good health, mentally speaking.

As I already said, the health of my parents has been greatly declining this last year, to the point that I feared I might lose them. Luckily they both are on a good path and I'm looking optimistically into the future.

The thing is, now my partner was diagnosed with a very bad high blood pressure. I know, this usually isn't a thing to be too worried about, it's well treatable. Yet it was the last straw and I just snapped. He's was on very heavy medication, since the blood pressure was really critical and the medication took it's toll on all aspects of our live. As I sometimes mentioned, my partner usually works the night shift, not always but sometimes he works them for like six weeks in row. Now he isn't working since December 6th. And he probably won't return to the night shifts ever again. Aside from them financial cut this means, those are a factor, but we'll manage. I'm really afraid what this turn of events will do to our relationship.

I'm a person that needs a lot of me time, almost all my hobbies require me to be on my own and for me to have my piece. The last month has been... challenging to say at least. I really love my partner, but our secret has always been, that we value the time we have together, as we don't have that much free time together. Now he's always there, when I'm at home too and I somehow can't go on about my hobbies as I used to.

I know, it will get better once he goes back to work (Jan 15.) but from now on we'll probably be out of the house for the same time and at home at the same time and honestly I don't know how to deal with that. Tonight I'm alone at home as he decided to go to the gym with a friend (doctor said he needs to lose weight).

I really hope he'll get a smaller dose of medication soon as those high dosed drugs really don't do him any good. He's not the same since taking them... It's interfering with out want to found a family this year.

I just went through such a shitty time this year and I was hoping things are going to be better but apparently somebody up there (or down there) really hates me... My doctor diagnosed a high-functioning depression due to the stress and all the burdens that were on my shoulders those past months. I'm slowly getting better but I'm still not feeling they way I did before. I feel guilty for not being able to care for my parents the way they deserve so strangers have to look after them. It costs their money, not mine, just because I'm to weak to handle the situation.

And I want a baby? Really, someone as weak as me? I really want a family, I'm just so afraid I will feel as overwhelmed as I do now for the rest of my life. What if my partner never gets better and has to take this medication for the rest of his life? The doctor says not to worry, everything's looking good, the high blood pressure can be a late symptom of an influenza or corona infection and will probably go away. Loosing weight will help enormously. But I'm still afraid.

I'm afraid of my parents untimely decline in health. I'm afraid for my own health. I'm just paralyzed by all those thoughts in my head. I don't know why I'm writing all this down here. Nobody will read a text as long as this. But sometimes it helps to shout my thoughts into the void.

I actually just wanted to say Hi! I'm still alive. I'll continue posting Sims stuff. Actually I'm currently throwing stuff into my queue. I've lost some pictures due to me being stupid and a noob, and I know there are ways to get them back but I'm too exhausted to try. It might be important screenshots, but I'll just summarize to you what happened. New Somerset posts are just around the corner.

Hope you'll enjoy them and I hope you had a great start into this new year. Lots of love and take care!

Omg thank you for saying it

Multiple times I've come across ppl literally sharing images of people who've been killed (in one case children what the fuck???) And even if its below a cut I still have to read the description of why they've put it under a cut. I know ppl have different opinions of this stuff but in my view that's so disrespectful of those who've lost their lives. The guilt trippy stuff (and I'm sorry but it's largely coming from people that don't know what they're talking about, as shown by the fact that there's literally no awareness that the stuff that's being said/shown untagged is hugely triggering for ppl who've lived through this stuff)

This is not a news site!!! People trying to avoid this stuff does not mean they don't have awareness of what's going on and aren't staying aware by getting their news from actual news sources???

I'm not against people talking about this stuff on here at all. It needs to be talked about. But for the love of God, making a post is not the same as taking to people in person. People do not have the option to walk away when you just send a post out in to the ether like that. Just tag things appropriately it's not that hard!!!

So yeah thank you for saying it. I always feel hugely guilty for trying to avoid certain things because of the guilt tripping that's so rife on this site but I really shouldn't cause half of what's coming up isn't even constructive (or true a lot of the time) and it just brings up a whole load of stuff that hits my mental health and makes it harder for me to actually campaign in a way that helps people

I always think of that one tweet that's like 'misery is not activism' making people feel shit isn't actually solving any of these issues or helping the world at all lol

When it comes to this topic, I always think of some articles I read about the human brain's capacity for processing bad news. One of them was titled something like "your brain can't handle the world".

Basically, it talked about how years ago (mind you, not that many years, given how fast modern technology evolved) you would get your handful of news, good and bad, on the newspaper or on TV and radio, and even that was already much more than a person in the 1800's would, given the slow pace of letters and how only vital info was able to fit into one. Newspapers would often only carry local news, and you could spend a whole lifetime without knowing what was happening in countries on the other side of the ocean.

Now, imagine that. A wedding would be the talk of the town for weeks. A funeral would be The Sad Event for your to grieve over for the following months. That is the amount of happy and sad (and playful, and contemplative, and other emotions) that one could experience and process in a healthy manner.

But nowadays, you get see the story of a family adopting their first puppy two continents away, and that's great and cool, but unfortunately that also means that you get the story of a bunch of children dying two continents away too, and the testimony of their families, and the overview of the political landscape that lead to this happening and the bleak understanding that that's not gonna change and it will happen again--

all that while you might be dealing yourself with a fascist government in your country, and your own bad news, and your own shitty economy, and laws that hurt a minority of which you are a part, and, and--

That is all too much. Literally too much for the mind of someone who is already tired of doing their own activism and surviving within the microcosm that is their town/community/country.

So you close CNN. You turn off the news livestream. You take a deep breath and you open tumblr because your mind is parched for dopamine and happiness you could use some cute fanart and compelling headcanons to relax.

You are two cute dog pics down when you scroll into graphic pictures of the latest massacre, paired with a detailed testemony of whatever horrific thing that happened. There isn't even a link for donations, or an e-mail you can reach to do anything remotely useful about it. It's just a spatter of misery smeared on your phone screen, quickly erasing all joy you might've gotten from the dog pics.

Your taglist is extensive, mind you, for the sake of keeping your dash a small safe haven from the dangers of doomscrolling - it's all there, blocked from sight: #negative, #current events, #death/, #child death/, #animal death/, #[insert current world tragedy], #[insert topic particularly triggering that could send you into a panic attack].

But people don't tag their shit. They say shit like "i don't care your blog theme, if you don't reblog this, you're a monster". They say "stop scrolling and look at this horrific thing". They say "why is no one talking about this"--

And don't realize, or don't care that some people are drowning in bills to pay and extra shifts to work and needing to double-think about wearing their pride pins because homophobia is getting worse in their country, and struggling with depression and anxiety, etc, etc.

I'm too adhd to make a concise text post ever, but if I can make any sort of point here, I guess that would be:

There is nothing wrong with not wanting to see, reblog or interact with negative posts about current events. This is not a news website. You did not come here for the news, and therefore is perfectly normal that you don't want to deal with them.

There is nothing wrong with making your dash a nice place curated with only the things you like. Block tags and blogs liberally. I know I do. This website is, to me, a source of memes, headcanons, jokes, character analysis and occasional useful knowledge. I don't get my news here. I don't engage in political/ideological debates here. I see a transphobe, I block them. I see a gun-freak bootlicker, I block them. This is my little garden, and goddamnit I will rip off all the weeds.

There is nothing wrong with not reblogging certain content, no matter what the guilt-trippy reblogs say. You don't owe anyone the space in your blog. This is your little garden, people don't get to tell you what to plant in it. You are one. Little. Person. You rebbloging something won't have the Big Worldly Impact they're making it out to be.

If you want to make room for the occasional activism in your blog, that's fine too. I make a point that everything I reblog that has a negative tone must be not only properly tagged but also have some kind of action attached to it - a donation link, a link for further reading in case of something raising awareness, a contact line for representatives to stop some dogshit law. I never reblog things that are just depressing and leave you feeling hopeless.

Please stay safe, drink water, be wary of doomscrolling, allow yourself not to be an activist 24/7, give yourself a safe space to decompress, take care, I love you <3

Before I go, I must leave fair warning to the piss-poor reading comprehension crowd: no, I am not advocating for toxic positivity or pretending that everything is fine, I just want the poor fuck juggling two jobs plus school while living in a political hellscape and managing depression and some other undiagnosed mental condition to be able to scroll the funny shitposting website without having to see triggering content that will send them into a panic attack.

Oh, and if you like my writing, here's my ko-fi for you to drop a lil coin <;3

being antisocial and schizoid and narcissistic so struggling to care about my safe person sometimes. Like MA has their trauma and dependency and I am so sick of them projecting trauma based thoughts onto me especially with my history of being shitty to them and trying so hard to be better for her only to be lumped back in there because I'm expressing my needs. And having to remind myself to be patient cause they're not as well off as I am with my own mental health and don't process things in the same way I do so I have to just try not to be frustrated with them over it like "you know this, we've talked about it, you know it hurts me" and trying to not take it too personally which I do well at. MA is doing their best and they're not always the best at fixing their defensive trauma coping mechanisms or dealing with intense emotions so I have to just sit there and take a break so I don't say something or do something I'll regret cause it's so hard for me to empathize with them over this shit. I very much struggle with us having entirely different thinking patterns and me being "worse" off or "more traumatized and disordered" than them (saying in quotes cause uh it ain't a competition, but I do experience things more than them) and being frustrated that what is small baby shit to me that I've dealt with for years is something intense for them especially when it ends up hurting me and maming me feel like theyre calling me an abuser.

The context for this? I cut down to only a few roleplays after they struggled with one in our list. They took it personally and said "I'm not incapable" since they get treated like that often and infantilized cause of them being an autistic airhead that acts young and goofy sometimes despite being the same age as me. And that especially hurt since I'm always reminding them of how capable they are and that those people are being shit to them. So not only to project onto me and put words in my mouth when I was being apathetic and blank in my emotions really fucking hurt. Especially since I would always worry about being abusive/bad to her between our ex friend, her shitty family and the way they demonize me as some controlling abuser for *checks list* treating her with respect and helping her practice boundaries, and shit like that. It stung. And I was so annoyed. She apologized right away and it's done, but I still just think about it. Like it's so much effort to be patient with her when she's so dependent on me and looks to me as guidance when that's a direct trigger for me.

This isn't something that happens often, but it's their DPD and BPD that gets to me sometimes. It happens when they get especially stressed and stuff and we are good at communicating. But I'm just ranting about it cause I am honestly sick of dealing with it coming up when it's so sensitive for me. But I'm reminding myself to be patient and understanding. She's apologized and made it up to me with love and cuddles so it's over with.

I dunno what the point of this post is tbh. Just ranting about how our different disorders, experiences, trauma, and thought processes kinda bash and being light hearted about my blank emotions about it cause other people's emotions are icky. My friend and I are very different with different points in our managing our trauma and disorders so I have to remind myself to be patient and caring towards them and to not get too frustrated because they have always been so kind about my unregulated trauma responses and so I should do the same to them :) I love em so much...genuinely...I wouldn't know about so many things about myself if not for them.

(MA and I are good. They're my safe person for a reason. Also MA will totally see this if they ever get on so it's not like I'm talking behind their back. I might be slightly delusional as I get when I make posts about made up people in my head. Well that explains a lot.)

C-PTSD/Trauma discussion under the cut.

In January 2009, I was sexually assaulted by a then-close friend and then almost abducted from a public park just a few days later. I was also dealing with another situation I don't want to elaborate on, but all three of these things severely fucked me up. I had a nervous breakdown and the PTSD I was likely already suffering from due to things from my childhood/teen years got more severe. I was having panic attacks, sometimes violent ones, and was developing some worrying habits and behaviors.

So many of my "friends", my ex-boyfriend, and even my own mother made me feel like shit during this time of my life. My mom called my panic attacks "tantrums" and often belittled me over them. My friends would talk behind my back about how I had "changed" and I wasn't the same person anymore. I was treated either like a joke - something to make fun of - or like I was a burden, or like I was somebody that people had to tolerate. I would find posts online from people I thought loved and cared about me where I found out I was lied to, referred to as a waste of space, dead weight, etc.

This is exactly what my song "Breathing Dust" is about. I was too poor to live on my own and had to live in a dilapidated house with my mother during this nervous breakdown time, a house filled with black mold, dust, roaches, cigarette smoke, the whole nine yards, and on top of it all, my mom was very fanatically religious and kept chalking up all of my problems to me leaving the Catholic church. I did everything I could to get out of that house, including spending time with these "friends" and my ex who just treated me like garbage.

I wasn't formally diagnosed with PTSD or C-PTSD until November 2017. It took that long for a therapist to finally figure out that I was a deeply traumatized person and needed help. Since then I have been placed on medication that has helped me tremendously and gotten the therapy and psychiatric help that I needed. My relationship with my mom is much better. I live in my own apartment with my partner of nearly 11 years and we both have good jobs. I have friends who genuinely love me and support me in everything I do. Life has gotten so much better and I'm thankful every single day.

This morning though...something happened that was a huge trigger for my C-PTSD and it was part of a situation that's been playing out for months. I don't want to go into details on main, but I've been treated like a joke by a couple of people in a very similar way to how I was treated all those years ago, and this morning I just broke. I rarely ever cry or have breakdowns/panic attacks anymore (which I'm so grateful for), but this morning I couldn't contain the wave of emotion I felt. I spent an hour crying and shaking and feeling so small, feeling like I wasn't taken seriously or seen as someone deserving of respect.

I've had to fight to remind myself that yes, I AM loved by the people who really know me. I AM strong. I AM a survivor. I AM worthy of love and respect. Two shitty people can't make me feel like I'm not worth the love and respect that I know I deserve. I might have have a meltdown today, but it is NOT a setback for my mental health journey. Everybody breaks down sometimes . It's okay. I am strong enough in myself to get through this because I know that the things a minority of people say are not true.

By talking about this, I hope that maybe some of you can relate and find hope, too. If you're in a place where I was a few years ago where every day feels like a fight to stay alive, or if you've recently had a meltdown that feels like a setback from all of the mental and emotional progress you've made - you're not alone and it's okay. I'm busy a lot of the time, but you can talk to me if you need to. I might not answer right away, but I will answer you.

We're in this together.

The thing about mental health & healing that no one ever really acknowledges, is that you can have all these coping skills thrown at you. You can have all these resources listed out. Warm line and hotline numbers out the ass for who to call when you're feeling suicidal.

But there's never ever ever gonna be a way to provide you with the comfort and support of eradicating what has already happened to you in the past.

Like the concept of "give me a fucking time machine so I can go back and prevent it from happening and/or do it better this time."

It doesn't really matter how much you shove breathing techniques into someone's face. If there is never any acknowledgement of the fact that your past exists? That your inability to breathe right now is actually valid? Or have the time and space to even acknowledge that you're suffocating to begin with? To even know that it's okay to be angry and upset and to not cope very well at all? To know that this isn't your fault? Because someone else has robbed you of your entire life?

Then what is the point?

There is an awareness that needs to happen before the true deeper understanding begins, and that awareness is that what you went through wasn't your fault. It wasn't actually supposed to happen like that. You weren't actually supposed to go through that at all. The adults and the people around you should have given you better than what you got.

But if you never get that type of awareness? If you're still being abused and manipulated and surrounded by people who don't care to even ask what you're going through? The what the fuck is breathing gonna do in this scenario. What the fuck is the point of the coping skills and the resources if there is no personal acknowledgement from yourself and others you're trusting that there is even a need to use them to begin with?

You cannot do this type of damage to yourself. You do not do this type of damage for no reason. People will expect you to automatically know that & get with the program right away. But it's like, no, that's not even REMOTELY close to how this works.

You need your humanity restored before you can even begin to trust that youre standing on a solid ground. You've been beat & abused & gaslit by so many people in your life, and now the concept that "you need to take care of yourself" is basically like you just belly flopped into a pool of water.

It stings.

And it stings because first of all, if you had known all of this from the start then we wouldn't even be here, would we? If your parents/abusers had never abused you, you would never even need to use the coping skills and deal with this massive amount of trauma to begin with!

But it also stings because then you start to realize, "oh, oh wait a minute. Oh okay, I finally get it now," when you finally start to understand that oh wait, this is actually kinda fucked up and I've been subconsciously acting on my survival instincts because of it. Suddenly you get thrust into understanding the deeper nuances of everything, everywhere, from every corner and direction.

And there's a lot to dissect here.

You've got your own childhood trauma. Your own parents bullshit has built up so far & deep down inside to the very core of your identity constructs and knowing that everything in you breaks with each passing second.

You've got your shitty abusive family system, your asshole siblings shitting all over you, your asshole relatives invading your space to triangulate on behalf of Those Who Cannot Get The Fuck On.

You've got the gaslighting & manipulation & indoctrination to give a flying fuck, because you love these motherfuckers. What the fuck.

Youve got your own shitty coping skills that are born out of survival & primal instincts. God bless you if you have an addiction of some sort.

Youve got no way of even knowing or understanding what the fuck is happening. Therapy? Lets not pretend that not even 60 years ago "mental health" was still being used as a modern day torture device. Oh wait no that's still happening today too!

You've got stigmatized mental health practices demonizing personality disorders that stem directly from traumagenic symptoms, ill informed & abusive therapists who thrive off of using their authority to induce shame and humiliation knowing good and goddamn well that the reason these symptoms exist is because of, yep you guessed it, 🎉childhood trauma🎉

Youve got a huge lack of mental health for minorities, POC, Asians, lgbt+, just to name a few.

You've got so few therapists that offer focalized services for things like religious trauma, cult & ritual abuse, & other very specific types of trauma, because they're so far & few in between.

You've got the huge lack of awareness in society from recognizing what boundaries & abuse even is, so much so that the only readily available resources for people to come across are pop psychology blogs that romanticize empathy and demonize NPD by grouping every single abuser that's ever existed and labelling them as a narcissist.

You've got very little resources that exist outside of therapy in itself and it's such a scrounge to gather up any and all self help you can possibly find if you cannot afford therapy.

And then you've got to deal with your own life staring back at you at the end of the day. You're traumatized, things are happening inside of your brain and body that you have absolutely no fucking idea what the fuck is happening. You've grown up from that scared little child to now a fully repressed adult filled with fear so deep you're clinging onto relationships and people out of fear that they will leave you stranded and abandoned just like your childhood did. All the while now people around you are getting pissed the fuck off because they don't fucking know. They don't fucking know what you've been through or how it feels to be inside your head. And they're expecting you to be a more fully fleshed out & functioning adult than what you can give them.

And it's never fucking pretty! It's arguments, it's obsession, it's control issues & power dynamics, it's unfocused & repressed anger that gets turned into rage, it's projections, it's staying silent and letting the resentments build, it's the inability to speak, the inability to communicate, the inability to talk about the hard & difficult & uncomfortable. it's all these horrific little tidbits of everything all at once.

It's a fucking nightmare trying to regain any sense of anything at all.

You can't really just snap your fingers and fix all of this shit. Even if you wanted to, even if you dig in real hard and learn and absorb all the fucking coping skills out there. The thing no one ever talks about, is how much time is needed to fully sit with and process every last single fucking thing that has ever happened and what is continuing to happen before you can finally figure out how to handle it.

People be so ready to forget that part. Therapists, friends, family, even ourselves. We just wanna rush right through and get to the end fucking result.

Who the fuck is there while you work it out? And what does your process look like right now, right here and now and in this moment? And who or what do you have in your life that can reaffirm your humanity while you sit with the horrors of your past & work it out? And how open and receptive are you to knowing what you went through was abuse and that eventually you're gonna have to leave this concept of going back in time to get a better fucking outcome?

That's probably a good thing to sit with and think about.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Hope this helps

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I think I actually am really upset about (everything) the referral call with my doctor. I had created this fantasy world in my head where my NHS doctor would somehow have advanced knowledge of trans and gender theory and that I could tell him the truth. Bending the truth scares me because I took long enough to get to this point because my experience of dysphoria was not what I had read it should be. It would feel like I was lying to myself somehow. But yeah I fucked up. Because he didn't know anything, and the conversation got weird. It was stuff like: did you have any adverse childhood experiences? Why are you mentally ill? Alongside more normal things like how long have you felt like this. Bearing in mind, he inherited my mental health care from my previous GP and didn't prescribe me my antidepressants, made me wonder how that would have gone if he was my GP when I was going on them for the first time. (But let's face it, it's not hard to get antidepressants on the NHS because there is Nothing. Else. Available. I can't stress that enough. So I'm sure it would have been possible. I just hope he doesn't expect his other mental health patients to be able to explain why they are mentally ill.) Having adverse childhood experiences isn't something you can help and it should not be stigmatised, and on a super advanced gender theory level yes there are people whose A.C.E. contibuted to their gender identity! However I do not feel that health professionals should be asking these questions with regards to gender referrals. It's complicated because I don't consider myself to have had A.C.E. although I did go through a stage of my illness where I really was trying to figure out why I was mentally ill (yaaay!) and disclosed some things to a psych which she said would go on my record. I guess he either hadn't looked at it or they didn't end up putting it on. The thing in question might be counted as A.C.E. on paper, though I don't personally consider it as such as ultimately I grew up in a loving and relatively stable home, which mitigates a lot of things.

From my awkward answers to his weird questions, he is now supposed to put together a referral to the gender clinic. I remembered to tell him which one I wanted (you can choose the one with the shortest waiting list even if it's far away, I think they have to do that as some of the waiting lists are like 5 years and some people just aren't near any of them). He didn't ask if I preferred a different name (I do). By the end of the call I was so frazzled that I didn't push the issue. Told myself it would be ok. I have heard horror stories about people ringing the GP to check up on their referral after a number of months and being told it was never put through. I'm trying to ignore that possibility. You're meant to get a letter within a few months but I have no faith in the NHS's letters. I had a cervical smear this year and they are meant to send you a letter saying if you have normal result or abnormal cells but I never got one. Fortunately as it's a test you can ring your GP for the result (thankfully it was normal). But me doing that should not have cancelled the letter- as far as I know there is no way the receptionist can, like, tick a box to say I was told my result verbally so don't send it. So where's my fucking letter?! On it's own it's not a big deal but as things are it goes on the pile of 'ohhhh fuck the NHS will probably dissolve within my lifetime....' that a lot of people in the UK my age and younger just kind of live with. Anyway, I realised today that I'm really not ok about any of this. The conversation with the doctor fucked me up and I've been feeling shitty ever since. I'm having an identity crisis. I'm still using my old name at work and now I barely know what my name is any more.

I still have so much school trauma to work through and come to terms with. In general I accept what happened happened and I can't change the past. But on the other hand I'm so fucking angry at the system that failed me and even neurotypical kids. The educational system as it is now is not good. It's just test after test, essay after essay, constant deadlines, constant homework it's just not healthy. Learning should be fun. I loved learning new things as a kid, I was a hard worker. But then school just overworks you, just keeps demanding more eventhough you are at your limit. Even though your mental health is already shit because you are bullied like hell and nobody does something about it. Already shit because you don't have any close friends because you don't even know what to do anymore together with other people your age because you aren't really interested in most teenager stuff. Already shit because you are constantly suffering sensory overload from out of control loud classes, crowded hallways, people invading your personal space and purposeful scaring you by popping lunchbags and drink cartons. Some teachers are just 0 fun to listen to and make the subject they are teaching the most boring thing ever. Dreading whenever it's someone's birthday because it means there will be balloons everywhere which you are terrified of. Having to explain to teachers over and over why you can't do certain assignments or why you need more time. Physical education being the most shitty thing ever as I can never keep up with the others and it makes me feel pathetic. Also the exercises are often not fun for me at all. Just.. school did so much damage to me.. they denied for a very long time just how stressed I was because I still had good grades and behaved in class. My parents kept telling them how stressed I appeared at home. That my hair was falling out, that I was trembling that I didn't want to eat that I was struggling. But they just shoved the concerns away. It wasn't until I had a panic attack in class at school that they assigned someone to me to help me. But it was too little too late. I started going home early because I was just too mentally unwell. They started to question this as me slacking off because I was lazy or something even though I was grossly overworked. In the end I became suicidal and extremely depressed and stressed and hit rock bottom and stayed home. At first this was meant to be temporary but in the end I just dropped out because I couldn't take it anymore. It was a very dark time..and it took a lot of therapy and time to crawl out of it...school had destroyed my self image. I thought of myself as stupid and lazy and not good enough, never good enough no matter how hard I tried. I wondered if my classmates missed me, it they even noticed I wasn't around anymore. I never got closure on that. But luckily I made a new support system for myself online. There were some toxic friends in there at first but it's been a few years now that I've kicked them all out and I feel loved and cared about and seen. In may this year it will also be a year that I've lived on my own, in my own studio apartment without housemates and it also did wonders for me. I mean it's also been tough and brought new stressful things to deal with but I like being in control over my environment..I hope to get a dog in the future to help me with emotional stability (I miss having a dog on my lap and petting them the most I'm so touch starved but I'm not fond of touching people) and getting out more but I'm not ready yet. For now I have my lil fish guys and snail guys to look after and that's already nice

Anyway.. sorry for rambling..I just had to let that all out, it was building up too much. Ever since the sun started shining I feel like my brain is processing so much stuff in the bg i guess the book post triggered some of it to come outward

To my friends: even if we don't talk much, I love you all so much and I'm so happy to have you all in my life. You make me feel loved, appreciated and supported. You make me feel seen. I am so grateful to have a loving support system, even if I'm a lil shy to reach out sometimes still.

Just you guys are all great, remember that

Why I was an addict

Anyone can become addicted to substances at any point in their lives, but there are some well known risk factors to it. Mental health problems, such as my companion borderline personality disorder, for example. I've often thought about this. If I had been more well-adjusted, had better friends and a different relationship with my family, would I ever had felt the need to use alcohol to cope? If I had better self-esteem would I ever have needed to blow lines to get that boost of self-confidence? Lots of whats and ifs.

From what I've gathered, substance abuse is a combination of learned behavior, existing mental health issues and unfortunate circumstances. There's also some debate about genetic disposition which I find very interesting, as there are other alcoholics in my family. After thinking about my own experiences I have a pretty good idea what caused me to become an addict.

I was definitely not one of the cool kids at school. I was bullied in elementary, but developed a thicker skin as I grew older and kind of embraced my reputation as the unpopular one, although I rarely felt good about myself. I mainly hung out with the other outcasts who weren't necessarily the best people to be around. I don't want to trash talk my parents, but they made some mistakes and my home life was not the best (they did not drink however, at least not in front of us). I was diagnosed with depression when I was 14, which turned out to be a developing BPD but my point is that I was not the most stable one. When I was a teen I became morbidly curious about decadence, drugs, mental instability and such, and began romanticizing that kind of life (just kick me, will you…).

I had no idea of what I wanted to do with my life once I became an adult, so I simply picked out a university I could easily get into and went with it. After that didn't work out I sort of ended up in a different program but never really stopped to think whether it was the right one for me. It wasn't, and it took several years of sunk cost fallacy to finally realize that. High-stress job was not good for my mental health either. After changing careers my stress levels went way down, along with the need to unwind by questionable means.

I also hung out with the wrong crowd. Shitty Boyfriend and his drug-seeking posse, and even my old friend J who was pretty much a functional alcoholic. They weren't bad people and I still consider some of them to be my friends but I've had to distance myself from those with the worst problems. Shitty Boyfriend was also shitty and turned a lot of our common friends against me. One of them has died of drug-related causes.

I had to gain control over my mental health, abandon my career, get out of a bad relationship, move away from my old life, finally learn to deal with my past and fix my relationship with my parents to conquer addiction. It was a lot of work and it's not over yet because of my BPD, but I think I've done pretty well. There's also S and his ongoing issues, but that's a battle I've voluntarily chosen, knowing very well what I was getting into (you may call me out on my taste of men…). Things are what they are right now, but I try to keep it positive. I've come a long way after all.

This right here is exactly the risk we're talking about with parasocial relationships.

Context: This is a viewer of mine who made a video asking me questions and popped into a couple of streams of mine. A fan, a stranger. Out of nowhere, they tweeted at me asking for advice for someone who wants to end their life in 6 months, their family doesn't care for them etc.

I get a lot of messages and tweets and stuff every day, including ones that attempt to cross a personal boundary like this. I've also had someone IRL threaten suicide and it is fucking awful to deal with. I replied with a list of global crisis lines and blocked them. I stand by that as the right thing to do for me and for them.

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. I cut communication with someone who doesn't understand the boundaries that need to exist between a creator and a fan. They were still in my discord, I blocked them from speaking to me personally but I didn't ban them from anywhere- to me it was about removing communication between us for both our sakes. It's clear that between their initial reaction of feeling apologetic and this message, they had gotten very angry at me not just for blocking them, but for not giving them the response they wanted.

I am not a mental health professional. There is no way to know whether I would give good or terrible advice, and I don't want to risk the latter. I've struggled with my own mental health issues all my life. My emotional lows come in a cycle, and if their tweet had come in the low part of the month for me, I could have had a really bad reaction- no one wants someone else's life to be suddenly in their hands. Of course they couldn't have known that about me- but that's the point. They don't know me. That's exactly why you don't reach out to a stranger, especially one you look up to as a fan, who could exert power over you. Imagine if I was a cruel and manipulative person, having just been handed a vulnerable individual who looks up to me.

From the final, guilt tripping message here, it seems like they may have envisioned a future in which we were friends or collaborators, and maybe that influenced their feelings here. The reality of the here and now is that they reached out to a stranger, someone whose curated videos they enjoyed watching from thousands of miles away.

I'm not angry at this person. They're young and going through a shitty time and it's normal to make mistakes. I hope that getting pissed at me makes them feel better, I really do, because that's a lot better than straining any real relationships they have.

There's not much to say that hasn't been said on parasocial relationships so I'll keep it really simple.

Don't trauma dump on strangers. You don't know what people are going through. If you reach out and find yourself unanswered or blocked etc by someone you looked up to, it's ok to be mad, but chances are they're just doing what is best for them and probably you too. The best thing you can do is seek professional resources and lean on your irl trust network. It's not easy, but they will undoubtedly give better advice than an internet stranger ever could.

I have a friend I don't check on because I find it so hard to sympathize with her mental health issues while subsequently dealing with my own. I know she is struggling but I feel like she just is in such a dark hole it borders on selfish. I had an event that meant a lot to me she RSVPd as attending, then just didn't turn up. I know she is struggling but the next time I saw her, she didn't even mention it or bring it up so I didn't either. No apology or anything and it hurt a lot. Genuine question dove tailing your post... at what point is it okay to step away from supporting people in their dark times, particularly when their dark times prevent them from supporting you in yours? I always appreciate your honest responses and this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Is dropping her too mean? I just feel like she is taking a lot and not giving, even though it is related to depression and a depressive episode.

Hi anon, I have an answer as a chronically depressed and disabled gal who has been in both your position and your friend's:

The time to leave is when you no longer feel value or reciprocation as a friend and it's not a short-term issue anymore.

It's not too mean to drop her. Putting it like that makes me wonder if you feel like you have to carry your friend or shoulder their load. Their treatment/healing isn't your responsibility. Depression is a condition that's very challenging and requires conscious changes and often chemical adjustments thru meds or other means. If they're using depression as a reason for their behavior while actively ignoring treatment options, then they risk making hostages of the people in their lives. Granted, it's probably not malicious or intentional, but it's still hurtful and you can and should set boundaries against that. Your boundaries as a friend still have value even if they're on the brink of losing it all.

Depression has this gnarly shrouding effect on people that can make communication inconsistent, but it's not a waiver for accountability. Many times when I was at my low points, I didn't know how bad the effect was on people around me *until* someone pointed it out in a direct way. That's how I ended up in therapy lol!

Currently, my closest friends who hold me up while also holding me accountable for shitty behavior are all either neurodivergent or mentally struggling. It's doable. It's hard. 😅 But if I want to keep plants, I have to water the soil, you know?

TW: religious delusions/demons, manic episodes, verbal abuse. Continuation of two previous asks I've sent in about similar topics.

Not too long ago I sent in an ask about a problem I was currently having with my mom. I mentioned that she has manic episodes where she forces me awake by coming up with random tasks for me to do in the middle of the night, and yells at me/insults me the whole time. I'm pretty sure this is one I sent in after the inbox got emptied so if you still have it, I'm the same anon. The other ask, I don't think you have anymore.

Before sending in that ask, I had previously sent in another ask during April that I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have anymore since it was before the inbox was empty. If you answered it I might have missed it but I don't think it got answered. It still had to do with my mom's manic episodes and verbal abuse, but at the time, her main issue was religious delusions (saying I was inviting demons into the house, and finding things about me supposedly demonic like the symbol on a video game T-shirt I was wearing). My mind was going through a lot of extreme chaos at the time so I might not have correctly expressed myself in that ask and it's understandable if it was difficult to answer, sorry.

Anyway, for a while, my mom was just back to getting upset over things in general during her episodes like what I mentioned before about how she walks around, mainly finds things to get upset about in the kitchen, and then decides we need to start cleaning the whole kitchen or cooking something extravagant.

Now, she's back to the religious delusions about demons being in our house. She says I have the devil in me, does things that are unsettling like going around the house carrying a cross, and genuinely thinks that our house is being targeted by demons or that someone has sent demons to attack her.

My friend is familiar with the topic and sent me some resources with information on religious delusions and hyperreligiosity. I read up on it and yes I know my mom is unwell and many people have these delusions but I feel like the things she says and does to me are just so outrageous, I can't just sit there listening to her verbally and psychologically abuse me, and stay completely calm and cheerful thinking "Awww it's okay, Mom doesn't really mean it!" Because whether she means it or not, she is really screwing up my mental state. I'm hurt and in the moment, I'll be angry at myself, and angry at my mom. I can't think straight while panicking. She is constantly gaslighting me, insulting me, name-calling me, turning me into her scapegoat, and honestly I would just rather sleep my life away than have to deal with her.

Today for example, I very gently told her that her words about demons and similar topics were making me feel on the verge of having a panic attack. And what she did was mock me and say "You sound just like a little baby complaining about not getting a toy from the store so you threaten to have a tantrum." And her disorders are valid because she gets to use them as excuses but when it comes to my own health she says everything I do is just me lying and faking. She's threatening to stop paying for any of my medical treatments anymore.

Just overall she makes me feel like such a shitty person. I try so hard to help her and everything I do just backfires. If I give her space, she gets mad at me for supposedly leaving her alone, or for not offering to help her enough because she says I'm selfish and I don't care about her enough to help. But then what set off the last argument we had was that I was offering to help her with stuff and she felt like I was "interrogating" her or something (persecutory delusions are another big thing that comes up a lot between us). When she told the story back to me she made it sound like I had been questioning her over and over about the same thing for several minutes when all I did was ask maybe 2-3 questions just to make sure I could help her out, but she was exaggerating everything. And it still got her extremely upset, she's been mad over this same damn issue I just mentioned, it's been going on for several days in a row already, first giving me the silent treatment and then finally snapping and screaming at me like I'm the worst person to ever exist, and I fucked everything up as usual. And she is always threatening me and telling me I should be afraid of the future because all the supposedly bad things I do to her are going to come back and get me, God is going to punish me both on earth and in hell because I was such a horrible child to my mother, I'm going to be alone in life, nobody can stand to be around me, I'm demonic... all sorts of lovely stuff. Yet I'm supposed to put up with it, because "Oh but she's your mom, she's sick, she's just in a bad mood!" and so on. And even she says things like that herself, like "I'm your mom, I carried you, I gave birth to you, I'm the one who changed your shitty diapers as a baby." As if I even asked to be born in the first place.

I can't get away from my house. And I just hate it. I'm not even saying everything she says/does, it feels a lot worse than what I've described here, but honestly when she's saying and doing these things everything feels so chaotic in the moment and like I said a lot of times I will be on the verge of a panic attack, or even in the middle of a panic attack, so not everything she says will be sinking in and I get the details all blurry when trying to retell them. But hopefully what I typed gives you some idea of the nature of how it usually goes.

I'm just finding it extremely hard to cope. My situation isn't getting any better because I'm her caregiver and my life has been set up in a way where I'm not really independent. I don't have enough money to live on my own, I don't have other family I could go live with. It feels like this stuff gets worse every day and I'm just trapped having to put up with it.

I just need someone right now to help me feel less upset and less unstable than I currently am feeling, just whatever validating words you think would be helpful for someone in my position to hear. I know there is no getting out of this situation anytime soon so I just want to hear something nice since I've been suffering so damn much and honestly just feel like I need some kindness and gentle words more than anything else at the moment. And maybe some tips on how to deal with my mom when I physically can't get away from her since like I said a big issue will be her coming into my space and waking me up, or her forcing me to stay with her in areas like the kitchen or in her bedroom.

Hi anon,

Firstly I'm so sorry about your mom and what she's putting you through.

I agree that you shouldn't have to feel obligated to forgive her, because despite how someone may be psychologically impaired and thus unaware of their actions or their repercussions, it doesn't erase the damage they do. You are valid for being upset or even traumatized by all of this, even if she isn't aware of it. You have every right to feel hurt and angry at her - those are natural trauma responses.

You do not deserve to feel like a demon or anything similar. My heart breaks for the way your mom treats you, as well as how stuck you may be in this situation. While I'm not sure what advice to give (and commenters are absolutely welcome to provide some), please remember that you are not a demon, you are trustworthy, you are kind, and you are trying your best. I wish the absolute best for you. I hope I could help at least a little bit. We're here for you if you ever need to talk.

-Bun

hiiii sorry i've been MIA!! a month and a half to two months or so ago a friend took his own life and i wasn't coping well so i went inpatient for two weeks. then outpatient care for another two weeks or so.

then my mom and sister had to move in with me due to an immigration crisis with my moms (shitty asshole) husband and they're still living with me which is a whole other thing but anyway then my grandmother in law passed away last saturday and i've been trying to deal and cope with that as well as being there for my spouse.

i'm back now and trying to be active to those that still follow me thank you! i followed back as many new follows i could. if i missed you and you're a true crime, horror, or mental health blog and want me to follow back just msg me!

thank you all for the msgs and support in my absence, i appreciate it sm 🥹💕

Long personal vent. Feel free to scroll past.

I was doing really well with self-care and getting my sleep schedule back on track for a week until my partner said he wasn't coming home and I need to find somewhere else to live. Now no matter how early I go to bed, how much I tire myself out, how much herbal tea or calming music and reading I do to help me relax, the second there's nothing going on to distract my brain I just break down in tears or start anxiously planning and looking for solutions to where I could possibly live.

It doesn't matter how exhausted I am, my brain won't let me sleep because I'm worrying so much about being homeless, and grieving a relationship that I don't even know what the status of it is anymore because he doesn't want to communicate about anything, and seems to be reading things I say in a totally different tone in his head to what I'm intending. All I know is that I've got two months to find somewhere new to live, that:

1) accepts people whose only income is benefits WITHOUT a guarantor (lol not likely)

2) isn't more than £500pcm because that's all UC will pay towards housing (ha. Ha ha ha ha ha)

3) is unfurnished

4) is still in this city so I don't lose access to social worker, mental health help, direct payments etc.

I'm also going to need to find at least a grand to pay packers and movers because I can't do that myself, on top of a deposit and at least a month's rent up front. So that's my entire life savings.

And I'm going to need to sell or give away almost everything I own in order to fit into any tiny shitty bedsit universal credit will cover (not that I've even found a single thing yet).

I've been spending 3-4 hours every day just looking for somewhere to live, and there is literally nowhere that meets the criteria, so I'm either going to end up in one of the crisis homeless shelters or couch-surfing. Maybe selling all the furniture would give me enough cash to pay a few months rent upfront instead of having a guarantor, so somewhere might take me on even with only benefits as income?

I don't have the spoons to work out how to sell all of my furniture and belongings, as well as looking for a new place, dealing with my current pain flare-up that's causing my vision to go grey and me to fall over, and trying to tiptoe around my partner's feelings to work out what he wants from this relationship now he's said he wants to live separately. I have time limits on some new expensive items which I could return, but until we've actually been able to have a conversation and make a plan I can't sort those things.

I'm just so anxious and grieving the relationship with the one person who promised he would be here through thick and thin, no matter what, that being in a relationship meant we were in this together and would support each other to find a way through whatever life threw at us.

And now I'm wondering if that was all a lie? It was only a few weeks ago we were talking about all the things we could do to help each other and get through this tough patch since my flashbacks got super frequent after all the parental contact. We talked about couples counselling and I wanted to do that, but then it never got brought up again. I really want to put in the work and become healthier together, and being ignored feels like he doesn't want to do that anymore, but I don't know if I'm reading that wrong because he doesn't want to talk about any of the heavy stuff atm.

I'm just really scared and lost and being ignored and not being told what's happening was one of the problems in our relationship, and something that massively triggers my RSD, and that's the thing he's doing now to get space from the issues.

I only got to sleep last night because I finally gave in and made myself a very strong drink. Don't want to have to resort to that but I need to be able to sleep. It's been 4 hours so far tonight and I'm way more awake than when I came to bed. I listened to meditations, read until I couldn't keep my eyes open, put on gentle music, but the second I stopped my brain was awake again. It's nearly half 1 in the morning and I have to travel to the osteopath in the morning so I need to have slept. Going to go and pour myself another stiff drink so I can hopefully sleep tonight. Maybe in the morning I can ask the GP for an appointment to see about sleeping tablets.