can we get rid of edtwt

Going back an episode and watching Born This Way

Santana is such a bitch but I still love her. Also her first vest and hat combo is fucking iconic! “I gotta gay, I mean go I gotta gay” honey you are so bad at being in closet.

The way Will thinks he has the capacity to handle everyone’s problems…maybe he is the reason teacher’s need a masters in education. This just makes me think of when he said

The big deal about junior prom queen and king, when I remember in high school it basically as determined by who won homecoming. Tho senior year our prom Queen was a heavier girl, who was the sweetest and also one of the best singers! Like she deserved it!

YASSSSS my favorite song! Pretty/Unpretty is so amazing! It was a crime that Quinn and Rachel didn’t have another duet! There were like a billion opportunities! I love this song so much.

Honestly I would recap every episode just to go into missed opportunities, #1 Quinn in her ‘stank’ phase not having a punk song like Cherry Bomb by Runaways, I really believe Dianna could’ve killed it.

All the prom posters are horrible which is actually super realistic.

“The only straight I am is a straight up bitch” ICON!!

The lockers shot with Quinn and Finn was interesting, though we never see anything like that again.

Any chance for Mike Chang to have a spotlight is good with me.

Finn, just break up with Quinn! You are in love with Rachel and she is with you, just pull the bandaid off!!

This whole zero tolerance shit, I get Karofsky is badly with his own gayness, but they just aren’t handling this shit well. It reminds me of Degrassi, thankfully it ended a lot better. Kurt was great for never outing him though. I wish they had handled Karofsky better, like this show dealt with every issue they could find but never handled it well!

Now I want to cry tho with Burt telling Finn “keep an eye on your brother” then Finn saying “I’m one step ahead of you” they really became a family and I love that. It was such a growth and it made me so happy!

Super don’t care about the warblers! Shouldn’t you be at your own school?? It’s a school day and the bell literally just rang! Where did that piano come from?? And the violinists?

I hate the Lucy Caboose stuff! Like her issues couldn’t be more no out of no where, knowing that Sue caused an eating disorder for the Cheerios and idk the whole teen pregnancy stuff!? Dianna did well with it though, why isn’t she in more things? I know she is in a lot of indie movies but give me more! Also her running hallway scene is amazing, it’s always amazing when these ladies go through the hallway, it’s practically a runway!

“Is Barbara here?” “No it’s a mall in Ohio”

Yea Barbara is 1 in a million, and you would’ve been too if you weren’t a fuxking bitch.

Brittany is smart enough to make that ironic shirt but then makes the Lebanese shirt for Santana. Also saying “clearly you don’t love yourself as mch as I love you” isn’t a healthy thing for when someone is in the closet. Not that someone is wrong for not wanting to be in closet for someone else’s sake. It’s a complex thing but again Murphy & the others don’t handle it well. What was the short hand for the show runners? We used to have one

Remember when Dianna wore the Likes Girls shirt at the Glee concert tour for Born this Way and everyone including myself lost their collective shit? And then she was absent for a couple shows after? Which is super suspicious…

while im on the topic, i wonder how much i personally have contributed to this problem, bc when it comes to making friends irl, where i can see what the person looks like before i get to know them, i have always hanged out and made friends with pretty people, with people that i find attractive. not bc im attracted to them per say, its more of an unconscious thing. and yes my idea of beauty goes beyond what social media said bc ive been friends with plenty of fat people, but thats bc i dont see fat as not attractive, not in other people , with me its more difficult bc ive been bullied by my mother about my weight since age 14 so im kinda sick when it comes to this topic in general, but that doesn't change the fact that the girls who i would consider to be amongst the best looking out of all girls ive been friends with was also the biggest, in both height and weight. But it feels like an excuse, bc if i don't find fatness to be a deterrer from beauty, doesn't that make me just as shallow?

i also realize that i actually dont have the greatest authority on this topic, being conventionally attractive, which my sister (who is STUNNING btw) reminded me of when we were talking about how looks really aren’t that important, when really, they are, its just that we have always benefited from that fact, and never really been victims of it (expect from our mother who HATES and i mean HATES our bodies, like my sister has never in her life been overweight, even by the bullshit medical definition, and yet she’s been called everything under the sun by our mom lmao)

I just think that i might actually not be that objective when it comes to this stuff. Like me not wearing makeup has NEVER been a on im going against society thing, or I actively dont want to participate in this aspect of the beauty change. I thought of it was boring and the idea of wearing something on my face is a sensory nightmare for me. i feel like im being suffocated when i wear makeup or nail polish, like i can feel it on me, which made me anxious. But if I hadn’t come from a family of good looking people with great skin, if i at any point in my life had struggled with acne, or anything similar, would I have submitted? despite how unpleasant wearing makeup is for me from a sensory point of view? bc im most certainly fucked up about weight and food and eating, and how falling into phases of disordered eating plenty of times in my life. idk if any of it would count as an eating disorder, i dont know what ''counts'' or what doesn’t (sorries if this is a very triggering way of speaking about this stuff just trying to be honest). But if i didnt know that my face was ''good'' lol, would my mess around body image be worse of? if i could rely on my face? bc its always been a comfort for me, being pretty. like im not a model which is fine bc i dont want to be, i don’t really want to look different face wise, I do really like my face. I would never rate my fave tho bc i think its sick to rate yourself the sick sick behaviour like never ever do it if people ask u to do it tell them no im not doing that weirdo. but like, when ive been upset of felt like a failure and i walk past a mirror i can stop and go well at least i have that god i love being pretty. i don’t really think that makes me a bad person, just that it's probs bad FOR me. to centre my looks less, which i dont do a lot compared to most girl my age (which isnt really saying anything given how fucked up everyone is nowadays) is probably in my best interest. But it's HARD. bc i really enjoy being pretty. i enjoy finding myself pretty I enjoy others finding me pretty. like this whole thing started bc i was introduced to a stranger and the first thing she said to me was wow ur really beautiful, like she looks great, and my friend said yes im always telling her that. and it make me feel GREAT. maybe better than i should. def more that we should, as humans.

At the same time, i worry about not being good looking enough for my family, like my parents are good looking, essentially my mom, who is gorge, and all my siblings are good looking, and i get this worry sometimes, like, what if im the least good looking of my siblings (i think this bc im the biggest out of all of them) which is crazy bc were siblings so we all look alike and several people have asked if me and my older sister are twins when they first meet us and she is pretty much my idea of beautiful but idk. Im fucked up both ways, i guess. I was never never ever self-conscious about my weight until my mother, so now im sick in that regard, but im also sick in the way i use my looks as a crutch. I need to work on both, admitting it to myself is probs a good first step or whatever. rant over i think

an analysis on and rant about what stan twitter did to grayson dolan:

as i mentioned earlier, i have quite a bit to say about the twitter stans trying to cancel the twins because of something they talked about on their podcast. not only do i have my own personal opinions on it, i also want to shed some light on the direction cancel culture has taken and why it’s so vile.

for context, here’s a transcription of what a very small but loud group of people are “upset” about: “people just want you to not be sober and not be on a diet, because, y’know, they-they kinda feel like shit that they’re not.” - ethan. also during the podcast, grayson mentions, vaguely, that he’s had an unhealthy relationship with food in the past, as did ethan. ethan later identified the problems as being eating disorders. from what i’ve seen on twitter, people mention either/or rather than both aspects when talking about why it should have had a trigger warning. for some people, the whole issue was the nine second clip of what ethan said. others said they were triggered by the mention of eating disorders.

let’s get into this, shall we?

first of all, let me identify myself as a fat girl who is the furthest thing from sober. my entire life, i have been criticized by my family and the world around me for my weight. i’m at a point in my life where i embrace being fat, and i am comfortable with it, which i constantly have to justify. i am directly affected by diet culture, fatphobia, and eating disorders. i personally struggle with disordered eating—different from an eating disorder in that i have a generally unhealthy relationship with food—and what they said does not warrant a trigger warning.

why? because they’re not talking about needing to be on a diet. they’re not shitting on people who aren’t on a diet. they aren’t forcing their diet & healthy eating onto us as an audience. they also didn’t talk about their eating disorders on the podcast; they said they might talk about it later. what they are doing is being condescending—but let’s unpack that quickly.

their condescension is not targeted or directed at us. it is directed toward people who try to pressure them to do things for instant gratification. specifically, other influencers and hollywood as a whole. not to mention, he’s clearly suggesting that people who try to get them to break their sobriety or their diets are the ones who probably feel shitty about themselves for not doing those things. idk about the rest of y’all but i’ve never seen any fans trying to pressure them into getting off their diet or drinking. so, it’s clearly not directed at any of us.

hollywood is hedonistic. the whole aesthetic of youth, the advertisement of satisfaction is rooted in indulgence. maintaining a healthy diet, just like sobriety, is the complete opposite of that.

the snark and the comparison to sobriety are there because he’s annoyed with others trying to pressure him into enjoying his youth “like he should;” a standard set by culture that he & grayson don’t want to participate in for personal reasons. let me remind you that we do not know what they hear from other influencers. we have not been surrounded by a group of other influential people—really influential, not your peers in high school—who are trying to get us to just have one little drink, or just have one little milkshake, or just eat one little burger. connections matter in hollywood. consider how separate the twins seem from other influencers—do you think that’s merely coincidental? i can almost promise you it’s not. they likely avoid people who pressure them one too many times or who put them at risk of disappointing themselves because they might succumb to peer pressure.

what i’m saying here is ethan was projecting. he was projecting his annoyance, frustration, and perhaps some amount of bitterness or general bad feelings in a way that protected himself. yes, it’s a little condescending because a lot of his fans—including myself—might struggle with diet culture or sobriety, or some of us might make choices in our lives that differ from theirs so it feels mildly offensive or just makes you feel bad. i’ll admit that when i first heard it, i was a little put off for a second. but then, i did precisely what so many twitter stans need to do: i got the fuck over it. because i’m not so unsympathetic that i can’t imaging that maybe their life looks a liiiittle different from mine, and i’m not so self-centered to believe that one passing comment applies to me or was ever intended to hurt me personally.

yes, delivery and effect matters more than intention. and if anyone was genuinely offended or triggered, yes, that warrants apology. but it doesn’t obliterate intention. intention matters.

onto my next point: responsibility. i believe people are responsible for correctly labelling potentially triggering information. BUT that doesn’t necessarily mean that you put a trigger warning on a podcast because of one passing comment and the mention of eating disorders. it’s not as though the twins were mocking them or carelessly talking about their experiences—which i note would be careless because eating disorders are a social disease and they get stronger with validation from others as well as through normalization of the disorder. by normalization, i mean saying things or making jokes that encourage one to restrict or to binge. knowing that they did none of that, and that people’s primary issue (what ethan said) was a major misunderstanding, it’s pretty clear that they were under no obligation to put a trigger warning.

now, let’s consider the following: the twins have recently been being more open with us about their insecurities, especially ethan. while talking about what helped him get to a point where he’s comfortable with his acne, he mentions that working out and taking care of himself physically played a huge part in that. in addition to the last two recent points of discussion on their platforms and channel, they have also been sharing their journey through veganism and are very excited about how great they feel because of it.

taking all of that into account, if you know that you’re at such a sensitive point in your recovery or your disorder (which is nothing to be ashamed about, i’d like to note) that someone mentioning their own diet, their view of their own diet, or just the general existence of eating disorders is enough to trigger you, you have to understand that you have a responsibility to avoid potentially triggering content. excluding their eating disorders, we all knew about their recent healthy vegan diet and their devotion to maintaining their physique. i mention this because it seems as though the people who are upset would’ve been triggered by the latter two things regardless—it’s not the words “eating” and “disorder” that suddenly break you like a hypnotic command, it’s the whole premise of two guys talking about how physically fit they are and how healthy they’ve been eating. since this is what they’ve been talking about recently and this is what’s going on in their life, you have to be responsible enough to not seek out or engage with something that could be triggering to you. you need to step away from those things yourself and come back to them when you are capable of hearing about someone else’s healthy choices without internalizing that information and inflicting it upon yourself.

i find it also incredibly important to note that the language ethan uses is very clearly a way to defend himself and ward off anyone who disagrees with his dietary choices. it’s his way of validating himself. which, if you’ve been paying attention, is a sign that he’s insecure about his diet to begin with; if you have more than three brain cells, you should be able to figure out from that fact alone that even if he didn’t have an eating disorder, he clearly has issues with eating. which is why i think nitpicking a nine second clip out of a 45-50ish minute episode of a podcast is absolutely disgusting to me; look at what’s happened now. in their lack of consideration for what he might be going through, despite them literally telling us that they have struggled with eating disorders in the past, they essentially ended up “outing” him. at least, i’ve spent enough time listening to that clip and typing up this analysis of the situation to see it that way.

the last overarching thing i’d like to talk about here is the how this whole situation demonstrates the dangerous and frankly disgusting turn that cancel culture has taken in recent times. cancel culture is no longer expository; it has evolved to be exploitative. people take any opportunity to cancel someone in the hopes that they get attention and validation from others. i believe—and i urge you to read this part carefully and to not misconstrue my intentions or meaning when i say this—that we have pushed the idea that we should support, trust, and listen to the disenfranchised to a degree that we no longer allow any space for critical thinking and analysis of a certain claim. LET ME BE PERFECTLY AND COMPLETELY CLEAR. this does NOT mean that a white person can analyze a BIPOC’s experience with racism to dismiss it, it does NOT mean that nonvictims can analyze a victim’s allegations against someone to disprove it, and thus, it does NOT mean that any oppressor of any kind can apply their ignorant, blind assumptions to any oppressed person’s claims to disqualify what they have said.

with that being said, the reason i mention this is because there are going to inevitably be people, like whoever started this whole mess, who make claims that are either false, dramatized, or that are based on misunderstandings. a part of me wants to believe that the person who initially claimed to be triggered by what ethan said misheard him or took what he said personally when they should not have. if we encouraged people to have discussions about these things, then perhaps someone would’ve pointed out to them that no where in that statement does he shame people for not being on diets or for not being sober. rather, he was projecting his feelings of being criticized onto those who criticize him.

now, the other possibility (that i would rather not believe) is that this person—the first person to say something—picked out a nine second segment of the podcast where ethan said something less than positive and went out of their way to make it seem like an issue. still, the same problem ensues: we’ve created such a culture that if you challenge the position of the accuser then you’re simply brainwashed by the accused and you’re part of the problem.

i can say with utmost certainty that even if the first person to complain about the clip hadn’t intended to make something out of nothing, a fair 90% of them who said blatantly disrespectful things to ethan and grayson DEFINITELY just wanted to hop on a bandwagon. there was one girl who replied to grayson several times, claiming that what they had said was VERY triggering to a lot of people, but within her frantic outcry for an apology from him, she admitted that she herself wasn’t triggered and didn’t even struggle with an eating disorder, before proceeding to tell someone else who does have an eating disorder that if they weren’t triggered it’s not their place to say the twins don’t have to apologize.

......................since the girlies from the bird app like to lurk here, let me spell that one out for y’all:

✨stop demanding apologies that you cannot accept✨

hopefully that gets through to them. because this is the second time in a row that they’ve gone ahead and demanded apologies from the twins that they cannot accept. the heteros were down their throats about the f-slur (which i use in reclamation as it has been used against me personally but i won’t repeat here on the off chance that someone is hurt by it).

it’s so painfully obvious that they’re doing it for likes, retweets, and replies. whether they want people to argue with them or just want attention, they’re hiding behind the guise of caring about a very serious issue and speaking FOR the people who might be offended. i believe people like this noticed a pattern under celebrity tweets when BLM was the center of discussion on twitter. if a celebrity wasn’t talking about BLM, people were under that tweet demanding that they did. those tweets would often get a lot of interactions from people who agreed that someone with a platform should speak up. and since local stan twitter does nothing but regurgitate what’s “trending,” they’re trying to find any reason to be the social justice warrior precisely no one asked them to be and absolutely no one needs them to be.

i don’t think that anyone really needs me to explain why they should be ashamed of themselves, but in case one of them is floating around: it’s because when a bunch of people demand an apology for a non-problem, gang up on that person, flood their replies with nothing but those demands in hopes that someone with as much sense as them on twitter-dot-fucking-com will engage with it and maybe join their futile efforts, it leads to people having to expose a part of themselves that they wanted to keep private. it’s a violation not only of their privacy, but of their emotional consent and the boundaries they had set up.

i’d like to leave anyone guilty of contributing to this situation with this to consider: they start to open up to us more, they start to be more honest with us, they try their best to show us their appreciation for support, and as soon as they mention having an eating disorder it’s a personal attack on you and they need to apologize for it? or worse—someone else said that it was a personal attack on them so you reply five separate times even though it’s not your apology to accept and therefore is not your apology to ask for. it’s bitches like you who make them keep everything vague and private. i don’t even want to consider what they’re going through right now; it breaks my heart to imagine how badly they’re hurting. all for likes and retweets on the fucking bird app. let me know what that gets you in five years.

Survey #298

“i don’t like what i am becoming  /  wish i could just feel something”

Do you have sensitive skin? Very. Do you wear necklaces or earrings more? Just my tragus piercing, really. I only ever wear a necklace sometimes if I'm taking a "nice" picture. Rings or bracelets? I currently don't wear any bracelets, but I do always have one ring on. How many toilets are in your house? Two. Is your current crush younger than you? By just a couple years. Are you a lighter complexion than your father? Yes; he's very tan, especially his arms from being a mailman. Ranch or barbeque sunflower seeds? I don't like sunflower seeds. Do you know the first five books of the Bible in order? No. Do you have a pet fish? Nah, they're not my thing. Do you believe being gay is a choice or a "disorder"? Neither; I believe it's a genetic mutation. It defies biology and the very motive for life, but I always say that a mutation does not, in any way, equate to "wrong." I am extremely adamantly pro-gay rights and bisexual myself, so I can't shit-talk it. What are some of your favourite sounds? Crunching leaves, rain gently tapping on windows, windchimes, birdsong... mainly nature sounds. There are others, I'm just blanking right now. Are you a warm weather or cold weather person? Cold, 100%. What time do you wake up? What for? This spans over a massive gap, honestly... I can wake up as early as 5 or as late as 9:30. Most often, it's pretty early, and I call that my "trial" of being awake, lol... because I will almost without fail go back to sleep for a couple more hours. Hell, that happens even if I sleep on the later side. Do you ever listen to music to fall asleep to? I used to do that in middle and maybe some of high school, I think; I'd fall asleep with my iPod on and earbuds in. I haven't done that in a very long time, though. Could you spend the rest of your life with someone who had bad taste in music? ... Yes? Their taste in music has nothing to do with them as a person???? Do you still talk to the person you fell hardest for? No, and it's best I don't. Have you ever wanted to get drunk and get your mind off everything? Yes, and that's how I found out I'm far from a lightweight. I wasn't going to drink more than I actually wanted to drink just to get wasted. Did you love playing hide and seek as a kid? Yeah. Who is the last child you held? My youngest niece. Have you ever woken up not knowing where you were? Maybe for a few moments after my surgery? I don't really recall. When is the last time you made the wrong choice in anything? Every fucking day when I decide what to do with my time. What is the most interesting thing in the room you are in? My snake, I guess. She's a champagne morph ball python. When washing your hands, do you wet your hands or put soap on first? I put on soap first. When was the hardest you ever cried? What was the circumstance? Probably when Mom literally dragged me home after I tried to walk to Jason's to talk the night of the breakup. I lost my fucking mind. Which gift cards do you have in your wallet? I don't think I have any. Coke or Pepsi? Coke. I hate Pepsi. What is better: cute smile, or amazing eyes? A cute smile. What song are you listening to? "Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek" by Blue October is on currently. Name your best friend(s): Sara. Do you know any mechanical stuff about cars? Nope. Last night you felt? I wasn't suicidal, but still kinda wanted to die lmao. Do you still watch Disney channel? No. How do you like your eggs? I only enjoy them scrambled, and preferably with cheese. What’s your all-time favorite song? "False Flags" by Massive Attack. If you could be any TV character, who would you be and why? Idk, I don't watch TV enough. Maybe Donna from That '70s Show. Very strong and independent, outspoken, and not to mention she has great taste. I find her to be a good female character to look up to. Do you ever come up with really good ideas for stories or movies? Do you do anything with them? Yeah; I'll try to integrate them into RP characters and plots. What sort of things do you post on your Tumblr? Vintage photos, screen caps, girly things? It's a Markiplier cesspit lmao. Sometimes I'll reblog shit I find funny. I've been very inactive on it, though. Have you ever had a dream that you couldn’t shake, even for days after you woke up? Oh yes. When was the last time you felt like a nuisance, or unwanted? Recently, I'm sure. When was the last time your dreams were crushed, or at least hindered? I dunno. How’s school going? I'm not in school. Are you angry at anyone right now? Myself. The last person to say they loved you? Mom. When is the last time you laughed hard? Hard? I'm really not sure. Are there any words on your shirt? No, it's just a blank black tank. Does it take a lot to make you cry? NOPE. Do you tell your parents everything? No. Do you get bored easily? I'm bored to the point of thinking being dead would be more fun at some point almost every day. I have anhedonia badly. I'm honestly starting to think I've over-medicated to a numbing degree so am trying to wean off some things. Have you ever burned someone's picture? No. How long was your last nap? Maybe three hours? I was really, really tired, though. Can you name the last time you felt happy? Probably when Sara and I talk-talked for the first time in a while. When was the last time you played with sidewalk chalk? Oh, I have zero clue. Probably not since I was a kid. Do you have friends obsessed with World of Warcraft? Bro wtf don't @ me. Have you ever punched a hole in the wall? No. Have you ever told someone you hated them? The only time I've seriously said that was to my dad before we reconciled after the divorce. What was the color of the bridesmaid dresses of the last wedding you went to? I actually don't remember... Favorite thing to do on Facebook? See The Memes. Do you wear flip flops, regardless of weather, all the time? I SAID don't @ me. What is in store for your future? I both do and don't want to know. Have you ever seen a live bat? Yeah. I adore bats. Do you chew on straws? No. Do you have any trophies? Yeah. Who’s the last person that creeped you out? Some guy who walked into the store I was at with Mom, continuously looking back and forth. Would you believe an ex if she/he said they love you? Well, that would depend on the person. Have you ever been kissed in the rain? Yeah. Anything exciting happening soon? My half-sister and her kids are visiting tomorrow and staying for a few days. It's a surprise for Mom. Do you keep a diary or journal (offline or online)? You could say these surveys kinda are. I don't have a designated "diary," though. When was the last time you took a painkiller? What was it for and did it work? I had womanly issues a few days back, and yeah, it helped. Have you ever had to go and rescue someone because their car broke down? When was the last time that happened? I mean, I've driven /with/ Mom to do so. I myself don't drive. What’s one sweet/candy you miss from your childhood? Is this item something you can still buy or has it been discontinued? Y'all remember Baby Bottle Pops??? 'Cuz I do, and I love those fuckin things. I still see them sometimes in gas stations. When was the last time you used some kind of moisturiser? A few days back for my hands. They were painfully dry. If you’re under lockdown/stay at home orders at the moment, are you struggling or managing okay? A bitch is s t r u g g l i n g. Has anything positive come out of the pandemic for you? Fuck no. Do you wear a watch? Is it analogue/digital? Does it it have things like a step-counter in it? No. Do you have any gifts from Christmas that you still haven’t opened or used? Not used, yes. Well, then some things are still in their boxes, but they're unwrapped. Do you know how to tie a tie? If so, who taught you? No. Who was your last missed call from? Did you ring that person back? Some number I didn't recognize, so no. When was the last time you had some kind of problem with your internet connection? Is this something that happens often? A few days back. It has occasional instances where it'll go out but come back on shortly. Do you have a favourite celebrity chef? No. Do you prefer pizza or pasta? Pizza. Have you ever volunteered anywhere before? What was the reason behind doing so? Once at PetSmart when they had dogs to adopt out, which was for school volunteer hours. I spent time with them, giving them attention and taking them outside. I also had two other animal-related volunteer days, but each was only a few hours because my fucking weak-ass body couldn't handle them. Have you ever been truly obsessed with something? What was it and how did you come to feel that way? I have an incredibly obsessive personality; I could probably name near on a dozen or so things I've been genuinely obsessed with. I don't know what it means to love in moderation. Some are/were pleasant obsessions, some aren't/weren't. Does it bother you when people turn up at your house without asking or waiting to be invited? Yes. Are you taller or shorter than average height? I'm the average for an American woman. Do you have any family members whose beliefs or ways of life completely embarrass you? YUP YUP YUP YUP. Are you scared of heights? Yes. When was the last time you lost something of great sentimental value? Did you ever end up finding it again? I don't know. Have you ever injured anyone in self-defense? No. What food do you find to be the most filling? Is this something you eat a lot of? In relation to its portion sizes, oatmeal or eggs. I can't have a whole lot of either. I wouldn't say I eat either a lot, but oatmeal is more common. Have you ever heard people talking badly about you behind your back? Did you confront them about it? Yes, and in at least two instances. Do you consider “home” to be the place you were born, or is it somewhere you create for yourself? I consider it to be my childhood home; not the one I was actually born in, but only because I was way too young to remember and we only lived there like, maybe two years into my life. Have you ever experienced having to leave your home due to a fire, or due to the threat of fire? No, thankfully. When was the last time you felt you were in a dangerous situation? When we had a serious tornado warning Christmas Eve. Yes. In winter. Are there any superstitions that you believe in? Which ones and what are your reasons for doing so? No. Are there any series of books/films that you never finished - either because you got bored of waiting or just lost interest? Oh, I'm sure. I Wouldn't say I lost interest in a lot though, I just wasn't interested enough, like for The Hunger Games. Which theme park is your favorite? I haven't been to nearly enough to know. Like, just one. Do you eat healthy? I try to be, at least. Though I've been doing very poorly about it lately because I'm a emotional goddamn eater and am having a very hard time. Do/did your parents fight often? They're divorced for a reason. Do YOU fight with them often? No. Would you say that you're respectful? I hope so. Are you a fan of Green Day? Yeah, I love them. Would you rather have 4 kids at one time or never have a kid? Jesus Christ, never. I don't want any anyway. Do you think 'friends with benefits' relationships really ever work? No. Do you or have you ever known a drug addict? Yes. Do you turn off the water while brushing your teeth or leave it on? I always turn it off. No reason to waste it. Do you have any nieces or nephews? Lots, if you include my half-siblings. Are caterpillars more cute or disgusting? I tend to find them cute. What's your homepage when you bring up the internet? Google. Was the last book you read for fun or was it for some type of assignment? It was for fun. Have you ever dated someone you met online? Yes. Would you go on a date with someone right now if they asked? Depends on who's asking. Do you own any band tees? Oh, I have lots. Off the top of my head, some that I frequently wear are Metallica, Otep, and Korn. Do you know someone who wears a wig? No. Have you ever kissed someone under fireworks? I don't think so. What kind of dressing do you eat on your salad, if any? I strongly prefer the Olive Garden kind, but I also enjoy ranch. What genre of music do you listen to the most? Metal of some sort. Have you ever dated someone who was way overprotective of you? No. Do you personally know any cops? No. How many different colleges have you gone to? Three. How much stress can you handle? Not much at all. How confident are you in achieving your dreams? I ain't got the slightest clue by this point in my life. What is one thing you thought you’d never do but have done or are doing? There's a lot of things, most bad, some good. Do you have to take medication for any mental illness? A lot. Do you like looking at pictures? It depends on what's in them. Specifically pictures from my past, that's usually a big no. Do you believe the dead can have connections with the living? I guess in very vague ways. Which family member do you get along with the most? Well, define "get along with." I by far have the strongest relationship with my mom, but we fight sometimes. As for who I stay on the most stable ground with, that's probably my dad. Would you ever be able to become a vegan? I know I couldn't, but I'd love to. How did you meet your newest friend? Who even IS my newest friend... Have you ever watched the show Teen Mom? What did you think about it? No, and I think it's an awful fucking idea for a television show. Put a spotlight on and money into teen pregnancy, yeah, that's a genius plan. Are you old enough to remember MySpace? Yeah. Do you think you’ll be a good mother/father? I wouldn't be. Do you have trouble deleting your text messages? I don't need to. Is there something that you haven’t told anyone that you actually would like to tell someone? No. Have you ever been called a tease? Yeah. Do people ever make fun of your religion or lack thereof? No. Do you say/do things a lot for shock effect? No? What was the last compliment you gave a guy? I probably told my nephew Ryder he was a good brother. Was one of your grandpas in a war? Maybe? Idk. I never knew either well at all. Have you screamed in a pillow before? Yes. What do you like more, acoustic or electric? Electric. Have you ever ordered something off a commercial on television? No. What's worse, having someone mad or disappointed in you? Disappointed. Do you still consider Pluto a planet? Yes. Didn't they reinstate it as one, anyway? Right now, are you at a high, leveled, or low point? What's lower than "low?"

No, not at all

jchance4d4 replied to your post “On why queer women writes m/m: This is my personal experience. But I...”

I hope my talking about my preference for it didn't get into uncomfortable territory.

Nah. I try not to be a hypocrite, especially when complaining about other people’s hypocrisy. Heh.

It’s not the fact that men like f/f that rubs me the wrong way at all. And no individual man’s taste is going to bug me whether it’s a taste I share or something I find laughably un-hot.

What happens is that there are certain types of female characters and certain physical/makeup/costuming looks that leave me cold. They’re some of the common ones for women in big media that are usually designed to please men as a group. But it’s inconsistent and not always logical. There are some very mainstream het or male gaze-y looks I love.

So, for example, the doctor love interest in Lost Girl is completely un-hot to me because her look says prime time het medical soap opera character to me. She’s canonically a lesbian, and she has an on-screen romance with the lead, which is the kind of thing I say I want more of, but she still isn’t what I'm looking for. Her personality reinforced this problem for me, but a big part of it was how she looked.

Neutral lipstick + “natural” hair that is the product of hot rollers + aggressively groomed eyebrows + bland, neutral tones in clothing + scrawny = NOPE

Meanwhile, there are some trash shows from the 90s where I love the male gazey looks. Everyone on Renegade was super hot to me, including the female lead.

Apparently, when the male gaze looks like bright red lipstick, big lips, and big T&A, my libido is just fine with it.  It’s not like she doesn’t have repulsively tweezed eyebrows. IDK. Maybe I hit puberty when DSL were in fashion or something. (I mean, part of the issue is that I’m an ass woman, and you can’t have an ass without some muscles and more than 4% body fat. 90s trash liked a bit more muscle on its women even if they were all still driven to eating disorders just like now.)

Cleopatra 2525 was a show in which no one wore clothing that actually covered anything, and they all have elaborate makeup and hairdos, but their looks, including the femme-y ones, just don’t read very straight to me, so I find them all hot:

There’s canon f/f that I like. It looks like this:

Yeah, yeah, costume drama, but it’s more than that: I already found most of these actresses super hot in other roles. They’re still pretty scrawny because they’re actresses, but they have interesting faces.

And it’s not like everything poisoned by men instantly turns me off because I still love Frida, even with what we now know about Weinstein traumatizing Salma Hayek by demanding a lesbian scene. She was literally puking and taking tranquilizers before filming it (not because it was a lesbian scene but because it was a power play in an ongoing saga of abuse), but none of that prevents me from enjoying the wonderful film she and director Julie Taymor made in spite of that shitbag.

If feelings were logical, this would probably be the most ruined of anything, but they aren’t and it isn’t. I think it’s the eyebrows. Rowr!

So when I say that men have poisoned certain kinds of f/f for me, what I mean is that something like a sex scene between two very femme women who don’t have a lot of queer markers other than the sex they’re having doesn’t tend to interest me and that “neutral” makeup looks from recent decades are an instant nope. Beige eyeshadow and nude lipstick and hair in perfect waves from hot rollers is what dumb men think women roll out of bed looking like. Blech!

It’s less about men liking f/f and more about certain fashions being the default male gaze in mass media.

They signal straight to me. They signal stifling male expectations to me. Whether or not that’s really fair in a given context.

If some lady looks gothy enough or whatever, it doesn’t bother me in the same way even though plenty of dudes like goth chicks. Like I said, it’s not really a rational response. I can explain the patterns after the fact, but they’re not going to be an accurate barometer of which looks are sexist or morally bad or something.

If men like f/f media, that’s often actually a good thing. It potentially means more paying customers to support artists who make f/f media.

And, yes, if enough men pay and they outnumber women who do, that means more media that isn’t quite the type of f/f I like. I think it’s directly analogous to queer men reading m/m romance novels: 90% of it is going to feel off, but somewhere in that sea of content will be some things I really like. Some of it I might even end up liking better than more authentic content depending on what mood I’m in. As a bi girl, I’m often pretty turned off by authentic engagement with what it means to have a lesbian identity. There’s nothing wrong with it! But it’s probably not what I’m going to seek in a fiction book or a film.

So talk away, my dude.

ETA: Oh! And as a side note, while I think it’s perfectly fine for cis dudes to make f/f art anyway, we also shouldn’t discount how much allowing “outsiders” to make art without interrogation protects the still-closeted people. That’s true whether it’s m/m romance novels or f/f movies or anything else.

I'm sorry if this is an intrusive question, but in your knowledge, how does ednos manifest? Both for you and people you might know. I know for a fact that my relationship with food is not fucking normal, but I don't exactly know what to make of it and...wth...

ednos stands for “eating disorder not otherwise specified” which means it reps ALL eating disorders not covered under other diagnostic criteria. most, something like 70% of eating disorders fall in this category.

MY ednos looks something like this: i have an avoidant and distressed response to food and being told to eat. i tend to delay eating for as long as possible. i’m underweight and too thin for my age+weight, but i don’t have body image issues other than a generalized gender dysphoria that can’t be solved by transition. often, i delay eating for as long as possible. often this results in headaches and chronic exhaustion, shaking hands, nausea, loss of ability to focus (compounded by adhd). for example, right now I’ve eaten food equal to one slice of toast and one cup of tea since i woke up at 9am - it’s 2:20pm as i write this. 

it’s hard for me to push myself to eat because i have adhd; executive dysfunction makes completing the steps of acquiring food difficult. i have autism and texture issues due to that which make eating a lot of food difficult. the food that i can stand, i often still need to be pushed into eating. i hate when people tell me i need to eat or gain weight and sometimes refuse to do the latter out of misery and spite. depression adds a layer of weight on top of all of this. 

fundamentally, my eating disorder is about my desire to avoid eating because i feel like it’s unnecessary, distressing, and repetitive. there’s no solution for this that i can envision.

a friend was kind enough to share their experience with me also:

my eating has definitely been disordered at times and I’ve only just now, in my thirties, gotten a handle on it

so, I grew up in a house where my mother (whom I love) was always insecure about her weight and always dieting. so the language she always used - and still uses - about food is very morality-based. some foods are ‘bad’, others are ‘good’. if you have a bad food, you’re being wicked, and even if she says it with a sort of humorous thrill, as a kid you still internalise the guilt

it was also a house where, for various reasons, we never really had any chips or chocolate or candy or snacks like that around, only basic ice cream sometimes and never soda

so the combination of this meant that, when I did encounter junk food, I’d go buckwild and compulsively stuff my face, because if it was my only opportunity to eat it, then I had to eat AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

the added result was that, if I ended up with a surplus of junk food, like from easter or christmas, I had to eat it all IMMEDIATELY, because if I ate it all at once (in my mind) then I was only being bad once, and that was therefore better than eating a little each day and being bad each day

plus, I couldn’t control myself

which was one thing when I lived at home and didn’t control the shopping, but as an adult I’d never learned self-control or how to stop eating junk when

I was full, because I’d developed a compulsion around itthe fact that I can now have a tub of ice cream in the house and not eat three bowls the day I buy it, or have chocolate and not eat it all at once, or anything like that, is a development that’s really only been true for like… a year? if that?

like, I was making progress towards this state of affairs for a while, but the fact that there are uneaten lindt balls in my cupboard right now would’ve been impossible a year and a bit ago

plus the whole 'food is my only comfort while pregnant’ thing probably set me back a bit

but I’ve really worked at being mentally calm around it and reminding myself the food will still be there tomorrow and that’s okay, that looking forward to it for tomorrow is nicer than stuffing myself now when I’m already full

so that’s another way it can manifest. and here’s yet another:

I grew up in a household that is, uh, increasingly fucked up about food - - it's worse now than when I lived there - - but I dealt with most of it (along with the rest of the emotionally shitty aspects of living there) by just... mentally withdrawing from anything that wasn't safe. We ate meals together when I was little, so maybe food tied into that, idk.

I'm also autistic and not super in touch with my body at the best of times. So... it was pretty easy to just... forget to eat.

I found some risk criteria for developing an eating disorder sometime in high school, and accurately recognized myself in the parts that were focusing on "perfectionist" and "very focused on self control," so I made a very deliberate effort to Not Diet pretty early on. I was the only non athletic family member (still am--everyone else will run marathons or 5ks together on family gatherings) in part because I couldn't breathe when I ran, and I'm also the fattest person in my immediate family.

I tend to stop eating and think of food as actively unsafe and hostile when I get stressed out, and my willingness to eat tends to be one of the first things to deteriorate when my mental health does. I tend to eat high sugar things when that happens, trying to get calories into me, and that sometimes crashes my blood sugar and makes everything worse.

As an adult, I've also been broke for most of my adult life and very conscious of my finances. If I haven't planned ahead and brought food with me, I often find it hard to convince myself that it's worth it to spend the money on a snack or meal for myself - - which means I skip a lot of meals and then wind up wondering why I'm in a brain fog.

I avoid diet talk very rigidly, in part because I am really worried about what might happen if I picked it up. It's really tempting sometimes to just not eat anything at all, maybe have a Real Problem someone might care about, get that positive validation about my body even though said body doesn't work so great in terms of breathing no matter what.

if any of these experiences, or aspects of these experiences resonate, consider that you may have an eating disorder.

here is one description of what a healthy relationship to food looks like. because we live in a diet culture, it’s often really hard to tell what’s normalized dysfunction, what’s a diagnosable eating disorder, and what is healthy and normal - and sometimes, healthy and normal aren’t the same thing. people with healthy relationships to food will

eat when they want to

eat as much as they feel like eating

eat what they feel like eating

not hold their habits and needs against themselves

give their body as much energy as required to sustain AND thrive

have compassion with themselves for shifting needs - more food on one day is as valid as less food on another.

do not weight- or body-shame themselves or others

respect their bodies capacities, limits, and needs

(one thing you hear when looking for recovery tips for eating disorders is to “respect and honour your hunger” and “to make peace with food” but if your ED is anything like mine, you can see how difficult this is. my problem isn’t a lack of peace with food, it’s that eating is inherently distressing for me and everything else just keeps making it harder and worse.

but you know what would help my ED? eating foods one-course meals (which I do already) and eating things which don’t require assembly or complexity. foods like pasta, pizza, sandwiches, curd-rice, are all easier for me to eat than anything else. i try to snack on chocolate and chips and fruit, because they’re easily accessed and provide energy. my goals for myself are small: eat, as much as you are able to, do not unduly distress yourself.)

don’t punish yourself for having to figure out your access needs around food from scratch. don’t hurt yourself for what you need to eat and what you find easy.you can have an ednos at any weight. remember that more weight is better than less weight - more IS healthier. take care of yourself

recovering from an ednos looks different for everyone because ednos ARE different for everyone. it’s up to you to figure out your balance, but of course there is help and resources available. check out blogs like @heavyweightheart. try to cultivate a body positive and disability positive environment around yourself, because that helps no matter what you have going on. best of luck! 

Larry Vs Zarry and more rants

Okay this is a rant that no one asked for but no one in my social circle cares enough about this to hear me out so tumblr will be a decent substitute.

I hate larries. First they try to make everything about Larry like it is so far fetch but they are gripping onto that theory tight. They are so blind and so adamant and anything that debunks any of their theory sets them off. The entire Larry fandom is so toxic that they even affected harry and Louis’s friendship. To be very honest I never liked Louis because he craved so much attention especially in the early days. He probably saw that many fans were invested in Larry and decided to add fuel to the fire by doing stuff purposefully on cameras. It’s so ridiculous. He even admitted himself that he was insecure about being obselete when he left the band as it is pretty evident that the more popular members of the band did not include him. He wanted to be relevant and did this by hopping onto the Larry BS. After it got out of control and compromised their actual friendship and even his relationship with his gf then did he start denying all the Larry theories. Louis was just milking it. Did y’all noticed how harry ignored Louis the last 2 years in the band? They barely even talked. Y’all say its the management but y’all watch too much tv man. Those things don’t happen in real life to such an extreme level because that’s not humane and they know that they can get into a lot of trouble doing that. They won’t go so far by not allowing them to talk H doesn’t even glance at Louis. Y’all keep saying that Louis’s backhanded comments are sassy well they aren’t they are just straight up rude y’all clearly don’t know the difference. Watch drag race and see how sassy is done. Sassy is being witty but if u say the ‘joke’ again and again it’s just being mean bro. Anyways I’m not here to define what sassy is. H did not deserve all those comments in the early days especially the ones about his mum it’s not appropriate at all. If u notice, Z never participated in the ‘hot mum’ convo and stopped teasing H’s voice after doing some impressions of harry in 2011. Harry was just tolerant and a nice human so he didn’t do much about it. Of course as he got older he knew he didn’t have to put up with the bs Louis gives him and started to take matters into his own hands.

Not to go off on Louis I’m sure he is an decent human privately but whatever I see on camera I dislike. His fans are also delusional. Since I’m alr going off on Louis might as well say everything. The main reason why Louis fights to stay relevant was his limited vocal skills. He has a nice tone to his voice I admit. I quite like it. But it’s just so unreliable. I laugh everytime I see a Louis singing like an angel compilation appearing on my ig because even in those clips he was off tune. Imagine his normal live performances. Idk maybe I just have a more sensitive musical ear because of my musical background but literally almost everytime he sings it’s bad. His fans keep complaining about how he never really got many parts in songs during 1D and most were given to H and Z and even Liam. He prob would be given more parts if he sang with technique and consistency as good as Mitch grassi( who has a similar temperament to Louis) but he doesn’t. He has a shit range I prob have a wider range than he does (and I mean the lower range as well); he has shit technique as you can see his voice get more hoarse as time goes on as he pushes too hard for the notes and often strains to hit the notes; bad at runs and the one time he was given a run in a song he screws up during almost all live shows or doesn’t even sing the runs; often off tune like so off he literally has 3 lines and can’t stay on key I can continue you know. Of course I can understand if you’re insecure. (Maybe stop wasting time on fuelling Larry and practice ur technique? Attend vocal lessons?) you want to prove me otherwise? U can watch the live performance after he went solo. Lmao with no one to hide behind and singing with another inconsistent singer (bebe rexha no hate tho I love her songs but she has problems singing live sometimes) the performance was an utter mess. Okay enough with Louis talking abt him is hurting my brain.

The thing I like about the zarry fandom is that they’re so Low key and very patient and friendly. They are always trying to find new content to share and keeps to fandom only. They know that if Z and H knew about such speculations and theories we made, their dynamic may change as well So zarries keeps it to themselves and RESPECTS THEIR PRIVACY. That’s why we Low key panicked when the articles about harry being the inspiration behind fingers came out. You can support your fandom, you can come up with your theories but if you start going off on other fandoms randomly, you are being defensive for nothing. When larries say “I’m just sharing my opinion” but goes off at other fandoms for sharing their’s isn’t that hypocritical? I don’t know why these minute feuds happen there are more significant things happening don’t y’all have homework and exams to deal with? Why do you have to defend them so strongly? Sorry sweetie they don’t know who you are probably never will.

Now the actual ships. Larry were clearly best buddies in the early days. Zarry (maybe not as bff as Larry )but they were very comfortable around each other and were very close ( they slept in the same bed and cuddled during an interview like full on nuzzle into neck Shit) but if u see the interview when the boys were asked to identify who the food thief is, the boys were outing Harry being a food thief but Louis of course had to say some cheesy thing about how he can take his food. Liam was like but the other day you said... CLEARLY Louis had complained about Harry stealing food but once again he was MILKING LARRY. Have you seen Harry say anything like that to Louis? No not really. Maybe said he was funny once or sth. With Zayn, yes many occasions. Saying he is intelligent, funny, pretty, missing his eyes when the question was not even for him???? The list can go on. All Harry had done was deny the Larry rumours again and again and again. Zayn even stepped in multiple times to deny the rumours as well. I mean man watch zarrydocumentary, mah edats or any zarry channles and the Miami incident omg that was so compelling. The eating disorder era and harry not saying weigh like asfghjk y’all won’t know till y’all watch the vids man. Okay I shall end this off with I hope ig stop showing me Louis/ Larry content cos just because I like Harry doesn’t mean I like any of those two things. Everytime I see it, it’s just pisses me off. If u even read this u have gained nothing from this.

Have a great day. :)

- cn for disordered eating -

.

ffs we're engaging in so many behaviours that are, like, huge red flags for eating disorders (I mean we've known for a really long time that we have sub-clinical disordered eating but still), like sneaking food or eating secretly, eating in the middle of the night when my roommates are asleep, waiting to go to the kitchen when we hear them/anyone being in there etc. Lowkey being scared of being "caught" eating or feeling like we have something to hide about how much we eat of certain foods. All that kind of stuff.

Even if the reasons are very different from what the mainstream idea of eating disorders looks like. But at the end of the day, we are restricting certain foods/at certain times (even if we're doing it unvoluntarily - as a result of trauma (instead of as a weight-loss effort)) and then compensating for that to a degree (sadly not enough to make up for the trauma-induced restriction) by eating more sweets, snacks and other high-calorie foods than we would if we ate regular, full meals. Or, anything really. Like, we'll just eat whatever we can and have access to, even if it's "just" a green salad (something we really crave a lot actually but it’s so hard for us to prepare).

The really complicated thing is though that we can't even do that enough, we can't even eat compensatorily (is that a word?), or we do too little of that, for example because we aren't sure if our roommates will be upset if we eat the rest of this or that thing etc. Or feeling guilty of eating the more expensive stuff. Or just things like that.

But really what I wanted to think about more is this aspect of.... well, this really disordered behaviour, or rather, this "tries to cover up the disordered behaviour"-behaviour, the things we do to try and keep the extent of our problems hidden from our roommates. Or the extent of our compensatory eating, even though we know that that's still not enough to compensate for our restriction.

And in part we do that because we don't want to burden them with our problems, but that's not the only reason. We're also scared they'll be mad at us, or rather we know they have been mad at us at several points in the past for eating the rest of this or that. So, I think the best thing to do would be to talk openly about just how bad our problems around food are and how much we need to eat and compensate for our times of undereating that still occurs due to trauma. And yes we're working on not undereating in the first place, and even more fundamentally, on working through that trauma, but it's an ongoing process and so far we're still at a place where we do undereat unfortunately. And we need to compensate for that as much as we can. And fear of upsetting roommates should not add to the already long list of (old traumarelated and financial and other) reasons that eating is difficult for us.

So we should talk about this and maybe just them knowing what we're going through can help mutual understanding, and also we might agree to mark the food more clearly so we don't have this constant uncertainty making things so much harder. But it's not like it's unclear per se, it's just that we can't rely on common sense (or our memory) to navigate this, like our roommates can. And it stresses us out so much. Like the nagging question in the back of my mind of "will roommates be upset if I eat this?" is an almost daily struggle for us. One that we really DO NOT need in our life!

I do think we can solve at least that one thing by talking it out with the roommates and putting simple "rules" in place like "unless there's a name on it, it's fair game and no one gets to complain that it was eaten over night" or whatever we decide on together.

Idk I just hope we actually go through with this, because we so often resolve to talk about something openly and then we don't. Did we mention we have trauma.... three guesses at what other thing trauma/abuse made difficult for us....)

early morning thoughts

So it’s 6:30am and I just finished my daily meditation/hypnosis and wanted to type out my reflections vs. hand writing them because thanks to vyvanse, my brain is moving way too fast for me to be able to get it all out fast enough and don’t want to miss anything. Today’s meditation/hypnosis was about regaining the confidence we are born with and lost along the way in life. It had us go back to a memory in our childhood where we feel that confidence was lost and another one where we felt on top of the world confident which our brains will automatically pick the best memories for us for both of those scenarios. I’m not sure if this was 100% accurate for me since I was definitely not fully hypnotized thanks to waiting to long to start and vyvanse kicking in much faster than usual (normally I’d be over the moon about that but the timing just wasn’t the best for me to get the most out of that session but oh well - they say to listen to it every day for 21 days to get the max benefits so I have at least another 20 tries to get it “right” so I’m not too worried, especially since I’m just getting back into the practice of meditation and am a bit rusty to begin with) but my confidence lost memory wasn’t super vivid of the actual event but it brought me back to JJMS in the main stairwell where all the classrooms are and just stuck there but the memory was when some “friend” who I can’t remember for the life of me told Will R that I had a crush on him (let’s face it, I was beyond obsessed to the point where I’m shocked we don’t have our own episode on Investigation Discovery for being stalked or something. it was that bad) and he basically went ew and flat out rejected me. Not even to my face but told my friend who told me and that just crushed me. The sad part was when it was time to pick a moment in childhood where I felt super confident and on top of the world, I had a hard time picking one... I know it’s mainly due to lyme in one of 2 ways - either 1. its because my memory is shit and I don’t remember a lot of the good times because when there’s so little storage space and my brain holds onto bad memories to help protect me from repeating them in the future, the good ones don’t always stay and/or 2. I was sick for most of my childhood and didn’t realize it so I feel like there was always just a cloud over me or there was like a blurred/black and white filter over my life and where having intense feelings was too much energy for me because I was fighting off the illness I didn’t know I had. But I ended up going with basically the beginning of my time working at EQX (only stuff related to there, not the shit show that was my dating life) where I was MOD or just generally crushing it and was the go to person and knew everything and loved my coworkers and the members loved me plus I was doing GF classes a lot and just getting into strength training and making all sorts of progress in a short amount of time and felt lean and strong and was hitting PRs left and right and god do I miss that feeling. Not necessarily just at that gym or anything but just feeling strong and pushing my body and not having to be so worried that I’m going to overheat and cause a migraine because it doesn’t take a lot to do that and I just miss being able to do so much more and having the drive and being confident that I was capable of lifting that extra weight or whatever it was whereas now I have that cloud over me again where I’ll start to get all fired up and into it and then my body is like uhh chill out and these problems start and I feel like I get knocked off my pedestal in my own brain and am reminded that I’m not some superhuman strength having god but just a weak, sick person. It’s so beyond frustrating to me and that’s literally the theme of my life right now. I have all of this drive and desire to be crushing it in everything I do but it feels like there’s something physically holding me back and imprisoning me and I can’t break free and the most frustrating part is that it’s things that are out of my control. Whether it’s my sick brain and all the issues with anxiety/depression/disordered eating or my actual body that can’t perform the way I want to in the gym or just have enough energy to get through the day or even leave my bed without such a strong medication, it’s just so fucking hard. Like having 1/2 my mother’s DNA aka her drive and type A-ness and all that plus my father’s drive and sicilian stubbornness but being stuck in a body that can’t even begin to keep up and is dragging me down is just so frustrating. The worst part is it’s not something I’m consciously doing or am just lazy or something that I’m not doing that could fix this, no it’s all things that are pretty out of my control and it feels like it’s not because of me if that makes sense and i’m just forced to be a victim of these issues that are not any part my fault or something I can just decide to stop doing and be fine. Plus now being jobless and almost 30, it’s a lot harder to convince myself that I’m still so young and it’s okay to not have life figured out yet and blah blah blah vs. when I was 18-21 years old aka back in that time of the memory at EQX. Like I want a career, I want to have a family of my own and I feel like the clock’s ticking on that and stressing me out but I also refuse to settle for less than like head over heels/soulmates/like the kind of love that you can just feel when you see two people together kinda love and again, I’m not getting any younger and 1. I want to have my own children aka not adopt or have a surrogate and I don’t want it to be too late in that aspect by the time I find someone and 2. I’m already so exhausted now and as I get older it’s not going to get any better unless they magically come up with a cure for lyme but i’m not holding my breath so like I can’t imagine me in 10 years running after a toddler... and I want to be the best mom I can be and I don’t feel like I can do that if i’m just barely survivng life and tired all the time mentally and physically and that’s just not fair to my future husband or child. I know I’m stressing over things that aren’t happening now or anytime soon because I’m not even like talking to any guys but it’s hard not to think about when I had a taste of “love” recently and remembered how amazing it felt and how much I miss having that intimate relationship in my life and ugh. That’s a topic for another day because I don’t want to 1. spend the rest of my day typing away and 2. I don’t want to start my day by getting that far into my feels and then being sad all day. Idk there’s just a lot going on in my brain right now and I don’t really know how to process all of it right now and I’m at a low that I haven’t been at since the whole Corey saga and I know it’ll get better and there’s amazing things coming my way, like I truly 1000000% believe that but right now i’m still stuck and it just sucks and I hate it. I’m hoping that getting back into meditation and journalling will help me start to work out some of this shitstorm and bring me peace with it all. Plus I am going to start seeing a therapist (which I’m exhausted already just thinking about starting that search) which I’m sure will be a huge help and yeah. Good things are coming, I just have to get through this shit first. Like I know there’s the quote or whatever about “i’m going to make you happy, but i’m going to make you strong first” or whatever... but like okay universe/god/whoever’s listening, I feel like I’ve been through enough character/strength building things in my life to where I promise I will truly appreciate being happy and proud of myself for making it through all of that shit so like enough’s enough. It’s my time to be happy and at peace so if you could talk to my brain and both of you sort your shit out and get with the program and make me happy damnit, that would be great. k thanks. 

Okay that’s enough rambling for today. Time to get up, take my progress pictures and weigh in, drink my supplement drink thing and some water, plan my day, maybe go for a really early walk and then do leg day later, maybe I’ll even go to QNTM to train legs... we shall see how I feel later. 

450.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 18

1701. How will tomorrow be like today? i’ll have the day off :) totally fine with that. 1702. How would you react if a stranger pinched your bottom? i’d call them out. 1703. When was the last time you went on a date? i don’t really know what counts as a date with my boyfriend and i anymore, but we went out for dinner together on tuesday. 1704. Have you ever ridden a horse? yes. 1706. What is almost over? ok i can’t, there’s missing questions again...

1707. What should you be doing that you are putting off? looking for new jobs. 1708. How much would you have to change physically before you would no longer be yourself anymore? if someone couldn’t recognise me from old photos then i’d consider that not being myself anymore. 1709. How much would you have to change mentally before you would no longer be yourself anymore? if the people around me don’t like me for who i am anymore i guess. 1710. Would you rather be famous or notorious? famous. 1711. Would you rather have a necklace that's dripping with diamonds or a blueberry farm? the necklace. i don’t even like blueberries. 1712. Could you take first place in a beauty contest? hell no. 1713. Who is the biggest hypocrite you know and why? no one comes to mind straight away. 1714. Would you consider yourself to be more opinionated or bitchy? opinionated. 1715. How long is it until your next day off? today! 1716. What sound is annoying you right now? there’s been the same bird chirping outside for the past couple of hours. it’s not even a chirp, i think it’s in heat or something. 1717. Imagine you're taking a vacation with 4 people. Who are they? dwayne, irene, ahmad andddd bek. 1718. The five of you travel by plane. Suddenly your plane crashes down over snowy mountains. The pilot and the air crew and all the other passengers die. The only way for you to survive is for one of you to get eaten by the others. Who will it be? omg idk... i’d offer myself i guess. 1719. Anorexia and obesity are two life threatening eating related disorders. Why is it that when it is discovered that someone is an anorexic they are rushed to the hospital, but when someone is obese they are not rushed to the hospital? not sure how to answer that. 1720. Who is your favorite smurf? smurfette. 1721. Why do you do things that you know are bad for you? for some reason they always feel/taste/are better. 1722. How important is testing to education? no idea. i always hated tests. 1723. What food group do you eat the most of (bread and pasta, meats and eggs and fish, fruits and vegetables, milk and cheese, sugar and butter)? between meats and veg i guess. 1724. Who is the most adorable person you know? my baby cousin, victoria. 1725. If you had to spend a half hour locked in a dark closet with someone from school or work that you don't normally hang out with who would you want it to be? haha i have no idea. no one tbh. 1726. How often do you masturbate in a week? i’d say once every 2-3 weeks tbh. 1727. In the USA people work a full third of the year for the government, due to taxes. How do you feel about this? i don’t live in the usa so idc. 1728. Should people be allowed to use cell phones in their cars? nah, i know of people getting into accidents coz they were on their phones. 1729. Have you ever been in the room while a human baby was born? nope. 1730. Have you ever been in the room while an animal baby was born? no. 1731. Did you see the video The Miracle of Life in school? no. 1732. How do you feel about having a baby? not sure. someday! 1733. Have you ever had a tooth pulled? yes. 1734. Who are you waiting for an email/call/note/visit from? my boyfriend. 1735. What are you counting the days until? my birthday lol. 1736. What is the greatest temptation for you? nothing. 1737. How do you resist it? - 1738. Who is your knight in shining armor? haha idk. 1739. If you were walking and someone behind you yelled "HEY YOU!" would you turn around? yeah. 1740. Do loud noises make you tense? they give me a fright i guess. 1741. Has anyone ever told you that your epidermis was showing? nope. 1742. Would you rather work or stay home with the baby? i’d like to stay home with the baby until they’re old enough for daycare. 1743. Would you rather have people agree with you all the time or tell you the honest truth? tell me the honest truth. 1744. Will you/have you gone to your high school reunion? no thanks. 1745. What do you think of your yearbook picture? it’s alright. 1746. Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer? gatherer. 1747. If you ever were to visit Hershey Park, the theme park based on the chocolate candy, would you enjoy going to the spa where you can be treated to a whipped cocoa bath, a milk and honey bath, or simply a chocolate fondue skin wrap? the skin wrap. 1748. If someone asks you to read a poem they wrote, will you really take your time to try and understand what they wrote and tell them what you think or just read it quickly and tell them that its really good? i’d definitely try to understand it. 1749. Do you feel that if a coincidence occurs it means something? not always. 1750. Were you beautiful as a child? i was actually. wtf happened haha. 1751. Do you think that it is okay for a homosexual or a woman to become a priest? i don’t see the problem if they’re devoted to the religion and they never get married. 1752. Which would you rather give up forever, religion or sex? religion. 1753. What comes to mind when you think of these places: Canada? toronto UK? fish and chips USA? hot dogs Australia? sunny weather Germany? bratwurst Italy? pizza 1754. What does your favorite bumper sticker say? i don’t have a fave. 1755. Have you ever taken a shower with another person? yes. 1756. What bath toys do you have, if any? none. 1757. Would you rather propose to someone you love or would you rather be proposed to by someone you love? i’d rather be proposed to. 1758. How can you reject someone nicely? thank them for the offer but tell them you don’t want to or aren’t ready. 1759. What kinds of diary names make you interested enough to check out the diary? - 1760. What do you think are three common passwords people use to secure their diaries? names, nicknames, pet names, birthdays. 1761. Pick an object in the room. Give that object a name. no. 1762. What is the quickest way to make you blush? compliment me lol. 1763. Do you usually feel that you deserve it when other people compliment you? it depends what it’s for. 1764. If you were to start your own business what kind of business do you think it might be? no idea. something in design. 1765. What is one of your pet peeves? when people cough without covering their mouths. 1766. What question do you get asked too frequently? do you still talk to the last person you kissed? 1767. You notice a ring is priced $40.00, but the cashier only charges you $10.00. Do you mention this to the cashier? haha yeah i think i would. 1768. Could a kiss on the ___ be considered cheating? Cheek? no Lips? yes Nose? this is just weird Hand? no Ear? still weird. Neck? assuming it’s passionate, yeah. 1769. Would it bother you if your lover occasionally flirted with others? of course. 1770. How long has it been since you last played truth or dare? absolute years. 1771. Should people who are living now be obligated to do things that will make the world better for people who will live 100 years from now? not obligated but it’s damn logic to preserve as much as we can for future generation. 1772. Imagine you have a dream in which someone you care for acts mean to you. Is it possible you will still be angry with this person when you wake up? haha it’s definitely happened before. i usually brush it off and tell the person. 1773. Have you ever left someone a note with a picture in it? If yes, how do you do it? i don’t think so. 1774. What do you fear more, death or pain? pain. 1775. Are the questions still interesting this far into the survey? somewhat. 1776. Do you like the cartoon Inspector Gadget? never watched it. 1777. You know how Gadget wears the same outfit all the time, and his closet is full of outfits that are exactly identical to the one he wears? If your closet was full of just one outfit that you had to wear everyday what would it be like? i couldn’t just have one outfit. maybe a casual one and one for going out lol. 1778. Would you rather time travel to the future or the past? future. 1779. Would you rather know how the world began or how it will end? how it will end.   1780. Would you rather meet your ancient ancestors or your great great great great great great grandchildren? probably my ancestors. imagine going to the future to meet your greatx6 grandchildren and there’s no one there... 1781. Out of these 4 which is most important (1=most, 2= second most, 3 = 3rd most, 4 = least)? Curing diseases such as aids, cancer: 2 Preserving wildlife areas: 3 Ending terrorism: 1 Building colonies in space: 4 1782. In your opinion should every child be entitled to a good education? definitely. 1783. What news item are you tired of hearing about? fucking politics. 1784. Speaking of 9/11 the anniversary is coming up. What will you be doing? it’s already passed. 1785. If this were a recipe for you, how would it go? 2 cups: 1 cup: 1/2 cup: A pinch of: A dash of: Mix well and bake until: Add: Serve: no thanks 1786. Which of the following would YOU be more likely to survive: A fall from a 3 story building Driving a car into the water <----- this 1787. What philosophy was manifested in the communist manifesto? haha idk. 1788. Who is your exact opposite? no idea. marie comes pretty close though. 1789. Would you rather have serenity or insanity? serenity. 1790. What do these phrases mean? Moulin Rogue: red something Le voyage sur le bateau: idk Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir: do you want to sleep with me tonight 1791. What is the longest distance you have ever walked? 23km in a day while sightseeing in london. that’s a record for me. 1792. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato believes that beauty truth and justice all basically mean the same thing. What are your feelings about this? nah. 1793. How did you first begin to assert yourself as independent from your parents? it was just a slow process of instead of asking permission, i’d just tell them what i was doing instead. 1794. If you had a magic bracelet, would you use it to gain luck, money, health, creativity or love? money. 1795. What would you do if every time you used your magic bracelet something bad would happen to someone else? i just wouldn’t use it as often? 1796. This is a story about a girl. While at the funeral of her own mother, she met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy she believed him to be that she fell in love with him then and there, although she didn't even see him after the funeral ended. A few days later, the girl killed her own sister. What is her motive for killing her sister? she wanted to run into that guy again at her sister’s funeral. 1797. Have you ever intentionally hurt someone’s feelings? yeah i have. 1798. What do you think of Franz Ferdinand? don’t know much about him. 1799. What do you think of the band Modest Mouse? nothing. 1800. What do you think of Morrissey? nothing.

(1/2) My grandma has five birds (two Cockatoos, three African Greys). She keeps them in their cages 24/7 in the sunroom by the kitchen. I don't know how fragile bird respiratory systems are, but feathers/dust/ammonia are everywhere in there and I'm sure it's not good. Their water hardly gets changed- when it does it's gotten to the point of being brown with food/newspaper/feathers in it. They eat food that is really bad for them (high in sugar and probably sodium).

(2/2) The toys only get replaced when they’re years old and worn down to the point of being pieces. The birds never get attention, they’re never out of their cages, and they don’t have any stimulation except for the TV (what?). I don’t know how to help them because my grandparents and my siblings/I aren’t on good terms at the moment.

Golly, this turned out to be a looooong answer, so let me but a read-more here…

Now, you probably know this first bit, since you’re writing this ask in the first place, but just for the sake of being a bit more thorough, in case any uninformed bird-owner reads this and maybe has an epiphany:

(Let me just note that all sources I link here are pages that I just quickly googled, so I can’t judge their professionalism. However, the issues that I sourced with these links, are issues I know about from my avian vet and that can easily be found on the internet thousands of times. So I assume they’re somewhat current when it comes to our state of avian medic knowledge.)

Birds’ respiratory systems are not the sturdiest, as far as I know. Ammonia is definitely bad for them, and being kept near the kitchen isn’t great, either, as stuff like teflon being heated can be deadly to them.

The thing about the feathers and the dust, is that they are very bad for humans (but you’re right that too much isn’t good for birds, either!), as a family member of mine had to experience, and has to experience for the rest of her life.So maybe if your grandmother doesn’t have too much concern for the birds, as I sadly often find in older generations, maybe that will give her cause to think about the situation.

I obviously don’t have to tell you that the water situation is horrible, but it’s also less than ideal that these birds have access to newspaper (I assume as flooring of the cage). Now, I don’t know where you’re from and what the newspapers there are printed with, so the print might be toxic in high doses. However, google is telling me, that this shouldn’t be a problem anymore nowadays, and the last time I heard about that was during my childhood when my grandfather was breeding budgies, so that might be completely outdated.On the other hand, birds like to have litter (idk if that’s the right english word… bed? bedding?) to play in, and it has the additional benefit of soaking up fluids like spilled bathing water and poop, so that is more hygenic for both the birds and your grandmother’s lung.However, I’m not tooooo sure about this, since I can’t find any sources on the internet right now and this page even claims that paper is the better choice in these regards. I’m far from an expert, I just go by what my vet told me, which is the “litter”-kind of bedding (chipped wood for birds).

As for food - yeah. That’s not good either.

Being always kept in a cage isn’t… always… bad… and I hesitated a lot to write this. I think in my whole life I’ve seen two or three aviaries that are big enough for birds to exclusively live in. That cage would have to be huge, especially for so many birds.For african greys, apparently, that is more than 60x90x120 cm if these sources can be believed. Note that these pages do not say if that’s for one bird or a pair. I’ve never had african greys, so I don’t know if that size doesn’t almost double if you keep two of them (which, I assume since it goes for most birds, is a requirement because they are social animals).For cockatoos, I found the same size-requirements on the internet, right now. It bugs me a bit, because it seems pretty tiny for such huge birds. I own parrotlets and that’s pretty much their requirements. And they’re tiny tiny birds. But again: I’m not an expert.

And lastly, the toy and stimulation situation. At least they’re together, that’s a plus. But of course, having nothing to do and sitting in a cage all day, would make anyone depressed and develop bad behavioural patterns. I’ve seen an african grey go completely apathetic, I’ve seen one non-stop-spinning around it’s own axis for days, I’ve seen a lot of shit. It can get really bad.That isn’t to say that if a bird doesn’t exhibit these problem, it’s fine. I’m just saying, that’s how bad it can get. (What I’m trying to say is, just because hitting a child regularly is not as bad as beating it dead, a child that is being hit daily is far from fine.)There’s a lot of blogs about building foraging toys yourself, there’s a lot of places where you can buy them, and there’s a lot of guides on how to train a parrot, like you would train dogs, to give them something to do and exercise their brain and motorabilities. And as a plus, you have a bird that doesn’t do annoying behaviour (like land on posters *I’m not looking at you, Mealey, but I’m looking at you), and can do cool tricks! It’s a win-win!

Okay, tl,dr… now what you were actually asking. (Sorry, I’m like my old maths professor. You come to him to ask him about polynomial division and he starts by explaining you the complete probability theory…)

If you or someone you know is still visiting your grandparents now and then (maybe your parent that is their child?), you could maybe bring the birds new foraging toys, so they have at least stimulation. However, I think that’s the least of their problem. It’s something easy to do, though, and I don’t see what your grandmother could possibly have against new toys if they’re already there and she doesn’t have to do anything with them.

Of course, they could also change the water, while they’re at it, and maybe sneak in some actual parrot food for greys and cockatoos, and throw the sugar-stuff away. That’s assuming that they’re visiting daily, though.If they’re not, changing the food might still be an option, as with the toys: If they already bring it to your grandmother, and it’s paid for, I don’t see why she would have a problem with it, if someone explains to her that it’s healthier for the birds.

For the water, I have heard tale that water dispensers (they look something like this or this) keep the water “fresher” since there would be no poop/food/newpaper in it. It’s still important to change it everyday, but it might improve the situation a lot.(Please don’t buy the dispensers off the internet, except it’s a site that you trust and that says it’s specially for parrots. I’ve heard horror stories of lead-poisoning and whatnot from toys, water dispensers and food bowels from dubious sources. Go to a pet store and make sure the materials are listed on the packaging, and that they are safe materials!Please also make sure that they’re the right size for your birds. My parrotlets wouldn’t be able to drink from the dispensers that looks like the one bunnies have, and if the second type is too small for a bird’s beak, it obviously can’t drink from it either…)

The most obvious advice, of course, is to talk to your grandma or have someone who has a better relationship to her, talk to her about it. Maybe they can go to an avian vet with her (make an appointment for a consultation, the vet is probably just as happy to prevent further mistreatment as he’d be to treat it), and have a conversation about how to keep parrots, because if it’s coming from an authority on the field, it’s probably not brushed aside as easily as if it’s a family member.

And lastly, if the whole situation is too bad, and if nothing can be done about it, call animal protection.It’s harsh, but if it were a child, we’d call child protection too. They’re living beings, they feel pain, they feel suffer from illness, mental disorders and everything we do too, and they are even more helpless than a child that can talk (and a child is already absolutely helpless, don’t get me wrong).Maybe, your grandmother doesn’t even want them around anymore. African greys and cockatoos get so old, who knows how long she’s had them? Maybe she changed her mind, maybe the responsibility has gotten to much, and she’s relieved to have them out of the house (also a thing someone should talk to her about, probably). Recently, someone called animal protection for the dog of our neighbours (wasn’t us; to our knowledge, that dog was treated fine, and I still kinda believe that since I’ve never had any reason to believe otherwise, when I saw him), and apparently/allegedly, instead of proving (or even trying to) that the dog is being treated right, they just let them take him, because they were looking to sell him anyway. Maybe it’s kinda the same situation for your grandmother…

I hope that helped and I hope that big wall of text didn’t overwhelm you!

Lastly: Again again, I’m absolutely no expert on bird keeping. I have two parrotlets, that’s all. So if anyone reads this and knows something I wrote to be false, please reblog or message me to let me know (preferably with sources so I know you’re not a troll) so I can change it!

Okay so weird question, but how exactly did you get diagnosed with POTS? I was diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome and partial arrhythmia a while ago, and it's only just recently that I've had a doc wonder if I have POTS. He didn't really tell me anything about POTS, and now I'm really lost! Do you think it's unlikely that I could get to be 21 and not be diagnosed?

Strap in, friend, because the story of how I got diagnosed is long and unpleasant.

So to start off, here’s a basic explanation of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It’s a syndrome, which means that it is a description of a collection of symptoms rather than an underlying cause. Frankly, doctors aren’t super sure why any of this happens, what exactly causes it, or even if it’s genetic or what. (But my mom, sister, and grandmother all show signs of mild POTS, so uh. It’s probably genetic.) The long and short of it, though, is that your blood vessels are supposed to automatically tighten or release in order to control blood flow. When you stand up, they tighten to counteract gravity and make sure blood stays where it should be. When you have POTS, your blood vessels don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Your autonomic nervous system stops controlling this tightening and loosening process, which means your blood flow is not being adequately controlled. (Also, there seems to be some research showing that #1, we tend to have more elastic blood vessels, which means they just expand when they fill up more – bad because that means your body can’t use blood pressure to regulate blood flow, either, and #2, we may not always have enough blood in our bodies to fill our blood vessels, so again, shitty blood pressure.) ANYWAY, what all this means in practice is that assorted parts of your body aren’t getting enough blood, or they’re getting too much blood. Blood does all sorts of important things for your organs, especially oxygenating them, so this really means that POTS is an “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” situation. Anything in your body that uses blood can go haywire at any time. And sorry to say, that’s everything.

Now, POTS is highly variable. Again, it’s a loose collection of symptoms, and those symptoms are different for literally every patient. POTS is actually super common in teenage girls, but it tends to be very mild and some teens (mostly boys, mind) completely grow out of it, so people often don’t even notice they have it. People only just started researching it and it’s still not talked about much, which, well, is probably due to sexism. I learned the hard way that teenage girls are not generally listened to when they complain about nebulous symptoms, especially if those symptoms have literally anything to do with hormones and menstruation. (Which POTS does. It’s…I think ¾ of all people who have it are biologically female, and onset usually accompanies periods of hormone fluctuation such as start of menstruation, childbirth, or start of menopause. Most sufferers get it in their teens when they start getting their period.) Like… It’s hard to really put this in a gender neutral way because I promise you, the reason doctors are shitty about POTS is tied to both the biological and societal effects of being female. That’s an aside though.

Anyway, tl;dr, it’s different for everyone and doctors think you’re nuts. When I was diagnosed, in the informational packet literally said “THIS IS NOT ALL IN YOUR HEAD” because so many patients have been repeatedly told that. For me, I was actually uh. I don’t want to say lucky? But in some ways I guess, yeah, lucky. I have a really bad case of POTS with some really severe symptoms. I have a lot of digestion problems, extreme exhaustion problems, dizziness, faintness, anxiety/depression, pooling/tingling/coldness in extremities, and here’s the biggie – blindness. When I stand up, I often just straight-up go blind. (Or if I’m just sitting there doing fucking nothing if I’m on an airplane.) It was really bad especially when I was a teenager. It used to be like literally every fucking time I stood up. (We later found out it was because all the blood was draining out of my head bc gravity. Turns out your brain likes blood! This is also why it hurts so much.) Now, doctors ignored most of what I told them about exhaustion, trouble keeping down food, aches and pains, etc. I was repeatedly told “oh, well, that’s just part of being a teenage girl”. Like honestly, try telling someone that you have exhaustion, pain, and nausea relating to a period and see how seriously you get taken. Jesus.

BUT UH THEY COULD NOT IGNORE THE BLINDNESS. Like I don’t care how teenage girl-y you are, it is not normal to go blind on the regular! My doctors could not figure out what the hell was happening. And I do mean doctors. I got POTS when I was around 10, along with my period. I was diagnosed when I was almost 18. In the meantime, I was passed around between dozens of doctors and honestly? I was a guinea pig. They didn’t know what was wrong with me so I was subjected to constant barrage of tests and treatments that made me a hell of a lot sicker. I was going to like 3 different doctors a week, sometimes every day. There are very few medical tests I have not had at least once. Some of the treatments they tried, I later learned, carried a strong risk of addiction, permanent neurological damage, and death. I was a drugged-out mess trying to drag myself through 15 flavors of physical therapy every day. Like uh. In short, my teenage years weren’t…good… 

I finally got referred to like my sixth neurologist, and the guy was like “okay, you have been passed around between neurologists, cardiologists, ENTs, sleep disorder specialists, etc. for YEARS and we don’t know what’s wrong, so it makes no sense to keep ‘treating’ you – so I’m gonna take some readings and send them (and you) to a research hospital”. And that’s what he did! He took me off all of my medications (leading to the kind of DTs that honestly possibly could have killed me; I researched a few of the medications later and let’s just say you’re not supposed to go off them cold turkey) and did some tests. He found out some stuff like my blood pressure moves around a lot when I stand up. And sometimes my blood pressure was as low as 60/40. (Yo, that’s almost dead. The nurse took the reading three times with two different machines bc she was freaking out, lmao.) So he referred me to Mayo Clinic.

Now, what I did not know before this was that Mayo was actually the clinic that had discovered (and still researched) POTS! They saw a lot of girls like me. They took some blood, did a few tests, and when I had my appointment with them, they knew in under a half hour that I had POTS. I…cried. A lot. haha. It was so bizarre how many things in my life were actually an indicator of POTS. They were like “do you often sit all folded up?” and I basically exclusively do – and often got in trouble for it in school – and they were like “yeah, that’s POTS, you unconsciously try to keep all your limbs tucked in to reduce how far your blood needs to go”. Which is, I guess, why I tend to lose sensation in my legs and/or have my feet turn purple when I sit in normal chairs. lol. “Do you ever get dizzy or black out when you stretch or yawn?” oh yeah. “Do you get really sick when you take hot showers?” almost died once or twice, check! “Do you get weak when you lift things above your head?” you betcha. “Do you have a lot of problems with heat and sunlight?” OH YES I DO. Living in Florida was hell. I’d be vomiting and unable to stand up after like 30 minutes outside in the summer. I still vomit and get migraines if I look at a sunset, when the sun is strongest. Sensory sensitivity, especially photosensitivity, is a thing with POTS.

The actual diagnosis of POTS is kind of difficult. They usually have to do a ton of tests to rule everything else out first. Then they’ll usually try a tilt-table test (they tilt ya and measure your heart rate to see if your heartbeat skyrockets to help battle your blood doing weird shit) or a sweat test (which I am told is supposed to be painless but was one of the most painful experiences of my life so maybe it was a POTS thing) or look at your pee and see if you’re hella dehydrated. If you have POTS, you’re pretty much always hella dehydrated. (Gross but important: a symptom I never mentioned bc I didn’t know how abnormal it was – it burned like HELL when I peed. Turns out I was grossly, dangerously dehydrated. My urine was so concentrated that it was literally burning my urethra. idk how this slipped by so many doctors, but drink some dang water!) So it’s really a combination of tests for diagnosis, and they have to know to look for it in the first place! More and more doctors know about POTS now, but when I was first diagnosed almost a decade ago (this February! :’) when I went to college none of the school doctors knew about it. My family doctor didn’t know. None of my specialists knew about it. They wouldn’t give me student vaccinations bc they didn’t know how they’d interact with my brain. lol. It’s better now, though! I recently got a new doctor when I left my school’s health system, and she knew what POTS was! I was so happy, haha. Once I had a doctor literally google it right in front of me, so it was uh. A welcome change.

All this is to say that getting POTS diagnosed can be hell!! And I could definitely buy that you’re 21 and haven’t yet been diagnosed, especially if you’re female. My recommendation is this: the main treatment for POTS is diet and exercise, and that can’t hurt even if you don’t have POTS. I shit you not. There’s no cure or anything, but you are supposed to drink A LOT of water (I drink over a gallon a day, and that’s on days I’m not dealing with the sun) and eat a LOT of salt (”as much as you can stand” was their exact wording) and wear compression clothing (spanx and compression socks help me) and try to keep your body as toned as possible. It’s really easy to get out of shape when you have POTS (god knows I did), but they recommend trying to keep your blood moving. (THOUGH, CAVEAT!! I put on a lot of weight since I got diagnosed, and I have to admit. It’s gotten my blood pressure to a healthier level. So idrk what to make of that.)

I’m not gonna tell you to start eating massive amounts of salt when I don’t know your body, but drinking water can’t hurt you. So if you suspect that you may have POTS, start drinking water. This is not a replacement for a treatment plan, but it can’t hurt you! It can only help! So while you’re working with your doctor, just drink a lot of water and see if it helps you feel better. It is like night and fucking day with me.

Finally, POTS has a high comorbidity rate with other issues. In other words, if you have a severe case of POTS, you probably don’t only have POTS. A common illness to have with POTS is EDS, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It’s a type of hypermobility, which may be why your doctor is concerned. (I don’t have EDS, probably, but I do have some pain/movement issues that they’ve never been able to pin down, so there’s probably…something. idk.)

Here’s my advice. Work with your doctor to try and figure things out. Drink water. Make sure you have a good doctor whom you trust. Even after I got diagnosed, I regularly got medical professionals who believed this shit was all in my head. And try not to worry. Like I said, for most people who have it, POTS is extremely mild. If you change your lifestyle, you might not see many symptoms at all, and if you do, well. Work with that trusted doctor. Hit me up. I know a lot of ways to get a lot of salt in your body. lol

These are kinda therapeutic for me (I’m going to skip some of them cause there’s a lot though!) sorry if you somehow know me irl and see this

1: How tall or short do you wish you were? I would love to be at least 5’6

2: What’s your dream pet? (Real or not) I already have my dream pets and I love them with my entire being

3: Do you have a favorite clothing style? No I switch between so many I never look the same lmao

4: What was your favorite video game growing up? Don’t make me answer this it’s too hard to think of, nextttt.

5: What three things/people do you think of most each day: 8:30pm (my fave time of day), mashed potatoes, and the rest of my brain goes into oblivion idk

6: If you had a warning label, what would yours say? I care too much or not at all there’s no inbetween beware I could scare u off or piss u off take ur pick

9: Are you ticklish? Everywhere on me is ticklish unfortunately but you can get a free pass to tickle me for 1min if I think you’re cute, otherwise take ya hands off the merchandise stupid bitch.

10: Are you allergic to anything? Being social

11: What’s your sexuality? I am pansexual but due to being bullied about it I tell everyone I’m Bi.

12: Do you prefer tea, coffee, or cocoa? This is a choice nobody should have to make.

13: Are you a cat or dog person? I am a regular person that loves them both

14: Would you rather be a vampire, elf, or merperson? Short enough to pass as an elf so why not 🧝‍♀️

15: Do you have a favorite Youtuber? David Dobrik, hes entertainment for when I’m eating snacks

16: How tall are you? Mind ya business.. 5feet...

17: If you had to change your name, what would you change it to? Tee, that’s what I go by anyways so considered it changed

19: Do you believe in ghosts/spirits? Yes and no.

20: Do you like space or the ocean more? How about neither because they’re big cluster fucks of the unknown and that in itself is terrifying

22: Pet peeves? Letting me get attached and talking to me then leaving me hanging without any fucking explanation like um lmao you suck

23: Would you rather be nocturnal or diurnal [opposite of nocturnal]? I’m nocturnal for sure

24: Favorite constellation? Dis pussy

25: Favorite star? Ur moms pussy

26: Do you like ball-jointed dolls? This sounds sexual

27: Any phobias or fears? Too many dots/holes in the same area, I’ll actually vomit.

28: Do you think global warming is real? OBVIOUSLY

29: Do you believe in reincarnation? Eeeehhhh I guess. I believe in a lot of different theories that I’ve thought of myself, I don’t care what other people think about these things because I’d like to stay true to my own thoughts.

30: Favorite movie? Spirited Away

31: Do you get scared easily? Not really

32: How many pets have you own in your lifetime? Too much math brb

34: What is a color that calms you? Red yay

35: Where would you like to travel and/or live? ... don’t make me say it because I won’t

36: Where were you born? In a Jesus piece praise

37: What is your eye color? Poop

38: Introvert or extrovert? Both depending on the day

39: Do you believe in horoscopes and zodiacs? Yea & if you don’t we probably won’t get along very well

40: Hugs or kisses? I’m definitely a hugger

41: Who is someone you would like to see/visit right now? There’s a very kind soul I’m dying to meet

42: Who is someone you love deeply? Tiger (my cat)

43: Any piercings you want? My bridge

44: Do you like tattoos and piercings? This is hilarious if you’ve never seen me before

45: Do you smoke or have you eiver done so? No smh are u kidding me that shits for the birds ya’heard weed will kill ya ;’(

46: Talk about your crush, if you have one! Godddd fucking DAMN he is so nice to me. Better than the stupid fuck people I tried to take care of around my area. These circumstances really suck.

47: What is a sound you really hate? There’s a couple people in mind that when they talk I would love to just shove a sock down their throat

48: A sound you really love? A skateboard on the pavement

49: Can you do a backflip? Fuk off maybe I’ll try to after doing this post

50: Can you do the splits? Used to

51: Favorite actor and/or actress? Myself when I need to get out of certain situations due to excessive anxiety but not wanting to show my real emotions, you feel?

53: How are you feeling right now? Would be better if I wasn’t here rn

54: What color would you like your hair to be right now? Exactly how it is

55: When did you feel happiest? When I get attention from the person I want it from, stupid romantic bullshit that doesn’t even matter

56: Something that calms you down? Probably my sister because we can laugh anything off together and I mean ANYTHING

57: Have any mental disorders? I can’t count them all on one hand

58: What does your URL mean? It’s from a hopsin song and Bioshock infinite. Good luck figuring it out

59: What three words describe you the most? Confusing, loud, quiet, and I’ll add one more, contradiction

60: Do you believe in evolution? Well.. how do you think we’re humans rn, we came from monkeys or whatever

61: What makes you unfollow a blog? If they post stupid ads or things that’ll try to pursue you into doing something

62: What makes you follow a blog? If it fits my aesthetic

63: Favorite kind of person: funny

64: Favorite animal(s): 🐨

66: Favorite emoticon: 🖤

67: Favorite meme: disgusteng

69: What is your star sign? TAURUS BAAAABYYYY 😍

70: Can your dog roll over on command, if you have a dog? No but I can so wassup dâddÿ

71: What outfit out of all your clothes do you like to wear the most? I have too many to pick

72: Post a selfie or two? How about no because I’m ugly lmao tf

73: Do you have platform shoes? NO I SHOULD GET SOME TBH

74: What is one random but interesting fact about yourself? I’ve pissed myself while drunk too many times to count, do as you wish with this information because I find it hilarious & I’m glad I don’t have an alcohol problem anymore lol

75: Can you do a front flip? Actually, yes, yes I can

76: Do you like birds? Don’t hate me for this but no I really don’t

77: Do you like to swim? Yessss

78: Is swimming or ice skating more fun to you? Ice skating

79: Something you wish didn’t exist: trump

80: Some thing you wish did exist: a green sky and a purple moon

81: Piercings you have? Lip, nose, ears, nipple (yes only one of them lmao)

82: Something you really enjoy doing: sucking my own dick for attention

83: Favorite person to talk to: myself in the mirror

84: What was your first impression of Tumblr? Idk I was so young when I made this blog I can’t recall

85: How many followers do you have? Idk does it even matter

86: Can you run a mile within ten minutes? I smoke far too many cigarettes for that

87: Do your socks always match? Never

88: Can you touch your toes and keep your legs straight completely? No wtf you thought I was fit? Nexxxttt

89: What are your birthstones? Emerald

90: If you were an animal, which one would you be? Koala

91: If a flower could aesthetically represent you, what kind would it be? Lillies, sunflowers, or buttercup flowers

92: A store you hate? Aerocrombie or however you fuckin spell it

93: How many cups of coffee can you drink in one day? 6 or 7

94: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds? Read minds but I would probably end up killing myself knowing all the bad things people think of me

95: Do you like to wear camo? Sometimes

96: Winter or summer? Summer

97: How long can you hold your breath for? 326183621

98: Least favorite person? Andrew lol fuck you.

99: Someone you look up to: my homies that have passed away, I look up to them every day

100: A store you love? I like to order things

101: Favorite type of shoes? VANS

102: Where do you live? Doesn’t matter smh

103: Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If so, why? Nnnooo

104: What is your favorite mineral or gem? Shiet

105: Do you drink milk? Milk drinks me glug glug bitch

106: Do you like bugs? NAH

107: Do you like spiders? NEGATIVE

108: Something you get paranoid about? Crack

109: Can you draw: if I try

110: Nosiest question you have ever been asked? Mannnnn idk

111: A question you hate being asked? Anything about my dead homies makes me at least a little uncomfortable

112: Ever been bitten by a spider? No

113: Do you like the sound of waves at the beach? Obviously

114: Do you prefer cloudy or sunny days? Sunny but not burning hot sunny u feel me

115: Someone you’d like to kiss or cuddle right now: who told u this information

THIS IS LONG

120: Fruits or vegetables? Fruit salad perhaps

121: Something you want to do right now: Get tf out of here

122: Is the ocean or sky prettier? Sky for sure

123: Sweet or sour foods? I eat sweets to confuse the demons inhabiting this body

124: Bright or dim lights? Dimmadomedim

125: Do you believe in a certain magical creature? Bitch u really thought dragons aren’t real

126: Something you hate about Tumblr: everyone is so sensitive bro then y’all gang up and bully someone for something so small & meaningless as if you have nothing better to do with yourselves

127: Something you love about Tumblr: nobody really knows me here & if you do then hey hi wassup I trust you 🖤

128: What do you think about the least? Sheesh I have adhd next question please

129: What would you want written on your tombstone? She was a bitch but she was a lit bitch

130: Who would you like to punch in the face right now? Fuck violence

131: What is something you love but also hate about yourself? My mind

132: Do you smile with your teeth showing for pictures? Ehhhhh on occasion

133: Computer or TV? Tv

134: Do you like roller coasters? Naaah son

135: Do you get motion sickness or seasickness? No

136: Are your ears lobed or attached? Lobed thank god

137: Do you believe in karma? HAH YES, she been slacking though💀👀

138: On a scale of 1-10, how attractive would you say you are? 3 tbh

139: What nicknames do you have/have had? People used to call me gauges and I am so glad that stage is over

140: Did you have any pretend or imaginary friends? Oh, you mean schizophrenia because yes

141: Have you ever seen a therapist/shrink? For years, then I dipped out because I know I can’t be cured from mental instability

142: Would you say you are a good or bad influence to others? Bad bad baaaad yikes

143: Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts/help? Giving

144: What makes you angry? When people play with me or attention seeking people, I really hate some of y’all cry baby asses fr

145: How many languages do you speak fluently? one sadly

146: Do you prefer boys, girls, and/or non-binaries? All of the above

147: Are you androgynous? Have you seen me because lmao

148: Favorite physical thing about yourself: I can’t even pick one because I genuinely hate myself and how I look

149: Favorite thing about your personality: my what now 💀

150: Name three people you would like to talk to right now in person: Jeremy McKinnon I want to tell him thank you. That’s it I guess

151: If you could go back into time and live in one era, which would you choose? Um probably none

152: Do you like BuzzFeed? Oooooofff I used to years ago but shit I’m over it now

153: How did you meet your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner? [If you have one.] my what

154: Do you like to kiss others’ foreheads or hands for platonic reasons? NO I AM NOT THE MOM FRIEND

155: Do you like to play with others’ hair? Not unless you’re my actual partner and even then I don’t really like to

156: What embarrasses you? Being outside

157: Something that makes you nervous/anxious: speaking/existing

158: Biggest lie you have ever told: I love you

159: How many people are you following? Idk prob a lot

160: How many posts do you have on your blog(s)? I’ve had this since I was 12 or something I really don’t know

161: How many drafts do you have on your blog(s)? IDFKKK

162: How many likes do you have on your blog(s)? WHAT

Sometimes it’s really hard to write about other people’s happy times when it reminds me of when I was strong and thought I could do almost anything. 

Sometimes it’s an escape, but sometimes it’s just a really rough reminder of how hard I’m struggling right now. 

The true answer to “How are you” behind the cut. It ain’t pretty.

The nausea is bad right now. Every week it’s a little worse, Saturdays. The dosage hasn’t changed, once a week I sit on the toilet lid while my husband is in the bathtub, and I swab alcohol between the stretch marks on my belly while he reads some old book or another (literally old, he’s on this kick and I think he’s up to the late 18th century? Maybe 19th? Idk.) 

I swab the top of the tiny vial of vile chartreuse poison. It’s thick:  in the little glass container it rolls thinner than honey, but thicker than oil. 

I pull out a syringe and draw .8 ml of air into it to push into the vial, in order to not create too much suction inside when I’m trying to pull the thick liquid into the needle.

The flashback comes when I get ready to inject, every time. When I was pregnant, I pushed a much larger amount of fire into my belly twice a day, every day, for most of ten months. It hurt, it bruised, and it kept me from clotting, and it meant that I survived a pregnancy without clots, long enough to give birth to a bundle of ornery sunshine. 

Methotrexate does not keep me from clotting. This is poison, and it’s only once a week, and the needle doesn’t even hurt going in. It doesn’t hurt pushing the medication in. But I know what’s coming. 

I do this before I head to bed. It’s almost always six or seven in the morning, because I dread it, and I want to milk the last of the “feeling okay” I’ve finally managed to achieve by the time I’m six days out from the shot. So I stay up too late, and then collapse into bed and cease to function for the rest of the weekend.

I sometimes think that I’m making too much of it. It’s only a little bit of chemo. For cancer, it would be 10-25 ml, not .8. It could be worse. I could be taking it orally and killing off my gastrointestinal tract. With the blood thinner I’m on, that seemed like a bad idea, so shots it is. 

When I let myself think that way, I do ill-advised things like decide I can fix shit and push through, like I did today when there was a crisis in the house over the fact that a DVD had come from the library as a blu-ray, for which we have no player. So I went to a store that had no electric cart to buy things that are literally way more expensive than a season of Game of Thrones could ever be, and came home to discover that there was literally no way to install anything on the computer that was supposed to get it. I sat there for an hour trying, on the wrong chair, which I should not have done, and then spent another hour trying to figure it out on a different computer. I emerged victorious, with a migraine and a blossoming fibro flare. 

I take... take feels like the wrong word. I subject myself to methotrexate in order to keep my immune system under control, to prevent my body from waging war on my gut, my liver, my salivary glands, my lacrimal glands and the membranes around my knuckles. It doesn’t work nearly as well as steroids at making me feel good, but might have fewer side effects long term? It’s hard to say. Something is going to kill me, and whether it’s the rheumatoid arthritis or the medications to fight the rheumatoid arthritis, or the blood clotting disorder, or the meds I take to prevent clots from forming (when the real problem is that once clots form, they just don’t STOP)... I don’t know. My grandmother lived to be 101 and right now that feels like too damn long. 

I have children. I have a husband. They need me, god knows why, and so I stay. I spent most of my time with my son today yelling at him. He’s five and it’s absolutely not his fault that my skin is so sensitive that touch is painful to me. I’m sure there’s probably a more graceful way to tell him that I just spent every last bit of energy I had making a couple of eggs that may or may not stay down and no, I don’t have the energy to deal with him wanting a new packet of salami and cheese when he hasn’t finished the cheese from the last one. He spent most of the day hanging out with his dad and his oldest sibling. My daughter is fortunately well cared for. We are protected from each other, but I wonder often what she thinks of our new reality, where she always has someone, but it’s almost never her mother because I can’t risk her feet or her teeth, because I can’t risk my temper or my lack of coping. Because I can no longer lift her, this child that I carried on my back for three straight years because she hadn’t learned to walk yet. I only stopped because I ended up with a clot and couldn’t lift anything. 

Writing has been hard this week, because when I write I draw on my experience, and right now it hurts to remember that once, I was a dancer, once I was a competitive swimmer, once I stood in front of people trying to ignore a bigot and roused them to speak out against him.

When I write I remember the things I could do and the places I went. I did so much. And it feels like that is over. The last convention I went to hurt. I had a scooter, and pillows, and a hotel room to retreat to, and it hurt so, so bad that I now associate conventions, which were fun, once, with blinding pain. 

The last one I went to was just before I was diagnosed. My joints were on fire. I thought I would need a wheelchair forever afterwards. 

I’m afraid to go back to the doctor and tell them how much the methotrexate is hurting me because the alternatives are thousands of dollars per month.

We can afford it, I just hate being that much more of a burden. That money was supposed to let us enjoy my husband’s retirement. But the idea of going on a cruise? I don’t see it happening and I don’t know how to break it to my husband that it might not be possible. 

I keep feeling like there are things I should be doing, like I should be trying, TRYING to exercise, like I should be trying to do something about my weight even though I know that trying to do something about my weight is not actually going to result in making healthier choices. There are barely any foods I can eat. No foods that are unambiguously healthy for me. The last thing I need to do right now is tell myself I can’t eat the few foods that don’t actively make me sick.

But today I tried to push through and I feel like I’m going to lose the entire week to it. 

I have no extra resources for social niceties. I’m completely social-scripting my responses to comments on my fic (please keep making comments, it matter so much, just understand if my responses are short.) I’m making huge social errors because I’m misreading things because the only way I social is by applying cognitive effort and I just don’t have it right now. 

I hear about people living and doing relatively normal things with RA. But my RA was not correctly diagnosed in a timely fashion. In retrospect, I think it started in 2014, but they didn’t have the right test in common usage so they shrugged and attributed my symptoms to “I don’t know some sort of inflammatory process probably related to EDS” and so by the time I was diagnosed, 29 joints were on fire and the antibody levels were so high they could not be accurately measured.

A lot of people with RA just have RA. 

I have RA, EDS, Hashimotos, Sjogren’s, fibro, sleep apnea, allergies, IBS, and Factor V Leiden. I’m probably autistic, definitely neuroatypical, with massive sensory issues and a brain that does amazing things in a lot of areas and is utterly inept at the things people expect to be easy. If I write people well it’s because I’ve been studying human beings like an anthropologist since I was three years old. (I gave my mother a sheet of paper on which I’d drawn a wide variety of facial expressions because I was trying to understand facial expressions.)

Someone asked me once, “Have you considered that your problems might be psychological?” I laughed in his face. The idea that I could, via mental illness, magically clot the blood in my veins or sabotage my own thyroid? I mean, I absolutely have anxiety and intermittent depression issues, but ffs, those things don’t make my salivary glands swell to the size of golf balls. I get tired because my body is attacking myself, and exercise makes that process worse because it fucks with my immune system which is pretty good at fucking its own self up.

Someone asked me once why I pursued so many diagnoses. The answer was, “Maybe if they figure out the right one, they can fix something.” It’s not because I *like* collecting diagnoses. I miss being able to eat normally. I miss being strong and physically fit. I used to swim 10 hours per week. I used to ride horses. I used to go camping and loved it. I used to be able to build things with my hands. 

I have to remind myself not to do those things.

I have to, because pretending I’m not sick makes me sicker.

Every shot I take seems to push me into a flare. Not a huge flare, just a few joints reminding me that this isn’t over. That this will never be over.

I got through the twice-a-day-Lovenox routine because I knew it was finite and i knew there would be a baby I wanted very much at the end of it.

I will be on methotrexate or something like it for the rest of my life. 

It feels like poison. The sneaky poison that you think isn’t poison until your lips go numb even though you didn’t drink it. And then I sleep and think, “Well, at least I can sleep.”

And then I wake up and my whole body hurts, and the exhaustion pulls at me so hard, and I’m supposed to eat something so that I can take the small dose of steroids I’m still on, and I don’t want to eat because my stomach is on a boat. 

Saturdays might as well not exist. Sundays aren’t much better. By Monday I can drag myself to physical therapy. By Tuesday I can drag myself to the grocery store. By Thursday I start to think, “I really should exercise” and on Friday I fight dread about the coming shot. 

This morning my husband said, “I blame Trump.”

And I said, “You might as well. Stress increases inflammation, and most of my stress in the last six months has started with That Man.”

It is no mystery to me that so many people died last year.

The mystery is how we keep going when it’s hard.

“How are you doing?” asks a cashier. They all ask this. Everyone, locally. It’s a reflex thing.

And my brain won’t let me give the flip lie of an answer. I can’t say I’m fine. I’m not fine.

“I’m doing,” I echo. (Right now this feels like a lie, too.)

Sometimes they say, “How are you today?”

And I just say, “I’m here.”

Sometimes what doesn’t kill us just doesn’t kill us (yet). 

I’m not stronger, I’m just not dead.

Survey 288

Boyfriend & I are taking this survey together; 

when did you last see someone you know in public? Joshua: hmmmm.. i think it was my uncle in target.  Zachary: no idea. i had to be years. 

do you enjoy going to the dentist? Joshua: ehhh no my favorite place.  Zachary: whatever. idc. 

when did you last eat something you didn’t like? Joshua: hmmm... no idea. i don’t eat things i don’t like?  Zachary: today.. a breakfast sandwich from McDonalds. 

do you think you’d survive if zombies took over the world? Joshua: 10000%  Zachary: ^^^ i’d kick all their asses. 

when did you last hang out with a bunch of friends at one time? Joshua: after my best friends wedding.  Zachary: like a month ago. 

what kind of music is your least favorite? Joshua: hmmmm... christian rock?  Zachary: country? 

are you and your best friend complete opposites? Joshua: no 1000% the same. Zachary: i wouldn’t say complete opposites. 

would people around you say you’re regularly a mean person? Joshua:  no.  Zachary: ^^^^ 

do you like the color yellow at all? Joshua:  YES MY FAV. i do love yellow roses.  Zachary: yeah. 

if you were to write a novel, what would it be about? Joshua: hmmm.. . pop culture?  Zachary: fantasy, or my life story? 

how many times have you logged in to Bzoink? Joshua: no idea what that is?  Zachary: never. 

are you currently pretending to be someone’s friend? Joshua:  nahhhh. can’t be bothered.  Zachary: nope i’m not. 

are you an impatient person? Joshua:  nah.  Zachary: sometimes. yes. 

are you afraid to watch movies that have sex scenes with your friends? Joshua:  lol.... no.  Zachary: bring on the sex. haha. 

who sings the last song you listened to? Joshua: little mix.  Zachary: ^^^ 

why do you think some actors don’t want to see their movies/shows? Joshua:  i can see that. people are super critical of themselves.  Zachary: embarrassed. 

do you think fortune tellers are the devil’s messengers? Joshua: no  no no.  Zachary: that sounds so stupid. 

would you rather use napkins or paper towels? Joshua:  paper towels i guess?  Zachary: ^^ 

do you go to the pool in the summer time very often? Joshua:  nah.  Zachary: nah. 

have you ever had a serious issue involving your eyes? Joshua:  nahhh.  Zachary:  i can’t see shiiit. 

have you ever watched South Park? who’s your favorite character? Joshua: yeah here and there.  Zachary: i don’t care about it. 

do you have sensitive teeth? Joshua:  nope.  Zachary: yeah, sure. kinda. 

do you enjoy or hate snow days? why is this your choice? Joshua: i enjoy snowdays, dah.  Zachary: ^^^ 

do you turn pale when you get sick? Joshua:  yes.  Zachary: yesss. 

does it bother you to get shots in the mouth? does it hurt? Joshua: ummm yes. gross.  Zachary: you don’t really feel it. 

when did you last talk seriously with one of your parents? Joshua: mmmm no idea. month ago.  Zachary: let me check my texts. this past Wednesday. 

what is the day of the week currently? Joshua:  sunday.  Zachary: ^^ 

is anything exciting coming up in the next three months? Joshua:  moving! Zachary: ^^^^ 

do you ever borrow money from someone? Joshua: nahhh.  Zachary: yeah, my broke af. 

when did you last kiss someone on the cheek? who was it? Joshua:  my doood. this morning.  Zachary: ^^  like 30 min ago. 

do you have a lot of enemies, or not so much? Joshua: nahhh. people do seem to judge me tho.  Zachary: nahh. because i don’t care enough. 

can you count backwards from 100 without a mistake? Joshua: idk.  Zachary: ya, its numbers. just count backwards. 

do you have any friends you’ve had since birth? Joshua:  yes. andrea.  Zachary: my sister & cousins. 

do you care if your friends talk badly about you? Joshua: dahhh.  who are they?  Zachary: I”M SORRY WHAT WAS SAID? lol. if they talk bad they aren’t friends? 

would you rather drink out of a straw or just the cup alone? Joshua:  strawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.  Zachary: depends on what i’m drinking. 

does anyone ever say they miss you often? Joshua: yes.  Zachary: my dood even though we are together everyday. 

would you rather become a wizard or a vampire, if you had the choice? Joshua: wizard.  Zachary: ^^^ 

is there anyone out there who has made you feel miserable? Joshua:  prob.  Zachary: ya. 

do you have a problem answering personal questions? Joshua: nope.  welll... maybe yes.  Zachary: sometimes yes. most of the time. 

what color is the vacuum-cleaner in your house? Joshua: white.  Zachary: i don’t even know where the vacuum cleaner is. 

have you already moved out of your parents’ house? Joshua: yes. but i’m back but leaving this month.  Zachary: yes. 

are your parents divorced, married or separated? Joshua:  divorced.  Zachary: ^^ 

have you ever thought you might just have obsessive compulsive disorder? Joshua:  i did as a child. i had so much built up anxiety i use to be super anal and collect things. i collected my toys rather then playing with them and excessive cleaning but then i broke from it after i came out and accepted myself. but now i struggle with the major opposite.  Zachary: yes. 

do you think it’s rude to text someone else while on a date? Joshua: yes.  Zachary: well dah. 

what is the funniest movie you’ve ever seen? Joshua: hmmmm Bridesmaids?  Zachary: The Heat? Scary Movie 2? 

what are your views on our current president? Joshua: AMERICAN TRASHHHHH. Zachary: in short. NEXTTTTT. 

has one of your websites ever quit operating or shut down? were you sad? Joshua: xanga! myspace.  Zachary: nah. 

is it awkward to see your best friend’s parents out in public? Joshua: umm no?  Zachary: i say “heyyyyyyy” 

who is the person you talk to the most in your house? Joshua:  my dood.  Zachary: my boyfriend. 

is there a television show out there that you never miss? Joshua:  a lot of them. Zachary: right now, the last and final season of Arrow. 

what movie have you seen too many times to be healthy? Joshua:  Titanic, The Danish Girls  Zachary: Resident Evil. 

what are the last two digits of your phone number? Joshua:  25.  Zachary: YOU WISH YOU KNEWW. 

does it creep you out to see people with mullets? Joshua:  no. it’s sad.  Zachary: it’s fucking gross. 

what is your biggest responsibility in your household? Joshua: supporting my dood.  Zachary: wearing a burger king crown, dah. haha. 

how cold did it get where you live last winter? Joshua:  idk. -3?  Zachary: idk, wasn’t that bad of winter. 

do you ever wish you could go back in time to redo something? Joshua: yes.  Zachary: yes. 

ever accidentally pull out a filling from your tooth? Joshua: omg noo.  Zachary: nooo i don’t have any cavities. 

do you ever wonder what your exes are doing? Joshua: not even a little.  Zachary: no. 

have you ever been caught in a huge lie with your parents? Joshua: i’m sure?  Zachary: no, because i don’t care and never felt i need to lie. fuck it. 

do you ever listen to the radio anymore? Joshua: nahhh.  Zachary: i like talk shows in the morning. 

does it bother you to have personal conversations with people? Joshua: depends.  Zachary: didn’t i answer this. 

ever ride in a limo? when did you last do so? Joshua:  yes prom.  Zachary: ya, i road in a limo on way to britney spears concert. 

do any of your body parts hurt at this moment in time? Joshua: yes my back.  Zachary: my left ball. haha. 

are you sober at the time being? Joshua: yes.  Zachary: yes but not for longg. 

do any of your friends constantly do things to annoy you? Joshua: no.  Zachary: nah. do you have any friends? 

when did you last eat a Starburst? what color was it? Joshua:  not my thang.  Zachary: idk, april? 

have you ever lied to someone and said they could sing when they couldn’t? Joshua: nahhh.  Zachary: no. 

do you ever call backstabbers out on what they do? Joshua:  can’t be bothered.  Zachary: fuck yeah, don’t be fake hoe. 

how many people in the world do you trust? Joshua: idk, 5.  Zachary: idk, 3.