Anonymous Buddha

Please allow me to ruminate a bit more on mental health on this blog. I have ADHD and OCD, both disorders commonly stereotyped and conflated with minor, silly behaviors like yelling SQUIRREL when you see a squirrel and organizing things by color. These stereotypes can often minimize and erase the genuine difficulties and harm that these conditions can cause. That’s very true, and it often causes intense sensitively and knee-jerk denial around stereotypes around this. I don’t think that’s necessarily the best reaction, because sometimes people can have symptoms very similar to these stereotypes.

I think we need to accept that silly things can hurt people. Silly, ridiculous symptoms can devastate people’s lives. People shouldn’t have to react into their painful past and trauma to get people to take their symptoms seriously when those symptoms are silly on their face, because that turns things into a pain competition and can result in gatekeeping how much people must suffer before their seemingly ridiculous symptoms get taken seriously.

I think we just need to, as a society and culture and social norm, accept that silly things can genuinely, sometimes intensely, hurt people. Yes, I do have the impulse to tell an animal’s name when I see that animal, and yes it’s part of my symptoms that makes it harder to me to drive and hold conversations and do basic functioning. Yes, I do worry about incredibly tiny and silly things, that the world’s tiniest cut means I’m literally dying, and this has at times been incredibly miserable to live with and severely inhibited my functioning and nearly lost me a job. Also I’m going to joke about it sometimes because it’s funny. I’m not going to find a joke about it from a stranger with no OCD funny, because they have no idea how much pain it can cause me.

- ‘The going is heavily assisted.’

-‘On without me.’

-‘It uses wheels’

-‘It’s not.’

-‘Against my will.’

-‘With frequent breaks’

-‘On pure spite’

-*That was a verbal question and I couldn’t hear you*

-‘We don’t have all day to go through enough medical history to give you enough context to understand exactly how it is going.’

I used to think sexual attraction was sinful and that my not experiencing it just made me a really good Christian... it’s funny what we tell ourselves when we’re in denial

Hello..

Yes, it’s true that, amongst themselves, adult housecats generally only vocalise to communicate with kittens, but the particular set of vocalisations that adult cats use to communicate with humans is distinct from, and largely non-overlapping with, the set of vocalisations that they use to communicate with kittens.

Your average adult housecat has anywhere from twenty to fifty distinct vocalisations that are basically only used to communicate with humans.

but they know that we don’t get their body language, so they meow instead.

Mrs Maggot is kind and sensible. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is jealous and petty but in the end principled and stout. Arwen is beautiful and kind and learned. Galadriel is powerful and ancient and wise, but is tempted by terrible power. The Ents have lost their womenfolk and miss them, because without women there is a loss greater than not reproducing. Ioreth of the houses of healing talks too much and is a little annoying but is knowledgeable and capable. Eowyn believed her work looking after her uncle to be less important than going to war, but she realizes she was wrong. It may be noble to lay down your life, but it's possible to keep on living and building and healing and that is more important than any battle, and much better than making a home in your despair. Rosie Cotton is faithful and patient and does not take bullshit and keeps the hearth warm in times of crisis.

Here are some sources:

https://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultures-and-scenes/underground-ball-culture/

https://www.them.us/story/inqueery-butch

https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/08/ballroom-cultures-gender-model-offers-rich-alternative-to-cis-trans-division.html

https://www.press.umich.edu/799908/butch_queens_up_in_pumps