ApricoTea

day by day, what is meant for

you will find its way.

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

You cannot study STEM without the arts, and you cannot study humanities without the sciences. In that tiny capsule we sent to the moon, we sent physicists who are also photographers. We sent poets who are pilots.

We sent experts on exact scientific maneuvers who also express precise emotion and experience that will be quoted for decades. They play with a stuffed moon in the background of a broadcast and have Chappell Roan as their wakeup music. They drove around the far side of the moon.

Background: someone asked how to humanely euthanize their betta who has tumors.

but that IS what it comes down to: Do you support forcing - or even allowing - animals to suffer without end? If no, then you must support preventing and/or ending animal suffering. And sometimes that does mean treatment, but sometimes the only way the suffering ends is when the life ends. There are cases where nothing can be done, and the only future an animal has is one where they suffer. In this case, the absolute kindest thing anyone can do is prevent the animal from having to go through that, by ending the life swiftly and painlessly.

The antelope did not lie down and die because it has no concept of life or death, and it was not making a sapient choice for life but rather following instincts which dictate all of their behaviors. This is not the same thing as choice.

Most animals have no concept of their own death ahead of the time it occurs, at the very least not the human concept of death. Instead, they are alive, until they are not. They are aware of the former as an experience (they are experiencing life via seeing things, they are hearing things, they are feeling things, etc), and most of them cannot anticipate the latter before it happens. They are not aware of "life and non-life." They are not aware they are alive, and they are not aware that they will die someday. Most of them aren't even aware of The Self (some are, but most are not). These are human concepts you've assigned to an animal.

They cannot avoid something they have little to no concept of. Instead, they avoid pain. We have documented, scientific proof that animals avoid pain if they can anticipate it, and predators are something which brings pain. Showing pain is likely to bring more pain. Showing weakness brings pain. Animals limp to avoid experiencing more pain. They graze with their intestines hanging out because they are hungry (or because signals from the GI tract are messed up from this injury), and being hungry can cause pain or at least discomfort (hunger pangs), not because they are thinking "I have to eat to stay alive." (and just for the record, "not eating" is like the single most common thing sick or dying animals do. it's like a top tier "this animal does not feel well/is dying" symptom. some random video of an antelope that at this point could have been AI does not change thousands of years of this being a most common and prevalent symptom of animals being unwell/dying. this is how we KNOW that it's not connected to any thought about staying alive, or every sick/dying animal would be horking down food to live longer). Animals give up and lie down to die all the time, but they will attempt to avoid pain in practically every situation.

So we must assume that, if given a choice, animals would choose to avoid pain. Because we see that happening, over and over and over, across all animals we've studied that can feel pain. It's universal. They avoid it, if they can. This is hard wired into every animal with the nerves and functionality to experience pain. The whole reason pain exists is to learn to avoid it, because the things which cause it are usually bad and can cause injury or death. Avoiding pain leads to avoiding death, which can be mistaken as avoiding death, but it's not the same thing.

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

That night on the phone when you said We Should Get Married and I said Yes with such feeling that I fell out of a hammock, into the mud, and knew again the first time every part of my body was open to your mouth and you only stopped smiling to kiss my nose. It’s what I’m trying for, when we are uncooked, half asleep, whispering that I feel silly, feel dizzy, feel I Never Want To Stop Touching You especially where you are most fragile.

Love, I am working toward the theory that a single truth is enough to right a life, like a candle in a dark room. I was wrong before when I said mean things about love songs. I’m sorry, love songs. For years I had memorized facts about stones and I did not want to be a thing that wants. But I wake up grateful to any misplaced God that brought me to you. I know now what the staggering beast in my chest is capable of when it meets an equally strange and gentle beast. Everything I wished for is true, and I was right to wish.”

text that reads, “It Was A Thing

I Knew For Certain

Erik

At first he could not even believe that she and Veronica were sisters. Not because they don’t look alike, but because Serena is just so much less irritating.

Serena might not be as powerful as Veronica, but she still packs a punch! Definitely grateful for all the times she’s saved his ass.

Veronica

That’s her baby. Thats her other half. That’s her best friend from birth. That’s her superstar. Thats her hero. There’s nothing more in this world Veronica wants than to see Serena flourish. Serena is the bravest person in the world to her.

Veronica would quite literally set the world ablaze for her sister.

Sylvando

Absolutely adores Serena. What a darling, what a diva! Insists that their combined healing abilities make them the team carriers. Thinks it’s cute that she’s proud of her high forehead.

He really, truly wants nothing more than to finally see her self confidence bloom. There’s so much to love about her.

Jade

Now, it’s not that she doesn’t like Serena. And she especially doesn’t feel threatened by Serena. But that unique gentleness that radiates from her is just so… What must it be like? To be brave enough to be so vulnerable?

She really wants to feel closer with both of the sisters, but it makes her nervous at the same time. They both possess so many traits Jade has a hard time seeing in herself.

Rab

Such a sweet girl. There is a part of him that wishes that she could have lived a normal life. That toughening up was never something she needed to learn. But that’s just not how life works, and he’s old enough to know that.

There’s a light in her that’s hard to come by. He can’t help but be proud of seeing her learn to shine.

Hendrik

She’s as delicate as a lady in waiting but not nearly so frail. In a way, she almost reminds him of Jade when she was so many years younger.