Cowboys not included

"In the middle of a "forcing party" where friends and I are forcing one another to do the things that we've been avoiding.

So far: [bullet list] A passport has been filed for; An inbox has been zero'd; A personal website has been created; & more.

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This is because there are two parts to memories - their encoding and their recall. The encoding determines their availability, their recall determines their accessibility. The reason why trauma memory and childhood amnesia are different is in this distinction. Trauma memory is often encoded differently, bypassing to the limbic system where it is stored as intrinsic memory. It can’t be recalled because it was never encoded. Childhood amnesia, however, seems to indicate that the memories are encoded, but we lose access to them as we age. This is most likely due to the development of brain structures that fundamentally change our encoding and recall of memory as we get older.

#And please STOP trying to contain your trans siblings

#we should never be enforcing imaginary rules on each other

#part of community is helping each other stand tall

I casually informed my gastro about this phenomenon near the end of our next appointment because I hadn’t been informed that was something that could happen and I thought it might be important to note, possibly a sign of a deeper problem with the way my body was reacting to the medication or sometime like that. Instead of responding with ‘That happens sometimes.’ or even ‘Huh. Weird. Didn’t know it could do that.’ he turned around and looked at me and said in the most condescending and judgmental voice imaginable “Your colon is more important than your hair.”

Which is a really funny one liner out of context and if he had said it with any other expression and tone, I might have laughed. But he was so fucking serious. I was taken aback and immediately tried to explain I just thought it might be of medical relevance. Like, yes, I fucking know my colon is more important than my hair and it seemed like this man was prematurely annoyed with me and (I assume) he thought I was going to try to switch treatments for my severe ulcerative colitis because my fucking hair was falling out. Far from the cruelest thing a medical professional has ever said to me, not egregious enough to make me feel the need to comment on it or try to switch providers, just demoralizing in a way that felt like a branding. I left the appointment feeling so fucking small. I thought, oh, he thinks I’m stupid and vain. This doctor, who has seen me at my most vulnerable and heard me have to describe shitting blood so much I needed iron infusions for the anemia, this man who has shoved a camera up my ass on multiple occasions thinks I am a vapid dumbass who would value my hair over not being in fucking pain and incontinent and sick and bleeding.