side: 10vers

And you know what? I was *skinny.*

I was 110lbs, and I was GORGEOUS. Not conventionally attractive at all, because when you're openly queer people de-feminize you in ways you cannot see in this dolled-up prom photo, but still incredibly beautiful. And I had NO illusions about the fact that people treated me nicely because I was skinny and pretty. People loved that I was white and waif-like and short and I got so many opportunities because of it - a full ride scholarship for acting in roles I never would have gotten if I was fat (and I know because I haven't gotten cast since, but my acting skill has only improved).

Then I finally had access to food. I moved out, went through some hell, and put on weight. I am now more than DOUBLE the weight I am in that photo.

I am built like my mother, who has been fat since she was my age. We have the same hips and same tits and same stomach (though that's shifting to look more like my dad because of t). My baby sister is starting to look like me now that SHE is no longer starving. My meds cause weight gain, my genetics cause weight gain, my PCOS causes weight gain. And my quality of life has been affected more by my weight than my disabilities. The way people treat me has plummeted, doctors no longer listen to me, and I am in constant pain on TOP of my chronic nerve pain - *because my clothes don't fit.* They don't MAKE clothes for people my size because of systemic fatphobia. Things that get close to the right size (being five foot tall and 250lbs) are ten times the cost I'd have paid for the same pair of jeans at 100lbs.

And none of this is my fault, but that doesn't mean it's not true. If you're fat, your health will be worse... because you will struggle to get the same amount of quality healthcare as skinny people and routine things will go undiagnosed and blamed on your weight. If you're fat, you won't look as good... because the fashion industry caters to skinny people despite them being a minority, and everything is more expensive for us. If you're fat, you become a problem in public... because the world is not built for us, instead working on cramming as many seats possible on an airplane and violating minimum seat size requirements for a cheap buck. THIS IS NOT OUR FAULT, and it should radicalize you, straight-size person reading this, that we do not have equitable access to the world like you do.

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your butt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recommend never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

so, yeah, worshippers were “holed up” inside the mosque, it’s literally a religious practice performed during ramadan across the entire world. i’ve participated in it as well, it’s extremely common. i know people who will spend days at a time inside a mosque and not come out while practicing itikaf

now the question you should be asking is why the military is invading a sacred place of prayer in the middle of the night and beating, tear-gassing, and brutalizing the men, women, children, and elderly who were worshipping God in our holiest month and in one of our holiest places. they even destroyed the free medical clinic inside the compound and started fires

the question you should be asking is why the world makes excuses for this unprovoked violence, or worse, believes it to be deserved

Some moron apparently built a bot to annoy or prank hundreds of authors.

They are now also linking to a site they claim is able to scan works and tell you whether they were AI written or not, and that you should do that before reading a fic.

It should go without saying that you should not, under no circumstances, visit a site advertised in a spam comment.

In this case, I'd say there's even a chance that the "scanning" site is actually used to scrape fics and use them for future AI writing. What it definitely doesn't do is tell you whether something was AI written or not. That's a bullshit claim.

Don't use that site. Don't believe these spam comments, whether you get them on your own works or see them on someone else's.

When you try to Google Tony Hawk but accidentally type in Tiny Hawk