Lattes and cheap novels anyone?

But it's complicated by the fact that the "anxiety" was part of the trauma.

I think I might have been inherently likely to be an extremely fearful person because of the way I experience the world. I also think the major [Thing] my fears centered around potentially became embedded in early childhood by some very negative experiences I had.

But in some ways, the thing that is most memorable is the experience of being terrified, of knowing that the world contained unbearably awful things that I would inevitably experience over and over and that no one cared because my visceral revulsion was something fundamentally wrong with me that I had a "responsibility" to overcome.

For the first, probably, 20 years of my life, there was always this THING in my head that I was trying to avoid thinking about. I could not just exist. I never, ever, ever stopped fending off the Bad Thing. It was like being Atlas holding up the sky, it would not let up.

I could not just...sit still and feel my body and think, "I exist right now and I'm okay," without the feeling of panic and sense of something awful and dark and evil immediately starting to seep in. I remember this so clearly and it's unbelievable to me now.

And parents and others saw the manifestation of this as "worrying," but I don't think the thoughts themselves were ever the problem. The thoughts were just me trying to gnaw on or placate or somehow engage with the Endless, Incomprehensible Badness.

I forget sometimes what a blessing and a relief it is to be able to safely think about all the things that are in my head. I forget how crazy it is that I don't feel an anvil of doom land on me every time my head goes quiet for a second.

I think getting on a stimulant for ADHD helped a lot. But I think the Badness was a Something, and not just the manifestation of my brain's dysregulation.

And I am getting closer to understanding what the Something was, and it was something like "the certainty that the world is going to torture me and that I will have to accept it." It felt like the inversion of what made me a person and what made life worth living.

I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.

All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."

But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.

While reading the manga, I couldn't stop wondering: what would Coco look like as an adult witch?

So I couldn't resist drawing my own take on her grownup version. I imagined her with a bit more refined elegance, holding her pen, but keeping that same warm, curious spark in her eyes. ✨

Swipe / scroll to see the close-up details and step-by-step process! Let me know what you think of this design

Process ⬇️

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💖 Reblogs & likes are greatly appreciated!

Like, a cop in the United States can pull you over for any reason. Which is a nice way of saying no reason, because literally anything can be used after the fact as justification. A cop can say its cuz you looked at him, or didnt look at him, or it looked like you were holding something, or looked like you were driving too perfectly for it to be natural. It's insane.

There are apparently no circumstances where a cop can't just kill you. The line the courts have applied is "reasonably believed" you were a threat, but that's such a nebulous nothing limit that people get shot for reaching for their license, having their phone in their hand, you're running away with no weapon, not being able to follow conflicting commands, like anything. And cops are almost never charged, because every court is going to believe he could "reasonably believe" he was threatened. Fuck, if you give me enough time, I can make any situation seem juuuuust plausibly threatening enough to pass that bar. It's insane.

A cop can just rob you. Like tell you to give him your wallet, take all the cash out, and just walk away with it. Exactly like you would imagine getting robbed in an alley would go, except no one can help. And he doesn't even have to hide it, he just drops it in a box at the station and they put it in their bank account. It's legal. You can't prove it wasn't drug money. I can't prove any money wasn't at some point drug money. It's insane.

If a cop just walks in your front door and says "I'm here to kill you and your entire family" YOU ARE GOING TO PRISON IF YOU STOP HIM. There is no positive defense for assaulting a police officer in the United States, and doubly so if you kill him. You have effectively no defense against a homicidal cop, which happens same as any other job. Unless for some reason you have cameras all thru your house and clearly caught the audio of him saying that he's there just to kill you, you have zero chance of not going to prison, probably for life. And that's assuming you aren't killed "resisting arrest" while being taken into custody. It is a crime, in this country, for you to defend yourself under any circumstances if the person you're defending yourself from is a cop. That's insane.

You don't have civil rights if a cop says so. You have the right to have a gun, right? A lot of states have open carry. A cop can shoot you if he sees you have a gun. Doesn't matter if you have a license and everything. So you effectively don't have the right to bear arms if a cop can shoot you for exercising it. You have the right to protest. Unless a cop tells you to stop. He doesn't need a real reason to tell you to stop. And if you don't stop, you can be arrested or shot. So you don't really have the right to protest, do you? A cop cant just search your car or house, right? Unless he claims he heard something, or smelled something, neither of which can be proven. So a cop can search whatever he wants, as long as he pretends there was a "reason". So you dont have protection from unreasonable search and seizure, do you? These are no longer rights- they're things the cops allow.. for now. But legally, those rights have already been found to not actually be rights, because any random cop can decide to take that right from you, for any reason. It's insane.

but if he asked, i'd beg for him to destroy me [x]

5 simple exercises to awaken dormant muscles

Surgeries require having a designated person to look after you. Many injuries require driving to somewhere like an emergency room which can be hard to do if you are the one injured. If you're home with the flu, it's hard to tell when it's bad enough to go to the hospital without another person checking on you. And if you pass out it requires another person to find you like that to get medical aid.