tired eyes

You know how hard it is to get people to ADMIT they were wrong? How toxic and pervasive the culture of “never admit you’re wrong” is?… And EVERYTHING in society discourages you from saying sorry because you gain almost nothing from it: you get people saying you’re lying or trying to absolve yourself, meanwhile the toxic group with the mindset you just left is also calling you out. So basically you lose support from everyone, no one is happy, and there is very little to encourage people that “its okay ro admit you were wrong and takes steps to fix the harm you caused.”

My fourth grade teacher thought it was wrong for my dad to be teaching me complex math because it fascinated me.

My elementary school music teacher hated the way my piano teacher taught me, and how I was more advanced than many of her students, and so told me, in front of my peers and my mother, that I was not good enough to participate in the state solo festival. She would not give me the form. We had to procure it from the district instead. She also hated how I excelled at reading and playing music for the recorder, and so she refused to give me my “belts” (colored beads to signify our level) and humiliated me in front of the class repeatedly.

My eighth grade algebra teacher used to fail me on take home tests because I didn’t solve problems exactly the way she showed us in class; I used methods that we had learned for other types of problems that also applied to these. She took points off my tests because I didn’t bring a calculator even though I got 100% without it, because I was able to do it by hand. I had to call my father, who is an engineer, down to the school to shout her down and give me back my A in the class.

My 10th grade Spanish teacher yelled at me in front of the class numerous times because she didn’t like the way I took notes; she thought that since I didn’t write every word off the slide, I wasn’t getting it all down. I had to explain to her that people who have taken advanced courses, like AP or IB classes, know that in a fast-paced learning environment you need to take quick shorthand notes that contain the necessary information rather than wasting time writing every word. She almost gave me detention.

My 11th grade English teacher gave me a poor mark on my first short essay because she believed that I was looking up unnecessarily complex words in a thesaurus to try and get better marks. The phrases in question: “laced with expletives” and “bombarded”. She wouldn’t hear any defense from me.

My 11th grade history teacher failed me on an essay about the 1950s because I misread the prompt. Except the prompt wasn’t words; it was a political cartoon. One of the figures was clearly president Eisenhower, but the other I couldn’t place. My teacher would not tell us who it was. I labelled him as the governor of Little Rock Arkansas during the integration period, and wrote an essay about that subject. My teacher said that no, it was Joseph McCarthy, and that there was a small picture of the man in our textbook and therefore I should have recognized him instantly. Half the class, apparently, did not.

I’ve noticed that when posts about mental illness and chronic illness get reblogged and removed from the context of their original blog, they sort of take on a life of their own. 

I had it happen to one of my own posts. Within the context of my own blog, where I talk daily about the realistic struggles of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, my post was just me venting about one of those little minor struggles. But when that post got reblogged by hundreds of people and somehow spread outside of the DID community, it became a relatable post and people started reading this one single symptom of DID and reacting to it by saying, “I do this too, do I have DID?” 

I experienced this the other way around a few days ago. I saw a post about hyperflexibility and EDS on my dash and immediately found it extremely relatable. I read the list of “Just EDS things” and thought to myself “Aren’t all those things normal? I experience all those things!” The next thing I knew, I was on Google looking up the Brighton Diagnostic Criteria. As it turns out, the things in that relatable post weren’t really symptoms or anything close to the diagnostic criteria for EDS. They were more like minor daily annoyances that someone with EDS might have, but typical people could theoretically experience too. Removed from the context of a blog about living with EDS, and viewed by someone who doesn’t know much about EDS, they gave me the wrong impression of what the symptoms of EDS looked like. This wasn’t OPs fault at all! It’s just sort of how tumblr works. Anyway, as it turns out I’m definitely not hypermobile. 

Tumblr is chocked full of “relatable” content, and I think that’s one of the things that makes this place great. People crave connection and to feel less alone in their life experiences. 

But I’m begging you, please be cautious about how you interact with “relatable” posts and memes about mental illness and chronic illness. Just because something seems to describe your experience, doesn’t mean that is the best description of your experience. 

Relating really strongly to a post about dealing with a specific mental illness is not a sign that you have that mental illness. Many mental health symptoms overlap. While the OP could be experiencing that because they have bipolar, you could be experiencing it because you have PTSD. 

Take relatable posts as a sign that you need help, not as a sign that you have that specific diagnosis. 

Obviously the same holds true about physical illnesses too. I’m probably not hypermobile, but I should probably bring up my joint pain and fatigue with my doctor at my next appointment. The fact that I related so strongly to a post about living with a chronic illness is a good sign that I’m living with too much pain and I should talk to someone about it. 

*goes on tumblr for hours, makes aesthetic moodboards and gifsets, picks up a book from my tbr and puts it back down 17 times, stares at a blank document for hours, can’t focus for shit*

me:

Other blogs have made posts highlighting the important of taking such breaks, and people in the notes argue that doing so is a privilege and you should feel guilty for it. You should not. Please, please take care of yourselves.

Mental health is a serious issue. Humans are not meant to receive a constant stream of horrific news. Please, if you see someone taking a break, posting about other things like shows that make them happy, please don't try to drag them down. The last thing the world needs right now is more negativity.

Please respect that some people need a break from these things and show kindness to them. Don't contribute to the hate and negativity flooding everything.

This comment by @screaming-wren illustrates the difference between ignorance and breaks very well.

Please, don't get so caught up in everything you trample others walking the same path.

jj: lmao what

Lemon man: what???? huh?????? u triggered?????????

jj: whatever you say lemon man

lemon man:

jj: ok, whatever “Lemon Man”

Lemon Man:

Someone–Stephen King? Pretty sure I saw this in a Stephen King foreword–once said they’d like to say to a brain surgeon, “Boy, I’d love to do brain surgery someday.”

We treat “the ability to put words into a sentence” like it’s just the same as “the ability to form a coherent narrative that engenders a variety of emotions within the reader and puts them in a scene and shows them what they didn’t see before”.

And that’s like me drawing a stick figure and saying I’m an artist.

Writers are constantly devalued because everyone thinks they have a book in them and don’t realize the level of skill and commitment it takes to finish even a short story, much less a whole book.