more people have been to russia than i have

I don’t have kids

I don’t spend money on nicotine

I don’t gamble my money away on sports

I’m not reliant on a chat bot for all my life functions

when i asked whether their autistic classmate's meltdown was dangerous or merely uncomfortable, they said, "i felt like i was in danger!"

yes you should, actually. that's life. upsetting things happen. no one should have to experience any discomfort. but we do. we get stung by bees and sunburns and headaches. we live in bodies in the world.

autistic people are human beings who have the right to exist in society, including during meltdowns. having one class of your entire semester interrupted by a singular meltdown is not anymore of an infringement upon your entitlement to education than having your class interrupted by a fire alarm or cancelled for a snow storm.

one of my peers once experienced a cardiac event 10 minutes into class. it was terrifying. it was desperately upsetting. i was contacted by the school and offered counseling because i happened to be the one who managed the situation until paramedics arrived. everyone was worried about my classmate first and foremost, and then about me. no one blamed anyone, and certainly when my classmate happily recovered and returned to school, no one thought they should be removed from the program.

And I clutch the little warm tubes of blood and feel this sick person warming my hands and I think about how kind you might be and how I wish I could hold your hand and how badly, how really really badly, I want you to get better and stay warm and hold someone’s hand again.

And anyway sometimes it’s better to not think so vividly about the people I’m doing tests for. I’m a good little cog in a vast machine of people all trying to heal and cure, and my cog feels so fucking small sometimes. But I hope the blood I prepare for you helps you breathe better and laugh and wake up feeling well rested.

Oh, so you think they should just go to jail? That addicts deserve to suffer?

This.

I got this from a former therapist, no less. I had been working from a coffee shop and a man came in, yelling about *bitches* and swearing at the girls behind the counter. He had a walking stick that he was pounding on the floor and at one point started hitting the counter with it.

He was between me and the door, it was stressful, and when he moved, I got myself out of there.

And I was talking to my therapist about it (I was seeing her for some pretty intense anxiety and PTSD (as in my doctor was like ‘your cortisol levels are at like active-combat-deployment levels, we gotta get those down’)), about how a day later I was still jittery about it.

And she gave me the “don’t be judgmental, most mentally ill people are harmless,” and I was like “lady, this one was ranting about women and BRANDISHING A WEAPON, I’m not going to stick around and wait to find out whether he’s actually harmless.”

And I think there’s a key component there that we don’t know how to talk about:

- most mentally ill people are harmless and more likely to be victims of harm

AND

- some forms of mental illness can cause people to behave in ways that seem threatening because they resemble what a person who doesn’t have that form of mental illness might do if they were in the grip of the sort of overwhelming anger that has a significant chance of becoming violence

You can't shake the Devil's hand and then say you were only kidding.

i don't mean like absolute silence. obviously in an ideal community, there would still be sound and noise from people and music and work etc. but it haunts me that when i camp in the forest i can hear the howl of semi trucks on the interstate miles away. and the people who live beside it never know quiet. it haunts me that many people will live their whole lives never seeing the stars in the sky that were fully visible with NO electric light pollution as recently as my great-grandparents' childhoods.

so much of our lives is bright bright unnecessary noise. neon mcdonalds signs 200 feet in the air so we can see it from the road. led lights over billboards. parking lots lit up like sports stadiums at closed office buildings. advertisements playing at gasoline pumps. streets lined with led porch lights and decorative garden lights that genuinely threaten entire species of wildlife. music blaring outside pharmacies to deter homeless people. everything always shining and wailing for no purpose but profit and cruelty.

you surgeon may be ripped to hell and back like mine and put the compression binder on super tight. ITS OK TO LOOSEN IT A LITTLE.

You can buy little hair net looking guys at some major pharmacies that include shampoo and can be used to wash your hair in bed if you’re having trouble in the shower

16. At some point during the healing process, your nipples (if you kept them) will scab over and look really gross. It's fine, they're fine, that's a normal part of the healing process, DO NOT PICK OR SCRUB THE SCABS OFF.

16a. Yes, you read right, you don't HAVE to keep your nipples if you'd rather have a cool lizard chest instead. That's an option.

17. If there's stuff you're gonna need that you can't lift with a grabber claw and it's normally on the floor or up on a shelf, move it to waist height. (But remember your lifting limit!!)

18. If you won't have someone to cook for you, pre-cook and freeze and/or refrigerate a week's worth of meals that you can pop into the microwave while you're high as fuck on painkillers.

21. Opioid pain meds WILL MAKE YOU CONSTIPATED. Start taking stool softener the day before surgery. Do it with electrolyte drinks. Drink lots of water. Pain ain’t noble but neither is needing to give yourself an enema.

22. Pick out things you want to read or watch before surgery. Have them queued up so you don’t have to make real decisions when you’re in brain fog land.

23. Allow yourself to sleep 20 hours in a day if that’s what your body is telling you it needs. One day you might feel fine and can sit up and read and watch movies no problem. The next day 30 minutes of low activity can feel exhausting. That’s part of the healing process.