Lurking in the shadowy recesses

Wonderful Nothing | A Fraser/Kowalski Vid

Don't talk, that's it, just one Do you think you can handle that much? I've just come back to life I'm here, I'm your little ray of sunshine

Thank you @duesouthseekritsanta for all your hard work 🥹🥹🥹 THERE’S SO MUCH GOOD FIC TO READ AND ART TO VIEW AND VIDS TO WATCH ANNHHHHHH

It is, as I already acknowledged, a trauma response. It’s what happens when you’ve been hurt too many times and your brain starts to go “why bother” because no matter what you do, someone hurts you.

On the outside, it can look like the person is being entirely unreasonable. It’s like telling someone to touch a cold stove top, knowing that it’s cold, and getting frustrated that the person won’t do it because it might be hot.

You’re telling them it’s off. You even put your own hand on it to show that it’s off. And they still won’t do it. And that’s frustrating.

But it’s also something I understand as a disabled person because so many of the things that are normal for so many people cause me debilitating pain, and yet people tell me all the time that’s impossible.

No one can live in constant pain like that. They’d go mad if they did. Here see, just do this, they’ll prove it. The stove top is cold—why won’t I believe them?

Just because the pain is mental for people with learned helplessness doesn’t mean it’s not pain. It’s a conditioned response. Someone has forced them to touch the hot stove top over and over—maybe they even made it look like the stove top was off to trick them into doing it.

It’s hard to trust again, after things like that happen to you. It’s hard to do anything.

The thing which those of us on the outside identify correctly as self-sabotaging behavior can feel like safety when all attempts to do anything in the past have resulted in profound hurt.

Does this make the behavior any less frustrating and maddening for me, a person who was forced too young to become hyper competent and independent to deal with the circumstances I grew up with?

No, absolutely not. I was also made to touch the hot stove top too often as a child. Not because people thought it was off, but because they needed someone else to get burned and I was there.

That’s my trauma and I do not have to diminish my own to make others feel better about theirs.

Ultimately, it’s a conflict of needs.

And perhaps once upon a time, before therapy, I would have seen it as my responsibility to help the other person because that’s what I was conditioned to do or face horrible consequences.

It’s a conflict of needs that requires communication.

Did the communication work last night? No. Sadly. It was taken in bad faith from a place of hurt.

Does that mean I need to tolerate that behavior because I recognize where it’s coming from?

Also no. I’m not their therapist.

I get to guard my emotional safety just as much as they do theirs. And if I continue to find the behavior untenable, I will make a decision about the longevity of the friendship based on that.

Neither of us are bad people in this scenario. We just currently can’t be healthy friends without triggering the shit out of each other and that’s fine.

But seen as how you emailed me from a dud email that appears to be bouncing back replies and I really wanted to address something you said to me about violence begetting violence:

My migraine medication, the medication I was given for my debilitating neurological disease that has gotten so bad I spent most of this year actively suicidal, costs $1300 a month.

My insurance covered it. But only because my doctors office went to fucking war for me because I’m a high anaphylaxis risk for the drugs the insurance wanted me to try.

Because that’s the thing.

My doctors knew, based on my documented medical history, I likely wouldn’t be a good fit for the “first line” of preventative migraine drugs, but because of insurance, I had to be given drugs that were contradictory to my other life threatening conditions, because otherwise insurance wouldn’t cover anything else.

I failed them. Spectacularly and with an anaphylactic reaction to one of them. And I was still warned insurance would fight me because I hadn’t tried the remaining drug they wanted me to try.

A drug which I would have to take in an ER waiting room because my mast cell disease is unpredictable but insurance wouldn’t cover in-patient treatment to let me try it safely under medical supervision.

Is that not violence?

Were all the times I was denied coverage for vital and necessary procedures that could have prevented my disabilities from worsening not violence?

Maybe not in the sense you mean. But I assure you it felt very much like violence to me.

Do I condone murder? No, obviously. But I’m also sick and tired of people pretending that what is happening to the American people every day isn’t eugenics through class warfare.

Violence begets violence.

It sure fucking does.

in one, they pack your cavities or cracked tooth or whatever with stem cells and then trigger those stem cells to become tooth cells and your tooth basically heals itself :D

in this one, they basically tell your genes, "hey, remember that bit of genetic code that caused your body to grow a whole new set of teeth when you were like 8 years old? Yeah, run that code again right here" or, more accurately, what they really do is tell your body to temporarily stop running the extra bit of code that prevents you continuously growing new teeth like a shark.

(Stacked Rewatch / Timestamp Roulette Art Challenge)

I'm really happy with this one! It took less than an hour and I had zero problems with it. Mused on shoulder holsters and other leather goods while I worked. And Ray's incredibly beautiful neck. And Fraser's perfect S3 hair - it was never better. ;)

Commander Rayner + the Rayner maneuver