whatever we feel like

Hemp is so threatening to the Commodities Industry, they have Lobbied Against Legalization since the 1920s.

*clears throat*

They’re cousins. They look similar, but Hemp can be used to make durable clothing, paper, biodegradable plastics, and has high nutritional value. It’s oil is good as an anti-inflammatory if taken in pill form with other medication. If you smoke hemp, you’re not going to get high. There’s no THC in hemp.

Doing the above things with Marijuana is a waste of THC ;p

Pot = medicinal and recreational depressant drug

That’s probably for a lot of reasons. The cost of doing something is mostly invisible to other people, while not being able to do something at all is really visible. Disabled people often themselves don’t have the concept “doing this is much harder for me than for other people” and think “other people work harder than me” or “I suck” or “I hate doing that but don’t know why”. It’s much easier to evaluate and verify ‘impossible’ than ‘really costly and awful’. 

And if something is easy for you, it can be really hard to imagine what it being costly would be like. I bet most people who can drive have an easier time imagining “you can’t drive”, which they can imagine like “you don’t have access to a car”, than “you can drive, but drives of more than ten minutes will usually (but not always) give you a headache and a buzzing sensation that lasts on-and-off for the next few hours, and drives of more than half an hour are so exhausting you had better be able to nap for hours when you reach your destination, and turning the radio on keeps you awake but makes you spatial awareness worse”. 

All this is to say that the fact that this octopus appears to be dreaming means one of two things. Either

a) dreaming is a very, very old thing indeed, going directly back to the Urbilaterian. This would mean that almost every animal, from insects to starfish to sea slugs to newts, is likely to have the ability to dream in some capacity or another (unless they have specifically lost it by evolutionary simplification).

or

b) dreaming evolved entirely independently in cephalopods when they developed greater intelligence. This would suggest, at least, that there’s something very fundamental about dreaming related to intelligence itself, which causes it to emerge independently when sufficient intelligence arises.

climbing ON the furniture will disrupt the pattern of your footsteps and make it harder to hear where you are in the house

crawling will do the same and if you get caught crawling you can pretend you fell 

the floor near the wall can be really loud if the floorboards/carpet is old and not completely flush to the wall

If your house has snack packs (like gummy bears or crackers or chips), count them every day until you know the rhythm that they get consumed. (This took me a week and a half with my twin brother and sister). Then join the rhythm when you make your nightly visits. It will be that much harder to figure out it was you.

-a jar of peanut butter is long lasting and easy to hide under a bed or in a dresser drawer. I lived off of jars of peanut butter and boxes of saltine crackers I would buy on grocery trips with my mom.

-two words: Slipper Socks. These are the socks that have rubber designs on the bottom for grip. They make no noise, and also keep you steady on slicker surfaces like tile and wood. You can find them cheap at Walmart. They also keep your feet more protected if you’re outside.

-if you’re secure enough in your room to have a small food stash, make sure you’re not too obvious about it (duh) but also move its location every few days. I kept mine in a shoebox under my bed, then switched it to a backpack in my closet, then wedged between my bookshelf and wall, and I would cycle locations until i moved it permanently to a false-bottomed drawer I installed in my dresser when my father was gone for a weekend. I would NEVER put food directly into my stash after taking it. I would keep it in pockets of my clothes and between books until everyone went to sleep, then I’d stock and stow my stash for the next few days.

-get a water bottle with a filter in it. I used to be able to reach my bathroom from my bedroom door down the hall using a huge step or minor jump/leap. If I was afraid of being caught at night, I’d fill up the humidifier tank we kept under our sink while I took a short shower, and would refill my water that way. It might not be the best option, but I kept a small stockade of water under my bed for emergencies.

-if you can, smuggle your garbage out in your backpack or purse. Dispose of it at work/school. I got caught twice by carelessly throwing away packaging.

-if someone knows the situation you’re going through (close friend/partner/etc) see if there’s a way for them to get food or other supplies to you at school or work or what private time you may get. A hidden first aid kit literally saved parts of my body before and I owe it to a close friend.

-try learning the building’s natural rhythm. The house I grew up in would creak and settle heavily every night for 3-5 minutes. That was my shot, and I had to be QUICK. I still got caught a few times, but learning the patterns in our floors and walls, when they creaked, WHERE they creaked, kept me going. Eventually I was sprinting in slipper socks to the kitchen and back in less than 90 seconds.

-if you have stairs, or live upstairs. Sit as you go down them one at a time, or climb up them like an animal. It keeps you low/out of lots of motion sight, and also can reduce noise and creaking by distributing weight over more than 1-2 steps.

-You can use common hand sanitizer to remove the stains certain snack foods leave behind (coughs cheeto fingers) and a dry toothbrush can help scrub the color off your tongue. If you can get powdered toothpaste or toothpaste tabs to keep on hand, it makes a huge difference in sneakiness.

-I don’t recommend going for dried foods like granola or cereal unless you can sneak it to a secure place to get it. It’s too loud, it’s a gamble every time for something with less caloric intake than it’s worth if you get caught. Of course, there are times when that’s the only option!!

-if you’re taking milk, add water, but be SURE to shake/agitate the bottle to distribute the dairy fat with the water. I got into the habit of shaking milk jugs when I started sneaking it, and explained the habit as something I read in an old comic strip my father showed me. (Back when whole milk had a lot more cream fats and they’d separate, so shaking it would redistribute the cream.) I still shake milk jugs to this day.

-if your windows open or don’t have screens, eat leaning out an open window. Any food mess will be lost in the dirt. I was lucky I had bushes and birds outside that would catch my granola bar crumbs before anyone could notice.

-canned goods are tempting, but not worth it. It requires too many tools (can opener/strained sometimes/utensils/some need heat) stick to thinks like various nut butters (sunflower/peanut/almond), crackers, dried fruit, and easy to conceal food bars (nature valley/nutrigrain/etc.) dried ramen packets are good uncooked if you can stand the texture. Apple sauce and pudding cups are also easier to sneak and stash than one might think, and can be eaten with your fingers. The only canned foods I recommend are condensed soups and precooked pasta (spaghetti-o’s). You can easily mix them with a little bit of hot water from the tap and get something more sustaining than a handful of captain Crunch. The cans are cheap, sometimes recyclable, and drinking soup takes way less time than chewing solid food.

-if you menstruate, attempt to stash pads/tampons in a safe location. Sometimes shit happens. Pads can work as bandages in emergency situations. Sometimes shark week comes unexpectedly. If you can sneak a roll of toilet paper or paper towels, these are also life savers.

-plastic utensils from takeout containers can be hidden inside socks and will be worth their weight in gold when you least expect it. I bought myself a tiny plastic bowl from the dollar store and kept cheap trinkets in it on my desk so it didn’t seem like a bowl I was eating out of. You could try this with something like a mason jar, which is also useful for drinking out of or storing water.

-if you’re eating a crunchy or solid food, try soaking it in water. Mushy food can be repulsive in texture, but I could clock the sound of someone eating a nature valley oat bar from like 6 miles away. Dunking it in water (or using a secret bowl+water) can reduce noise, and also eating time since you don’t have to chew as much.

-keep a laundry bar or tide pen on you. Laundry bars are super useful, a little hard to find though. I washed a lot of stains out of my clothes with laundry bars in my bathroom sink as a kid. Not proud if it, but it kept me flying under the radar at school.

-clear rubber bands, plain twine or string, paper clips, and thumb tacks. Indescribably useful. I once rigged a system to open tricky cabinets and get objects from inside using two paper clips and a foot of plain string like a mock lasso system.

-if you’re pulling objects from tall cabinets, use your chest or stomach to cushion them. Let them fall into your torso and then into your hands cradled underneath. Not as loud, not as much grabbing, if someone sees it they can mistake it for it falling on you by the body language.

-get a bandana. Or four. Napkins, bandages, tool, and accessory all in one.

-get a tiny sewing kit. I’m talking 3 needles and a spool of thread tiny. Scissors if you can sneak it. See things into your clothes. Make hidden pockets or compartments. Threadbanger on YouTube did a video a few years ago about sneaking things into music festivals using tiny clothing mods, but they may be useful in sneaking money or medicine.

-on the topic of sneaking money. don’t take bills, take change. If your abusers don’t meticulously count their nickels and pennies, they’re an easy(ish) way to build up a tiny savings pool. I found nickels the least noticed coin I took, even more than pennies, and taking two every few nights from where they’d be tossed on our countertop soon built up to a semi-reliable fund I passed off to someone to get me food for my stash without having to sneak it from the kitchen. As soon as I became “independent” in my food storage, I was subjected to much less scrutiny. I managed to build up a solid 1-2 week ration supply after hoarding change.

-you can tape SD cards to the inside of book dust covers(the part that folds inside the actual cover of the book), if you have a sewing kit or zipper on it inside the stuffing of your pillow (trim a corner, stuff it inside, stitch it closed) or (this is final resort) VERY CAREFULLY remove the covering from your outlet and tape it to the wall stud before replacing the casing. I kept mine inside part of my wooden bed frame that I hollowed out using, you guessed it, take out silverware knives and 4 nights without sleep.

-THE FLOOR IS LAVA WAS KEY TRAINING FOR ME AS A CHILD. I learned to take pillows with me, climb on furniture to disrupt my flow of movement, toss a pillow down, and use that to cushion any rattle our living room could give off as I crept to the kitchen from the side entrance so my mom’s dog wouldn’t bark or alert anyone. I highly suggest crawling around on all fours like some sort of beast to stay out of sight.

-can you run your house blindfolded?? If you can’t. Maybe you should try to learn. I suffered some heavy eye traumas growing up and had a collective 3-4 months just IN THE DARK. Eyes bandaged, left alone. It was terrible, but damn if I couldn’t navigate the whole place silently, without any visual cues. This helps a lot with the whole moving around in the dark thing, too. Listening is obviously key.

-if your parents start getting suspicious, or you’re suspicious they’re getting suspicious, watch out for traps. String on the ground that gets shifted when you walk on it. Baby powder or flour left to track footprints or doors opening/closing. My dad was partial to wrapping a bungee cord around my doorknob and attaching it to the closet across the hallway. I wouldn’t be able to open my door enough to get out, or if I did, I risked ruining the structural integrity of the wrappings he did, and he would notice.

-learn to tie some knots. Strong ones. They’ll come in handy at one point or another.

•Keeping a $10 bill on the inside of my phone case for emergencies. My mother will search my wallet and bags but has not taken my phone case off when she takes my phone as of yet.

•stashing loose change I find in the soil of my potted plant. Very quiet hiding place for coins. All bills are quickly confiscated but coins I have managed to hold onto this way

•changing food stash locations constantly. A good stash I’ve found is buried in my mice seed mix. Small packages or granola bars can fit in there pretty easily and the wrappers are flushable (I know it’s bad to flush them but my trash is routinely searched)

• always deleting online traces in case of phone/computer search. This includes search history, forbidden apps, messages, pictures, notes, games, etc. I don’t know how many times I have deleted the tumblr app during the day only to re download it late at night to use it. My phone and computer are constantly confiscated and gone through with a fine tooth comb. I delete anything I might possibly get in trouble for after I use it and re download it when I need it again. Don’t delete all your browsing history though, they will notice if it’s suspiciously empty. Fill it with safe and approved stuff and remove anything you might get punished for.

•learning what each and every door in the house sounds like so I know who is where at all times without having to leave the room

•learning where those ‘sweet spots’ are in the house where you can notice anyone coming before they can see you or what you are doing

•always having a pre-approved cover. I use books and preaching videos as covers. I can hide a phone in a book or quickly switch apps to the one playing the video if surprised or discovered.

• always being aware of ‘the trail’. If I tell a friend something who tells their sibling who tells my sibling who tells my mom I get punished so basically tell no one and it won’t come back to bite you. This includes talking about tv shows/movies that are forbidden, forbidden foods/drinks, activities, apps, games, friends, political views, etc. Express an opinion and it’s bound to reach someone you don’t want it to.

•never take from your abuser’s personal stash of food or money. The family pantry is fair game to carefully pilfer from and so is loose change but never take from their personal purse/wallet, fridge, pantry, or stash. They WILL find out.

•beware of traps and manipulation . My mother will leave money and food unattended and wait for it to disappear. She will also act like she wants to do a good thing and help you out but in the end you will pay for it a hundred times over. Avoid this if at all possible.

-bring a large cup to pee in when it is not safe for you to leave your room or space. be sure to sneak it down a drain as soon as possible.

-other foods to stash away include trail mix, breakfast bars, fruits and veggies. a couple slices of bread and cheese aren’t as easily missed either.

-i have had luck taping paper money to the underside of our rug.

-be aware that you will likely carry the weight of this time with you for a long while. most of my nightmares still take place in my childhood home, where i haven’t lived in over five years.

-Avoid plastic and paper. They russle a lot, especially when you’re trying to be quiet. As stated above pillowcases are a godsend.

-If you can access the kitchen during the day (and not get caught doing this) move things you might need, granola on the shelf you can only just barely reach? Pull one bar out and slip it to the lowest shelf in the whole kitchen. Put it somewhere no one will check.

-The bottom of a trash can is NOT a good hiding spot. Tempting I know. I’ve hidden a secret stash under a trash bag. Played it off a few times as being a good kid and taking out the trash. But you would have to be the one to always take it out if you did this. Always. You can’t rely on ‘probablies’.

-Self aid. Go to your school nurse and ask for Band-Aids. School computer lab have alcohol pads so you can clean off the mouse? Take some. They will hurt and burn but a clean wound is so much better than an infected one.

-For those of you with allergies to the Staples (peanut butter, bread, cheese, the like) Beans are your new best friend. They suck but hey, they work.

-AVOID SWEETS. This sucks I know. But sweets leave more behind than a chocolate colored tongue, including a sweetened breath (I got busted so badly once even after scrubbing my tongue.)

And finally,

Most obvious hiding places are in the closet, under the bed, in the bottom of drawers and under rugs.

You can tape small items such as a metro card, prepaid phone, plastic bag of money, birth control or other medications, etc under a desk or even better: open the top drawer of your dresser and tape the item to the bottom of the dresser top. Make sure you can open and close it securely without jarring the item free.

You can also hide bills in an old DVD case if you are 100% SURE no one will open it.

If you can get your hands on some good concealer, use it to hide scars and bruises. Abusers will try to isolate you even more if you are a walking display of evidence. Don’t give them any excuse to not let you go to school.

On this same note, avoid making drastic changes to your appearance (dramatic change to hair cut/dye, tattoos or piercings or wearing any makeup/accessory/clothing that might be deemed “different” for you) Your abuser may perceive this as you acting out or seeking attention, and they do not want you to receive any kind of attention as it may give you an outlet to expose what is happening at home.

Don’t write things in codes that are obviously codes. Your abuser will not like this if they find it and you will be punished or forced to reveal the code but most likely both. If you can, make a code that would look like something else if found by someone. For example: If hiding say, your email password so you won’t forget, make a list of things beginning with each letter of the password. Draw pictures of your passwords. (Ex. Draw 4 red dogs, your password is RedDog4.)

Evernote is a great way to hide a digital diary/notebook/photos/contacts that you can delete from your device quickly before a phone search. If you fear you wont have time to delete before a search there is an option to hide your private notebooks so that you can only find them by searching their name and load up some class notes so if your abuser asks about the app you can say it’s for school.

This is a bit expensive but if you can manage it use an external hardrive for anything on your computer your abuser wouldn’t approve of, from photos and videos to games to creative and programming software, etc.

To walk completely silently, even barefoot, start on the outside of your foot and roll off your big toe. This takes practice though. Your bare feet will also be quieter if you have calluses on them, so you want to walk barefoot as much as possible.

One thing I did was getting well acquainted with the woods. If I needed to avoid people and couldn’t hide in my room, (the door doesn’t have a lock and the consequences would be SO BAD if I blocked it with something), I grab my bag, and try to avoid them + walk silently as I walked outside and hid deep in the woods where they couldn’t find me.

Never bring your phone (or any electronics) if you choose to escape to a friend’s house/the woods/etc. You don’t know what apps they hid on there, which could track your location.

When in the woods, I would bury my trash so if a family member decides to explore the woods one day/was actively trying to find where I kept hiding, they wouldn’t find traces.

About that bag I mentioned. I risked getting caught for this. I have it in my closet with the other bags so it wasn’t suspicious, but if I got the feeling they were suspicious about me, I hid all the stuff in the bag in different places temporarily. In the bag I keep a bottle of 90% isopropyl alcohol (disinfectant) that my aunt gave me as a joke, a small sewing kit (needle, string, scissors) that I stole the components of from my mom’s room, a knife that I also stole from my mom, and some granola bars.

You can hide things in boxes that appear to be sealed on your shelves. Choose a side, use the corner of your nail, or a small knife if you have one, to slit 3 edges of the plasic on the box on your chosen side. Carefully side the box open so as to not tear the plastic. If there is space, hide your item(s) in the space. If not, take some of the contents out and hide them elsewhere* until you can dispose of them where they won’t find them. Arrange the flap of plastic so it lines up properly (if box is cardboard or similar you can lick the edge of the plastic and place it down, it will stick moderately well and the fact it isn’t in tact will be less noticeable) and put box on shelf so that the cut side is against the back. (I have many time in the past taken a “sealed” box of playing cards and take the right amount of cards out so that after putting whatever I want in, it would weigh the same as a normal box of playing cards. This way if they pulled things off the self, unless they examined the playing card box carefully, it was unlikely that they would notice)

*if you have a coat/jacket with a liner, you can put holes in your pockets and stitch the liner to the jacket at the bottom so things you put in there will be at the bottom and it will seem like your pockets are empty. Don’t put anything bulky or potentially loud in, or your trick will be exposed immediately. Works great for papers though, and it’s one of the only ways to transport plastic wrappers without being loud. Not coins though.

Learn how to remove the screen from your window

Any social media or other restricted thing or anything they could use to stalk me if they found out I had it I use web for, my accounts are under different fake names with different email address I created with different fake names just for them, and my passwords are all long, secure, and MEMORIZED. And I delete my search history of any of those particular things.

I know how to give myself stitches. This has come in handy.

Leather = low grade armor. Wear it whenever you can. Then you can take a punch without it being quite so bad.

There’s a gate at the bottom of the stairs at my house that not only creaks, but the latch is LOUD. I climbed over the railing near the bottom instead, and then walked down the outsides of the last couple of steps.

How to climb over a railing silently: put hands on railing, swing one leg over so you’re sitting as if on a horse, and then carefully slide your already over leg down so it is touching the outside of the step and at the same time you swing your other leg over and carefully place that foot down.

If you close a door while holding the handle turned, like how you would if you were opening it, and use your other hand to guide it so it doesn’t hit the door frame, instead lining it up exactly where the latch needs to go, and then slowly rotate the handle back, it is near silent.

A fluffy sock jammed in the bottom handle-side corner of the door can keep the door from making noise as you walk around your room at night.

Hide things inside your pillows. Not just your pillow cases, but the pillows themselves. A lot of them have zippers where you can access the fluff, and you can hide things in the fluff. Stuffed animals sometimes have this too.

Semi-sheer, loose layers will be a lot less hellish and a lot less suspicious in warm weather but can still hide most older cuts/scars that are starting to become less garishly red.

If you close your eyes for 30 seconds before trying to navigate the dark your eyes will adjust and you will be able to see much better.

if you never turn a fan on you can tape ska stuff to the top of it, idk if it will hold if the fan turns on

Seriously

We’re here for you

always have an escape route mapped out

always have an escape bag, just in case. mine has an extra phone charger, my wallet, a sewing kit, a re-usable water bottle, extra underwear, toilet paper, headphones, a grocery bag, and a small blanket

if u can, try to get a pair of boots that are good for navigating wooded areas

study foraging. u never know how useful info about toxic and non-toxic plants can be

Oh and you can put things like crackers, pretzels, and cereal in clean socks (or just a small bag if you have one) if you can’t take the whole container. Just make sure to switch the socks around every now and then because crumbs are a bitch. 

Also, I had a mortice lock on my door. If you stick a plaster or some opaque tape over it, it stops them looking through and it also stops them smashing into the door until your key falls out, if you have a key. This happened to me once and he also had a key so obviously I had to stop it from happening again. Just leave the key in the lock and put the plaster so it covers the rest of the hole:

Keep batteries in your room and a torch. I grew up in a house with a separate breaker for my room, and it’s a lot less harrowing when they shut off the power to your room if you can have some light.

If you can, get one of those phone chargers with a handle, it takes a lot of cranking but it can mean being able to call someone for help when you really need it.

There are often little gaps in upholstery if you have any upholstered furniture, where you can hide stuff. Also, flat things can go under your mattress if nobody else is likely to flip your mattress. There is a little space between cushions sometimes. Find the little hiding places that are already part of your furniture.

Always move your hiding places.