Tired but Trying

my body has 0 tolerance for doing anything or going anywhere

abelds have this funky ability where they hear disabled people say they "can't" do something and instead of hearing "can't" as in, cannot, they hear "i can if i push myself and i just don't wanna". which is really interesting!

It's nuts how common it is to not allow children to be angry, even (especially) in households where adults are angry all the time. As a child I knew my own anger was unacceptable--not just expressing it outwardly but feeling it at all. So now as an adult my immediate reaction to my own anger is often to feel guilt instead of like. Noticing when someone is being rude or unfair or my boundaries are being violated or whatever. fucked up.

to this day "who is allowed to be angry" has been an incredible benchmark for teasing out who, in abusive situations with mutual accusations and DARVO happening, is being abusive and who is being abused. one of my favorite resources about this, the Creative Interventions Toolkit, phrases the question "who sets the weather?" in the relationship and I think about it so so often when I think about my own childhood. I was parentified in a way that set me up for future abusive relationships, because I had to soothe my parents' anger while not being allowed to feel angry myself. I am extremely grateful to everyone outside myself - friends, therapists, partners - who's gotten angry on my behalf about how I'm treated or let me know something I'd been excusing or blaming myself for was actually Not Okay. I guess the good news here is that it's possible to learn how to access anger again in a healthy way, it just takes support, like doing physical therapy for a muscle that didn't develop quite right.

and this isn't even getting into harm that's genuinely necessary! i read a book recently that was intended to educate people in healthcare about medical trauma, written by a medical professional who found that there weren't existing resources to help her cope with the aftermath of the extremely traumatic c section that saved her life. the whole tone of the book was "i know you've never thought about this before, but walk with me through this case study" and it's aimed at other medical professionals! it's aimed at the people who are doing this harm, and so many of them think that people aren't allowed to find it harmful just because it's necessary!

so many trauma resources assume that your trauma is from a specific person or people who treated you in a way that society deems unacceptable. if your trauma doesn't fit that profile then you're left sitting there like. idk i dont think most of this stuff applies to me. where are the resources for people like me.

if you were ever scared or in pain and were told that you had to grin and bear it because it's necessary for you to do the thing that scares and hurts you, you are allowed to say that that was traumatic. you are allowed to say that you were scared and in pain and that even if this was the least bad option, even if it was lifesaving, it still was not okay. something being necessary does not inherently make it okay.

This is a common gateway to pseudoscience. People experience trauma from receiving, or from seeing a loved one receive, lifesaving medical care and aren't able to find the space to process that it was necessary, the alternative was worse, AND it was really and truly awful. People who are afraid to go back. People who need accommodations to make necessary medical care less stressful and scary, and can't get them.

It’s fascinating hearing how other people think. My dad says he has to think of a full sentence word for word before he says it whereas I don’t know what I’m gonna say until I’ve already said it.

looks inside procrastination -> it's anxiety -> looks inside anxiety -> it's fear -> looks inside fear -> it's shame

Surely these circumstances will improve with additional shame

"if you forgot then it obviously wasn't important to you" is an ableist thing to say and i'm tired of pretending it's not

I've forgotten *my own birthday* before. There are several years of my life just straight up missing. In the past I've forgotten silly little frivolous things like NAMES OF LOVED ONES or WHERE MY HOUSE IS. But obviously none of that was important. Fucking awful, ableist thing to say.

WAIT HOLD ON I cannot fucking believe when I was like four years old my parents were cajoling me to walk with the family and trying to get me to keep up even though I kept insisting that I was "tired" until they took me to a doctor and found out my LUNGS DIDN'T WORK. how insane that we live in a world where reasonably loving parents think their FOUR YEAR OLD is trying to be LAZY. like they were mortified to be clear. adults are just so trained to ignore children's complaints as untrustworthy, kids just need discipline, they can't possibly speak for themselves. what the fuuuuck.

YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE BTW you should always be trying to take children seriously, especially very little ones but definitely all of them. the most disempowered class basically legally defined as property and most people are like "yeah that's good actually I hate when they Loiter lol they're stupid and loud and i actually think children should stop existing. restrict their personhood more actually"