>:0

High functioning catboy // he/him // DNI if you support Franklin the turtle

[dogpuppy]

[bakersfield-row]

[wordfather]

doctor diagnosed me with oc sickness in the brain; the ocs will spin around in my brain forever and ever

[thecryptkeeper]

how it feels to drink water out of a mason jar

[parkchanwoohoo]

[beemovieerotica]

was at a bar and a 50+ year old drunk white woman complimented me and my friend's outfits, told us there was a campsite up in northern maryland where a lot of gay bears go to have sex in the woods. we asked her how she knew about this and she very aggressively said "because i'm a FAG HAG!!! but i'm not allowed to say that anymore I GUESS!!!"

[plague-vulture]

washing dishes is evil because you go "oh fuck there's so many dishes this is gonna take foreverrr" and then you enter the dish abyss and emerge with your abdomen somehow covered in water and your hands all wrinky and then you look at the clock and what felt like half an hour was actually 10 minutes

[kaijuerotica]

save me, rice mixed with some bullshit

[lesvegas]

passing in public makes me feel like white shrek

[lesvegas]

literally how it feels

[steelydanyaoi]

whats the fuckwhat makes this guy so fucking special

[ojibwa]

im so fucking determined to get better i swear to god lets do this bitch lets go

[juniper-petunia]

they should make a version of socializing that doesn’t make you feel like you’re still the weird 12 year old kid that doesn’t know why she’s not normal like the other kids

[aethersea]

cannot understate the value of turning a few no-thought-required chores into your idle animation. I am wandering around in aimless restless need, unsure what kind of stimulation I crave, compelled to seek it out and yet unsatisfied by all that I attempt? ok I can do that while I put the dishes away. or fold some laundry. recently I was able to add 'washing the dishes' to the list and it's been a game changer. I can settle into the physical motion and very low-level mental requirements of doing the chore, and the rest of my brain can turn over the problem of What Should I Do Next. eventually I think of something I could try doing instead, and by the time I do I've folded three shirts and half my underwear. and these are all chores I can drop almost at once (except washing dishes, I don't like to leave the soapy dishes out, but rinsing is mostly quick). so as soon as I want to not be doing this anymore, I just stop!

[aethersea]

crucially this is not an 'if you can lean you can clean' thing! I am doing these tasks to keep my hands busy. keeping my hands busy frees up brain space to actually make a rational decision about what I should spend my energy on, because it scratches the restless screaming itch in my skin to DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW (normal relatable content teehee we've all got bees in our bones right?)

as a bonus it also quiets the voice that complains I never do anything worthwhile etc etc, and it also makes me feel better later in a mysterious inexplicable way (since nicer living space => better mental health, in a mechanism that I'm intellectually aware of but regularly forget in practice)

[aethersea]

I don't have a clear guide for How To Do This, but a huge part of the end goal and something one could try working on idk is mentally turning the chore into "a thing I do while I'm really doing other stuff." this may work best if you already have a few activities in that category - I like to knit while I watch TV, sew while I'm chatting with people, etc - but the key component is that the dishes are not The Activity. the dishes are what your hands are doing while your brain is occupied with The Activity. you get in the habit of expending like .5% of a thought on the dishes, which includes not thinking any thoughts like "ugh ugh I hate doing the dishes." you have better things you could do with that brainpower!

maybe a good way to practice is turn on a podcast or youtube video while you do the chore. or maybe call a friend and chat all the way through! get used to doing the chore while your mind is fully just elsewhere.

another one is probably making sure the chore requires minimal effort + time to start and to stop. for me Folding Laundry is no longer a thing with a start and stop, I just leave the hamper of clean clothes out and I fold a shirt whenever I walk by until the whole thing is empty. it takes the time it takes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the moment you have to do Setup Activities before you can commence the chore, the chore becomes a whole Thing and you suddenly have to engage executive function on purpose to do it, instead of having it be something your hands can randomly pick up without you having to think about it.

[byjove]

Heterosexual relationship culture is so alien to me and I don’t know if it’s the fact I’m not cishet or the fact I’m autistic but I hear so many things that make me go “Am I insane or are they?”

There’s a lot of hate on widowers and I saw a woman say “You cannot compete with a dead woman.” which is perhaps a reasonable statement to say if he’s constantly comparing you to his dead partner but that wasn’t what the post was about. And I realized “Oh my God, these people genuinely feel like they’re constantly in competition with their spouse’s exes and the ex being dead makes them feel insecure that they cannot best her.”

There’s also been an uptick in the ‘men and women cannot be ‘just’ friends’ rhetoric which I feel like is extremely dangerous and reflects the rise of fascism and sexism. Some of these stories of women feeling threatened by their husband’s female best friend have some merit and others are like “I feel angry that my husband still talks to the girl he grew up next door to and she and her wife are invited to family gatherings and included in family photos sometimes. Am I right to be suspicious?” No. No you’re not. I cannot imagine being you and living with that high level of stress and paranoia and constant torment and jealousy about your husband having a positive relationship with anyone who isn’t you.

[covington-shenanigans]

okay look i know this isn't relevant to this post past the second paragraph but. here's the thing. the facts of the case are as follows:

1) I am widowed. my Beloved Wife of Blessed Memory(tm) died in 2019

2) I got together with my current partner about 18 months later

3) when I am committing acts of Foolishness my current partner loves to gesture at the sky to my dead wife, like "do you see this shit, my liege" and regularly says to me things like "[wife's name] was right about this" when my Foolishness inevitably comes back to bite me in the ass

4) this happens. all the time

more importantly:

5) my current partner is on tumblr

6) they love to incessantly send me posts

WHICH MEANS:

7) they just sent me this post with this commentary:

8) they really, really are ganging up on me with her. god help us if there's an afterlife and those two ever actually meet. "eternal rest" my ass, i will never know peace again

[isa-ah]

it should be illegal to take a nap and still have a headache when you wake up. like no i shut it off and back on again why are you still here

[guooey]

me after loosening up on the routine that keeps me functioning as a person: why am I not functioning as a person

[owlet]

you need to get it out of your mind that psychosomatic illness is just “making up symptoms” when it’s actually much more like your body is being actively poisoned by chemicals released from your brain

[owlet]

if you’re so stressed that you’re puking your guts up every morning, are unable to eat or keep anything down, you can’t look at light without feeling infinitely worse and feel exhausted and in pain all the time (or whatever your particular stress induced symptom set is) you’re not just feeling like that because you’ve willed it into being. your body is begging for relief from the constant barrage of stress hormones and it requires the fundamental source of stress to go away, not just distracting yourself from the symptoms

just because the root is psychological doesn’t mean the result isn’t an entirely physical process.

[headspace-hotel]

This and also "your body is desperately trying to alert you to the fact that stress is killing you"

[katherynefromphilly]

Doctor, looking at my neck x-ray: “The muscles of your neck are in such spasm right now that your spine has lost its curve. No wonder you’re in such pain. What the heck did you do to yourself?”

Me: “I work on a computer all day.”

Doctor: “Ah. That will do it. Right, so here’s a script for anti-inflammatories and a muscle relaxer. Also try hot and cold on it, 15 minutes each, and then gentle movements between each round. You’ll feel better in about a week.”

Me: “In a week I’m still going to need to work on the computer.”

Doctor: “And here’s also a script for 6 months of Physical Therapy.”

Me: “In 6 months I’m still going to need to work at a computer.”

Doctor: “And take breaks and do stretches between meetings?”

Me: “They book me in back to back meetings where I work. I eat lunch at my computer. I have to excuse myself to go pee.”

Doctor: “…”

Me: “…”

Doctor: “Um… it sounds like this job is actually, literally, killing you? Can you possibly work someplace else?” *

———

*note: It wasn’t said as flippant advice, and the doctor was 100%. right. After I got a different job — which took a WHILE — it was in a different corporate culture, one that didn’t believe in filling the day with meetings. I was able to do the stretches I was supposed to do, and also walk at lunch, and my neck is much better now. Not everyone has this choice. But maybe, if your job is killing you too, start thinking about an escape plan. Your body will eventually turn you into a pretzel otherwise. Nothing psychosomatic about that.

[shubbabang]

[noodleddragon]